All That Matters

by Wayson Choy

  “I don’t want Kiam-Kim to eat flesh and blood,” Poh-Poh warned. She had herself once witnessed Christians eating only wafers and drinking only wine, but someone warned her that the wafer and wine instantly turned into the actual flesh and blood of the Lord Jesus. Poh-Poh spat at the thought.

  Third Uncle promised Poh-Poh that no possible harm would ever come to me at the Mission Church. I would be asked to swallow neither flesh nor blood. Instead, cakes and tea were often served. He would take me with him himself until my bowl was full of Light, or at least with enough wattage to chase away the darkness.

  Third Uncle had some acquaintance with the Bible and with the minister at the church. Twenty-five years ago, he had attended English classes there taught by a Mrs. Simpson. She had introduced him to the Chinese Bible, and occasionally they still arranged to meet at community fundraisers. Third Uncle and the church people spoke together about my teenage fears, my obsession with Hell. The minister said that I should attend Mrs. Simpson’s First Instructions class. We were to avoid the Baptists, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Catholics, in fact all groups who believed everything was always about darkness and punishment, always about sin and Hell.

  “Of course, Kiam-Kim, there is a Hell,” Mrs. Simpson said matter-of-factly. “But good Christians and good people don’t need to worry about that. We should all think about God’s Heaven. That’s where we truly belong.”

  Mrs. Simpson had tight curly hair, more white than brown, and she wore thick glasses through which grey eyes shone. She had a strong, motherly voice that suited her big-boned height. She wore a blue jacket with a cherub pin on the lapel.

  I liked Mrs. Simpson. She had no fear of the Devil or of Hell; she would not even listen to the list of tortures that I had nightmares about. She was intent on teaching us her version of the Bible.

  I knew that many Chinatown men and women went to these Church-sponsored classes, often because it was a safe place to socialize. Tea and cookies were served—and if they were hungry, no one looked if they pocketed some extra biscuits—and the classes required a donation only of a nickel, maybe a dime. Some basic English could be learned, and then, when you felt you had enough English words, you would simply not show up.

  Some, like Mrs. Leong and Mrs. Wong, attended English night classes for other reasons. When the evening’s language and Proverb lessons were done, these two women, souls refreshed, hats adjusted, coats tightly buttoned, walked blissfully in the moonlight the two blocks to Mrs. Lim’s. Then the three of them would powder their noses and go and play mahjong at Betty Lee’s. For them, salvation always came first, in case.

  “Well,” said Mrs. Chong about the three mahjong ladies, “why be saved for nothing?”

  Poh-Poh laughed. “Too late for me.”

  Third Uncle told me he used to feel very lucky after some of those Bible lessons; he would rush off at once to the fantan tables, and often won quite a few dollars.

  “Of course,” he said, “I donate to the church.”

  Mrs. Simpson warmly welcomed us that first day, taking us from the minister’s office to her Beginner’s English and First Instructions class in a small meeting room at the back of the building. Also in the class were Mrs. Poon and her oldest daughter, Joanne, four years older than me, who came to continue their Bible lessons and to learn English; a white lady from Poland who hardly spoke any English but clutched a picture of Jesus and the Virgin Mary against her thick sweater; Miss Abbey, a Siwash Indian whom Mrs. Simpson had saved from a bad life and who seemed to only half listen as she pulled strands of her long, black hair between her fingers; two other kids around my age, Steven and Jess; and Third Uncle, who had brought me.

  Mrs. Simpson could see from Third Uncle’s rice-bowl loyalty (for he now came to classes only when he needed to understand certain English phrases related to business) that through Third Uncle’s recommendations she could at least still increase the flock. He had sent her way a steady stream of sheep, old like Mrs. Poon and young like myself. Joanne and I could speak English and Toishanese, so we were asked to help translate for Mrs. Poon and for the two youngest in the class.

  “Let the light guide you,” Mrs. Simpson said, “not the darkness. Angels fear not the darkness.” Mrs. Simpson smiled at the mix of adults and children before her. “The good people who love us are also like angels. They will help us fight demons and temptation. Be a good person and you will have wings to fly over God’s Eternal Garden.”

  Joanne and I translated what we could. If Mrs. Simpson noticed any one of the eight of us struggling, she would walk straight to her special green felt board and illustrate her meaning. She stuck up an angel-shaped felt cutout and a thin red strip with a pointed yellow dot on top.

  “Like angels, you will bring your light to this dark world.”

  After the first month, not everyone stayed. The Polish lady, tongue-tied, did not come back, and neither did Mrs. Poon, whose husband, Third Uncle told me, was angry at her for coming at all. Joanne Poon, however, signed up for more classes. She wept for joy that she might be an angel, since she was only a girl at home.

  “She work harder than you, Kiam-Kim,” said Third Uncle.

  “She prays harder,” I said, though I knew everyone in the family was concerned that my grades were slipping. I had too much to think about. I stayed in my room and sank deeper into a grim-faced melancholy. At night, Jung quietly slipped into his small cot and said nothing. I prayed for his soul.

  Whenever I grew restless, on those Beginners’ mornings, Mrs. Simpson’s steel eyes bored into me.

  “If you remember to be patient, Kiam-Kim,” she said, “as Jesus taught us to be patient, even under the lash, then Heaven will be your reward.” Her stories held my attention. There was the tale of a man who helped another man who was beaten by crooks and left to die. A felt cutout of a man lay on a grey patch of felt road. “Other holy men passed him by, but a Samaritan, the kind of person thought to be the least respectable”—Mrs. Simpson looked at Miss Abbey—“this worthless outcast rescued the bleeding man. That good Samaritan has no fear of Hell. He is one of God’s angels.”

  I thought of the blankets and food my Free China donation boxes were helping to buy, my efforts helping to guard soldiers against the cold, and orphans against hunger. For the next three Sundays, Mrs. Simpson told other Christian stories. She assured us of the promise of Heaven granted to all good people. She asked each one of us to think about our own goodness. There was a scarcity of goodness and mercy and charity in the world—but one had to choose to be good, to be merciful, to be charitable. That was God’s gift to us, that choice.

  “Free will,” said Mrs. Simpson. “So choose wisely.”

  I thought of Jenny Chong banging away at the piano: she didn’t seem to realize there was Heaven as well as Hell. And just as Hell had obsessed me, I began to see the Heavenly Light everywhere. I smiled like an idiot.

  As quickly as the fires and demon visions had flooded my thoughts, they just as suddenly receded. One bright May Sunday morning I woke up, either saved by Jesus or surrendered by the Devil, and knew this would be my last visit to the Mission Church. I told Mrs. Simpson that I could see the light now, though I knew it was not exactly as she might have wished.

  “As long as you believe this,” she said, “then all will be fine, Kiam-Kim. Bless you.”

  I suppose if I was so concerned about Hell, I should have asked Third Uncle about Heaven as well. The Chinese Heaven was certain to be more splendid than the Christian one. And there were Chinese guardians, too, though I always felt unsure about them, like Poh-Poh’s Kitchen God, and the Goddess of Mercy in our parlour, and the pictures of our distant dead cousins on the end table between the incense and the thick red candles. Chinatown was flooded with spiritual wealth. Most everyone we knew had a laughing Buddha sitting on top of their piano or on a plate shelf. Every Chinatown business had the fierce-faced God of Good Fortune standing on a temple-shaped platform, and almost every store sold incense and lucky envelopes. />
  I could see now that in Chinatown there was more Heaven than Hell.

  Leaving the house for school one beautiful morning, with Liang and Jung tagging behind me, I said, out of the blue, “I’m lucky.”

  “Why?” Jung asked.

  “Because we’re a family,” I said. “We have Poh-Poh and Father and Stepmother with us.”

  Jung-Sum smiled. “And they have me.”

  “Me, too,” Liang piped up.

  “And all those Chinese gods,” I said, touching my forehead and crossing my heart just as Jack had taught me to do. In case.

  SIX

  JEFF ENG ALREADY WORKED AT his family’s garage, learning a trade. Fat Wah Duk washed dishes and chopped vegetables like a real chef in the kitchen of his family’s restaurant. At their market store, Joe Sing helped his parents, too, and not just with household chores or with rattling donation cans. Even Jenny Chong worked behind the counter at the corner store.

  Father said we couldn’t do fundraising as much any more. Third Uncle said everyone was too used to me now. New boys were rattling the cans, a few for rival charities and with different political names. Instead, I was to devote more time to my Chinese lessons.

  But I did have one consistent job. Stepmother and Poh-Poh both said, “Take Jung-Sum with you.”

  “You be dai-goh,” Father said. “That’s your duty.”

  As Jung was now stronger and taller, I talked my pals into letting him play soccer with us. Whenever we were short of team members, Jung was appointed our goalie. At first, he didn’t block that many goals. He grew increasingly frustrated, madly dashing to block the speeding ball with his feet and missing his target by a mile. But he soon figured out another tactic: he hurled his whole body at any human trunk charging towards the goal. He never missed, his feet kicking up dust before they flew into the air, his lean torso crashing like a battering ram into his opponent, sending legs and arms and head smearing into the ground.

  “Your goalie’s crazy,” one white boy said to me, wiping at his bleeding lip. “He thinks nothing can kill him.”

  We each got our share of scrapes and cuts. Jung just got more than most. I told Poh-Poh he was crazy.

  “Boy-fever,” Poh-Poh said.

  Stepmother shook her head in amazement: why would anyone choose to injure himself? Poh-Poh and Father, however, admired our warrior wounds. In China, Father said, we would make good soldiers. We could do anything.

  Stepmother looked away. I remembered Poh-Poh telling me about Stepmother’s tragic time. How her child’s eyes once peeked out from beneath a stack of clothing, how they had witnessed bandit soldiers raising their swords; how Stepmother had heard and seen, unblinking, five blades hissing in the air to strike at her trembling family. One blow for each of them.

  “Teach Jung-Sum how to kick and pass the ball,” Father said to me. “Canada never need soldiers.”

  “Need soldiers in China,” Poh-Poh said, slapping the last bandage on my arm. She poured her stinging homemade lotion on one of Jung’s battle wounds. “Fight the warlords! Fight the Japanese!”

  He barely flinched.

  I felt a thrill to think that I might one day be a soldier in China, too. A good soldier fought in the battlefield, or sat bravely waiting for his execution, faithful to his country, not like one of those warrior-scholars from the Cantonese opera who wrote poems and fought or died for love.

  Jung-Sum flexed his arm. The pain was nothing.

  After every soccer game, we would break up, winging back to our own flock, chattering in Italian, Polish, Chinese, or whatever language we spoke at home. We took it for granted that every Vancouver family, in their own household language, had endlessly recited the same edict that Poh-Poh and everyone in Chinatown had repeated to me, Stick to your own kind. And for the most part I did.

  However, Jack O’Connor and I remained best pals. But Poh-Poh tested our friendship.

  One day, when we were out on the porch working through a Grade 8 history project together, the Old One came out with a plate of lunch for me. Jack grimaced at the Chinese sausages and red-bean-paste buns. Poh-Poh wafted a steamed bun under his nostrils. He curled his lips and pinched his nose.

  “How can you eat that stuff?” he asked.

  Another time, undeterred, the Old One pushed up the porch window and offered him a steamed black-bean sparerib. I wasn’t surprised when Jack jumped back from the garlicky smell. His family lived on boiled meat and potatoes, beans and wieners and bologna sandwiches.

  Poh-Poh shouted at him, “Demon boy no know-how! No sabby!”

  “Kemo-sabe!” Jack shouted back. He looked at me in surprise. “She knows The Lone Ranger!”

  I was impressed that Poh-Poh had tolerated all these years my barbarian playmate, even after she caught him mimicking her Chinese speech and threw a broom at him. Years ago, when we were first neighbours, she and Stepmother saw Jack with his mother beside him hanging out the laundry in the backyard, turning up their noses at the cooking smells drifting from our window. But our household had some judgments to make, too.

  Against the white bedsheets, the bright sun made Jack and his mother seem even more chalky and wan. In their veins, Poh-Poh said, there ran no soy sauce, no hot sauce, no sauce at all!

  “Aaaiiyaah!” Stepmother said, with some pity, “They so pale!”

  “They die soon!” said Poh-Poh.

  But from the beginning, Stepmother thought Jack’s and my friendship was probably best for me: from my new friend I would pick up more English words. Father agreed.

  Our two fathers got along reasonably well, and always greeted each other over the porch rails. When we were younger, we often spent time on each other’s porch and our toys often lay scattered together where we left them, warriors and cowboys side by side.

  Nevertheless, “Don’t let the demon boy in the house,” Poh-Poh warned me. “He not Chinese!”

  And so the rule was set. Throughout Chinatown, in fact, it was rare to have any outsiders visit our homes. There didn’t seem to be any good reason to have foreigners come into our places and have them judge what we ate or complain about how we lived or have them ask too many questions.

  Although inside the O’Connor house I would listen to the radio or work on a project, Poh-Poh made it clear that Jack would not be welcome to step inside our door.

  “Chinese air kill him,” she said.

  “But I’ve had hot dogs at his place,” I protested. “Why can’t you make hot dogs?”

  “Hot dog, no head, no tail. Not real food,” Poh-Poh said, rolling up her sleeve to tear the feathers off a freshly killed chicken. She lifted its sagging head. “This real food.”

  The beady eyes of the dead chicken stared me down. What would Jack say if he saw the chicken when it was finally cooked, with its head and beak lolling on the platter? Or what would he think if he heard the scratching noises coming from the crate under our sink? Uncle Dai Kew had brought Poh-Poh a live turtle to make them both a special soup for longevity. Even I had to shut my eyes as the cleaver fell and split apart the wiggling creature. And what if he came upon the dried-up sea horses, the clump of costly bird’s nest, or the dehydrated black-bear paw?

  Perhaps it was better that Jack never set foot in our house.

  Stepmother was not so antagonistic towards the O’Connors. One day I had spilled some groceries on the sidewalk after a bully ran by and knocked me down. The eggs were smashed and the bags were torn, and goods lay strewn about me. Stepmother had fallen behind to gossip with Mrs. Leong. I could see her half a block away just as Mrs. O’Connor came down from her garden to help me pick up the groceries.

  “Why, this is parsley,” she said. “And it’s all covered with egg.”

  She told me to wait. It wasn’t long before she came back with some fresh parsley in her hand and some grocery bags. By then I’d gathered up as much as I could, and Mrs. O’Connor went back into her house.

  Stepmother caught up with me and I told her what had happened.

>   “Jack’s mother,” Stepmother asked, “does she like anything Chinese?”

  I told Stepmother that according to Jack the only thing the thin woman liked about Chinamen was China tea. That evening, Stepmother wrapped a small packet of tea and gave it to Jack to give to his mother.

  “We say thank you,” she said, which I translated for Jack, who bowed his head as if he were in a Charlie Chan picture.

  Next day, Jack’s mother sent over a folded handwritten note with flowers on one corner. I glanced over it and told Stepmother it was a thank-you note. But Mrs. Chong took it from me and translated every word for her: “ ‘Thank you for the peasant tea.’ ”

  “Not peasant tea!” protested Stepmother. “First-class oolong!”

  Doubting that Mrs. O’Connor would mean to insult her, Stepmother had Mrs. Leong’s oldest daughter retranslate the sentence: Thank you for the pleasant tea.

  Stepmother had often looked with envy at Mrs. O’Connor’s small front yard crowded with flowers. There were no flowers on our side; Grandmother had planted rows of beans and vegetables to catch the long and late afternoon light.

  One afternoon, after observing Stepmother staring again at her front yard of blooms, Mrs. O’Connor sent over some roses. Later that week, she told Jack to pick some daisies and snapdragons for me to take home.

  I carried back packets of tea. The two women smiled at each other.

  “I should give garlic bean paste,” declared Poh-Poh. “Finish things up!”

  “Leave them alone,” Father said. “No one troubling you.”

  “No trouble,” said the Old One. “No taste.”

  Jung-Sum and Liang, and now Sekky, too, got the same warning that I had been given.

  “Stick to Chinese,” Poh-Poh said to them, clipping Mrs. O’Connor’s fresh pink roses to fit the vase Stepmother gave her. “Don’t play too long over there.”

  Then she wrapped up some ordinary tea and sent Jung-Sum over the porch.

  “Why did you send her English tea?” I asked. “They must have lots of that.”