by Sky Lee
She let herself in very quietly. Once inside the front entranceway, she took her key out of the door lock and purposefully slammed the heavy door hard enough to make the leaded glass windows vibrate. She smiled slyly to herself and waited a second or two longer in the dark. She could well imagine the look of consternation on her husband’s face upstairs. No doubt he was getting ready to leave in a hurry, hopefully before she got home. But whenever she could, Fong Mei would not let him off so easily. She clattered up the stairs and stomped down the hallway. A touch too abruptly, she threw open one of the doors. Sure enough, Choy Fuk stood in the narrow toilet chamber, razor in hand, shaving soap all over his face. He looked like a sheep. She stared at him coldly, mutely. She knew he hated this silent stare, and he finished his shave as quickly as he could, nicking his tallowy neck twice. Fong Mei narrowed her eyes at each wince. Why doesn’t he slash his useless throat? she thought viciously.
Hastily, he put on his shirt. When he started back to their bedroom, he stepped on his dangling suspenders, dragging his pants down around his knees. Fong Mei followed closely, openly jeering at the ridiculous sight he made. In the bedroom, he finished dressing. Finally, Choy Fuk threw on his jacket, grabbed his hat and stumbled out without a single glance in her direction, not even bothering to tie his shoelaces. She still hounded him as far as the front door though, slamming and locking it after him.
“Go, you turtle,” she muttered to herself. “I can’t stand the sight of you any more than you can stand me.”
As soon as he left, Fong Mei relaxed. These mean little triumphs were getting to be a bit boring since she started them last year in the fall, but now her ego absolutely refused to give them up. Whistling a tune, she readied herself for bed. Tonight, she might have a few minutes to start a letter to her elder sister before she got too sleepy. Before springing into bed, she threw open the window and looked down at the garden in the moonlight. She loved to sniff at the night air. Although not like the warm, moist, subtropical one of her girlhood, the night seemed animated, filled with all sorts of wonderfully intoxicating possibilities.
In bed, she made a cosy nest out of the flouncy pillows and was about to pick up her fountain pen and writing pad, when she felt a strange pang of guilt. She should stop harassing her husband! What was the use of being so vindictive! She certainly wasn’t angry at him any more. And his sleeping with the waitress didn’t gnaw at her pride as it had before.
She had changed these past six months. Where the loathsome living arrangement that Mui Lan had forced her into had once made her blood boil, it in fact suited her now. Fong Mei no longer felt like she was a part of somebody else’s plans.
And quite truthfully, Fong Mei had never borne any malice towards that poor, unfortunate waitress-woman. She was being paid well enough to lay with Mui Lan’s son, but as Fong Mei knew by now, she wasn’t getting such a wonderful deal. Pitiful thing—just a sore bag who didn’t seem to have enough gumption or sagacity to manipulate a better life for herself.
Mind you, it was hard to imagine how wretched the waitress’s life was. She seemed so beaten. Fong Mei wondered how she herself would have fared in the face of such raw poverty and abuse. That waitress hadn’t even a pretty face to help buy her way. But, if nothing else, the woman had freedom. That thought made Fong Mei tighten her shoulders a little, because, for all of her new plans, her life was still not her own.
Fong Mei had always been a little intimidated by the waitress, who was an older woman, and had never made any friendly gestures to her. Her big, clumsy frame shuffled about, from kitchen to booth, booth to kitchen, seemingly impervious to the sniggers and lewd remarks from the more obnoxious patrons. Whenever the tables were slow, she drudged in the dirtiest parts of the kitchen, elbow deep in lye or grease. If there was a moment of respite at all, she would droop on the lowest corner stool, near the back of the restaurant, always dumb. Even with Mui Lan chattering beside her, she was the same listless kind of person.
To Fong Mei, the waitress belonged to that other class of women—the one without male patronage, barely existing, mute in their misery. It never occurred to her to think how she herself was silenced by luxury. Fong Mei was too self-absorbed to be conscious of how her eyes hardened against the waitress’s dirty clothes and hair; of how her nose crinkled slightly at the suspicious odours about the woman; of how her long white fingers dropped the weekly pay envelope into the red, chapped hands as if from great heights.
Not long after accepting her mother-in-law’s terms, Fong Mei had discovered how much she had been set up. That old bitch Mui Lan had struck a baby deal with the waitress long before approaching Fong Mei. Why Mui Lan had bothered to waste an entire morning debasing Fong Mei and forcing her to her knees was beyond comprehension. She knew that Fong Mei had no choice in the matter. It made Fong Mei feel all the more acutely her predicament, the lie she had to live in order to fill her belly. It made her despise Mui Lan and her son all the more for their cowardly, underhanded ways.
To Mui Lan, the waitress must have been of course the perfect choice; she was “clean enough” and cheap and easily available. More importantly, the woman would keep her mouth shut. Fong Mei found out that she had come over on the same boat with Mui Lan and Choy Fuk, thirteen years ago. And Mui Lan had helped her out a lot. No wonder Mui Lan trusted her so much; she must have thought that the waitress owed her something!
As one of the naked poor hakkas or “guest people” in China, the waitress had been married off at the age of fourteen to a very old, shell-shocked, overseas chinese despot left over from the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. He used to beat, rape and abuse her atrociously; and she would have died of her violent beatings if it hadn’t been for the not infrequent intervention of Lee Mui Lan, who carried considerable social clout and, more importantly, had a piercing tongue.
Mui Lan had taken a liking to this shy, defenceless child, perhaps because she was about the same age as her Choy Fuk. Or perhaps because she was the kind of daughter-in-law Mui Lan would have preferred to have. Soon after the young girl had tried to commit suicide by suspending herself from the rafters in her old man’s chicken coop when she was pregnant with her first, Mui Lan stepped in and shamed the old bugger into clemency for the poor girl. The beatings didn’t stop for long, though; they went on even beyond the birth of her second boy. He broke her nose and collarbone at least a couple of times.
Mercifully, the ugly old gizzard had died in his tracks of a burst blood vessel in his brain. However, except for the leaky shack and chicken coop on the muddy fringes of False Creek, he left her and her babies destitute. She tried to work the small garden plot herself and practically starved herself and her children to death. Chinatown, being the tight watchful community it was, soon stepped in with aid. Still, misfortune hounded her. Both boys died within days of each other of Rocky Mountain fever. Too depressed this time even to attempt suicide, she would have simply died of neglect if Mui Lan hadn’t come in the nick of time to nag and goad her back to being a human being again.
The woman had come to work for Mui Lan in the kitchen of Disappearing Moon, scraping garbage off the floor. Then she was offered work as a waitress. And she accepted. It meant more money, with tips, although she must have realized that in this sexually suspicious street of village-bred men, a waitress meant no better than a prostitute. A lone woman serving tables of dirty-minded men who righteously looked down upon her was an ironic twist for a descendant of the hakka people who, no matter how poor, never sold their girls into prostitution or slavery. Then, as the years passed, she became known as “the waitress” because there was no other in Chinatown. Many people never even bothered to ask her name.
How, Fong Mei thought magnanimously, could she have borne any hard feelings at all against such a pitiful beast? She sank back against softness. Moonlight filtered through the windows into the dark room, illuminating the porcelain-blue in her complexion. On the pad of onion paper beside her head was written another beginning:
> “My beloved elder sister, I am sure that my trials and tribulations are now over. The air around me is sweet and cool, and I can see clearly now.”
CHOY FUK
1925
Choy Fuk breathed a big sigh of relief when he stepped out into the spring air and strutted down Georgia Street towards Chinatown.
Ah, women are no good! he thought mournfully to himself. He adjusted his tie, smoothed it down, and tucked the end smartly under the waistband of his trousers. They’re always dissatisfied with one thing or another. What is it that they want? He glanced back over his shoulder for no particular reason. The street was clear, lit by the occasional street lamp, hardly a horse or wagon anywhere. A spattering of white picket fences and fancy fretwork here, there. Neat lawns and freshly turned flowerbeds. Daffodils out in full force, glowing yellow embers in the murkiness. A few porch lights illuminated his way in the dark. The warm, rosy glow of lamps in parlour windows reassured Choy Fuk that the world was still safe and hospitable. But when he turned away and started jaywalking across the street, he caught his loose shoelaces in some cedar blocks left exposed where the pavement had worn away. When he tried to pull away, he caught his other heel on a trolley-car rail, skidding and twisting his ankle. “Sonovabitchee!” he swore angrily under his breath.
Choy Fuk felt sure he was headed for trouble. He could easily ignore this problem for a little while longer, but he should at least think it over a little, maybe! So he paused in front of an empty lot full of tangled brambles and bushes to light a cigarette and relieve himself. Sucking the smoke greedily into his lungs, he wondered how many months this had been going on. Wow your mother, it couldn’t have been six months already!
Well, then, no wonder he was tired. In fact, more than tired of all the whining, weeping women around him. He was sick to death of his mother nagging him. And he was fed up with his wife—the smouldering hatred in her eyes when she slopped his congee spitefully into his bowl in the mornings. How long could a man live with this one’s meddling, with that one’s obstinacy? He felt like a squealing pig bound tight in a woven bamboo cage, poked fun at by man-eating ogresses.
Six months ago, Choy Fuk had yelped at his distraught wife, “It’s . . . it’s not my fault! You yourself agreed to it. What can I do? I don’t want to slap you in the face.”
“Go die!” his young wife had howled back at him. “You want to go. You can’t trick me! You enjoy rolling around in that pig-sty bed of hers.”
“Women!” he had sputtered like the fine spray of a sneeze. There was no ready reply to such a vile accusation, he thought. He was a man. And it was not for a man to withhold his vital life-force stream on the spiteful whim of a barren wife. So what if he enjoyed the woman? What could be more natural for a man? Of course, since the opportunities for his pleasure had suddenly flourished, how could he be expected to contain his exhilaration and glee? Who wouldn’t sink his teeth into this juicy ham bone? But as the saying went, “When eating beside a woman of mourning, the master dares not eat his fill.”
“And what about me?” his wife had sniffled, a swollen, hurt pout about her lips. “How do you think I feel? Twenty-three, and a discarded rag of a woman already. I sit on the edge of our bed and have to watch you prepare to go to her every night now. What is there left for me except an empty bed and . . .” She wanted to say “and an empty crotch,” but didn’t have the brazenness.
“What, would you have me not go? Both you and I will catch trouble then. Just bear this through for another month or so, and I’ll be finished. The old lady’ll leave us alone then.”
His wife had stared at him. What a stupid man to think that the end of his coupling duties with that woman would mark the end of this whole sordid mess.
Choy Fuk had given her a hesitant, sidelong glance, and said ever so carefully, “Then, you’ll have my baby to care for . . .”
Fong Mei had let out a strangulated squawk, which startled him. “You cracked-brain . . . you’ll never understand!”
Torrential tears had followed, beating down what little patience Choy Fuk had to begin with. He was the man, and she was his wife. She was supposed to follow his wishes. Why should he waste his time listening to all this soggy female noise? She was supposed to bring forth a son and heir. What else could he do if she was as fruitless as a broken twig?
He remembered staring stupidly at her white arms reaching out to him and thinking that she was ten-parts more beautiful than that “wild chicken.” And he was really fond of her.
“Don’t go!” she had begged. But he was anxious to go. It was too bad that she could no longer be the recipient of his precious manly juices, but that was just the way things had turned out. He couldn’t understand how that mangy waitress of a woman could make his cock soar like she did. And night after night, he never tired of her. She infuriated him with her sagging milk bags and mangled belly button. Yet the sight of her in her shack, lying on that ragged sack cloth bunkbed, seared him with fervid desire. He never dreamed such passion was even possible. Emotions bottled up in his mother’s big house burst out of control in the outlying shack. His own wife was but a darling pink child; he felt more of an inclination to pet her. But this one with her hard face and cool indifferent stare made him want to squash, pump and squeeze all night long. She made his toes curl. He fantasized that she was the demon-fox lasciviously draining off his fresh male sperm. And he, her spellbound victim, growing weaker and weaker, losing control of his faculties. Sperm was liquefied brain matter. Once drained away, he would go about Pender Street with a dull, vacuous stare. Hah! His old parents would have to take care of an idiot for the rest of their lives.
Suddenly, a childish voice chanted out of the night:
Chinkee, chinkee chinaman, eats dead rats.
Eats them up like gingersnaps.
A gang of young ruffians popped out of the side of a building and blocked his way. Choy Fuk flicked away his cigarette and loosened his shoulders, ready for a scuffle. There were four or five of them, no older than fourteen years old. Searching their faces for the ringleader, he spotted him—a skinny, tall kid with a horselike nose and dirty blond hair, wearing a tattered, filthy sweater which had shrunk in hot water a long time ago. Without warning, two of them wound up and threw things at him. Choy Fuk ducked one, but a wet paper bag smashed on the boardwalk and skidded between his legs, its contents splattering a foul stench over his pant legs and shiny shoes. He let out a loud growl and lurched at his chosen one. But the dead boy-bitch was too fast. Springing like a cat, he got away easily. Choy Fuk, much too pudgy and clumsy, knew he couldn’t hope to catch him, so he lunged for whatever was the closest. He managed to secure a small one who was too inept to run away on cue. Clutching a handful of tangled, furlike hair, Choy Fuk shook and rattled him while those good buddies of his laughed and pointed at them from a safe distance. He also gave the howling little shrimp two sound kicks on his scrawny butt, one with each foot, taking care to wipe off his besmeared shoes at the same time.
As he watched the boy hobble away, tears streaming down his cheeks, scuff marks on the back of his pants, Choy Fuk contemplated the inequity of life. He himself was also a hapless bystander led astray by his own innocence, just like that yellow-haired devil. The boy looked like he was the youngest. And he wasn’t the one who had thrown the rotten garbage. He probably didn’t even realize what his peers had intended. However, it was precisely this kind of ignorance that turned him into easy prey. People always vented themselves on easy targets.
Choy Fuk knew the punks had gone ahead of him, hiding in wait behind another shadowy tree or fence. They’d hound him to their evil little hearts’ desire. A chinese—who couldn’t report them to the nearest constable—made fine prey. In fact, if they had harassed him in daylight, a chinese wouldn’t even dare lay a finger on their butts for fear of repercussions from other whites, especially the constables.
Choy Fuk peered into the darkness and decided he would not go to Chinatown tonight. His social club would h
ave to wait until he had talked to his waitress, until he had reasserted his manliness.
He took one resolute step after another, until he reached her little farm. By then, the night was coal black, the forest even blacker. Shimmering in the distance, the few lights of shantytown on the far edge of the marsh.
The waitress’s tarpaper shack was all dark. He knocked on the door, but no one answered, so he lifted the latch and let himself in. He struck a match to light the kerosene lamp, which he placed near the one and only window. She couldn’t be far off. Perhaps she was still working out in the back fields. She was a strangely fearless woman who did not seem to notice night or day. If she had to chop wood or dig up potatoes, she’d do it regardless of dark or damp or snow. But the light in her window would bring her in.
The waitress’s little hovel reminded him of the village. The same threadbare paucity. On a plank nailed to the wall, a small crock of pickling vegetables stood, its wooden cover secured by a granite rock. Beside it, a square tin box to hold her raw rice and worn coconut shells for lopsided rice bowls. The front wall was plastered with newspaper, and a thin scant cotton diaper shivered sadly in front of the drafty window. Off to the side of the bed, a monstrous wood stove, way out of proportion to the tiny shack, squatted like a big black bear. Choy Fuk threw a couple of logs into its pot belly and poked around a bit. Through the vents and the slits, the flame flickered in a promising way.
Before long, he heard timid movements along the path behind the house, like an animal treading softly. Then he heard voices, so he opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. The light from inside flooded out to the waitress as she bent over the front steps, scraping mud from her boots with a stick. A gaunt man stood very still beside her, a hoe and shovel slung over his shoulder. He stared dryly back at Choy Fuk, who recognized him from the fantan tables. Last name Woo, an unfriendly sort who gambled a lot and spoke little. Didn’t ever work as far as Choy Fuk knew, but then he had never really bothered to find out much about him. Men like him—there were so many.