The Year of Finding Memory

by Judy Fong Bates

  The sky was thinly streaked with clouds, and the light was still warm and soft—on the cusp of darkness. We stood for another few minutes, then started to retrace our footsteps. By the time we got back to the van, I could see the moon, like a giant orange itself, glowing against a darkening sky. It seemed so close I felt I could reach up and pluck it.

  One of my strongest childhood memories is of my mother sleeping. Whenever there was a break from work, she chose to lie down. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized the obvious: she was depressed. My relatives in China saw my parents almost as mythic characters. I so wished I could share their point of view, but to me they were testaments to self-denial and endurance. Other families produced heroes who performed fantastic feats, prevailing against all odds. With my parents there were no fantastic feats. With them it was never what they gave me; it was what they gave up. I could not brag about lessons, tuition for camp, an airline ticket or help with a down payment for a home. When I try to describe their gifts, words fail me.

  The story of my family is filled with ghosts, their presence resonating from beyond the grave. In the course of a year, their whispers have turned my doubt and arrogance into a richer sort of knowing, and I have watched my parents grow into fully fleshed human beings. At the same time they have also turned into strangers. The more I find out about them, the further they are removed from the people who eked out a living in a small-town hand laundry. I cannot connect this charming, much-admired and respected woman to my sharp-tongued mother, consumed by bitterness. I cannot connect this confident man with high standing in his community to the diminished man whom I knew as my father, to the man who ended his life at the end of a rope. My parents were unhappy exiles in the Gold Mountain, shadows of their former selves. I am left aching to know the man and the woman who knew each other before I was born. Whatever truth I now hold feels insignificant and false.

  TWENTY-TWO

  My sister Jook lived with her son Liang and his family in the village of Ong Sun, where Su also had her herbal pharmacy. The morning after our trip to Ai Sah and Yellow Olive, we met Kim at the Kaiping bus station and boarded the 10 a.m. bus to Ong Sun for a last visit with my sister. We would also see Liang and his farm, which was on the outskirts of the village. In another few days, we’d be leaving for Shanghai.

  As we headed out of town, the bus stopped every few blocks to let on other riders, each paying with a handful of soiled-looking bills. But before arriving at Ong Sun, Kim wanted to stop and show us her husband’s ancestral village, which was on the same road. As it turned out, it was only a few hundred yards from Ning Kai Lee. This made sense. Kim’s married name was Fong, and the cluster of villages in this area was all inhabited by Fongs. The village resembled my father’s, but it was in much worse shape. At one time it had been home to forty households with a population of about two hundred people. Now, only four households with about twenty people still lived there. Kim led us to her husband’s ancestral house and unlocked the door. The air was stale, and I could smell the dampness in the bricks. Black mildew was growing on some of the surfaces. It had not been occupied for almost fifteen years. In one room I saw sheets of paper glued to the wall. It was hard to tell what was on them because they were discoloured and wrinkled with moisture. But on closer inspection, I could see that the pictures were of glamorous young women dressed in fashionable clothes, pictures of Chinese movie and singing stars, clipped from magazines. Kim smiled and told me that her daughter, who now lived in Ottawa, had pasted them there when she was a teenager.

  Several weeks before coming to China, Michael and I had driven to Ottawa and met Kim’s daughter for the first time. While we were there, Michael took dozens of pictures of her, her husband, her baby and their new, suburban house. When I gave these photos to Kim, there was pleasure and longing on her face, and she poured out questions about her daughter and grandchild. I felt both pleased and guilty. It was unfair that she was unable to visit her daughter and granddaughter while I had the resources to hop on a plane to China for a holiday. I looked at the posters of those women in typical movie star poses, hair coiffed and smiles perfect, eyes flirting with the camera. Kim’s daughter, in some ways, had been like her great-grandfather, my father—fantasizing about the Gold Mountain.

  A few days before, Kim and I had sat together in the garden across the road from the Ever Joint Hotel. We’d been shopping in downtown Kaiping and decided to rest for a while before I returned to my room. She told me once again that she and her husband wanted to emigrate and join their daughter overseas. Her daughter was in the process of sponsoring them, and they hoped to go in another two years. She was worried, though, about passing the interview with the immigration officers. She had heard rumours about a trained cook who’d given the wrong answer for preparing a fish and was subsequently refused entry. I said this was unlikely, since Canada had a point system and that if the applicant was refused, it was most likely because he didn’t have a high enough score. Kim nodded politely. I could tell she doubted my response.

  As my niece spoke about her desire to live overseas, I thought about my mother and how she never adjusted to her new country. She’d arrived in her early forties, and if Kim were to immigrate she would be doing so in her sixties. The last time my niece spoke to me about her desire to emigrate, I’d kept my opinion to myself. But now I wanted to tell her that although she’d be living with her daughter in a comfortable house in the suburbs, homes in Canada were not like homes in southern China—friendly to the outdoors, welcoming to friends dropping by. I wanted to tell her that she’d have to depend on others for transportation, that she’d be far away from Chinatown, that she wouldn’t be able to talk to friends on her cell phone, that she wouldn’t be able to haggle in the markets, that she would no longer harvest fresh ginger from her brother’s farm or help at her sister’s tidy herbal pharmacy. I wanted to warn her that winters in Ottawa were cold beyond her comprehension. I knew how much Kim missed her daughter and longed to see her granddaughter, and I suppose she also longed for what she saw as my wealth and comfortable lifestyle. But Canada was my home, and English was my language.

  Kim was my niece, but our friendship was new and I did not know her well. There was so much I wanted to tell her. But, it was not my place. I told her to think carefully before she left her rich, independent life in China.

  By the time we got back on the bus and arrived at the Ong Sun station, it was early afternoon. I had barely stepped onto the street when a motorcycle taxi, trying to hustle customers, came so close he almost ran me over. Jook had been standing nearby with her neck craned, watching for us to disembark. She rushed over and scolded the taxi driver.

  It was market day, and on the way to my nephew’s home, Jook led us past a variety of outdoor stalls, selling everything from live chickens to “Jackie Chan” condoms. As usual, people would stop whatever they were doing to gawk at us.

  Two teenaged school girls started to follow us, visibly curious about Michael. When we stopped in front of a fruit stall, Michael smiled at them and said, “Hello.” This friendly gesture encouraged the girls to finally approach us. They spoke to Michael in their halting English and asked to have their picture taken with him. They gave their phone numbers to Kim, and we promised to mail her copies of the photo once we arrived home. By this time a small crowd had gathered around us. My sister was chuckling and announced to the onlookers that I was her moi, her little sister, and that my husband and I had returned from the Gold Mountain.

  My sister linked her arm through mine, and we continued our happy stroll through the market. Jook smiled and waved at her friends. She had lived in Ong Sun for almost sixty years and knew most of the villagers. She wanted everyone to know that I had come halfway around the world to visit her.

  We walked past a table display of seeds in paper envelopes with pictures of bok choy, gai lan, bitter melon, fuzzy melon and winter melon, all vegetables my father had grown in his garden. The vendor smiled at us and tried to convince us to
buy, but we could buy seeds like these at home. Then, just as we were about to leave, my husband saw a package of dow mew, seeds for green pea shoots. We had routinely eaten these shoots in Chinatown restaurants, but Michael had been unable to find seeds to grow them himself. He picked up the package and started to turn it over, even though he couldn’t read the Chinese script. The vendor told us they were a superior variety. As soon as he gave us a price, my sister reminded him that she lived in the village and that she would not let him overcharge her brother-in-law just because he was from the Gold Mountain. The man laughed and offered a lower price. My sister nodded begrudging approval. I was sure we could find the seeds at a Chinese nursery back home, but they often sold their goods in packages without pictures, and I couldn’t read the Chinese characters. Besides, my spoken Cantonese was inadequate. I chuckled to myself as Michael paid the vendor. We had our seeds, even though we’d come all the way to China to find them.

  After a short stop at Su’s herbal pharmacy, we walked to Liang’s house, which is completely open to the street. The edge of his living room borders the sidewalk, and people can step in and out of his house without going through a door. Instead, a roll-up gate, much like a garage door, closes the house at night. While we sat drinking tea, a boy who was probably ten or eleven walked into the room. He stood for a few moments and stared at me and Michael. When I asked my nephew who the boy was, he answered that he didn’t know. You don’t know? I thought to myself. Who did this child think he was, walking into somebody’s house without being invited? I remember once being told that there is no word in Chinese for privacy. Privacy as I know it seems to be a Western concept. The boy remained for several minutes while my relatives carried on with their conversation and after a few more minutes he left.

  Houses in Canada seal off the elements, but they also seal in their inhabitants. After living in homes where the line between outdoor and indoor was nearly imperceptible, had my parents found that those northern houses added to their isolation?

  My nephew Liang works his land with a vehicle called a gow-gung char, which translates into “dog-work cart,” a small tractor with handlebars instead of a steering wheel. He told us to get into the wagon hitched to the back and drove us along a dirt road so rough that if I hadn’t hung onto the edge of the wagon, I would have fallen out. Once we arrived at his fields, we got out and walked along dirt paths and over narrow bridges, past fish ponds and a reforested area alive with butterflies. We crossed a high cement bridge over a stream and saw a derelict stone mill, a mill pond and a dam far below. Farther down the stream, two men were fishing. One was using a long, bamboo rod to propel a raft made from a large slab of Styrofoam, while the man at the front held a long, wooden pole attached to a metal rod wired to a large battery. His other hand gripped the handle of a small net. As he put the metal rod in the water, he activated an electrical current, making a musical whirr. Stunned fish would float to the surface, and he would scoop them up with the net. Michael and I watched this ingenious process for several minutes. I then remembered that on our walk up the mountain in Ai Sah, we had run across a toad catcher who was using an electrical rod in the same way. Once again, our fascination with such commonplace things amused my relatives.

  Liang pointed out which of the fields around us belonged to him; they were close to each other, but not all adjacent. I marvelled that his farm is productive twelve months of the year. He grows rice, sugar cane, bananas, lychees and garden vegetables and raises pigs, chickens, ducks and fish. The fertility of the Pearl Delta never ceased to amaze me.

  After our tour Michael and I spent the afternoon sitting under a lychee tree, eating bananas that Kim and Liang’s wife had harvested earlier that afternoon. I pointed to some mountains in the distance and was told that they were named for their shapes: Cow Mountain, Horse Mountain and Goose Mountain. When it was time for dinner, my nephew and his neighbour each held an end of a long fishnet, and by pulling it through his pond caught two large fish. Liang’s wife picked vegetables and dug up some ginger root, and Kim caught a duck. Holding the duck with both wings behind its back, she bent back its neck so its wings and head could be gripped in one hand. With her feet apart and her knees slightly bent, my niece looked like a performer in a martial arts movie. She took up a cleaver in her other hand and in one swift, fluid motion, she slit the bird’s throat. Kim then held the duck upside down as the blood dripped slowly onto the ground.

  Every Saturday while I was growing up in Acton, a farmer delivered a chicken inside a brown burlap bag. My father then kept the unsuspecting fowl inside the drying room behind the kitchen for the night. On Sunday he would catch it, slit its throat and hold it over a bowl to collect the dripping blood, which my mother would later steam into a pudding. He had figured out that this should not be done in our backyard, where the neighbours would witness what they might consider to be a primitive slaughter. One weekend my father ordered two chickens, and when they’d both been plucked and cleaned, he wrapped one of them in brown laundry paper and told me to take it to a neighbour who had been especially kind to us. I did as instructed in spite of being deeply embarrassed by what I thought was a most inappropriate gift. A few days later, when I saw our neighbour in a store on the main street of Acton, I tried to sneak past her. But she saw me and told me that my father’s chicken was the best she’d ever had. I wanted to get away as fast as I could, but she insisted on talking and made me promise to thank my father for her.

  The table was spread with food from my nephew’s farm. Kim had steamed the duck with hoisin sauce and slices of muk see, the yam-like root. Liang’s wife had fried the fish whole, so the skin was brown and crispy, then smothered it with garlic and ginger. Early in the afternoon, Su had started making a medicinal soup of berries and roots simmered in chicken broth. “We don’t have much money,” my nephew said, “but we always have lots to eat.”

  With a broad grin across her face, his wife added, “Today we have lots of money. We sold two hundred yuans’ worth of bananas at the market!”

  Partway through dinner, Liang invited us to spend the night at his house. He had extra beds. I was touched by his hospitality but ended up declining, saying that we’d already paid for the hotel room. But that was not the only reason. Earlier in the afternoon, I’d been in their bathroom, where I’d seen the wooden tub and ladle. Even though I’d camped and canoed in the Canadian outdoors, I could not face using the washing facilities in that home. I felt terrible turning down my nephew’s offer because my reaction was so irrational. But that basin and ladle reminded me too much of bathing in my father’s laundry, crouching inside a wooden laundry tub next to an enamel basin of warm water, rinsing the soap off my skinny, shivering body with a wet cloth.

  Later, Liang’s wife brought out a photo album of her daughter’s wedding. My sister told me to sit beside her on the wooden sofa. They were eager for Michael and me to see pictures of this auspicious family occasion. The album was full of studio photographs of the bride and groom in wedding clothes and in fairytale-like ball gowns and tuxedos, all taken against a backdrop of painted formal gardens. This wedding in rural Kaiping wasn’t all that different from what I knew in Canada: a single day of living out a fantasy. But what struck me were the group photos. Everyone, even the parents of the couple being married, was dressed in everyday clothes. Kim was actually now wearing what she’d had on that day. It suddenly occurred to me that even though I’d been with Kim almost every day for the month we’d been in Kaiping, I’d seen her in only two different shirts. And here I was living out of a suitcase and still in a different outfit each day of the week.

  Liang’s wife closed the album and Jook said, “When I got married, I was only seventeen and I hadn’t even met my husband. On my wedding day, I wore a veil so thick I couldn’t see through it. At the end of the day, when it was lifted, I saw three men in the room and I didn’t even know which one I’d married!” Everyone giggled. My sister sighed and shook her head, “Tsk, how could I possibly know? We’d nev
er laid eyes on each other. Then somebody, probably my mother-in-law, led us both into a bedroom. We were both still children, didn’t know anything. We were so frightened. I spent the night on the bed, and he slept on the floor.” My sister sighed.

  “Of all my brothers and sisters, my life has been the worst. You can’t imagine how many tears I’ve shed. If only my mother hadn’t been so stubborn. If she’d allowed Father to marry your mother, she might have lived.”

  “You think she should have listened to the fortune teller?” I said.

  My sister shook her head. “You haven’t heard everything. You spent your life in the Gold Mountain. Lucky.” My sister paused. Just as Michael had said, in China there was no such thing as the end of a trail.

  “Mother had a terrible temper. After Father told her about the fortune teller saying he was fated to have two wives and that her life depended on a second wife coming into the family, she threw a tantrum. Father could not convince her to allow a second. In the end he gave in, but he shouldn’t have. Your mother was in the village for only two or three years, and then she left for Nanking to go to school. I think Mother was really relieved to see her go. Father went back to Canada in 1937. When he left I was only six years old, and when he came back, I was seventeen, and within a few months I was married. I barely knew him. But then I have no real memory of Mother. Father was gone for not even three years and she was dead. When I look back, as far as Mother was concerned, the fortune teller was wrong. Here it was years after the prediction and she was still alive. Her life didn’t depend on a second wife.”

  I’d heard this story already. How many more times would I have to listen to it before leaving China? I was about to say something but then decided against it. Jook was my older sister, and it would have been disrespectful of me to interrupt.