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Authors: Jen Sookfong Lee

BOOK: End of East, The
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Fifteen minutes later, I’m in the bar down the street, crushed up against strangers in a sweaty, boozy crowd. He shouts over the noise and orders a double gin and tonic for me before looking me in the eye. “I hope this isn’t weird for you.”
His head is bent over, and his breath is hot on my ear. “Because I know I’m just what you need.”
“We were going to name you Christopher,” says Wendy as she paints her fingernails. “But, you know, you came out a girl, so we had to turf that idea.” She blows on her long fingers, carefully moving them back and forth so that the polish will dry evenly.
I sit cross-legged on the floor of her bedroom, breathing in the nail polish and the dry, dusty smell of the potpourri packets she has placed on every surface. Her wedding dress hangs on a hook on the back of her door, its white satin shining in the dim light. Her veil lies on her dresser, covered in plastic. I touched it once the day before, when my sister had left the house to buy more wrappers for the fruitcake party favours. It felt stiff, wiry, completely opposite to the way I had expected (lighter even than air, white froth made solid). Weddings are a disappointing business when you are only seven years old.
“And then, you know, Mom was sick, so no one really took care of you. I mean, we all did, but we were just kids then, and we didn’t know what to do.” She looks at me through her asymmetrical bangs and reaches over to tousle my hair. “I actually melted your baby bottles once. How was I supposed to know that water boils away so fast?”
Daisy, her highlighted hair in curlers, runs into the room with her bright pink bridesmaid dress in her hands. “Listen, can you help me iron out this pucker right by the zipper? How did I not notice this earlier?” She looks at me, surprised. “Aren’t you in bed yet? You’re too little to stay up this late.” She runs out of the room again, leaving behind a curler that has dropped out of her hair.
Wendy sighs. “Well, Sammy, I’ll be out of the house forever by tomorrow. Can’t say that I’m too sad about it either.” She pats me on the head. “You have a big day tomorrow too. Go to bed. I still have a lot to do.”
I sit on the stairs for a long time, watching my sisters break in their shoes, run out to the twenty-four-hour drugstore for last-minute makeup and hairspray. Penny joins me briefly. “They’re going to play Christopher Cross at the reception, you know. How sappy. I’m going to see if I can request something better, maybe some New Order or something, like they played at the school dance.” She punches me in the arm. “I’ll get my own bedroom now that Wendy’s leaving. I can’t wait, because you’re the biggest pain in the butt when you snore.”
Upstairs, my parents play mah-jong with the out-of-town relatives, the moving tiles like little footsteps, dozens of tap shoes on a wooden floor. I rest my head on a banister and fall asleep. When I wake up, the house vibrates with suppressed energy, full to the rafters with back satin, boutonnieres. Expectations.
At the airport, my father, thinner than he has ever been before, stands in line with Daisy as she checks her luggage and requests an aisle seat. He hoists her suitcase up onto the scale, his scraggly hair falling over his forehead and into his eyes. He straightens up again, sighing.
I stand to the side with everyone else: my mother, Jackie and Penny, even Wendy and her nervous husband, who fidgets and rubs the top of his head until his straight black hair sticks up on end. He stands on one foot and then the other, twisting his hands together and whistling. My grandfather is at home. No one has bothered to tell him that Daisy is leaving to live in Hong Kong.
“I guess I have to go to the gate now. Goodbye, Sammy. Remember to write.” Daisy stands tall, unwilling to go anywhere without her heels, even when travelling.
I look at the floor, dig the toe of my dirty sneaker into the concrete. Daisy laughs.
“You don’t have to hug me if you don’t want to, but I wouldn’t mind if you don’t mind.”
I push my face into the side of her body, feel her arm wrap around my shoulders.
She whispers, “I’ll miss you too, Sammy. But I have to leave. I’ll be back someday—just think of that. I’ll phone you on your birthday. Turning ten is a big deal, and I don’t want to miss it.”
She turns to my mother. “I’ll call when I get in.”
My mother sniffs. “Remember what I said. Hong Kong isn’t like Canada, you know. Men will rip the necklace right off your body. And don’t let anyone charge you more just because you’re Canadian.”
Daisy waves her hand dismissively and nods along. “I don’t want to fight, Mom. Last night wasn’t any fun for either of us.”
“Who’s fighting?” Her lips are stretched thin over her uneven teeth. “Don’t accuse me of fighting when all I ever wanted was to teach you right from wrong. You’ll come to a bad end in Hong Kong, I just know it. It’s only what you deserve for leaving your father at a time like this—no good daughter would go off alone just for a career. Who will marry you now?”
Daisy pushes her face closer to my mother’s. “I’m surprised anyone married you.”
My mother steps back and spits in Daisy’s face. Wendy’s husband giggles nervously. Then my mother, her entire body
quivering with rage, walks away, out the doors and toward the parking lot. No one follows.
My father sighs, then half-heartedly punches Daisy on the shoulder as she wipes off her cheek with her hand. “Ten percent of your paycheque in the bank. Always. No exceptions.”
“Of course, Dad.” Daisy pauses. “If you need anything, I’ll come home right away.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll be all right. Hey, how do you avoid falling hair?”
Daisy smiles. “How?”
“Jump out of the way! That one always kills me.” He coughs into his hand and then grimaces. Daisy rubs her eyes.
And then she is gone.
Somehow, her empty place grew over, like a bald patch of grass that slowly fills in. We started to use her room for sewing and soon her old bed was covered with fabric remnants and half-pinned dresses, most of them in pink taffeta, Jackie’s favourite.
In the end, she did come back for good, but by then, everything had changed.
Jackie is posing, the heavy white silk of her mermaid wedding dress pooled around her feet. The crowd gathered around the church murmurs, “So beautiful, isn’t she?” She smiles, puts her hand on her hip and tilts her elaborately styled head for the camera.
Penny stands beside me. “It’s just us now, Sammy.” She looks behind her, waves at her boyfriend, who is leaning against his silver sports car. “I don’t know how we’ll ever stand it. At least Dad was around before.”
I stare forlornly at my pink bubble skirt, designed to give
my prepubescent body the shape it doesn’t yet have. “You won’t leave, will you?”
She sighs. “One day, I’ll have to. But not right now, Sammy. Not right now.”
That night, I dance with my brothers-in-law, with Penny’s boyfriend, too. At midnight, Jackie changes into the going-away outfit that Daisy brought back from Hong Kong (a purple silk suit, nipped at the waist with a peplum on the jacket) and poses for a picture with all of us: Wendy, Daisy, Penny and me.
“Penny, there’s a run in your pantyhose.”
“Come on, Sammy, stand in front of me, like this.”
“I don’t know, Daisy, maybe it would have been better without the earrings.”
“Okay, okay. Let’s just smile.”
It’s not until everything is all over (Jackie rides off with her new husband in a white limousine, her head sticking out of the sunroof; one of our uncles throws up on the dance floor, his right hand still firmly grasping his glass of whisky; Wendy walks around the dance floor for ten minutes before realizing that the back of her designer knock-off dress is tucked into her pantyhose), that I speak even one word to my mother. She sits at the messy head table, her head resting in her hands. Her red dress looks limp, as if it is hanging on a hook, empty.
“How are you feeling, Mom? Did you have fun?”
She doesn’t even open her eyes. “A little. The food was good.”
“Wendy’s coming around with the car. We should go.”
“All right. Take my purse, will you?”
Aunt Min Lai’s husband, his breath smelling of vomit and the mints he must have eaten to hide it, lurches toward us. “Siu Sang, how are you?”
“I’m fine. Weddings are happy business, after all.”
“No, I mean, how are you
really?
Pon Man’s not here anymore. You’re all alone. Tell me honestly.”
My mother smiles tightly. “As I said, I’m fine. Daisy is back now to help out, at least until she finds an apartment.”
My uncle starts to cry. Giant tears like golf balls roll down his thin cheeks. “This isn’t fair, is it? Nothing about any of this is fair. Some wedding, huh?”
His daughter swoops toward us, her hands fluttering like anxious birds. “Daddy. Daddy! I’m so sorry, Auntie, he just needs a good sleep.” And she drags him away, his head slumped over her shoulder, his body folded over like a garment bag.
My mother wipes her hands on her skirt. “Close call. I was afraid he would try to hug me.” She laughs, an empty, trilling sound that dies abruptly as if the air is slicing it in half.
The bartender laughs and moves closer. I close my eyes, wondering if that red hair will burn my fingers when I touch it.
It’s strange, the feeling that everything you’re thinking is in plain view, that your thoughts are being anticipated by someone you’ve only just met. When he says, “This is what you want,” you think, “Yes, that’s it!” You wonder if he’s reading the expression on your face or your body language. Maybe he’s hearing the subtext, the unsaid things running like shadows underneath your conversation. Maybe he has a mystical gift. Maybe you and he are just the pawns of fate. Or maybe you’re just imagining all of it. But the origins don’t really matter, because the strange feeling is still there—unnerving, sexy.
It’s a relief, too, not having to think about what you want all the time, especially when everything you thought you
wanted has gone to shit. You thought critically at school, but now, when the analytical eye turns inward, it meets a murky, gelatinous mess, opaque enough that it’s impossible to see through, but not so opaque that you lose hope of catching a glimpse of that one thing that will explain who you really are. Even if what he’s telling you about yourself is untrue, it’s better than looking inside your messy head one more time. Whatever. Coming up with your own words is sometimes the hardest thing of all.
When his hand finally touches yours, you realize, right then, that you have been waiting for this all night, this sting from his fingertips on your palm. Your eyes close for just a second, just so you can turn off everything else except this touch, the touch that means he knows the darkest wishes of your being and is not scared, the touch that means you will never feel like this again unless you’re with him, the touch that means you have come this far and there is no turning back now.
Pon Man stands in his father’s room, looks at the small cot pushed up against the closet door, the slightly larger bed opposite. The bare window is open, and a breeze smelling of moss and mud floats in. Pon Man edges up against a wall, fits his back into a corner. Seid Quan walks in and drops his suitcase on the floor.
“All right.” He nods to the cot. “Your bed is that one over there. Do you want to have a nap now? Are you tired from the trip?”
Pon Man looks down at his shoes. “No.”
“Are you hungry? I could make some sandwiches.”
“No.” He is still looking at his shoes. “Do we have to sleep in the same room?”
“Yes, for now. I’m saving to buy a house so that your mother and sister can join us.”
“Min Lai might get married soon. Some guy named Ng has been hanging around.”
Seid Quan sighs. “Oh. Is there any other news I should know?”
“I don’t know. Mother and Yun Wo both like this Ng guy, say he has relatives in Canada too, so Min Lai can come here without costing you too much if they get married. And Mother told me to tell you to take good care of me because of those nosebleeds I get.”
“Right. Of course.”
Pon Man shoves his hands into his pockets, shakes his head as if he is trying to get rid of something. “I don’t like this place.”
“What do you mean? You’ve only been here for two hours.”
“It’s wet.” Pon Man flicks at the damp cuffs of his pants. “I don’t like feeling cold all the time.” He stares defiantly into his father’s eyes. His strange, ghost-grey eyes.
“Once you get used to it, it’s not so bad. There’s no money to be made in the village, just remember that.” Seid Quan lets out a long breath as if he is unused to explaining himself, or talking at all.
“I don’t see anything worth money here, just a room we have to share. Our house in the village was nicer, and it didn’t smell so mouldy.” Pon Man wrinkles his nose.
Seid Quan falls silent for a moment before he begins to speak again, his voice deliberately even. “It’s not about expensive things. It’s about hard work and saving and supporting a family. I’ve seen men ruined by chasing expensive cars and clothes, taking shortcuts to look big around their friends. That’s not going to happen to us. Do you understand?”
Pon Man watches as his father leans forward and chops at the air with his hands for emphasis. He can see the emotion like
snakes under Seid Quan’s skin—sinister, squirming. He is suddenly afraid, so he shrugs. “I guess.” He pushes himself farther into the wall.
“All right. Let’s go to the café and order something to eat. We’ll have some real Western food. How about that?”
Pon Man almost whispers, “Okay.”
He is, finally, out of Chinatown and wandering down Hastings Street. He is a small boy, and slight, but he walks with confidence in his basketball shoes, the swagger of a man who has been to many places and found them wanting. Hidden inside his jacket is a brand new sketchbook, his going-away present from his mother. He reaches inside and caresses its spine, then zips up his jacket again before anyone can see.
He has been in Canada for eight days, and had begun to think that Chinatown was Vancouver in its entirety. During the day, he stayed with Seid Quan in the barbershop, cleaning up the cut hair, washing out the towels. Pon Man gagged whenever he had to touch the wet clumps of hair that gathered in the corners of the shop and collected in the sinks. When the last customer had left, newly shorn, Pon Man could feel a thick layer of other men’s skin over his own, as if the flakes had flown up into the air while his father was cutting hair or shaving beards, and then settled down again on Pon Man’s face, arms and shoulders. Even after he washed himself down in the back room, he could still smell the oil of other men. He thought he would rather be at home with his mother, helping her rinse the dirt off vegetables, counting the money in the family jar.
He asked his father, over and over again, when he could start school. Seid Quan always shrugged and said, “In the fall, when everyone else goes.”
When they closed up, they walked together up and down Pender Street and looked into the windows of the shops, the dark windows of the nightclubs. The older men on the street nodded to them and gave Pon Man candy. He didn’t like it, but he ate it anyway. The night before, a thin man wearing a tattered wool overcoat had lurched toward Pon Man from the shadows.
“You must be the boy,” he slurred in Chinese.
Pon Man looked at his father, who held his hands out, palms up. His face was so pale and thin it looked as if it were made of paper. “You must leave him alone, brother. He’s still just a child.”
The thin man pulled himself up straight and stood facing Seid Quan, their chins almost touching. “He won’t catch anything from me, old friend,” he said in English. “He will learn the truth about this fucking country on his own. Even you cannot protect him.”
And the thin man backed away, disappearing into the dark alley as if he had never emerged. Seid Quan sighed. “Someone I used to know, I’m afraid,” he said. Pon Man did not dare to ask his name.
This morning, as Seid Quan was busy shaving a customer, Pon Man slipped out the back door and headed west on Hastings, dizzy with adventure. Now, he sees downtown ahead of him and, if he looks behind, he can see Chinatown retreating, a picture postcard growing smaller and smaller. A bus trundles toward him and he steps on, determined to stay on for as long as he can.
The bus rolls past Granville Street, and Pon Man stares, open-mouthed, at the fancy shops lined up, one next to the other, all along the street. Jewellery, furs, shoes. Everything. Women in high heels walk with shopping bags, alone and
without men. As the bus travels farther west, he looks up and sees the tall office buildings, grey, carved with lions and gargoyles, constructed from stone, sixteen, maybe twenty storeys high.
This is nothing like Chinatown,
he thinks.
This is like the magazines Mother gets from the city.
When the bus finally stops, the driver shouts, “Last stop! Stanley Park!” Pon Man steps off and walks straight into the thick green of the trees.
The park is empty in the middle of the day, and the only people he sees are old ladies walking their dogs, old ladies who look at him once and edge farther away from him on the trails as they walk past. He does not notice and gapes at everything else around him. A goose flies out over Lost Lagoon and honks loudly, and somewhere, invisible in the trees, another goose honks in response. Pon Man thinks they must be related.
He walks off on the horse trails and, suddenly, the summer sky disappears. He stops to look up and sees nothing but trees, their dark green tops meeting overhead, obscuring the sun. Here, the ground is wet, soaked through as if it has never been dry, and pools of water collect in his footprints. The smell is sharp and medicinal.
It’s like being in a pit,
he thinks.
Nowhere to go
,
and so far away from the top you can hardly see it
. It is so quiet that Pon Man can hear only his own sharp breathing. His fear at being lost stops him from pulling out his sketchbook to draw this dripping, fantastic landscape. Instead, he turns around, trying to remember which direction he came from. He stumbles forward, hoping that the trail he is on leads somewhere. He shivers in his short-sleeved shirt.
He sees a break in the trees and runs through it, cracking branches and pushing aside leaves as he goes. Just ahead in a
clearing, a photographer focuses his camera on a family standing beside a giant hollow tree. He rushes forward and stops directly behind the photographer, happy to be so close to another human being.
The mother of the family, wearing a pink sweater and a white skirt, screams.
The father runs forward and says, “Watch out, there’s a Chinaman behind you!”
The photographer turns around and looks at Pon Man. His eyes narrow and he hisses, “Get out of here, kid. Chinamen are no good for business.” He gives him a little push.
As the photographer tries to calm down the hysterical mother and outraged father, Pon Man walks north, on a different trail. He did not understand what those people said, but he knows what they meant. His head hurts and his legs feel like rubber. He carefully places one foot in front of the other, one step at a time, until he reaches the seawall. He sits on the stones for a few minutes before walking back to the bus stop. His father will be angry, and then he will want to feed him, but Pon Man just wants to sleep somewhere, a room of his own where he does not have to face anyone.
“I bought something for you.” Seid Quan places a lumpy brown paper package on the table between them at the Ovaltine Café.
Pon Man takes the package in his hands, turns it around and around. “What is it?”
Seid Quan smiles. “Well, I can’t tell you that. Just open it.”
Pon Man peels away the paper slowly, placing each torn piece on the table beside his plate of steak and eggs. It was not his mother’s way to wrap presents for him. She only passed him
the sketchbook with a grunt and then smiled at his happiness, turning her head as if she thought she was hiding her pleasure from him, even though he could see it anyway.
“A radio!” Pon Man smiles broadly. “Thank you, Father.”
He fiddles with the controls, trying to find a station. Seid Quan leans forward. “You see, if you turn this one, that changes the frequency. That’s what this word means. And this one makes it louder or quieter. The word here means ‘volume.’ Here, just let me show you how to do it.” He takes the radio out of Pon Man’s hands.
Pon Man stares at his father, drums his finger on the table. He watches his father’s forehead, the lines deep in the skin, the muscles around his eyebrows, the brown spots around his hairline. Pon Man feels sick.
“Seid Quan! Is that your son?” An old man leans toward them and pushes his cane behind his back.
“Mr. Wong, how are you?”
“Fine, fine.” He waves his hand dismissively. “Is this Pon Man, then?”
“Yes, of course. Pon Man, this is an old friend of mine, Mr. Wong. Say hello.”
“Hello, Uncle Wong.”
Old Mr. Wong chuckles. “A nice, polite boy too. Well, Pon Man, you must come to my house and meet my grandson. He’s about your age, I think. He started a basketball team with his friends, you know. Maybe you would enjoy it.”
Pon Man nods and opens his mouth to speak.
Seid Quan says quickly, “Oh, he wouldn’t want to barge in like that. They probably don’t have a spot for him anyway.”
Mr. Wong looks confused. “I’m sure they could always use extras.”
“Yes, but he helps me in the shop all day, and then I want him to rest up before school starts. You know how it is.”
Mr. Wong nods absently. “Yes, I suppose. Well, whatever you think, Seid Quan. I suppose I’ll see you at the funeral for Mr. Yip?”
“Yes, I’ll be there.”
“All right. Well, it was nice meeting you, young man. I’m sure I’ll see you around.” Mr. Wong walks slowly out of the café.
Pon Man looks at his father. “I want to play basketball.”
Seid Quan shakes his head. “No, you don’t. Those Wong boys, they’re trouble. All they do is smoke cigarettes and chase white girls all day. You’re better off staying away from them and working in the shop.”
“I don’t want to work in the shop.”
“What?”
Pon Man sits up straight. “I don’t want to work in the shop. It smells funny.”
“You can go to school in the fall. You are going to work in the shop for the rest of the summer. I won’t have you running around the streets of Chinatown like one of those thugs.”
Pon Man stares at the speckled table, imagines he can see his own reflection in one of the tiny embedded sparkles.
I wouldn’t mind being that small,
he thinks. He looks up at his father, at his set face, which seems as if it might crack and let out tears or laughter or maybe rage.
You don’t know me. No one here knows me
. He remembers his mother’s gruff voice the day before he left her. “You must do what your father tells you, even if you don’t like it or don’t want to do it. It doesn’t matter. He’s your father and he deserves your obedience. He works hard for you and the rest of us.”

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