The Jade Peony (15 page)

I curled up on the floor. My child’s voice could not stop its pleading. Frank Yuen, kneeling, bent forward and pressed my babbling head against his torn shirt. He began to rock me, and the slow rhythm of his rocking, back and forth, caught me off guard. I closed my eyes and moved with him, a child being cradled, back and forth. There was the smell of Frank’s sweat and his tobacco; his rapid breathing sounded as loud and ragged as my own. We were collapsed together on the floor. The porcelain gods gazed down on us from the far end of the hall. Minutes passed. Frank’s lips brushed my forehead, settled for a second, then lifted.

But Frank Yuen could not comfort me forever. He sighed deeply, began to let me go, to let some darkness gently go.

I felt his arms withdrawing, the strong warrior hands leaving me. Frank got up and walked away to pick up his jacket and sweater.

As I, too, moved to get up, my whole body suddenly lit with an unbidden, shuddering tension; a strange yearning awoke in me, a vivid longing rose relentlessly from the centre of my groin, sensuous and craving, rising until my hands unclenched, throwing me forward, soundlessly, until my fingers tingled and stretched to grope the raw tactile air.

I closed my eyes, tasted salt and smelled the dust in the air. A roar came into my ears. Outside, a car drove past, its engines gunning.

“Jung,” came a voice above the roaring, “are you okay?”

I opened my eyes and looked up and was astonished at the depth and height of the vast shadowy ceiling looming over Frank’s head. He stood in silence above me, like one of the temple gods. For a moment, we stared at each other. He spoke, and I was surprised at how ordinary his voice sounded.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. My cheeks were wet. “You?”

Frank put his hand through his slashed shirt and waved.

“Nearly killed me, you little bastard,” he said and grinned.

I broke into a smile, then flinched with the pain that stabbed my shoulder. He reached into his pocket and gave me a clean handkerchief.

“Honk,” he said. “Keep it.”

I wiped my cheeks and blew my nose.

“So where the fuck’s my knife, Champ?” Frank said, looking around.

“Under that chair,” I said.

I stood up. He’d called me Champ. Champion.

Frank walked over and picked up the knife and snapped it back in its sheath. He threw me my sweater and reminded me that Kiam and Jenny Chong were waiting for us at the Blue Eagle.

I pushed my arms through the sleeves, careful not to show how badly he had hurt me. Frank switched off the lights. Our shadows disappeared.

After that time I fought Frank Yuen, I never felt the same about anything.

Frank Yuen is the sun,
I remembered thinking, and I remembered also the Old One telling Mrs. Lim, “Jung-Sum is the moon.”

Yes, I said to myself, as I finished putting on my coat, my armour,
I am the moon.
As I walked briskly to keep up with Frank on our way to the Blue Eagle, the Old One’s words followed me, followed me all the way along the snow-dusted streets of Chinatown.

A
YEAR AFTER I FIRST MET
him, Frank said he was going to Seattle to sign up with the U.S. Marines. They were welcoming English-speaking Chinese. Max, the Negro coach at the Hastings Gym, and the gang gave a goodbye party for Frank. Kiam and Jenny Chong went to it, and Frank insisted that I join them, too. First they had a ten-course dinner at the W. K. Gardens, where people passed around a bottle hidden in a paper bag and poured “tea” into the tea cups. I got some cherry pop in mine, and Frank picked up his chopsticks and gave me the best pieces of chicken and duck and pork.

After the meal, it was only about seven-thirty. All the guys, about twelve of them, went back to the gym to get in some early drinking in the back room. I went along too. The three women, including Jenny Chong, went first to her place to “freshen up.” Frank got a little tipsy, made a big deal of looking at his watch for the time. It was the gold watch Old Yuen had given him to take away for keeps. In front of everyone, Frank made a big show of handing it over to me.

“It’s yours, Champ, if I don’t make it back,” he half-joked.

Ever since that time we had tangled in the Tong assembly hall, Frank had been calling me Little Brother and Champ and Killer. He let me hang out with him sometimes, and when Kiam and he went to boxing matches or rugby games, I was allowed to tag along. He had let me hold that gold watch now and again, just to time a match or check how long it took him to do ten push-ups.

Frank was a little drunk and he put his arm around my shoulder, proud of me. I was beginning to win some of my exhibition fights, just like Max said I would. Frank kept holding onto me.

I felt a little queasy, maybe it was from the two or three swallows of beer that Max, just a few minutes ago, had allowed me to guzzle from his bottle.

“Whoa!” Max said. “Don’t hog it, just drink it!”

I thought it was great to get away with a gulp or two. Frank, laughing, pulled me even closer to his chest and pressed me harder against himself.

In the joy of his affection, secure and clownish, he gave me a kiss-smack on my forehead, cheerfully shouting to his gang of friends, “Hey, all you bastards! This is my Little Brother, Jung-Sum—
THE CHAMPION YELLOW BOMBER
!”

At first I blushed, then laughed with everyone. Then all at once I felt the centre of my body go weak. I began to push Frank to break away from him. He let me go. Maybe he thought he was acting too crazy and embarrassing his Champ. But he wasn’t. I was getting scared.

I wanted him to hold me again, wanted him to press against me, even harder and closer. But I pushed him away. I pushed him away. A warm, sensual shiver started inside me, rising from my groin and threading up my spine. The same feeling had come over me that time when Frank held me, rocking, back and forth, on the assembly hall floor.

My mind reeled with distorted, sneering faces, including Frank’s and Kiam’s. I thought someone would see inside me. I waited for someone to expose me. I waited for Frank to turn on me, to spit in my face. Across the room, a camera flashed. My hands desperately tightened around the gold watch, the metal still warm from being next to Frank’s body.

Nothing happened. Three of the guys raised more bottles of beer and shouted “Bon voyage!” and then someone started everyone singing “For he’s a jolly good fellow...” The camera flashed again.

Minutes later, everyone was quietly watching Frank at the other end of the room, reading out loud his farewell messages from a big card that Jenny Chong got from Woodward’s.

Frank laughed, threw his head back to drink more beer.

My eyes suddenly focussed on the smallness of his ear, the curve of his neck; I thought I could smell again the sweet soy, the salt of his body. I stepped back, thirsting for the sensations that were already leaving me.

Sometimes a lightning bolt strikes the darkness, making visible for miles a frieze of housetops, trees and mountains carved against the sky, and you see at the same time your smallness against the immensity of the world. As Frank turned his muscular body to smile for the camera, he waved to me.

Fear abruptly turned my spine to water. My fists began to shake. What if Frank caught on? Would I still be his Little Brother? Would I still be the Champ? A hand touched my shoulder from behind. It was Max’s hand, dark and shining in the gym light that spilled off the boxing ring. He neatly gripped my shoulder. Everyone’s attention had turned again to Frank, who was singing some bawdy song about girls in the back of cars. Only that ebony hand could feel me trembling.

“It’s okay, Jung,” Max whispered in my ear, a whisper not of warning but of deliverance. “It’s okay.”

He didn’t smile at first, not until I looked him in the eye, not until I stopped trembling.

“Good boy, Champ,” Max said. “Here.”

He put the bottle in my hand and let me throw back some more of his beer. Then he took the bottle from me, and without looking back, walked into the crowd and joined the applause that ended Frank’s yowling.

I was the youngest there. All the guys and the three girls, including Jenny Chong, wanted to go dancing in the back room of the Jazz Hut. Kiam said I should say goodbye to Frank and go home; it was getting late.

I made my way through the crowd. I shook Frank’s hand and wished him well. He gave me another sloppy kiss on my forehead. Everyone cheered and laughed. Then Max said he’d walk me, the Champ, back to the lockers, because he had the key to the room where we kept our coats and things.

On the way there, we hardly talked, Max and I, except to joke and wonder how many bad guys Frank would kill. When he unlocked the storage door, Max unfurled my coat and draped it on my shoulders, like I was a Champion.

“Have courage, kid,” Max said.

“Thanks, Max,” I said, and pushed my arms through the coat.

Max stood at the gym door and watched me until I disappeared down the stairs.

I walked home fingering Frank’s heavy watch in my coat pocket. I stopped under a street lamp, thinking. I took the timepiece out, looked at its gold case and saw my face reflected from the curved glass. I played with the watch stem and turned it between my fingers. There was a November chill hitting against the warm metal.

The old watch had a cut-out, upside-down crescent under the numbers, and in the semi-circle the face of an antique sun rose and fell, and then the moon took its turn. I kept thinking things over and over. Just thinking. I don’t know how long I stayed there. Maybe just a few minutes, but I don’t know.

In the halo of the street lamp, the old watch gently chimed eight times. I said Frank’s name, in a half-breath, my lips barely moving. I tried to feel again his muscled arm pressing around my shoulder.

Max had whispered to me to have courage, but it was not courage I desired most at that moment. It was Frank Yuen.

WHEN I GOT HOME
, it was only a little after eight-thirty but it felt like midnight. Everyone was home and sitting around the parlour. They admired the gold watch and said how spoiled I was, and Stepmother said I must put it away in some safe place until Frank got back. Of course, he’ll be back, Father said.

“And he’ll come back with medals,” Sekky said, cheering me up.

“Frank Yuen will look really handsome in that army uniform,” Liang said, and looked at her
Screen Stars
magazine at an American actor standing proudly beside a tank.

I carefully studied the moon in the blue crescent of the gold watch and asked Poh-Poh what else the moon was besides the
yin
force. She said the moon was the sign of the dark storyteller. In Old China, this was the one who told of hidden things not seen in the glare of daylight. Moon people
felt
things, as she did, things that others did not name. I could see Father shaking his head at his desk, wanting to interrupt her Old China nonsense.

That same evening, Poh-Poh decided to show Liang and me and Sekky some of her jade amulets and charms. She carefully removed each piece from its small envelope of silk.

“Here is a moon piece, Jung-Sum,” she said, holding up a circlet of jade. “See how it glows, pale as a ghost?”

Poh-Poh reached over to me, took my finger and glided it over the rim of the jade circlet, and then she smiled.

“Each piece is different,” she said. “Each is precious.”

Liang shifted closer to Poh-Poh. She put down her
Screen Stars
magazine and picked up a slender jade stick, one of Poh-Poh’s favourite hair ornaments.

“Tell us again,” Liang demanded, “the story of this piece.”

Grandmother told that story, and then another, each story brief and sad and marvellous. There were seven pieces of jade, carved in the shape of ancient symbols. The one she held most dear, we knew, was a coin-sized one, an exquisitely carved peony of translucent white and pinkish jade; its petals were outlined in a simple, carved relief against a perfect round of stone. Its underside was smooth and flawless.

Grandmother said that life itself was loss and pain and suffering. Who would deny this, she exclaimed, was a fool. Then she recited some Chinese sayings, about the bitter and the difficult, which Father smiled at.

“Half the jade in Chinatown is made from bits of bone and flesh,” she said, gathering up her pieces.

“And the other half?” Liang asked, flipping open another movie magazine.

“The other half,” Poh-Poh said, “is made of blood.”

Liang sat up. Father, who was working on another editorial essay about China and the Japanese invasion, laughed out loud. He was more worried about the rent for next month. He had spent some of Old Yuen’s rent for groceries and had to make that up, too, before Monday. He didn’t want to ask Third Uncle for another small loan.

Poh-Poh handed me a silk envelope that she said I could have to keep Frank’s watch in.

“This silk bag used to hold a good piece of lucky jade,” she said. “But I gave it to Old Wong Suk—
aaiiiyah,
too many years ago! I die soon!”

“Stop all this
die
nonsense,” Father said. “Your old ways are not the new ways. Your grandchildren have to live the new ways.”

“Why?” I protested.

“Why?” Father repeated. “Because, Jung, I have to worry about what will happen to you three boys after this war is over. What will happen to Liang?”

“When I fight for Canada—when I join up, I mean,” Kiam said, putting down an invoice he was entering into Third Uncle’s account books, “I’m going to call myself
Ken.
Do you like that, Liang?”

“Jenny Chong will like that,” Liang said. “Jenny says we should all have real English names. When we’re outside of Chinatown, we should try not to be so different.”

The Old One shrugged and held up the round jade peony for little Sekky to see, just as she once had held it before each of her small ones, slowly turning the talisman as she spun out a story of her life in Old China.

She held it high against the ceiling light, encouraging Sekky to make out the shifting swirl of pink in the stone’s moonlit centre. Sekky raised the toy plane in his hand as if it would fly, enchanted, on its own. I picked him up and play-tossed him in the air.