Pao

by Kerry Young

  Then them tell me they organising a garden party. Zhang, and now Ma, very excited. It seem like this is the best thing to happen since Mao Zedong win the war and they set up the People’s Republic of China. Zhang and Ma fuss me so much that Sunday morning I barely make it outta the house on time, with Zhang looking at me all expectant like, and Ma waving me goodbye, and Hampton stand up in the yard with his hands on his hips laughing like him witnessing a clown show.

  She was there though, with her dark wavy hair pin in a neat bun at the back of her head, and hips, and lips, and hands that she wave about all the time she talking, and throwing her head back and squeezing her eyes tight shut when she laugh. I ask somebody who she is.

  ‘That is Fay Wong.’

  ‘You mean Henry Wong daughter?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  So then I know there is no point me even going up to her because most likely she wouldn’t even talk to me. Henry Wong is one of the richest Chinese men in Jamaica. He own supermarkets, wholesalers and wine merchants all over Kingston, Ocho Rios and Montego Bay, and he have a big house uptown busting with servants. And I think well if Zhang reckon Gloria not good enough for me what is he going make of Fay Wong? So right from that moment I had her in my sights.

  When I go back to Matthews Lane Judge Finley tell me that Henry Wong is a regular player at the mah-jongg tables in Barry Street. So the next time Henry Wong come down to Chinatown I get a professional to lift his wallet, and that give me a chance to go uptown to return it.

  The Wongs’ house on Lady Musgrave Road got a semi-circular driveway, and between the two entrances a grass tennis court with a big red hibiscus hedge. The house sit on top of a flight of concrete steps with a wide tiled veranda, and a low white-concrete balustrade. And all over it there is wicker armchairs and little tables. The flower bed under the veranda crammed with all sorta colours and shapes, pinks and purples and reds, and to the side there is a twelve-foot-tall angel’s trumpet, which I know, come evening, is going to put out a real strong, sweet, heavy scent.

  When I get on this veranda I see they got a swimming pool ’round the side with some nice little almond trees for shade. Then I see a black woman filling up one of them big wicker armchair. So I introduce myself and she say she is Cicely Wong, who I know is Henry Wong’s wife.

  I tell her what my business is and I reach out with Henry Wong’s wallet in my hand but she don’t take it from me. Instead she call out, ‘Ethyl,’ and this girl come running outta the house like Miss Cicely just call out ‘Fire’, and it turn out that she is the one that is going to take the wallet from me, and then pass it directly to Miss Cicely.

  Then Miss Cicely ask me if I want to join her for afternoon tea. Well, this I know about, so I say, ‘Thank you.’ And she tell me to sit down. She move her embroidery so that I can sit on the chair right next to her.

  But no sooner than I sit down she stand up and sorta march over to the edge of the veranda and start shouting, ‘Edmond, gather up those mangoes from under the tree, I don’t want them turning to pulp on the grass there around the swing. You need to sweep up all that rubbish from ’round the back as well, all sort of rotten fruit and things ’round there. And when you done that cut back that poinsettia, can’t you see it getting too big for that corner.’ And she come back and sit down again. Edmond standing up under the tree look like him tired. But I don’t know if it from overwork or from Miss Cicely yelling at him.

  Before Ethyl finish pour the tea Miss Cicely is on her feet again. ‘Lord, Edmond, what is it you think we paying you for? Every other garden down the road look better than this one. The garden next door look like it belong to a palace and their gardener is only part-time and a old man at that, not a young sap like you. Make me wonder if I should ask him to come over here and see what he can do to help us out. I keep praying to the good Lord to see if he can send you some inspiration, but He don’t seem to be paying me no mind. When the ecumenical women’s group come here next week I want the place looking spick and span and beautiful, you understand me? I don’t want it looking like this while you leaning up under a tree shading yourself and acting like you sweating from exhaustion.’

  Miss Cicely take a liking to me though, and after that day a week didn’t go by without her inviting me for afternoon tea. So week after week I was sitting there drinking tea while I watch her instruct the butler, and arrange the menu with the housekeeper, and check the grocery bill, and dish out household chores to the maids; all of the time Ethyl keeping us cool with ice-cold lemonade, and at four pm precisely, Earl Grey tea with tin salmon and cucumber sandwiches, and a slice of Victoria sponge cake. Well this bit I never did with Gloria, so I wait and watch and make sure that I do everything just exactly the same way Miss Cicely do it, and that seem to work out fine.

  I find out a lot about Miss Cicely. First of all that she like chocolates and grapenut ice cream, so I always make sure to bring plenty of that. Also, she like Chinese men.

  ‘A Chinese man,’ she say to me, ‘is hardworking and diligent. He is prudent and steadfast in his resolve to make a better future for himself and his family. A Chinese man hunts out prosperity. Not like the Africans. The Africans are irresponsible and unreliable; indolent and slipshod. They squander every penny. That is why I married a Chinese man. And why my daughters will also marry Chinese men.’

  Another time she tell me, ‘I can see you have money in your pocket, Philip. You are well dressed, and well mannered and charming. Yes, quite charming, and quite good looking if you will excuse my impertinence. I understand you have a shop in downtown Kingston. When I married my husband, Mr Henry, he had only the one shop as well.’

  Every now and again she tell Fay to come sit on the veranda with us and Fay do it, but she don’t seem that interested and after a while she get up and go back inside, or she make an excuse that she have to go somewhere and she leave the house. I keep thinking I should try to say something to her. If I could get her talking ’bout something she might sit there for longer than five minute. But every time I open my mouth she just look at me like she thinking ’bout something else, and she don’t even seem to care that it rude to just sit there and nuh say nothing to me.

  After my visiting with Miss Cicely I say to Finley, ‘Cicely Wong, she talk one way to the help and a completely different way to me. When she talk to me she sound like a proper Englishwoman and every afternoon she serve Earl Grey tea and Victoria sponge cake.’

  ‘The story I hear ’bout her is that she grow up on a banana plantation outside of Ocho Rios with her father, but her education come from missionaries. The first thing she learn to read was the Bible and that how come she such a staunch Wesleyan but I also hear tell that she convert to Catholicism because she think that Catholics are a better class of person.’

  So one Wednesday afternoon after months of swallowing gallons of Earl Grey tea and carting quart after quart of grapenut ice cream to Lady Musgrave Road I finally say to Miss Cicely, ‘I was wondering if you and Mr Wong would consider me marrying Fay.’

  And she say, ‘Yes.’ Just like that, like she was expecting it.

  ‘You don’t have to ask Fay or check with Mr Wong or anything like that?’

  ‘I already took the liberty of asking my husband about you, Philip. He tells me your father is an honourable man. A man greatly respected by the Chinese merchants in Kingston. Henry says you have a family business and have served the Chinatown community for many years. I understand your father is retired now, is that correct?’

  I so shocked I dunno what to say. I can’t figure out why Henry Wong no tell her the truth about me.

  Then she say, ‘Anyway, you are a charming young man and Fay will do as she is told. Mr Henry doesn’t involve himself in this sort of thing, the household, marriage, children, this is the domain of women as far as he is concerned.’

  So it was done. I was busy the next two days but Friday evening I realise I need to go tell Gloria before she find out from somebody else. But when I get there
she already know.

  ‘Is it true what I hear ’bout you marrying Fay Wong?’

  I feel that bad about it I dunno what to say to her. After all me and Gloria been going well over four years now, so I say, ‘I can’t marry you, Gloria, you know that.’

  ‘I didn’t expect you to marry me.’

  ‘So what you expect?’

  She think on it and then she say, ‘I didn’t expect you to go marry somebody else.’

  I can see she have a point so I say to her, ‘I have to give my children a name.’

  She turn her back to me and I can tell she crying from the way her shoulders heaving up and down. So I go over to her and put my hand on her shoulder, but she just shrug it off and say to me, ‘Get out, Pao, I don’t want to look at you.’

  The wedding at Holy Trinity Cathedral, with its big stained-glass window and white dome roof. I just invite Ma, Zhang, Hampton, Finley and his wife, a nice straight schoolteacher-looking woman, and Hampton’s sister, Tilly, and McKenzie the old ragamuffin that Zhang nearly kill that day years back and who turn out to be his best friend. McKenzie come in them same tartan socks him been wearing day in day out ever since I know him that him tell me is the tartan for the McKenzie clan in Scotland. Why a man like him should be proud of a thing like that I don’t know. You would think he would want to forget that he not even got no name apart from the one he get from the old slave master, not be parading it round on his feet every single day like that.

  When I get inside the church it look like Miss Cicely invite half of Kingston, all of them dress up like they attending some royal coronation. Miss Cicely herself got on a big bright yellow frock and a even bigger hat all decorate with feathers and whatnot. Afterwards, when we step through the front door into the noon-day sun, it seem like the other half of Kingston and the whole of Chinatown turn up as well to witness the spectacle. Or maybe they just come to see if it was really true. That a boy from Matthews Lane could marry a woman like Fay Wong.

  We drive up to Ocho Rios for a week because that is the place Gloria and her friends always talking ’bout. Finley tell me they open a new hotel up there called the Jamaica Inn and Marilyn Monroe and Henry Miller just done staying there. Maybe it true ’bout Marilyn Monroe, I dunno, and in truth it don’t mean nothing to me but I reckon if it good enough for any kinda movie star then it sound like the sort of place Fay will think is alright for a honeymoon.

  But the moment I clap eyes on the place, I fall in love with it. It got it own white sandy cove with the breeze coming off the sea, and banana trees, blushing jacaranda, coconut palms, bougainvillaea. It was like a piece of heaven right here on earth. Elegant, that is what it was. I almost couldn’t believe I was in the same country.

  But if I think it was the scenery that was captivating me I was wrong because the thing that I find myself staring at all week was Fay. And what I realise was that I go marry this woman but I didn’t know nothing about her. I seen her two or three times at the Chinese Athletic Club and I seen her back plenty of times as she leaving Lady Musgrave Road, but I didn’t know her. I hardly even talk to her. All I knew about Fay Wong was that she light-skin and her papa rich.

  But this week now I wasn’t doing nothing but sitting and watching. Watching how she take the napkin and dab the corner of her mouth, gentle like, before she drink from the glass. And how she look at the waiter direct and smile at him when he come to take her order. And how she touch him lightly on the arm just after he put down the plate in a way like it seem the whole of him melt under her fingertips. And how the maids dance round her picking up everything she put down, and fetching this and carrying that, and all the time asking her if there is anything else she want them to do for her, like there is nothing they wouldn’t do to please her just because they want to. And when she look at them and say thank you it as if they think she give them a gift that maybe they should be thanking her for.

  They flocking to her and it not just the help. When she go to breakfast or dinner, or pass the afternoon on the beach, there is people she is greeting. And she know them by name. She can ask them questions ’bout their day because she remember what they tell her the day before. She even know the names of the children back home in New York or Washington or Baltimore. She chat with them maybe two or three minutes and after she move on I look at them and see how they sorta sink deeper into their chair, like they can rest easy now because Fay recognise them.

  Then one morning this man is walking ’cross the veranda and outta all of the people sitting there it is Fay that he stop to talk to and ask if she is having a good time and if everything in the hotel is to her liking. It turn out Mr Charlie own the place and him and Fay sit down there some long time talking and laughing and ordering up rum punch.

  I sitting and watching from across the terrace because most of the time she keep her distance from me. But it don’t bother me none because what I see is something I have never ever seen before in my whole life. What I see is somebody who know they belong. She know it for sure. One hundred per cent. Fay not got, not even in the smallest corner of her mind, any doubt whatsoever ’bout her place in this world. She not got one question ’bout who she is or what people going make of her. She just take it for granted that they going love her and that she going take them in her stride, whoever they are.

  To me, that is rare. So I sit there all week and look at her knowing that I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it would feel like to be that certain.

  I look at her, this wife of mine, and I look out across the veranda at the white sand and the croquet lawn, and the shrimp plant and red ginger filling up the flower bed, and I think to myself, you sure come a long way, bwoy.

  3

  Command

  I was just a boy when I come to Jamaica. It was 1938 and all sorts of mayhem was going on with strikes and disturbances because the workers wanted better wages and conditions. It didn’t seem too bad to me. I just come from Guangzhou where the Japanese was raising hell trying to take over the place.

  First time I see Kingston I couldn’t believe what a mess it was. Piles of wood and corrugated zinc just like it heap up in every direction, all brown and grey and zinc-sheet flat. Not like China with the yellow and the red, and the sloping roofs that peak to heaven. No, the only bit of colour I could see was this blue mountain way off yonder.

  Kingston look like the worst kind of shanty town I ever did see. But then I never see anything from the top deck of a cargo ship before, so most likely Guangzhou look just the same. I didn’t know. When I left there all I saw was the Japanese lighting up the night.

  The wharf look like it a sea of black ants heaving and humping and sweating. They got crates pile up this way and that, and a big zinc shed that they must burn up inside on a hot day, and a little concrete building stand next to it.

  And that is when I see the two of them standing on the dock. The little Round One look excited and waving his arm in the air, but the other one don’t look too interested. That is the one I think I recognise from the way Ma describe him to me, tall and straight, proud and strong. I think this is Zhang, Zhang Xiuquan, my father’s best friend from China. My older brother name after him, Yang Xiuquan. Zhang is the one that send passage for us after my father get murdered by British and French soldiers at Shaji. But what with the war and everything it take a long time for us to get here.

  When we get inside the little concrete building Round One is there arguing with a white man in a uniform. The white man sitting at the desk and Round One is standing next to him nodding his head, ‘Yes, yes.’ White man shaking his head, ‘No, no.’ Then Round One go away and come back a bit later with a brown envelope and put it on the desk. Him sort of pat it with his hand and step back. White man pick up the envelope and look inside it. Then him put the envelope in his pocket and wave his hand to tell us to come forward.

  When him ask my name I tell him Yang Pao, but he have me tell him again two more times and then him write on a piece of light brown paper and thump down heavy o
n it with a big red rubber stamp. Him hold out the paper to me and I take it. I was going to bow and say, ‘ Xièxie , thank you ’, but him don’t look at me, him just keep on looking down at his little desk. Later on I find out that the paper say my name is Philip Young.

  Outside on the dock we get introduced. There is me, Ma and Xiuquan just come off the boat; and Zhang and Round One who come to meet us. Round One turn out to be called Mr Chin. He is the chairman of the Kingston Chinatown Committee. He is Zhang’s employer.

  When Zhang and Ma come face to face they just stand there and look. I was thinking they would say something after not seeing each other for such a long time, but Zhang just bow his head and Ma bow as well. Zhang look just like Ma say but older than I had him fix in my mind. He even starting to get grey on his head.

  Mr Chin got a buggy waiting for him. It got one horse and two big wheels and a black canvas canopy to keep the sun off. He tell Ma she must come ride with him, but is only two people can fit in the buggy so then he say to Zhang that maybe they should have bring another one. But Zhang say no, boys can walk. And Mr Chin say OK because Matthews Lane not too far, turn left and right and straight up. Then Mr Chin call over a barefoot boy with a pushcart and Zhang put the bags on it.

  All the time we walking my legs wobbly from so long at sea. And then I realise I must be some kind of curiosity because every corner and doorway got people hanging there just to look at us. Plus, little pushcart boy cannot take his eyes off me. I try not look at him, but every now and again I let my eyes wander to see if him still staring at me, and sure enough him looking straight back, even though every time I catch him he lower his eyes or look away to pretend him not watching me. The thing I notice ’bout pushcart boy is how dark his skin is. And how his hair tight on his head, and how his eyes round. And how he don’t look nothing like me.