The Jade Peony

by Wayson Choy

  “How long his penis, you think?”

  “Like my old man’s—long enough to have babies—”

  “—and too damn short to have fun!”

  Everyone laughed. The ivory pieces clacked back and forth.

  “Perhaps a hairy ape back in the Old China village frightened his mother.”

  Cards were discarded. I imagined a hairy ape, gorilla-size, chasing Wong Suk’s poor mother.

  “Ahhh, perhaps she fell in love with a monkey!”

  Someone discarded her last pieces. Someone swore. Then the ivory pieces clacked again.

  “How you think monkeys do it?”

  “Men and monkeys, do-do, do-do, all the same!”

  Do-do what, I puzzled.

  The women’s voices pitched higher between the smacking of the game pieces, then settled like musical notes. Tea was being poured.

  “I hear Mau-lauh Bak’s family was eating live monkey brain... you know how they carve that stuff out, with razor-sharp spoons, and—”

  “—they forgot to blindfold the creature!”

  “Yes, yes, the expectant mother walks by and—”

  “—aaiiiiyahhh—”

  “—the Demon-Monkey threw a curse on the unborn baby, just like that. The poor mother grips her opening, she feels wetness and pain, she gives birth—a monkey boy with a monkey face!”

  I was proud of Wong Suk. Not even Rosie Chung’s one-eyed, monster-faced uncle, Chung-Guun, drew so much attention. Chung-Guun’s face had been divided by a thrown axe after a card-cheating episode in a fish cannery up the B.C. coast near Bella Bella. To cheat at cards and get caught—what did Chung-Guun expect? Luckily for him the axe only sliced his face open. In Chinatown, as in Old China, so many men walked about with scarred faces and limbs. Who did not have a tale to tell?

  THE LONG AWAITED mill whistle blasted into the air. Noon, it said. Countless birds flew up from the giant Douglas fir across the street and noisily resettled. The porch step I was sitting on felt hard. The plate of food sat heavy on my lap. Should I wind up the RCA gramophone? Why was Wong Suk more than an hour late?

  If I had been allowed to stay to listen to more of their talk last Saturday, Grandmother would not be holding her hint of mystery over my head: “Paper, paper, paper”... so what if there was? If only I had stayed longer, I might have found out something. Tell her, Wong Suk had urged. And Father could not.

  Today he had promised to see me decorated in his gift of red ribbons, the ones Grandmother this very morning tied into pom-poms on my tap-shoes. Today I was dancing my new Short’nin’ Bread tap-steps for him. Then we were going to line up at the Lux, stay twice to see the newsreels. “You’ll see the Japanese bombing Shanghai,” First Brother Kiam had told us at dinner. “You’ll see bodies everywhere. There’s a baby crying by the railway tracks, his mother dead beside him.” I imagined the bodies scattered all over. But we’re safe in Canada, I thought.

  Suddenly, I was aware of Grandmother behind me, watching me. I hated being watched as much as I hated waiting. I took a big bite of bread and picked up a piece of sausage and started chewing.

  “Swallow first,” Poh-Poh said. “Eat slow like lady.”

  She stepped back into the house. I heard her picking up my sickly baby brother and lifting him up so he could giggle for her. He could never get enough attention. I think she wished I was one of those rich children she had to serve when she was a young girl back in Old China. They daintily chewed their food while she stood by in silence and wiped their heart-shaped lips with silk napkins. It was one of the rare stories I heard being told between Wong Suk and Grandmother of their time in Old China.

  Wong Suk and Grandmother remembered how they first met, in one of the kitchens of the rich families: how they would talk in their clan dialect or switch to their secret slave dialect; how they would meet at the marketplace and trade secrets and laugh at their household masters and mistresses. And how they, this monkey-boy and defiant girl, once showed their whip scars to each other, shared healing balms and kind words, and wished their lives would end. Stepmother told me that as children they had been sold to rich merchant families as their house servants.

  Grandmother stepped back onto the porch carrying Sekky. He was more weak than strong, which made Poh-Poh spoil him even more. I bet no one carried me around like that when I was three, except to pass me along to someone else. When I was six, Grandmother already had me folding diapers for Sekky, and when I cried, I cried on my own.

  “POH-POH,” I begged, “why is Wong Suk so late today?”

  “He come now,” she said. “He tell you.”

  I stood up, looked in the direction she pointed. There came towards me the familiar bamboo canes tap-tap-tapping on the sidewalk. Wong Suk, with the help of his two walking canes, push-pulled himself up the stairs to our house. His dark cloak caught a gust of wind, opened wide and partially blocked my view; then, coming up behind him, I saw Father carrying two suitcases, one larger than the other. Seeing Monkey Man, Sekky burrowed his face into Poh-Poh’s shoulders. He was always shy around Wong Suk, afraid of his monkey face and roaring laugh.

  The old man reached our porch landing, breathless. Our porch steps were nothing to him. He had climbed the Rockies, decades before I was born, and seen others, like him, climb up the steepest mountain slopes, then come skidding down, legs and arms flying, to escape dynamite blasts, rockfalls.

  Wong Suk leaned his two canes against the porch pillar and limbered down beside me. Before I could ask about the two suitcases, everyone and everything—Father, the suitcases, Grandmother and Sekky, the plate of food on my lap—all disappeared into the house, leaving Wong Suk and me abruptly alone. And that was a sign, too. Wong Suk sat on his cloak, which neatly cushioned under him; he moved closer beside me and touched my ringlets and smiled how pretty I looked.

  “Poh-Poh tell you?” he asked, in Toisanese.

  “Tell me what?”

  “About the bones—the bone shipment.”

  I was puzzled. I wanted to hear him speak Chinglish—the mix of Chinese and English we threw together for our own secret talks. I used Chinglish to tell him all the movie stories we ever saw, about Tarzan and Shirley Temple, about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, about Robin Hood and how he, Wong Suk, my Best Friend, was like the bandit-prince and how I was his bandit-princess. What did bones have to do with us? I remembered Father carrying in the two suitcases, one larger than the other. Suitcases meant hello or farewell. My stomach tightened. The chicken feet may have been too rich; the bread, too coarse. I waited for our Chinglish conversation.

  Wong Suk talked instead only in Sze-yup. He said, “You listen to me, Jook-Liang, I tell you about the bone shipment.”

  He took my hand in his. I thought that meant I should stand up. I wanted to spread out his cloak, hang it up as we always did for our stage curtain. I wanted to do my Shirley Temple dance and shake my ringlets. I wanted to sing and watch the pom-poms on my tap-shoes catch his eyes. However, he didn’t let my hand go. I didn’t move. He did not notice anything I had on, not even the taffeta dress, not even the ribboned shoes; he only looked at my face, intensely, with unfamiliar wetness in his eyes, as if he were trying to memorize forever my half-opened mouth, my wide-apart eyes, my ringlets. This is the Monkey King, I thought, as if I were five years old again, deeply enchanted. I gave him all of my attention, so that even the wind and the birds grew soundless to me, everything went quiet, except for his voice.

  “I’m going on the Empress steamship this afternoon,” I heard him say. “I’m going back to China with the bone shipment.”

  “But we’re going to the Lux today,” I said, “to see the cartoons and the news about China. Kiam said they bombed Shanghai.”

  I pulled away from him.

  “And you’re late,” I said.

  “The bone shipment,” Wong Suk kept on, “that’s all the bones of the dead Chinese, the Chinese who died in Gold Mountain. The bones come from all over B.C. I’m going back with the sh
ipment to Hong Kong first, then to Mainland China, then back to my—”

  The old man could see I was not listening to him properly, but he kept talking.

  “Two thousand pounds of bones going home to China. Liang-Liang, isn’t that wonderful?”

  In my mind, I saw a pile of bones, a mountain of dead people’s bones: it was horrible. Like all the dead people lying about the railroad in Shanghai.

  “Stupid bones!” I said. “You promised me we would go to the movies today. Father gave you big money last week. We could go to movies for years and years.”

  I got up, had to, and reached through the open parlour window and churned the handle of the second-hand RCA gramophone. I lifted the needle arm and put it down gently. No matter how carefully I put it down, the needle bounced, then threw itself back-forth, back-forth, making a sound like a heartbeat, before it would at last snap-skip into play. A Negro voice sang out. Mama’s little baby loves... Banjoes and drums jangled in light-hearted unison. I danced.

  The sky was blue and the air smelled of fresh wet leaves. I danced away with eight-year-old thoughts of stardom and the miracle of Wong Suk, my Best Friend, travelling to Hollywood with me. Then, the music over, the needle went back-forth, back-forth, until I shut it off. I sat down again.

  “Just likee moo-vee star,” Wong Suk said, at last, in Chinglish.

  I did not respond.

  Wong Suk nudged me, “What thinking, Liang?”

  Neither of us said any more. Father came out and told Wong Suk his lunch was ready. He should eat something before he sailed; it was a long way to China. The old man leaned on his two canes, hauled himself up, and push-pulled into the house, his cloak swinging. I felt Father touch my shoulder.

  “Come in and finish your lunch,” he said. “You can sit beside Wong Suk.”

  I didn’t move.

  “Kiam and Jung will be home soon. Later, Stepmother will be arriving in a taxi to take Wong Suk and all of us to the docks.”

  I wished everyone would go away and stay away.

  Even Wong Suk.

  Even me.

  I stepped back from Father, felt sweat on my head. The large tree across the road seemed to bend. It was very hot. Father looked at me, touched my forehead like he would baby Sekky.

  “All right,” Father said. “You stay here if you want.”

  I sat down on the porch. Time went by, a minute, an hour. Jung and Kiam walked up the stairs, looked at me, said nothing, and then stepped into the house. My mind seemed to go blank. A horn honked. It was Tom’s Taxi. Stepmother waved for me to come down the porch steps. I helped her carry some boxes into our house; they were belongings to be shipped back later to China when Wong Suk sent for them. Then everyone put on jackets because Father said the docks would be windy and chilly.

  “I’m too hot,” I said, and shrugged off the jacket First Brother Kiam attempted to put over me. No one insisted.

  We stepped out of the house and started towards the taxi. Stepmother got in first.

  “Come on,” she said to me. “Get in.”

  I did. My white taffeta dress made crinkling noises.

  Wong Suk came in beside me, clutching his two canes, while the taxi driver and Father put the suitcases in the trunk of the car. I felt the deep warmth of his cloak and moved away. Kiam climbed into the front; Jung sat giggling on First Brother’s lap. Then Father stepped in beside Wong Suk and I was put on Stepmother’s lap. As the taxi backed up to make a U-turn, I could see, on the porch landing, Poh-Poh with Sekky squirming in her arms; Grandmother looked at us without a word.

  The taxi went smoothly forward, down our street, down streets soon unfamiliar to me. In no time we were driving past the docks, past huge ships bobbing like monsters. Tall cranes lifted up crates and steel pipes hung dangling in the air, clanging against each other. The air tasted salty. Thousands of gulls rose into the sky and dove down into the waters to feed on floating debris.

  We all got out of the taxi, stepped onto the pier, and felt it move with the waves breaking beneath on the pilings. Here, I thought, the Sea Dragon lives. My tap-shoes were noiseless against the cry of the gulls and the clamour of the waters slapping against the dock. Stepmother and Father helped Wong Suk out of the taxi. Brothers Kiam and Jung took the pieces of luggage out of the trunk and led the way towards large wooden gates and a sign that said: ALL VISITORS STOP HERE: CUSTOMS.

  We were not allowed to go past the customs landing and departure gates. Everyone started to say goodbye. The dock felt unsteady under my feet; everything smelled like iodine and salt and the sky was bright with light. Father gave a man in a uniform some money to carry Wong Suk’s luggage past the gates. I could only look about me, robbed of speech, spellbound. I remember Father lifting me up a little to kiss Wong Suk on his cheek; he seemed unable to kiss me back. His cheek, I remember, had the look of wrinkled documents. He looked secretive, like Poh-Poh, saying nothing. I felt his hand rest a moment on my curls, then a crowd of people began to push by us.

  “Hurry,” Father said, gently lifting the old man’s hand from my head.

  Wong Suk shook his shoulders so that his cape opened up; he shifted on his two bamboo canes, push-pulled, push-pulled away from us, but against the noise of the docks and the chaotic loading of baggage on huge carts, I could not hear the familiar tapping of his two canes. People stepped aside, made room for him; they openly stared, pointed, shook their heads. Wong Suk never looked at them, and he never looked back. The hump of his back animated his cloak. The sea-salt wind lifted up its mended edges. Fighting the wind, Wong Suk’s cloak began to flow away from him. The cape continued to move, as if in slow motion, to unfurl. Farewell, chak neuih, I thought it said, Farewell, my bandit-princess. I waved frantically back.

  Father lifted me up. Higher and higher.

  It was not a dream.

  Higher and higher, Father lifted me.

  The ship blasted its horn, a short, sharp shriek, like the sound I imagine an eagle might have made. The crowd closed in. There was nothing more to see: Monkey Man had gone into the Customs House with all the other passengers. At the other end of that huge dockside warehouse, Father explained, Wong Suk would make his way up a plank stairway and board the Empress of Russia. Against the afternoon light, I strained my eyes to catch a glimpse of Wong Suk. An English woman pointed at me and said to Stepmother, “What a pretty dress.”

  Father put me down on the ground.

  I forgot I still had on my taffeta dress; I forgot to ask Wong Suk how he liked the way the dress danced when I danced. I forgot to cry and shout his name and urge him: Turn around! Come back! Come back! We stood with others on our side of the gates, watching. Someone put a thick sweater over me. I think we waited a long while. First Brother said, “Let’s go.” But Father said, “No, not yet, not until Liang wants to leave.”

  The Empress’s whistle gave a loud, long, last cry, sent seabirds soaring into manic flight; the giant engines roared, churned up colliding waves; the dock shook. The ship began to pull away. I think I saw Wong Suk on the distant deck of the ship. Then, as in a dream, I was standing beside Wong Suk, felt his cloak folding around me under the late afternoon sky. We were travelling together, as we had promised each other in so many of my games. I wondered how he felt, unbending his neck against the stinging homeward wind.

  What wealth should a bandit-prince give his princess? Wong Suk once had asked me, as I turned and turned and his cloak enfolded me, with its dark, imperial wings. And I answered greedily, too quickly, my childish fingers grasping imaginary gold coins, slipping over pearls large enough to choke a dragon, gripping rubies the colour of fire... everything... for I did not, then, in the days of our royal friendship, understand how bones must come to rest where they most belong.

  Dear Wong Suk, I never to forget you.

  four

  BEFORE I DISCOVERED IT, the hissing lao kwei had been in our outbuilding for seven days. But no one had thought to tell me about it.

  When Dai Kew got off hi
s kitchen-galley duty on the Princess ship and arrived with the wooden crate at our house, I was asleep. It was 2 A.M. As he always did, Dai Kew brought us tins of tea biscuits, crusty bread rolls, tiny soaps with the letters CPR carved in them, and other sundries or gifts, all generously pulled out from two duffle bags. Dai Kew called this loot “my salary bonus.” Then he would rush off to go gambling in a smoky Chinatown bachelor-club, with its all-night kitchen and fast night company. The men of Chinatown, who were lucky to be hired on, worked for weeks or months in the hellhole kitchens of the steamship lines, touring the B.C. coast from Seattle and Vancouver to Alaska.

  We might see Dai Kew again in two days, two weeks, or two months—depending on his Chinatown winnings or, more often than not, on his losses. Dai Kew always looked for omens directing his luck. One day, a stevedore, as a joke, put a turtle in Dai Kew’s locker, and that very afternoon, in a crapshoot on the docks, Dai Kew won over a hundred dollars and escaped with only a bruised eye. He kept the turtle with him for two years, moving from ship to ship, until one day he was caught feeding it soft-boiled eggs.

  And so the turtle, the lao kwei, arrived in a crate at our house. Father helped Dai Kew to lift the crate and put it down in a corner of our garage-sized woodshed.

  Then it finally became my turn to bring in, for our hungry stove, buckets of sawdust and armloads of wood. All the old men who visited our house considered me weak and spoiled. They were from Old China, after all, remembering the calluses already forming on their own hands at five and six and seven. And here I was, ten years old, with hands like silk.

  “No work, no will,” some of the bachelor-men warned my father, waving old sinewed hands with missing fingers and bent joints.