All That Matters

by Wayson Choy

  “Well …,” Mrs. Chong began, putting down her Sweet Caporal, “my worthless daughter threw a book at her father.”

  “Poor Ben Chong!” Mrs. Leong leaned over to hear more.

  Mrs. Wong shook her head in disbelief. “Attack her father!”

  Jenny’s mother gravely bowed her head. “That’s why, Dai-mo, I thought it best I bring this useless girl with me.”

  “No worry, Annah,” Poh-Poh said. “She really is good girl. Has tiger spirit.”

  “Tiger, yes, but good,” Mrs. Wong said, and her pudgy hand reached out to touch Mrs. Chong’s sloped shoulder. “Your daughter is plenty smart. How could she—?”

  “Let her rot by herself,” Mrs. Chong said. “Say neuih! Mo yung neuih! Dead girl! Useless girl!” She lit up another cigarette.

  Mrs. Leong and Mrs. Wong clucked their tongues at this news of a mere girl daring to throw anything at anyone, let alone a book at her father. One of Ben Chong’s many jobs, aside from working in his own corner store, was keeping sets of accounts for Chinatown’s smaller, and more and more often failing, businesses. In their upstairs office, where I had visited a few times with Father, big metal-clipped volumes lay about. I imagined one of those inches-thick account books, two feet wide, being heaved across the room. They could knock out a man with one blow. Mouth open, I looked at Jenny Chong. She looked so thin, too thin.

  Grandmother noticed my astonishment and said, “Annah, may I ask—?”

  “Yes, yes, Dai-mo, ask me.”

  “How large was this book that your daughter threw?”

  “Well, of course,” Mrs. Chong said, exhaling, “it was only one of those school scribblers.”

  “A scribbler,” Poh-Poh said, pausing thoughtfully, looking directly at me, “is hardly a book.”

  I squeezed my lips together, tried not to laugh. A scribbler was smaller than a comic, would barely flutter a few feet in the air.

  “But what a thing to do!” Mrs. Wong said, fanning the fires. “Such spirit!”

  “We needn’t give this another thought.” Grandmother tapped the table. “South?”

  After almost two hours and nearly completing the round, Poh-Poh called me away from my wobbly, nearly finished Ferris wheel to get the wok ready. Mrs. Leong complimented me on my skill. I sighed. For sure, there were some Meccano pieces missing, but I had done my best. Poh-Poh told me to hurry and heat up the large wok.

  I wiped the curved bottom as I had been taught to do, then lifted one of the stove tops to set the pan in. I slid the handle on the grate. The stove stirred awake and flames began to lick the wok bottom.

  “Everything all cut and ready,” Poh-Poh said, pushing Mrs. Leong back into her seat and insisting she only needed me. “Just need ten minutes to stir-fry.”

  In front of our wood-and-sawdust stove, Grandmother handed me Stepmother’s flowery apron. I folded and tied it around my waist just the way Mr. Ding Wong the butcher would, or the waiters at the Hong Kong Café.

  Poh-Poh seemed pleased that I did not have to be told twice to follow any of her instructions. When she ordered, I handed her the tin pan of marinated chicken pieces and the flat of pork cubes out of our wooden icebox; passed her the bowls of bean sprouts and soaked mushrooms; tossed her the soy bottle and sesame oil when she nodded towards the pantry and the small dish of dao-see, black-bean sauce, with the tablespoon of starch when she said, “Din-foon.”

  She had taught me well, as she had promised Father she would, so that I would survive in Gold Mountain among the barbarians who boiled greens into mush and blackened whole chunks of meat the size of a man’s head, and carved the dead thing and ate whole slabs employing weapons at the table.

  “He will teach Liang when I gone,” she told Father.

  One after another, our serving plates filled with different dishes. Then I stood back from the wok as Poh-Poh threw in a splash of water to steam the last of the greens with crushed ginger and garlic and a final plop of oyster sauce.

  Tonight, at the Old One’s gathering, I was supposed to be on my best behaviour. I was. Still, in the midst of all the activity between Poh-Poh and myself, I thought Jenny Chong should be here, too, not sulking in our parlour. More than I did, she belonged in the kitchen. She should have been whipped, the way Poh-Poh was whipped when she was a servant girl in Old China, with thin bamboo rods that etched hairline scars forever on her back.

  The melon soup was now at full boil. Five steaming plates were piled with greens and meats.

  “We serve now,” Poh-Poh said. “Why you look like that?”

  “Nothing,” I said, still fuming about doing all the work when Jenny could have helped.

  “Take off your nothing apron.”

  I obeyed. She pointed to the cloth napkins. I folded the napkins, then picked up the chopsticks.

  With a pot holder, Poh-Poh lifted the hot dish of beef and greens sprinkled with herbs, all steaming with flavours and glistening from the sesame oil. Grandmother clanged her ladle against the wok.

  “Everyone please help!” she said, and the three ladies rushed into the kitchen, exclaiming over the delicious smells. Mrs. Chong filled blue-and-white bowls with rice, and scrawny Mrs. Leong and pudgy Mrs. Wong, holding tea towels against the hot platters, carried the remaining pie-plate tin and porcelain dishes past Grandmother’s surveying eyes. I counted out enough napkins for everyone and picked up the porcelain soup spoons, just as I always did for Stepmother at dinnertime. I slapped a napkin, chopsticks, and a spoon down in front of each empty chair. Adding me to the table, there were five chairs. But there should have been six.

  I caught a glimpse of Jenny Chong looking as mean as her mother. Her eyes narrowed again, daring me to stare one second longer.

  Poh-Poh pushed me aside. “Watch out for the soup!”

  And when the lid with the lucky red-and-gold crests was lifted off, the golden brew steamed majestically. Crystals of melon lay in a rich broth. The air smelled of crushed ginger. Everyone sighed with delight. Summer melon with chicken and sweet pork in chicken-feet stock was one of Poh-Poh’s specialties. Mrs. Chong had grown the prized melon in her backyard garden, and Mrs. Leong, the herbs. Mrs. Wong, the butcher’s mother, had contributed the pork bones; she made sure they were thick with meat.

  “People still eat,” she had said, “but they don’t buy so much any more. Stingy times.”

  To signal the beginning of the meal, Poh-Poh dipped her chopsticks down into the communal soup bowl and gracefully lifted away the largest pork bone. Thick, tender-cooked pork slid away and fell back into the fragrant broth. Everyone began to chatter, drifting into the deep comfort of their village dialects.

  “Perfect,” Mrs. Leong said in her Sam-yup manner. She reached over with her chopsticks and graciously took the bone from Poh-Poh to put onto the bone plate. “Everything perfect.”

  “Sik-la!” Grandmother commanded. “Eat, eat, eat! Don’t stand on ceremony!”

  “You and your grandson, dai yat!” Mrs. Chong said. “Number One!”

  I suddenly felt proud that I belonged there with Poh-Poh—the Number One assistant to the culinary celebrity. Clicking chopsticks rose and fell, and the clink of porcelain spoons in the large bowl made a happy chorus. Grandmother picked up choice pieces of chicken and pork with her ivory chopsticks and generously put them into the rice bowls of her friends.

  “Take this one,” she would urge, “this is best.”

  Each guest would feign refusal, smiling all the while with pleasure. Finally, everyone was left to eat the portions fate had left facing in his or her direction, like sections of a pie. To cross over your section was rude, unless you wished to give away a good piece from your own portion to someone else. Because I was a growing boy, I was often given good pieces. Mrs. Chong lifted a leafy stalk into my rice bowl.

  “Be big and strong for my useless daughter,” she said. “Ten thousand blessings!”

  “Here, Kiam-Kim,” Mrs. Wong said, “this morsel of chicken will help you grow up even bigger an
d stronger.”

  “You be good friend to Jenny,” Mrs. Leong said. “She need good friend.”

  The women all laughed, as if they were sharing a secret.

  “Eat, eat,” Poh-Poh said to me before I could think.

  Through the waves of savoury steam, I stole quick glances at Jenny Chong. Grandmother noticed me looking.

  “Come—come in and eat, Jen-Jen,” Poh-Poh called out. “Kiam-Kim, bring the kitchen chair.”

  Everyone turned to look at Jenny Chong in the parlour. She sat with her hands in her lap as if she had been frozen in ice. Just below her chin, below the ruffles, a pinkish flower was pinned to her red dress; I watched to see if it moved. It didn’t: she was stubbornly holding in her breath. Her two thick pigtails shone like plaited rope under the parlour lamp.

  “No, no, no!” Mrs. Chong said. “Leave my mo yung daughter alone. Nobody wants a useless daughter to spoil our dinner!”

  “Stop staring, Kiam.” The Old One shoved me back into my seat. “Eat.”

  The chair I had slipped between Mrs. Chong and Mrs. Wong sat empty. Now I had a direct view into the parlour. Jenny Chong turned her face away, as if she had better things to look at than a bunch of monkeys feeding their fat faces. She pretended to read.

  “Soup very hot,” Poh-Poh said. “Careful, Mrs. Wong.”

  I picked up a piece of chicken, moist with flavour, and held it up to see if I could catch Jenny Chong’s attention. I wanted her to notice, to get up and join us. I chewed and swallowed. She took deep breaths; the pink flower on her dress shifted up and down. She was peeking at me. I picked up an even nicer piece. I made a show of slowly chewing and swallowing the meat. I picked up a length of bok choy with my chopsticks and let it slip gradually, lusciously, into my mouth. I thought Poh-Poh should also see how much I enjoyed her cooking, but all the ladies hardly noticed me. Mrs. Chong went on talking about whose Pender Street business might fail next, and the others nodded sadly. In between the nodding, the women slurped their hot soup and complimented the Old One on her cooking.

  “Nothing at all,” Poh-Poh responded. “So simple to make.”

  I moved my chopsticks over the glistening mushrooms studded with crushed peanuts and seasoned with soy, and the fresh-picked green beans and savoury fried onions. My smiling face and my broad table gestures were all saying delicious!

  I chewed with even greater mouth-watering, Charlie Chaplin intensity, desperate to catch the eye of someone starving to death. She should come to the table, I thought, add to Poh-Poh’s joy.

  Jenny Chong’s head turned slightly. She looked at me from the corner of her eye. I imagined her stomach growling with hunger, a tigress’s empty belly, her mouth salivating, her eyes the eyes of a huntress. Her jaw moved slightly, as if she were chewing.

  I gobbled down some rice like a hungry bear. I took up my spoon and royally dipped into the communal bowl. The mixed pork and chicken broth was savoury with sweet dried shrimp and greens. I slowly tipped the brimming porcelain spoon and caught a square of melon.

  I only meant to slurp gently, but the heat of the melon caught me off guard. I gulped, gasped. Everyone stopped talking. I sputtered, a trail of glowing liquid dribbling down the corner of my mouth. Jenny Chong stared wide-eyed. Knuckles rapped my head.

  “Stop showing off,” Poh-Poh said. “No one wants you!”

  Beneath the stinging pain, through the waves of half-swallowed heat that made my eyes tear, I saw a grin break out on Jenny Chong’s face.

  After dinner, when all the ladies had helped Poh-Poh clear the dishes away, the women persuaded Mrs. Chong to let Jenny out of the parlour.

  “She only a child,” Mrs. Leong said. “She learn her lesson, yes, yes.”

  “Too much discipline,” Poh-Poh said, “can spoil the lesson.”

  “And not enough discipline,” Mrs. Chong sniffed into her flowery hanky, “spoils the child.”

  Poh-Poh and Mrs. Wong stared at Mrs. Chong until she relented. She got up, knuckled Jenny, and sent her smarting out of the parlour.

  “You go help Kiam-Kim clean up,” she commanded, and pushed her dead girl in the direction of the kitchen.

  Poh-Poh suggested that Jenny help me rinse the dishes to be washed later. In the kitchen, she quietly offered some soup to Jenny, but Mrs. Chong stood guard at the doorway.

  “Let her starve,” she said. “Let this mo yung girl earn her keep like we did in Old China. Who gave us good soup?”

  “Every child spoiled here,” Mrs. Pan Wong said. “My two grandsons always they beg for candy and Coca-Cola! They die soon, poisoned!”

  “You show Jen-Jen what to do,” Grandmother said to me.

  “A fine, fine First Grandson, your Kiam-Kim,” Mrs. Chong said. “Oh, why am I cursed with such a daughter!” She pushed up her silk sleeves and went back to the mahjong table, all set up for another round.

  Grandmother shut the kitchen door behind her and left the two of us by ourselves.

  Jenny stuck her tongue out, then turned to the platters of leftovers. She picked up some chicken and vegetables with her fingers. Through the door, I could hear the loud clicking of the mahjong tiles, the muffled chattering of satisfied voices rising with pleasure and complaint.

  “What job do you want?” I said. “Rinsing or stacking?”

  “Shut your mouth,” she mumbled. She picked up a pair of chopsticks and started chewing on a piece of chicken, then she dashed in some rice. A grain of rice stuck to her chin; she ignored it. She tilted the soup bowl to scoop up what was left. Piles of dirty bowls and plates sat on the galvanized wash counter.

  “I’ll get the sink rack ready,” I said.

  I always liked doing this orderly chore. I could see what was done and what was not done. I didn’t have to wait for Jenny Chong.

  After Baby Liang’s arrival, rinsing the dishes was one of the jobs that Poh-Poh and Stepmother insisted I do. Only the dishes, though, not the knives or the pots and pans. I was five then and used to stand on a wooden stool to reach counter height, doing very little but passing along plates and utensils. It was like a game. I sang songs I learned from the Chinese United Church kindergarten and rattled the plates like cymbals. But now I was older, and I stood on a sturdy wooden crate to do the job.

  “So,” Jenny said to me in a stuffy voice, “start.”

  I decided not to. She was tall for a girl, but no taller than I was. I went to the back porch and got another crate.

  “What’s that for?”

  “You,” I said. “You rinse. I stack.” Rinsing was really more fun, and so I thought she might prefer it.

  She sneered. “Put this box on top of yours,” she said, “and you’ll maybe reach the counter.”

  I ignored her. She paid no attention. She stepped up on the box, brushing back her hair. She had unbraided half of one pigtail and must have been playing with it all that time in the parlour jail. It was messy. Her pinned flower looked wilted up close, but now I could see it was only scruffy pink tissue paper. She tried to turn on the brass tap, but there was a trick to turning it.

  “Let me,” I said, and stood on tiptoe on the edge of her box and reached over to the tap. The water started to trickle out. I turned the tap a little more. I would let her decide how much water she wanted.

  The sneer never left Jenny Chong’s face.

  “So,” she said, “why are you doing this sissy job?”

  “This a man’s job in all the Chinatown restaurants.”

  “This”—she waved her arms—“a restaurant?”

  Stepmother said I was not to fight with girls, even if they teased. Even if they started it. And even if they deserved a sock in the mouth.

  “My sweet mother says you do just about everything”—Jenny Chong held her nose in the air and shut her eyes like a snob—“just perfectly.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “I’m not a mo yung girl like you. I’m tough.”

  “Tough?” She stepped back, looked at the stove, at the steam rising from the stock
pot. “Bet you don’t dare stick your hand into that.”

  “Put on an apron,” I said. “There. On the hanger.”

  She hopped off the box. “You put yours on,” she said. “You think you’re so smart.”

  She threw a half apron at me and took the full apron for herself. She stared into the sink at the dirty pots and pans stuck with rice and food, the upside-down greasy wok lying on top. I could see she didn’t want to go near them.

  “We don’t have to do anything with those,” I said. “Just rinse these dishes for Poh-Poh to wash later.”

  “Shut your mouth,” she said.

  With my bare warrior hands, I could pick up Jenny Chong, spin her in the air like nothing, and toss her out of the kitchen.

  Poh-Poh’s voice startled me.

  “How come I don’t hear the tap running?”

  Mrs. Chong shouted out from the dining room, “Get busy, mo yung! I send you away. Send you away soon!”

  Being sent away did not seem to scare Jenny. Her eyes boiled with anger. She grabbed the brass tap and twist-turned it violently.

  I should have known to step back, but it happened so fast. A watery burst hit the upturned bottom of the wok and curved up in a sudden arc. A wave splashed full in my face. Eyes blurry with water, I pushed Jenny off her crate and blindly turned the tap.

  I gasped. I was soaked, from shirt to pants. Jenny Chong, apron thrown over her head, could not stop laughing. Too loudly.

  “What’s that dead girl doing!” Mrs. Chong shouted, and we could hear her chair screech back.

  Jenny’s hands went to her eyes, and her face contorted with fright. We both held our breath.

  Through the partly open door, we heard Mrs. Leong saying, “Don’t be so upset.” We heard someone get up, holding back Jenny’s mother.

  “They’re only children,” Mrs. Wong said. “Children play.”

  For a second, I wasn’t sure what to do.

  “It’s me!” I called. “I made a funny joke!”

  “A miracle,” I heard Poh-Poh say. “My grandson is clever enough to tell a joke.”