by Wayson Choy
“You forgot to chain it,” Father said, looking to Stepmother for support.
Stepmother said nothing. It was no use arguing with the Old One, dead or alive.
I took a deep breath.
“Grandmama wants us to bai sen once more,” I blurted.
Kiam groaned. Father turned away. But that April afternoon in our parlour Uncle Dai Kew raised his voice.
“What harm could it do?” he argued, putting down his Bible. “You can respect your mother and still be modern.”
Uncle Dai Kew turned his Bible to a page showing some women bowing at the feet of Jesus.
“Look here, look at the white people here. Look at them in the church, bowing all the time, and they run electric motors.”
Father relented.
“I bring you incense tomorrow,” Third Uncle said. “I bring you special wine and paper money to burn. The Old One will never fear poverty in the other place.”
“I’ll make steamed chicken with black mushrooms,” Stepmother said. “That was the Old One’s favourite dish.”
“I’ll ask Mrs. Lim to bring red sauce for good luck,” Father said. “Everything should go well.”
The next afternoon, Stepmother set up one of the small end tables in the parlour, put down a white cloth, and on it placed dishes of food, a red clay bowl and Grandmama’s picture. On each side of the picture, Father hung small banners with black and gold-edged Chinese characters on them. The Buddhist monk came again and bowed before the picture. He lit sticks of incense.
We each took a turn and bowed three times, paying our respects to Grandmama’s formal portrait; then, and hereafter, the monk assured Father, it would be all right for everyone to talk directly and loudly to the Old One.
Using a formal dialect, Father greeted her, and burned a sheaf of gold and silver paper money. Flames curled into the air.
Father talked to Grandmama about keeping the family in good fortune and good health. Stepmother bowed and, looking at me, said, “Good health for Sek-Lung...” twice.
“Poh-Poh,” said First Brother Kiam, “please see me through my scholarship exams.”
Second Brother Jung whispered something, but no one could make out what he said.
“Please let Sekky start school in September,” Sister Liang said, and she crisscrossed her fingers for double luck.
It was my turn.
“I’m getting stronger, aren’t I, Grandmama?”
I could feel the oxygen in my lungs, the tightness gone; even the burning incense didn’t bother me. Grandmama looked sternly back at me.
Stepmother set a plate of fruit before the Old One’s picture, bowed three times and said nothing.
To bai sen meant atoms and molecules did not count.
“YOU’RE looking stronger,” Father said.
I knew my improving health had to do with the family talking to Grandmama. Jung said I wasn’t snoring or wheezing any more in my sleep. I felt I would never have to gasp for breath again, never feel my chest tighten with fire, nor my head burn with fever.
“See,” I said at dinnertime one night, eating an unheard of third bowl of rice, “Grandmama said I would get better.”
“Jesus!” Kiam moaned, but nothing could remove the smile on my face. Liang gave me a wild-eyed, monkey-faced look, and slurped up a spoonful of bitter melon soup. Jung shook his head like a boxer waiting for the bell. Father and Stepmother glanced quickly at each other, said nothing, and pushed more steaming rice into their mouths. Grandmama, in her favourite blue-quilted jacket, leaned on her elbow against the kitchen doorway and smiled back at me.
I did not mention this last fact to anyone. There was no need to cause any more incidents.
twelve
AFTER THE FAMILY HAD decided to respect Grandmama’s spirit, to bow three times, burn joss sticks, and pray before the Old One’s gilt-framed photograph—that is, to bai sen—the Old One no longer haunted us. Now, when I picked up the coin-sized jade peony, remembering how Grandmama used to hold it up to the light and tell me stories, the carved semitranslucent stone was a reminder that she was gone.
A few days later, Father had Kiam hammer in three nails on the parlour wall facing the front windows. In between two elegant scrolls of memorial calligraphy, Father hung up Grandmama’s portrait. The front room, however, and her upstairs room, which was now more or less Liang’s bedroom, never quite lost the smell of myrrh. Mrs. Lim said the lingering fragrance was a good sign, and Jung said he liked the smell, because the scent reminded him of the Tong Association assembly hall where on special days, rows of incense and thick red candles burned before warrior gods.
A kind of peace settled over our household.
THAT SUMMER, seven months after Grandmama’s death, a long time for a young boy, I flung myself into life without her.
I wanted to grow up fast, to have my chance to fly a teeth-baring Fighting Tiger over the skies of China, to storm over Europe and bomb and strafe as many of the enemy as possible, to mow down as many Nazis and Japanese as my older brothers and their grown-up pals vowed to kill.
I imagined Stepmother and Father, even Liang, and brothers Kiam and Jung, standing at the Vancouver docks to wave me off while a military band with trumpets and drums and bagpipes played on and on. And I, handsome in my military uniform, would promise to stay healthy and never wheeze again.
That year, 1941, I had my first outdoor summer, with my two older brothers packing me off to soccer games and football practice, encouraging me to be as physical and as robust as they were.
All that summer, whenever he had time off from his work at Third Uncle’s warehouse, Kiam had me chasing and kicking soccer balls on the school grounds, sometimes good-naturedly laughing at my awkwardness. Jung took me to the Hastings Gym, where he and his pals taught me how to put up my fists to defend myself.
All the foot-stomping, jumping, pushing and shoving I had been forbidden to do because I would choke and wheeze, all the pent-up physical energies inside my bony frame, suddenly exploded. I was a new boy.
When my two brothers were working, or when they were too busy to bother with me, I hitched up with a half-dozen or so bloodthirsty boys—boastful eight-, nine- and know-it-all ten-year-old comrades. We were constantly bending down our shorn heads in a football huddle to plot out endless movie-inspired war games.
We were, of course, all “good guys” fighting the dirty Nazis and Japanese. We broke into threes and fours and soared into snarling, arm-stretching, attack-and-dive flight patterns, loudly dropping brick and concrete bombs down the grassy slopes of MacLean Park. We roared through clouds of playground dust in oversized shipping cartons devised by Joe Eng to look like Sherman tanks, setting cardboard towns and cities on fire with stolen matches. We slammed together ear-crunching, dented garbage-can lids, and cheerfully yelped ourselves dry with the cheap thrill of murderous victories as we sent smaller children scrambling and screaming out of the range of our howling gunsights. And one late afternoon Alfred Stevorsky, the oldest of all of us, jumped over a garbage pile and plucked out a discarded bakelite doll the size of a real baby. He sat it up against a pile of bricks.
“Watch this,” he snarled.
He poured out some liquid from a small paint can, took out a match from his shirt pocket, and set the half-dressed doll on fire.
We all watched with fascinated horror as the baby-sized head began to melt. Its rose-coloured cupid mouth twisted into a wide gaping grimace. Its two large glassy eyes burst from their wired sockets and, slowly, one after the other, drooled down the distorting flaming cheeks.
“That’s what real bombs do,” one of the Han boys said. “That’s what my Uncle Bing told me.”
Alfred Stevorsky unbuttoned his fly and pulled out his show-off cock. A long stream of urine splashed over the mess.
THE ENEMY was everywhere. The Vancouver Sun newspaper said so. Newsreels said so. Hollywood and British movies said so. All of Chinatown said so, out loud.
On June 20, 1941, at 10:15 P.M., shelling from a Ja
panese submarine hit Estevan Point on Vancouver Island; then, a day later, shells hit the Oregon coast. An unidentified submarine was spotted in the Strait. It’s true, I thought. The enemy is everywhere.
Every household along the West Coast was ordered by the government to hang thick blackout cloth over each window. Air raid sirens screamed practice warnings and frightened birds flew into the air. On certain clear days at noon, foghorns and sirens tested Warning and All-Clear patterns. Kiam and Father agreed with the series of editorials in the Sun: the Japanese along the coast were potential spies and traitors. Letters in the newspapers demanded that something be done with the “infiltrating treacherous” Japanese in B.C. Gangs of older, jobless boys roamed back streets hunting for Japanese. Fights broke out. There were knifings on some streets, and on Fourth Avenue and Alberta, a Japanese boy, trying to protect his mother, was shot dead. Stepmother told Father to write something about that, to protest the killing.
“They’re killing Chinese boys in China,” Father said, in Stepmother’s dialect. “I lost three cousins, the youngest seven years old. You lost your Mission Church friend when they bombed Canton. What the hell am I supposed to write about?”
Our war games went on unabated, fed by movies, spy comics, drum-beating parades, trading cards, fund-raising drives, recruiting posters and war toys of every kind. I had a dozen tin American pursuit bombers and British fighter planes. I remember how pleased I was to trade away an early Curtiss B-24 and a chipped-wing Hurricane (it had a broken tail as well) for three chunky Sherman tanks for much-needed ground support.
The gang treasured bits and pieces of army and navy surplus military clothing salvaged from the First War. Alfred Stevorsky had the best outfit. His older brother gave him a patched-up U.S. Army coat, with what the brother swore was a real bullet hole in the left arm, and Alfred’s mother opened up a trunk and gave him an RAF captain’s hat with a stiff brim. Some of us, like the Han boys, got our stuff from second-hand clothing stores along Hastings Street. I had Father buy me from the Army and Navy Store’s clear-out sale a British-made leather aviator’s cap, with its genuine cracked flight goggles and authentic earflaps and a mysterious number inked inside the right flap. The world was full of secrets.
WHEN SEPTEMBER came, the school doctor put his cold stethoscope on my chest and pronounced the slight wheezing to be some kind of allergy. I nervously passed the rest of the medical exam; then I confidently completed a six-page English reading test, matching cartoon pictures with English words, wrote a paragraph of my choice, passed everything—and was allowed to start at Strathcona in Advanced Grade Three. I was joyful: it would be as if I had not missed a single day of school.
Grandmama had kept her promise. No longer would those towering red-bricked Strathcona School buildings along Pender and Keefer Streets be a mystery to me: I was starting school in five days. Kiam and Jung gave me some new pencils and three blank exercise books. Even Liang gave me things: a stick-pen holder with an unlicked nib and a large ink eraser she hardly ever used. Stepmother stitched a brown corduroy carrying case for me. Father showed me a new Waterman fountain pen he said would be mine as soon as I learned to write properly.
I might even start Chinese School.
ADVANCED Grade Three at Strathcona was a class for immigrant kids who knew too little English, or who could understand English but not read or speak it well, or who for whatever reason were starting late and needed extra attention, like me.
Jung had taught me to use my fists, so I even-stevened in two recess fights and lost one. It was worth it; I learned to spit blood, just like the elders spit out tobacco. I didn’t really enjoy the fights, but I enjoyed the attention. Except for a few scrapes, plus a few name-calling sessions during the first two weeks of recesses—Sick-kee Sekkk-kee!—everything was going A-okay.
In Miss E. Doyle’s classroom, at least, there was no name-calling; in class, no pushing, no kicking. Not even whispering. Her commands were simple, and simply barked: “Sit.” “Eyes front.” “Feet flat on the floor.” And all the boys and girls obeyed.
“I am the General of this class,” she said, looking particularly at a front row of tall boys whom she had placed there on purpose, including my friends Alfred Stevorsky and Joe Eng.
Big Miss Doyle waved a steel-edged ruler just like the one my Grade One teacher, Miss MacKinney, had waved. With her large palms, Miss Doyle brushed the stiff lapels of her brass-buttoned tartan jacket.
“All of you are my soldiers, and some of you, like Joseph Piscatella here, need more English before you are finally marched out of my care. Some of you need pro-nun-ci-a-tion lessons.”
She looked at the tall boy in the front row.
“I can tell your spoken English is much improved this year, Joseph.”
Miss Doyle looked around and nodded at one or two familiar faces. She noticed my aviator’s cap folded neatly on my lap.
“Next time, Sek-Lung,” she said, “that stays in the cloakroom.”
“The boys at recess called him Sekky, Miss Doyle.” A red-haired girl with braces on her legs smiled at the teacher.
“Thank you, Darlene,” Miss Doyle smiled back, “but you remember from last year how you should raise your hand and wait for permission before speaking out in class.”
“Yes, Miss Doyle.”
After the daily roll call, rain or shine, warm or cold, Miss Doyle assigned one of the bigger boys, like Joseph, to pry open a window. She asked for other volunteers to water the row of flower pots she carefully seeded at the beginning of every school term. The seeding was part of her nature lesson. At the end of June, the best students were awarded plants bursting with blooms.
“Perhaps, Sek-Lung,” Miss Doyle said, looking directly at me, “you might like to help Darlene with the watering jug on Mondays.”
“Yes, Miss Doyle.”
Joe Eng snickered.
“—and Joe Eng will help on Thursdays and dust the windows as well... yes, Joe?”
“Yes, Miss Doyle.”
No one snickered.
In Miss Doyle’s class, we sat with our backs straight “like soldiers,” with our hands folded in front of us. Our hands sat pressed against a book opened to the correct page, its number chalked on the blackboard; and our feet, for Miss Doyle’s inspection, were to be flat as an iron against the floor.
Miss Doyle, with her loud gravel voice, was the guardian of our education. With hawk-eyed precision, she reined in her Third Graders with a kind of compassionate terror, blasting out a delinquent’s full name as if she were God’s avenging horn: each vowel of any name, however multisyllabled, whether it was Japanese, East Asian or Eastern European, Italian or Chinese, was enunciated; each vowel cracked with the clarity of thunder. She walked so heavily that the floor boards squeaked with stress. And if you pleased her, she would seem to be amused, and sharply pulled her opened red jacket tightly about her thick body so that her large breasts poked up. Alfred Stevorsky always liked that.
Most of us, like Darlene or Joseph, liked to please Miss Doyle, but she was, like a mother, easier to annoy than please and, like a father, careful to display authority, in her case, the strap hanging next to the large Neilson Chocolate Map of the World at the front of the classroom. She used the leather strap to point out the latest battles in the British Empire—which was all the red colour on the map—or the battle in England itself.
Each afternoon, we waited with excitement for Miss Doyle’s descriptions of the day’s battles and victories. No matter how small the conflicts or how great the number of casualties, Miss Doyle rarely talked of people killing each other, but always mentioned “rescue” and “courage” and “kindness.”
She also regularly read aloud letters from her brother, whose name she enuciated clearly for us: “John Wil-lard Hen-ry Doyle.” He was a fire marshal for his district of St. Martin’s, London.
“A fire marshal,” the General said, “is someone assigned to take charge of putting out fires caused by the bombing. But his main job, b
oys and girls, is to save lives, not buildings.”
She repeated her only and older brother’s full name so that we would not think, she said, that our own variety of names was any more unusual.
“A name is a name,” Miss Doyle emphasized. “Always be brave enough to be proud of yours.”
Bravery was a central theme in her class. I saw her brother in a fireman’s outfit climbing ladders and walking through flames.
In his world, bombs fell night and day, injured people were pulled out from under collapsed buildings, children were hurt but brave. Miss Doyle kept her brother’s picture in a small silver frame on her desk. He looked very young in the picture, very tall, and the small girl beside him, looking up at John Willard Henry’s big smile, was Miss Doyle herself.
Miss Doyle read us sections of her brother’s vivid letters, which thrilled us all.
I remember listening to how the smoke rose in furious clouds over a place called Pick-a-dill-lee Square; how in a place called Kensington Gardens, a statue of a boy named Peter Pan was not disturbed even an inch by the concussion bombs. There were ghastly smells coming from burning factories and houses, the awful weight of collapsed walls and twisted steel girders, the cries and screams from the mysterious dust-choking darkness beneath trembling beams. There was rescue and valour, and unending hope for the nightmare to end. “We will never surrender,” John Willard Henry wrote, quoting a man named Churchill, who, Miss Doyle emphasized, was a loyal friend of the King and Queen.
“When I was a little girl,” Miss Doyle said to the class, “my brother John used to read the story of Peter Pan to me. It is a book written by whom, Darlene?”
“Mr. J. M. Barrie.”
The letters inspired everyone in the class to believe in “the just cause” and bravery. We saved our pennies to help our families buy more war bonds. One day, when John Doyle noted that the bombs were coming closer and closer to St. Martin’s, I noticed the red-haired Darlene dropping her head to her desk, as if she were afraid. And Joe Piscatella tensely bit his bottom lip, following every word of the brave John Doyle.
