End of East, The (11 page)
Authors: Jen Sookfong Lee
Her mother always said that Siu Sang was a dreamer.Unlike her older sister, who attends school to learn accounting and business, Siu Sang stays at home, looking out the window with her small, round eyes at the busy Hong Kong streets below, or lying on a stone bench in the central courtyard, staring for as long as she can at the hot sun in the hazy sky. She reads romance novels and listens to the radio, dancing only if no one is around. Her mother once tried to insist that Siu Sang learn to cook or sew or do something useful, but she soon came to the conclusion that her middle daughter was stupid, or simply destined to be a rich man’s wife.
But she is not a socialite like her cousins. Instead, she stays at home, content to nibble on snacks or try on her mother’s wedding jewellery. She walks slowly, her movement confined by the walls of their house and its courtyard. No one knows what she is thinking, but her mind is clearly elsewhere.
Her brothers call her the Absent-Minded Princess.
One evening, her older sister, Yen Mei, begs her to attend a dance at the university. “Please come. One of the girls can’t make it, so if you don’t come with me, everything will be uneven.”
Siu Sang agrees, sighing as she pulls herself out of her chair to get dressed. The night is sticky, and it is impossible for her to move quickly. Yen Mei is ready to go while Siu Sang is still brushing the lint off her pink dress.
As they are being driven to the dance in their father’s big silver car, Siu Sang imagines that she is gliding across a ballroom, a martini in her hand. Couples spin in perfect time with the full orchestra behind them, and she can hear the murmur of appreciation as she walks through the crowd. Her long skirt with marabou trim barely touches the floor while she gazes at herself in the mirrors lining the long gilt wall. A moustached man steps in front of her and wordlessly offers her his arm. She dances with him, and the glitter of the room dims. They trail romance and glamour behind them.
Twenty minutes later, Siu Sang finds herself standing against a whitewashed cinder-block wall. A tinny record player plays warbled Artie Shaw in the far corner, and a card table has been set up with paper cups and a bowl of faintly purple punch. Her sister’s friends surround her, talking quickly and laughing. The record skips.
“He’s coming over here.”
“No, don’t look! Pretend you don’t see him.”
“All this waiting. Why don’t you ask him to dance yourself?”
“What? I’m not that kind of girl.”
At seventeen, Siu Sang has never been to a dance before. Whenever her mother showed her an invitation that had arrived in the mail, Siu Sang simply shrugged and stayed home.
She is unsure of what to do, whether she should sit or stand, dance in place by herself like some of the other girls or just hide in the washroom. She cannot look at the bank of boys standing against the wall opposite her.
She is unsure of what to do, whether she should sit or stand, dance in place by herself like some of the other girls or just hide in the washroom. She cannot look at the bank of boys standing against the wall opposite her.
One by one, each of the girls is asked to dance. Siu Sang sinks her insubstantial body closer to the wall and stares at the ceiling, noticing its bubbled paint and peeling plaster. The music sounds like a loop to her, each song indistinguishable from the rest, each chord like the one that came before. She looks back at the couples in front of her—awkward boys with their hands on red-faced girls.
They’re messing up the steps,
she thinks, but then realizes that nobody cares. They are touching, and that is all that matters.
They’re messing up the steps,
she thinks, but then realizes that nobody cares. They are touching, and that is all that matters.
When the music stops, she finally moves from her spot in the corner and leaves the dance, nodding along silently as her sister talks and talks, filling the stale air of the chauffeured car. As they pull up to their house—grey stone with red columns, a gated archway made of black wrought iron—one of the maids throws a bucket of dirty water from the side kitchen door. When she sees Siu Sang and Yen Mei, she retreats into the shadows.
Later that night, their mother appears in the doorway to the room they share with their younger sister. The air hangs thickly; all the smells from the day’s activities (cooking, laundry, bathing) have settled into a damp cloud that sits just below the ceiling. Siu Sang’s upper lip is sweaty.
She lies on the top bunk. Her younger sister is on the bottom, snoring loudly. Yen Mei sleeps noiselessly on a bed across the room. Siu Sang can feel the silk sheets growing slimy with sweat underneath her. The window is open and the street din has not stopped.
Their mother stands in her spot for a long time. Siu Sang imagines that she is looking at each girl’s face, judging what kind of wives and daughters-in-law they will become, speculating on how many sons lie dormant in their bodies. Her mother breathes heavily, her open lips wetly smacking together with every exhale. Siu Sang moves her eyes to look at her older sister. She will be leaving soon to be married to a man in Canada, but she lies there exactly as she always has, her left leg hanging down off the side of the bed, her eyelids slightly open, as if she is afraid she will miss something. Siu Sang watches her mother as she wipes her forehead with the silk handkerchief she keeps tucked in her belt. She shuts the door and turns to walk slowly back to her own bedroom.
Siu Sang waits for the sound of her mother’s door closing before she raises her head. From her bed, she can look straight out into the street and see the lights of Kowloon district. It is close to midnight, and she can still hear the shopkeepers selling chickens, noodles and paper money for offerings to household gods. She can see people moving about in the building across the street, their house lights flickering and weak. She fidgets underneath her sheet.
A girl laughs outside, her giggle skipping through the streets like a pebble. Siu Sang wonders if she is on a date, if she has slipped out of her bedroom to secretly meet a young man, if she is, like her, a teenager dreaming of love.
Tonight, Siu Sang transforms Hong Kong into something else, creates in her mind a mannered, well-dressed city where she and the laughing girl skip along the clean sidewalks carelessly. There are no just-slaughtered chickens hanging on hooks at the street market, no dirty old women selling cheap jewellery displayed on threadbare blankets at every corner, no
men spitting on the sidewalk as the girls pass. Here, in this different Hong Kong, the air is pure and no one ever sweats. The only vendors on the street are clean, polite men who offer trinkets and novelties: paper fans, cookies wrapped in red paper, pet birds in gold cages.
men spitting on the sidewalk as the girls pass. Here, in this different Hong Kong, the air is pure and no one ever sweats. The only vendors on the street are clean, polite men who offer trinkets and novelties: paper fans, cookies wrapped in red paper, pet birds in gold cages.
Siu Sang and the laughing girl walk into a café, order a Western soda, sit in the window and watch the people walk by. Women in pastel day suits, men in hats, children with candy. As they walk home in the evening, the windows in the tall buildings of the financial district begin to light up, one by one, like thousands of little eyes, winking.
A man shouts outside Siu Sang’s window, and she looks out, blinking to clear her head. Across the street, on the sidewalk, a couple argues. The man has grabbed the woman’s arm and her body is half-turned, as if she is trying to run away. She wears only one high-heeled shoe, and even from this distance, Siu Sang can see that the heavy makeup around her eyes is running and her face is covered in black streaks. The man shouts, “You will do what I say!” The woman sobs and her body goes limp. She allows the man to walk her down the street, and they disappear around a corner.
Siu Sang lies back down on her damp pillows and turns on her side to face the room. Nothing ever changes here: the same rosewood chairs and table, the same scrolls hanging on the wall. She touches a bruise on her hip, the purple stain the exact shape of a table corner.
She watches as Yen Mei directs the driver how to pack her trunk and suitcases into the car. “Do you understand that soft luggage always goes on top? If you ruin my makeup bag, I’ll have nothing on the boat and I’ll look like a peasant girl.”
Everyone else said goodbye in the house. When Siu Sang asked her sister if she could follow her to the car and say goodbye in the street, Yen Mei just shrugged and said, “Whatever you want.”
She stands on one foot, enjoying the feeling of being slightly off balance yet strangely rooted to the concrete at the same time. The street in front of her is a blur.
“Well, I’m leaving.” Yen Mei stands in front of her, staring.
Siu Sang puts her foot down and pats Yen Mei on the shoulder. “Goodbye.”
“Is that it? I thought you had something special to tell me.” She looks annoyed.
“No. I just wanted to see you drive away, that’s all.”
Yen Mei shakes her head. “You’re a funny one. Well, goodbye.”
Siu Sang watches the long silver car pull into traffic and slowly make its way down the congested street. She wonders if Yen Mei really knows what Canada is like, or if she has only been making things up as she goes along, preferring to provide an answer than say nothing at all. When their younger sister asked Yen Mei if it might be a good idea to bring clothes besides all her silk dresses, Yen Mei had snorted and said, “My new husband and I will be so rich so fast, I’ll have no need for anything else. Besides, all the women in Canada wear silk all the time.” Listening, Siu Sang wasn’t so sure.
She watches until the car disappears and joins the traffic blur. As she turns to walk up the stairs, she looks back one more time and sees that Yen Mei has dropped one of her earrings on the street. It sits there, gleaming gold, its jade stone winking in the sunlight. A ragged woman, her pants held up with rope, bends to pick it up and laughs—a high, piercing cackle. Siu
Sang thinks she should say something, but then decides that the earring will make this poor woman happy, at least for a while, and that Yen Mei will only blame the driver for the loss and then forget about it altogether.
Sang thinks she should say something, but then decides that the earring will make this poor woman happy, at least for a while, and that Yen Mei will only blame the driver for the loss and then forget about it altogether.
Siu Sang sits quietly on an ottoman at her mother’s feet, staring straight ahead at her dimpled, well-fed knees. Her brothers have warned her, and she has been waiting for this talk.
“Siu Sang,” her mother says, “we have had another offer from a young man and his family.”
Her mind reels back to the boy with the big bum who has been following her around the city since she left school two years ago. Her stomach turns.
“Yen Mei’s husband has a friend. He lives in Canada.”
All her life she has been picturing herself the wife of a wealthy businessman, a man who will not expect her to do anything, a man who takes over his father’s shops and land in filial duty, only adding to the money and prestige that her father spent his whole life pursuing. It has never occurred to her to wish for anything else, to conceive of anything off the coast of Hong Kong. Canada has always been a foreign concept, and became even more so when she received her sister’s letters describing infinitely high trees, snow-covered mountains and a small, wild city.
In the time it takes Siu Sang to shift her mind over to this new possibility, her mother has finished telling her all the details: his family and hers have origins in neighbouring villages; he has great prospects in that vast and open country; he is handsome. She makes it clear that Siu Sang has a choice: she can marry one of the boys who have already approached the family and stay in Hong Kong, or she can go to Canada to
begin something new, where her children will grow up never worried about China’s occupation and far away from the possibility of a new, energized Japan.
begin something new, where her children will grow up never worried about China’s occupation and far away from the possibility of a new, energized Japan.
“He is not rich, but the family is prominent. When China takes over, who knows what will happen? You will be almost sixty then and could lose everything in your old age, when you need your money most. Canada is a free country with unlimited opportunity, as I often hear your brothers say. There is reason to hope that this boy will be rich one day.” She leans forward and touches Siu Sang on the cheek. “It is up to you.”
She reaches to her left, picks up an envelope from the polished teak side table and withdraws a small photograph. She hands it to her daughter. Siu Sang, still dizzy, takes the picture and looks at it, blinking furiously to clear her mind.
The young man is smiling, his lips full. His teeth are shining white, and his hair is slicked back in a way that is almost tough, but at the same time not. His eyes are big, limpid, full of naughty humour. He is sitting on a floral sofa with his arm draped along the back as if to say, “You would fit right here and we would laugh at this ugly sofa together.”
Siu Sang looks and looks. She puts her hand up to the back of her long neck to make sure that she is really here, that this is not one of her daydreams turned frighteningly real. She thinks to herself,
Remain calm. This is only a photo. This is not the real man
. But still.
Remain calm. This is only a photo. This is not the real man
. But still.
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