All That Matters

by Wayson Choy

  “Best for pale skin,” Poh-Poh said. “No flavour.”

  Jung said Mrs. O’Connor told him she hadn’t brewed that brand for a long time.

  The Old One smiled. “She more Chinese now.”

  Although the O’Connors and the Chens had lived side by side for more than ten years, Jack and I took for granted that both our families were too familiar and too strange to explain. What mattered to us was that, as a team, fair or not, we bloodied the noses of Strathcona recess bullies and earned a reputation for sticking together.

  Of course, having to attend Chinese classes meant that more and more I hung out with Chinese boys my age who went to the same school, or who wanted to play hooky as badly as I did. We learned by rote, attempting to follow the basic discipline of a thousand years of writing history. We needed to train our young eyes and inexperienced hands to coordinate our fingers, to make the ink-wet brush move into the dips and dashes of Chinese script. Reading lessons were shouted back and forth between teacher and students, repetitions of one boring edict after another, as if by repetition they would sink into our hearts if not our heads: Respect the elders first. Always obey your parents. Study hard. Do your homework every day. Because of the strict way everything was taught to us by the male teachers, with bamboo rods slamming down on tables or palms, we mimicked the lessons like trained seals. Chinese school was always heads down, concentrate, recite and copy, copy and recite. The more restless of us did everything to get out of going to classes; a few, like me, who sometimes earned some praise because all the teachers knew of Father’s writings and saw in me a little potential, or the few whose merchant family connections were powerful and known, did nothing to shame our families. I came to see the serious need to focus and accept the discipline that had given Father his pride in his work, whether with accounts or with essays: Father had endured school himself, and his discipline with brush and pen helped him to earn a living in Chinatown. When he had time, I would read him back the week’s lessons, and Father would illustrate an aphorism with a story he himself had learned in his school days.

  “Yes, yes, study hard!” he would begin, then tell me the story of the young student—“a boy like you”—who kept a jar of fireflies so that their collective fire would allow him to study through the night to pass the Imperial Exams. But two weeks later, the Chinese words would fade from my brain, and the order of dips and dashes would be lost to my brush, and I would be left wondering, What do fireflies eat to keep them burning so bright against the night? Father complained about my constant slippage with my Chinese writing and reading, though I was an excellent writer and enthusiastic reader at English school.

  “Not enough time for both,” Third Uncle told Father. “Too much English school.”

  “Let Kiam-Kim learn what he can,” argued Stepmother. “Impossible to do much more.”

  “Keep my grandson Chinese,” Poh-Poh urged one of my teachers at the school, and Teacher Sing smiled politely to ease her concerns. But for the majority of us Gold Mountain children, it was a smile against futility.

  I went to Chinese school every weekday, and on Saturday mornings until half past noon. I spent a lot more time with my studies than Jack ever did. And Jack himself, free from the extra burden of memorizing and deciphering dips and dashes, soon fell into happy companionship with a roving gang of blue-eyed, red-headed Irish boys. Then, as the years claimed our days, though our proximity to each other as neighbours assured that we remained best friends, I fell into step with a Chinatown crowd and Jack moved from one gang to another, but mostly with those like himself, white-skinned and sports-minded. Each to his own kind.

  “I get the best deal,” Jack told me one day when I rushed past him with my leather case filled with copybooks, texts, ink, and writing brushes. “I don’t have to go to any Chink, Jew, or Wop school like all you other guys.”

  Sometimes in the hour between the end of English school and the start of Chinese school, Jack, Jeff Eng, and I met behind the sheltered bathrooms at MacLean Park. In that dank, echoing chamber, next to a row of stained urinals, we inhaled, along with the flavour of stale piss and ammonia, the Player’s or Exports we had cadged from older boys.

  Once, one of Jack’s pals turned up with an almost full bottle of hard liquor, filched from a wedding. We dared each other to take a swig. Jack tossed his head back like the pirates in the picture shows we saw; we each threw our head back, coughed and gagged at the burning alcohol, and wiped our eyes without shame. After another dare or two, a big second gulp followed.

  “The bottle’s not finished,” Jack said. “Anyone game for more?”

  “Maybe after Chinese school,” Jeff said. “I’m for it.”

  The two looked over to see what I had in mind.

  “Count me in,” I said. “We’ll all meet here right after school.”

  Jeff slapped me on the back.

  “It’s a deal,” Jack said.

  Jeff’s mother and sister had come to the house to warn us about the strange illness that made Jeff so late coming home from Chinese school. And how odd, Mrs. Eng noted, that her son’s breath smelled so freshly of a thick wad of Wrigley’s spearmint. When I stumbled into the house much later, everyone but Father, who had yet to return from work, was standing waiting. Liang hid behind Stepmother’s dress.

  Without a word, Poh-Poh touched my head, squeezed my cheeks so that my mouth opened wide. She sniffed my breath and looked at my tongue. She watched me try to follow her finger with my crossed eyes, then she sent me right to bed.

  Moments later, or so it seemed, half out of my clothes, I heard Father arrive home. He asked Jung-Sum why he was bringing me dinner on a tray.

  “Dai-goh sick,” I heard Second Brother answer. Poh-Poh called Father into the kitchen.

  “No one’s telling Father anything yet,” Jung told me. “Just that you have a fever.” He put down the tray and helped me yank off my pants. “Poh-Poh told Stepmother you probably have boy-fever. You get over it soon.”

  “Where’s Stepmother?”

  “She’s in the bedroom. Sekky is playing with his tanks in the pantry. Only Sister is with Poh-Poh.”

  “I know,” I snapped, threading my legs through my pyjama bottoms.

  I started to eat, to show Jung how stupid talk of boy-fever was. After two big swallows, with the food halfway down, I pushed the greasy plate aside; my eyes began to bulge, my stomach lurched. Of its own accord, the plate of food floated above the tray. Jung grabbed everything from me. I raced downstairs and pounded on the bathroom door for whoever was inside to hurry the hell up. I pushed my way in just as Father was buttoning up his fly and yanking the chain. He was as red with surprise as I was green with bile.

  I bent over and puked my boy-fever into the swirling waters.

  Father smelled the sour air. He sniffed again, recognized the sharp odour. Without a word, he knuckled me. He grabbed my hair and yanked me to my feet. A mistake. I spewed more bile onto the floor and side of the tub.

  “Useless boy!” Father twisted my ear. “Drunken dead boy!”

  I felt a sharp kick on my rear end, and the linoleum floor and the white sink and the tin-plate ceiling spun around and around. I heard Stepmother calling my name from upstairs, telling Father to stop.

  “Send him upstairs.”

  Father took a deep breath. “Go,” he said. “I kill you later.”

  Sekky dashed out of the pantry and disappeared behind the sofa in the parlour. Liang was standing beside Poh-Poh by the stove, holding her breath, waiting for my early death.

  I walked by Jung-Sum, who was standing by the front doorway. When I made it safely up the first three steps, Second Brother went into the parlour to comfort Sekky. The two of them huddled together beside the sofa to watch their big brother’s progress.

  Clinging to the bannister, thinking as clearly as I could manage, I paused a moment to consider what would happen next: Stepmother would deliver a stern lecture and set down some rules for me; of course, I would lose some fre
edom … but I felt oddly content. I started to say something, to set a good example, but a sudden queasiness oiled the back of my throat. I bent over and clutched at the railing. My ribs ached. The pungent smells on my shirt and hands made me gag.

  Before I knew what was happening, Jung-Sum was at my side, trying to lift my arm back onto the bannister. Sekky was clapping his encouragement, as if he were watching a performance.

  I heard Poh-Poh cleaning up the bathroom, the mop banging against the tub, and Jook-Liang in her little voice saying, “Dai-goh so sick!”

  “Good sick,” the Old One was saying. “This sick is good sign. He send out bad stuff.”

  I shoved Second Brother aside. I thought that it was my duty to set a manly example.

  But as he fell back, something in Jung’s eyes made me want to reach out and pull him back towards me; when I didn’t do anything but wait for him to regain his footing, he must have realized, in that instant, that I could never be trusted.

  I shut my eyes, pulled myself slowly up the stairs.

  The bedroom door was shut. I knocked.

  “Kiam-Kim? Come.”

  Stepmother was rummaging through the trunk. When she found what she was looking for, she told me to sit down on the chair before her dressing table. In her hand was my mother’s picture.

  “You remember this?”

  “Yes.”

  I tried to focus my eyes to see the small woman in the frame. The dresser mirror reflected back the image.

  “After Liang was born, your father showed me your mother’s picture. He told me no one could ever replace her.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You are the son of your father and First Wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can anyone replace you?”

  This was a game, but I thought it was best to play along.

  “Only I can be First Son.”

  “Poh-Poh tell everyone your mother spoke to you before she died. Do you remember that?”

  “No,” I said, “but Poh-Poh says so.”

  “Your poor mother’s final breath was used to speak to you, Kiam-Kim. You were the last one. Poh-Poh told me you even answered her. That was what the maid witnessed.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Stepmother’s words echoed in my head. What everyone said had happened, I had been too young to remember. But I was now old enough to know that the maid must have been mistaken, and that Poh-Poh had always imagined such things to be true.

  “Gai-mou, what are you going to say to me?”

  “Nothing. I am not your mother.”

  In the mysterious quiet that settled between us, Stepmother’s eyes seemed to swallow me up. As I looked away, the image in the dresser mirror wavered. In the back of my mind, someone else’s despairing eyes drifted towards me, and I longed to fall into their darkness. Stepmother’s fierce gaze drew me back to her, made me focus through my drunken haze and pay attention.

  A firm voice broke through the silence.

  “When you go back to your room,” the voice said, “call back your mother, Kiam-Kim. Tonight, before you sleep, think what she would say to you about your behaviour.”

  Gai-mou touched my forehead; she traced the wetness on my palm and studied me a moment. She got up and put away the picture.

  “Stand up, Kiam-Kim.”

  She put her arm around my shoulder and guided me to my bed. I felt like a child again. She folded down the blanket, even lifted my foot to help me slip under the sheets, her every gesture as gentle as I imagined my mother’s would have been. Stepmother’s warmth made me want to lean against her, as if she mattered more to me than anyone else.

  “What would your mother say to you, Kiam-Kim?”

  I closed my eyes. The nausea began to settle. The round face in the picture floated towards me.

  I lost track of time and did not hear Jung-Sum come into the room to go to bed.

  “Dai-goh,” he said. “Are you dead?”

  Silence.

  “Dai-goh?” he persisted. “Are you awake?”

  I nodded, but did not open my eyes. Later, Jung told me he had asked if I still wanted him as a brother. I said that he would always be my brother. But I remembered none of this.

  The next day, Poh-Poh came to my room first.

  “Father downstairs. He wait for you.”

  I sat up, rubbing my eyes, put on my kimono, and carefully navigated my way down the stairs. I dragged myself along the hall into the dining room, where Father pointed to the empty chair. With my blood pounding in my ears, I sat across from Father at his desk. Slowly he set his glasses down and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “I’m sorry, Father,” I said.

  A teapot sat before him, steeping.

  He looked at me carefully. I lifted the lid and absent-mindedly tapped it twice on the side of the pot. Then I poured a cup for him. Something made me bow my head. I had no more words to say. I was too ashamed to look up.

  We sat in silence. After a sip of tea, Father told me that Third Uncle wanted me to do some real work at the warehouse that weekend. A shipment of pottery had come in from Hong Kong.

  “You will be on time?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Right after Chinese school, I will go to the warehouse.”

  “Bring some tea to Stepmother. She is upstairs with Sekky waiting for you.”

  I poured a cup and took it to her. Sekky was pushing the extra pillows together to make a mountain for his fighter plane to fly over.

  “Well, Kiam-Kim?”

  “Mother came to me,” I said, “but no words were spoken. I think I only dreamed she was with me. I—I was very sick.”

  Sekky’s fighter plane zoomed between us and almost caused the tea to spill. Stepmother put her hand out to subdue him.

  That afternoon Poh-Poh asked me, “Where Father kicked you, any bruise?”

  To change the subject, I told her the good news, that I was going to work at Third Uncle’s warehouse.

  Poh-Poh ignored me. “When you tapped the teapot, your father almost wept that he had hurt you in such anger. Your mother used to do that every morning, Kiam-Kim.”

  “Do what?”

  “Tap the lid of the teapot.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “She said that was how she woke up both you and your father.”

  After I had barely recovered from my hangover and after my protest against Poh-Poh, who, with her own hands, insisted on putting some of her lotion on my backside, Mrs. Chong came over with some egg tarts.

  I should have guessed she would show up. The night before, Poh-Poh had felt the need to walk over with Liang to the Chongs’ corner store to get me some aspirin. No doubt Jeff’s mother had already told Mrs. Chong a few details. The mahjong ladies were a tight group.

  “Heard you still recovering, Kiam-Kim,” said Mrs. Chong slyly as she stepped into our front hall. She was wearing a new hat with tiny feathers. “Your father told Third Uncle he feels terrible about what happened.” To let me know how much was known, Mrs. Chong, her tongue clucking away, pointed at my rear end.

  I led her into the kitchen and put some water on for tea so she could sit and gossip with Stepmother and Poh-Poh. I turned down the offer of an egg tart.

  “Later I make you some delicious soup, Kiam-Kim,” Mrs. Chong said. “Settle your tummy.” She went on about the imbalances in my hot-cold che. She was right: there was a lingering acid taste in the back of my mouth.

  “Only boy-fever,” Poh-Poh said. “All over now.”

  Later that afternoon, Jenny Chong appeared with some of her mother’s promised soup. I hadn’t seen her for months and noticed right away that her hair had grown in, thick and dark, which distracted me.

  “How hard did your father kick you?”

  I ignored her and went straight to the kitchen. I kept myself busy unlocking the tin container of soup. She took another tack.

  “Why didn’t you tell them the whole story?”

  “What story?”
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br />   “Why didn’t you tell your father that Jack was involved, too?” She sounded breathless. “Jack’s been boasting to Shelly Larkin about getting drunk at MacLean Park. Shelly’s mother says Jack’s just like his father.”

  “Why should I tell anything?”

  Jenny took a bowl from the shelf and poured me out some soup. No doubt following her mother’s careful instructions.

  “Try some.”

  It tasted good, like a plain beef broth but with a tangy flavour I couldn’t identify. Jenny pulled up a chair and sat down next to me, her eyes wide open with digging prospects.

  “Well?”

  “Good soup,” I said.

  “Mother said you got kicked. How hard?”

  The two words shot out like a real dare.

  I did not want a girl like Jenny to think of me as a second-rate sufferer. I put down my spoon and waved her to follow me through the screen door. I made sure no one was walking in the alleyway and the O’Connors’ backyard was empty. I stepped away from Jenny.

  “Don’t move.”

  I turned my back, and with one thumb hooked under both my pants and underwear, I yanked them down. The breeze felt cool. I looked back over my shoulder, and I could see behind her the climbing beanstalks and the bamboo staves.

  I had studied the bruise in Father’s bedroom mirror. Running down my left side was a dark, blood-clotted beauty stained with Poh-Poh’s lotion. A first-class bruise.

  “Go ahead,” I said, holding on to my pants. “Touch it.”

  Jenny’s warm hand hesitated a moment, waiting to see if I would draw back. Her fingers were surprisingly delicate, and I thought of the small feathers on her mother’s new hat. Her palm rubbed the broken skin and glided across the bluish streak where the heel of Father’s shoe had landed.

  Jenny lifted her forefinger, caught my eye, and jabbed at the sorest spot.

  I flinched.

  “Must really hurt,” she said. I thought she sounded impressed. Her palm lingered.

  A tap gurgled in the kitchen. I straightened up. The trousers’ rough edges made me flinch again. The tap went silent. I heard the unmistakable sound of the Old One’s feet rushing out of the kitchen. Though my pants were buckled up again and my shirt neatly tucked back in, I felt oddly exposed, as if I were even more naked than before.