by Ling Zhang
Yiu Kei was left standing there feeling a bit foolish.
He had never in his life transplanted rice seedlings or harvested the rice crop, gone rowing or tickled fish in the river. His face had never been burned dark by the sun or beaten by rainstorms, so he was pale by comparison with the village children. He loathed it when anyone called him “sissy whitey.” Once he asked his granny: “How can I not be white-faced?” His grandmother laughed until she shook. “It’s not so difficult,” she told him. “You’d just have to roll around in No-Name River and tickle fish for couple of days. Then you wouldn’t be a ‘sissy whitey’ any more. It takes much longer for dark-skinned people to cosset their skin back to fairness, several generations sometimes.”
But Yiu Kei was not taken in by her words. He really wanted to be like the village children, barefoot and dark-skinned, turning somersaults along the dikes, diving into the water and staying under for minutes on end, then crawling out naked and calling other children names like “Sissy whitey!”
The sun was climbing higher and Wai Kwok began to feel scared. “Let’s go back, Yiu Kei. We’ll get into trouble with Granny.” “It’s not time yet. I’ll take you to tickle fish,” his cousin said. “Can you really tickle fish, Yiu Kei?” Yiu Kei scoffed: “Of course, any idiot can do it.” They took off their shoes and walked down to the water’s edge.
This early in the day, there was not a soul at the river. The sun had not yet taken the chill off the water and no swimmers would come till midday. It was so quiet they could hear the fish gulping air. Swollen by the rains, the river reached halfway up the steps. Yiu Kei felt a tug at his hand.
“Let’s go home Yiu Kei,” said Wai Kwok shakily.
“No,” said Yiu Kei, although his voice shook a little too.
Yiu Kei wanted to go back. His “no” was just bravado. But before they could leave, a breeze blew up and the waters nodded, and suddenly came alive. Gently tickling the soles of Yiu Kei’s feet, they whispered to him: “Come in, little boy, why don’t you?”
Yiu Kei could not resist such a supplication. He let go of Wai Kwok’s hand and went down the steps.
An hour later, Yiu Kei’s body was returned to the Fongs’ diulau. The family and servants watched as men from the village carried in a bundle caked with sludge. They laid it down on the ground and dirty water pooled around it.
Six Fingers picked up Yiu Kei in her arms and held him on her knee. She pressed her face to his, but did not cry.
Ah-Hsien wailed and ran forward to take her son from Six Fingers. Six Fingers wrenched the hairpin from her bun, and jabbed it into Ah-Hsien’s face. “Why don’t you just go back to sleep and never wake up,” she said fiercely.
Ah-Hsien fell to the ground, holding her head in her hands and whimpering like a whipped dog. Mak Dau called some of the men and with some difficulty they carried her into the house.
Six Fingers fetched a basin of water and began to wipe Yiu Kei down. She made a little roll of a corner of the towel and cleaned his seven orifices and under his fingernails with the greatest care. Again and again, she changed the water in the basin until gradually it ran clear. But she could not clean Yiu Kei’s face. It was as if the silt had seeped under the skin, giving it a dark, purplish colouring.
Six Fingers washed and washed him.
Mak Dau tried to console her. “Ah-Hsien’s still young enough to give you a houseful of grandchildren. But you mustn’t leave this child lying here naked. Dress him now, before he gets stiff.”
Mak Dau reached for the towel in her hand. Six Fingers resisted, then finally relinquished it. Mak Dau helped her over to a tree where she could sit in the shade.
“Don’t stand there like a doorpost! Get him a change of clothes, will you?” Mak Dau shouted at his wife.
Ah-Yuet brought out Yiu Kei’s school uniform, dark blue with a khaki collar. He had grown so much this year, he was bursting out of his clothes and Six Fingers had asked Mr. Au, the village tailor, to make him a new uniform. It was brand new; it had never been worn.
Mak Dau and Ah-Yuet dressed Yiu Kei. Six Fingers’ ministrations had made his skin as fragile as a cicada’s wing and, as Ah-Yuet did up his buttons, she scratched Yiu Kei on the face with her fingernail. A trickle of blood oozed down his right cheek. “Stupid cow!” Mak Dau shouted at her. Kicking her out of the way, he finished dressing Yiu Kei himself. The uniform had not been washed and was slightly too long. Mak Dau rolled the sleeve and trouser cuffs up and combed the boy’s wet hair into a middle parting. His face still had a purplish hue. He looked just like a farm boy who had spent his life outside in all weather.
It was then that Six Fingers began to weep as if her heart would break.
Years thirty to year thirty-one of the Republic (1941–1942)
Vancouver, British Columbia, and Red Deer, Alberta
As soon as Yin Ling got home from school she sensed something was different.
Her grandfather’s scratchy old gramophone was on as usual, but instead of the Cantonese opera that he liked so much, he was playing a record of Guangdong folk tunes he had bought at a Fundraising for Victory meeting. Dinner was ready and the table was set. The food was freshly made, not the usual leftovers from the restaurant. Yin Ling’s eyes widened when she saw the dish of tiger prawns with ginger and scallions. That was a rare treat that Yin Ling tasted only once a year. A soup was bubbling away in the saucepan. Yin Ling lifted the lid. Inside was a rich duck and bean curd broth. Her mother had the day off today, but even so, she would not normally spend it making fancy food like this. Her mother worked six days a week and could not be bothered with housework on her free day.
“There’s a letter from your uncle,” said her grandfather, handing over an envelope covered in stamps.
Her uncle Kam Ho had joined the army at the end of last year. At the time, the government of British Columbia would not allow foreign nationals to join up, so Kam Ho went to Manitoba. Although he had been gone for several months, this was the first letter they had received from him. Kam Shan had a foreboding about the whole business and had not dared to mention his brother to his father. But now, to their surprise, a letter had arrived.
Yin Ling opened the envelope, but before she had time to read the letter, her grandfather snatched it out of her hand. “You’ve hardly studied any Chinese. How d’you think you’re going to understand your uncle’s scribbles? Let me read it to you.”
He opened the letter, put on his reading glasses and recited the words slowly. He must have learned it off by heart, because as soon as he finished one sentence he carried on without looking at the paper.
Dear Father and all the family,
I have been with the troops in France for nearly six months, and we are constantly on the move. Our operations are secret so we have not been allowed to write home, but today I am in Paris on a mission so I am able to send you this letter. Please rest assured that I am well and in good spirits. Being in France has shown me the sufferings of ordinary people under the German occupation and makes me think of the sufferings of our family in China. I wish I could be back there, fighting the Japanese devils. They say that Hong Kong has been invaded and that no letters are getting through. I do not know how my mother and Kam Sau are managing. Since I joined up, the whole burden of supporting our family has fallen on my sister-in-law, which I feel very guilty about. I do hope my brother will make allowances for her and that you will only be good to each other.
Yin Ling glanced at her mother, who was standing with her back to them, stirring the soup. She saw her shoulders twitch, and guessed that she was crying—this was the first time ever that Kam Ho had called her his “sister-in-law.”
I hope my brother and sister-in-law are well. My good little niece graduates from high school this year, don’t you? Are you planning on going to university? Your father and I were very young when we came to Gold Mountain, but circumstances did not allow us to go to school there. Yin Ling, you are the third generation of Fongs in Gold Mountain, and I do hope tha
t you will go to university so the family can get ahead in life. After I send this letter, I have to go to a small town in the south of France. Again we will be on the move and I do not know when I will be able to write again. But do not worry about me, I will take good care of myself.
Most humbly, your son Kam Ho,
The tenth day of the fourth month of year thirty of the Republic, Paris, France
Kam Shan rapped Yin Ling’s bowl with his chopsticks. “Did you hear what your uncle said? You study hard and get into university, then you’ll understand everything and the yeung fan won’t be able to do the dirty on us ever again!”
Her mother turned around. “Huh! What does it matter what she studies? She still has to get married and have babies. It’s much more important for her to get a job and earn her living so I don’t have to carry on slogging away till I die!”
Her father grimaced and began to mutter something about “a woman’s ideas.…” but then bit back the words, clearly trying to keep his temper under control.
Dinner passed peacefully. For the first time ever, her mother drank a glass of rice wine with her father and grandfather. When she finished the wine, she had a coughing fit. The coughs got more and more violent until she made a dash for the sink and spewed everything up. Her mother had been vomiting a lot recently, Yin Ling noticed. Her father pulled a towel down from the clothesline and gave it to her to wipe her mouth. “If you can’t hold your liquor, then don’t drink,” he said. “No one’s holding a gun to your head.” Yin Ling noticed that he was speaking to her mother unusually gently today.
When Yin Ling had finished her dinner, she got up to go to her room, but her mother shouted at her.
“Can’t you wash the dishes when someone’s got the meal ready for you? A big girl of eighteen like you, can’t you do anything but hang around boys? Such a lazybones! When I was eight years old I was getting the dinner for the whole family.…”
Her mother’s words buzzed in Yin Ling’s ears like a persistent fly.
Yin Ling started to count. One, two, three, four. If her mother did not shut up by the time she reached ten, she would smash the plate in her hand to smithereens. But by the time she reached eight, her mother had gone to her room.
Her father and grandfather lit their cigarettes and the room filled with acrid, foul-smelling smoke.
She could hear her mother’s dry coughs, which sounded as if they might turn into another bout of vomiting. Suddenly the sounds stopped. Cat Eyes came out of her room, dressed up and carrying her purse.
“Are you going out in this rain?” asked Yin Ling’s father, scowling.
The only answer he got was a grunt. As Cat Eyes sat on a stool to put her shoes on, Kam Shan’s face was dark with rage.
“You won’t rest until you lose every last cent, is that it?” he shouted, thumping the table so hard with his fist that the tea mugs jumped and dark liquid trickled down from their lids.
“You can smoke and drink to your heart’s content, but you won’t let me play a few games of mahjong!” Cat Eyes retorted, and left the house without looking back.
There was a long silence in the room.
“It’s not proper for a woman to go out to work to support the whole family,” her grandfather finally said.
Ah-Fat had shut his café a couple of years ago. While it was open, at least he had a bit of pocket money, enough to keep him in cigarettes. After he shut it, he could not even afford a cheap ticket to the opera on Canton Street.
“Kam Shan, your studio business is going from bad to worse. No one wants photos of themselves in wartime. And if they do, they go to the big studios. Why don’t you go and get yourself a job, one where you can sit down, just for a few hours each day? Wouldn’t that be better than nothing?”
Kam Shan shook his head. “It’s not as if I haven’t looked. The only places hiring are munitions factories. You have to be on your feet from morning till night. I can’t do that.”
“Or we can go and buy some beans, sprout them and sell the bean sprouts in yeung fan shops, how about that?” his father tried again. “You don’t need much cash to start a business like that, and what we don’t sell we can eat at home. Ah-Tong, who lives at the end of the street, does it, and he seems to be making a bit of money.
“Not such a bad idea. When the sprouts are ready, Yin Ling can help us sell them after school. Her English is good, the yeung fan understand her.”
Silence fell again.
“I’ve had rotten luck to end up getting old like this,” Ah-Fat said with a sigh. “Just think of that farm I had in New Westminster, and how envious it made the yeung fan. I don’t know how your mother’s managing at home now.
“At least in the village, they’ve got land to sell. That must have kept them going these last couple of years,” he went on. “Not like us. We just have to keep tightening our belts. That paycheque just won’t stretch any further.”
Yin Ling put the last plate in the dish rack, took off her apron and ran up to her room. She shut the door and bolted it, and then blew a long, loud raspberry. This house was like a sardine tin, and she was one small fish squeezed into the crowded, suffocating darkness. The thought of carrying a basket of sopping-wet bean sprouts through the vegetable market with cries of “If ten cents is too much, eight cents will do!” made her break out in a cold sweat.
Downstairs, her grandfather heaved one sigh after another. Then there was the tinkling of boiling water—her father was replenishing her grandfather’s mug of tea.
“Even a dog wouldn’t go out on a night like this, but she won’t stay home,” Yin Ling heard her father say angrily.
She knew her father was referring to her mother. Every Monday, come rain or shine, when her mother got the day off from the restaurant, she went out with her girlfriends for a few sessions of mahjong.
“Kam Shan, don’t keep scolding her all the time,” her grandfather said. “You know, the baby in her belly might be a boy. Maybe it’s the Buddha making sure my family line will carry on after all.” There was a hint of happiness in his voice.
Yin Ling was thunderstruck. It was a few moments before she could pull herself together.
Her mother, a woman old enough to be a grandmother, was pregnant.
The tiny house they shared would soon have to accommodate another. And she knew her share would not be equal to everyone else’s. If the baby in her mother’s belly was a boy, he would take up half the house. They’d have to split the other half between them and not into four equal parts either. Hers would be the smallest. She was not much good at math, but this calculation was not hard to figure out.
Why didn’t she just die?
Yin Ling made a fist of one hand and beat her chest. She felt the card she had hidden in her breast pocket. It was her exam results for the term. She had kept it tucked into her pocket for two days and it was beginning to smell sweaty.
English 62
Mathematics 58
Science 47
History 55
Social Studies 62
P. E. 78
The principal, Mrs. Sullivan, had called her into the office and personally given the marks to her.
“We must fix a time to have a meeting with your mother and father, and discuss retaking your courses and study plan,” Mrs. Sullivan said. She was a washed-out-looking woman, so pale that bluish veins showed faintly through the skin on her neck and forehead. The veins wriggled like worms as she went on “…if you want to graduate this year.”
Her mother and father? A man with a lame leg, teeth yellowed from smoking, speaking pidgin English? A woman reeking of cooking oil and smoke? No way was she going to have those two marching into Mrs.Sullivan’s office under everyone’s gaze.
“Did you see Yin Ling’s Chink Chinaman mum and dad!”
“Look at them! Do they really let men that old make their wives pregnant?”
The snide comments jumped around in her head like tenacious fleas that refused to be slapped away.
She wished the ground would open up in front of her and swallow her. That way, she would not have to listen to her mother grumbling and her father and grandfather sighing ever again. Nor would she have to see the blue veins jumping on Mrs. Sullivan’s neck, or face the nightmare of selling baskets of bean sprouts in the market.
Johnny.
The name suddenly popped up from the recesses of Yin Ling’s mind.
To her surprise, Miss Watson had paired her up with Johnny for the tango classes. Johnny seemed not to notice that her sleeve cuffs were shiny from wear, and she did not faint in the crook of his arm. After the tango classes were over, they continued to talk to each other. Yin Ling discovered that Johnny’s father was a drunk who was hardly ever at home. As the middle child of three, Johnny always felt left out. By the time his mother tried to take him in hand, it was too late. During the second half of grade ten, Johnny dropped out of school. He joined a band called The Bad Boys with some other kids in a higher grade and went with them to Montreal.
After Johnny left school, quite a few lovelorn girls wrote to him, Yin Ling among them. As time went by, however, they found new boys to focus their attentions on and memories of Johnny faded. Only Yin Ling kept writing. Johnny answered sporadically.
He stayed only three months in Montreal because people there spoke French and no one listened to English songs. The band followed the St. Lawrence River west, stopping for gigs in small towns. In Thunder Bay, Johnny fell out with the others and struck out for the Prairies. In the last letter, he said he had left the Prairies and had come back West. He was in the Rocky Mountains, in a town called Red Deer in Alberta, where he was singing in a tavern.