by May Q. Wong
The family knew he was coming; they just didn’t know exactly when he would be arriving in the hamlet. The women had scrubbed the house clean and replaced the old, patched bed linens with the ones Ah Thloo had made as part of her trousseau.
Then it rained steadily for a week. It was monsoon season, and the house was flooded with brown muddy water, partway up the stairs. All the furniture and animals had to be lugged up to the second floor. The only benefit was that there were fresh fish swimming inside the house.
Ah Thloo used to say to Ah Lai, “Don’t go to the market. Your father doesn’t like it,” and she had taken the instruction to heart. During the war with Japan, they had rarely had the opportunity to shop, but with her father’s recent remittances, she and her mother were stocking the larder in readiness for his homecoming. Although the civil war was still being waged in the north, the markets in the south had access to goods smuggled through the ports in Guangzhou. Things could be found, if one had enough money.
Unfortunately, Ah Dang’s arrival coincided with Ah Thloo and Ah Lai’s return from another day of shopping.
“Ah Dang, your wife and daughter are back from the market!” Ah Chiang Hoo shouted excitedly. “See how big your daughter has grown!”
“Umm,” he murmured from over the balcony.
Ah Lai heard the exchange between their well-meaning neighbour and the hidden male voice she surmised was her father’s. Oh, why did Ah Chiang Hoo have to tell him that ? Although she had bought nothing for herself, she had been caught shopping: she had unwittingly disobeyed one of his commandments, and he would be angry with her. It wasn’t her fault; they had bought thlonge, food, for him ! Ah Lai’s heart, already racing from the prospect of seeing her father, immediately sank to her stomach, making her nauseous and faint.
Her mother pushed her forward, saying, “Go say hello to your father.”
Ah Lai’s legs shook all the way up the stairs. When she saw him, the only words that came out of her dry mouth were a croaky “Ah Yea.” Then she fled into Ah Ngange’s room, slammed the door behind her, threw herself onto the bed, and sobbed her heart out.
• • •
AH DANG
Ah Dang had had to hire a boat in the nearest market town to take him to the flooded hamlet. The first person he met when he arrived was the neighbour, Ah Chiang Hoo, who greeted him enthusiastically, hailing him from an upstairs window in her house. When he acknowledged her shout with a wave of his hand, she continued to blather loudly at him. Perhaps she hoped he was bringing her a remittance from her husband. Unfortunately, he wasn’t, but Ah Ngay Gonge had given him some money to give her. “Don’t tell her it’s from me,” he had said. “Let her believe it’s from my brother.”
Inside the house, he was pleasantly surprised to be welcomed by his mother, Ah Tew May. While there was no look of happiness on her face, she called out his name and helped him unload the boat. In the past, she had ignored his greeting and his presence for as long as possible.
Each time he brought up a load of his belongings, he heard Ah Chiang Hoo carrying on. It did not matter that he did not actually converse with her. He could hear her above the slapping of the water and the clunking of the steering pole used by the boatman. He knew about the unpleasant odour that accompanied her and was grateful that the flood prevented her from actually visiting. Not wanting to be impolite, he gave her an occasional grunt. Raising her voice even higher, she announced the return of his wife and daughter from the market.
He quickly returned to the bedroom to check himself in the mirror, making sure he looked presentable. He wanted to make a good first impression on his daughter. When she came up the stairs to greet him, he was surprised and pleased to see how tall and pretty she had grown.
Opening his arms to embrace her, he was happy to hear her call him “Ah Yea.” She was the first person ever to call him “Father,” but he did not get to hug her, for she immediately ran into the room across the hall and slammed the door shut. What had just happened?
• • •
AH THLOO
This time, Ah Thloo had looked forward to her husband’s arrival. She wanted him to know how smart and well behaved their daughter was, to see the hillock she owned, and to recognize her new status as a leader in the area. She now headed a land redistribution committee. She was disappointed when he did not pay the close attention she had expected.
“All in good time. First, I want to take you away from all of this. You’ve worked hard to keep everyone alive through a horrible time and you deserve to be rewarded,” Ah Dang said.
He took her to Guangzhou, where he bought her new jewellery to replace some of the gold that had been sold during the war. He bought her exquisite pieces of translucent jade: two round disks and an oval cabochon. She had the disks made into earrings with screw-back clasps. The cabochon was fashioned into a ring. They shopped for fabric for their daughter, stocked up on herbs for their daily use, and bought a package of the best ginseng for his mother. It was in Guangzhou that their next child was conceived.
• • •
AH DANG AND AH THLOO: CHINA, 1947–1948
In Guangzhou, Ah Dang had attempted to get permission from the appropriate ministries for his daughter to emigrate to Canada when the time came, but frustratingly, all he got was a bureaucratic runaround.
Back in the hamlet, he tried to get to know his daughter. He wanted to establish a relationship with her before he left for Canada again, but it was difficult. She seemed reluctant to talk to him.
He tried smoothing the way by complimenting her. She had intelligent eyes and a bright smile, not that she ever smiled at him. He told her she looked like her mother. Women liked new things; he gave her gifts. From Canada, he had brought her a full-length woollen coat that fell in an elegant A-line. He had forgotten how hot it was in Guangdong. She always accepted her gifts with extreme politeness—she had been taught well by Ah Thloo—but she still appeared to be uncomfortable in his presence.
He asked her to take him to her school. At home, he had seen her workbooks; she had scored almost perfectly in every subject. He met her teacher, who spoke enthusiastically about his star pupil. Ah Dang was proud of her, but he did not show his pride to her teacher or his daughter, lest he be seen as boastful.
When he read her compositions, there were words he had forgotten and others he did not even recognize. In only two years of schooling, her education had surpassed his own. When he spoke to her again, to encourage her in her studies, he reverted to an old saying to hide his own lack of education: “Kange nang woo joit, study hard, avoid stupidity.” Immediately, seeing her face turn from eagerness to stone, he realized he had said the wrong thing, but he did not know how to turn the situation around. They each retreated, neither knowing how to reach out to reconnect.
While Ah Dang was home, he went to the market every week to bring back special food. Roast pork with crackling was a favourite, especially when accompanied by haam ha, a salty fermented shrimp paste.
He also introduced the family to a miraculous medicine. Ah Dang travelled everywhere with his jar of Mentholatum Decongestant and Analgesic Ointment, advertised to help “relieve cold symptoms, chapped skin, and coughs.” He used it to help clear his stuffy nose. When his daughter caught a cold and developed a cough, he had his mother rub it on the girl’s chest and was relieved that it helped her to sleep through the night. Finally, he felt he had done something positive for Ah Lai.
Husband and wife carried on the topsy-turvy relationship that had become the pattern for their lives together. It did not seem to take much for one to be misunderstood and then the yelling would start. There was no more physical violence, from either one, but neither would let the other have the last word. However, while Ah Dang’s anger would spark, flare, then die forgotten, Ah Thloo’s would smoulder and simmer, to be dredged up and stoked over the years. It was her one demon. Whenever they argued, Ah Thloo refused to sleep with him; she stomped away and locked herself overnight in the looko
ut.
Normally, Ah Lai shared the bed with her mother, but while her father was in the hamlet, she went to sleep with Ah Ngange. Both she and her grandmother actually preferred this arrangement. Ah Ngange was always the same, whereas her mother seemed preoccupied and distant. Her father, in person, did not live up to the image Ah Lai had created as a child, listening to her mother read his letters. When her parents argued—and it was hard to miss the verbal volleys—she would cry herself to sleep while Ah Ngange comforted her.
As Ah Dang had done with his wife’s first pregnancy, he again sought the services of the area’s best physician. The pregnancy had no complications, so no plans were made to go to the hospital in town, and the birth took place at home, on their marriage bed. At the ages of forty-six and thirty-seven respectively, Ah Dang and Ah Thloo became the joyous parents of a son. He was born on the twenty-seventh day of the first month of the lunar calendar under the sign of the Boar. The year was 1948.
A son was every man’s crowning desire; a son to carry on his name. The child attracted adoration, with large, dark brown eyes and a small bow of a mouth. He was a contented and quiet baby. His cries were no louder than a mew, more like a puppy in distress, so his grandmother nicknamed him Gowdoy, Puppy. His father picked him up as soon as the infant was awake. They would sit for hours together, the baby swaddled in a blanket and snuggled on his father’s lap. His sister also cuddled and played with him when all the adults were occupied elsewhere, and until she went back to school, the siblings were inseparable.
Ah Thloo followed the traditional thirty-day lying-in period after the birth and, as she had done after Ah Lai was born, watched the baby like a hungry hawk. She feasted her eyes on his beauty, breathed in his smells, and felt his breath as her own. Sighing with relief at having produced a boy, she now made sure he thrived.
Ah Ngange made soups to nourish and restore her daughter-in-law’s yang, hot energies, to counter the effects of the mainly yin, cold effects, dominant during pregnancy, according to traditional Chinese medicine. She slaughtered chickens, collected eggs, and sent Ah Dang to the market to buy whisky and ginger. Using ginger in copious quantities, she cooked the chicken in the whisky and added peanuts and a handful of dried gim ja toy, lily stalks, which she had rehydrated, knotted, and tossed in. Modern-day nutritionists might recognize these foods as adding protein to the mother’s diet, but traditional practitioners note their ability to purify and thin the blood and rid the body of potentially harmful yin effects.
Neither the baby nor the mother went out of the house during that first month. It was a delicate time for the baby, and few people except the immediate family were allowed to visit, in case they brought disease. Many infants died, so this was deemed a necessary precaution. Both mother and child were to stay away from drafts, cold, wind, and dirty air. Thus, bathing and hair washing were forbidden, as cold could seep into a body when the skin was still damp and before hair could dry.
After the month was up, the family held a Choot Ngiet Gat How, one-month head-shaving celebratory meal, to which everyone in the hamlet and all their relatives and friends were invited. At their first glimpse of the baby, everyone clucked and chuckled with delight. No one who held him willingly passed him on to anyone else.
The most typical baby present was lie see, money wrapped in red paper, red being the colour for happiness and celebration. During that time, when few people had money, they gave small, practical items, such as a homemade hat or a hand-carved toy, decorated with the appropriate colour.
Showing off a new son, 1948.
UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHY STUDIO, CHINA
All the guests helped themselves to red-dyed hard-boiled eggs and yuon, a doughy confection made from sticky rice flour and brown sugar, rolled into small balls and steamed. Eggs, considered a delicacy, symbolized life and fertility. The roundness of the eggs and the yuon symbolized continuity, harmony, and a happy life; the Chinese word for round is yuon. Also served was a soup made of pork knuckles simmered in dark, sweet vinegar. Ah Dang, having been influenced by Montreal friends from Guangzhou, added ginger and hard-boiled eggs to the soup. He had scoured the market for delicacies, sparing no expense, and bought whatever was available for the feast.
Choot Ngiet Gat How was also the time to name the child; after a month, its chances for survival were increased. Ah Dang and Ah Thloo agreed on the name Yuet Wei, meaning “the Most Accomplished in all Guangdong Province.” They presented the infant to the ancestors’ altar, where incense burned. There, Ah Wei’s downy hair was shaved, except for three square patches, one on top and one on each side of his little head: his first haircut, symbolizing his independent existence.
Ah Dang took his family to the photographer’s shop. Though it was rare in portraits of the time, almost everyone was smiling, though it was hard to tell with Ah Ngange. Rejoicing, relieved, happy, contented, and satisfied were the emotions shown on the respective faces of the father, the mother, the big sister, the baby, and the grandmother.
The baby’s bottom was naked. What better way to show off a son! What more needed to be said?
Applicant arrived in Canada 11th Oct., 1921 on the “SS” [sic] Empress of Japan, Port of Vancouver, BC. From Port of Entry he remained in Vancouver for eight years, then proceeded to Montreal, Que. . . . He made three trips to China for a total of three years and two months out of Canada, the last trip being from March 1947 to June 1948 and on his first trip he married in China . . . Chinese Immigration Certificate checked and found in order. Sponsors appear to be of good character and are not known or suspected of having any subversive tendencies toward the State.
—S/Cst. E.H. Desaulniers, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
NINE
Father Regroups
AH DANG: MONTREAL, 1949–53
During the voyage back to Canada, the photo of his son kept Ah Dang’s spirits buoyed, despite the emptiness he was feeling. This separation will be harder than the other two because I now have a son!
When his first child was born, she had been an unexpected surprise and delight. She could make him laugh out loud just by curling her little hands around his pinkie; he had created a family of his own. Now he had a son. He had never known he could feel this way about a child who still could not talk or walk; he felt invincible!
Thinking about his boy, he could almost, but not quite, forget his bafflement regarding his daughter. On this last visit, when she was certainly old enough to talk sensibly, he had not understood her reaction to him. He had tried hard to let her get to know him, but it was almost as if she was afraid of him. What was there to be afraid of? he wondered. While he was in the hamlet, he had never laid a hand on her in anger nor ever raised his voice.
He had watched her from a distance as she interacted with other adults. With them, she was chatty, easygoing, even happy, and he especially noticed how affectionately she treated her Ah Ngange. Yet whenever he spoke to her, she was reluctant to talk to him and tended to respond in single words, even after a whole year of living in the same house. He was proud of her though; she was always first or second in school. She was a smart one.
He thought about Ah Thloo. He did not know what he had done to deserve such a difficult wife. He had long ago learned that beating her did not change her—it only made her more ngang giang, stiff-necked and stubborn. He had given it up. He recognized and admired her gumption.
He himself had learned to fight when he first came to Canada. The British Columbia fishing and logging camps, where he had worked as a cook, attracted rough, tough guey law, devil or ghost men, hooligans. Living together in close quarters and away from civilization made them feel like prisoners, and they needed a diversion to vent their feelings. A Chink was an easy target. He was a Chink, sometimes the only one in the camp.
The first time he was picked on and beaten, he was afraid to fight back and had to stay in bed for two days, losing wages, before he could resume work. He vowed it would never happen again. The next time he was in town on leave, he
bought a knuckle-duster and a leather sap, both of which he learned to use effectively, and he never left home without his protection. The hooligans got as good as they gave. Soon, Ah Dang had a reputation for being tough, earning him some grudging respect among the whites.
Ah Thloo was like that, much like Scarlett O’Hara in his favourite movie, Gone with the Wind. He had gone to the theatre to watch it at least thirteen times. Scarlett was feisty too: single-minded in getting what she wanted and not bending to anyone’s will. Fearless. His little wife had saved the village from bandit raids and the Japanese, if the stories he had heard from the neighbours were true. He believed them. He would believe anything they said about Ah Thloo. She would never boast about it to him, but he knew she was capable. That was why he wanted to keep her. He would never abandon her for another because he knew they were so much alike. He had been right to choose her.
But she could make him so angry! It took just a few well-chosen words, and his blood boiled so much that he felt his eyes popping out of his head like those fancy goldfish sold in the market. She had learned from that poisoned-tongued viper, his mother, after all. But I don’t want to think about my mother, and he shook his head to get her image out of his mind.
On this last trip to China, he had stayed away as long as he dared, fifteen months—by far the longest time he had been out of Canada. He entered his adopted country at the port of Sarnia, Ontario, on June 6, 1948. For the first time, he was not detained and humiliated by immigration officials upon landing on the shores of his chosen home, nor was he required to show his head tax receipt. Rather than being herded off, he disembarked at his leisure with the other passengers and went on his way, just like a white person. Just like a human being. It felt good!
• • •
More than ever before, Ah Dang was eager to have his family join him in Canada. He had not been able to watch his daughter grow up, and now she was a stranger to him; he did not want that to happen with his son. For a time, he kept trying to apply for permission from the Chinese government for his children to join him, but in the spring of 1949, he decided to work at getting his Canadian citizenship. He had lived in the country for twenty-five years, thus establishing himself as a resident.