All That Matters (14 page)

Father often came home too exhausted to think of telling fables to us. When we asked for them, he laughed and said he counted on Grandmother to be the family storyteller. Then he winked at Stepmother, who always protested that she knew only some Christian Bible stories preached by Patriarch Chen.

“Impossible to believe,” she said. “Whales swallowing up people and spitting them out alive!”

And so there was only Poh-Poh to be counted on to tell the Old China tales to us. They were the stories she had told Father when he was a small boy and Father said they would be the same stories we would one day tell our own children. I didn’t think that would happen: if Stepmother found the Christian stories too farfetched, and Father didn’t think the Old China stories were worth his own time to tell, then why would I tell anyone, Jack O’Connor or stubborn Jenny Chong, let alone my own future children, about the dragons and devious Fox Lady and the talking pigs and monkeys on sacred treks that once lived in Old China.

When I was almost ten, I stood with one foot deep in the rippling waves of Poh-Poh’s storytelling while my other foot stood firmly on dry ground. I would watch over my siblings, catch them if they slipped into Poh-Poh’s beguiling waters, as I had often slipped in
my dreams, half believing trains to be iron dragons. I decided that one of my duties would be to explain to Jung and Liang what was real, what was true, in Gold Mountain, just as Father had done for me, taking me to the echoing CPR Roundhouse where the ear-shattering train engines were shunted and turned around to head back east. I would turn my siblings around to see the world as it truly was. Show them at the proper time that the world was scientific and solid, just as Miss Kinny, with her chemistry demonstrations, had confirmed to us at school. Yet when the talk-story mood entered into our day, it was hard even for me to resist.

“This story true … oh, so long ago …,” the Old One always began.

“Dragons and talking monkeys!” I demanded. “They really true?”

“Not so true today,” Poh-Poh would say, a little disgruntled at my challenge. “But very true a long, long time ago in Old China.”

Jung-Sum crossed his legs and pushed me aside. “When was that time, Poh-Poh?”

The two at her side wanted so much to hear the story, they shifted restlessly on their bums.

“When?” Liang repeated.

“When ancient dragons and talking monkeys ruled the world, oh, way even before I was born … just ask Mrs. Lim.”

Jung-Sum’s eyes shone with amazement. I knew it was useless to argue over details at such a moment. Besides, I still wanted to hear the stories, so that, late in
bed, as Jung-Sum tossed about and the flimsy curtains shifted gently with possibilities, I could sense the wonder that must be visiting him in his dreams, the time during which fierce dragons and birds of paradise all had appeared before me, too. During those years of my dreaming, Father said that from his own bedroom he could hear me shouting in my sleep.

“What did I say?”

“You said, ‘Poh-Poh, talk-story!’ ”

Stepmother smiled when she was told this. She must have thought that was my Chinese brain starving for more stories.

No, I would be patient with Second Brother and Only Sister: they, too, would need a Chinese brain, or be forever
mo no
.

Late one afternoon, as the skies darkened, gossiping Mrs. Lim said that her back was telling her that a rainstorm was headed towards us. Though we might be scattered with our toys and books in separate rooms, Liang and Jung could be summoned at once for talk-story time like hungry dogs to dinner.

I took my time.

“Fa-dee lah! Fa-dee lah!,”
Poh-Poh called out to me. “Hurry! Hurry! I talk-story now.”

The Old One’s clearing her throat and shifting in her seat would quickly settle down the two youngest beside her in the kitchen, knee-clinging Only Sister and stool-perching Second Brother Jung. Then came stand-alone me. I leaned against the doorway, as if I
was not going to be fooled like Liang and Jung, who would be swallowing every word Poh-Poh spoke.

Our largest teapot sat between big Mrs. Lim and Grandmother. This was going to be a long story.

“I tell story about Mistress Mean-Mouth,” Poh-Poh began, making a shuddering gesture as if a demon had just walked into the room.

A wild wind knocked against our kitchen window. Mrs. Lim rubbed her back and sighed.

Slam!

Everyone jumped. I had left the front door unlocked again.

“A house that welcomes thieves,” Mrs. Lim said. “Get me a cushion from the sofa, Kiam-Kim.”

“I talk-story,” Poh-Poh said again, ignoring me. I rushed out to lock the front door and came back with the cushion.

Mrs. Lim pulled in her chair and settled down on the cushion. “I listen.” With her thick palm she pushed aside the flour sack of carrots and turnips on the table, moved the bottle of pickled cabbage, and reached into the half-filled bucket of unshelled peas picked from her garden. She and Poh-Poh both began shelling the peas, dropping them into a porcelain bowl. The Old One tossed aside the green shells, working quickly. Mrs. Lim picked out a thick carrot from the sack, wiped it clean with the dark sleeve of her wool sweater.

“Fatten up, Jung-Sum,” she said.

Jung caught the carrot in mid-flight. At six, Second Brother was now more lanky than thin. He bit into the carrot like one of those cartoon rabbits. Mrs.
Lim wiped a smaller one for Liang to chew on, but she saw nothing to offer me. I hated raw carrots anyway.

All this delay and settling down was meaningful. The story was to be a very special tale and required dawdling about to build up the suspense. An old trick.

Poh-Poh sighed, her mind settling in to talk-story. Only after the third and final sigh would she begin. But we were to sit still and wait respectfully. Even Mrs. Lim, whose very breathing grew quiet, slowed down the shelling. We sat while the Old One tilted her small head and brushed back the white strands. She gave the two youngest a sidelong glance, a warning to sit still, or absolutely no three-sigh-story would be told.

Big Mrs. Lim picked up the teapot and filled two china cups for herself and Poh-Poh.

I was growing impatient. From the corner of her eye, Poh-Poh caught me squirming and smiled.

In China, Father had explained to me, storytellers rattled noisemakers or knocked wooden clappers together, but even when a good crowd had gathered around them, there was always the waiting. The more famous the storyteller, the longer the wait. And three-sigh storytellers were the most desirable. With the loud second sigh, the hushed crowd understood more coins were required. Coins clinked into his cap to encourage the third sigh. With a satisfied glance at his cap, and only after the last exhalation, he would begin the story. Father said that a poor teller of tales would need to begin right away, even before he sat down, or everyone would depart. Poh-Poh was a three-sigh storyteller, and our coins to her were our squirming impatience
for her stories of Old China.

Poh-Poh sighed a second time. Mrs. Lim put down her teacup. Both women studied us to see whether we were ready.

Excited, Jung snapped at his carrot. Liang pretended to chew, merrily displaying her missing tooth. The Old One looked at each of us. Satisfied, she gathered her breath, summoning up the third, crucial sigh. I sank back against the doorway.

“Don’t stand like useless boy,” Poh-Poh said to me instead of sighing. “Sit. Clean turnips. Grown-up job, Kiam-Kim.”

She plopped into my hand her favourite rasp, a curved blade with a rough sandpaper surface that she wielded like a weapon. Until that day, I had never been allowed to touch it. Too sharp, too dangerous. She shoved a large tin bucket my way and upended the flour sack with a bang. Liang jumped. Head-sized turnips and thick carrots tumbled out, rattling the sides of the galvanized bucket. Dust rose in the air.

I sat myself down on the extra crate.

“You know what to do?”

“Yes,” I said, having seen her use the razor-sharp weapon with a sculptor’s ease, carving a winter melon. Jung-Sum looked at me with envy. I had almost forgotten there was a story to be told. Poh-Poh’s third sigh came at last. She had been waiting for me to do my part.

I reached for a large turnip and leaned it against the lip of the pail between my knees. The hardened dirt from Mrs. Lim’s backyard flew off the root. The
kitchen smelled of earth and pods. I was doing a man’s job. Everyone watched me. Then Liang shuffled restlessly in her chair and cried out for the story to be told. Jung chewed on the end of his carrot and nodded,
yes, yes!
Mrs. Lim laughed and said I was doing a good job on those turnips: “Just like my dead one-eyed old man used to do.” All this talk teased us into unbearable anticipation.

Finally, Mrs. Lim poured more tea and urged Poh-Poh to begin.

Silence.

We heard an incredible
fourth
exhalation, Poh-Poh’s signal that this story, rare and surely to be fantastic, was a most important one. Liang and Jung stopped wiggling. Distant thunder sounded. The room darkened. We held our breath. Mrs. Lim reached over and snapped on the light. Shadows darted away. Unable to stop my Chinese brain, I thought of ghosts.

With eyes closed, her head titled back, the Old One began.

“Once upon a long ago in Old China, in the time of my slave years …”

She put down the bowl of peas and lifted Liang onto her knee. She turned Liang around to show Jung and me how she was taught to comb the waist-length hair of the young mistress, who lived like a royal princess.

“Hair down all the way here,” she said, patting Liang-Liang’s bum. “Face like pie plate. Every time I be with her, I see the two corners of her mouth go one way, down-way. Like this.” Poh-Poh pulled at the corners of her mouth. “When she carp at me, her
words so
mean
to me, so cruel, the words drop like stones into my heart.”

Poh-Poh was warned not to pull at hair tangles or she would be beaten with a slim bamboo cane.

“Mistress Mean-Mouth, oh, she always yelped if I tug too hard,” Poh-Poh said, tugging gently at Liang’s hair. “My little hands carefully,
very carefully
, pull down the long comb, one slow, gentle stroke after another. Pull comb,
once, twice
, my hand shake. Tremble.”

But the comb was magical, we knew.

“Tell about the comb,” Mrs. Lim prompted.

I could see Liang’s eyes light up. Jung held his breath.

Decorative carved creatures were entwined around the rosewood handle of the oversized comb—two lifelike serpents with fierce dragon heads, with inlaid pinpoint gems for shiny eyes. Most marvellous of all, in the night, when everyone was asleep, these serpents moved about, their tails slithering.

“Oh,” Poh-Poh said, catching the tilt of my doubting head. “I tell you how I know this.”

In a dream one night—one of those nights when she had been beaten and sent to bed without food—one of the two serpents spoke to Poh-Poh and granted her a single wish. With a child’s hopeless misery, Poh-Poh clutched her stone pillow and wished the Mistress a terrible death, never to bother anyone again.

“I wake up and grab the comb. I look—” The Old One barely smiled, wetting her lower lip. “One serpent tail now over
here
, the other one over
there
. Not by the
end of the handle. Both tails inches away from where they once reposed.”

“How come, Poh-Poh?” Jung asked, his eyes wide.

“Yes, yes, I asked that, too,” the Old One said. “I asked the Number Two house servant. He tell me the rare rosewood comb once carved by a magician. Fine teeth sliced from ancient turtle shell. ‘You get your wish,’ the old servant told me. ‘
The Mistress will die.’ ”

Jung twisted his leg around the stool. “Is that truly true?”

“Of course!” Mrs. Lim said. “In China, witches and magicians everywhere.”

“No,” Jung said. “I mean the comb.”

Mrs. Lim looked at Poh-Poh. The two women shook their heads in disbelief. How could a child doubt the truth?

“Comb had two serpents,” Poh-Poh said. “Oh, yes, yes. I never to forget.”

“Yes, yes,” Mrs. Lim said. “A Chinese comb is not a five-cent Woolworth comb! Many combs with serpents made in China. Why should your Poh-Poh not say so?”

Jung nodded. He watched the Old One drop more peas into the Blue Willow bowl.

“Why wasn’t the magic comb made of—
gold!”

“Because made of rosewood,” Mrs. Lim said. “Who can change wood to gold?”

“Ah, yes,” Poh-Poh said. “If that was possible, I would be rich with gold, with jade, and have by my side today six more grandsons.”

“If we can change the past by lying,” Mrs. Lim said,
helping herself to some raw peas, “these will change to pearls.” Mrs. Lim put a few into Jung’s hands. “See?
Still
peas!”

Jung stared at the green spheres, then bit into one.
Peas
, for sure.

“Tell what happened,” Jung said, chewing slowly. “Poh-Poh, tell what happened.”

I stopped scraping. There was perfect silence. The turnip in my hand seemed to be listening, too.

A sigh.

“Every morning, first thing, I comb her hair. If Mistress yelp, she call me
cat-bitch
, slap me hard. Lash me with her bamboo cane. Every night I sleep on the kitchen floor, I clutch the magic comb and wish her dead. Every night, with the comb beside my stone pillow, I hear the hiss of snakes.
Ugly cat-bitch!
Mistress Mean-Mouth yell at me. Every morning, her thick hair snag and snarl: she hit me again and again.”

“What did you do?” Liang asked, clutching at Poh-Poh’s elbow. “Did you trick her?”

It was a question I wanted to ask. To survive in this world, Third Uncle once warned me, you had to know that demons and even good ghosts used trickery to test your character. Demons you had to outwit; with good ghosts you had to prove your character a worthy one. But human trickery could go either way. Liang knew from Poh-Poh’s stories that deception often meant survival. I knew that a ghost or demon would soon appear. Always at the last minute.

“Trick her?” Poh-Poh smiled. Her voice fell into a
whisper. “One day, the cook told me to soak the comb overnight in the wide-mouth jar sitting on the shelf above my head. The deep jar was filled with pure cooking oil. ‘Be sure always to wipe the comb off,’ he instructed me, ‘then use it on the Mistress.’ ”