On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family

by Lisa See

  Stella wasn’t afraid of much. Well, once, when they’d gone on the ferry to Vancouver, British Columbia, and Mama and Papa hadn’t wanted to spend the money for a full fare, she’d been pretty scared when the captain asked how old she was and she forgot to lie. She’d thought for sure he’d throw her overboard, but he didn’t. She remembered that trip vividly because it was the first time she’d eaten bananas and cream, and she’d thrown them up. Even though she’d been as sick as a dog, she’d always thought those bananas had tasted pretty neat. They’d had a nice time in Vancouver. A lot better than when they’d stayed in the central valley, where it had been as hot as the dickens and Mama had hung wet blankets in the cook tent to cool it off.

  When Stella was eleven, her first menstrual period came, and Mama showed her how to fold the rags and pin them to her underwear. Later, Mama told her to soak them in a pan under the clawfoot tub in the bathroom: “Now you wash them out and don’t you dare leave them there too long.” Yes, Stella was a woman now, and of strong constitution. When she was four, and Papa had had a job in the mountains—she couldn’t remember where exactly, because she was too young back then—she’d had rheumatic fever, or maybe measles. Maybe both at the same time. That seemed like something that could have happened, because she almost died. They’d lived in a one-room cabin, and she remembered Mama taping newspapers to the window to keep out the light, then taking more newspaper, lighting it, and waving it around the room to kill the germs. Mama had concocted a homemade remedy, a mixture of onions and sugar, cooked down to a thick marmalade, for Stella to eat.

  To pass the time, Stella had cut out paper dolls from the Sears, Roebuck catalog. Every morning when Mama went to work, she’d say, “No matter what happens today, I want you to clean up. If you take sick, I don’t want to have to send for the doctor and have him see your mess.” Stella thought that was a good lesson, because you never knew when something bad might happen and people would see how you lived.

  Last year, when she was staying with Aunt Eva in Everett, Stella had come down with smallpox. She’d had sores in her ears, nose, and mouth, but she’d been pretty lucky because she didn’t have any bad scars, as did some of the kids she’d seen. Then, while staying with Grandma Copeland, Stella had had whooping cough. They’d thought she was a goner that time for sure, but Grandma had dosed her every couple of hours with a teaspoon of sugar and a few drops of turpentine to clear the air passages.

  She didn’t get sick once in Los Angeles. She’d visited there last year, when she was ten. It seemed that the healthy climate was the reason Grandma Huggins had moved there in the first place; she had a brother who was a doctor, and he’d come west from Kansas to Los Angeles, where he’d bought land in the Wolfskill Orchard tract—land that had once held orange groves but was now being converted to housing. One day Grandma had told Stella, “My brother says that the real gold in California isn’t nuggets and it isn’t oranges, either. The real gold is the sunshine. People will get well if they go there. He says there’s money to be made from consumptives.” Soon after that, Grandma Huggins and her sons—Stella’s uncles—had packed up and moved down south. With money they’d saved, they had opened the Huggins Hotel, right across from the Santa Monica Pier. Stella knew all about it because she’d seen it with her own eyes—the roller coaster, the caressing ocean, the beckoning breezes. Still, she was happy to get home. She missed Mama and Papa.

  The best thing about harvest time was that Stella wasn’t sent off somewhere. Summers were for being with Mama and Papa—whether they were traveling and looking for jobs, or staying at a farm like this one for something more permanent. During the day, Stella’s dad helped out in the fields, hefting the 140-pound sacks of wheat onto the flatbed wagons. Papa didn’t make much money, maybe forty dollars a month for the farm work, plus whatever he made from barbering. “It’s a lot better than some farmers make,” he liked to say. “I don’t want to spend my life fighting ground squirrels for my livelihood.” Since Mama worked the cook wagon, they also got her salary.

  The cook wagon was a boxlike house on wheels, with benches and tables along either side and steps at the back, with a door. It was hotter than hell inside. Even Mama’s wet blankets didn’t help. The burners and ovens blazed continually. Mama made griddle cakes, biscuits, and thick slabs of bacon for breakfast. During the rest of the morning, she kneaded dough for bread, beat batter for cakes, sliced fruit for pies, while keeping an eye on the stew over the fire. Every day there were twenty or thirty men for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and midday meals in the forenoon and afternoon. The men were always hungry. Mama earned three dollars a day; sometimes, if she was lucky, a girl would be hired to come out from town and do the dishes for three dollars a week.

  Stella liked it on the farm, where she had no grandmothers, no aunts, no uncles, no town kids, no bossing, no teasing. Here, Mama and Papa worked during the day. At night, Mama read to Papa from The Adventures of Livingstone. He couldn’t read it himself, but he loved the story and Mama had read it to him many times. So it was nice—just the three of them these few weeks out of the year. And—best of all—there weren’t any saloons.

  That was it—the one bad thing. The Saturday-night dances. Every farmer had them—it was kind of like hiring a good cook. This is how they worked: They’d all take baths. Mama would wash Stella’s hair. Then Mama brushed out her own long, copper-colored hair until it shone. After that, she rolled it into a loose bun at the top of her head, making sure to leave plenty of strands hanging down, which she wrapped around her fingers until they curled just so. The three of them would then put on their Sunday best for Saturday and walk over to the barn, with Papa mumbling promises to Mama.

  Inside, a fiddler played. There’d be punch for the ladies and children. The men would also take cups of the pink liquid and step outside for a few minutes. Stella knew what that meant. It mean that in an hour or so—after Papa had thrown back more than a few cups of this special brew—he would come back in and be as drunk as a skunk. She’d be able to tell by the way he looked at Mama.

  Because this was what always happened. Mama would get bored and lonely when Papa was out behind the barn with the men. Some hand some buck would ask her to dance. Why not? Mama was the prettiest one there. No farmer’s daughter or field hand’s wife was as pretty as she was. No one else had the beautiful hair, the smooth, pale skin, the small waist. Some man would dance Mama around and around. They’d get awful close, too close, even Stella could see that. Just about the time Stella would be wondering if Mama could feel that man’s thing, the way they were dancing, Papa would step out on the dance floor, grab Mama’s arm, shove her to the ground, then haul off and belt that bounder in the jaw. Her dad was the most jealous man Stella had ever seen, but Mama was partly at fault. Any fool could see she shouldn’t be dancing like that if she was a married woman—even if she wasn’t a married woman! One thing Stella knew for sure. She was never going to dance with a man, ever, as long as she lived. You could get in trouble that way.

  Eddy was Sissee’s protector. Eddy, who was almost three years older than Sissee, laughed when Ma called to warn them of Pa’s approach. He laughed when he helped Sissee take off her skates and hide them before Pa rounded the corner. Eddy teased her and cajoled her and kept her company during the long hours that she sat doing her cross-stitch. At night he talked to her, whispering while she listened. Mostly their conversation revolved around how unjust their father was, and how Eddy was going to break the rules. Sometimes Pa would come in and start to yell. “What are you talking about? Are you talking about me? Be quiet! No talking!” Eddy would listen to Pa’s footsteps as he walked away, then whisper, “He’s jealous of us, Sissee. He doesn’t want us to have fun. He doesn’t want us to be happy. He doesn’t understand us, but we can be our own way.” Eddy gave her courage. He was her ally.

  Jennie Chan was Sissee’s best friend. Jennie lived down on Alameda Street. The Chan and See apartments were connected by a concrete bridge that went from rooftop to
rooftop. Jennie and Sissee met out there every day. Often they just sat and talked and looked down into the courtyard below, where several restaurants kept their live chickens in crates. No, it wasn’t a bridge—more like a rooftop courtyard or something. Sissee didn’t know and didn’t care. What she cared about was that she finally had a friend.

  Her father sometimes complained that Jennie’s father was just a vegetable peddler, that he kept his horses down at the stable, and stuff like that. But then he would turn around and ask Mr. Chan about his business. Sissee couldn’t figure Pa out, but Eddy always had an explanation. “If Pa’s so smart,” he might ask, “why doesn’t he know that Ma bought our shoes, not Mrs. Morgan? If he’s so rich and important, why doesn’t he want us to have good shoes? Ma has money and does what she wants. She can listen to him, but she doesn’t have to do what he says.” Sissee thought her brother was the smartest one in the whole family.

  Most parents in Chinatown wouldn’t spend money on luxuries for themselves, but they always tried to give something to their children. Like most girls in Chinatown, Jennie and Sissee had porcelain dolls and jacks. Their brothers had marbles and cast-iron trains and fire engines pulled by iron horses. But unlike the other neighborhood children, Sissee could splurge on special treats. Once Sissee had bought two tennis rackets, and she and Jennie had gone over to the USC campus to play. The balls had gone all over the place, and they’d never played again.

  Sometimes the girls did errands for their mothers. Sissee’s mother often sent them down to buy a whole meal from the Sam Yuen or See Yuen Restaurant. The girls especially loved See Yuen, which served American food—brisket of beef, pie, and the best bread any of them had ever tasted. They would stand behind the counter and giggle as the old man swatted at the flies that tried to land on the meat. Since Jennie’s family didn’t have much money, the girls also frequented the little market between the two restaurants, which sold buns stuffed with meat or soybeans.

  Once Pa had traded some merchandise for a pair of Shetland ponies, and for a while the girls had gone down to the stables every day. Men hitched up the ponies to a little wicker cart and led the girls around the corral. Some of those men, Sissee thought, would do anything for her father. But those ponies went the way of the tennis rackets. They were a nice idea, but they were the meanest darn things. They were dirty too, and someone had to brush them and take care of them. Pa had finally traded them away. “For glue, I hope,” Jennie had said, and the two girls had laughed some more.

  Jennie knew about fun, and wasn’t afraid of anything; Sissee was afraid of almost everything, but she had money. Between them they always had a good time. First they would walk into her father’s store, weaving through the clutter, taking care not to bump anything. Then Pa would give Sissee money. Jennie said it was because Sissee was his little pet. Then they’d walk over to Jennie’s apartment. The whole way—as they walked back upstairs, through the apartment heavy with the smells of roasting meat and potatoes, across the bridge, and into the other apartment, where Mrs. Chan peeled garlic and ginger for the Chans’ evening meal—Jennie made Sissee repeat Chinese phrases over and over again.

  “May we go to the movies?” Sissee would ask Mrs. Chan in awkward Chinese. “My father gave us the money.”

  Sissee knew that Mrs. Chan couldn’t say no, so off she and Jennie went every Saturday afternoon. First they’d see the movie, then they’d walk over to See’s Candies and buy a one-pound box. (They always chuckled over that name.) After they’d eaten it all, Jennie would muse, “It’s a wonder we have teeth.” That made Sissee giggle because it was such a grown-up thing to say.

  Most of their adventures happened on Saturday, because during the week Jennie went to the elementary school for Chinese kids, while Sissee went to California Street School with Eddy, where they were the only Chinese. Ma said she wanted the children in American schools, so that’s where Sissee and her brothers went. Bennie was going to Custer Avenue Intermediate School. Ray and Milton—who were in the same grade—attended Lincoln High School. Like their older brothers, Sissee and Eddy had learned to keep to themselves. It wasn’t that the other kids were mean, exactly—well, there was some of that, but mostly she and her brother were just ignored. Every day after school, Sissee and Eddy came straight home. They were never invited to play with the other kids—either from school or in Chinatown. And Jennie couldn’t play then because she had to go to Mrs. Leong’s Chinese-language class at the mission.

  Before summer, the two girls had joined the Girl Reserves at Jennie’s urging. “We’re pals,” she’d said. “It’ll be fun.” But it hadn’t been fun. Sissee knew she was pleasant and could get along, but she was too shy to pick up with those girls. When vacation came, Jennie had begged Sissee to go to camp. “Mother won’t hold me back,” Jennie stated boldly. “I do what I want.” Sissee had been swept up in her enthusiasm. If her friend could do it, so could she. But when they’d gotten to the camp, Sissee had been so homesick that her brothers had to come and get her.

  Nevertheless, Jennie encouraged Sissee. “We’re not shy when we’re together, huh?”

  But Sissee always felt shy, even when she was with Jennie.

  Sissee’s other brothers made fun of the threesome—Sissee, Eddy, and Jennie. Some days when Bennie walked in from school, he’d say, “I saw that highbinder friend of yours.” Sissee never got mad. It wasn’t proper for her to show anger at an older brother, even if he did call her best friend a tong thug. But Eddy would hoot and holler: “Highbinder? Did you say ‘highbinder’? That’s an insult, Ben. Why do you talk like that?” But Bennie didn’t care what he said. Everyone in the family accepted it. Bennie dressed however he liked, ate what he liked, talked how he wanted to—and if they didn’t like it, too bad.

  Today Jennie and Sissee met out on the bridge between their two buildings. Eddy joined them, and soon they were involved in a game of post office. Eddy went back inside to the bathroom, stood up on the toilet, and peered at the girls through the bars of the window. “Come on, you two,” he said in mock impatience. “I don’t have all day.”

  Jennie and Sissee took turns being customers. “I’d like to purchase two stamps,” Jennie said, slipping a few scraps of pretend paper money through the window. Eddy frowned, said, “Yes, ma’am,” and passed back the stamps that Ma had given them to use for their game.

  Sissee stepped forward. “This package needs to go to Macao. How much will that cost?”

  Eddy balanced the invisible package in his hands. “Well, let me see,” he said. “Do you have anything to declare in here? Do I need to collect for customs?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Sissee replied. “It’s a gift.” She smiled as she had seen her father do with customs inspectors.

  Later they clambered back through the See apartment, yelling that they were going for a walk and promising to be home for dinner. Even without watches, the kids knew exactly when that would be. Around dinnertime, the vegetable peddlers with their lumbering horse-drawn carts would come rolling back into Chinatown. As soon as the teams hit Alameda, the drivers would loosen the reins and the horses would gallop pell-mell to the stable.

  The kids knew every inch of Chinatown. For the past few years people had been talking about how Chinatown was going to be torn down to make way for a big train terminal. With that possibility, conditions had declined. Landlords refused to do repairs, and tenants were too scared to ask. Any mention of Chinatown to white society only brought a sigh, a shrug of the shoulders, and a breezy, “Yes, conditions are bad, but they are Chinese!” So broken windows were boarded up, keeping out rain and cold winds in winter, flies and dust in summer, and light and fresh air all year. If a sink or a toilet became disconnected, then whatever went down the drain ran out on kitchen floors or under houses. In many buildings, standing water and rubbish filled cellars. The kids saw all of this and could smell it, too. They knew which places to avoid. They knew which restaurant owners threw dead chickens and leftover food into their cellars and sme
lled up half of Marchessault Street.

  The kids were always running into gruesome things, like the time they’d seen that man run over by the streetcar. He was already dead, but that car had rolled back over him and forward again too. Eddy said the driver must have panicked. The three of them stared at that body. They saw funny things, too—like the time Uncle Yun bought a horse and buggy and it ran away with him. The kids decided Uncle was too kind to beat a horse into obedience. By the next week he’d sold the horse and had begun walking to work again.

  Today, when the kids went east across Alameda and down into the oldest part of Chinatown, they noticed a group of people standing at the entrance to one of the alleys. Sissee followed as Jennie and Eddy sidled into the crowd. It was another dead body—a casualty of a tong war. Again, they stared and stared, knowing that neither set of parents would let them out again if rumors were circulating about rivalries heating up.

  “I guess that does it for us,” Eddy said. “All we’ll be doing is playing post office for a while.”

  “Eye for an eye,” said Jennie.

  “Two-for-one revenge,” Sissee added.

  “No matter who you are, the tongs will get you if you cross them,” Eddy concluded.