The Jade Peony (11 page)

“Don’t cry, sissy,” Kiam said, “or we’ll throw you under the Georgia Viaduct with the bums and the dead people.”

Poh-Poh, carrying some folded clothes, came into the room and walked deliberately between Kiam and me. She took some clothes off the small pile and handed them to me.

“Put this and this on,” she said. “Then come downstairs for some dumplings.”

She told Kiam to help Little Brother, and I realized she meant me. Kiam lifted my arms up and pulled my undershirt off.

“Look,” he said to the old woman. She looked.

The reddish scars on my back did not surprise her.

“A belt buckle,” the old woman said. “We put something on it tonight.”

I pushed them away and dressed myself. We went downstairs and I sat through the tea-drinking and chatter. I drank an orange pop and ate three dumplings just to show Kiam how strong I was going to get.

Stepmother had a thin face and pretty eyes, and, as she bent down to brush back my hair, to offer me another dumpling, her flower-print dress smelled of flowers, too.

Kiam asked about my name. Everyone called out my name,
Jung-Sum,
and the man called Father said it meant
loyalty,
one who was faithful, loyal, and he pronounced it in an odd way, a tone of dialect different from the way I had always heard it. For some reason, I suddenly was not afraid of any of them; for some reason, as I lifted up my fourth sweet dumpling, hearing my name over and over again, I knew I belonged. A baby cried, and it was Jook-Liang, my new sister.

Before he tucked himself under his sheets that first night, First Brother Kiam said, “Stay on your side of the room. And don’t start bawling or anything.”

I looked up at the moonlit ceiling, at the ceiling cracks and shadows thrown up by the streetlamp against the half-drawn window shades and the lace curtains. I peered at the dresser drawer that held my things, the third drawer down. I thought of my crushed snake and my socks with the holes in them, and Stepmother that evening mending them as Kiam sat by the kitchen table straightening out my paper snake. Poh-Poh sat holding the baby girl, rocking her, and Father was ink-brushing words that trailed expertly up and down a long sheet. Mr. Chang’s last stern words to me, as he took some signed papers from Father, came back into my head: “This is the way things are, Jung-Sum.”

And I knew it was so, and could no longer worry about demon foxes.

“Bet you’re crying,” Kiam said, in a half-awake voice, but soon he drifted into sleep. From my cot, in a rectangle of bright moonlight cast down from the window, I saw First Brother toss, heard him talk, and envied him his dreams.

I gripped my pillow and not one tear fell from my eyes.

I DID NOT CRY
that first night, nor any night thereafter, as I did the strange morning a long time ago when someone frantically yanked up the blinds and stubbornly pulled me away from the cold arms of my mother.

I remember groggily pushing myself up in the morning light, pushing away the weight-laden blanket, half-tottering with sleep, half-groping in my pyjamas in fear that I might have wet the bed. In the kitchen, in the blue morning light, I glimpsed my father oddly slumped beside the open oven door; then I walked into the bedroom and pushed Mother, but she would not move. I called her once, then something told me not to say anything more. I adjusted to the semi-dark, the morning light breaking between the pulled bedroom blinds and now pouring in from the kitchen. On the bed mattress that she slept on, at my level of vision, my mommy stared with unshut eyes at the ceiling, her neck a purple colour from ear to ear. I climbed into the bed and lifted her stiff heavy arms, one after another, over me, and slowly crawled under them. Mommy’s two arms collapsed on me when I let go, and they felt cold. I stared at the ceiling and thought I should sleep... close eyes... sleep...

I pushed my face between Mommy’s arms, against her body’s still plush softness; I let my body fall against her: I stayed very still. After that, the pee started leaving me, a soothing warm wetness between my legs. I waited for Daddy to get up from the kitchen floor, half-drunk, waited for him to beat me with his belt. I waited for Mommy to tell him to stop, waited for Mommy to twist against the falling belt and take the blows. I waited.

I stayed very still, long enough for the pee to feel cold, for the acrid smell to reach me, for the staining warmth to fade and the growing chill to numb me. My thumb felt sore from being sucked for the one or two hours I had lain there, unmoving. A boy’s voice suddenly shouted, “Mommy! Mommy!” and for a moment I thought it was my voice. Then another voice shouted “Get Mommy! Get Mommy!”

Herby Chin kept calling for his mother, until finally I heard the back door open and a rush of footsteps and voices from the kitchen; a chair fell over, curtains were whipped back, blinds whirled and snapped up. Mr. Chin was shouting instructions. Mrs. Chin called my name. Shadows moved, and bodies, tall and short, shuddered around the room. At the doorway of the bedroom, when she saw me look up at her, Mrs. Chin only hesitated for a second before she rushed beside the bed, shoved aside some pillows and clothes, and warily knelt beside me on the mattress: “
Don’t be afraid... don’t be afraid...
” I felt Mommy’s head move.

Mrs. Chin, with her strong farming hands, pulled apart the rigid arms and began lifting me up, up, up, from the dark between my mother’s breasts. Wetness clung to my legs. Sheets of wetness pulled away from me.

I was carried away at last, carried into the late morning air to the Chins’ heated cabin. Mrs. Chin told me again not to be afraid, put me down in a large chair in the midst of her own four children sitting around the table. Their small faces reflected back to me my own vacant stare.

“Now we have some
jook,
” Mrs. Chin said, as calmly as she could manage, putting a bowl of morning gruel in front of me.

They told me later that I ate, that I said nothing. I remember hearing the siren of the police car, Mrs. Chin scrubbing her hands furiously; and when night fell, Mr. Chin sat beside me and told all his four children and myself a story of Old China. There were many words I did not understand, phrases whose meanings were riddles. In the kerosene lamp-light, he recited poetry and sang old songs, and slapped his overalls till the dust from his day’s labour settled over everyone. I remember the joy and excitement of his storytelling, and the quickening of my heart when he asked me what I would like.

“Tell another story!” I said, and knew suddenly, another’s voice, my mommy’s voice with its
Hoiping
tones, would never say again “
Long time ago... in Old China...
”

Mrs. Chin passed some pie a neighbour had brought by. The pie was freshly baked and steaming, and smelled of apples and cinnamon. It was made by a white lady named Mrs. Lawrence. She had white hair and wore glasses and had a kind face. She poked her head in and asked, “How is the little boy doing?”

“Good,” Mrs. Chin said. “Jung strong boy. Never cry.”

A WEEK AFTERWARDS
, I was taken from one strange home to another. I spent a month or two in one place, a few weeks in another, finally travelling on a train to
Hahm-sui-fauh,
Salt Water City. A Chinese man wearing thick glasses, with a white band for a collar, said to me over and over again, “No use to cry. Big boys don’t need to cry.”

Kiam told me
Hahm-sui-fauh
was the Chinese name for Vancouver because it was a city built beside the salt water of the Pacific Ocean. Until Kiam told me, I thought it was where all the salt tears came to make up the ocean, just as my mother told me in one of her stories about her own father’s coming to Vancouver. And then I told myself, this is the way the world is. I felt I would never need to cry again. Never.

Now, Stepmother took me in her arms when I could not sleep, but it was not the same and I began to push her away.

The Old One said, “Leave the boy alone,” and pushed me away from her. “Go downstairs,” she commanded. “First Brother is waiting.”

My job was to help Kiam start the stove in the morning by banging on the sawdust bin. I helped pour ladles of water into a larger container which sat heating on the stove for all-day winter use. I was given some picture books to learn to read with Liang and was expected to do better since I was two years older. Poh-Poh showed me how to dress myself properly; Stepmother taught me how to make my bed; Father took me to places in Chinatown and boasted of his new son and patted my head. First Brother Kiam became my guardian on the playground and warned everyone not to get smart around me. People gave me lucky money and candy and toys. Women with powdered faces and red lipstick kissed me and pinched my cheeks and went back to playing
mahjong.
I did not always do my chores nor read every book, for there was so much more to discover. Vancouver was bigger than anything I had ever seen. There were blocks and blocks of houses and stores and places to play.

One day, I got a new box of hand-me-down clothes. Everything seemed two or three sizes too big.

Poh-Poh said to me, “Can you feed yourself now?”

“Always,” I said, still wondering about her wagging tail.

“Good,” she said, tossing me one of the hand-me-down sweaters, “feed yourself until this fits you.” She blinked. “Jung-Sum, are you still worried this Old Fox will eat you up?”

In a year, that sweater fitted me. Time did pass, just as the Tong official had said it would. I belonged.

The Depression meant the man whom I now called Father struggled at many jobs to keep everyone at home well nourished. I was never treated differently from First Brother Kiam or Only Sister Liang. But when Sekky was born, and was sickly, Poh-Poh poured almost her entire attention on him. Neither Kiam, Liang nor I minded; in fact, things went easier for all of us because the Old One no longer nagged us as much about our shortcomings or pestered us with old sayings. Liang demanded a little attention now and again, because she was so young.

From Father and Stepmother, we all received equally what clothes or second-hand goods were salvaged or given to us from the Tong Association. As well, the Anglican Vancouver Chinese Mission passed along books they couldn’t sell and gave us stacks of magazines to look through before they were bound up for the paper drive.

In the months after I arrived, I nearly forgot my own mother and father, even in my dreaming. As the years went by, they became part of the darkness at night or, on the brightest day, merely shadows.

I CAME FINALLY
to celebrate my twelfth birthday, with friends like Bobby Steinberg and two of the boys from the boxing club at the Hastings Gym.

I had discovered Joe Louis, read everything about him, and taken to boxing. After Kiam’s lion dance practice with the Chinese Students’ Athletic Club, Frank Yuen took Kiam and me to the Hastings Gym one day. At once I liked the
whack-whack
sound of the punching bag being hammered into a blur.

That day, a lanky Negro was throwing himself at the punching bag, his feet hopping in rhythm with his lightning-fast fists. He noticed me practically hypnotized watching him.

“Wanna try, China boy?” he asked, breathless, then stopped. In the glaring lights of Hastings Gym, the black man took the towel from around his neck and wiped silver beads from his forehead; he laughed and joked as he pulled off his gloves. He inspected a smaller pair on a rack, held them next to my hands, and fitted them onto me.

Frank waved to him and called him Max and told him to go easy on me. Max laughed even harder. I liked him.

Guys at the Hastings Gym took turns with all the equipment and a few, like Max, took it upon themselves to teach the younger boys how to hold their fists, how to swing and fake a punch, how to pull back and lunge forward, how to shadow box.

“Do this,” Max said, in the weeks that followed, putting me through my paces. Frank and Kiam thought that was great. Someone else to babysit me while they sat on the bench waiting for weights or whatever, talking about the war and how they would like to join up somewhere.

Max teamed me up with my friend Bobby Steinberg and taught us both how to take a punch, how to absorb the shock. He taught me how to breathe in rhythm to the movement of my arms. “You see, kid,” Max said, “the muscles of your arms are pumping up your rib muscles. Bobby, show him.”

Bobby Steinberg caught on to some things faster than I did, but soon he couldn’t come to the gym any more, unless he sneaked around. His father and mother didn’t want him getting into fights.

I joined the junior boxing section and paid my fifteen cents each week for lessons with one of the coaches. But I thought Max was my best trainer. I happily learned how to swear, how to kick if you have to, how to throw back any shit you didn’t want to take.

On my twelfth birthday, Frank Yuen brought me a ticket to see three fights with him at Exhibition Park. Max was fighting. As I was staring at the ticket, looking for the name of Joe Louis, he tossed around my shoulders his father’s topcoat and held my fist up as if I were Champion of the World. Joe Louis never fought in Vancouver, of course, but if he had, he would have worn a coat like the one Frank gave me.

The second-hand coat from Old Yuen, falling on my twelve-year-old shoulders, felt like armour. It had been worn by Frank’s father, for sure, but it was top quality and had been well taken care of.

This charcoal coat, Frank told me, had cost his father, Old Yuen, three straight lucky nights of gambling; otherwise, it would have cost a regular China man more than three months’ hard wages. During the Depression and the opening of the war years, you could only buy such a classic coat on Granville Street, in one of those men’s stores where a salesman in a black suit sniffed at China men who asked for the
bess-see
—the best—and who proudly pulled out a thick roll of folding money. It was money earned from a labour camp’s honest sweat or won from gambling, or from playing a longshot at the Hastings Park races, but it was enough money to have the salesman go to the back room and pull out his best stock.