The Year of Finding Memory (26 page)

I looked at my grandfather’s house again. It was built of solid brick, with plumbing and electricity, which would have been regarded as modern at the time. It was not a large
house, but neither was it small. He gave his children a middle-class life in what would then have been a happy setting. But even with his skills, with his respected position as an herbalist doctor, he could not shield them from the inhumanity of life in early-twentieth-century China. I cannot begin to imagine the sickening horror my mother and her family must have felt upon finding their beloved father’s crumpled body in that peaceful stand of bamboo, where my mother and Little Aunt would have laughed and played almost every day.

My cousin and I had grown up on the same stories. He suggested that we walk to the church where our mothers had attended Sunday school. It was only a short distance from the house, an easy walk for a young child. The building dated from 1922, but the Chinese Baptist Church had had a presence in the area since 1891. As the lay minister took us through his modest church, I tried to imagine my mother and Little Aunt as children, sitting on low chairs in one of the rooms while the missionaries sang hymns and told stories from the Bible. I could see my mother, small and bright, so eager to learn. She loved to tell me how much the missionaries liked her. She was always the first to master the new stitch in knitting or embroidery. She would then turn and help others like Little Aunt, who were never as smart. Or so she said.

When I used to return home from Sunday school at the Presbyterian church in Acton, I would often absentmindedly sing or hum the hymns from the morning service. My mother sometimes echoed them in Chinese. In my mind I
can still hear her singing in that pure, sweet voice,
Yay-su oiy gnoy
, Jesus loves me, this I know. …

The marble floors in my cousin’s living room felt cool against my feet. Michael and I were sitting on a low, rosewood bench, and Lin had brought out a plate of watermelon. My relatives never stopped eating. Kung pointed to a photograph under a sheet of glass that covered his coffee table and asked if I recognized one of the girls in the picture. I peered closely at the sepia image of four young girls and saw my mother in the group—perhaps fourteen or fifteen years old. I had never seen a picture of her at such an early age. But there she was, a teenaged girl full of life and anticipation, staring back at me. In another year or so, she would be married to that very no-good man. My mother was sitting on the arm of a carved, wooden bench, while Little Aunt was sitting on a cushion beside her. Another girl, who seemed to be about ten or eleven, sat on the other arm. Kung did not know who she was, but I suspected she was Big Uncle’s daughter. She bore a marked resemblance to some photographs I’d seen of her as a young adult. We were unable to identify the fourth person, a young woman standing behind the other three. She was definitely the oldest and the most beautiful. Her shoulder-length hair was thick and permed, and there was a slight smile on her face. She exuded confidence and sensuality. I had to think she was the oldest sister, the one my mother referred to as Family Beauty. And yet, even in the company
of such striking young women, it was my mother who held my gaze. Again, there was that familiar compelling stare. My mother and Little Aunt were dressed in identical, loose-fitting
cheongsams
, possibly school uniforms, or perhaps dresses made especially for this occasion.

Everyone in the photograph seemed so relaxed, so middle-class. I remembered the close-up of my father on his head tax certificate, the bewildered expression on his face. I thought about the stories of his indigent childhood and pictured a skinny, cringing adolescent with a wooden yoke across his shoulder, carrying heavy pails of water on blistered shoulders while being scolded by an uncaring and ruthless boss. The people in this picture were living a life beyond that boy’s wildest dreams. They possessed the quiet confidence that comes with privilege, a look I had associated with other families but never my own.

My cousin brought me another photo. A woman in her late teens or early twenties sat in a chair. She was wearing a simple, flower-printed
cheongsam.
Seated on the arm of the chair was a man dressed in a suit and tie, with his hand resting protectively on her shoulder. They were both leaning slightly forward and toward each other. The intimacy between them was evident and tender. The woman’s resemblance to my mother was remarkable, but she was not my mother. The photo was of Little Aunt and her husband, Kung’s parents. As I looked at this photograph, I felt envious. I’d never seen a formal picture of my parents together, nothing that announced them as a couple. The only photograph I’d seen of just the two of them was taken outside
my father’s laundry in Acton. They were standing apart from each other, both wearing heavy winter coats that were several sizes too large. The droop of their mouths, the sag of their shoulders, nothing about them inspired envy. The wind was whipping strands of my mother’s hair across her forehead. I never liked that picture.

Once again, Kung told me how indebted his family felt toward my mother. How during the years that they’d lived in the Mainland under the Communist government, they’d depended upon her generosity, how she faithfully sent money year after year. If it had not been for her, he said, they might have starved. I would hear this refrain over and over many times before our trip was finished, and I’d also heard it many times before. As I held the picture of my cousin’s parents in my hand, I thought about what their last years must have been like together in their son’s home in Macau, surrounded by family, living in the only culture they had ever known.

During our time in Taishan, Kung insisted on paying for everything from taxi rides to an evening at a hot springs resort. On our last morning, when we went to the station to take the bus to Kaiping City, he insisted on paying the fares for everyone. He finally agreed, though, that when he and his family joined us in my ancestral county, they would be our guests.

EIGHTEEN

M
y nephew Lew, son of First Brother Hing, lived with his family in a complex of medium-rise, concrete apartment buildings. There was no greenery between the buildings, and each grey tower rose directly from the asphalt. On the pavement near the entrance was a huge, dark blue mound of jeans. A little girl was playing on top of the heap while her mother sat on a stool and snipped the loose threads from each pair of pants. I stopped and exchanged greetings with the woman. The little girl couldn’t take her eyes off Michael, but when I offered to take her picture, she hid behind the mountain of denim.

Bing, who was married to my niece Jeen—Lew’s sister—had met Kung, Lin, Michael and me at the Kaiping bus station and invited us for lunch at Lew’s apartment. Lew lived there with his wife, Wei; their adult son; and his elderly mother, the widow of First Brother. After Bing unlocked the heavy-looking steel front door, he led us up five flights of stairs. I did not expect to enter a spacious apartment with
marble floors and big windows overlooking a large balcony. Since I’d always thought my relatives in China were poor, I was pleased to see Lew’s comfortable furnishings: a wooden sofa, a coffee table and a TV. His standard of living was perhaps not as high as Kung’s, but possessions like those were not even part of my early childhood in Acton.

The unmistakable aroma of simmering soup filled the air, and in spite of my full breakfast, I felt hungry. Every morning, Jeen, who had lost her job and now received a small pension, arrived before Lew and Wei left for work, to look after their mother. But today she had also been busy preparing lunch.

I had met First Brother’s Widow briefly last year when she’d visited us with her son and daughter-in-law at the Ever Joint Hotel. Her face seemed to be lifted from ancient China with her high cheekbones and plucked hairline. But during the past year, the old woman had grown even more frail and was no longer able to climb the five flights of stairs. She had not left the apartment for almost a year.

Jeen wheeled a large, round table with collapsible legs into the middle of the living room, set it up and spread a tablecloth on top. As soon as Lew and Wei arrived home from work, they greeted us and then changed out of their work clothes and started to cook. They told me that Chinese workers, at least in the Kaiping area, were given a two-hour break for lunch. I was astonished and when I told them that most workers in Canada had only thirty to sixty minutes, they both shook their heads. Two hours, they insisted, were necessary for producing a decent meal.

Jeen rolled her eyes and laughed. “Nobody is as fussy as Lew, except Wei,” she said. “Wei insists all her vegetables be cut in a particular way and when she cuts up fruit, everything has to be displayed just so. First the fruit has to be carefully chosen, and presented in a way that looks so good your hand automatically reaches out.” Wei had gone into the kitchen, and I could hear her good-natured laugh above the hiss of ingredients being tossed into a wok of hot oil.

I once read that food for the Chinese is like sex for Westerners. My relatives were obsessed with food. Since arriving in Macau, we had consumed three multi-course meals every day and snacked in between.

Once Michael and I sat down at the table, Jeen set a large, steaming bowl of watercress soup in the middle. She’d arrived at her brother’s early in the morning to get a head start on simmering the stock of pork bones, dried red dates and dried orange peel. Wei carefully ladled out a bowl for each person. After the soup Lew and Wei started bringing out dish after dish. My nephew had gone to much trouble and expense to provide us with an elaborate lunch. There was roast pork from the barbeque shop, a plate of stir-fried shrimp, a whole steamed fish with scallions, a variety of Chinese greens and a steamed patty of minced pork and salted fish with ginger. Jeen had made this last dish because she’d remembered from last year that it was a favourite of Michael Uncle. We ate everything with bowls of hot steamed rice. After a short break Wei produced a platter of perfectly sliced oranges, dragon fruit and Chinese pears. I was deeply touched.

Once lunch was over Michael hooked up his digital camera to Lew’s television and showed everyone the photos we’d taken in Taishan and Macau. My relatives commented politely.
Very nice …
But the moment anyone in the room appeared on the TV screen, they started to laugh and point at the screen. It didn’t matter that Michael spoke no Chinese. He’d crossed the language barrier. When they saw pictures of our granddaughter, they asked how could she, with her blue eyes and fair hair, possibly be one-quarter Chinese? I had wondered the same thing.

Later in the afternoon my sister Jook and her daughter Kim arrived at the apartment. My sister struck me as being slightly more stooped than when I’d last seen her, but Kim was the same, greeting me with her silvery smile. I told my relatives that I wanted to return to my father’s village and to the family store in Cheong Hong See. I looked forward to exploring my ancestral village without being rushed from one destination to another. Last year I’d wanted to walk among the rice paddies behind Ning Kai Lee, but there was not enough time. I wanted to return to my father’s house and make an offering to the ancestors again. They told me not to worry, that they would look after everything.