Shew Lin sighs happily. “Yes, it is perfect. Only my boy knows me so well.”
Pon Man feels a ripple work its way through his father’s body, a prolonged twitch that pulses like electricity under the skin. Pon Man tightens his grip on his mother’s arm.
“I knew you would like it,” he says.
After twenty minutes in her new house, Shew Lin, already wearing a housedress, reorders the furniture and brings out some of the odds and ends she brought with her from the house in the village. Pon Man runs around, placing things where she instructs him, laughing at the silly calendar from 1938 she has kept all this time (“To remember the worst year of the war,” she says, “and to remember that we are all still alive”), the little teapot in which she steeped Pon Man’s tea so that he would feel special.
“Are you still drawing, my son?”
Pon Man looks nervously at his father. “Sometimes. I mean, only when I have a chance, on little bits of scrap paper, here and there. I hardly draw at all anymore, really.”
Shew Lin looks skeptical. “You must show me later,” she says, her hands still rummaging in her suitcase. “Remember this?” She pulls out a stuffed grey mouse with pink felt lining its ears.
“It’s Bobo.” Pon Man holds the mouse up to his face, inspects its fur with his fingers. “He has the same hole, right here.” He pokes a finger into a seam by the armpit.
“Born in the year of the rat,” says Seid Quan, speaking for the first time. “I see.”
Shew Lin and Pon Man look up, surprised that someone else has spoken, is standing with them in a square of sunshine in the living room. Their laughter stops abruptly, and Shew Lin turns back to her suitcase, fiddling with the clothes left inside. Pon Man thinks that he is the one who must speak.
“Yes, that’s right. The year of the rat. Mother sewed that for me herself while she was pregnant, even though she knew it might be bad luck to make things for a baby who was not yet born. Isn’t that right?”
Shew Lin nods, looks briefly into Seid Quan’s eyes, clasps her hands over her thick stomach. “I brought some of the old things we bought together from the house in the village. I just need to find them.”
Seid Quan looks at both of them, his eyes travelling slowly from one face to the other. Pon Man watches as his father puts his hands in his pockets. He backs out of the room and disappears into the hallway.
Pon Man wants to run after him, allow all those words he wants to speak into the air, but Seid Quan is not that kind of father. So I am the one who understands my mother, he thinks. I knew her first, and she knew me last. He only knows how to leave.
He sits in the living room, waiting for his father to return home. He watches his mother in the kitchen as she nervously prepares dinner. Shew Lin peeks through the doorway, nods at her son. When he winks, she shakes her head and continues chopping.
The door opens, and Pon Man stands up to take a small step forward. He stares at the report card in his hand. As soon as Seid Quan enters the room, the smell of disinfectant and man oil following him, Pon Man sits down again.
He has been planning this moment for months: the talk, the understanding, the nodding of heads. He imagined the two of them, father and son, speaking quietly, heads close together, conferring in ways they never had before. And then his father would sit up suddenly, eyes beaming with pride and hope for the future. Pon Man wouldn’t even notice the barbershop smell. It was all so clear.
Seid Quan sits down in his chair and sighs, nodding slightly to his son. He picks up the newspaper and leans back.
Pon Man sucks in his breath. “Father,” he starts, his voice catching, “do you want to see my report card?”
Seid Quan puts his paper down and silently takes the card. He looks briefly and turns to give it back. “Very good, son.”
Pon Man sees his mother peering at them from the kitchen. She looks once into his eyes and her head disappears again. He says, quickly, “I want to go to university.”
Seid Quan folds his paper and stares at his son, a pretty boy sitting on the edge of the sofa, fearful. He rubs the back of his neck. “Well, that’s just something you want, then. There’s a difference between wanting and needing. I need you to help me pay for this house. I need you to work. You haven’t been in the shop much lately. After you graduate from high school, you could come and work with me.”
Pon Man hears Shew Lin cough and then immediately bang a pot lid to cover up the sound.
“If I go to university, I can learn something that will help me make more money later. I don’t want to cut hair or sell vegetables. I want something else. Mother wants something else for me too.”
Seid Quan looks at his son coldly, his eyes narrowing. “Do you know how many times I’ve heard that before? Don’t you think I wanted more than this house, cutting hair, living here? Do you think a degree will change how people see you? You’ll just be a Chinaman who can read, that’s all. And your mother knows nothing of these things.”
Pon Man sits up straighter. “Aren’t you the one who moved us all here so we could do better? Isn’t that the point of living here instead of the village?”
“If you are not working for four years, how are we supposed to feed you? How are we going to pay for university? No one will give you a job. Do you know how many men I know who tried to compete with the whites? Do you know what happened to them?” Seid Quan smacks his fist on the arm of his chair. “Horrible things, that’s what. Things I can’t even talk about.”
“It’s not 1913 anymore, Father. Things have changed; Chinese people are moving up, leaving Chinatown. How will I be Canadian unless I go to school like Canadians do?”
Seid Quan says nothing, only stares at Pon Man’s moving lips.
“Just because you weren’t able to become a calligrapher, what does that have to do with me?” Pon Man sees the surprise on his father’s face, the rise and fall of his eyebrows.
“If that’s what you think this is about, then you’re dead wrong, more wrong than you could ever know.” Seid Quan folds his paper up and walks out of the room.
Pon Man fingers his report card. He looks into the kitchen, at his mother standing in the doorway holding a wooden spoon in her right hand. She shakes her head again and steps back, turning toward her hissing wok. Crumpling it into a ball, Pon Man throws the report card out the window.
the dream
A basement bedroom. There are dark stains on the walls that could be water, could be cat piss. A tiny window the size of a shoebox. A laminate and chrome desk, covered by an old pink sheet and pushed up against a wall of cinder blocks. I’m lying on my back on a fold-out couch, breathing in a mixture of mould, sweat and beer. He’s undressing and he almost glows—a white, lean body, red, red hair. He sees me watching him. His blue eyes are like a kerosene fire in this half-darkness.
For the first time, I am aware that I am naked, that this bartender I’ve only just met will soon touch me, use his entire body to push us together. I can hear my mother’s voice in my head: “Leaving your sister’s wedding like that.” I make up my mind to forget her.
He kneels over me, looks at my body, slowly, from my head to my feet, as if there is a map pointing to hidden treasure printed on my skin. His gaze feels like a touch, a tongue.
He lowers himself and licks my nipples. I put my hand on the top of his head, and his hair is damp, thick, soft. I can smell my own sweat, bitter like gin, tart like tonic. He looks up at me for one moment, his forehead wrinkled, and quickly looks down again.
It begins, and I can feel myself opening up to him, a dull ache, warm and waiting. He pushes himself inside me, as far as he can, as quickly as he can. It feels like razors, like a knife with a curved blade is sawing through my insides with deliberate, regular movements. I try to push myself away from him, but he’s too heavy and does not notice.
“I can’t do this,” I say. “Please.”
He looks up at me finally, places his hand against the side of my face and turns my head so that I�
��m looking directly into his eyes, into his black pupils. “It’ll get better. Trust me.”
“Really, I can’t do this. I don’t want to.”
He kisses me on the mouth, gently. “I know you want this. Don’t fight me.”
And I stop fighting him. But it doesn’t get any better.
In his car on the way home, we don’t talk. I rest my head on the window, look straight ahead and try to ignore the sounds that mean he’s sitting right beside me. His breath, the click of changing gears, the squeak of his hands on the steering wheel. He stops in front of my house and turns toward me, but I’m already halfway out of the car. He drives off without waving.
As I walk up to our front door, I check my watch to see how late it is, to gauge the possibility that my mother has not yet returned from the wedding. I feel wrung out, like a dishcloth so thin with wear that it is being held together with only one thread. The last face I want to see is my mother’s.
I walk through the hallway to the bathroom, and my mother’s thin voice calls out, says, “Did you lock the front door?” I tell her I did. She doesn’t ask me anything else, and for the first time since my return, I’m glad she’s my mother.
I sit on the toilet and stare at my thighs. They’re red and chafed with long scratches that stretch from my pelvis to my knees. I touch them and wince; they’re soft and pulpy, like raw meat. The skin is already starting to turn blue. I pee, and it stings.
Lying in bed, I can hear my mother snoring, a low, soft hum, more nose than throat. A dog barks. The sun starts to come up, and I finally fall asleep.
In my dream I am helping my mother put away the groceries, my body half in the fridge, plastic bags littering the floor at my feet. As usual, she tells me I am putting the food away all wrong and that, as per her system, only beverages should be placed on the top shelf and only soft fruits belong in the crisper. I straighten up, intending to say that her system doesn’t make any difference in the relative quality of the food, when I see a dark shape step into the kitchen.
My mother turns, says, “Pon Man, what are you doing here?” My father, wearing his dark red bathrobe, takes a step toward us. His skin is white, almost blue, and I can see that his pupils are so large that both eyes appear entirely black.
“I want to hold you,” he says, extending his thin, sinewy arms.
I whisper to my mother, “We have to run.”
Holding hands, we run out the back door and down the porch steps. I feel as if I am dragging her, pulling her shorter legs after me as she pants and whimpers. I turn around to yell at her, impress on her the importance of running as fast as possible. Instead, I see my father floating effortlessly down the stairs, his arms still extended, his mouth tucked into a strange, half-satisfied smile.
At the side of the house, my mother hangs back and stops, bent over double as she gasps for air. “Please,” she says, “go without me. I can’t run anymore.”
I can see the street in front of us, and I know that if we make it there I can yell for help and our neighbours will come and help us beat back this version of my father who is not my father at all, but some kind of vampiric apparition.
“Mom, please run. Please don’t make me leave you.” But she will not move, and I can see my father closing in on her, his long, bony hand just inches away from grasping her shoulder.
I wake up, hearing my own raw breathing echo off the walls of my bedroom. I stand up and walk down the hall. I can hear that my mother is not sleeping; her breath sounds alert, as if she, too, has just woken up from a bad dream. As I step into her room, a floorboard creaks.
“Sammy? Is something the matter?” Her voice cracks on the air.
“No. I just thought I heard a noise, that’s all. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I have some heartburn—it hurts right here, below my lungs. It feels jagged and sharp, you know, but you can go back to sleep. It must have been the crab.”
I almost reach out and touch her cheek. I want her to realize that something is wrong, that my head and my body hurt. I suppose I could tell her myself, but I cannot open my mouth again. My hand stays where it is, glued to my side. I turn and walk back down the hall.
Back in my bed, the sheets cling to me like remnants of my bad dream made tangible. I know that if I close my eyes my father will come back for me, so I stay awake until the daylight burns away the rest of the night.
In the morning, I can hear her shuffling through the house, pink knitted vest puffy over her pyjamas. She is more than what she appears, this small, aging, slightly dotty woman. She is part of me, and I pretend to be asleep.
I have my father’s bones—thin and frail, bird-like. My mother stands rooted to the earth, compact like a miniature bomb, wide hands grasping hot pans, impossible jar lids, bleach. Her apron says “Kiss the Cook,” but no one dares.
She smells of soup, work, wool and spinach.
She told me once of a boy who stood outside her bedroom window, shouting, “Leung Siu Sang, please come out! Leung Siu Sang, marry me!” I imagine her, sixteen years old, calves covered in seamless nude stockings, hiding behind drapes as her younger sister makes faces through the glass.
Three years later, my mother came to Vancouver and married a handsome man she did not know.
Now, my mother stands solidly, her body in contrast to the sliver of thin light she’s standing in. With one eye open, I can see her peering at me through the crack in my bedroom door. I hold my breath and watch her close the door slowly and silently, her face disappearing inch by inch until I am left with the greyness of early morning light and the smell of myself in the sheets.
departure
Her mother always said that Siu Sang was a dreamer.
Unlike her older sister, who attends school to learn accounting and business, Siu Sang stays at home, looking out the window with her small, round eyes at the busy Hong Kong streets below, or lying on a stone bench in the central courtyard, staring for as long as she can at the hot sun in the hazy sky. She reads romance novels and listens to the radio, dancing only if no one is around. Her mother once tried to insist that Siu Sang learn to cook or sew or do something useful, but she soon came to the conclusion that her middle daughter was stupid, or simply destined to be a rich man’s wife.
But she is not a socialite like her cousins. Instead, she stays at home, content to nibble on snacks or try on her mother’s wedding jewellery. She walks slowly, her movement confined by the walls of their house and its courtyard. No one knows what she is thinking, but her mind is clearly elsewhere.
Her brothers call her the Absent-Minded Princess.
One evening, her older sister, Yen Mei, begs her to attend a dance at the university. “Please come. One of the girls can’t make it, so if you don’t come with me, everything will be uneven.”
Siu Sang agrees, sighing as she pulls herself out of her chair to get dressed. The night is sticky, and it is impossible for her to move quickly. Yen Mei is ready to go while Siu Sang is still brushing the lint off her pink dress.
As they are being driven to the dance in their father’s big silver car, Siu Sang imagines that she is gliding across a ballroom, a martini in her hand. Couples spin in perfect time with the full orchestra behind them, and she can hear the murmur of appreciation as she walks through the crowd. Her long skirt with marabou trim barely touches the floor while she gazes at herself in the mirrors lining the long gilt wall. A moustached man steps in front of her and wordlessly offers her his arm. She dances with him, and the glitter of the room dims. They trail romance and glamour behind them.
Twenty minutes later, Siu Sang finds herself standing against a whitewashed cinder-block wall. A tinny record player plays warbled Artie Shaw in the far corner, and a card table has been set up with paper cups and a bowl of faintly purple punch. Her sister’s friends surround her, talking quickly and laughing. The record skips.
“He’s coming over here.”
“No, don’t look! Pretend you don’t see him.”
“All this waiting. Why don’t you ask him to dance yourself?”
“What? I’m not that kind of girl.”
At seventeen, Siu Sang has never been to a dance before. Whenever her mother showed her an invitation that had arrived in the mail, Siu Sang simply shrugged and stayed home. She is unsure of what to do, whether she should sit or stand, dance in place by herself like some of the other girls or just hide in the washroom. She cannot look at the bank of boys standing against the wall opposite her.
One by one, each of the girls is asked to dance. Siu Sang sinks her insubstantial body closer to the wall and stares at the ceiling, noticing its bubbled paint and peeling plaster. The music sounds like a loop to her, each song indistinguishable from the rest, each chord like the one that came before. She looks back at the couples in front of her—awkward boys with their hands on red-faced girls. They’re messing up the steps, she thinks, but then realizes that nobody cares. They are touching, and that is all that matters.
When the music stops, she finally moves from her spot in the corner and leaves the dance, nodding along silently as her sister talks and talks, filling the stale air of the chauffeured car. As they pull up to their house—grey stone with red columns, a gated archway made of black wrought iron—one of the maids throws a bucket of dirty water from the side kitchen door. When she sees Siu Sang and Yen Mei, she retreats into the shadows.
Later that night, their mother appears in the doorway to the room they share with their younger sister. The air hangs thickly; all the smells from the day’s activities (cooking, laundry, bathing) have settled into a damp cloud that sits just below the ceiling. Siu Sang’s upper lip is sweaty.
She lies on the top bunk. Her younger sister is on the bottom, snoring loudly. Yen Mei sleeps noiselessly on a bed across the room. Siu Sang can feel the silk sheets growing slimy with sweat underneath her. The window is open and the street din has not stopped.
End of East, The Page 9