She stared hard when the taxi drove past Robinson Road, where the Japanese sentry post had stood. “Right there,” she whispered to herself. All that remained now was the small, square concrete foundation, all of the wood having been stripped for fuel. Joan shuddered, remembering the fear she’d felt during the occupation every time she passed a checkpoint. Her stomach tightened. As the taxi sped away, she couldn’t help turning back to make sure it was really gone.
At times, the blackness of night still haunted her with vivid nightmares of the Japanese soldier’s clammy touch. She’d thought of it less and less during the past year, but occasionally she could still feel him grab her arms, push her back against the wall, and begin to claw at her clothes. It was something she had not been able to tell anybody, especially not her sister. Joan remembered Emma’s face that night, wide-eyed and glassy with fear, her anxious questions floating through the dark damp of the room.
Joan didn’t know what she would have done if she hadn’t left so soon for Macao and learned to cook. It was almost as if Foon had read her mind and thrown her the one lifeline she had to offer—her cooking skills. Keeping her mind and hands busy, Joan slowly began to heal. Each dish she learned to prepare became a journey she needed to complete. When one was accomplished, Foon would have another dish for her to tackle—sliced pork with pickled vegetables, beef with lotus roots, steamed bok choy with oyster sauce. Sometimes the steam made Joan’s eyes water, until tears rolled down her cheeks and salted the chicken or soup she prepared. It was the only time she allowed herself to cry.
Occasionally, Joan still stole into the kitchen to help Foon stuff a bitter melon or cook a soy sauce chicken, but it wasn’t something Mah-mee ever liked her to do. “It’s a servant’s job,” her mother said, though Joan couldn’t see much difference between cooking and having had to collect money.
The taxi turned onto Queen’s Road. Joan checked her watch. She felt a burning sensation in her stomach, but swallowed the sour taste that had risen to her mouth. It was just before two o’clock. First, she had to meet her date in front of the Gloucester Hotel—another blind date, set up by a friend whose brother had returned from studying in England. If they didn’t waste too much time with small talk, they might still be able to catch the matinee showing of Double Indemnity, with Barbara Stanwyck, at the King’s Theatre. Afterward, she planned to politely excuse herself and walk over to pick up Emma at her piano lesson. Then they could go on for tea and still have time to do some shopping.
Joan stared out the taxi window, still surprised that in less than eight months the British government was fully restored, and the streets were again bursting with people and automobiles. A new sense of enterprise filled the air, which she knew Ba ba was determined to share in. Mah-mee had quickly reestablished ties with all their old family friends, while Ba ba hoped for a thriving business again, this time, he said, dealing with Koreans and Vietnamese who had made their way to Hong Kong after the war.
Best of all, Hong Kong was again filled with merchandise. Every day, shipments of goods poured in from all over the world. From the Lane Crawford department store in Central to the shops and vendors of Lee Yuen East and West Streets, Joan loved the bustling street crowds and vendors who sold everything from blankets to perfume. Voices rang out in high, whining cries: “Stockin’s! Ceegarettes!” It was hard to believe that just a few years earlier, during the occupation, an old wool blanket was worth ten times the most expensive bottle of Chanel No. 5. Now, women and men alike bargained at stalls for the abundance of goods that changed hands daily.
It was like magic to Joan, who loved shopping, almost as much as going to the movies. Ever since her bill-collecting days, she’d felt a kind of hunger, as if the less money she had, the more she wanted to spend.
Just after they had returned from Macao, Joan discovered a small shop in Central that carried nothing but “sample” shoes at such good prices she went to Auntie Go to borrow money.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime sale,” Joan pleaded, standing in the middle of Auntie Go’s almost empty flat. The Japanese had taken everything not nailed down, and then some. Auntie Go was so busy getting her knitting factory going again, she had neglected to refurnish her flat.
“Do those shoes mean that much to you?” Auntie Go asked.
“Yes.” Joan knew it was ridiculous, but she couldn’t help herself. “I can’t tell you why, but they do.”
Auntie Go watched Joan for a long time, then sighed and relented. “Spend it wisely, and don’t tell your mah-mee.”
Joan bought fourteen pairs. They ranged from flats to heels, in leather and patent leather, with straps and buckles, in an array of colors. That night Joan went home and gave four pairs to Emma.
“Where did you get them?” Emma said, beaming.
“From a shop in the Prince Building. I borrowed the money from Auntie Go.”
“That means she’ll never see it again.” Emma laughed and flopped down on Joan’s bed.
“But look what I’ve bought you.” Joan handed Emma one of the boxes.
Downstairs from the courtyard, the servants’ voices floated through the window like a high, whining song. A feeling of closeness and contentment, like a childhood secret, spread through Joan as she watched Emma happily try on pair after pair, then place them lovingly back into their boxes, wrapping them tightly with the milky white tissue paper.
Joan paced back and forth in front of the Gloucester Hotel, her anger growing with the heat. This endless assortment of prearranged dates was going nowhere. And now Joseph Wong was already more than half an hour late. The Sikh doorman with his cloth-wrapped head followed her every move as she sidestepped people and checked her watch every few minutes. Then Joan stopped, breathed in some of the warm, heavy air, and turned to leave. If she hurried, she could still make it to the King’s Theatre on time.
“Miss Lew! Joan Lew!” A low, smooth-sounding voice rang out in the air.
Joan hesitated, then glanced back to see a tall, dark figure plowing through the crowd toward her. She looked at her watch again, thought of the string of fruitless dates she’d had, and quickly picked up her pace. After all, Kate Hepburn would never put up with someone who couldn’t keep an appointment. She strode guiltlessly down the street without turning back. In the near distance, she heard her name called again and again, the faint, sweet music of it slowly lost among the crowds.
After seeing Double Indemnity, Joan picked up Emma for afternoon tea. The Hong Kong Hotel was teeming with people. Joan left Emma to wait in line and went to see if any tables were free, only to return shaking her head. The room vibrated with voices. Silverware clinked against china as waiters moved swiftly through the packed room carrying silver trays laden with teapots, cakes, and layered trays of cucumber and chicken sandwiches. A good two hours could slip away each day at afternoon tea. Just as in the movies, money could be made or lost, marriages saved or broken, lives changed, all in a few hours. Joan always thought it one of the more interesting habits the Chinese had picked up from the British.
“How was your date?” Emma suddenly asked.
“I don’t know. I went to the movies by myself.” Joan looked across the room. She was surprised that she hadn’t yet run into anyone she knew. Usually, some acquaintance materialized out of the crowd.
Emma stood there with her mouth wide open. “He stood you up?” she finally whispered.
Joan nodded her head and smiled. “At first. And then when he finally arrived, I stood him up.”
Emma smiled, but before she was able to say anything else, a group of Joan’s friends surged toward them. Maria Wong, whose brother Joan was to have met, reached them first. She had never been a particularly close friend, but their mothers knew each other casually, so Maria had insisted that Joan meet Joseph. Joan braced herself against the onslaught as Maria leaned close to her and whispered just loud enough for everyone around them to hear. “Joan Lew, you’re terrible leaving Joseph waiting at the Gloucester. He came back and sai
d you practically ran away from him!”
Joan took a deep breath as a small pain rippled through her stomach. She searched for her old money-collecting voice. “Joseph needs to get his story straight,” she answered curtly in her best imitation of Bette Davis. “I was the one who did all the waiting.”
“I’m sure it was just some kind of misunderstanding.” Maria laughed. “Perhaps you just missed each other. I know you’ll like my brother once you’re introduced. Enough with all these blind dates, I’ll introduce you myself!”
“It really isn’t necessary. I don’t think it’s meant to be.” Joan couldn’t imagine having to see Maria more than occasionally.
“Give him another chance. I know it was just some big mistake.”
“Oh, look, there’s a table ready for us across the room!” Joan said, pulling Emma along with her. “I’m sure we’ll see one another again soon.” Joan crossed the room briskly, raising her hand in the slightest wave to the crowd behind her.
Joan smelled the garlic Foon was cooking even before she and Emma set foot in the house. She assumed Foon was making sticky rice and sliced beef with ginger, two of her father’s favorite dishes. He was so rarely home from his business travels that she knew Foon would go out of her way. The tall doors leading out to the terrace were open. She and Emma stood still a moment and listened. Except for the dull thuds of Foon’s chopping coming from the kitchen, and the more distant singsong voices of their neighbors’ servants in the courtyard below, the house was quiet. The door to their parents’ room was closed. If Mah-mee had returned and was resting, then Joan could still spend some time in the kitchen with Foon without her mother knowing. While Emma went downstairs to visit their neighbors, Joan changed into a cotton cheungsam and slipped quietly into the kitchen.
“Your moi-moi?” Foon asked without looking up.
“She’s downstairs at the Tongs. Do you need any help?”
“Everything’s done. Waiting for your mah-mee to return from her mah-jongg game.”
“Ba ba’s resting?”
Foon nodded. “Came home two hours ago.” She lifted a large bowl and placed it on the stone slab she used as her working space.
Right after returning from Macao, Foon had reverted to her old methods of bargaining and bartering to put food on the table. Those first few months after the Japanese surrender seemed harder for the Lew family than the early days of the occupation. Like so many others, Auntie Go’s house had been stripped of everything not nailed down. Ba ba had sold or bartered away their paintings, vases, and jewelry for provisions or cash. Though the enemy was gone, so was much of the food and fuel supply. The war had paralyzed everyone. At first, aid from abroad was slow to arrive, but more and more refugees seeking food and shelter flowed from China into the ravaged city. People wandered slowly, burdened by heavy loads, heading nowhere. Foon told Joan and Emma of the thousands who formed long lines outside government rice kitchens, waiting for anything that might keep them alive for another day.
Joan saw how the war years had aged her old amah. Her gold tooth seemed to have dulled. Her black hair had streaks of gray that she no longer tried to pull out. Foon had slipped into middle age right before their eyes. Joan wanted to wrap her arms around her small, dark figure.
Every day, even during the hard times, Joan was constantly amazed at all the delicacies that came out of Foon’s primitive kitchen. It seemed all Foon’s color was saved for her food. Joan glanced down at the dull red, sliced beef marinating in a bowl, next to the bitter Chinese mustard greens ready to be cooked. Foon’s old cleaver lay on its side, waiting for her nimble fingers to pick it up and slice the Chinese mushrooms floating like black caps in a bowl of water. Joan knew that everything would be stir-fried at the last minute, though Foon sometimes cleaned and peeled, sliced and chopped, a good part of the afternoon away. There always seemed to be some kind of strange-looking root, or cluster of leaves, soaking or boiling in a pot waiting to become one of Foon’s famous soups or teas.
“Can I slice those?” Joan asked, gesturing toward the mushrooms.
Foon looked up at her and smiled, her gold tooth glinting. When Joan was a little girl, she had first heard the story of Foon’s gold tooth from Mah-mee, though Joan never knew whether to believe it. Mah-mee had told her Foon had once been the fourth wife of a wealthy farmer. He married her at fourteen for her cooking skills and showered her with gifts, including her gold tooth. Hated by his other wives, Foon was hustled out of bed one night, bound and gagged, and taken by men hired by the farmer’s other wives to Hong Kong. It was the last time she ever saw her husband, or the life she had known. To support herself, Foon became a servant and cooked in several households until she entered Joan’s grandfather’s house, where she’d remained ever since.
Once, when they were alone in the kitchen of their Macao house, Joan had gathered enough courage to ask Foon how she came to have a gold tooth.
“Paid for it,” Foon answered, chopping away.
“How?” Joan didn’t look up.
“Just as always,” was all Foon would say.
Joan assumed she meant by her cooking skills, but kept quiet, hoping the steamy aromas of the food they were preparing might loosen her old servant’s tongue.
“Aii-ya, you get nothing in this life without paying for it,” Foon suddenly continued. “I always paid my share. I have the tooth to prove it!”
Joan realized it was the first time Foon had actually spoken complete sentences to her.
“I know,” Joan whispered.
Foon picked up her cleaver and began chopping bamboo shoots, creating a rhythm in which her words hummed. “My ba ba was a poor farmer in Fukien. Never enough for the family to eat. Ma ma was a good cook. She taught me how. Used mostly herbs and roots. Gathered from the land. Ma ma could make stones into tasty soup.” Foon laughed aloud. “But never enough. One by one, Ba ba sold his children. I was a girl bride. Too young to know anything. The husband was already a gray, old man. I cook and clean. At night I warm his bed and waited. Two years later, he no longer got out of bed. Another year, he no longer breathe. I took little money he left. Bought gold tooth. Earned it.”
Foon stopped. She looked up at Joan and smiled so that just a sliver of gold shone between her lips. At that moment Joan knew the real story and felt closer to Foon than she’d ever been. She watched as Foon scraped the round circles of bamboo shoots off the counter and into a clay bowl.
By the time Mah-mee returned from her mah-jongg game, Joan had sliced the black mushrooms into thin crescent moons to be fried with the beef. As she stepped out of the kitchen, she heard her parents’ low voices floating from their room on a wave of her mother’s Shalimar. Then the door to their room swung open and they walked toward Joan, smiling.
Joan had always thought her mother and father were a handsome couple, the Chinese equivalent of Ronald Colman and Hedy Lamarr. As a young girl, Mah-mee’s large eyes and flawless skin had been famous throughout Hong Kong. Joan had been told that her father, at eighteen, had taken one look at thirteen-year-old Kum Ling and known he would marry her. Three years later their wedding was arranged. Both came from good families.
Joan still thought it was one of the most romantic stories she’d ever heard, even if she knew they had since grown apart. Even before the war, and their move to Macao, Ba ba had spent more and more time away on business, while Mah-mee stayed in Hong Kong and became immersed in her mah-jongg games and finding Joan a suitable husband through her society friends.
Joan swallowed, pulled at her collar, and straightened her cheungsam. Her father’s hair had turned almost completely gray in the last three months; his eyes drooped a bit in tiredness. Ever since he’d begun trying to establish business relations with the Koreans and Vietnamese, Joan could feel him slowly lose the vitality he once had. She wanted to run to Ba ba, put her arms tightly around him in a hug. Instead, Joan quickly kissed his cheek, smelled his flowery cologne, as he lifted his right hand and touched her lightly on the back.<
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“Where’s moi-moi?” Mah-mee asked.
“Downstairs. I was just about to call her. Foon wants to know if you’re ready for dinner,” Joan said.
After an afternoon of mah-jongg, Mah-mee had broken even and was in good spirits. Wearing black silk trousers and a tunic, she massaged her neck with one hand. “I’m more tired than hungry. Auntie Lai had her cook prepare a large tea this afternoon. You go ahead, I’ll be right in. Your ba ba is famished.”
Joan turned around and followed her father to the dining room, happy that her mother hadn’t mentioned the cooking smells clinging to her clothes, nor asked about her afternoon with Joseph Wong.
When the doorbell rang the next morning just before noon, Emma was first to the door. A hint of surprise was in her voice when she called out Joan’s name. At the door, Joan saw what was so startling to Emma. On the threshold stood the smallest old woman she’d ever seen, supported by a servant, holding a large box of chocolates. The old woman was a head shorter than Joan, no larger than a nine-year-old child. Under the weight of the box, she balanced on two tulip feet, once bound, now deformed. All Joan could think was, Who would send such a frail, old lady to deliver such a big box?
“Excuse me, Missee Lew, but this is for you.” The old woman leaned forward. “From Mr. Wong.”
Joan quickly reached for the box, taking the weight from the old woman. Emma stood watching, her hand still clutching the doorknob.
“Thank you. Please come in,” Joan said, stepping aside. The box felt heavy and solid perched against her hip.
Night of Many Dreams Page 8