Emma wanted to ask, “What about love?” but held her tongue. Perhaps in the end, all the love, sadness, grief, and anger were one and the same.
They had just turned down Robinson Road when Joan suddenly stepped to the curb and waved for a taxi. “Let’s visit Auntie Go,” she said, swinging open the taxi door and stepping in.
Emma hesitated. “Mah-mee said not to walk too far. You’ve just gotten better.”
“Come on,” Joan insisted. “Don’t be a spoilsport. Besides, we’re taking a taxi, aren’t we? Anyway, I feel fine, and Auntie Go will be so happy to see me up and around again.”
Emma couldn’t argue. She didn’t want to. It’d been so many months since Joan had been her old self. Emma was afraid that the smallest thing might send Joan back to her dark, closed room. Emma jumped into the taxi and slammed the door shut behind her.
The Wanchai District was bustling with people, crowded with bars, girlie shows, and small shops. Neon signs, which glowed and blinked madly after dark, seemed asleep and harmless in the daylight. Mah-mee wasn’t happy that Auntie Go worked in such a disreputable area, but Emma once heard her aunt snap back, “At least prostitutes and pimps are honest about what they do! Not like the businessmen and bankers wearing dark suits and sly smiles.” Emma remembered that Mah-mee didn’t speak to Auntie Go for a couple of days after that fight.
Morning traffic inched along. Sidewalk vendors with high, piercing voices screamed out words; horns blared; young and old alike crowded the sidewalks. In the taxi, Emma glanced at Joan, who seemed to be taking it all in peacefully, as if viewing it for the first time. Even pale and tired, Joan appeared a lovely mystery to Emma.
The Western Wind Knitting Company was in a narrow, two-story building that had been almost completely destroyed by the Japanese. Right after the war, Emma had returned with Mah-mee and Joan to help Auntie Go clean it up. Emma would never forget the glassy stare of fear in her aunt’s eyes.
“It’s going to be all right,” Mah-mee had said.
But when Auntie Go pushed open the door, the large downstairs room was hollow and empty. “It’s all gone,” she whispered.
Joan wandered off to the other end of the room. “I found some yarn!” she said, holding up a blue spool.
“It’s a start,” Emma added optimistically.
Auntie Go had stood in the middle of the room as if frozen. Only now was she getting the ravaged factory back into full production. Downstairs in the large open room was the smell of hot metal, dusty air, the rhythmic hum of the knitting machines, which played like music. Emma loved the beautiful patterns they created. She stood and watched, hypnotized, as little by little, right before her eyes, flowers or animals gradually came into being. Wool and cotton cardigan and crew-neck sweaters hung from racks, waiting to be packed and shipped all over the world. Upstairs was Auntie Go’s office, and room for storing yarns and patterns. Emma quickly ran up the wooden stairs, followed more slowly by Joan.
Emma knocked three times on Auntie Go’s office door, then waited for a distracted, slightly irritated “Come in” before she pushed open the door, letting in the quick swishing sounds of the machines from downstairs.
“We’ve come to visit you,” Emma sang out.
Auntie Go looked up and smiled. “We?”
“Me too,” Joan said, stepping into the office, her arms outstretched.
Auntie Go stood up and hugged Joan first. Her aunt was almost half a head taller. “It’s so good to see you up and feeling better.”
Emma looked around the room—a standard desk and chair, two chairs for clients, a small table, and on it, a tray holding a pot of tea and a thermos. Framed reproductions of paintings by Monet and Degas leaned against one wall. Everything simple and efficient.
“And you, moi-moi.” Auntie Go hugged Emma. “What brings you two down here?”
“It was my idea,” Joan volunteered before Emma could say anything. “I’ve been thinking…wondering if maybe you would like some help here. I could help you with office work.”
For a moment, both Emma and Auntie Go were surprised into silence. In the near distance, Emma heard the hollow whoosh of the knitting machines.
“I’d love you to come work with me.” Auntie Go spoke carefully, leaning back against the edge of her desk. “Perhaps in a couple of weeks when you’re stronger and your mah-mee and ba ba agree to it.”
“They will,” Joan said almost too quickly. “I’ll see to it.”
Emma listened to the dull surge of the machines, absorbing the newness of the idea. She wondered if this was what Joan meant by telling Mah-mee she’d move on, rather than forgive Joseph. Then Emma wondered, doesn’t a person deserve more than just one chance? But she simply smiled and nodded, saying nothing.
“Let’s get something to eat and discuss this further,” Auntie Go said. “You two must be famished.”
“The Hong Kong Hotel?” Emma asked.
Auntie Go smiled. “Of course, we have to celebrate Joan’s recovery!”
Emma opened the door again, letting in the noise of the machines below.
Alone in her room that evening, Emma smiled remembering Joan’s hearty appetite at lunch. She had eaten three steamed pork buns and two plates of rice noodles. Auntie Go wouldn’t allow her to eat any more, fearing she might be sick again. Then she would have to face the wrath of Mah-mee and Foon. But as they left the restaurant, Emma knew her sister had revived. She saw it in her quick, fluid movements, the spark of light in her eyes that Emma had almost forgotten.
Now Emma sat at her desk and took out the pearl-inlaid, black lacquer jewelry box Ba ba had given her. She swung open the two doors and pulled out the bottom drawer. Buried beneath her gold bracelets and a jade pendant were the three gold charms Joseph had given her last year. She picked them out one by one—first the piano, then the ballerina, and finally the rosebud. She felt their lightness in the palm of her hand.
Chapter 7
The Way of Love—1948
Auntie Go
Kum Ling suddenly sat back and asked her mah-jongg group, “What am I to do? Joan isn’t bad looking, but she has hands which men seem to slip through. And her head is always in the clouds.”
“Don’t worry,” the nasal-high voice of Auntie Hong piped in. “Joan has plenty of time. She’s only twenty-two. Why push her?”
“Aii-ya! These precious years can’t be wasted,” Kum Ling said.
In the pause between their chattering voices, Auntie Go sat quietly while her cousin and mah-jongg partners lifted the covers and sipped from their steaming cups of tea. They nibbled on a small banquet of peanuts, dried plums, Chinese beef jerky, and shrimp chips, which Foon had left on small tables beside each woman.
Auntie Go was Lew Kum Ling’s first cousin and the only true blood relative included in her cousin’s weekly mah-jongg games. Now in her midforties, Kum Ling’s beauty and style, as well as her husband Lew Hing’s business connections, made her an invaluable asset to any social event. She played mah-jongg with the wives of the wealthiest bankers and businessmen in Hong Kong and was often included in their social events. Auntie Go knew Kum Ling’s solid social connections were what her cousin dearly wanted for her daughters.
“It’s a different world now, a girl can wait longer before settling down,” continued Auntie Kao, tugging at the collar of her sleeveless cheungsam. “In our day, if you weren’t married by sixteen, seventeen, you were too old for a good match. Nowadays, it isn’t the same, times have changed. The war…” Her voice trailed off.
“Look at my sister’s daughter Mei, not married until her late twenties, and now expecting her third child. And the first baby a son!” Heavyset Auntie Hong snatched a piece of beef jerky and sucked on it thoughtfully. “You can’t change fate, better to sit back and relax.”
Kum Ling’s face remained expressionless. Auntie Go could tell she was seething underneath by the way she made a throaty sound in response.
Auntie Go knew Kum Ling’s friends were just as old-fas
hioned as her cousin. Their words were meant to pacify Kum Ling, to help her save face, even though their feelings about marriage were the same. And like Kum Ling, none of them could really understand why a young woman as beautiful as Joan hadn’t yet found her match.
Auntie Go waited a little longer. She bit her tongue rather than voice any thoughts that might upset her cousin and disrupt their mah-jongg game.
After all these years, Auntie Go knew there was always something to keep her apart from the others. First, there was the fact that she had never married. The years had softened this distinction and she was accepted into Kum Ling’s circle of tai tais, though she still cringed at the same words now directed toward Joan.
Then, there was the fact that she’d started her own knitting business, entering in her late twenties “a world she had no right to,” as Kum Ling once warned her. She knew her cousin was just worrying about her, but the words had incensed her all the same. Only in recent years had Auntie Go realized it had been fear more than desire that made her risk everything she owned. She refused to be pitied, refused to become a stone always carted around by others.
And it was Auntie Go to whom Joan first turned, a few weeks after her breakup with the Wong boy. Go had been working long hours at the knitting factory and had returned home late one evening to find Joan waiting for her. Joan was the last person Auntie Go had expected to see.
“Joan, what are you doing here? It’s almost midnight.” Go unlocked her front door and offered her frail-looking niece a chair. “Sit, sit. Does your mah-mee know you’re here?”
Joan shook her head. In the dim light, Joan appeared even paler and thinner than when Auntie Go had seen her the evening before. Her cotton cheungsam and matching jacket hung loosely on her body Joan hesitated a moment, then sat down. “I don’t want them to know I’m here,” she said anxiously. “I needed to talk to you.”
“Of course,” Auntie Go said, pulling another chair closer to Joan. “I’m so sorry about everything that has happened.”
It was the first time she had mentioned the Wong boy, electing to give Joan some distance. Besides, she had her hands full trying to keep her business afloat.
“I don’t understand why…” Joan began, her voice halting.
Auntie Go quickly continued, “Sometimes there aren’t any reasons for what people do, or don’t do. Maybe he wasn’t ready for such a big commitment.”
“Then why did he tell me he loved me?” Joan asked, trembling.
Auntie Go took hold of Joan’s hands. They felt smooth and small in her own. “I believe he does love you, but love isn’t a guarantee against hurt.”
For a moment Joan stared at her without speaking. Auntie Go could see the tears forming in the corners of her eyes.
“Is that how it was for you?”
Auntie Go let go of Joan’s hands and sat back in her chair. “What do you mean?”
Joan shifted in her chair, then leaned closer. “I heard Mah-mee once say you had lost someone you loved.”
Auntie Go paused in thought. The memory seemed so long ago. “I was nineteen and in love.” She smiled wistfully. “He was a teacher, the youngest son of a family friend, whose kindness made up for any lack of material wealth. We were making marriage plans when he became ill. Within months, what I now know was cancer had spread throughout his body. Just over a year later, he was gone….” Go’s voice trailed.
Afterward, there were other suitors, many of them, but never anyone she wanted to create a life with. Go knew other girls would have settled with any one of them, simply for the sake of being married, but it wasn’t a lie she could swallow without choking.
Auntie Go looked up at her niece. “It did hurt me very much.”
“What am I supposed to do now?” Joan whispered.
“You go on. The road has just begun for you.”
Joan dropped her head and began to cry softly. Auntie Go wrapped her arms around her niece and folded away her own memories. Then much later, when Joan had calmed, they stepped out into the warm night air tasting faintly of litchi as Go steered her home.
Only with Joan and Emma did Auntie Go’s words flow with ease. They held a special place in her heart. From the time of their births, Auntie Go was like a second mother to them. Sometimes, in the quiet of her mind, Go felt her barrenness. It echoed through her, like the empty rooms of her house that would never be filled. But over the years, her sorrow lessened as she watched her nieces grow into such fine young women.
Auntie Go looked up and stared into the faces of her cousin and friends across the mah-jongg table. She listened, as if each slippery tongue directed at Joan were also addressed to her. So many years had passed, but the words still stung with the same power. Auntie Go held her breath, but couldn’t swallow the words that would defend her niece and put these women in their place.
“And what if she never marries? Would it be such a crime?” Auntie Go exhaled in one hurried breath. She avoided her cousin’s eyes, Go’s hands quickly turning the ivory mah-jongg tiles facedown in the middle of the table. “Joan is a capable girl who can do many things.”
The voices stopped. Auntie Kao sighed, while Auntie Hong crunched down on shrimp chips. Go knew she had slipped again. She tried not to make her thoughts too evident. There’d been too many occasions when her views and her cousin’s had clashed. Then, their conversations would end either in an argument or a hard, cold silence. Joan’s working at the knitting factory had been a sore subject between them. But Kum Ling refrained from saying too much, knowing Joan was happy working part-time there.
Auntie Go prepared for the worst.
“Not everyone is as industrious as you,” her cousin snapped back amid the noisy clatter of the tiles being mixed together.
“That seems to be the way you always like to see it. I’d like to think anyone can do what I’ve done.”
Auntie Go heard Kum Ling mumble something under her breath that sounded like, “We should all remain single without a family of our own.”
Then it became so quiet, all Go could hear was the crackling sound of the thick ivory tiles, etched with patterns of bamboo, circles, and Chinese characters, being mixed and stacked into four neat double rows in the middle of the table. One after another, each woman reached out to take her tiles, thirteen in all, standing them upright in front of their places like soldiers.
Go smiled when Auntie Kao reached out to pick first from the remaining rows, slyly grabbing two tiles rather than one. Glancing quickly at them, Kao kept the more advantageous of the two, then threw one back from her original thirteen, slipping the extra tile into the discard pile along with it.
Auntie Go picked, rubbed the etched circle pattern on the tile, then threw it back.
“No good, no good,” Auntie Kao mumbled as she studied the tiles in front of her. If the others had seen her cheat, they also kept quiet. Auntie Kao came from a wealthy and powerful family that had always taken care of her indiscretions. She was well-known throughout Hong Kong for “borrowing” things that didn’t belong to her. Ever since she was a small child, objects of her fancy had disappeared from houses and stores alike. Her family and husband arranged for the merchants and friends to send a bill for the missing items. Nevertheless, Auntie Kao had a reputation for donating generously to charitable causes and was invited to every important social function.
Auntie Hong cleared her throat and changed the subject to a relative whose son had abruptly denounced his mother and father and joined the Communist Party. “Can you imagine,” Auntie Hong gossiped, “he had the nerve to steal his mother’s jewelry and give it to the Party as an example of the family’s decadence!”
“They don’t know any better. They’re brainwashed,” replied Auntie Kao. “The entire country will be following Mao pretty soon.”
“Young people nowadays, they only care about themselves,” snapped Kum Ling, tapping a tile on the table before throwing it back into the pile.
“They’re certainly not the same as our generation.
” Auntie Hong shook her head, then reached for another tile.
Auntie Go leaned back at ease in her chair as she watched Kum Ling sigh and slowly sip her tea, already distant, nodding absently at whatever was said.
Auntie Go had inherited everything upon the death of her parents. Her father’s store was sold, and though it didn’t bring in a great deal of money, it would take care of her if she lived wisely. At that most financially secure time in her life, Auntie Go decided to take her biggest gamble. From a friend of her father’s, Go had heard of a small sweater knitting factory for sale. she’d little knowledge of the knitting business, but had always been fascinated just watching her mother produce sweaters and socks by the simple clicking together of two needles. Having been trained in accounting at her father’s store, she decided to risk her savings on it. The day she told Kum Ling what she had done, her cousin simply shook her head and said, “Well, I suppose you can always stay with us after Joan and Emma are married.”
Auntie Go bought the Western Wind Knitting Company using her father’s name. Already having a head for sums, Go learned to walk through the business step by step. Though the hours were long, and learning to run the machines was a maze of dead ends, Auntie Go was determined to master her factory and create a life of her own. She hired experienced knitters and held on to a small list of existing merchant and exporter clients. Specializing in sweaters made from wool, cotton, and silk, Go was beginning to turn a profit when the war intruded and brought her growing business to a deafening silence.
When Go returned from Macao in 1945, she was grateful that Kum Ling and the girls insisted on returning to the Western Wind with her. Though she had prepared herself for what she might see, Go’s hands shook as she squeaked open the door and stepped into the cold, only to have her heart sink at the destruction she found. What wasn’t bolted down had been taken away by the Japanese. The largest room, where the machines once hummed, stood skeletal, stripped of everything, from her knitting machines to the stools and light fixtures. The bits and pieces that were left had been totally destroyed.
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