All That Matters (24 page)

I looked towards the outcrop of rockery where Mrs. Lim’s wooden shack was perched on stilts. I wondered why widowed Mrs. Lim didn’t panic, didn’t worry that her house might be snatched up and blown away. I knew her windows were always shut, the shades drawn, to preserve the
che
forces, the spirit forces, of her home. I wondered if that was why she did not worry. I wondered at our bedroom window, which was now holding against the force of a slamming North Shore wind, probably with the same force that hit the soldier’s face and forced him to shut his eyes.

I went downstairs. Everyone was still busy with the clothes. A delicate silk shawl now lifted into the air; embroidered butterflies caught the light.

“You think too much, Kiam-Kim,” Poh-Poh said, gathering up the shawl. “Gai-mou agrees.”

“I can’t help it,” I protested.

I wanted to explain to them how I puzzled over why things happened, what things meant. I wanted to
understand what the elders told me about Old China, about which side was good, if any side was good at all.

I stared into space, thinking about my own life inside the borders of Chinatown, a life sometimes so far away from the Old China world they all still lived in.

I went to the parlour and picked up Sekky and swung him, giggling, into the air. I wanted to toss him higher than any Hell could ever reach him.

After weeks of moping about, worrying, and pestering everyone about the dark place called Hell, I began to brood over the fate of my siblings and Stepmother’s Lost Baby.

“Did he go directly to Heaven?”

Maybe Father would have been less worried if I was more like Jack, whose fascination was with girls, or like Jeffrey Eng, who fretted endlessly over car engines. Instead, he and Third Uncle decided that I should attend a few Sunday school classes at the Good Mission Church on Keefer Street.

“Let Kiam-Kim learn as much as possible,” Father said to Poh-Poh, who resisted. “He should hear about Heaven, too.”

It turned out that Stepmother had a close friend in China named Chen Suling who, after she accepted Christ into her life, was thrown out of her family compound. Suling’s father did not appreciate the fact that, like a barbarian, his useless daughter would drink the blood of Christ and eat his flesh.

Chen Suling found shelter at the Mission Church.
If church people were such good people as to save the lives of useless or orphaned girls like herself and Suling, Stepmother did not mind if I went to Sunday school. Quite a few Chinatown families belonged to the United Church.

“I don’t want Kiam-Kim to eat flesh and blood,” Poh-Poh warned. She had herself once witnessed Christians eating only wafers and drinking only wine, but someone warned her that the wafer and wine instantly turned into the actual flesh and blood of the Lord Jesus. Poh-Poh spat at the thought.

Third Uncle promised Poh-Poh that no possible harm would ever come to me at the Mission Church. I would be asked to swallow neither flesh nor blood. Instead, cakes and tea were often served. He would take me with him himself until my bowl was full of Light, or at least with enough wattage to chase away the darkness.

Third Uncle had some acquaintance with the Bible and with the minister at the church. Twenty-five years ago, he had attended English classes there taught by a Mrs. Simpson. She had introduced him to the Chinese Bible, and occasionally they still arranged to meet at community fundraisers. Third Uncle and the church people spoke together about my teenage fears, my obsession with Hell. The minister said that I should attend Mrs. Simpson’s First Instructions class. We were to avoid the Baptists, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Catholics, in fact all groups who believed everything was always about darkness and punishment, always about sin and Hell.

“Of course, Kiam-Kim, there is a Hell,” Mrs. Simpson said matter-of-factly. “But good Christians and good people don’t need to worry about that. We should all think about God’s Heaven. That’s where we truly belong.”

Mrs. Simpson had tight curly hair, more white than brown, and she wore thick glasses through which grey eyes shone. She had a strong, motherly voice that suited her big-boned height. She wore a blue jacket with a cherub pin on the lapel.

I liked Mrs. Simpson. She had no fear of the Devil or of Hell; she would not even listen to the list of tortures that I had nightmares about. She was intent on teaching us her version of the Bible.

I knew that many Chinatown men and women went to these Church-sponsored classes, often because it was a safe place to socialize. Tea and cookies were served—and if they were hungry, no one looked if they pocketed some extra biscuits—and the classes required a donation only of a nickel, maybe a dime. Some basic English could be learned, and then, when you felt you had enough English words, you would simply not show up.

Some, like Mrs. Leong and Mrs. Wong, attended English night classes for other reasons. When the evening’s language and Proverb lessons were done, these two women, souls refreshed, hats adjusted, coats tightly buttoned, walked blissfully in the moonlight the two blocks to Mrs. Lim’s. Then the three of them would powder their noses and go and play mahjong at Betty Lee’s. For them, salvation always came first,
in case
.

“Well,” said Mrs. Chong about the three mahjong ladies, “why be saved for nothing?”

Poh-Poh laughed. “Too late for me.”

Third Uncle told me he used to feel very lucky after some of those Bible lessons; he would rush off at once to the
fantan
tables, and often won quite a few dollars.

“Of course,” he said, “I donate to the church.”

Mrs. Simpson warmly welcomed us that first day, taking us from the minister’s office to her Beginner’s English and First Instructions class in a small meeting room at the back of the building. Also in the class were Mrs. Poon and her oldest daughter, Joanne, four years older than me, who came to continue their Bible lessons and to learn English; a white lady from Poland who hardly spoke any English but clutched a picture of Jesus and the Virgin Mary against her thick sweater; Miss Abbey, a Siwash Indian whom Mrs. Simpson had saved from a bad life and who seemed to only half listen as she pulled strands of her long, black hair between her fingers; two other kids around my age, Steven and Jess; and Third Uncle, who had brought me.

Mrs. Simpson could see from Third Uncle’s rice-bowl loyalty (for he now came to classes only when he needed to understand certain English phrases related to business) that through Third Uncle’s recommendations she could at least still increase the flock. He had sent her way a steady stream of sheep, old like Mrs. Poon and young like myself. Joanne and I could speak English and Toishanese, so we were asked to help translate for Mrs. Poon and for the two youngest in the class.

“Let the light guide you,” Mrs. Simpson said, “not the darkness. Angels fear not the darkness.” Mrs. Simpson smiled at the mix of adults and children before her. “The good people who love us are also like angels. They will help us fight demons and temptation. Be a good person and you will have wings to fly over God’s Eternal Garden.”

Joanne and I translated what we could. If Mrs. Simpson noticed any one of the eight of us struggling, she would walk straight to her special green felt board and illustrate her meaning. She stuck up an angel-shaped felt cutout and a thin red strip with a pointed yellow dot on top.

“Like angels, you will bring your light to this dark world.”

After the first month, not everyone stayed. The Polish lady, tongue-tied, did not come back, and neither did Mrs. Poon, whose husband, Third Uncle told me, was angry at her for coming at all. Joanne Poon, however, signed up for more classes. She wept for joy that she might be an angel, since she was only a girl at home.

“She work harder than you, Kiam-Kim,” said Third Uncle.

“She prays harder,” I said, though I knew everyone in the family was concerned that my grades were slipping. I had too much to think about. I stayed in my room and sank deeper into a grim-faced melancholy. At night, Jung quietly slipped into his small cot and said nothing. I prayed for his soul.

Whenever I grew restless, on those Beginners’
mornings, Mrs. Simpson’s steel eyes bored into me.

“If you remember to be patient, Kiam-Kim,” she said, “as Jesus taught us to be patient, even under the lash, then Heaven will be your reward.” Her stories held my attention. There was the tale of a man who helped another man who was beaten by crooks and left to die. A felt cutout of a man lay on a grey patch of felt road. “Other holy men passed him by, but a Samaritan, the kind of person thought to be the least respectable”—Mrs. Simpson looked at Miss Abbey—“this worthless outcast rescued the bleeding man. That good Samaritan has no fear of Hell. He is one of God’s angels.”

I thought of the blankets and food my Free China donation boxes were helping to buy, my efforts helping to guard soldiers against the cold, and orphans against hunger. For the next three Sundays, Mrs. Simpson told other Christian stories. She assured us of the promise of Heaven granted to all good people. She asked each one of us to think about our own goodness. There was a scarcity of goodness and mercy and charity in the world—but one had to choose to be good, to be merciful, to be charitable. That was God’s gift to us, that choice.

“Free will,” said Mrs. Simpson. “So choose wisely.”

I thought of Jenny Chong banging away at the piano: she didn’t seem to realize there was Heaven as well as Hell. And just as Hell had obsessed me, I began to see the Heavenly Light everywhere. I smiled like an idiot.

As quickly as the fires and demon visions had flooded my thoughts, they just as suddenly receded. One bright May Sunday morning I woke up, either saved by Jesus or surrendered by the Devil, and knew this would be my last visit to the Mission Church. I told Mrs. Simpson that I could see the light now, though I knew it was not exactly as she might have wished.

“As long as you believe this,” she said, “then all will be fine, Kiam-Kim. Bless you.”

I suppose if I was so concerned about Hell, I should have asked Third Uncle about Heaven as well. The Chinese Heaven was certain to be more splendid than the Christian one. And there were Chinese guardians, too, though I always felt unsure about them, like Poh-Poh’s Kitchen God, and the Goddess of Mercy in our parlour, and the pictures of our distant dead cousins on the end table between the incense and the thick red candles. Chinatown was flooded with spiritual wealth. Most everyone we knew had a laughing Buddha sitting on top of their piano or on a plate shelf. Every Chinatown business had the fierce-faced God of Good Fortune standing on a temple-shaped platform, and almost every store sold incense and lucky envelopes.

I could see now that in Chinatown there was more Heaven than Hell.

Leaving the house for school one beautiful morning, with Liang and Jung tagging behind me, I said, out of the blue, “I’m lucky.”

“Why?” Jung asked.

“Because we’re a family,” I said. “We have Poh-Poh and Father and Stepmother with us.”

Jung-Sum smiled. “And they have me.”

“Me, too,” Liang piped up.

“And all those Chinese gods,” I said, touching my forehead and crossing my heart just as Jack had taught me to do.
In case
.

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