FOUR FOUR THROUGHOUT MY ELEVENTH AND twelfth years, everything focussed on English and Chinese school work, and I also grew busy with new duties—I now routinely went with Father for an hour or two on Sunday afternoons to Third Uncle’s Shanghai Alley warehouse, where, under the towering ceiling, I pulled along a handcart of account books. At every one of the three storage floors, I clambered over stands of huge boxes and shouted out their code numbers while Father checked off the inventory list. When we were finished, we would go to one of the noodle houses on Pender with some of his friends and some elders.
Certain Saturdays, after I finished my morning Chinese classes, Jung-Sum and I met at Gore and Pender and took turns carrying the grocery bags for Stepmother. Poh-Poh would be home with baby Sekky, cooing over him every waking minute.
Second Brother and I also took regular turns filling up the sawdust pails ready for feeding the chute on the side of the kitchen stove. Chopped logs had to be piled neatly beneath the back stairs, then covered with a large canvas tarp. We were also assigned to help Mrs. Lim with her load of logs when she couldn’t find anyone else who would, for ten cents an hour, carry them up the two and a half flights of precarious stairs to her little house. The money was paid in an envelope to Stepmother or Father, who always said, “For your school books.”
Mrs. Lim fed us well during those lugging sessions, calling us good grandsons and telling Poh-Poh how we were building up our muscles.
“Good for fighting,” said Poh-Poh.
Though my time with Jack O’Connor was restricted, we still managed to meet up for sword fighting, acting out Robin Hood episodes in his backyard, or climbing over each other’s porch like Sinbad the Sailor jumping from one prayer tower to another.
One morning, before a shopping expedition with Stepmother, Jack was showing off to Jung-Sum how he could swing like Tarzan from a thick rope we “found” near the ice house and which we had securely tied up to our porch. Jack now decided to tie the rope even higher. He climbed up to the roof and knotted it around one of the metal anchors bracketing the eaves.
“See if it’ll hold,” he hollered down to us.
Jung and I pulled down with our whole weight, and the rope held. Then I tossed the end of the rope to see if it would reach the O’Connors’ porch. It swung like a loose snake and easily crossed to the other side. I figured that Jack would have to fly through the air at a harrowing angle to avoid banging into our corner post. I leaned over the bannister and warned him about the angle.
“Don’t wet your pants,” he said. “I can see that post from up here.”
“Let me go next,” Jung-Sum shouted up, just as Jack flew into the air with his Tarzan yell.
For a few exciting seconds, everything was going aces. Jack’s lanky body came swinging down in a perfect arc, but suddenly he realized gravity had taken over, and he had only a split-second to jerk himself out of the way of the post. His foot lifted, his hips swung sideways, then his whole body angled out of kilter like a piece of lumber. He missed the post and went swinging down as planned. Jung’s mouth fell open. I was about to yell ‘Watch out!’ but before a single word could escape me, Jack went flying across and into his own porch and crashed through the front window.
Afterwards, Jack told me that he wasn’t the one doing all the screaming, it was his mother. “She gets hysterical,” he said.
She’d been sitting having tea with a friend when two feet came hurtling at them, followed by shattering panes of glass and Jack himself, thumping down hard onto the shards, his limbs entangled in curtain and rod.
Jack required stitches just above his knee. That impressed Jung even more.
The next day, the rope still tied to our roof, Father made me walk over with Jung-Sum and apologize to Jack’s parents. Father even offered to pay a share of the damage. But when Mr. O’Connor walked outside and saw Stepmother carrying diapered Sekky onto our porch, he told father to put away his wallet.
“Jack’s big feet and thick head were the main problem,” he said. “My boy has absolutely no common sense.”
Jack was not allowed out for two weeks, but later he had fun showing off to the gang at MacLean Park the Frankenstein stitches on his leg. I thought Jack limped a little more than he needed to, but his injury made us both the centre of attention.
“Kiam was ripped up a bit, too,” Jack would boast for me in front of the gang at recess. He gravely indicated an area near my groin. “But his granny won’t let anyone see.”
I kept my mouth shut. I wasn’t sure whether I should have limped a little, too.
“You have to give them some blarney,” said Jack when we were on our own. “Makes life interesting.”
Later, I asked Father what Mr. O’Connor meant by Jack’s having no common sense.
“That means,” said Father, “mo no!”
That made me feel good. Jack and I both lacked the same thing.
By 1935, shadowy men and darker events edged the ragged borders of our life in Chinatown. More and more hobo shacks and corrugated-tin lean-tos were being built in small enclaves along False Creek.
“Very bad,” Father said as he and Third Uncle looked out from the third-storey warehouse window and observed the hut-like humps growing around the distant steam ducts and heating vents under the Georgia Viaduct.
“Never go there,” warned Third Uncle.
Mrs. Chong claimed that at least two hundred unemployed men were living in those hovels, cooking over open fires and sharing pots of gruel salvaged from the slop pails of Chinatown restaurants. Segregated areas were now populated by Chinamen who had lost their seasonal jobs and who could no longer afford sharing a shift-time room, often just a bed with three or four others taking their turn to sleep; dozens had already starved to death, their bodies found in the rooming houses in Canton Alley, in the weekly-rental hotel rooms along Hastings and Main Street, and in the deserted alleyways.
“Those place stink with death,” said Third Uncle.
He was on a committee of merchants and landlords, part of the Chinese Benevolent Association, who volunteered to open up their warehouses, basements, and backrooms to shelter and feed some of the homeless.
The Vancouver Health Board was set to condemn Chinatown’s efforts. Men and women were coughing all night; many coughed up blood.
Father and others from Chinatown joined a committee set up by a United Church preacher to organize some soup kitchens. Late at night, Chinatown restaurants brought out unsold soup and soon-to-be-spoiled food to serve to lineups of waiting men. The rule was quickly established that no one would come to the front of the Chinese cafés or restaurants and frighten away the paying customers. One came to ask for food only in the back alleys, and only after dark. Even the unwashed white faces came to understand that. No one was turned away.
Father told me the Canadian government would offer the hungry men and some women their fully paid passage back to China, but only if they agreed to surrender their original documents and sign a contract that said they would never return to Canada.
“They all come to Gold Mountain with hope,” Third Uncle said. “They work hard for ten or twenty years and leave with only what they can carry back in one suitcase.”
I remember going with Father to the docks to wave goodbye to a group who had accepted the free passage. Hundreds of men and the few women who saw no more future in Gold Mountain, carrying no more than a smelly duffel bag or a battered suitcase, often dressed in second- and third-hand coats, all of them sadly pushing their way up the gangplanks.
“Why not starve and die in China?” said one old man to Father. He bent down and shook my hand and wished me well in Tin-Pot Mountain. His stumpy hand felt funny, but I knew better than to back away. Father had warned me about such hands. Old Beard had first helped to clear the forest for the railroad tracks; he lost a few fingers in the shingle mill, yet with his hooked fists he had hauled nets on salmon boats until he could do so no more. Jobs vanished from the West Coast, and jobs fit only for the labouring Chinese were the first to go.
“Why not die in Toishan?” asked Old Beard. “Why not be buried back home? You remember that, Kiam-Kim. You Chinese.”
Poh-Poh understood. Old Beard’s bones would not have to wait their proper return to ancestral burial grounds. His ghost would not have to wander in Gold Mountain crying out for his Old China ancestors.
Elderly men that Poh-Poh once fed at our second-floor apartment came to our Keefer Street house to say goodbye.
“I never to forget you, Kiam-Kim,” one said to me. “How tall you be now!”
“Take care of Poh-Poh,” another said. “Listen to your good father!”
When Stepmother invited them in, pushing Only Sister aside to make way, they shook their heads.
“I not too clean,” some would say, perhaps catching Liang-Liang wrinkling her nose at the smell of their unwashed bodies.
Stepmother told me that it might break their hearts to see how all of us lived in a house, how we were living as a family in Gold Mountain. Some of the men patted Jung-Sum on his head and gave him and Liang-Liang a handful of candies. I sometimes got a red packet with their last coins enclosed.
“For school,” a few would say.
I would refuse, three times, and three times the lei-see would be pushed back into my hand. Then they would turn from our door and walk slowly away, or Father would walk with them down the porch steps, promising to see them one last time at the docks.
“I say goodbye now,” Poh-Poh would say from the front door, carrying Sek-Lung in her arm. “I die soon.”
The men would protest, but then they would laugh along with Grandmother, shaking their heads sadly at the same time; after all, whether young or old, they joked, who could live forever?
Later, I was told that some sickened and died in the fourth-class hold of the slow steamers that took them back. Others jumped into the ocean, unable to bear the shame of going home with less than nothing in their pockets.
Beside a few obituary lines published in the Gold Mountain newspapers, some formal names were noted under the heading “Missing at Sea.”
“Who’s that name?” I asked Father, who was reading the list aloud to Poh-Poh. They were both commenting on the last formal name, as if they had known the person very well.
“Old Beard,” said Stepmother. “Do you remember him?”
If I hadn’t been so busy being protective of him, I would almost have been proud of Jung-Sum.
Father constantly emphasized that we all had to take care of one another, and the oldest son would always be the one the family members would most depend upon. Stepmother taught me that Jung-Sum and Liang would pay attention to my example, and so I was to do my very best in school.
As First Son, I had a responsibility that weighed heavily on me: to set an example, to never let the family down, to never give them cause to be ashamed of me.
“What’s ashamed?” Jung-Sum asked me.
“It’s when you do something bad and—and …”
“And everyone wishes you weren’t part of the family,” said Poh-Poh.
Second Brother shivered.
“No worry,” Poh-Poh said. “We raise you up to be good. Never to shame the family.”
But Jung-Sum insisted on hearing examples of shameful behaviour.
“You murder someone,” explained the Old One. “That very shameful to family.”
“How about stealing?”
Poh-Poh thought a moment. She guessed what Second Brother was thinking: the Old One often put extra “samples” into her shopping bag at Mr. Lew’s vegetable stall when he put out dried fruits, salted greens, or fresh peas for customers to taste or sniff.
“Big stealing,” she said finally. “Big stealing very bad.”
“How big?”
“Too many questions!”
Stepmother smiled at the Old One’s impatience. Wrinkled eyes caught her looking too comfortable.
“What do you say, Gai-mou?”
“When you do something bad,” she answered, “something inside will tell you.”
“That’s what Miss Schooley tells us,” I said. “Except very bad people don’t know how to tell right from wrong. Miss Schooley says they don’t have education.”
Poh-Poh nodded, grateful for the change in subject. “Study hard like Kiam-Kim,” she told Jung and Liang, then set down a cup of tea beside me as if I were to be respected as much as Father was respected behind his pile of notebooks and invoices.
“The oldest branch bear the most fruit,” Mrs. Lim once said to me.
I thought she meant to compliment my stature as First Son, but as was the way of village women, the saying was to warn me of the unspeakable burdens that lay ahead. Third Uncle later revealed to me that when Mrs. Lim’s only brother, many years older than her, was in his thirties and none of his three brides had produced a single child, he hanged himself from a courtyard tree. Then her family sent Mrs. Lim away to be a mail-order bride to a desperate stranger in Gold Mountain.
I asked Poh-Poh why Mrs. Lim’s brother didn’t pick up a son like we had Jung-Sum. After all, children were bought and sold in Old China.
“Too proud,” she said, turning away from me with a look that disturbed Stepmother and puzzled all of us, especially Jung-Sum. Poh-Poh reached out to him and took his hand. “Never worry. You be family with us,” she said. “You hear what I say, Kiam-Kim?”
I nodded, sipped my tea, and turned back to my textbook.
The Depression soon set me free from my work duties at Third Uncle’s warehouse; it was considered inappropriate for children to be doing work that an unemployed man might do. Children in Chinatown never starved, for the Benevolent Society kept track of the Tong families. And Father and Stepmother had part-time work offered to them, however menial.
I was at liberty to play.
Jack had started to go to the Hastings Gym for boxing lessons. He was a few months older than me, taller and heavier than I was, and he qualified for the twelve-to-fourteen Second Junior Level.
I took Jung to the gym to watch Jack. At night, I would walk into our bedroom and catch him boxing with his shadow. Skinny arms flailing, he looked comic in the beginning, but he quickly caught on. At first his fists thrashed away at the air. Jack and I would position his elbows to stick out at a certain angle. Tell him to punch from there.
“Imagine a guy in front of you, Jung,” Jack said. “See his ugly nose?”
Jung-Sum nodded. Jack pointed in front of him. Gave me the signal.
“Ready,” I said. Jung shifted his weight. “Aim.”
Jack put his lips right next to Second Brother’s ear and barked: “FIRE!”
Battering rams slammed into the air. One-two, one-two. Jung’s eyes lit up; his bony shoulders heaved with every whiplash wallop until finally Jack grabbed his wrists and shook one tiny fist into the air.
“Knockout!”
Jung collapsed into Jack’s side.
Jack’s father got him started at Hastings Gym, in tribute to his pal, Jimmy McLarnin, the gallant neighbourhood boxer who knocked out Young Corbett III in 1933 and took on the title of World Welterweight Champ. A picture of Mr. McLarnin even hung on one of the walls at Strathcona School, where he was once a student. At the Hastings Gym, the champ’s newspaper pictures were prominently displayed in the manager’s front office. Every one of them caught McLarnin’s left fist poised to strike the final, skull-cracking blow. But Mr. O’Connor had a special photograph.
“That’s Jimmy McLarnin,” Jack said, pointing to a picture in a frame that he took from his father’s dresser. “And that’s my dad.”
Mr. O’Connor looked much younger in his sharp fedora, and proud, as if he knew he was standing beside a future champion boxer.
Jack put their RCA in the front parlour window so Jung and I could hear the Saturday games: baseball in the daytime and boxing matches sometimes at night. His father listened to them at a Hastings Street pub and would discuss the highlights with Jack later in the evening.
We crouched down and strained to catch the fadeaway American baseball broadcasts, three heads bumping like coconuts. Sometimes Jack and I did push-ups during the commercials for Burma Shave, pushing up and down with the rhyming jingles. Jung would stoop and count with us, pumping himself up and down like the heroes who ate Wheaties, the Breakfast of Champions. Jung begged Father to buy Wheaties instead of the oatmeal Poh-Poh would boil for the family.
Jung-Sum began to grow taller, faster, stronger. His habit of cheerfully eating everything and asking for seconds, even thirds, made Poh-Poh and Stepmother feel like happy matrons, but Father wondered if his children would eat him into the poorhouse.
Father wasn’t wrong. Some days, there wasn’t enough food on the table. As I caught on, I told Jung he ate like greedy Pigsy. Poh-Poh knuckled me.
“I tell him when to eat or not eat,” she snapped. “Jung-Sum, hold your tummy in. Tight, like Kiam. See?”
I sucked in my stomach.
“You feel full in two minutes,” Poh-Poh said. “You eat more, Sekky!”
Jung-Sum did feel full, and Baby Brother ate more of the food Stepmother chewed first and then, with mushy dabs on her finger, slipped into his mouth. But we all worried: Sek-Lung slept more than Stepmother thought he should, and in his sleep, his breath was raspy and unsteady. Dr. Chu said he was having some lung problems and we should track his growth and watch that he did not catch any drafts. At night, I could hear Stepmother pacing back and forth, calling out his name as if to call him back from some dark well. Father would take his turn, but neither would sleep until Sek-Lung was breathing well again. Some nights, Poh-Poh took over, and she woke me up to bring the bowls of steaming water that smelled of eucalyptus, and the Old One would hold his little head high over the vapours. Finally, Dr. Chu said that he was getting stronger. Sek-Lung began to chatter, grab at things with his fists, and one day he stood up and yelled for a toy. We all ran to him and clapped, and he laughed as Father picked him up to gently swing him by his arms. Stepmother cried, and Poh-Poh beamed. Liang even said she would make doll clothes for his toy bear.
Father found time to take Jung-Sum and me to visit various tong halls while he interviewed Chinatown politicians for the community newspaper. Some were just street-level reading rooms, like the ones along Columbia Street, where the elders sat around smoking and talking. The larger family association halls were on second or third floors, up long flights of wooden stairs that you climbed from the street, finally to stand before latched swinging doors that opened up to vast assembly rooms.
During those visits, Father would tell a friendly elder to take charge of us. “Teach my unworthy sons to be Chinese,” he would say.
The elders would laugh, call us juk-sing, hollow bamboo stumps, then ease into telling us stories of their young lives back in China, how they, as I should, bowed three times before the tall gleaming statues of Buddha or the grinning Gods of Fortune and Longevity. We were given fresh fruit from red-and-gold-rimmed bowls and sometimes a penny or a nickel if we had been especially attentive. When no one around cared to give us attention, Father would let us wander about.
I always hunted up the older boys trying out for the kung fu teams at the other end of the hall. Then a bunch of us would talk sports with Quene Yip, the Chinatown soccer champ.
Some of the elders appreciated how Second Brother stood in the central halls to study their exercise routines. He mimicked their movements, so Old Sing taught him a few Tai Chi routines.
One day, left by himself, Jung decided to practice a Tai Chi routine while standing ten feet up in the air on the edge of a six-inch-wide plank some workmen had been using to paint the ceiling. Slowly stepping forward, he angled his one foot and turned while lifting his other foot in the air; he bent forward, his head up, hands praising Heaven. He told me later he was playing the Monkey King crossing the sacred rope bridge, just as Poh-Poh had told the story. But he slipped, tipped over the narrow beam, and everything—plank, paint cans, tools, flailing boy—fell with echoing explosions.
I realized, then, how everything taught to Jung, he wanted to make more dangerous. He wanted to be like Jack O’Connor.
Poh-Poh told me one day how Jung-Sum lifted two buckets of nails at Ming Wo’s hardware store when Mr. Wong, the proprietor, dared him to act like a man.
“He not like you, Kiam-Kim,” Poh-Poh said. “He tougher.”
“So what?” I said.
“So you—you be clever! Watch out for him!”
Everyone noticed Jung. With all that attention, I started to feel as if I, too, were important in some odd way, that his toughness made him my worthy Second Brother.
We were a crowded house, everyone sleeping two to a room, but for the most part things were comfortable. Poh-Poh occasionally mentioned how Liang was filling up their bedroom with her dollhouse and toys, but she didn’t mind too much. Liang said the Old One snored too loudly and the herbal medicines she concocted from ancient recipes were stinky-smelly. Everyone shushed her up. Father sometimes said he could turn the small storage room at the end of the upstairs hall into a room for Liang. He would burn all the junk he had kept from our first years in Vancouver and donate to the homeless shelter all the extra furniture and hardware we had been given by the Chen Association to start our home. But it remained just talk.
One morning, Liang climbed her way onto a footstool balanced on top of a chair. Stepmother caught her just as she was reaching for one of the mysteriously labelled bottles, filled with paper-thin slices of deer horn and roots, sitting between the tins of smelly, dark powders on the second shelf. When I came home that day, the storage room was empty. Third Uncle had sent his van over, and two of his workers took everything away. In the backyard, Father had lit a fire. I saw fragments of notebooks and old newspapers, bits of cloth and legs of broken furniture poking out from the flames.
That weekend I helped Father clean the floors and walls; finally, we carried Liang’s furniture into her very own room. She squealed with delight and did not mind that the space barely took in her tiny dresser and pallet.
“Just temporary,” Father told Only Sister.
Father took me aside and told me Stepmother had not been well. I knew she had missed having dinner three times that week, and Poh-Poh had had me take up to her in bed special teas and soups. He studied my puzzled look.
“Poh-Poh say you old enough now, so I tell you something.”
“What?”
I felt my eyes widen with pleasure: I was old enough for another secret. Father unbuttoned his shirt collar.
“Gai-mou is expecting a baby.”
“When?”
“Maybe February—maybe March.”
“A baby boy!” I said, thinking of my growing boss status. “Poh-Poh will be happy!”
“Yes, that’s so.” But Father looked unsettled. “If Poh-Poh be right, of course.”
The nervous way he yanked off his rimmed glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose confused me. However, like Poh-Poh, I felt no doubt about the outcome. The birth of the baby boy would be a great joy. As Jung-Sum had started out with me all bones and weakness and had turned out to be tall and strong—with brain and brawn—and as baby Sekky seemed much better every day and was more and more active without too much wheezing, I would not mind having a third brother to train.
But Stepmother did not look happy. As she threw the fresh bedsheets over Liang’s little bed, she suddenly clutched her stomach and sat down.
“We see Mr. Gu,” Father said. “Maybe see doctor …”
Even Poh-Poh felt Stepmother’s wan eyes and pale skin, her uneven breathing, were beyond Mrs. Lim’s special recipes, even beyond her own blood-strengthening soups and herbal teas, and certainly beyond the mahjong ladies’ hopeful chatter.
“New baby,” Mrs. Leong said to me, her hand tugging at my sweater.
Poh-Poh accepted every best wish for the safe delivery of her fourth grandson.
Everyone said the baby would be a boy. Boys were often born around spring.
“Best time of year,” Mrs. Chong said. “Cool and quiet time. Lots of yin current with fresh yang energy!”
Stepmother, perhaps, was discomforted thinking of those winter months before the baby’s delivery; her smile was forced.
“Yes,” she said. “Good time to have a son.”
Mrs. Lim and Mrs. Wong thought so, too. Then the women began to fuss over Poh-Poh’s new flowery dress. Mrs. Sui Leong had helped to pick it out for her. White and pink flowers decorated the fabric like ghosts.
Pink! Stepmother must have seen my face and guessed at my concern: What if the baby was … a girl!
A half whisper came towards me and stroked my ears. “It be a boy,” the voice said. “No worry, Kiam-Kim.”
One hot August day, with nothing better to do, Jung and I decided to return some library books. In lock-step like soldiers, Second Brother and I raced past Jenny Chong and a couple of her friends up the curving stairway of the Carnegie Library at Main and Hastings. Perhaps upset that we had ignored her, Jenny said, “There goes Kiam’s shadow!”
“Ha, ha,” I said, turning around to stare her down. She thought herself out of our hearing, standing on the sidewalk with her two twittering friends. She rolled her eyes at me. It made me think of her mother. Whenever Mrs. Chong wanted more tea or dumplings, or more attention, her dark eyes would roll up in the same way, and the pupils would narrow, pulling you into range so you had to say something. Anything.
“Jealous?” I said, remembering how I once had saved her from her mother’s wrath.
“Yeah,” she said, pointing at Second Brother, “I always wanted a dog.”
For weeks, she had been begging her mother to buy her one of those lap dogs she had seen scampering about in a Shirley Temple movie. Poh-Poh told her dogs were dirty, but cleaned up, they were good for eating. Maybe she was thinking of that. Maybe she didn’t realize how Jung would take the joke.
Before I could stop him, he jumped down the steps and booted her in the shin. She let out a screech, dropped her books, and hopped about. Her two girlfriends scooted behind one of the library pillars to peer warily at Jung. He stared back, his fists clenched.
I ran down the steps, threw my free arm over him, and started dragging him away. I barely hung on to the books in the crook of my other arm as he struggled against me, his thin limbs flailing in the air. An old man stopped to ask Jenny what was the matter, but she couldn’t tell him for her hopping about and her crying.
“You’re going to get it,” I said as I pushed with my back against the heavy library door. But someone I hadn’t seen was already opening the door, and with Jung still struggling against me, we twisted backwards into the air and fell sprawling into the main hall. A middle-aged white lady stood over us, eyes wide with surprise. I still had a grip on Little Brother and a tighter one on the three books. She was about to say something when she noticed Jung’s eyes bulging like a cornered animal’s. She quickly left.
“Sticks and stones will break your bones,” I chanted, letting go and slapping dust off my pants, “but names will never hurt you.”
Little Brother wasn’t impressed. As I brushed his hair back, he took hold of my arm and squeezed it in frustration. I sensed he was near tears, but I started laughing at how we had fallen backwards and ended up sitting there on the cold floor like clowns. I laughed even harder remembering Jenny Chong’s look of shock. The hall echoed with my laughter. A librarian in a pink dress came rushing out, bent down, and snatched away the three books. She pointed to the front doors.
“You can both come back,” she said. “when you decide this isn’t a playground.”
Before Jung could figure out a way to kick her, I shoved him through the doors.
“Don’t,” he said. “I wasn’t going to do anything.” His thin face turned serious. “That lady doesn’t call people names.”
A warm breeze whirled candy wrappers and tissues around the pillars.
We sat on the steps of the Carnegie, without a single word between us; after a while, Jung-Sum leaned against me. I put my arm around his knobby shoulders.
“Did you have to kick Jenny?”
Second Brother whispered into my ear. “Ngoh m’hai—gow!” he said. “I’m not—dog!”
Later that afternoon, of course, Mrs. Chong dropped in for tea to complain to Poh-Poh and Stepmother about the “brutal” kicking incident. They all agreed it wasn’t necessary to involve Father.
When I walked into the dining room to take my place at the corner desk and spread out my Saturday Chinese school homework, Mrs. Chong’s voice was already pitched high above Grandmother’s calm. Stepmother sat leaning into her chair, one sleeveless arm resting across her belly. Her eyes were red.
I had just uncapped the bottle to dip the brush when a familiar voice caught my attention. The Old One was telling Mrs. Chong that Jenny had been jealous.
Just as I had guessed, grass green with jealousy. Poh-Poh turned her head. She looked directly at me. I ducked.
“Kiam-Kim stood by,” she said. “Is that so?”
I pretended I didn’t hear. Too late.
Mrs. Chong looked dejected. “Jen-Jen’s leg all blue and sore.”
“Blue and green,” I muttered.
Grandmother saw my lips moving. Her voice was grave, her Sze-yup tones formal.
“Did Grandson see this happen?”
“Yes, Poh-Poh,” I said, responding in dialect. “Jenny called Jung-Sum a dog—my dog. And Second Brother kicked before I could stop him.”
“Did Jenny speak lao-fang wah, foreign words?”
“Hi-lah,” I said. “She spoke English words.”
Poh-Poh mulled over things. Mrs. Chong’s raised eyebrow suggested she hadn’t heard this version of the incident before.
“Jen-Jen just say her greetings,” she said. “I’m sure you and Little Brother misheard her.”
“Lo-faan wah,” Stepmother said, “difficult to hear.”
Grandmother agreed. The three women nodded in unison: English so easy to mishear.
“Is that not so, Grandson?”
“One sound like another,” Mrs. Chong said. “Barbaric!”
I knew I was expected to agree. Dog. Log. Fog. Bog.
I nodded. I flipped open my copybook and began brushing my first page of Chinese script, fighting the urge to pitch the ink bottle at Mrs. Chong. Through the parlour doorway, I could see Jung-Sum busy playing Robin Hood with Only Sister on the linoleum floor, ignoring the talk from the dining room. He was rounding up Liang-Liang’s population of cutout dolls to herd them deep into Sherwood Forest. Mrs. Chong raised her voice, determined to catch Jung’s attention, but he played on, pushing paper figures under the sofa to shelter them from attack.
The Old One finally spoke aloud what she had been thinking all along.
“Your pretty Jen-Jen want to walk beside my grandson,” Poh-Poh said. “So she be showing off to girlfriends.”
“Think so?” Mrs. Chong said, her voice softening. “Jenny like to walk with Kiam-Kim?”
“Yes, so young, too,” Poh-Poh said, tilting her head slightly. “How she get idea to walk with Kiam-Kim?”
For some mysterious reason, the two women wanted me to hear all this nonsense. I feigned deafness, my horsehair brush dashing strokes into characters.
“Of course, this not Old China way, this meeting of girl and boy,” Poh-Poh continued. “This Canada way.”
“Old way better.” Mrs. Chong placed a teacup into Stepmother’s hand. “Don’t you think so, Chen Sim?”
Stepmother shrugged and smiled politely, as if her opinion could not matter one way or another. She sipped her tea while with the other hand she gently massaged her belly. She had come to us the Old China way.
“Old China way best,” Mrs. Chong repeated, taking her eyes off Stepmother.
“I give you some ointment for your poor Jen-Jen,” Grandmother said. She patted her open palm against the back of Mrs. Chong’s wrist and continued in formal Cantonese. “So kind of you to allow me to know about this misunderstanding. I will certainly speak to Jung-Sum.”
Things sounded as if they were being settled when I heard polite sniffing and looked up from my inky brush. I caught Mrs. Chong staring at me, her eyes softening.
“You good First Son,” she said, her voice placating. “Jenny like you, Kiam-Kim.” Maybe I shouldn’t have smiled back. “Like you very much.”
I glanced back at Jung-Sum playing in the parlour with Liang. I wondered if Second Brother understood he was in trouble. I cleared my throat; he and Liang raised their heads to see what I wanted. Just as I was going to make the sign of a slashed throat with my forefinger, for Jung to see, Father rushed through the front door, and Liang ran to him to be hugged.
Without taking his hat off, Father gently put Liang down and walked into the dining room. He pulled out of his coat pocket an inch-square velvety black box. It had a red phoenix seal embossed on the lid. Grandmother reached for the fist-sized container.
“This is the best medicine,” Father said. “Cost eight dollars.”
Grandmother pushed open the lid with her thumb. She picked out some dried leaves and a few knotted black things tied together with hemp grass.
“Everything soon be fine again, Chen Sim,” Mrs. Chong said to Stepmother. “You very young. After Mr. Gu’s herbal tea, you be strong again. No bleeding. Baby be okay.”
Father cleared his throat. Time to change the subject: big ears were listening. I didn’t think of my own big ears; I thought of the two pairs on the two little heads that were now staring into the dining room, their senses alerted.
“Please come here, Jung-Sum,” Poh-Poh said in her formal Canton manner. Second Brother hesitated, but the formal words meant he had little choice.
Poh-Poh stood looking down at him. “You kick Mrs. Chong’s poor Jen-Jen?”
Jung just barely nodded. The Old One’s frown slowly quashed him with condemnation. It was the same withering, anguished look the Old One gave me whenever she caught me disobeying Father. The high cheekbones lifted every scowling wrinkle on her old face; her ancient eyes penetrated your soul. Even I would have preferred to be whipped. Jung bowed his head. He knew I would be called as a witness if he said nothing.
“Yes. I kicked Jen-Jen.”
Since the matter had been raised first between the women, Father kept quiet. The whole room waited for Poh-Poh’s sentence. She shook her head. Perhaps she was overwhelmed by some shame for Jung’s behaviour. Perhaps he now understood how he had shamed us all. As in the matter of a little stealing or a big stealing, boys do not kick girls.
“Go upstairs.” Poh-Poh’s voice chilled the room.
Second Brother bit his lip. He knew this meant he would have to wait for Poh-Poh’s sentence. He might be locked in the closet all night, as Mrs. Leong had done to punish her third son; he might be deprived of supper for a whole month and have to find a way to eat double the lunch at school; certainly, Poh-Poh would use her knuckles once or twice, to knock some brains into him.
Father might add his punishment, too. There would be a stern lecture about proper behaviour. An assignment of twenty lines of Chinese writing. Half the lines committed to memory before bedtime. Perhaps a twenty-five-word essay to be written in English. Or, worse, he might be grounded for ten weekends and be assigned Sekky’s dirty diapers to rinse and wash every day before bedtime. Jung-Sum would have to lie on his iron cot, count the minutes, the hours, until …
As Jung stomped up the stairs, Mrs. Chong sighed. All this time, Stepmother had been whispering to Father.
“Jung-Sum kicked Jenny!” Father said, appalled. He lifted off his glasses to think better. “Why?”
I spoke up. “Jenny said Second Brother’s always following me around like a stupid dog.”
Poh-Poh coughed loudly and waved her hand as if to expel the bad air: a warning for me to shut up. Her eyes shone. Seeing the intensity of those eyes, Mrs. Chong wanted to soften the Old One’s tendency towards, perhaps, too much disappointment with her grandsons. She lifted a manicured hand to her forehead.
“My mo yung daughter! To speak too soon can be so thoughtless!”
“My mo no Second Son!” added Father, firmly putting back his glasses. “Acting before thinking!”
Between those two cries, a balance had been struck: neither family would lose face.
Stepmother shifted in her chair. She looked too tired to say anything. She was as slim as ever; her belly barely pushed against her dress, if it did at all. But thinking of how big her stomach would become, I couldn’t help staring.
“Kiam-Kim,” Poh-Poh said, “finish your school work.”
“Have you not finished?” Father demanded.
As he drank his tea at the round table, Father watched me dip the brush and instructed me to hold my forefinger at a sharper angle against the bamboo stem. But I was distracted by my own thoughts. To talk too soon … to act too quickly must be unlucky forces.
Now Jung-Sum was going to get it.
“Why didn’t you stop Jung-Sum?” Father said. “Don’t overload your brush.”
“He was too fast for me,” I said.
“You be faster next time.”
I knew what Father meant. As Dai-goh, I was supposed to protect Second Brother from himself, from his bad temper. I was to teach Jung-Sum how to be always patient. Set an example. I had not acted as a wise and all-seeing Big Brother for Jung-Sum. I had failed.
I listened for Jung’s reactions to Poh-Poh’s punishment, but except for the daub-swish of the brush as I dipped into the ink block, no sound came to my ears.
By the time I went to bed, I still hadn’t found out what tough punishment the Old One had assigned to Jung. In a slant of moonlight falling across the room, I could see the little guy fast asleep in his cot. I got up and shook him awake.
“So?” I said. “Did Poh-Poh speak to you?”
“Yes,” came his sleepy voice.
“Well?”
“She told me …” It was as if he were thinking with difficulty, or falling back to sleep. Poor Jung, I thought. Poh-Poh probably force-fed him castor oil like Jack’s mother once had done to him. She must have knuckled him. Twisted his ears. Pulled his nose. Made him swear he would never kick any female creature again—never, never, never kick!
“Well?” I said.
“Poh-Poh told me—” He yawned, shifting onto his side “—for the next time …”
I wanted to jolt him wide awake, punch my fist into his pillow as I used to do when we were younger, but remembered that I needed to set an example. To think before I acted.
“Next time,” I asked gently, “next time—what?”
“Next time, I to kick … harder!”
“You misheard her,” I said.
But in the darkness, relentless old eyes penetrated my brain and left no doubt. “Kick harder!” Poh-Poh had said, and walked out of the bedroom, trailing her bitter anger to the end.
The Japanese were moving their armies down from the north into the Southern Provinces. China’s divided armies needed the food to help them fight the growing war, not only against the Imperial Japanese but against each other, too. People were starving. No one was in control. By 1936, the news was always bad.
“New baby go hungry in Gold Mountain,” Poh-Poh said to Stepmother.
We could buy good food that came from the Fraser Valley farmers, but the prices of anything like soy or oyster sauce, salted fish, rice, or thousand-year-old eggs, or any special herbs, or dried plums or oranges, if they were available at all, had all increased ten times over last season’s prices. Shipping routes were mined by all sides. Fewer and fewer China goods arrived in Vancouver.
Father had to ask the Tong Association to lower the rent for our Keefer Street house. Stepmother, her belly growing ever larger, stayed home with Poh-Poh; the two of them worked together mending and altering second-hand shirts and pants to fit each of us. The Tong Association now paid half the fees for my Chinese school in exchange for Father’s collecting their rents for them, and for Jung’s and my washing the insides of the main office windows every three weeks. Without the variety of work Father now took on, Third Uncle told me, the Chen family would be in trouble: I would be out of school and know no Chinese and be ashamed and mocked as a “Gold Mountain dreamer”; finally, when all the family returned to China, even with Third Uncle, we would be just as poor as when we first arrived.
One rain-soaked day in February, Mrs. Lim and Poh-Poh said that the baby would come very soon. While I did my school work, the two old friends sat stitching together old bedsheets to make fresh mattress covers. Stepmother was in the parlour, collapsed on the sofa. A towel-wrapped pillow had been put under her head. Her long hair was pinned up. She had asked to come downstairs to be with all of us, and did not seem to mind the family noise around her. Poh-Poh had put a blanket over her, though she seemed warmly dressed to me.
Sekky and Liang were playing house underneath Father’s oak desk. Jung-Sum was studying for another test. And I sat wondering over my history book how I would feel next September when I would be in Grade 8, the highest grade at Strathcona. Then I heard the sobbing.
“Poh-Poh,” I said, “Gai-mou is crying.”
Tears ran freely down her pale cheeks.
Poh-Poh said, “Gai-mou not too well, Kiam-Kim. Father at Mr. Gu’s store to pick up Tai Sim’s medicine.”
I knew Mrs. Tai. She always wore a bright kerchief and simple black dresses. She had come to our house one night, along with the midwife Mrs. Nellie Yip, a white lady who was almost as big as Mrs. Lim. The next morning, there was baby Liang-Liang suckling on Stepmother’s breast. Mrs. Tai showed up again when Sekky was born.
I sat up. “Is Tai Sim coming to bring out the new baby?”
Jung was all ears. Liang hushed up Sekky to listen.
Stepmother looked flushed. Poh-Poh gently patted her knee. She reached deep into the sleeve of her quilted jacket and handed Stepmother a handkerchief.
“Tai Sim here?”
“No—not yet,” Poh-Poh said. “Soon.”
“Kiam-Kim was not told—?” Mrs. Lim said.
“I maybe talk too soon,” Poh-Poh said. “Too sure and too soon!”
“Soon?” I said, confused again. “The new baby coming soon?”
“No, no,” Poh-Poh said. “Not this time. Maybe too soon!”
She sounded confused herself. Stepmother groaned.
One hour later Tai Sim arrived and said she would sit with Stepmother, that we should go on with our usual business.
“I wait,” I said.
But Stepmother’s tears would not stop. Perhaps she had wanted a new boy sooner.
Father arrived home, took his hat and coat off, and went straight to Stepmother’s side.
Tai Sim stepped back from the sofa. “Madame Nellie Yip come later tonight,” the small woman announced to everyone in the parlour. She quickly knelt down, turned over Stepmother’s wrist and tapped, then she studied Stepmother’s tongue and the rims of her eyes. She rubbed the back of Stepmother’s soaked neck and felt for tension. The towel under Stepmother was wet.
“Madame Yip know what to do,” Tai Sim said.
Madame Nellie Yip had studied in Old China and knew as many dialects as any Chinatown resident, even more than Poh-Poh herself. She told one of her in-laws, in witty Cantonese, “You have perfect hips for having babies! Have a dozen!” Everyone wanted Nellie Yip to oversee their births: she knew both Western and Eastern ways. For years, she had fought to have sick Chinese people served properly in the city hospitals. In her adopted tongue, she was not “Mrs.” but was highly regarded and called Madame.
Hearing that Madame Nellie Yip would be with her, working along with Tai Sim, Stepmother smiled confidently.
“You have the medicine for me?”
Father held up the black, velvety box. A crest of a red phoenix was embossed on its lid.
“Tai Sim thinks I might have the baby very soon.”
“Everything go well,” Father said. “No worry.”
Tai Sim asked for the small box from Father.
“Give Chen Sim some warm soup,” she said, “while I prepare phoenix medicine.” She shook the velvet box. The contents made a soft pattering noise, like rolling BBs. I thought of the loud rattling pebbles coming from another, larger box. That one had had a golden dragon curved over the lid.
“Paid many dollars,” Father said. “More than one week’s salary!”
“Cost Gai-mou, too,” the Old One said. Rain began pelting against the porch. “Very soon be over.”
“Maybe too soon for me,” said Stepmother. Her voice sounded strained.
“Maybe count wrong,” Tai Sim said. “No worry.”
A knock came from the front door. Shaking her umbrella, Mrs. Chong stepped into the parlour. With one glance she knew what was going on. Madame Yip had phoned her to bring over from her store a tiny tube of White Flower Essence, a bottle of Lysol, and thick cotton bundles of bandages. In case.
Jung-Sum took away her raincoat, I brought some chairs from the dining room. Everyone sat close to the sofa. Sekky and Liang brought out their toys to play at the foot of the big chesterfield. From her cane rocker, Poh-Poh nudged me to pour tea for our guests.
I poured Father’s last. He looked first at Stepmother, then he stared helplessly at Mrs. Chong. Little sympathy reflected back from her. She sat in the sofa chair and reached into her purse for a cigarette. I took the Peter Pan Café matches she handed me. At one of the mahjong games, Mrs. Chong taught me how to be a gentleman with a match, to be like one of those picture-show stars she admired. I struck the match, and Mrs. Chong inhaled. The Sweet Caporal flared with fire and smoke. Then she exhaled and, with her pencilled eyebrows cresting elegantly, smiled at me. Her hand delicately fanned away the smoke. Across the room, Stepmother politely pointed out the ashtray on the end table. I set it on the arm of the sofa. It was the big ashtray Third Uncle used for his pipe.
“Everything fine now, Chen Suk,” Mrs. Chong said to Father. “Chen Sim just have a little bad spell. Nothing more.”
No one believed her.
We all watched Poh-Poh get up and press her palm against Stepmother’s forehead. Tai Sim had taken the medicine box and all the packages into the kitchen. She told Father that the pills would have to be crushed and an assortment of herbs blended together with them. It would take an hour of steaming in a double-enclosed pot before the bitter liquid, distilled and cooled, would be ready for Stepmother.
“Sip when cramp push lower,” Tai Sim had said with authority. “Strengthen muscle.”
Hearing those words, Mrs. Chong grimaced and exchanged some nervous glances with Poh-Poh and big Mrs. Lim. My spine tightened. It was clear Stepmother did not want to move from the sofa. She did not want to move at all. Tai Sim had told her to stay put until she checked her signs again.
Father looked uncomfortable.
“Need more strength,” Poh-Poh said gently to Stepmother.
“I make you very good soup,” said Mrs. Lim. She folded her hands, as if in prayer. “I now go home to make.”
During the wait for Tai Sim to reappear, Father drank his tea and hardly took his eyes away from Stepmother. I could see she was holding her knees together, as if she were in pain.
“Oh, Chen Sim,” Mrs. Chong said, “you must go upstairs into your big bed.”
Poh-Poh looked alarmed. “Not here. I bring you soup upstairs.”
“Yes,” Father said, “much more room in bed.”
“And the children not be there,” Tai Sim said, coming into the parlour. She felt Stepmother’s forehead with the back of her small palm; patiently, with her forefinger she traced the vein that visibly throbbed beneath the ear. Tai Sim sighed. “Not for children to see. Much to be done.” Tai Sim marched back into the kitchen, her body rigid with efficiency.
“Kiam-Kim,” Poh-Poh commanded. “You and Father help Gai-mou upstairs.”
Stepmother leaned against Father’s arm. Then she put one hand on my shoulder and asked me to walk up the stairs first.
The Old One rushed back from the kitchen with a small lidded bowl. “I mix broth with honey,” she said, climbing the staircase behind us. “Sweet and bitter balance heat and cold.”
As we all shifted up the stairs, I glimpsed Liang through the bannister. She sat on the parlour floor, pushing a toy spoon of imaginary medicine into Raggedy Ann. With a tin horn, Sekky poked at its stomach.
At last, Stepmother lay down on the bed. Father began to undress her. Poh-Poh told me to run downstairs and help clear up the kitchen.
Mrs. Chong was slipping into her hooded raincoat. As she walked out of our house, the rain lashed against her umbrella.
I remember that Madame Nellie Yip arrived very late that night. Sekky, Liang, and Jung had all gone to bed hours before, and Father and I sat in the dining room, quiet and waiting.
Poh-Poh came downstairs to rinse and boil some more towels. She told Father that Stepmother had already taken half of the phoenix liquid.
“Go to bed, Kiam-Kim,” Poh-Poh said. “This night for women only.”
I went to bed, listening through the half-open door of the bedroom to the groans and troubling sounds coming from the room across the hall. I remember the stairs creaking as big Mrs. Lim made her way upstairs. Carrying a thermos of soup in one hand, she leaned against the doorway and peeked in, looking over at Jung-Sum. As I turned over, she said to me, “Go to sleep, First Son.”
I sat up. “Will the new baby be okay?”
Mrs. Lim waved the container at me. “Good soup here,” she said softly. “Not for you to worry.”
“Father worries,” I said. “He worries all the time.”
“Yes, yes.” In her Toishanese words there followed as blunt a truth as ever, as if one could not be defeated by even the inevitable. “Worry and die. Worry and die. What is the use of such a life? You go to sleep.”
Mrs. Lim saw the sock I had jammed into the doorway so it would stay open. She tugged it out of the way, tossed it onto my bed, and shut the door tightly. There was nothing to do but listen to the rain, lie still, and be swallowed by the darkness.
Jung-Sum sat up, too. I could hear Liang crying and jumped out of my bed to see what was the matter. In seconds, the three of us stood in the doorway and watched the last moments of the birthing. No one chased us away. Father was a few steps into the room, carrying a sleeping Sekky in his arms.
Bending over the bed, Madame Nellie Yip announced, “A boy,” but there were no smiles on anyone’s face.
The baby had been strangled by its cord.
I could hear Stepmother weeping softly, as if she were a child. I watched Madame Yip lift the small, glistening baby with the dangling cord into a tin pail at the foot of the bed. A folded bedsheet covered the galvanized bucket. Mrs. Lim bowed her head and walked to the other side of the bed, as if her weight might balance the cruel fate of birth and death.
Poh-Poh slowly took Jung-Sum to the bedside.
“This is why we were given Jung-Sum,” she told Stepmother.
Then the Old One turned to me. “You hear, Kiam-Kim?”
Second Brother did not pull away. He stood tall and straight and held on to the Old One’s hand.
Liang slipped into the room to be with her mother; then I stepped in, too. Then Father brought Sekky in his arms and stood behind Poh-Poh.
“Why cry?” she said. “Tomorrow we bury this one. We thank the temple gods that this grandson suffer only this night.”
Father asked Madame Yip a complicated question I did not understand. The big woman bowed her head and looked solemnly down at Stepmother before she would answer. Stepmother’s eyes were closed. The phoenix medicine must have done its work.
“No, no more,” Madame Yip said.
The wet head lifted up from the pillow. Eyes opened wide. Stepmother smiled with relief.
“No,” she repeated, “no more … no more.”
Father’s hand gripped my shoulder.