All That Matters (16 page)

“Lucky you have smart grandson!” said Mrs. Lim, wiping her wet hands on Poh-Poh’s handy apron.

“You go, Gai-mou,” said Poh-Poh when she noticed Stepmother’s wan face and tired expression. “Get some exercise. Enjoy yourself. Buy sweet buns from the Royal.” She reached into her porcelain steamer bowl, high on the shelf, and handed Stepmother some dollar bills.

The two older women had been busy preparing the chicken and pork, checking through the pantry for ingredients. Mrs. Lim had coated the chicken with dark soy in a special way, so that the roasted skin would turn crispy and taste of salt and ginger, exactly the same way her one-eyed husband had liked to eat it. Some other ingredients were running short, and Poh-Poh sent Stepmother and the three of us children to pick up some things from Chinatown.

“Go, go, go,” Poh-Poh said, rushing all of us out of her and Mrs. Lim’s way.

“Get fresh air,” said Mrs. Lim, and I noticed how she sweetly patted Stepmother’s tummy. She and the Old One burst into knowing smiles.

“Buy sweet buns,” Poh-Poh said again.

Stepmother blushed when I patted her on the gut and asked if something was wrong. Her belly was pushing against her simple dress. But that wasn’t too surprising. At supper, Father had pointed out that she
had been eating much more than usual and had been drinking lots of tea with Mrs. Chong. Before she could answer my question, Poh-Poh came chasing us to leave the house. We rushed out the door, my head filled with thoughts of treats to be bought from the B.C. Royal bakery.

But as we stepped onto the sidewalk, another thought came to me: Stepmother was going to have a baby.
A secret
, I thought. Something children were not to know about, but to know just the same. Perhaps to say anything more would bring bad luck. Signs were everywhere for me to see and
not
see: Stepmother had blushed, Mrs. Lim had patted her belly as one might pat an eggshell, and Poh-Poh had rushed us out as if to say,
Pay no attention! Not for children to know!

I watched for more signs. How did such things happen? Babies like Liang must have come from the tummy of Stepmother at night. After Liang was ours, I remembered, Stepmother’s middle flattened out again. Jack and I had seen an alley cat drop slimy kittens from its backside. I felt queasy and stupid and wise all at the same time.

At the end of our walk into Chinatown we stood at Pender and Main and waited for Stepmother to return some mending to Gee Sook at American Steam Cleaners. Jung took a tennis ball from his pocket and played catch with Liang. I got to dash into the road and retrieve the ball a few times, the cars honking at me as if I were in danger. Finally, Stepmother came out. Gee Sook shook his head at me.

“No play on the road,” he said. “Little boy killed there last week. Right over there. Head crushed by truck.”

He pointed at the corner where I had dashed out. Jung’s eyes widened. While Stepmother exchanged some last words with Gee Sook, Liang huddled against Stepmother’s skirt. A truck honked and Stepmother jumped. I thought the baby inside the tummy must have jumped, too, but I pretended that I didn’t think such things. I would let everyone tell me whatever they wanted me to know. What was the use of knowing anything more than I should know? Best to let things be, as Poh-Poh often advised Mrs. Lim.

Gee Sook was a kindly man, but he had told me once too often about the dead boy killed at the corner of the road. I counted on my fingers how many boys had died
right over there
, and ran out of fingers to count on. The cautionary story still had its effect over Jung and poor Sister Liang, but to me, bad and unlucky little boys were dying every week in Chinatown. Even Mrs. Chong said so. Yet whenever we went to the cemetery to pay our respects at the Chen Tong Memorial, I never saw any little boys buried there.

Finally, we made our way into the heart of Chinatown, along Market Alley and Columbia. Between the gaps in the buildings I could see the campfires blazing along False Creek. The smell of smoke and stagnant water drifted up towards us. Jung and Liang tugged at Stepmother to slow down while they watched a long train slowly cross Pender Street, headed for the CPR Roundhouse. Men walked with their heads down, their caps pulled over their
foreheads as if to avoid looking at us. We were a family shopping together, a reminder of what they did not have. In the grey afternoon light, the striped green awnings over the street stalls sagged wet from the morning’s rain.

“Everyone so unhappy,” I said. I was thinking of the pictures in Father’s copy of the
Herald
that showed the shopkeepers smiling. It was an article about “yellow labour” and city health standards, about Chinatown grocery stores and open live-chicken cages and why they should all be shut down.

“Yes, yes,” Stepmother said, but before I could explain myself, she turned away from me to demand that Mr. Wing check his scale again. Jung-Sum raised himself up on the outdoor counter to look. The balances swung in the air, then settled.

Stepmother looked discouraged. How could this balance be correct? There were now even fewer pockets with cash to buy the special imported food from China—shouldn’t things be cheaper? “Why so much!” she demanded.

“Piracy in the China Seas,” Mr. Wing noted. “Japanese invasion. Famine. Civil war …”

The balance stood still. Mr. Wing shrugged. The weight was correct. The price of Hong Kong salted fish had tripled.

“Buy it or leave it,” said Mr. Wing.

When Stepmother looked so downcast at the coins left in her palm after giving over a whole dollar bill to Mr. Wing, Liang volunteered to carry the small newspaper-wrapped package herself.

“Soon the family sell you to buy food,” Mr. Wing joked to Liang.

When the husky man caught the fury in Gai-mou’s eyes, he quickly retreated to the other end of the stall.

Liang looked up at Stepmother.

“No one sell you,” said Jung.

“No one,” I said, catching on to how Liang-Liang was trembling.

Stepmother knelt down and held the little head against herself. “No one sell you … no one sell you.” But Liang’s tears would not stop.

I picked up the dropped package of salted fish.

The next day, Stepmother said she was not feeling well enough to go with us to Ocean View Cemetery; she asked that Liang stay home to keep her company.

The Vancouver rains had started again, and Father agreed with Poh-Poh that Stepmother would be vulnerable to the graveyard dampness. Mrs. Lim, dressed all in black, said she would make some herbal tea for Stepmother when we all returned. Poh-Poh said Gai-mou should be sure to eat some of Mrs. Lim’s cemetery chicken, which would be brought right home with the pork and the fruit after the ceremonies.

Third Uncle’s van puttered up and his driver honked. Impatient, Third Uncle ran up to our door and knocked loudly, as if we were all deaf. Bachelors, complained Poh-Poh, never understood how long it took to dress a family for an outing.

At last we piled in for the long drive to Ocean View, the men carrying large umbrellas over the women’s heads as they took the two side seats; Jung and I lugging
the two boxes of foodstuffs into the back of the van; Father holding on to the sticks of incense and the box of Eagle matches; and Third Uncle carrying the two bags of token Hell money for the spendthrift dead.

Staring out the back window, I could make out Stepmother standing in the parlour window, holding Liang in her arms. I watched them through the light curtain of rain until the van jerked and pulled away.

“Sit down,” Third Uncle commanded me. “Last time, a little boy fell out of this van and smashed his head on the road.”

We never again shopped at Mr. Wing’s stall.

Grandmother and I were sitting on the porch on two mismatched kitchen chairs. Now and then a brisk, chilly wind blew down from the snow-topped North Shore mountains and rustled the pages of my comic, and Poh-Poh pulled her thick woollen sweater tight around her shoulders. Pink and yellow flowers were in full bloom in the O’Connors’ front yard, and the tendrils of bean and pea plants in our own yard were already tied to thin bamboo stakes. It was hard to focus on
Mutt and Jeff
, but Poh-Poh insisted that I sit and wait with her.

“Maybe some good news,” she said, shifting her feet about on the wooden porch. “We wait.” Stepmother and Father had gone to visit Mr. Gu, the old herbalist on Columbia. Stepmother had been waking up in the morning drowsy and sickly, and Father had been acutely sensitive to her moods and
bringing her tea in bed. The mahjong ladies brought her gingered soups. Big Mrs. Lim was especially interested. Across the street, from her wooden shack perched high above a rockery, big Mrs. Lim hollered down at us, “Any news?”

Poh-Poh told me to wave and answer back.

“Not yet!” I shouted, and in that instant the Old One sat up. Down the street, we could both see Father and Stepmother in their long coats walking towards us.

“Fa-dee! Fa-dee!”
Poh-Poh shouted at them. “Hurry! Hurry!” But just as suddenly her strained, impatient voice turned to concern. “No hurry! No hurry!” she cried out. “Take time! Take time!”

Poh-Poh snatched away my comic and pushed me off my chair. “Go down and help Gai-mou and Father,” she said. “Take shopping bags from Father and take purse. Hurry!”

I scurried down the steps and ran the half block to meet Father and Stepmother. I took her purse, and Father, his face flushed, handed me the two bags of groceries so he could take Stepmother by her elbow. Stepmother leaned heavily on Father; her brow glistened. I walked beside them.

From the porch Poh-Poh began her urgent singsong questioning. “Yes? Yes?”

Mrs. Lim stomped her way over towards our house. She seemed to jiggle with questions but only repeated over and over the Old One’s same singsong query: “Yes? Yes?”

At last, halfway up our six porch steps, Father responded: “Yes! Yes!”

Stepmother sighed loudly enough to hush up everyone. We all followed her into the house. To my surprise, instead of walking directly into the dining room or kitchen, everyone settled themselves in the parlour. Stepmother sat in the sofa chair, breathing rapidly, her face red from the sun or from exertion. Father held her hand and explained there were no taxis available. Some white labour groups were on a kind of strike, protesting against the Chinese fruit and vegetable merchants. The roads in and out of Chinatown had been blocked. The angry crowd of shouting men had parted to let them walk through.

“We don’t pick on ladies,” one of the white men said to Stepmother.

From her rocker, Poh-Poh waved to Mrs. Lim to sit herself down on the chesterfield.

In the silence, each one of them took a deep breath.

Stepmother dabbed her brow with her lacy handkerchief. She took pride in all the family’s white handkerchiefs, washing them twice, bleaching and ironing the plain ones for Father and us kids, and always taking the time to press and starch the lace edges of the fancy Irish linen ones sold cheaply by Ben Chong at their corner store and used by her and Poh-Poh and all the mahjong ladies.

They were all waiting for Stepmother to say something. I couldn’t resist repeating the query that Poh-Poh and Mrs. Lim had shouted.

“Yes? Yes?” My voice squeaked. “Yes? Yes?”

Father burst out laughing.

Playing in the backyard, Jung-Sum and Liang must have heard him through the open window, and they came running up the back stairs, dashed through the kitchen and dining room, and jumped into the parlour to join us. Often someone would have brought a box of dumplings or dried plums to share. But there was none today. The two looked confused. Father was still laughing, but the three women were silent. Poh-Poh sat up straight. She looked steadily at Liang-Liang and Jung, and then slowly her dark, sharp eyes landed on me.

“You soon have new brother,” she said.

“So!” exclaimed Mrs. Lim. “Mrs. Ben Chong and I never wrong!”

“Never wrong,” said Father.

“Yes, yes,” Mrs. Lim said, “this time a new boy baby!”

I looked at Stepmother, who looked worried.

“Maybe a new sister,” Father said quickly.

“Brother,” insisted Poh-Poh. “What did herbalist say?”

“Maybe a boy,” Father said. “Maybe not.”

Mrs. Lim fidgeted. “We old women know better.”

Everyone turned to Stepmother. With an ebbing smile she patted her tummy and said nothing.

During the next few weeks, as Stepmother’s belly grew slightly rounder and she stayed home from all her part-time shifts, the mahjong ladies—Mrs. Leong, Mrs. Wong, and Mrs. Chong, and the others—visited
us regularly. Third Uncle promised a celebration banquet when and if my new brother arrived.

When we were shopping together, I grew used to seeing others’ tiny smiles of appreciation mingled with envy and grew accustomed to the good wishes that followed Stepmother’s response to their hints of concern.

“So sure a boy, Chen Sim?”

“Everything well. Most kind of you.”

“How nice! A boy baby!”

I wondered how it was when I was in my own mother’s tummy in Patriarch Chen’s compound in Old China. Was the tiny woman with her bound feet greeted with as much seeming warmth and concern? I asked Poh-Poh and Father for details, but they both said, ‘Yes! Yes! Of course! Of course!’ and turned abruptly away from me, stifling further questions. After all, I had little gold baby bracelets and a few jade amulets to prove how much I had been expected. Those would be for me to pass along to my own son one day, Poh-Poh told me. She kept everything in silk sachets, along with the silver butterfly Stepmother had given me, the silver butterfly given to Stepmother herself at her birth. Girl babies did not always get gold trinkets. All I knew was that I must have been a wanted baby, just like this new brother of mine.

With Third Uncle’s return to financial stability and with his stated happiness over the news of his sponsored growing family, this boy child would not starve or ever feel unwanted. Every day, Poh-Poh kept stubbornly to the idea that Stepmother was bringing her the wished-for third grandson, though she was
diplomatic and very careful only to whisper about the matter. For example, before the big ears of the Kitchen God, we were all warned to say nothing about the Old One’s desire for more grandsons, not even to hint at her long-ago talk-story wish, though as she mixed, mashed, and stirred the blood-strengthening dishes, she often, and somewhat casually, invited fierced-face Tsao Chung’s blessing for Stepmother’s good health.