The Jade Peony

by Wayson Choy

  “Impossible!” she said.

  The Old One slowly lifted her tea cup and gently focussed on me, her gaze full of knowing mystery.

  WHEN I WAS FOUR years old and brought on the train from a town called Kamloops to this family, it was the Old One at the Vancouver train station who first looked askance at me like a shrewd farmer’s wife.

  “Too thin,” she complained to the dark-suited, solemn Tong Association official, Mr. Chang, who held me up for her to see. As the train noisily chugged away from the station, she squeezed my upper arm and blasted over the noise, “Cost too much to fatten him.”

  “I feed myself,” I shouted, in a Hoiping accent. “Mommy lets me feed myself!”

  Mr. Chang put me down. I grabbed at my suitcase to run away. The Old One pulled me back by my shirt collar. Mr. Chang stood solemnly on guard, his heavy foot pressed down on my suitcase. The Old One bent her head down.

  “Your daddy and mommy dead,” she said, adjusting her Toisanese.

  A strand of hair fell over the Old One’s narrow eyes and made me think of the cunning Fox Lady my mother had warned me about. The gut-hungry Fox, a demon, took on many shapes and disguises to ensnare little children for her supper. To the Fox Lady, the bony crunch and sweet flesh of small, well-fed children tasted best of all. But any smart child could expose and outsmart the Fox Demon soon enough.

  The demon creature loved to take on its favourite disguise of a friendly elderly old lady. Like a helpless grandmother, Mother told me, begging for a small child’s assistance to cross a stream or to help her reach into a deep sack to retrieve some candy. When a child could not perceive any danger, the Fox Lady grew full of satisfaction and delight, her teeth dripped with saliva; her furry tail began wagging impatiently, pushing away at her ankle-length black skirt. And that was the clue, Mother warned me: Look for the furry tail waving frantically. Always look behind.

  The Fox Lady at the train station took hold of my hand and held me in front of her. Her eyes narrowed. I imagined the back of her dress moving, side to side.

  “Who feeds you now?” the disguised Fox Lady said, her eyes twinkling, just as I was told they would, though her voice might have been more friendly.

  I said nothing. I stared back to hide my growing fear. Her furry tail would poke out from under her skirt and start wagging like crazy. Then everyone at the train station would see it was the Fox Demon and attack her, poke out her gleaming eyes, rip her apart, and cut off her foxtail. The tail would hang on my suitcase like a trophy.

  “Aaiiiyyyah, the boy’s a mute!” the Fox Lady exclaimed to Mr. Chang. Mr. Chang was being totally fooled by the cunning demon. I knew I had to say something.

  “I feed myself now,” I repeated, loudly, for the Fox Lady always pretends she is very deaf, so you will bring your delicious young head within biting range of her row of razor-sharp teeth. I shouted even louder: “I FEED MYSELF!”

  The startled old lady jumped back. People in the station turned their heads to look at us. Perhaps they’d already spotted her fox tail. She let my hand go, but her keen eyes kept appraising me. No one came near us.

  “So Jung-Sum thinks he doesn’t need anyone,” she said to Mr. Chang. I glared at them both. The Old One started moving her lips again.

  “Mr. Chang, the boy is fine,” the wrinkled lips said. “We’ll take him.”

  I darted behind the foxy old lady to look at the many folds of her skirt. Nothing moved. No furry tail appeared, no wagging motion whatsoever, only the extended long fingers of her old hand, stretched behind her back, offering to take my hand.

  “Let’s go,” Mr. Chang ordered.

  I put both my hands on my suitcase and followed them out to a taxi. In the distance, another train whistle blew as its engine chugged away.

  “I’m your new Poh-Poh,” the old lady said to me in the back of the taxi, as Mr. Chang settled in the front seat. “That’s what you call me from now on.”

  That afternoon, in the house of the Old One, I met a little girl with a moon face, who kept staring at me from behind the Old One’s ankle-long skirt. I was only a little taller, but knew I could handle her if I had to. Lady foxes had little foxes. She held onto the head of a Raggedy Ann doll and poked its head at me as if the doll could see, too.

  “Jook-Liang is your new sister,” the official said. “Your Sai Mui, your Little Sister.”

  Liang slept in a room with her grandmother, Poh-Poh. Everyone spoke with an accent, a tone or two different, though I understood the same dialect.

  “Jung-Sum,” Mr. Chang said, positively. “You’ll get used to your new family very quickly.”

  Things change. This is the way things are, I said to my four-year-old self, and accepted that I was not in Kamloops any more, but in Salt Water City.

  The man and woman who earlier had seen me at the Tong Association office both smiled at me nervously and said that this was their house, too. This man and the thin, graceful woman beside him were now taking care of me, along with Poh-Poh. I was to call the woman, who wore a pretty print dress, Stepmother, and the man Father.

  “You have a family again, Jung,” the man who was my new father said. “Forget everything else.”

  He reached out to pat my head, but I darted away just in time. The Head Fox, I thought to myself. But when the Head Fox, with his slightly balding head and round face, turned back to talk with Mr. Chang, I was disappointed. He had no tail.

  Mr. Chang said that I must be well-behaved. I now belonged in this house, belonged with these people. I remember I looked past each of them to see if my mommy and my daddy would suddenly appear.

  “He’s done that everywhere we’ve taken him,” the Tong official said. “The boy still thinks his own parents will come back for him. It’s been six months.”

  “Let him look,” the Old One commanded.

  When Stepmother and Father first showed me the rooms in this house, they watched me get down on my knees to catch any moving shadow under the beds. I walked inside the small closets and pushed aside racks of clothes, nothing there, and looked behind the large dressers, nothing; I peered behind doors and stand-alone wardrobes but the faces of my mother and my father were not anywhere.

  That first night in Salt Water City I was given a cot to sleep in, set up in a small room with my new brother, Kiam, who was almost twice my four years and a head taller than me. Stepmother said the adults were going downstairs to have some tea and sweetmeats. Everyone left Kiam and me alone in the small room to first put away my suitcase things. There wasn’t much, just a few pieces of underwear and shirts, two sweaters, a toy cowboy that was supposed to be Tom Mix, and a snake with a clay head. The snake had a long accordion body made of black and green paper. Its head hung from a string tied to a stick, so that it curled like a real snake. But the snake’s paper body was badly crushed even though its head was intact. There were also three pairs of socks, two with holes in them, and a pair of shoes that didn’t fit me any more.

  Kiam got to business right away. “Your side of the room stops here,” he said, pointing to a red line he had crayoned on the linoleum floor, “except when you have to get your clothes from that dresser over there by the window.” He asked me if I knew anything about British football or muscle building and showed me some cuts on his knees from playing football. He thought I was too weak to be his brother, a real brother, so it was his plan to make me strong and tough. He was going to be eight in two weeks, he said, and wanted me to know his rules, and not being a sissy was one of them. His baby sister Liang did not count for much, but if I was going to be a real Second Brother, I had to put on some more weight. He crossed the red line and punched me in the chest to see if I could take it. I hardly felt anything; I was wondering where I was and how I got here and where my mommy and my daddy were.

  “Don’t cry, sissy,” Kiam said, “or we’ll throw you under the Georgia Viaduct with the bums and the dead people.”

  Poh-Poh, carrying some folded clothes, came into the room and walked deliberat
ely between Kiam and me. She took some clothes off the small pile and handed them to me.

  “Put this and this on,” she said. “Then come downstairs for some dumplings.”

  She told Kiam to help Little Brother, and I realized she meant me. Kiam lifted my arms up and pulled my undershirt off.

  “Look,” he said to the old woman. She looked.

  The reddish scars on my back did not surprise her.

  “A belt buckle,” the old woman said. “We put something on it tonight.”

  I pushed them away and dressed myself. We went downstairs and I sat through the tea-drinking and chatter. I drank an orange pop and ate three dumplings just to show Kiam how strong I was going to get.

  Stepmother had a thin face and pretty eyes, and, as she bent down to brush back my hair, to offer me another dumpling, her flower-print dress smelled of flowers, too.

  Kiam asked about my name. Everyone called out my name, Jung-Sum, and the man called Father said it meant loyalty, one who was faithful, loyal, and he pronounced it in an odd way, a tone of dialect different from the way I had always heard it. For some reason, I suddenly was not afraid of any of them; for some reason, as I lifted up my fourth sweet dumpling, hearing my name over and over again, I knew I belonged. A baby cried, and it was Jook-Liang, my new sister.

  Before he tucked himself under his sheets that first night, First Brother Kiam said, “Stay on your side of the room. And don’t start bawling or anything.”

  I looked up at the moonlit ceiling, at the ceiling cracks and shadows thrown up by the streetlamp against the half-drawn window shades and the lace curtains. I peered at the dresser drawer that held my things, the third drawer down. I thought of my crushed snake and my socks with the holes in them, and Stepmother that evening mending them as Kiam sat by the kitchen table straightening out my paper snake. Poh-Poh sat holding the baby girl, rocking her, and Father was ink-brushing words that trailed expertly up and down a long sheet. Mr. Chang’s last stern words to me, as he took some signed papers from Father, came back into my head: “This is the way things are, Jung-Sum.”

  And I knew it was so, and could no longer worry about demon foxes.

  “Bet you’re crying,” Kiam said, in a half-awake voice, but soon he drifted into sleep. From my cot, in a rectangle of bright moonlight cast down from the window, I saw First Brother toss, heard him talk, and envied him his dreams.

  I gripped my pillow and not one tear fell from my eyes.

  I DID NOT CRY that first night, nor any night thereafter, as I did the strange morning a long time ago when someone frantically yanked up the blinds and stubbornly pulled me away from the cold arms of my mother.

  I remember groggily pushing myself up in the morning light, pushing away the weight-laden blanket, half-tottering with sleep, half-groping in my pyjamas in fear that I might have wet the bed. In the kitchen, in the blue morning light, I glimpsed my father oddly slumped beside the open oven door; then I walked into the bedroom and pushed Mother, but she would not move. I called her once, then something told me not to say anything more. I adjusted to the semi-dark, the morning light breaking between the pulled bedroom blinds and now pouring in from the kitchen. On the bed mattress that she slept on, at my level of vision, my mommy stared with unshut eyes at the ceiling, her neck a purple colour from ear to ear. I climbed into the bed and lifted her stiff heavy arms, one after another, over me, and slowly crawled under them. Mommy’s two arms collapsed on me when I let go, and they felt cold. I stared at the ceiling and thought I should sleep... close eyes... sleep...

  I pushed my face between Mommy’s arms, against her body’s still plush softness; I let my body fall against her: I stayed very still. After that, the pee started leaving me, a soothing warm wetness between my legs. I waited for Daddy to get up from the kitchen floor, half-drunk, waited for him to beat me with his belt. I waited for Mommy to tell him to stop, waited for Mommy to twist against the falling belt and take the blows. I waited.

  I stayed very still, long enough for the pee to feel cold, for the acrid smell to reach me, for the staining warmth to fade and the growing chill to numb me. My thumb felt sore from being sucked for the one or two hours I had lain there, unmoving. A boy’s voice suddenly shouted, “Mommy! Mommy!” and for a moment I thought it was my voice. Then another voice shouted “Get Mommy! Get Mommy!”

  Herby Chin kept calling for his mother, until finally I heard the back door open and a rush of footsteps and voices from the kitchen; a chair fell over, curtains were whipped back, blinds whirled and snapped up. Mr. Chin was shouting instructions. Mrs. Chin called my name. Shadows moved, and bodies, tall and short, shuddered around the room. At the doorway of the bedroom, when she saw me look up at her, Mrs. Chin only hesitated for a second before she rushed beside the bed, shoved aside some pillows and clothes, and warily knelt beside me on the mattress: “Don’t be afraid... don’t be afraid...” I felt Mommy’s head move.

  Mrs. Chin, with her strong farming hands, pulled apart the rigid arms and began lifting me up, up, up, from the dark between my mother’s breasts. Wetness clung to my legs. Sheets of wetness pulled away from me.

  I was carried away at last, carried into the late morning air to the Chins’ heated cabin. Mrs. Chin told me again not to be afraid, put me down in a large chair in the midst of her own four children sitting around the table. Their small faces reflected back to me my own vacant stare.

  “Now we have some jook,” Mrs. Chin said, as calmly as she could manage, putting a bowl of morning gruel in front of me.

  They told me later that I ate, that I said nothing. I remember hearing the siren of the police car, Mrs. Chin scrubbing her hands furiously; and when night fell, Mr. Chin sat beside me and told all his four children and myself a story of Old China. There were many words I did not understand, phrases whose meanings were riddles. In the kerosene lamp-light, he recited poetry and sang old songs, and slapped his overalls till the dust from his day’s labour settled over everyone. I remember the joy and excitement of his storytelling, and the quickening of my heart when he asked me what I would like.

  “Tell another story!” I said, and knew suddenly, another’s voice, my mommy’s voice with its Hoiping tones, would never say again “Long time ago... in Old China...”

  Mrs. Chin passed some pie a neighbour had brought by. The pie was freshly baked and steaming, and smelled of apples and cinnamon. It was made by a white lady named Mrs. Lawrence. She had white hair and wore glasses and had a kind face. She poked her head in and asked, “How is the little boy doing?”

  “Good,” Mrs. Chin said. “Jung strong boy. Never cry.”

  A WEEK AFTERWARDS, I was taken from one strange home to another. I spent a month or two in one place, a few weeks in another, finally travelling on a train to Hahm-sui-fauh, Salt Water City. A Chinese man wearing thick glasses, with a white band for a collar, said to me over and over again, “No use to cry. Big boys don’t need to cry.”

  Kiam told me Hahm-sui-fauh was the Chinese name for Vancouver because it was a city built beside the salt water of the Pacific Ocean. Until Kiam told me, I thought it was where all the salt tears came to make up the ocean, just as my mother told me in one of her stories about her own father’s coming to Vancouver. And then I told myself, this is the way the world is. I felt I would never need to cry again. Never.

  Now, Stepmother took me in her arms when I could not sleep, but it was not the same and I began to push her away.

  The Old One said, “Leave the boy alone,” and pushed me away from her. “Go downstairs,” she commanded. “First Brother is waiting.”

  My job was to help Kiam start the stove in the morning by banging on the sawdust bin. I helped pour ladles of water into a larger container which sat heating on the stove for all-day winter use. I was given some picture books to learn to read with Liang and was expected to do better since I was two years older. Poh-Poh showed me how to dress myself properly; Stepmother taught me how to make my bed; Father took me to places in Chinatown and boas
ted of his new son and patted my head. First Brother Kiam became my guardian on the playground and warned everyone not to get smart around me. People gave me lucky money and candy and toys. Women with powdered faces and red lipstick kissed me and pinched my cheeks and went back to playing mahjong. I did not always do my chores nor read every book, for there was so much more to discover. Vancouver was bigger than anything I had ever seen. There were blocks and blocks of houses and stores and places to play.

  One day, I got a new box of hand-me-down clothes. Everything seemed two or three sizes too big.

  Poh-Poh said to me, “Can you feed yourself now?”

  “Always,” I said, still wondering about her wagging tail.

  “Good,” she said, tossing me one of the hand-me-down sweaters, “feed yourself until this fits you.” She blinked. “Jung-Sum, are you still worried this Old Fox will eat you up?”

  In a year, that sweater fitted me. Time did pass, just as the Tong official had said it would. I belonged.

  The Depression meant the man whom I now called Father struggled at many jobs to keep everyone at home well nourished. I was never treated differently from First Brother Kiam or Only Sister Liang. But when Sekky was born, and was sickly, Poh-Poh poured almost her entire attention on him. Neither Kiam, Liang nor I minded; in fact, things went easier for all of us because the Old One no longer nagged us as much about our shortcomings or pestered us with old sayings. Liang demanded a little attention now and again, because she was so young.

  From Father and Stepmother, we all received equally what clothes or second-hand goods were salvaged or given to us from the Tong Association. As well, the Anglican Vancouver Chinese Mission passed along books they couldn’t sell and gave us stacks of magazines to look through before they were bound up for the paper drive.

  In the months after I arrived, I nearly forgot my own mother and father, even in my dreaming. As the years went by, they became part of the darkness at night or, on the brightest day, merely shadows.