All That Matters (10 page)

“Such a smart boy already!” Mrs. Wong said. “Some lucky girl will catch him!”

Mrs. Leong said, “If only my eight-year-old could do a tenth as much!”

She was talking about her Winston, a fat boy with a thick head. He failed English Grade 2 and was taken out of Chinese school for throwing ink at some of the younger girls who laughed at his stuttering. Mrs. Leong bit her bottom lip. Mrs. Wong knitted her thinly drawn eyebrows.

It was inspection time. Glittering, appraising eyes took in everything. Poh-Poh reached out and tucked my shirt in. I felt I was going to be sold to one of the ladies, just as the bad children back in China were
sold at the whim of an elder. The two ladies on the chesterfield broke into even broader smiles. Mrs. Wong pulled me closer to her. What a good grandson. How tall, how always considerate. Under the parlour lamp beside her, Mrs. Pan Wong’s gold tooth shone like fire. The Old One’s eyes registered
enough, enough
. She was more anxious to play mahjong, to get on with the business of the evening.

“Check on the chicken-melon soup,” Poh-Poh said. “Use the metal spoon carefully.”

I knew what she meant. Stand on the apple box. Lift the pot lid and peek in to see that the liquid was not bubbling over.

It wasn’t.

“I’m getting a new brother,” I said just to myself, and, to pass the time, banged on the side of the stock pot with the spoon and a chopstick. The banging did my talking for me:
New! new! new! new!
The pot lid tilted, the golden liquid hissed and bubbled over.

Poh-Poh stormed into the kitchen, her back hunched up beneath her quilted jacket, bent knuckles ready to land on my crown. “You study your school book and listen for the door.” With stinging precision, her knuckles landed. “Mrs. Chong come any minute now.”

She straightened the 100 per cent Canada Wheat apron hanging over the chair. As I rubbed my head, the flaps of the white apron wavered like two ghosts.

“Did you say something, Grandson?”

“Nothing,” I said, dropping the spoon and chopsticks.

“How clever,” the Old One said, “to say
nothing.”

Giggling rippled from the front room.

When finally Mrs. Annah Chong arrived at our front door, she apologized, using her formal Cantonese to win back Poh-Poh’s good grace.

“
Jan-haih mh-hoh yee-see la,”
the tall woman said. “How thoughtless of me. Arriving so late. You must think I am so ungrateful.”

“Mh-hoh haak-hei,”
Poh-Poh said, echoing Mrs. Chong’s formality. “Don’t stand on ceremony. Let my grandson take your lovely fur coat.”

As I stepped up to do so, Mrs. Chong slapped her purse into my hands and hurriedly unbuttoned her coat.

“Thank you, Kiam-Kim,” she continued in Cantonese. “You’re such a good boy, so smart looking, so tall! Grandmama must be feeding you her best cooking.”

I smiled, but knew I was not to say anything. Mrs. Chong swung her thin arms out to let her heavy coat slide away from her. The coat smelled faintly of mothballs; two beady-eyed foxes dangled from the collar into my nose. I grabbed one corner of the dark garment just before it hit the floor and was surprised to see Mrs. Chong’s daughter, Jenny, standing right behind the curtain of fur. The coat knocked the purse from my hand; Jenny was quick to catch the strap. Her eyes narrowed at me as if I were stupid or clumsy. Or both.

Tonight was for Poh-Poh’s ladies only, a chance to get away from the rest of their families, especially from their crowded households of live-in namesake cousins and roomers, and from children the likes of Jenny Chong and me.

Except I got stuck as kitchen help and doormat.

“Remember to help Poh-Poh greet the guests, Kiam-Kim,” Stepmother had said. “You be the man of the house tonight.”

When Mrs. Chong walked by and absent-mindedly patted my head, I remembered to be like Father. I stood taller. Girl children, like Jenny Chong, first-born or last-born, hardly mattered. I ignored her.

Jenny’s lips curled when I said my formal greetings to her mother.
“Chong Sim, nei ho ma?”
If she smiled, she might not have been so ugly.

Mrs. Chong gave her a stern look, her pencil-drawn eyebrows curving upward, her dialect slipping back to her Toishan village origins.

“
Mo yung neuih
upset her father! Useless girl! Three times this week!” Mrs. Chong dragged Jenny into our parlour, grabbed her thin shoulders, and shook her in front of everyone. “You behave! Dai-mo send you away!”

She called my grandmother Dai-mo, Great Mrs. or Great-aunt, because Poh-Poh, in her seventies, was the oldest of her crowd. Mrs. Chong brushed back a strand of her hair as if she were regaining control. She pushed Jenny down on our long sofa and glared at her.

“Stay here and die,” Mrs. Chong said, throwing
some school books at her. She sighed and walked into the next room to join the mahjong group.

“
Say neuih,”
Mrs. Chong said, her arms opening up to her three friends for sympathy. “Dead girl, I have a dead girl for a daughter.”

Two stiff-necked foes were left behind in the parlour.

Jenny looked up at our Great Wall of China calendar. She sat rigidly in her bright red dress, a dress topped with a ruffled collar. When she turned back to glare at me, the ruffles shifted like a stupid clown’s collar.

I could see no interest or mystery in girls like Jenny. If I laughed, even smiled, she would have told Poh-Poh. Then I would be sent right up to bed without even a taste of the late-night supper. The two bowls of
jook
I had earlier would hardly keep me from hunger. I glared back.

Jenny Chong was almost eight, but skinny in the way most Chinese girls were, stretched too tall for her weight. Her braided pigtails were tightly pinned up and ribboned, and her nostrils visibly flared. She dared me to look away. I found it hard to keep my eyes focussed on her, so I glanced at the four women, who were babbling again. They were admiring Mrs. Chong’s embroidered silk
cheongsam
, as if her tardiness hadn’t mattered at all.

“I wear special dress for special party,” Mrs. Chong said.

Then there was that pause again, a sudden and important silence.

“Grandson,” Poh-Poh called out to me, “come and get the game table ready.”

I slowly walked away from Jenny to make it clear that she, a girl, wasn’t the one who made me leave the parlour.

“Grandson!”

I went to the hall cupboard and took out the game case.

Mrs. Chong smiled at the three ladies already sitting at the fold-away card table parked just a few feet from our round oak dining table. The tall woman stood as if she could barely move, still fuming over whatever had happened at home. She took out the lucky ashtray she always carried to these parties and parked it on her right side. It was a tiny thing, shaped like a flower. Poh-Poh handed me a coaster to put under it. Finally, Mrs. Annah Chong sat down.

“Just relax, Ann-nah,” Poh-Poh said, and pursed her lips to signal the other two ladies to remain silent. But they purred with curiosity.

“Annah, may I ask what your lovely daughter has done to upset you so?” Mrs. Pan Wong’s Sun Wui village dialect sounded delicate, more diplomatic than familiar.

Mrs. Leong caught Grandmother’s warning look, too, but ignored it. “What could such a beautiful daughter have done to her poor mother?”

“Oh, Leong Sim,” Mrs. Chong said, lighting up a Sweet Caporal, “you are too thoughtful.” She blew out the match. “Me? I suffer in silence. Please, let’s ignore my useless daughter.”

I liked the way Annah Chong would inhale so deeply that her cheeks formed indentations; when she exhaled, they ballooned out. A puff of smoke rose into the air.

The Kitchen God
, I thought.

“Grandson,” Poh-Poh said, “we’re ready to play.”

I lifted the leather case of playing tiles onto the table and slipped out the tray with the counters, shook out the two dice and the four-wind disc. Mrs. Wong smiled at me.

“What a good boy,” she said. “So tall.”

The ladies began throwing dice to see who would start breaking up the tiles.

“You start, Sui Leong,” Poh-Poh commanded. “You East, Pan Wong, you sit across.”

I stepped out of the way.

The four ladies began shuffling and palming the ivory tiles, turning them face down, stacking the pieces into two-tier walls. Their gold and jade bracelets tinkled like bells.

I sat at Father’s small oak desk, facing the gaming table, and turned my attention to my Meccano set, hardly looking up at anyone. I was building a Ferris wheel, like the one shown on the battered box that Third Uncle had bought me from the Strathcona School bazaar.

“It’s an Advanced project,” Father told me, “recommended for big boys, twelve and up.”

“I can do it,” I said.

“There’s some pieces missing,” Third Uncle had told me. “You do your best, Kiam.”

“Very smart Grandson,” Poh-Poh said, out of the blue.

With a quick flip of her forefinger, Mrs. Chong discarded a tile. She and Poh-Poh smiled across the table at each other.

Between one of the mahjong rounds, while the tiles were being shuffled, Mrs. Chong finally broke down. A cloud of cigarette smoke streamed into the air.

“My heart is too heavy,” she began. “I must tell you, dear friends.”

“Tell, tell!” Mrs. Wong said. “You know we all care for your happiness.”

“Yes, yes,” Mrs. Leong said. “If the women of Chinatown don’t care for each other, who will?”

“Well …,” Mrs. Chong began, putting down her Sweet Caporal, “my worthless daughter threw a book at her father.”

“Poor Ben Chong!” Mrs. Leong leaned over to hear more.

Mrs. Wong shook her head in disbelief. “Attack her father!”

Jenny’s mother gravely bowed her head. “That’s why, Dai-mo, I thought it best I bring this useless girl with me.”

“No worry, Annah,” Poh-Poh said. “She really is good girl. Has tiger spirit.”

“Tiger, yes, but
good,”
Mrs. Wong said, and her pudgy hand reached out to touch Mrs. Chong’s sloped shoulder. “Your daughter is plenty smart. How could she—?”

“Let her rot by herself,” Mrs. Chong said.
“Say neuih! Mo yung neuih!
Dead girl! Useless girl!” She lit up another cigarette.

Mrs. Leong and Mrs. Wong clucked their tongues at this news of a mere girl daring to throw anything at anyone, let alone a book at her father. One of Ben Chong’s many jobs, aside from working in his own corner store, was keeping sets of accounts for Chinatown’s smaller, and more and more often failing, businesses. In their upstairs office, where I had visited a few times with Father, big metal-clipped volumes lay about. I imagined one of those inches-thick account books, two feet wide, being heaved across the room. They could knock out a man with one blow. Mouth open, I looked at Jenny Chong. She looked so thin, too thin.

Grandmother noticed my astonishment and said, “Annah, may I ask—?”

“Yes, yes, Dai-mo, ask me.”

“How large was this book that your daughter threw?”

“Well, of course,” Mrs. Chong said, exhaling, “it was only one of those school scribblers.”

“A scribbler,” Poh-Poh said, pausing thoughtfully, looking directly at me, “is hardly a book.”

I squeezed my lips together, tried not to laugh. A scribbler was smaller than a comic, would barely flutter a few feet in the air.

“But what a thing to do!” Mrs. Wong said, fanning the fires. “Such spirit!”

“We needn’t give this another thought.” Grandmother tapped the table. “South?”

After almost two hours and nearly completing the round, Poh-Poh called me away from my wobbly, nearly finished Ferris wheel to get the wok ready. Mrs. Leong complimented me on my skill. I sighed. For sure, there were some Meccano pieces missing, but I had done my best. Poh-Poh told me to hurry and heat up the large wok.

I wiped the curved bottom as I had been taught to do, then lifted one of the stove tops to set the pan in. I slid the handle on the grate. The stove stirred awake and flames began to lick the wok bottom.

“Everything all cut and ready,” Poh-Poh said, pushing Mrs. Leong back into her seat and insisting she only needed me. “Just need ten minutes to stir-fry.”

In front of our wood-and-sawdust stove, Grandmother handed me Stepmother’s flowery apron. I folded and tied it around my waist just the way Mr. Ding Wong the butcher would, or the waiters at the Hong Kong Café.

Poh-Poh seemed pleased that I did not have to be told twice to follow any of her instructions. When she ordered, I handed her the tin pan of marinated chicken pieces and the flat of pork cubes out of our wooden icebox; passed her the bowls of bean sprouts and soaked mushrooms; tossed her the soy bottle and sesame oil when she nodded towards the pantry and the small dish of
dao-see
, black-bean sauce, with the tablespoon of starch when she said,
“Din-foon.”

She had taught me well, as she had promised Father
she would, so that I would survive in Gold Mountain among the barbarians who boiled greens into mush and blackened whole chunks of meat the size of a man’s head, and carved the dead thing and ate whole slabs employing weapons at the table.