by Wayson Choy
Later that day, Father told me how—scientifically—it was only smoke. Overhearing this, Third Uncle said, with some reluctance, “Sometime smoke, Kiam-Kim, and sometime not.”
Next door, at the O’Connors’, there was nothing like a Kitchen God. But as I waited in their front hall for Jack to come out to play, I saw hanging askew a wood-framed picture of a white lady in a blue dress. In their tidy, uncluttered kitchen, Mrs. O’Connor made Jack and me hot dogs in the only pot that I could see, and Jack told me that the lady in the blue dress was the Blessed Virgin Mary. She had the Holy Baby Jesus in an old barn crowded with livestock. Mrs. O’Connor said it was all true, and crossed herself.
I told Poh-Poh and Stepmother about Blessed Mary and her having a baby right there in a cowshed. I told them about all the creatures surrounding Baby Jesus, all the chickens and ducks, the sheep, the cows and pigs, including, best of all, the three hairy men and their three camels. Poh-Poh thought a moment.
“Not too clean,” she said finally.
When I told some of the other Grade 3 white boys about Tsao Chung, they all laughed at me. Jon Wing, whose father’s store sold the images wholesale, said nothing. One of the Italian boys shoved me aside, but he said something that made sense to me. That afternoon in the kitchen, I repeated the boy’s words to the Old One.
“Poh-Poh, the Kitchen God—just a piece of paper!”
“Kiam-Kim, you be careful what you say. You clean up now,” she ordered. “Put out chopsticks and best dishes on kitchen table, all ready for later.”
I quickly scrubbed the empty colander. Then, wiping my hands, I jumped off the apple crate, climbed up on the chair, and lifted from the lower shelves two sizes of our best plates and bowls. Then I dipped into the lower drawer for the chopsticks. Everything clattered into three stacks bristling with serving spoons and eye-poking chopsticks.
“What’s that?” Poh-Poh asked.
Gentle knocking drifted from the front door, but I kept busy, carrying the dishes to the pine board that Father had put up as a serving shelf. I’m too busy, I thought, and gathered the spoons into one bowl; the chopsticks I plunked into a glass, just as Stepmother would have done.
The Old One had no time for my stubbornness. She tossed her flour-bag apron over the broken-backed chair by the doorway and shifted the stockpot away from the direct heat. Thick pork bones bobbed to the surface. Her lightning-quick eyes appraised bowls and plates of raw and semi-cooked ingredients, all placed in a certain order for the stir-frying. Finally, Poh-Poh reached over and wiped her hands on my apron. “Who answer your door, clever boy,” she said to me, “if no one marry you!”
I didn’t care.
She hurried out of the kitchen, her quilted jacket dancing on her shoulders. I looked past the Old One as she opened the door. Two tiny ladies bustled in to escape the fall dampness, Mrs. Pan Wong and Mrs. Hin Leong, their voices happily chirping above Grandmother’s humble greetings.
Grandmother shouted back at me, “Watch the soup pot!”
Minutes later, she scurried into the kitchen with a small bag of oranges and two wrapped parcels. There was a parcel of two cooked chicken breasts from Mrs. Wong, who always brought the same thing. Crunchy-skinned barbecued pork fell out of the second parcel onto a serving dish.
Poh-Poh stood at the loaded kitchen table and wiped her hands on the dish towel. Everything was in place. Except me.
“Sit,” Poh-Poh said to me, frogging the row of silk buttons on her jacket. “Read.”
I knew she meant the Chinese First Word books lying dead on the corner stool, just as Father had left them.
Turning her back on me, she lightly touched the greyish bun of her hair and adjusted a cloisonné barrette. I yanked off my flowery apron, threw it aside, and advanced towards the textbooks as if I were going to lift one up. Satisfied, the Old One ambled away. I ducked into the pantry.
There I sat on the cool linoleum floor under the glowing lightbulb. I pushed aside the family rice barrel and reached behind for the comic book that Stepmother had slipped me that morning.
“Don’t tell Poh-Poh,” she had said.
These China-made comics were stitch-bound booklets. Their sixteen pages depicted in vivid, detailed drawings how ancient Chinese warriors had fought the early Mongol invaders. There were five booklets in the series, each with running panels of detailed drawings and captions below in Chinese. Even if you could not read the Chinese, the drawings were so elaborate anyone could follow the story. Even Jack. We both traded our comics and read them. He said he read them on the floor in the parlour and in bed. Terry and the Pirates was the best. We sometimes read comics together in his house, but Poh-Poh never wanted me to let Jack into ours. Playing on our porch one summer day, he had asked Poh-Poh what smelled so rotten in our house. I translated. Poh-Poh had been making a herbal soup. The front door slammed shut in our faces.
“Mo li,” she told me later. “No manners.”
Mr. O’Connor said that the Chinese comics had more details in them but the writing was all “chop-chop” to him. Jack made a face and pretended he could read Chinese. I could make out only a word or two myself.
Jeung Sam was number three. Father had taught me about the Chinese heroes of the first two books, how each of the five warriors were like today’s soldiers fighting against the evil foreigners who were dividing up China. The dog-turd Japanese. The demon Russians. The big-nosed British. I was supposed to enjoy number three only after finishing my chores for Poh-Poh and after I made sure I read my Chinese-school homework.
“I promise,” I said to Stepmother, remembering how the Old One laughed at these comic heroes that Father thought were so important for me to discover.
“No one kung fu any more,” Poh-Poh said, pushing her fists into the air. “Spears! Swords! Useless! Today, one bomb kill everybody!” The war news from China had been terrible.
Poh-Poh reminded me that comic books were bad for young eyes.
Now I leaned against the wooden slats and flipped through the first few pages of the comic. Here were drawn the usual Chinese words on the huge banners of the fighting armies: North. East. Tiger … and the adventures began …
That bit of reading would be, I reasoned, my Chinese homework.
I studied the dramatic panels, the wave of arrows in the air, the swords dripping with blood, easily figuring out the good guys from the bad guys with their snarling dark faces and slit Mogul eyes. I found myself stage-whispering sounds to mimic the flying arrows and slashing swords, marvelled at the trickery of friend and foe, and cracked my knuckles as the enemy broke the legs of the captured hero. I gulped at his dying, and heard his challenge for others to come forward, not to save him but to “Come and save China!”—the same words Father wrote in his newspaper essays, the words he taught me to write out—the final cry of a victory in defeat.
“China never lose,” Father said. “Always be Chinese.”
I looked up and remembered where I was. In the yellowish light of the pantry I could hear rising voices, impatient voices.
From the parlour, Mrs. Pan Wong and Mrs. Sui Leong were talking anxiously with the Old One, all three waiting for their fourth partner. They were cracking red melon seeds and tsk-tsking over and over about how late, as usual, Mrs. Chong was.
When I had read twelve pages—another hero, this one a master of archery, now perched on a double-spread cliff ready to plunge into the raging river below—Poh-Poh’s firm voice rose above the other two.
“Well, this is more than Chinese time to be so late.”
I heard a bustle of rattling paper bags being opened. I imagined packets of candied plums, sugared ginger, dried prunes being exchanged. They were relaxing into serious talk, sitting back on the cushions, not waiting for Mrs. Chong. Mrs. Pan Wong started to speak, and Poh-Poh abruptly said, “Shh—the kitchen!”
Now there came whisperings. I listened closely, imagining three heads bowed towards each other. Huddling spies. I thought I heard my name pitched dramatically, K
iam-Kim … Kiam-Kim, but I couldn’t make out anything else. The murmuring intrigued me.
Grandmother, from where she sat in the parlour, could partly see the empty stool. She demanded I come out. Right now! I refused to answer. Abruptly, her tone sweetened. Perhaps she remembered her promise to Father to be patient with me.
“Come out, Kiam-Kim,” she said. “Come and join Mrs. Leong and Mrs. Wong for a visit. They want to see you.”
I slipped my comic back into its hiding place and stood up. As I walked towards them, Poh-Poh offhandedly mentioned that Grandson would be helping her cook each dish for the sui-yah, that Grandson had even helped her prepare the many ingredients.
“Such a smart boy already!” Mrs. Wong said. “Some lucky girl will catch him!”
Mrs. Leong said, “If only my eight-year-old could do a tenth as much!”
She was talking about her Winston, a fat boy with a thick head. He failed English Grade 2 and was taken out of Chinese school for throwing ink at some of the younger girls who laughed at his stuttering. Mrs. Leong bit her bottom lip. Mrs. Wong knitted her thinly drawn eyebrows.
It was inspection time. Glittering, appraising eyes took in everything. Poh-Poh reached out and tucked my shirt in. I felt I was going to be sold to one of the ladies, just as the bad children back in China were sold at the whim of an elder. The two ladies on the chesterfield broke into even broader smiles. Mrs. Wong pulled me closer to her. What a good grandson. How tall, how always considerate. Under the parlour lamp beside her, Mrs. Pan Wong’s gold tooth shone like fire. The Old One’s eyes registered enough, enough. She was more anxious to play mahjong, to get on with the business of the evening.
“Check on the chicken-melon soup,” Poh-Poh said. “Use the metal spoon carefully.”
I knew what she meant. Stand on the apple box. Lift the pot lid and peek in to see that the liquid was not bubbling over.
It wasn’t.
“I’m getting a new brother,” I said just to myself, and, to pass the time, banged on the side of the stock pot with the spoon and a chopstick. The banging did my talking for me: New! new! new! new! The pot lid tilted, the golden liquid hissed and bubbled over.
Poh-Poh stormed into the kitchen, her back hunched up beneath her quilted jacket, bent knuckles ready to land on my crown. “You study your school book and listen for the door.” With stinging precision, her knuckles landed. “Mrs. Chong come any minute now.”
She straightened the 100 per cent Canada Wheat apron hanging over the chair. As I rubbed my head, the flaps of the white apron wavered like two ghosts.
“Did you say something, Grandson?”
“Nothing,” I said, dropping the spoon and chopsticks.
“How clever,” the Old One said, “to say nothing.”
Giggling rippled from the front room.
When finally Mrs. Annah Chong arrived at our front door, she apologized, using her formal Cantonese to win back Poh-Poh’s good grace.
“Jan-haih mh-hoh yee-see la,” the tall woman said. “How thoughtless of me. Arriving so late. You must think I am so ungrateful.”
“Mh-hoh haak-hei,” Poh-Poh said, echoing Mrs. Chong’s formality. “Don’t stand on ceremony. Let my grandson take your lovely fur coat.”
As I stepped up to do so, Mrs. Chong slapped her purse into my hands and hurriedly unbuttoned her coat.
“Thank you, Kiam-Kim,” she continued in Cantonese. “You’re such a good boy, so smart looking, so tall! Grandmama must be feeding you her best cooking.”
I smiled, but knew I was not to say anything. Mrs. Chong swung her thin arms out to let her heavy coat slide away from her. The coat smelled faintly of mothballs; two beady-eyed foxes dangled from the collar into my nose. I grabbed one corner of the dark garment just before it hit the floor and was surprised to see Mrs. Chong’s daughter, Jenny, standing right behind the curtain of fur. The coat knocked the purse from my hand; Jenny was quick to catch the strap. Her eyes narrowed at me as if I were stupid or clumsy. Or both.
Tonight was for Poh-Poh’s ladies only, a chance to get away from the rest of their families, especially from their crowded households of live-in namesake cousins and roomers, and from children the likes of Jenny Chong and me.
Except I got stuck as kitchen help and doormat.
“Remember to help Poh-Poh greet the guests, Kiam-Kim,” Stepmother had said. “You be the man of the house tonight.”
When Mrs. Chong walked by and absent-mindedly patted my head, I remembered to be like Father. I stood taller. Girl children, like Jenny Chong, first-born or last-born, hardly mattered. I ignored her.
Jenny’s lips curled when I said my formal greetings to her mother. “Chong Sim, nei ho ma?” If she smiled, she might not have been so ugly.
Mrs. Chong gave her a stern look, her pencil-drawn eyebrows curving upward, her dialect slipping back to her Toishan village origins.
“Mo yung neuih upset her father! Useless girl! Three times this week!” Mrs. Chong dragged Jenny into our parlour, grabbed her thin shoulders, and shook her in front of everyone. “You behave! Dai-mo send you away!”
She called my grandmother Dai-mo, Great Mrs. or Great-aunt, because Poh-Poh, in her seventies, was the oldest of her crowd. Mrs. Chong brushed back a strand of her hair as if she were regaining control. She pushed Jenny down on our long sofa and glared at her.
“Stay here and die,” Mrs. Chong said, throwing some school books at her. She sighed and walked into the next room to join the mahjong group.
“Say neuih,” Mrs. Chong said, her arms opening up to her three friends for sympathy. “Dead girl, I have a dead girl for a daughter.”
Two stiff-necked foes were left behind in the parlour.
Jenny looked up at our Great Wall of China calendar. She sat rigidly in her bright red dress, a dress topped with a ruffled collar. When she turned back to glare at me, the ruffles shifted like a stupid clown’s collar.
I could see no interest or mystery in girls like Jenny. If I laughed, even smiled, she would have told Poh-Poh. Then I would be sent right up to bed without even a taste of the late-night supper. The two bowls of jook I had earlier would hardly keep me from hunger. I glared back.
Jenny Chong was almost eight, but skinny in the way most Chinese girls were, stretched too tall for her weight. Her braided pigtails were tightly pinned up and ribboned, and her nostrils visibly flared. She dared me to look away. I found it hard to keep my eyes focussed on her, so I glanced at the four women, who were babbling again. They were admiring Mrs. Chong’s embroidered silk cheongsam, as if her tardiness hadn’t mattered at all.
“I wear special dress for special party,” Mrs. Chong said.
Then there was that pause again, a sudden and important silence.
“Grandson,” Poh-Poh called out to me, “come and get the game table ready.”
I slowly walked away from Jenny to make it clear that she, a girl, wasn’t the one who made me leave the parlour.
“Grandson!”
I went to the hall cupboard and took out the game case.
Mrs. Chong smiled at the three ladies already sitting at the fold-away card table parked just a few feet from our round oak dining table. The tall woman stood as if she could barely move, still fuming over whatever had happened at home. She took out the lucky ashtray she always carried to these parties and parked it on her right side. It was a tiny thing, shaped like a flower. Poh-Poh handed me a coaster to put under it. Finally, Mrs. Annah Chong sat down.
“Just relax, Ann-nah,” Poh-Poh said, and pursed her lips to signal the other two ladies to remain silent. But they purred with curiosity.
“Annah, may I ask what your lovely daughter has done to upset you so?” Mrs. Pan Wong’s Sun Wui village dialect sounded delicate, more diplomatic than familiar.
Mrs. Leong caught Grandmother’s warning look, too, but ignored it. “What could such a beautiful daughter have done to her poor mother?”
“Oh, Leong Sim,” Mrs. Chong said, lighting up a Sweet Caporal, �
�you are too thoughtful.” She blew out the match. “Me? I suffer in silence. Please, let’s ignore my useless daughter.”
I liked the way Annah Chong would inhale so deeply that her cheeks formed indentations; when she exhaled, they ballooned out. A puff of smoke rose into the air.
The Kitchen God, I thought.
“Grandson,” Poh-Poh said, “we’re ready to play.”
I lifted the leather case of playing tiles onto the table and slipped out the tray with the counters, shook out the two dice and the four-wind disc. Mrs. Wong smiled at me.
“What a good boy,” she said. “So tall.”
The ladies began throwing dice to see who would start breaking up the tiles.
“You start, Sui Leong,” Poh-Poh commanded. “You East, Pan Wong, you sit across.”
I stepped out of the way.
The four ladies began shuffling and palming the ivory tiles, turning them face down, stacking the pieces into two-tier walls. Their gold and jade bracelets tinkled like bells.
I sat at Father’s small oak desk, facing the gaming table, and turned my attention to my Meccano set, hardly looking up at anyone. I was building a Ferris wheel, like the one shown on the battered box that Third Uncle had bought me from the Strathcona School bazaar.
“It’s an Advanced project,” Father told me, “recommended for big boys, twelve and up.”
“I can do it,” I said.
“There’s some pieces missing,” Third Uncle had told me. “You do your best, Kiam.”
“Very smart Grandson,” Poh-Poh said, out of the blue.
With a quick flip of her forefinger, Mrs. Chong discarded a tile. She and Poh-Poh smiled across the table at each other.
Between one of the mahjong rounds, while the tiles were being shuffled, Mrs. Chong finally broke down. A cloud of cigarette smoke streamed into the air.
“My heart is too heavy,” she began. “I must tell you, dear friends.”
“Tell, tell!” Mrs. Wong said. “You know we all care for your happiness.”
“Yes, yes,” Mrs. Leong said. “If the women of Chinatown don’t care for each other, who will?”