Disappearing Moon Cafe

by Sky Lee

  Mother never understood poverty, not even when she married a poor man. Convenient perhaps, but she could not grasp the reality of underwear greying with use and time. She would always need someone else to fret over the petty details of our human condition. My mother was an artiste. Eternal beauty and exaltation became the only qualities which could be valid for her. Along with her meandering music, eurhythmy would be her sole dedication to her intimate little world. Towards that esoteric end, she was given first Chi, then my dad, and finally me, to do the mundane, oftentimes trying tasks like picking up the pieces.

  Fancy words to excuse my mother’s helplessness. As a child, I used to look up from my play when the music stopped, to watch her at the piano. And there, behind her shut eyelids, was a kind of insanity—sometimes bleak but also full of creativity and possibilities. I knew she was happiest there, in that faraway place she had finally escaped to.

  Funny how I can still get protective of the women in my family, how I can give them all sorts of excuses for their littering. In the telling of their stories, I get sucked into criticizing their actions, but how can I allow my grandmother and great-grandmother to stay maligned? Perhaps, as Hermia suggested, they were ungrounded women, living with displaced chinamen, and everyone trapped by circumstances. I prefer to romanticize them as a lineage of women with passion and fierceness in their veins. In each of their woman-hating worlds, each did what she could. If there is a simple truth beneath their survival stories, then it must be that women’s lives, being what they are, are linked together. Mother to daughter, sister to sister. Sooner or later, we get lost or separated from each other; then we have a bigger chance of falling into the same holes over and over again. Then again, we may find each other, and together, we may be able to form a bridge over the abyss.

  “I was there when her mother first tore her heart in half,” Chi once said protectively, of Bea, to me. “And I was there when Sue took the other half.”

  “So were you, I guess,” she generously included me afterwards. And I thought, at the very least, Chi and Bea will be eternally loyal to each other.

  And who’s Sue? Suzie was my aunt, who died with the final irony—the last male Wong child.

  BEATRICE AND KEEMAN

  1946

  At twenty years old, most couples right after the war would have been married already, but Beatrice and Keeman wouldn’t have married as young as they did if their families with their hysterical antics hadn’t forced them into it. They would have been just as happy to maintain a platonic relationship—she from her big house high up on a hill, he from a run-down one on Keefer Street. They were like that, meeting in some heavenly headspace as only a math whiz and a classical pianist could do.

  News of their timid engagement resulted in Beatrice’s mother fighting with her grandmother, one screaming and fainting, then the other screaming and fainting all over again. And the way they both descended on Beatrice’s dad was terrible to behold! Her grandfather had already passed on, thank goodness, before he could witness the screeching all the way out onto the street. Astonished onlookers stared at Fong Mei wielding a shotgun, grappling with her son, John, who was trying to get it away from her. There’s still a ragged hole up there, just under the eaves, from when the gun went off. Of course, the roof’s been repaired and the scandal patched over since. She was determined to go down to Chinatown to put a hole into Keeman’s mother’s head. Her husband cowering inside the house, sweating it out!

  Naturally, Mrs. Woo wouldn’t have anything to do with the Wongs either.

  “Son, don’t go near her any more! Her whole family’s cracked in the head.” She never knew how close she came to getting cracked in the head herself. “Go find some-body else.”

  A sound piece of advice, but twenty years too late. And how could he find somebody else anyway? There was such a meagre number of young people—no new immigrant blood. What few there were, were native-born. Since 1923 the Chinese Exclusion Act had taken its heavy toll. The rapidly diminishing chinese-canadian community had withdrawn into itself, ripe for incest.

  In 1946, Keeman had just come home from overseas, and he wanted only peace in the world and a quiet environment in which to go on to his doctoral degree. He came back a survivor, a WWII veteran—a man of the world, because he had become an expert on the dehumanizing experience of war, and terror, and despair. He had been a part of the wanton technological genocide that humankind had finally consolidated into history. Back home, this qualified him for compensation, so that he and men like him could rebuild their ruptured lives the best they could.

  Chinatown welcomed its returning war heroes with as much gusto and fanfare as any small town. They wanted to validate them as individuals again, precious because each young man was an important part of their small-town lives. Not a nameless death, diminished even more by that vast desolation over there. Chinatown would have given Keeman anything to show their eternal gratitude. He chose wisely. He claimed the love that had matured out his childhood with Beatrice. And she consented to an engagement with him by strolling up the street in Chinatown with him, hand in hand. The more modern of the young people were starting to engage themselves. They stopped and chatted with a few of the shopkeepers who were sweeping their portion of sidewalk clean. People were ecstatically pleased with the fairy tale—a warrior-hero and a beautiful princess. It even made the local newspaper a few days later. Of course, the darker side of the story stayed in the dark, privy to family members only.

  On the way back home that evening, Beatrice and Keeman, their hands still pressed palm to palm, fingers tightly interlaced, stopped in at Chi’s brother’s house, to tell Chi first. They lingered a few hours and listened to CBC radio broadcasts on Chi’s brother’s upright Victrola. They all had lots of time for leisure, since Chi had been laid off from her job at the Mac & Blo sawmill on Marine Drive. The three friends made a tranquil scene in the living room, content just to be with each other.

  “I wish I could have frozen the three of us right then and there,” remarked Chi. “Bea would have liked that too. We all could have stayed fresh, and dreamy, and in love forever and ever. The perfect ending for your mother. If I had known, I wouldn’t have let her go home that night.”

  After a program of Beethoven’s forested symphony, Keeman and Beatrice left in a hurry because Beatrice began to get quite anxious about telling her family.

  Unexpectedly, that very same evening, Bea was back at Chi’s home again. The left side of her face terribly swollen and bruised with red-hot finger-shaped welts from her mother’s right hand. Her eyelids puffed out like overripe apricots. Chi had to get out of bed to answer the banging at the back door. When she opened it, Beatrice fell into her surprised arms and sobbed like her insides were coming out. Chi reached for the leftover popcorn bowl, thinking that she was about to throw up.

  “Mother slapped me,” was all Chi could get out of her for the longest time.

  Beatrice shivered out of control as Chi guided her up the stairs, to her bedroom. Chi peeled off her sopping wet dress, stockings and underwear.

  “My mother’s . . . never . . . never . . .” Beatrice stuttered as Chi sat her down on the bed and threw a quilt over her quivering shoulders. Then Chi went to get a towel for her wet hair.

  “No one’s ever hit me in my entire life!” she wailed afresh, as Chi rubbed and blew on her cold white hands and hugged her as tightly as she could. Finally, Chi urged her to lie down, under the covers, and climbed in close beside her.

  As Chi held her, Bea told the whole story. “. . . And the terrible things she said. I can’t believe them. Oh Chi! . . . Oh Chi! I can’t ever go home again. I can’t bear to face her.”

  All night they whispered, and she wept. “. . . I wish I were dead. Where have I got to go now? You know, I almost passed out on the train tracks on my way over here. I tripped over them because it was too dark to see. I should have just lain there until a train came. She said that . . . she said that Keeman’s my father’s bastard son!”<
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  FONG MEI

  1946

  Shocked, Fong Mei couldn’t believe what she had just done! She looked first at her mother-in-law, who was swaying and clutching onto the doorjamb, then she stared vacantly at her youngest daughter cowering and sobbing in the farthest corner. In the background, she was dimly aware of Beatrice clattering out the door, down the porch. The glass in the front door rattling. In front of her eyes, the image of fear on her baby’s face still swam, after Fong Mei had slapped with all her might, again and again, wanting to kill. Her beautiful Bea, her firstborn! Yes, she would rather see her dead.

  “You could see that I’ve always hated him. Why him?” she hissed at her surprised daughter. “Didn’t I ever count for anything?” Year after year of tightly knotted lies—what she had had to endure. All that she had worked so hard to avoid. She would not have it destroyed. Blind rage consumed her. She kept striking out. Her daughter’s soft, tear-streaked face, so compliant, so sweet and dumb, round and so unsuspecting. She suddenly hated it with all her heart, enough to blot it out of her life forever.

  This fateful evening had started out with an electrical storm—flash lightning, followed by booming thunder and a heavy downpour. As was his habit, Choy Fuk, before parking his Buick Roadmaster in the garage, let his wife and mother out near the back porch. Mui Lan went on ahead, but Fong Mei stood for a few minutes on the wet driveway, listening for the studied notes of a Chopin nocturne. But the house was dark and obviously empty. Beatrice must have gone out. And without the eldest at home, the two younger ones would have weaseled out of their evening routine in a flash. Feeling piqued, she waited for Choy Fuk as he came up the walkway to express her dissatisfaction.

  “I told her to call us at the store if she was planning to go out. Her little sister is still too young to be left on her own,” she said, her breath steamy against the damp night air. “I don’t know what’s gotten into her. She’s going out all the time now!”

  That was a nervous lie on Fong Mei’s part. She knew all too well that Keeman Woo was back in town. She just didn’t want to spell disaster out loud. Who wants to wreak havoc on themselves?

  Suddenly, a bicycle whizzed by, and a familiar bell tinkled at them.

  “Hi Mom! Hi Dad!” their third sang out to them from the dark. “Turn on the porch light when you get in, will you please, Mom?”

  Choy Fuk watched the unhappiness evaporate from his wife’s face, just as he’d seen it broaden with pure bliss countless times before, whenever she spotted any one of her children.

  “A Suzie-ah,” she scolded the girl with plenty of indulgence in her voice, “what are you up to, bicycling in the dark and rain?”

  To Choy Fuk, she ordered, “Hurry up! Turn on the porch light! And go boil water in the kettle for hot cocoa!”

  Fong Mei waited by the door to hug her daughter. At least one is back, she thought to herself. When Suzie finally bounced into the big kitchen, her mother clasped her cheeks and stroked them gently.

  “Aie, how chilled you are! Where were you, my pet?”

  “I was just standing on the corner, talking to Judith and Lily. I saw you drive in. I would have asked them to come in, but you don’t like them, do you?” Suzie pouted most effectively.

  “The less you see of those white girls, the better off you’ll be. They don’t make good friends. Just be polite enough to get along with them at school!” Fong Mei said out of habit, fingering one of the young girl’s braids. “You’ve lost another ribbon.”

  Suzanne Bo Syang Wong fairly bloomed with pubescent charm. She had the same clear features as her older sister, and she was already taller. Many people would claim she was in fact more beautiful than Beatrice because her demeanour was more coquettish. Where her sister was a bit too serious and aloof, Suzie was a bit too free and easy, the way she moved a teensy bit too fluid.

  When she spotted her father, she sprang at him from behind and flung her arms around his waist. Choy Fuk chuckled and chided, “Well, let me at least take off my coat, you little monkey!” Like Fong Mei, he particularly doted on the youngest one. She was after all the last one for them.

  “Now, tell your mother where your elder brother and sister are. She’s very worried about them.” He touched his index finger to her forehead, a gesture as stern as Choy Fuk ever got with his children.

  “John’s over at the Dart Foon Club. And I’m never, never going to tell you where Bea Bea’s gone. Never, ever, cross my heart and hope to die!” The twelve-year-old girl broke into a dance around the kitchen table, her braids flipping back and forth, as she shook her head.

  “Now don’t be silly,” Fong Mei demanded and grabbed one of her arms, “and tell me!”

  “She’s gone off with our soldier boy, Mummy. And they were holding hands. I saw them.” The girl slipped out of her mother’s stunned grasp and ran off.

  Choy Fuk tried to sneak out of the kitchen too, the kettle blasting like a siren, but not before he suffered the full impact of Fong Mei’s deadly scowl aimed at him from across the room.

  Fong Mei made enough hot cocoa for everyone and left it to keep warm on the stove. Then she went upstairs to sit in the dark of her room and to wait for Beatrice to come home. But old memories came to visit instead.

  IN 1926, Choy Fuk’s whore must have been five months gone before she confirmed her pregnancy to him or his mother. In actuality, she didn’t have to open her mouth at all. Mui Lan seemed to know already, and strangely enough she remained calm. In fact Fong Mei remembered that time to be the calmest she had ever experienced in the Wong household. Choy Fuk was calm, and Lo Yeh was, as always, away. More importantly, she herself was in love and living a splendid dream.

  Every day she flitted about, looking radiant, as if in full bloom. She could feel her body lighten, soften. Where it had been silent before, it began pulsating the most exhilarating messages to her brain. She was not aware that people were remarking upon how womanly she had become. Some even went so far as to suggest this to her mother-in-law, who reinforced their observations with some of her own creations, such as how picky an eater her daughter-in-law had become, how she’d been needing more time off on her own, probably to rest. Ironically, Fong Mei seemed to be doing all the right things, for a change, and Mui Lan had suddenly become very protective of her. And she’d been losing a little weight, didn’t they think?

  “Of course, to begin with,” people smiled, “of course.” Of course, nobody would bother to discuss this openly with the daughter-in-law herself.

  Fong Mei was well aware of what her mother-in-law was whispering into every ear she could bend, but she just didn’t care any more. Let Mui Lan think that she had everything carefully mapped out, that she knew exactly how to manage people! Let people draw their own conclusions. They’re all so clever—for now!

  In fact, the waitress was too slim for her time. Soon enough though, Mui Lan would be sending her away. She’d already had Choy Fuk make all the secret arrangements. And soon after her, Mui Lan, with Fong Mei by her side, would be going up to supposedly see about one of their stores in around Lillooet. Mui Lan told everyone in Chinatown that Gwei Chang had talked about selling it for a long time. Of course, it could be inconvenient with Fong Mei’s health the way it was, but if all went well (and from one peasant woman to another, why shouldn’t it?) they’d be back in plenty of time.

  She would change the story afterward. She would take all the blame of overestimating “A Mei Mei’s” capabilities. Fong Mei would supposedly fall ill. Then they’d have to stay because they were warned against travel until after the baby came. By then, it would be winter, and such a trip would be far too hazardous for a newborn infant. Since they were already nicely settled in a cozy house up there, with Choy Fuk running in with supplies and out with what Mui Lan told him to report, why not stay until the baby was stronger? This way, the waitress’s baby could be easily passed off as Fong Mei’s when they got back to Chinatown.

  Mui Lan had no qualms about being lashed together in a
lonely cabin with two desperate women—one who was being forced to give up her infant, and the other one who was being forced to take it in. But then, why should she? She was the matriarch, and she considered them both daughters-in-law.

  On the day of departure, their trip was interrupted. Ting An was the driver, with Mui Lan packed between him and Fong Mei. Much preparation and planning had gone into this automobile journey. Gwei Chang was only too happy when Mui Lan suggested to him that Fong Mei needed some kind of woman’s holiday. Not only was he a lenient man, but he was the first to “leave women alone to be women.” Mui Lan was the one who fussed endlessly over this and that. She made a great display about Choy Fuk having to stay behind, as though the whole business would fall apart without him as overseer. Actually, Gwei Chang’s ever-expanding business would just idle in neutral for a while, at least until Ting An came back; and he was just supposed to drive them and stay long enough to see if the Lillooet store could be sold. No one in the cab of the truck spoke except for Mui Lan barking out orders. They didn’t get as far as New Westminster before Fong Mei was vomiting so much they had to stop.

  Fong Mei felt no shame, retching and gagging, grovelling in the dust. This was the last time she would ever grovel. Mui Lan, angered, stared down at this female inconvenience on the side of the gravel road, and kept insisting that they continue on their way. Ting An stubbornly refused, saying he didn’t want to take the risk of dirtying his truck.

  In the middle of the argument that followed, Fong Mei blurted out that she might not be able to go on, that she had missed her moon. Mui Lan didn’t believe her right away. She stared at Fong Mei, unable to refocus on what to do next. Was it true or ploy? She looked ahead; the road was wooded, unfamiliar. She couldn’t have foreseen this one.

  If Fong Mei hadn’t been as sick as she truly was, she would have laughed with glee, watching her mother-in-law topple, a wrench thrown into her works. Anyway, whatever Mui Lan decided in the end had little consequence; Fong Mei’s accomplice, whether he knew he was or not, was already turning the truck around, carefully avoiding the soft shoulders of the road.