All That Matters

by Wayson Choy

  “Who is this?”

  Stepmother said, “Your grandfather.”

  I laughed. Impossible. The full-length portrait showed a wealthy man dressed in a fine robe embroidered with dragons, with carved jade pendants hanging from his neck. He sat posed in front of a carved ebony screen. Even in the black-and-white photo one could see that the panels of painted flying cranes were inlaid with ivory and gold. The elegant long nails on his hands suggested he had never had to work a day in his life.

  “Who is he really?”

  “Look again at the face.”

  The high forehead, the wide nostrils and broad cheeks … the way the hair beneath the mandarin cap seemed to slightly curl … I was looking at Father’s twin. The rich clothing had distracted me.

  “Patriarch Chen,” Poh-Poh said. She leaned back to study my expression. “I was a grown woman in his service when he forced himself on me.” She sensed my disbelief. “Do you understand?”

  Stepmother quietly said, “That was how things were in Old China, Kiam-Kim.”

  “Then Patriarch found Lord Jesus,” Poh-Poh said. “Or Lord Jesus found him.”

  Stepmother tried to help me make sense of things: “Kiam-Kim, how do you think Poh-Poh come to Gold Mountain with you? Old and poor house-servants like her do not leave China.”

  The Old One smiled. “Your father a smarter boy than the Patriarch’s two ox-brained sons. He send your father to school. But the family of Patriarch Chen,” Poh-Poh said, “his two sons and three daughters, his two wives and his concubine, they all hate us, Kiam-Kim. Heart-bitter that slave woman and her bastard son favoured by the Patriarch. They say his new Christian ways make him crazy. They say it is madness to treat a slave and her bastard as if they deserved kindness.”

  Poh-Poh half shut her eyes. Stepmother urged her to rest, but the Old One persisted, the front of her grey gown rising and falling with the effort.

  “And so, when Third Uncle ask for a family, for peace in his own household, Master Chen send us all away to Gold Mountain.”

  The Old One’s tone revealed neither regret nor sorrow, but her voice grew raspy, her energy a low tide slipping away: “Such things I tell … Now, no more talk.”

  The words had been abrupt. The odd silence that followed was unfathomable; secrets were not always necessary to explain. Enough had been said. This much I should know and no more.

  I thought of the tiny shoes that Poh-Poh kept in her trunk that were once worn by my mother. I thought of the Old One as a small woman cornered by Patriarch Chen. The portrait felt heavy. I could not erase Father’s exact features staring back at me. Stepmother gently unclenched my fingers and took the photo from my hand. Someone coughed, hacked, and antiseptic burned my tongue. Poh-Poh, her eyes now completely closed and her cheeks collapsed, looked exhausted but at peace. I knew I was only to listen and not speak; to observe and, somehow, accept.

  I thought how I had never called the Old One anything but Poh-Poh, as if she were my mother’s mother, and not, properly, Nai-Nai, my father’s mother. Years ago, when I asked about this, I was told all the immigration ghost papers, the gai-gee, all those false documents made it so. For me, as a child, to slip up and call the Old One Nai-Nai would have caused the demon customs officers to scrutinize our papers and ship all three of us back to Old China. Documents also made Liang and Sekky, and even Jung-Sum, my blood family. We have lived only as a family, I told myself. How could all this matter?

  Why did I need to know at all?

  Poh-Poh began to breathe with difficulty. I looked at Stepmother to guess her thoughts, but she was busy helping Poh-Poh to lie back down on the cot. I removed the pillow and placed it under the small head. The Old One smiled, contented.

  “Does Father know all this?”

  “Yes,” Stepmother said. “And so does Third Uncle.”

  “Then it doesn’t change anything,” I said. “Nothing has changed.”

  “You know now that your father endured many humiliations in China. That has changed.”

  Something else did, too, but I hadn’t noticed it at the time. My love for each of them deepened and grew. But I was thinking of the Old One when she was a young girl, and I thought of Patriarch Chen and how he must have … I wanted to rip up and burn the photograph. Stepmother saw how my eyes must have turned hard.

  “Poh-Poh has forgiven the Patriarch,” she said. “Everything has turned out for the better.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “You, Kiam-Kim, are here and …”

  “And?”

  “And Poh-Poh told me that you will marry Jenny.”

  A thick knot began to unravel. Its tightness had been there inside my gut ever since that afternoon in the library basement. I thought that time would smooth things over, push away my knowledge of what I had seen, but I knew now that what I had seen beyond those half-closed library doors in those few seconds would be with me forever. Yet Poh-Poh had not only experienced the worst, she had survived, had even forgiven the abuses committed against her, and had taken her life to be her own. The bitterness of the past never left her, but her strength was to see that her survival would mean something more to those she loved than it would mean to her. She had gone further than I thought I ever could, or wanted to. I hadn’t forgiven the two closest friends in my life: I had accommodated them. Instead of resignation, or feeling any sense of weakness, a strange relief came over me. I had been doing my best.

  I sighed.

  Poh-Poh’s eyelids lifted up, and her pupils grew large and bright. Her voice was clear, triumphant, and she stared beyond the grey ceiling of St. Paul’s.

  “Patriarch Chen had only two say-no doi—two dead-brained sons—but I have three grandsons!

  “Have sons, Kiam-Kim,” she said to me. “Have many tiger sons with Jenny.”

  I smiled; then, at her look of joy and irrepressible triumph, I broke into laughter. How was it possible that Poh-Poh could ever leave us?

  The next day, Father came home unexpectedly early. Stepmother met him at the front door and took his hat and coat. They spoke at once in hushed tones. Sekky stood at the top of the stairs, a toy tank in his hand. His mouth dropped open. I ran up to him and picked him up.

  “It had to be,” I told him. “Poh-Poh was very, very tired.”

  Father came upstairs and into the Old One’s room. With Sekky in my arms, we watched father from the doorway. He slipped out from under her bed a large, flat carton, the kind that ceremonial Chinese robes were once packed in. He drew aside the lace curtains in the window and lifted from the box Poh-Poh’s windchime. In the sullen universe of her small room, the glass pieces spun and sang.

  A few weeks later, over cups of tea around the kitchen table, Mrs. Lim pointed out how the white cat had never been seen again.

  “Very powerful curse,” she said. “Very powerful.”

  Father bowed his head. Stepmother said nothing but began to sort out the root vegetables Mrs. Lim had generously brought over from her garden. Yes, she would be very happy to stay for dinner with the family. Stepmother put on a familiar apron. Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed the tattered Kitchen God tacked on the wall above the stove.

  NINE

  ALL THE YEARS THAT FATHER and Poh-Poh lived their lives together in Old China, they had survived through unspeakable hardships and borne the burden of secrets. And when the three of us arrived in Gold Mountain, the two of them lived their lives in front of me as if nothing were out of place. Even when Stepmother came to join us, I grew up protected by the comfort of their silence. Whole families and all of Chinatown grew used to such silences. And when finally it was time to tell me some of the truths from the past, I was ready to listen, ready to accept my share of silence. In all the ways they lived their lives, survivors like Poh-Poh and Stepmother, Third Uncle and Father, and those elders who hacked their breath away, they were all saying, Sail, paddle, swim, but push forward to shore. Do not drown in the past.

  At the Armstrong & Company Funeral Ho
me on Dunlevy, during the Old One’s service, I watched Jenny nod to acknowledge Jack, but when he approached the two of us, she turned her back on him and said something to Mrs. Leong about the beautiful flowers arranged around the casket. When I next had a chance to look for the only blond head in the crowded room, Jack was standing near the far door, offering his handkerchief to Liang and touching Jung-Sum’s arm. Then he jostled through the crowd and disappeared.

  Looking at Jenny with her high cheekbones and wilful eyes, I wanted to have the tiger sons Poh-Poh had urged upon her and me. What I had witnessed in the basement of the Carnegie Library was in the past, and would stay in the past. We would live on. And our mutual silence would comfort not only ourselves but those tiger sons of ours.

  My youngest brother, though, was struggling to put old ghosts to rest.

  “Sekky thinks he sees Poh-Poh,” I explained to Jenny.

  “No one should be surprised,” she said. “I’m not.”

  We were walking home after seeing Rebecca, by coincidence a tale of a haunting, and Jeff and his date had dropped us off a block from Jenny’s place so we could have some time by ourselves. Because of the blackout restrictions, the street lamps were soon to be turned off, but there was little to worry about. A bright harvest moon hung above us. The grey mist skirting Keefer Street and curling away from the Strathcona school buildings made me think of the fog-shrouded Cornish coast and of the haunted characters who could not let go of the dead Rebecca. Like Sekky, haunted by the Old One.

  “Because the Old One promised to come back to him, Sekky’s imagining that he sees her,” I said. “Don’t you think so?”

  There was only the sound of our footsteps slowing down on the pavement. The damp night air tasted of salt.

  Jenny let go of my hand and threaded her arm through mine. It was a comfortable fit.

  “So poor Sekky sees Poh-Poh,” she began again.

  “I don’t mean he actually sees her.”

  “Why not?”

  “Sekky believes that he sees her, but it’s all in his imagination.”

  “Under stress,” Jenny countered, “people see things.”

  I took a deep breath. “I think it’s because Poh-Poh told him too many ghost stories.”

  “And you?”

  “Yes, she passed them along to me, too, except Father taught me to be more sensible about what I heard from her.”

  “Sensible?” said Jenny, as if she didn’t care for my answer.

  “Something the matter with ‘sensible’?”

  “Yes … and no.”

  There was nothing more to say. We were young and slowly pacing our steps, arm in arm, and the moon was bright. She looked splendid in her long red coat. The air was damp, chilly, but we didn’t mind.

  But something sinister stirred to life in me, and I blurted out that Jack and I had bumped into each other in front of our houses that morning and that he and Moira Williams seemed to have moved past any misunderstandings they may have had.

  “Good,” Jenny said too quickly.

  “I’m happy for Jack,” I said. “Moira and he look great together—they make a perfect couple. Can’t you see them married one day?”

  “You’re his best friend,” Jenny said. “You should know.”

  Her grip on my arm tightened. I thought it best to change direction.

  “What should I do about Sekky’s ghost sightings?” I said.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Leave him alone.”

  “You think so?”

  “He needs to work things out his own way. Everyone needs to do that. I bet you’ve already tried to reason with him.”

  I did tell Sekky that I understood how hard it was to miss Poh-Poh so much, and had explained to him, as gently as possible, how there was no scientific evidence for ghosts. Not even for the ghost of Poh-Poh. I described to Jenny how Sekky had sat on his bed, crossed-legged, and listened intently to my every word.

  But the very next day he told me he had seen her again, in the blue jacket we had buried her in, standing by the kitchen stove. Of course, as in any good folk tale, she vanished when he approached her.

  The mist was thickening into layers of lamplit fog.

  “Let Sekky have his way,” Jenny said, taking her keys out. “It won’t last.”

  We had just stopped at the front entrance of the store. I had hoped we would head for the back alcove where we might have lingered a few minutes, as we had done the last few weekends, and we would have kissed, I would have held her against me.

  The door was stuck. I reached out for the handle.

  “Leave Sekky alone,” she went on. “Why do you have to be so sure that reason is always the answer? It isn’t.”

  A nervous laugh escaped from me—a stupid titter that mocked me, not her. Jenny shoved my hand away. Under the light of the street lamp I could see her eyes narrowing. Her nostrils flared.

  “You’re so goddamn sure!”

  The door shut behind her. A Drink Orange Crush sign swung haphazardly in front of my face: CLOSED, PLEASE COME AGAIN.

  Talk of Sekky seeing Poh-Poh must have started the impulse that pushed Jenny away from me. She was, after all, haunted by her own ghost. And I had mentioned her ghost by name, again and again, deliberately.

  On Monday, I approached Jenny at school during our lunch period. Before I could even greet her, she said, “I’m sorry, Kiam. I was rude to leave you like that.”

  “It was pretty damp,” I said, “and cold. I don’t blame you. I wasn’t laughing at you. Just nervous, I guess.”

  “It was cold,” she agreed, “and the movie left me a bit spooked.”

  Like two lost souls on a sinking boat, our words kept paddling towards the safety of some distant, familiar shore.

  “By the way,” Jenny said, as we were getting ready to go off to our separate classes, “your little brother’s situation isn’t one that reason will solve. As my mother says, ‘Ghosts are ghosts. Aaaiiyaah! Doesn’t Kiam-Kim know that simple truth?’ ”

  Jenny left me laughing at the realization that Mrs. Chong, as usual, had had the last word.

  But the two were right about ghosts being ghosts. I could not just reason away Sekky’s sighting of Poh-Poh. And big Mrs. Lim swore she saw Poh-Poh’s ghostly figure in the upstairs window.

  Sitting at his oak desk, Father slapped his newspaper down and complained to Third Uncle that Sekky’s ghost stories were fuelling gossip, tarnishing his reputation in Chinatown.

  “People are saying he must have done something to offend Poh-Poh’s spirit,” Liang had told me, delighted to report to me every detail of a grown-up conversation she had been allowed to overhear.

  “People talk,” Third Uncle said. “What can you do? Sek-Lung and Mrs. Lim, they tell everyone they see the Old One.”

  People in the newsroom said Father must have failed to do the correct filial ceremonies for her. But Father had done as much as he could afford to, with Stepmother’s and Third Uncle’s approval, spending a lot of money on the Old One’s eight-table memorial dinner, on piles of funeral “cash” and on symbolic paper ingots of gold and silver, all to be burned for the Old One’s use in her afterlife, and on her polished coffin.

  “The Old One very stubborn,” Third Uncle commented. “Maybe need something more.”

  And then, as if aware of Father’s loss of face, of the pressures he was creating in our household, Sekky stopped talking about Poh-Poh’s ghost.

  Arrangements had been made to cut down on Stepmother’s sewing shifts so she could watch over Sekky in the daytime. And Jung and Liang each took a turn rushing home from school to be with him when Stepmother left for her shift. I assigned him his take-home school work, telling him that Poh-Poh would have wanted me to check only his best efforts, that she always wanted him to go to school. He agreed, and his work was faithfully done every day, ready for me to check over the pages with him at night. Stepmother took him shopping and visited the mahjong ladies at their houses and Gee Sook at American Cleaners, a
nd he gave her no trouble. His behaviour was as Poh-Poh herself would have wished it to be.

  Of course, when things go too well, the gods strike. Poh-Poh had often have warned us about that.

  It was Christmas Day, and Sekky had not even opened his presents when he confronted Father and Stepmother. He wanted them to take down the picture of the Kitchen God and burn it, as Poh-Poh always did as the New Year approached.

  “We’ll see,” Father said, and afterwards consulted me.

  “What harm will it do?” Stepmother said.

  “We’re not back in Old China,” I protested.

  “Sekky still thinks Poh-Poh is with him,” Stepmother said. “So does Mrs. Lim. She tells the mahjong ladies.”

  What harm could it do to burn a cartoon picture? But still, I felt stuck. I told Father that I agreed with Stepmother. We should burn the picture of the Kitchen God at least, this last time, for the sake of peace in the house.

  During the six days between Christmas and the New Year, Sekky began mumbling about seeing Poh-Poh again. And Liang, who was now staying in the Old One’s bedroom, said she was feeling uneasy—and kept the door open so that Father or Stepmother could check in on the room at all hours. When Father brought his last editorial of the year to his colleagues at the newspaper office, he told them that his youngest was seeing a ghost again. He had hoped his Gold Mountain workmates would enjoy the joke.

  “I wondered,” Grey Head said, with not even a smile crossing his lips, “when you would be ready to hear the truth.”

  The other reporters nodded, as if to agree.

  “Talk to your old mother’s spirit,” Mr. Wen at the Daily Republic told him. “Tell her that you respect her old ways. Then she’ll leave your little boy alone.”

  On New Year’s morning, my head still pounding from celebrations with Jenny and our Chinatown friends the night before, I woke up thinking that the pounding had grown even louder. Then I heard Father run out of his bedroom and Stepmother calling me.

  I struggled out of my tangled sheets, grabbed my kimono and, in spite of my headache, found myself standing at the top of the steps watching pint-sized Sekky dragging and bouncing a big urn down the staircase. It thumped with each step he negotiated. It was the special urn, of porcelain and brass fittings, that Poh-Poh would have had Father or me carry down for her to set on the back porch. I would fill it with some dirt and Poh-Poh would stick in some incense.