“Ma, I’ve told Ah Lan-chay to go into the carriage with you and the children. To keep them quiet. The whole morning they’ve been jumping like grasshoppers. Especially Kok Wah.”
“Bring my little precious to me. I’ll look after him. Tell everyone to be ready by noon.”
“Please don’t worry, Ma. Have some tea.”
Wong-ma sipped her tea and watched as Lai Fong poured out three cups of rice wine and placed them carefully in a row on the altar. In dress and demeanour, her daughter-in-law was a plain woman who eschewed jewellery, her only ornaments being a pair of jade earrings and a jade bangle. Her samfoo was well-tailored but looked modest next to those worn by the wives of other rich men.
“Humble and sensible, that’s my daughter-in-law. It’s true, she’s from an orphanage. But what’s more important? Character or family background?” she asked her listeners.
Even in her old age, Wong-ma continued to pooh-pooh the conventions of her day and urged Lai Fong to do the same.
“Under my roof, my daughter-in-law must use her head. And her mouth too. Listen to me, Fong. We’re the women-generals in this new country. We’ve got to take charge. Of course a wise woman won’t let her husband know that. With a man, you can’t show your true self. I tell you this even though Tuck Heng is my son.”
And for that, Lai Fong was grateful to her mother-in-law. Theirs was not a relationship of blind obedience and submission. It was more a collaboration with the older woman showing the way. Unknown to Wong-ma, however, she had had another teacher.
Miss Higgs, the plainly dressed and plain-speaking missionary from Yorkshire, had saved her from her father when he attacked the orphanage to force her to return to their village to marry a dolt. Speaking Cantonese with a quaint accent, Miss Higgs had taught her that a woman should be free from male tyranny. “No man should force a woman to marry against her will.” Miss Higgs brooked no nonsense from the men whether English or Chinese. She ruled her orphanage with a firm hand.
And Lai Fong, following her example, managed her husband’s household with a firm hand too. Every dollar spent by the cook and the head servant had to be accounted for, thrift and honesty being the hallmarks of a good servant, according to Miss Higgs. Those who shirked their duties or abused Lai Fong’s trust found her punishment swift and sharp for they were instantly sacked. Not even an appeal to Wong-ma could change her mind.
Once Wong-ma had pleaded for a servant and Lai Fong had replied with a quote from the Bible which Miss Higgs had taught her to read in Cantonese. “If a man is not faithful in safeguarding what is another man’s, who can trust him?” Wong-ma had concluded that her daughter-in-law was quoting a saying of the Great Master. She repeated it to her friends, saying it was from Confucius.
But Lai Fong didn’t correct her mother-in-law. Had she pointed out the mistake, Wong-ma would’ve lost face and perhaps a crack in their relationship would’ve been created. Was it always necessary to demonstrate one’s knowledge and honesty? Had she not camouflaged her true feelings during her years in the orphanage, the Christian missionaries might not have accepted her. During her stay with them, never once did she reveal her disbelief in their strange god who had allowed himself to be killed on a cross.
From a very young age, she’d learned that questioning authority openly did not pay. Frankness led to caning. Growing up in an extended family of sixteen children with dozens of busybodies living under one roof, she had learned the art of concealment.
When she was twelve, her father sold her off to a sixty-year-old landlord to be his thirteenth concubine. A week before her marriage, she hid herself in a farmer’s wagon and made her way to the Christian mission in Kwangtung. She had heard that the Christians were determined to stop this heinous practice of forcing girls into concubinage. When her father and the landlord, backed by a horde of furious men, stormed the mission, Miss Higgs had called in the soldiers of the English embassy.
Defeated, the men left. But they had not forgotten. Years later they returned with a vengeance. That was the year she met Wong-ma in the orphanage. By then she was twenty-one and well past marrying age. Trouble was brewing in the Kwangtung District and the local warlords and Qing officials were mounting attacks on the Christian mission. Anti-Western feelings ran so high that the mission was burned down. When she looked back on those turbulent days, she realised that it was necessity that had forced her to marry Tuck Heng.
“Ma, I ... ah ... I’ve something to tell you. It’s Tuck Heng Kor! He ... he’s cut off his queue this morning!”
“Aiyah! Why did he do that? And today of all days!”
“Ma, please don’t worry. It’s the modern style.”
“What modern? What style? All Chinese men wear queues! Only criminals and Christian converts have no queues!”
“Ma, many men in Penang have already cut them off.”
“They’re just the Straits-born. They follow the foreign devils! They don’t count. His Nonya wife! She must’ve put him up to it!”
“But Ma, Tuck Heng Kor didn’t cut his hair in Penang.”
“Aiyah, Fong! Those women are clever. They can twist a man round their little finger. Never trust them!”