All That Matters

by Wayson Choy

  Jung-Sum began to grow taller, faster, stronger. His habit of cheerfully eating everything and asking for seconds, even thirds, made Poh-Poh and Stepmother feel like happy matrons, but Father wondered if his children would eat him into the poorhouse.

  Father wasn’t wrong. Some days, there wasn’t enough food on the table. As I caught on, I told Jung he ate like greedy Pigsy. Poh-Poh knuckled me.

  “I tell him when to eat or not eat,” she snapped. “Jung-Sum, hold your tummy in. Tight, like Kiam. See?”

  I sucked in my stomach.

  “You feel full in two minutes,” Poh-Poh said. “You eat more, Sekky!”

  Jung-Sum did feel full, and Baby Brother ate more of the food Stepmother chewed first and then, with mushy dabs on her finger, slipped into his mouth. But we all worried: Sek-Lung slept more than Stepmother thought he should, and in his sleep, his breath was raspy and unsteady. Dr. Chu said he was having some lung problems and we should track his growth and watch that he did not catch any drafts. At night, I could hear Stepmother pacing back and forth, calling out his name as if to call him back from some dark well. Father would take his turn, but neither would sleep until Sek-Lung was breathing well again. Some nights, Poh-Poh took over, and she woke me up to bring the bowls of steaming water that smelled of eucalyptus, and the Old One would hold his little head high over the vapours. Finally, Dr. Chu said that he was getting stronger. Sek-Lung began to chatter, grab at things with his fists, and one day he stood up and yelled for a toy. We all ran to him and clapped, and he laughed as Father picked him up to gently swing him by his arms. Stepmother cried, and Poh-Poh beamed. Liang even said she would make doll clothes for his toy bear.

  Father found time to take Jung-Sum and me to visit various tong halls while he interviewed Chinatown politicians for the community newspaper. Some were just street-level reading rooms, like the ones along Columbia Street, where the elders sat around smoking and talking. The larger family association halls were on second or third floors, up long flights of wooden stairs that you climbed from the street, finally to stand before latched swinging doors that opened up to vast assembly rooms.

  During those visits, Father would tell a friendly elder to take charge of us. “Teach my unworthy sons to be Chinese,” he would say.

  The elders would laugh, call us juk-sing, hollow bamboo stumps, then ease into telling us stories of their young lives back in China, how they, as I should, bowed three times before the tall gleaming statues of Buddha or the grinning Gods of Fortune and Longevity. We were given fresh fruit from red-and-gold-rimmed bowls and sometimes a penny or a nickel if we had been especially attentive. When no one around cared to give us attention, Father would let us wander about.

  I always hunted up the older boys trying out for the kung fu teams at the other end of the hall. Then a bunch of us would talk sports with Quene Yip, the Chinatown soccer champ.

  Some of the elders appreciated how Second Brother stood in the central halls to study their exercise routines. He mimicked their movements, so Old Sing taught him a few Tai Chi routines.

  One day, left by himself, Jung decided to practice a Tai Chi routine while standing ten feet up in the air on the edge of a six-inch-wide plank some workmen had been using to paint the ceiling. Slowly stepping forward, he angled his one foot and turned while lifting his other foot in the air; he bent forward, his head up, hands praising Heaven. He told me later he was playing the Monkey King crossing the sacred rope bridge, just as Poh-Poh had told the story. But he slipped, tipped over the narrow beam, and everything—plank, paint cans, tools, flailing boy—fell with echoing explosions.

  I realized, then, how everything taught to Jung, he wanted to make more dangerous. He wanted to be like Jack O’Connor.

  Poh-Poh told me one day how Jung-Sum lifted two buckets of nails at Ming Wo’s hardware store when Mr. Wong, the proprietor, dared him to act like a man.

  “He not like you, Kiam-Kim,” Poh-Poh said. “He tougher.”

  “So what?” I said.

  “So you—you be clever! Watch out for him!”

  Everyone noticed Jung. With all that attention, I started to feel as if I, too, were important in some odd way, that his toughness made him my worthy Second Brother.

  We were a crowded house, everyone sleeping two to a room, but for the most part things were comfortable. Poh-Poh occasionally mentioned how Liang was filling up their bedroom with her dollhouse and toys, but she didn’t mind too much. Liang said the Old One snored too loudly and the herbal medicines she concocted from ancient recipes were stinky-smelly. Everyone shushed her up. Father sometimes said he could turn the small storage room at the end of the upstairs hall into a room for Liang. He would burn all the junk he had kept from our first years in Vancouver and donate to the homeless shelter all the extra furniture and hardware we had been given by the Chen Association to start our home. But it remained just talk.

  One morning, Liang climbed her way onto a footstool balanced on top of a chair. Stepmother caught her just as she was reaching for one of the mysteriously labelled bottles, filled with paper-thin slices of deer horn and roots, sitting between the tins of smelly, dark powders on the second shelf. When I came home that day, the storage room was empty. Third Uncle had sent his van over, and two of his workers took everything away. In the backyard, Father had lit a fire. I saw fragments of notebooks and old newspapers, bits of cloth and legs of broken furniture poking out from the flames.

  That weekend I helped Father clean the floors and walls; finally, we carried Liang’s furniture into her very own room. She squealed with delight and did not mind that the space barely took in her tiny dresser and pallet.

  “Just temporary,” Father told Only Sister.

  Stepmother looked worried.

  Father took me aside and told me Stepmother had not been well. I knew she had missed having dinner three times that week, and Poh-Poh had had me take up to her in bed special teas and soups. He studied my puzzled look.

  “Poh-Poh say you old enough now, so I tell you something.”

  “What?”

  I felt my eyes widen with pleasure: I was old enough for another secret. Father unbuttoned his shirt collar.

  “Gai-mou is expecting a baby.”

  “When?”

  “Maybe February—maybe March.”

  “A baby boy!” I said, thinking of my growing boss status. “Poh-Poh will be happy!”

  “Yes, that’s so.” But Father looked unsettled. “If Poh-Poh be right, of course.”

  The nervous way he yanked off his rimmed glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose confused me. However, like Poh-Poh, I felt no doubt about the outcome. The birth of the baby boy would be a great joy. As Jung-Sum had started out with me all bones and weakness and had turned out to be tall and strong—with brain and brawn—and as baby Sekky seemed much better every day and was more and more active without too much wheezing, I would not mind having a third brother to train.

  But Stepmother did not look happy. As she threw the fresh bedsheets over Liang’s little bed, she suddenly clutched her stomach and sat down.

  “We see Mr. Gu,” Father said. “Maybe see doctor …”

  Even Poh-Poh felt Stepmother’s wan eyes and pale skin, her uneven breathing, were beyond Mrs. Lim’s special recipes, even beyond her own blood-strengthening soups and herbal teas, and certainly beyond the mahjong ladies’ hopeful chatter.

  “New baby,” Mrs. Leong said to me, her hand tugging at my sweater.

  Poh-Poh accepted every best wish for the safe delivery of her fourth grandson.

  Everyone said the baby would be a boy. Boys were often born around spring.

  “Best time of year,” Mrs. Chong said. “Cool and quiet time. Lots of yin current with fresh yang energy!”

  Stepmother, perhaps, was discomforted thinking of those winter months before the baby’s delivery; her smile was forced.

  “Yes,” she said. “Good time to have a son.”

  Mrs. Lim and Mrs. Wong thought so, too. Th
en the women began to fuss over Poh-Poh’s new flowery dress. Mrs. Sui Leong had helped to pick it out for her. White and pink flowers decorated the fabric like ghosts.

  Pink! Stepmother must have seen my face and guessed at my concern: What if the baby was … a girl!

  A half whisper came towards me and stroked my ears. “It be a boy,” the voice said. “No worry, Kiam-Kim.”

  One hot August day, with nothing better to do, Jung and I decided to return some library books. In lock-step like soldiers, Second Brother and I raced past Jenny Chong and a couple of her friends up the curving stairway of the Carnegie Library at Main and Hastings. Perhaps upset that we had ignored her, Jenny said, “There goes Kiam’s shadow!”

  “Ha, ha,” I said, turning around to stare her down. She thought herself out of our hearing, standing on the sidewalk with her two twittering friends. She rolled her eyes at me. It made me think of her mother. Whenever Mrs. Chong wanted more tea or dumplings, or more attention, her dark eyes would roll up in the same way, and the pupils would narrow, pulling you into range so you had to say something. Anything.

  “Jealous?” I said, remembering how I once had saved her from her mother’s wrath.

  “Yeah,” she said, pointing at Second Brother, “I always wanted a dog.”

  For weeks, she had been begging her mother to buy her one of those lap dogs she had seen scampering about in a Shirley Temple movie. Poh-Poh told her dogs were dirty, but cleaned up, they were good for eating. Maybe she was thinking of that. Maybe she didn’t realize how Jung would take the joke.

  Before I could stop him, he jumped down the steps and booted her in the shin. She let out a screech, dropped her books, and hopped about. Her two girlfriends scooted behind one of the library pillars to peer warily at Jung. He stared back, his fists clenched.

  I ran down the steps, threw my free arm over him, and started dragging him away. I barely hung on to the books in the crook of my other arm as he struggled against me, his thin limbs flailing in the air. An old man stopped to ask Jenny what was the matter, but she couldn’t tell him for her hopping about and her crying.

  “You’re going to get it,” I said as I pushed with my back against the heavy library door. But someone I hadn’t seen was already opening the door, and with Jung still struggling against me, we twisted backwards into the air and fell sprawling into the main hall. A middle-aged white lady stood over us, eyes wide with surprise. I still had a grip on Little Brother and a tighter one on the three books. She was about to say something when she noticed Jung’s eyes bulging like a cornered animal’s. She quickly left.

  “Sticks and stones will break your bones,” I chanted, letting go and slapping dust off my pants, “but names will never hurt you.”

  Little Brother wasn’t impressed. As I brushed his hair back, he took hold of my arm and squeezed it in frustration. I sensed he was near tears, but I started laughing at how we had fallen backwards and ended up sitting there on the cold floor like clowns. I laughed even harder remembering Jenny Chong’s look of shock. The hall echoed with my laughter. A librarian in a pink dress came rushing out, bent down, and snatched away the three books. She pointed to the front doors.

  “You can both come back,” she said. “when you decide this isn’t a playground.”

  Before Jung could figure out a way to kick her, I shoved him through the doors.

  “Don’t,” he said. “I wasn’t going to do anything.” His thin face turned serious. “That lady doesn’t call people names.”

  A warm breeze whirled candy wrappers and tissues around the pillars.

  We sat on the steps of the Carnegie, without a single word between us; after a while, Jung-Sum leaned against me. I put my arm around his knobby shoulders.

  “Did you have to kick Jenny?”

  Second Brother whispered into my ear. “Ngoh m’hai—gow!” he said. “I’m not—dog!”

  Later that afternoon, of course, Mrs. Chong dropped in for tea to complain to Poh-Poh and Stepmother about the “brutal” kicking incident. They all agreed it wasn’t necessary to involve Father.

  When I walked into the dining room to take my place at the corner desk and spread out my Saturday Chinese school homework, Mrs. Chong’s voice was already pitched high above Grandmother’s calm. Stepmother sat leaning into her chair, one sleeveless arm resting across her belly. Her eyes were red.

  I had just uncapped the bottle to dip the brush when a familiar voice caught my attention. The Old One was telling Mrs. Chong that Jenny had been jealous.

  Just as I had guessed, grass green with jealousy. Poh-Poh turned her head. She looked directly at me. I ducked.

  “Kiam-Kim stood by,” she said. “Is that so?”

  I pretended I didn’t hear. Too late.

  Mrs. Chong looked dejected. “Jen-Jen’s leg all blue and sore.”

  “Blue and green,” I muttered.

  Grandmother saw my lips moving. Her voice was grave, her Sze-yup tones formal.

  “Did Grandson see this happen?”

  “Yes, Poh-Poh,” I said, responding in dialect. “Jenny called Jung-Sum a dog—my dog. And Second Brother kicked before I could stop him.”

  “Did Jenny speak lao-fang wah, foreign words?”

  “Hi-lah,” I said. “She spoke English words.”

  Poh-Poh mulled over things. Mrs. Chong’s raised eyebrow suggested she hadn’t heard this version of the incident before.

  “Jen-Jen just say her greetings,” she said. “I’m sure you and Little Brother misheard her.”

  “Lo-faan wah,” Stepmother said, “difficult to hear.”

  Grandmother agreed. The three women nodded in unison: English so easy to mishear.

  “Is that not so, Grandson?”

  “One sound like another,” Mrs. Chong said. “Barbaric!”

  I knew I was expected to agree. Dog. Log. Fog. Bog.

  I nodded. I flipped open my copybook and began brushing my first page of Chinese script, fighting the urge to pitch the ink bottle at Mrs. Chong. Through the parlour doorway, I could see Jung-Sum busy playing Robin Hood with Only Sister on the linoleum floor, ignoring the talk from the dining room. He was rounding up Liang-Liang’s population of cutout dolls to herd them deep into Sherwood Forest. Mrs. Chong raised her voice, determined to catch Jung’s attention, but he played on, pushing paper figures under the sofa to shelter them from attack.

  The Old One finally spoke aloud what she had been thinking all along.

  “Your pretty Jen-Jen want to walk beside my grandson,” Poh-Poh said. “So she be showing off to girlfriends.”

  “Think so?” Mrs. Chong said, her voice softening. “Jenny like to walk with Kiam-Kim?”

  “Yes, so young, too,” Poh-Poh said, tilting her head slightly. “How she get idea to walk with Kiam-Kim?”

  For some mysterious reason, the two women wanted me to hear all this nonsense. I feigned deafness, my horsehair brush dashing strokes into characters.

  “Of course, this not Old China way, this meeting of girl and boy,” Poh-Poh continued. “This Canada way.”

  “Old way better.” Mrs. Chong placed a teacup into Stepmother’s hand. “Don’t you think so, Chen Sim?”

  Stepmother shrugged and smiled politely, as if her opinion could not matter one way or another. She sipped her tea while with the other hand she gently massaged her belly. She had come to us the Old China way.

  “Old China way best,” Mrs. Chong repeated, taking her eyes off Stepmother.

  “I give you some ointment for your poor Jen-Jen,” Grandmother said. She patted her open palm against the back of Mrs. Chong’s wrist and continued in formal Cantonese. “So kind of you to allow me to know about this misunderstanding. I will certainly speak to Jung-Sum.”

  Things sounded as if they were being settled when I heard polite sniffing and looked up from my inky brush. I caught Mrs. Chong staring at me, her eyes softening.

  “You good First Son,” she said, her voice placating. “Jenny like you, Kiam-Kim.” Maybe I shouldn�
�t have smiled back. “Like you very much.”

  I glanced back at Jung-Sum playing in the parlour with Liang. I wondered if Second Brother understood he was in trouble. I cleared my throat; he and Liang raised their heads to see what I wanted. Just as I was going to make the sign of a slashed throat with my forefinger, for Jung to see, Father rushed through the front door, and Liang ran to him to be hugged.

  Without taking his hat off, Father gently put Liang down and walked into the dining room. He pulled out of his coat pocket an inch-square velvety black box. It had a red phoenix seal embossed on the lid. Grandmother reached for the fist-sized container.

  “This is the best medicine,” Father said. “Cost eight dollars.”

  Grandmother pushed open the lid with her thumb. She picked out some dried leaves and a few knotted black things tied together with hemp grass.

  “Everything soon be fine again, Chen Sim,” Mrs. Chong said to Stepmother. “You very young. After Mr. Gu’s herbal tea, you be strong again. No bleeding. Baby be okay.”

  Father cleared his throat. Time to change the subject: big ears were listening. I didn’t think of my own big ears; I thought of the two pairs on the two little heads that were now staring into the dining room, their senses alerted.

  “Please come here, Jung-Sum,” Poh-Poh said in her formal Canton manner. Second Brother hesitated, but the formal words meant he had little choice.

  Poh-Poh stood looking down at him. “You kick Mrs. Chong’s poor Jen-Jen?”

  Jung just barely nodded. The Old One’s frown slowly quashed him with condemnation. It was the same withering, anguished look the Old One gave me whenever she caught me disobeying Father. The high cheekbones lifted every scowling wrinkle on her old face; her ancient eyes penetrated your soul. Even I would have preferred to be whipped. Jung bowed his head. He knew I would be called as a witness if he said nothing.