All That Matters (37 page)

“How sad all beautiful windows lost,” big Mrs. Lim told Poh-Poh at the kitchen table while Sekky slurped up his morning bowl of
jook
. “How lucky church be empty.”

Poh-Poh smiled at the news. Sekky smiled too.

Right after Mrs. Lim left our house that morning, Sekky and Poh-Poh put on extra sweaters under their coats and went to scout the smoking site. They picked up fragments of half-faced men and angels, portions of raised hands in blessing, and eyes opened wide with bliss. Poh-Poh was ready to complete her work.

I was in the locker room at school when six-foot Spencer Langley said he had spotted Sekky and Poh-Poh rummaging in the ruins, and he said in his show-off Latin that Grandmother was
non compos mentis
. I started sputtering some response when Jack rushed up
from behind me, set to punch Spence out. I grabbed his shoulder and told him to lay off.

“Just joking,” Spence said, backing off into the shower.

“You okay?” Jack asked me.

“Fine,” I said. “Thanks.” I grabbed my stuff, flashed my textbook at him, and walked away as if I were late for chemistry.

When I sat down in the lab, my heart was still pounding. I had told myself not to remember. Jenny loved me, surely, as much as she could ever love someone like Jack. Everyone knew he could have a hundred or more girls. She must have known that he would betray her as easily as he betrayed all the girls he dated. Moira had been the fifth in a line.

Across the aisle, seats were filling up. Mr. Ainsley put on his lab coat and started to take supplies from the storage cabinet.

I tried to focus, but my mind would not rest: Jack was just a guy who might never settle down, who could never be faithful. He and Jenny had acted impulsively. Nothing had been planned between them. And if I believed that nothing had really changed between Jenny and me, if I remained steady and didn’t rock the boat, it would be the last time they would be alone together like that. What had happened would never happen again. I was the one who loved Jenny and would always be faithful. She knew that.

“Mr. Chen?”

“Yes, sir?”

“We’re waiting for you to open your textbook …”

I told myself, when I calmed down, when I remembered how much Jack also meant to me, that I could still think of him as my best friend. He thought he was coming to my defence with Spence. I should drop over to his house, catch up on his news, and thank him. I opened my book.

As it turned out, I didn’t get over to Jack’s that evening. Instead, Jenny came by to warn me that a couple had come to her store to buy some film. They’d asked her if she knew about this old Chinese lady and the little boy. What time might the two show up at the ruins?

Just the night before, Father and Stepmother had asked me to speak to Sekky. When they’d left for work, I’d shaken my young brother awake.

“Father told me to tell you to stay home and do your school work. Too dangerous out at the church. Don’t go there any more.”

“Why not?”

“Poh-Poh or you could slip and fall. The frost makes everything icy.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “Grandmama says she got everything she needed. I even found a piece of an angel’s wing for her.”

I heard sighing. It was me.

“Don’t do that,” Sekky said.

“Do what?”

“Sound like Father.”

I did not protest. How could I not sound like Father? I was more Gold Mountain than Old China. Father appreciated that I, First Son, would
do my duty to teach my siblings what was true and what mattered.

“Don’t worry so much about Sekky and the Old One,” Jenny said. “When you think too much, you get so quiet. You scare me. Stop it.”

“What’s wrong with thinking?”

“Gets you nowhere.”

A light kiss landed on my forehead as if I were as simple as my little brother.

I pulled Jenny against me, felt how real she was, the smell and colour of her hair, the way her one leg moved between mine, the laughter in her eyes, and the way she was smiling, the way my hand cushioned the back of her head and our foreheads bumped, her lips leaned towards my own, and her eyes reflected the lamplight, and all this realness made me want to hold her forever, exactly as I was, entangled and lost, silent and hard. Back and forth.

The fall winds were harsh, and winter was coming. Father and Stepmother were worried that the Old One might leave the house for more treks through alleyways and ruins and endanger both her life and Sek-Lung’s. Father decided it was time to speak up.

After the three youngest ones were in bed, Stepmother and I watched as Poh-Poh sat silently in her rocking chair while Father carefully explained the untenable situation to her.

After a long pause, she said, “Yes, yes, I stay home. I wait for the last sign.”

“Which sign?” I asked her as patiently as I could.

“A sign that my friend the magician has come back for me.”

“But—”

“I have everything now,” the Old One said, gently cutting me off. “I have three grandsons. Good family. Plenty food. I rest and wait. I have long life already.”

I saw Father take out his handkerchief. Stepmother took Poh-Poh’s arm, and they went upstairs.

Father said to me, “First Son, the Old One is going to leave us very soon.” He stayed as calm as he could manage, and waited for my questions.

I had none. Jenny and I had spoken about Poh-Poh’s leaving, about her death. I found myself resisting the thought.

“Everyone dies, Kiam,” Jenny had said to me when I spoke of Poh-Poh’s shaking hands and slowed steps. “Everything ends.”

“It can’t be that simple,” I said, though I felt she was right. “Things never are that simple.”

“The other day,” Father said, “the Old One asked me how you and Jenny are doing. She say Jenny so much like herself.”

“We’re okay,” I said.

“I know she like you, Kiam-Kim.” For emphasis, Father tapped his glasses with his forefinger. “Her mother tell Poh-Poh Jenny think about you all night and all day. Just you.”

A lie, I thought, and the painful truth of that assessment made me flinch. My silence gave me away.

“Be careful, Kiam-Kim,” Father continued, with a small laugh. “Love too much, and love make you suffer.” He removed his glasses and pinched his nose, a gesture he always made when there was something too important or too personal to share. “Gai-mou and I,” he began, “we … 
like
each other. Very much, of course.”

“Liking each other, is that enough?”

“Yes, all these years, that has been enough.”

“But you loved my mother?”

Stepmother came into the parlour. Father and I had not even heard her coming down the stairs. She sat down on the sofa close to Father and picked up her knitting from a basket at her feet. Poh-Poh’s blue sweater was almost finished. Father had stopped talking, as if he were wondering how much she had heard, though I didn’t think that he had said anything that was not true. He had assessed his twelve years with Stepmother, seen her raise the two children that were her own, watched her care for the Old One, and liked how she stood by him. When Stepmother began to talk, it became apparent that she had heard his every word.

“Yes, Kiam-Kim,” she said, “your father
like
me. Like me very much. That is true.”

Stepmother stared at the two of us, as if to decide whether to say more. She herself must have thought a long time about her own situation, accepted things as they were. She was Father’s helpmate; she was our
gai-mou
. The knitting needles began click-clicking. Her beautiful eyes focussed on her work; her long fingers moved rapidly, confidently, as if from those hands the voice would take strength, at last, to speak out.

“Your father love only First Wife, Kiam-Kim,” she said. Her head bent lower. “Some nights your father, half asleep, he call me by your mother’s name.”

And her tears fell.

Father gently reached for Stepmother’s hand. The blue sweater collapsed in a heap in her lap.

There was nothing I could have said that would have changed the situation. I left them alone and climbed the stairs to my room.

By some miracle, just before supper the next day we were all at home at the same time. Everyone was busy. Sewing supplies for uniforms and knapsacks were held up by shortages, so Stepmother was sent home from work that afternoon and was pinning up Liang’s school dress for her. Father was at his desk writing furiously to meet another deadline; the wastebasket was filled with his crumpled efforts. And I was home interrupting Father to show off my latest 90 in the weekly math test.

Father held the paper up for Jung to see.

“I got an
Excellent
last week!” he said, shadow-boxing with the lamp on the floor to help outline every imaginary blow. He bounced on the balls of his feet like his hero, Joe Louis. Sekky was in the parlour cutting out some newspaper pictures of tanks and planes to paste into his scrapbook. Poh-Poh was busy in the kitchen.

Liang said how she wanted her dress hemmed closer to her knees.

“Not possible,” Stepmother said. She was rushing to finish so that they both could join the Old One in the kitchen and help prepare dinner.

I looked up from my math book and watched everyone and imagined how Jenny would fit in, and how, one day, she would have a big family with me. We had joked about having six kids, if I was capable.

The crash of garbage cans from the back porch startled us. An alley cat screeched, its cry almost halfhuman, and then another crash struck our ears as one of the galvanized cans fell over, spilling its contents, its lid, and store of empty tin cans clattering down the porch steps.

Father looked at me sternly, as if I had forgotten to set the cans up properly. More screeches. Father threw his papers down.

“Those damn cats!”

I sighed. Someone had forgotten again to lay the heavy plank over the two pails so the four-legged pests would not knock them over. I started to get up when I was hit by Poh-Poh’s intense cry:
“Aaaiiyaah!”

Father ran past me. I rushed into the kitchen after him.

The Old One stood at the threshold of the back door, holding her head in her hands, her shoulders shaking.

“He’s come back!” she said. “I saw him!”

“Hai bin-goh?”
Father asked. “Saw who?”

“Him,” she said, her Toishan words cracking with remorse. “He came staring at me with his eyes … and I cursed him!”

I pushed aside the curtains and peered out the back window and saw through the murky evening light the shape of a large white tomcat—the biggest one I had ever seen—crouched halfway down the steep steps, looking up at me. A foggy mist swirled at the bottom of the steps. The wily creature licked its lips, its hollow-looking eyes glowing like fire.

“It’s just that new alley cat,” I explained. “It’s been hanging around for days.”

I did nothing more. I would have shouted at the animal to scat, tossed the other lid crashing down the stairs to scare the scavenger off, but the way Poh-Poh looked past the half-opened door, the way she shook her head slowly, sadly, left me unable to move. She patted her wrinkled forehead as if she wanted desperately to erase some memory. When the white tom bounded off the steps, meowing, Poh-Poh looked frantic: her dark eyes had seen more than a cat. She stumbled over to Father and put her small hand on his arm.

“Too late,” she said to him, her words quaking in her throat. “Too … too late …”

Father held her close and said, gently but firmly, “Tell me what you saw.”

Poh-Poh looked up at him. “I saw …” Her eyes were wet. She whispered to him, as if she were a child, “It had … pink eyes.”

The eyes of the pure white tomcat came back to me. Their glow was odd.
Albino
, I thought.

“Please clean up the mess, Kiam,” Stepmother said. “And close the door. Too cold for Poh-Poh.”

I looked down to the bottom step. Garbage was strewn everywhere. The cat had snuck back. When I bent to pick up one of the lids, it crept away and vanished into the mist.

The back door squeaked open, then shut. Stepmother had sent Jung-Sum out to help me. I pointed to the shiny lid at the bottom of the steps. He started down the first step, then turned around, as if he wanted to talk.

“What?” I said, impatient.

“Dai-goh, why did Poh-Poh look so scared?”

I shrugged. “Just a cat,” I said. “The size of the thing must have rattled her old bones.” Jung raised his eyebrows in disbelief. “Poh-Poh’s just a little confused,” I said.

“Kiam, she just told Father she’s going to die.”

“Oh,
again?”
I smiled. “It’s just her old way of talking.”

“Dai-goh.” His murmuring grabbed my attention. “This time it’s true.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Father believes her this time.”

“Go pick up the lid,” I said.

Peering through the window into the kitchen, I saw Father and Stepmother holding on to the Old One. Father was wiping his eyes with his sleeve. I pressed my ear against the back door: Poh-Poh was saying over and over again the same words, shaking her head—
pink eyes, the cat, pink eyes
. She pushed away and went to the sink and began rinsing out some greens. The crisis was suddenly over. Stepmother hesitated, then picked up the rice pot
and went into the pantry. Father paused a moment, too, making sure that the Old One had settled down. When he saw the greens hit the colander, he went back to his desk as if nothing was wrong.

I picked up some tins and newspaper bundles full of food scraps and stuffed them back into the cans. I didn’t want to think about Grandmother’s breakdown.

When the dinner dishes were finally put away, and Poh-Poh had taken Sekky up to her room, closing the door behind them, I looked up from my Chinese brush work.

“Poh-Poh saw a ghost?” I asked Father, getting straight to the point.

“The Old One thinks she did.” He shuffled uneasily at his corner desk. “You know how it is with old people.”

“Jung-Sum heard her say she was going to die.”

“Yes … that’s what she says.”

“Do you think so?”

“Poh-Poh thinks that person she loved—that magician—has come back for her.”