All That Matters

by Wayson Choy

  “Yes,” Stepmother said, but her eyes twinkled, “that’s what Father said.”

  Sekky didn’t quite get the point. He sailed his palm in the air. Number One Fighter Pilot. “When can I go?”

  “Not yet,” I said. He bit his lip. “We go together when you are as tall as I am. How’s that?”

  “A pilot, Dai-goh!”

  I had told him the story of Robert Shun Wong, who had hand-built his own single-seat Pietenpol airplane in his family’s upstairs apartment overlooking Market Alley. Three years ago he had gone east to sign up with a flight school. Maybe he was in the sky now, flying over Nazi territory. Sekky said he was going to build an even bigger plane. Our house, he insisted, had to be bigger than any apartment in Market Alley.

  “Can we both be pilots and fly over the Burma Road?”

  “If we win this war,” Father said, “anyone here can be anything they want.”

  “End of school next year,” Stepmother broke in. “What do you want to be, Jenny?”

  “I think I want to be with Kiam-Kim,” she said, breaking into a giggle. “Would you mind?”

  Liang gave me a quick look. I winked at her.

  “Sure,” I said. “We’ll make it official.”

  “Yes, yes—when?” Poh-Poh said, coughing a little but joining in the laughter with everyone else, except Sekky, who looked up scornfully, annoyed that he might have to give up his co-pilot.

  Liang reached for some soup and pointed out that Jenny’s lace blouse was tied at the collar with a pink ribbon, just like her own.

  “We’re in style,” Jenny said. “We girls know how to dress.”

  Liang beamed. Hers was actually an old blouse from the Mission House Bazaar that Poh-Poh had altered. Father said the two of them looked liked sisters. Of course, Liang looked little like Jenny. My sister had Father’s round face, Poh-Poh’s small eyes. But her lips were like Jenny’s: perfect.

  When I turned to give Jenny a choice piece of chicken, I saw that she had a profile like Kwan Ying, the Goddess of Mercy. Like the familiar statue sitting on Stepmother’s dresser, Jenny was actually beautiful. The food was exceptional that night: the dining table was rich with savoury dishes.

  “Maybe Ben talked to you about this already,” Father said to Jenny, and he explained that the Chinatown boys, supported by men like Jenny’s father, were holding meetings to encourage others to enlist.

  “What for you fight a white man’s war?” some of the elders challenged the younger men. The old men reminded everyone not to forget the 1911 demonstrations along Hastings against the Chinese vegetable sellers. Then there was the famous strike by the white waitresses after the city council said it would not permit them to work in Chinese-owned restaurants. Any restaurant owner would be fined and lose his licence if he hired a white woman.

  “And what about the goddamn city council?” demanded someone else. “They pass a motion to tell Ottawa not to offer the vote to Orientals. We fight. We die for nothing!”

  I thought of the boy-soldier who knelt on the ground with his hands tied, waiting for the executioner’s sword, the torn flaps of his jacket lifting in the wind like broken wings.

  “Go back to China,” the elders said to the Canadaborns who wanted to join the Canadian forces. “Fight for China. You Chinese! Look in the mirror!”

  Father sniffed. “What’s that smell?” A sudden taint of chemicals had fumed the dining-room air.

  “It’s”—and with seven-year-old dramatics, holding his nose and covering his mouth, Sekky squealed “—yes … eww … it’s a fart!”

  “False Creek,” I said. “The wind must have shifted.”

  As if to listen for the changing current, everyone grew silent: a slight popping and a rattling-tin sound came from the back of the house.

  “Go check, Kiam-Kim,” Stepmother said. “Sit down, Sekky.”

  I got up and shut the small window by Father’s desk and went to the kitchen to make sure everything was shut there, too. The back door was open. Through the screen, I could see Jack holding a pellet rifle, aiming at a row of tin cans set up in front of their shed. The tins went flying, one after another. With beer in hand, Mr. O’Connor stood on their back porch watching quietly.

  Jack had joined the Rifle Club at King Ed. As he reset the cans on his makeshift platform—two old saw-horses with a pair of flashlights tied from the shed to shine down on them—I wondered about his father, standing stock-still. Mr. O’Connor had spent two years in the Great War, but it was a war he spoke very little about. When I switched on the dangling porch light, his shadow quivered in the bluish dusk.

  I called out to Jack, asked him what he was doing later that evening. As he turned, his blond hair danced against the growing dark of the yard. I thought, What an easy target.

  “Have a date with Moira,” he called back, holding his gun as though he were Hemingway. Then he whipped himself around, and the final tin bolted into the air.

  I realized that the sulphurous smell of gunpowder could not have come from Jack’s target practice alone. It was definitely blowing in from False Creek. The huge refineries there had been cooking up new chemicals for the military. Bright yellow warning signs were now posted on chain-link gates under the Georgia Viaduct: DANGER—NO ENTRY. Armed guards kept watch in one-man booths. The Province and the News-Herald had reported that some Victory Gardens in backyards a few blocks away from the viaduct underpass grew thick vines that suddenly withered and died. The day before, a brownish fog had saturated the area. People still complained of brown spots ruining their clothes and bedsheets. Gasping lungs and short breath marked lives lodged too near the viaduct. The summer breeze smelled of deadly secrets.

  When I returned to the table, Father was still talking.

  “Maybe,” he was saying, “even go back to China to fight.”

  “Aaaiiyaah! More fighting!” said Poh-Poh, raising her eyebrows. “Everyone die.”

  Jenny started to protest but caught my look. Playing host, I lifted some snow peas onto her plate. Poh-Poh coughed again. With concern creasing his brow, Father asked the Old One, “Did you take your medicine?”

  Poh-Poh nodded—Of course! Of course!—but Father exchanged doubtful looks with Stepmother and me. The rest of us kept quiet while Poh-Poh went on about the dire news arriving every day from all fronts.

  The war news had been so discouraging, old village people like Poh-Poh became the lao naauh, the Old Scold, to heckle and mock away the curse of bad news. In threatening times, the elderly of Chinatown would blurt out the worst thing they feared could ever happen—All soon die in China! All die!—then a lightning-swift smirk would cross their lips. To be sure to disarm ill fortune, they shouted out the worst.

  “I join! I go fight!” Sekky’s palm sliced into the air like a bomber, skimming over Jenny’s soup bowl.

  Poh-Poh knuckled him. “You dead boy!”

  “I fight!” said Jung and threw some shadow-box punches in the air to exasperate Poh-Poh, who couldn’t reach him with her knuckle.

  At the Hastings Gym, the trainer, Max, had been teaching Second Brother how to box like Joe Louis, how to fake a left and deliver a smashing right hook. For a few nights, Poh-Poh insisted on dabbing her special lotion on Jung’s bruised knuckles. “Dr. Chu chop them off!” she threatened, looking up at the fierce Kitchen God. That weekend, the Old One served a steaming dish of knuckle-like oxtails to strengthen the joints of her pugnacious grandson.

  My two brothers were no different from all the other Chinatown kids who knew nothing of politics but played at war with a fierce and dedicated craving. MacLean Park was crowded with boys of all ages shooting at each other with toy weapons, the older ones rumbling in jerry-built tanks nailed together out of wooden crates and cardboard flaps. Boys like Sekky even wore war-surplus goggles and dented helmets, ran amok with tin-pressed planes held high in the air ready to drop their bombs. His lungs were getting stronger, and his roaring about was proof enough of that. He had taken his medication, rested when
any of us told him to; he swore to Father he would become a pilot and go “kill the Japs to death.”

  “Dai-goh,” Liang began, picking up a piece of bok choy, “what’re you going to do if the Japs invade B.C.? Are you going to join up?”

  “Of course he is,” said Sekky, rolling his eyes. “Jung and me, too!”

  “For sure Dai-goh will fight,” Father said. “We all fight.”

  “Eat more,” Poh-Poh said to Jenny. “Kiam-Kim, fill her soup bowl.”

  Stepmother said she had heard that some Canadaborns had been applying for permission to join the American armed forces.

  “Yes,” Jenny joined in. “That’s what Frank Yuen plans to do.”

  Frank had been discouraged from volunteering with the Canadian army at Little Mountain headquarters; others, too, like Allan Wong, were told by the Naval Office that if they insisted on signing up, they would be assigned only a shore job like cook’s assistant. Others were told they would be given orders to dress fresh meat to be flash-frozen and loaded onto ships direct from the slaughterhouse. “Lots of guts,” Allan told a bunch of us at the Blue Eagle, “but no glory.”

  Father said the three Chinese-language papers had already reported on those frustrated attempts to enlist. The Chinese New Republic headlined the story, “UNWANTED CHINESE GHOSTS,” and the reporter wrote, “The loyal gentlemen of B.C. Chinatowns are as undesirable as the dead if they want to fight for this country.”

  “For now,” Father confirmed, “Ottawa say no Chinese.”

  “But if there be more bad news,” said Poh-Poh, “they take even me. And I bring my chopper! Chop Japs to death!”

  Everyone laughed at the thought of the Old One in a helmet, swinging at the hapless enemy. Sekky clapped his hands. “Kill them all, Poh-Poh!” Father lifted his chopsticks and awarded Poh-Poh the prized chicken head.

  Gradually, as we feasted on delicious meats and greens and contentedly swallowed clear broth, we spoke of other things besides the war. Jenny gossiped with my sister about movie stars, told her how she could pin her hair back like Ginger Rogers so it wouldn’t fly into her eyes when she tap danced. I admired the way Jenny raised her smooth, bare arms, her fingers pointing at her head to show Liang where hairpins might go.

  Jung-Sum finished his third bowl of rice and started telling Sekky about the last matinee he had seen at the Rex, Stagecoach. “John Wayne fights these bad guys, and the horses …”

  But I noticed Poh-Poh was paying no attention to the chatter around her. I thought she had raised her hand to stop herself from coughing again; instead, she held her palm halfway between the table and her mouth. She stared past the table, right over me, as if someone, or something were standing directly behind my chair. I deliberately moved my head to distract her, but her dark pupils stared, unmoving. Perhaps she was seeing ghosts, as she sometimes confided to Mrs. Lim and Stepmother that she had. Poh-Poh dropped her hand and nodded, just slightly, as if whoever was standing behind me were demanding her attention.

  The Old One’s chopsticks slipped from her fingers and clattered onto her plate.

  “Ma-mah!” Father said. “Are you all right?”

  Everyone stopped talking.

  Stepmother took the Old One’s hand.

  “You’re shaking, Poh-Poh,” she said. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  Grandmother snatched her hand away. “Just thinking,” she snapped. “Thinking Old China times.”

  I looked behind me. There was nothing there, of course. Nothing but the small, shut window and the wall. And Father’s oak desk. Sekky sat up and looked, too.

  “I know, Dai-goh,” he said. He panicked. “Don’t look there!”

  All at once, Sekky threw his head back and fell into a choking fit; his heavy rasping made him clutch at his throat.

  Stepmother rushed to the pantry to get the breathing salts. Father ran around the table and began pushing with both palms on Sekky’s chest while Liang held the back of Sekky’s head.

  “We know what to do,” I assured Jenny. “Just sit quietly.” I rushed to the kitchen and grabbed a towel in case he threw up.

  But Poh-Poh did nothing. She was usually the first to be with Sekky, slapping his wrists and pinching his pale cheeks between her thumb and forefinger. This time she stayed in her chair, still staring straight ahead. Jenny followed the Old One’s eyes. Jung looked, too. Behind my chair. Between the window and Father’s desk. Stepmother and Liang looked.

  Nothing there.

  I looked again.

  Nothing.

  “No, no … not yet,” Poh-Poh said quietly. “Not yet.”

  Her old head dipped slightly; she shook herself. A moment went by. She smiled down at Sekky.

  “You be all right, Sek-Lung,” she said. “You live long time.”

  Father stopped pushing. Sekky was breathing regularly again. Stepmother had just unscrewed the smelling salts. “Not needed,” said Father.

  A sharp tap of a soup spoon made us all look at Poh-Poh. She sat firmly in her chair, her authority in full force.

  “Everybody go back to eat,” she said, as if nothing had happened. Her old eyes surveyed the table. “Give your guest more chicken, Kiam-Kim. What’s wrong with you? The Chongs will think we have mo li.”

  I put the towel over the back of my chair, sat down, and picked up a piece of bok choy for Jenny. Stepmother and Father, too, sat down. Poh-Poh and Sekky were already eating away, Sekky lifting his bowl of soup, the Old One choosing a piece of pork from the hot sauce. Father gave each of us a quick glance: Eat. Everything be fine now.

  Jenny nudged me under the table. I took her hand and squeezed it.

  Sekky said, “When the team of horses broke away, what did the cowboy do?”

  Second Brother took a deep breath. “He held on to their reins and was yanked into the air …”

  Jenny fell into step and started telling Liang where she had purchased her blouse. The room happily buzzed with our voices. I asked Poh-Poh if I should put the water on for after-dinner tea.

  “No,” she said. “You and Jen-Jen study first, then you take her home. I make tea for everyone.”

  I felt a sudden chill. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Perhaps the wind had shifted again. It shook the small window behind me.

  “So drafty these days!” Stepmother said. She had goosebumps on her arms.

  “Why not?” said Poh-Poh. “Soon be winter.”

  Much later, when I was alone with Father at his desk, he assured me, “Only a draft, Kiam. I felt it, too. Vancouver is not a village in Old China.”

  After dinner, I set up the card table in the parlour. Jenny opened up the math book, and I tossed down some loose-leaf pages and two pencils. Father called to me from his desk in the corner of the dining room that he had the title for the new editorial, “Gold Mountain Says No Chinese Soldiers Wanted.”

  Poh-Poh shouted out from the crowded kitchen, “Write down, ‘No one fight, no one die. Everyone fight, then everyone die!’ ”

  “No, no, not everyone,” Stepmother protested. Dishes were being stacked. “Not everyone dies.”

  The Old One’s voice lost its timbre, and she shrieked above the noise of the kitchen: “Yes! Oh, yes! Very soon! I to die! Very soon!”

  Everyone in the kitchen stopped what they were doing. Jenny held her pencil in the air. The house was still. How did we all know—for even Sekky had stopped playing—that this time the Old One’s words were not merely lao naauh?

  I could hear Stepmother speaking a few words, gently, sweetly. But Poh-Poh answered very clearly: “Gai-mou, you know as I know what the Great Buddha himself say: ‘The only cure for old age … is to die.’ ”

  Poh-Poh broke into laughter; her sharp cooking tools clattered into the sink to be washed.

  “She will die, you know,” whispered Jenny. “At dinner tonight, I think she was having a stroke or something. She’s in her eighties, isn’t she?”

  I could hear Father returning to work at his desk. Jenny took my hand.
We heard him crying.

  The noise of cleaning up filled the kitchen again, and we heard Poh-Poh begin a nursery song. Someone turned on the faucet, and the voices of Sekky and Liang and Jung joined the din of dishes and pots being shuffled along the metal trough of the old sink.

  Sekky came out to the parlour to say that tea would be ready after everything was finished in the kitchen. “Poh-Poh says so.”

  “How long?” I asked.

  He looked at Jenny. “Whenever your pretty girlfriend wants it.”

  Jenny smiled. “How about in an hour?” she asked. “Will that be okay?”

  “Okay,” he answered. “Do you want the English or Chinese kind?”

  Jenny pretended to mull this over. I could see she was checking Sekky out.

  “Chinese would be nice.”

  “Okay,” he said, “but I’ll check with Father. He gets first choice.”

  “That puts me in my place,” said Jenny after Sekky dashed away. “But ‘they also serve who also’—how does that go?”

  “ ‘Who only stand and wait.’ ”

  Jenny and I finished the math in just under an hour. She hadn’t done badly. But she could sense my brain was now buzzing with other thoughts.

  “What will you do if they start needing Chinese boys? Will you join up?

  “I guess. But I need to know if we’ll always be Resident Aliens.”

  Poh-Poh moseyed into the parlour. She looked the same as ever.

  “Oolong tea now being served,” she said.

  Oolong tea was saved for only special occasions, since there was hardly any left in Chinatown because of the war. She wiped her hands on her untied apron and proposed the impossible to Jenny.

  “If he fight,” said Poh-Poh, “Kiam-Kim go back to China with me!”

  “Better to be with Jenny,” I said and made an Eddie Cantor wild-eyed face.

  Poh-Poh fanned her apron in the air. “Too much hot air in here. You two finish tea outside.”

  Liang and Sekky wanted to go outside with us, but the Old One shushed them. “We keep Gai-mou good company. She show you how to knit. After that, I tell you all ghost story.”