Gold Mountain Blues

by Ling Zhang

  “How many times have I told you that well-brought-up girls don’t do things like that?”

  Her mother’s English went to pieces under stress. Of course, it would be some years before Amy understood that her mother had an accent. And several more years passed before she realized that that accent had something to do with a childhood that Yin Ling wanted to put behind her forever.

  “Lots … Lots of times,” stammered Amy.

  “Then you tell me what I’ve taught you!” shouted her mother.

  “I must not pick my nose, scratch myself, or fart, in front of other people. I must cover my mouth with my hand when I sneeze.”

  “If you know it, then why do you still do it?”

  “But it wasn’t … it wasn’t in front of—”

  “Shut up!” Yin Ling brusquely interrupted Amy. “Bad habits start behind people’s backs!”

  Amy shut up. She did not dare ask her mother what a well-brought-up girl was supposed to do when she had an itch, though she wanted to. She knew her mother was in a very bad mood today and anything Amy said might make the storm break over her head.

  It had something to do with Uncle Bill.

  Uncle Bill had told her mother he would take her to Ottawa on Victoria Day to see the tulips flown in from Holland. But the day before they were due to go, he had gone back on his word. And for the last three days, he had not called her mother either.

  “Uncle Bill must be ill,” said Yin Ling. “Last time we saw him, didn’t he keep sneezing?”

  Yin Ling kept on and on asking the same question. The first time, Amy answered that, no, he hadn’t been sneezing. Her mother got so angry, she would not speak to her for the rest of the day. So the next time her mother raised the subject of Uncle Bill, she knew what she had to say: “Yes, Uncle Bill must surely have a bad cold.” Her mother beamed with joy at that. Amy was puzzled. Why did Uncle Bill having a cold make her mother so happy?

  Today was Uncle Bill’s birthday, and her mother had a present for him—a lighter in the shape of an eagle. If you gave its legs a little snap, flame spurted from its beak. Uncle Bill smoked Cuban cigars which filled the room with a haze of smoke so dense that Amy felt as if she was choking. Yin Ling put the lighter in a silver-plated box and carefully wrapped it in gold paper.

  “We won’t tell Uncle Bill we’re coming. It’ll be a surprise,” she said to Amy.

  But Amy could see that her mother did not look like someone who was going to spring a nice surprise on a friend. She wore a worried expression.

  “All right, all right! Don’t give me that long face just because I’m talking to you!” she said shortly from the front seat. “You’ll be seeing Uncle Bill soon. Do you remember what you’re going to say to him?”

  “Happy birthday,” said Amy, swallowing the lump in her throat. “What else?”

  “We … miss you very much.”

  “What else?”

  “You look very smart today.”

  Her mother fell silent, and pulled in at the curb. She took a cigarette from her bag. Her hand was trembling so much, it took her some time to light it.

  She finally finished the cigarette, and spent several more minutes clipping her fingernails. Snip. Snip. Snip. The clippings flew about the car like grasshoppers. As Yin Ling propped herself on the steering wheel, she looked very skinny, her bony shoulder blades sticking out like sharp knives under the thin material of her summer dress.

  “Amy, would you like Uncle Bill to be your dad?” asked her mother.

  The question caught Amy completely unprepared. She guessed her mother wanted her to say yes, but that “Yes” stuck in her throat and would not come out. Luckily, her mother started up the engine without waiting for an answer, and the old Ford rattled off down the street again.

  When she stopped again and got out of the car, pulling Amy with her, her hands were still trembling. She pushed Amy toward Uncle Bill’s front door, and stood leaning against the car door. She lit another cigarette and, with the first drag, began coughing—very loudly. She sounded like a woodpecker rapping on a tree trunk.

  Mum forgot to cover her mouth, thought Amy.

  Amy climbed the house steps and knocked on the door. She had to knock for quite a while before someone opened the door. But it was not Uncle Bill.

  It was a young, blue-eyed blond woman in a silk dressing gown. Her hair was dripping wet, as if she had just got out of the shower.

  “Honey! It’s for you!” the woman called casually over her shoulder.

  But her mother did not wait for Uncle Bill to appear. She dragged Amy back to the car and backed, revving furiously, out of Uncle Bill’s driveway. Out of the back window, Amy saw Uncle Bill rushing out in a pair of undershorts. He waved and shouted something but the wind snatched the sound away before they could hear what it was.

  “You look.…” Before Amy had finished reciting her lines, something flew past the car window and thudded against Uncle Bill’s mailbox. It was the gold-wrapped box with the lighter inside.

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!” her mother swore, punching the steering wheel, her hair almost standing on end in fury.

  The car zigzagged dangerously as it sped down the street, pursued by the tooting of angry horns.

  “I knew it! I knew it! All he wanted was a white girl!”

  Amy wanted to say something comforting, but she had no idea what to say. Finally she leaned against the back of her mother’s seat and said in little voice:

  “Mum, maybe we don’t need a dad.…”

  Her mother was quiet for a moment, then gave a high-pitched laugh. It gave Amy goose pimples. Then she realized her mother was crying. She kept wiping the snot from her nose with her hand and flicking it at the car window until the glass was covered with trails of slime.

  Mum’s forgotten how to be a well-brought-up woman, Amy thought. Finally the weeping stopped and calm descended. They drove on for about fifteen minutes, and arrived at a shabby old street. This was where Amy’s grandfather lived. Every time she lost an uncle, or when her mother was between uncles, this was where Amy was left.

  They stopped outside her grandfather’s house.

  The day was hot and the crickets were chirping noisily. From a distance, Amy could see him sitting in the porch dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, one leg propped up on the other, cooling himself down with the aid of a large rush fan.

  “For the love of God, put your leg down!” shouted Yin Ling.

  She quickly let Amy out of the car, as if she was anxious to be rid of her. “I’ll pick her up tomorrow morning.”

  And she drove off to the casino, without even stopping to step inside the house. Amy knew she did not need to go to work so early but wanted to avoid her grandfather’s endless questions.

  “Amy, good girl, what you like your granddad cook you dinner tonight?”

  Her grandfather’s English was even worse than her mother’s. When Amy first met him, she could not understand a word he was saying. But she was used to the way he spoke now, and mostly she could guess if she did not understand.

  “Fried chicken,” Amy said.

  She knew that if she did not make up her mind quickly, her grandfather would be sure to make her pickled egg porridge. She could not understand why he kept eating eggs that looked as if they had turned black from being buried in the earth for a thousand years. The first time she saw him putting one in his mouth, she expected him to fall down dead. But he did not. He even bared his stained teeth and grinned at her.

  “OK, Granddad, cut up the chicken,” and he went indoors.

  She had been secretly hoping he would go away quickly, because she often found coins which had dropped out of his pockets in the chair he sat in.

  But today she was out of luck. She only found two cents, which she put carefully away in an inside pocket.

  Bright sunlight glared down, bleaching the trees white. She heard the ice-cream van’s jingle but it did not stop at her street. It was hours till bedtime, too many to count properly. What w
as she going to do while they dragged by? Why could she not have a sister, or even a brother? Even a little brother would do in a pinch. Together they could have made the boring hours pass, made things a bit more fun. And why could she not live in one place, like other people did, so she could get to know the neighbours’ children and spend the long afternoons cycling up and down the street, skipping and running around?

  “Amy, good girl, come and eat char siu dumplings,” her grandfather called.

  Char siu dumplings again. He served them up every time she came. The sticky lumps of red meat always threatened to come back up the minute she had swallowed them down. She had asked her mother once: “Why does Granddad eat such funny food?” “Because he’s Chinese” was the answer. “Then if he’s Chinese, are we Chinese too?” To her surprise, her mother seemed stumped at that simple question. Finally she just said: “You’re not Chinese.” Amy wanted to ask if her mother was, but she did not dare because Yin Ling had an ugly look on her face.

  Amy went indoors. Her grandfather was chopping the chicken up. Bang, bang went the cleaver, until the chopping board squealed in protest. Something wet spattered on Amy’s cheek. She wiped it off—it was a bloody bone fragment. Her grandfather wiped his hands on his T-shirt and pulled a char siu dumpling in two, giving half to Amy.

  “To keep you going till the chicken’s ready,” he said.

  Amy felt like she was going to gag. “I’m not hungry,” she said. He did not force the dumpling on her, just shovelled both halves into his own mouth and waved her away. “Go play,” he said. “I call you when it’s ready.”

  Play? What with? Where? Amy looked outside at the blazing sunshine, and her heart sank.

  Teddy.

  Amy suddenly thought of her teddy bear. It was her only toy, given her one Christmas by one of the uncles. She had left it at her grandfather’s last time. She would go and search for it.

  She searched every nook and cranny downstairs, without success. She went upstairs. The two lodgers had gone to work and their doors were padlocked. Only her grandfather’s room was open. She went in and searched in the bed and under the pillow. No teddy. Then she saw that in the corner of the room there were some steps. They led up to the attic, she knew. Maybe her grandfather had found her teddy and put it up there.

  She climbed up.

  There was a skylight in the attic and the sunlight shone through, making a square shape on the floor. It was all much brighter than she had imagined. Amy thought no one had been up here for a long time. It smelled musty and she sneezed loudly, forgetting to put her hands over her nose and mouth. Good thing her mother was not here. She pushed her way into the room through layer after layer of cobwebs.

  There was not much in there. In one corner beneath the skylight there was a roll of paper and, next to it, a cloth bag. She opened the bag, releasing a cloud of dust, the motes sparkling golden in the sunlight. The bag held a stack of photographs. They were old and faded to a muddy sepia. Some were stuck together. Amy tried to pull them apart gently, and found she had left half of someone’s face behind.

  The photograph on top of the pile had been taken indoors. It was of a middle-aged couple, the woman wearing an embroidered tunic, buttoned slantwise, and the man in a gown that looked a bit like a woman’s dress, holding a hat in his left hand and a cane in his right hand. The second picture was of two boys on old-fashioned bicycles. The third was of a young woman with a small baby in her arms, standing on the bank of a river against a thick clump of trees. The sun shone brightly, bleaching the woman’s face white. All that was visible was her brilliant smile.

  Amy had never seen people, clothes or scenery like that before. She pored over all the photographs, and soon forgot about her teddy bear.

  Halfway through the pile, she finally found some faces she recognized: her grandfather and her mother.

  Her grandfather had to call her a few times before she came down. She was covered in dust. Her grandfather was startled. “Where you been, naughty girl?” he asked as he wiped her face and served her dinner. Amy bit off a piece of the chicken leg, then stopped chewing and looked abstracted. “Who are those people?” she asked. “What people?” He looked blank. “The pictures. The pictures in the attic.” The old man smiled. “So you been messing round up there? That’s your great-grandfather, great-grandmother, grandmother and great-aunt and great-uncles.”

  “What’s a great-grandfather?” “That’s your grandfather’s father.” “And a great-uncle?” “Your grandfather’s little brother.”

  Amy was still looking puzzled. Her grandfather fetched a piece of paper, and drew a tree on it. At the foot of the tree, he wrote Guangdong, China. Pointing to the tree trunk, he said: “That’s your grandfather’s mum and dad.” Then he drew three branches on the tree. “That’s me,” he said pointing to one branch, “and that’s my younger brother, your great-uncle, and my little sister, your great-aunt.” He drew a smaller branch coming off the first branch: “That’s my daughter, your mother.” Amy took the pen and drew an even smaller branch joined to her mother’s branch. “That’s me, Amy!” she said. Her grandfather’s face was suddenly wreathed in smiles. “What a clever girl, our little Amy!”

  Encouraged, Amy started to ask more questions. “Where are they, these branches?”

  “Some are dead,” said her grandfather, “and some live in China. We’ve lost touch.” “Where’s China?” “Very far away, on the other side of a big ocean.” “Could the Queen Victoria go there?” The Queen Victoria was a paddle steamer that went to Vancouver Island, and Amy and her mother had been on it once. Her grandfather roared with laughter. “No! You couldn’t get there even with ten Queen Victorias!”

  Amy looked disappointed. Finally she started chewing the piece of chicken again. But before she had finished, she thought of a new question.

  “Granddad, why are you Chinese and I’m not?”

  “Who says you’re not? You’re at least half Chinese.” “Then why do you say I am and Mum says I’m not? And why only half? What about the other half?”

  Before her grandfather had time to answer, the door burst open and her mother came in carrying two bags of shopping.

  “They’ve sent all the staff home. There’s a power outage,” she said to her grandfather.

  He found her a clean bowl and chopsticks and served her some chicken soup. “Sit down and eat with Amy. She’s hardly eaten anything.”

  As she ate, her mother caught sight of the piece of paper and pulled it towards her. When she saw what was drawn on it, her face looked thunderous and she slammed her bowl down, spattering rice all over the table.

  “How many times have I told you, Dad, not to go filling Amy’s head with that nonsense?”

  Her grandfather banged down his bowl too. “How long are you going to keep lying to her? Sooner or later she’s got to know who her family is. Don’t bother ever asking for your ancestors’ blessing if you go on refusing to acknowledge them!”

  Yin Ling seized Amy by the hand. She dragged her outside, pushed her into the car and banged the door shut on her.

  “Blessing from them? Fat chance! Being Chinese brought me nothing but misery. I’m not going to let Amy suffer the same way I did!” she shouted furiously out of the car window as she drove off.

  1971

  Vancouver, British Columbia

  “Rain, what a mess this rain makes.…”

  Kam Shan sat at the window looking moodily out at the rain. It was the second spell of wet weather they had had this spring. As the rain met the ground, there was a gentle hissing sound. It emanated not from the rain or the earth but from the rampant growth of lush grass. Rain had shrouded the city in a sort of wet haze all week. The grass absorbed the moisture and sprang up, in no time at all reaching waist high. The dandelions, not to be outdone, were even taller, their long stems twisting up through the grass, ending in yellow flowers and fluffy white heads.

  Let it grow, Kam Shan thought to himself.

  He had stopped wee
ding and cutting the lawn long ago. He had not touched it at all last year, and the vegetation had grown so tall it almost covered the window. In the end, it was reported to the city council and one day a heavy-duty grass-cutter roared up to his front door. Of course, a hefty bill followed in the wake of the cutter.

  For a lawn to thrive it needed young people to play upon it. He and his two lodgers were far too old. Children had not chased and tumbled on the lawn for a very long time. Yin Ling had sent Amy away to a Catholic girls’ boarding school, and nowadays he only saw her at Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. Yin Ling was a more frequent visitor than her daughter though that depended on how hard he worked to get her there.

  “I’ve made too much chicken soup and there’s some left over, Yin Ling. Come over and take it away.”

  “There’s a sale on at the Hudson’s Bay department store, Yin Ling, and I bought you a coat. Come and try it on.”

  “I’ve got money left over this month, Yin Ling, you can have it.”

  He sometimes felt it was demeaning to be bribing his daughter like this. Time after time, he said to himself fiercely that he would give nothing more, and then he’d see if she came. But he never found out, because he always dialed her phone number first.

  Rat-a-tat-tat.

  Someone was at the door.

  Surely it could not be the postman. He had not been by for ages. Since China turned Red he had lost touch with his family over there. There were rumours, of course, and the Overseas Chinese press published hair-raising stories every day. The stories went by a succession of different names: first it was Land Reform, then Suppression of Counter-Revolutionaries, then the Anti-Rightist Campaign. The latest was the Cultural Revolution. The names kept changing but the substance of the stories stayed the same: it was always about who was in power and who had been booted out. Of those who were booted out, some lived, others died. Living all boiled down to the same thing, hardship. But there were many ways of dying. Some years ago, people from Hoi Ping had got word to him that his mother and sister and the rest of the family had all died horribly. He did not believe it, he refused to believe it, in fact. Unless and until he got a letter from his brother-in-law, Ah-Yuen, he still had a family, and could cherish his memories of them.