All That Matters (20 page)

Father cleared his throat. Time to change the
subject: big ears were listening. I didn’t think of my own big ears; I thought of the two pairs on the two little heads that were now staring into the dining room, their senses alerted.

“Please come here, Jung-Sum,” Poh-Poh said in her formal Canton manner. Second Brother hesitated, but the formal words meant he had little choice.

Poh-Poh stood looking down at him. “You kick Mrs. Chong’s poor Jen-Jen?”

Jung just barely nodded. The Old One’s frown slowly quashed him with condemnation. It was the same withering, anguished look the Old One gave me whenever she caught me disobeying Father. The high cheekbones lifted every scowling wrinkle on her old face; her ancient eyes penetrated your soul. Even I would have preferred to be whipped. Jung bowed his head. He knew I would be called as a witness if he said nothing.

“Yes. I kicked Jen-Jen.”

Since the matter had been raised first between the women, Father kept quiet. The whole room waited for Poh-Poh’s sentence. She shook her head. Perhaps she was overwhelmed by some shame for Jung’s behaviour. Perhaps he now understood how he had shamed us all. As in the matter of a little stealing or a big stealing, boys do not kick girls.

“Go upstairs.” Poh-Poh’s voice chilled the room.

Second Brother bit his lip. He knew this meant he would have to wait for Poh-Poh’s sentence. He might be locked in the closet all night, as Mrs. Leong had done to punish her third son; he might be deprived of supper for a whole month and have to find a way to eat
double the lunch at school; certainly, Poh-Poh would use her knuckles once or twice, to knock some brains into him.

Father might add his punishment, too. There would be a stern lecture about proper behaviour. An assignment of twenty lines of Chinese writing. Half the lines committed to memory before bedtime. Perhaps a twenty-five-word essay to be written in English. Or, worse, he might be grounded for ten weekends and be assigned Sekky’s dirty diapers to rinse and wash every day before bedtime. Jung-Sum would have to lie on his iron cot, count the minutes, the hours, until …

As Jung stomped up the stairs, Mrs. Chong sighed. All this time, Stepmother had been whispering to Father.

“Jung-Sum kicked Jenny!” Father said, appalled. He lifted off his glasses to think better. “Why?”

I spoke up. “Jenny said Second Brother’s always following me around like a stupid dog.”

Poh-Poh coughed loudly and waved her hand as if to expel the bad air: a warning for me to shut up. Her eyes shone. Seeing the intensity of those eyes, Mrs. Chong wanted to soften the Old One’s tendency towards, perhaps, too much disappointment with her grandsons. She lifted a manicured hand to her forehead.

“My
mo yung
daughter! To speak too soon can be so thoughtless!”

“My
mo no
Second Son!” added Father, firmly putting back his glasses. “Acting before thinking!”

Between those two cries, a balance had been struck: neither family would lose face.

Stepmother shifted in her chair. She looked too tired to say anything. She was as slim as ever; her belly barely pushed against her dress, if it did at all. But thinking of how big her stomach would become, I couldn’t help staring.

“Kiam-Kim,” Poh-Poh said, “finish your school work.”

“Have you not finished?” Father demanded.

As he drank his tea at the round table, Father watched me dip the brush and instructed me to hold my forefinger at a sharper angle against the bamboo stem. But I was distracted by my own thoughts.
To talk too soon …
to act too quickly
must be unlucky forces.

Now Jung-Sum was going to get it.

“Why didn’t you stop Jung-Sum?” Father said. “Don’t overload your brush.”

“He was too fast for me,” I said.

“You be faster next time.”

I knew what Father meant. As
Dai-goh
, I was supposed to protect Second Brother from himself, from his bad temper. I was to teach Jung-Sum how to be always patient. Set an example. I had not acted as a wise and all-seeing Big Brother for Jung-Sum. I had failed.

I listened for Jung’s reactions to Poh-Poh’s punishment, but except for the
daub-swish
of the brush as I dipped into the ink block, no sound came to my ears.

By the time I went to bed, I still hadn’t found out what tough punishment the Old One had assigned to
Jung. In a slant of moonlight falling across the room, I could see the little guy fast asleep in his cot. I got up and shook him awake.

“So?”
I said. “Did Poh-Poh speak to you?”

“Yes,” came his sleepy voice.

“Well?”

“She told me …” It was as if he were thinking with difficulty, or falling back to sleep. Poor Jung, I thought. Poh-Poh probably force-fed him castor oil like Jack’s mother once had done to him. She must have knuckled him. Twisted his ears. Pulled his nose. Made him swear he would never kick any female creature again—
never, never, never kick!

“Well?”
I said.

“Poh-Poh told me—” He yawned, shifting onto his side “—for the next time …”

I wanted to jolt him wide awake, punch my fist into his pillow as I used to do when we were younger, but remembered that I needed to set an example. To think before I acted.

“Next time,”
I asked gently, “next time—
what?”

“Next time, I to kick … 
harder!”

“You misheard her,” I said.

But in the darkness, relentless old eyes penetrated my brain and left no doubt.
“Kick harder!”
Poh-Poh had said, and walked out of the bedroom, trailing her bitter anger to the end.

The Japanese were moving their armies down from the north into the Southern Provinces. China’s divided
armies needed the food to help them fight the growing war, not only against the Imperial Japanese but against each other, too. People were starving. No one was in control. By 1936, the news was always bad.

“New baby go hungry in Gold Mountain,” Poh-Poh said to Stepmother.

We could buy good food that came from the Fraser Valley farmers, but the prices of anything like soy or oyster sauce, salted fish, rice, or thousand-year-old eggs, or any special herbs, or dried plums or oranges, if they were available at all, had all increased ten times over last season’s prices. Shipping routes were mined by all sides. Fewer and fewer China goods arrived in Vancouver.

Father had to ask the Tong Association to lower the rent for our Keefer Street house. Stepmother, her belly growing ever larger, stayed home with Poh-Poh; the two of them worked together mending and altering second-hand shirts and pants to fit each of us. The Tong Association now paid half the fees for my Chinese school in exchange for Father’s collecting their rents for them, and for Jung’s and my washing the insides of the main office windows every three weeks. Without the variety of work Father now took on, Third Uncle told me, the Chen family would be in trouble: I would be out of school and know no Chinese and be ashamed and mocked as a “Gold Mountain dreamer”; finally, when all the family returned to China, even with Third Uncle, we would be just as poor as when we first arrived.

One rain-soaked day in February, Mrs. Lim and
Poh-Poh said that the baby would come very soon. While I did my school work, the two old friends sat stitching together old bedsheets to make fresh mattress covers. Stepmother was in the parlour, collapsed on the sofa. A towel-wrapped pillow had been put under her head. Her long hair was pinned up. She had asked to come downstairs to be with all of us, and did not seem to mind the family noise around her. Poh-Poh had put a blanket over her, though she seemed warmly dressed to me.

Sekky and Liang were playing house underneath Father’s oak desk. Jung-Sum was studying for another test. And I sat wondering over my history book how I would feel next September when I would be in Grade 8, the highest grade at Strathcona. Then I heard the sobbing.

“Poh-Poh,” I said, “Gai-mou is crying.”

Tears ran freely down her pale cheeks.

Poh-Poh said, “Gai-mou not too well, Kiam-Kim. Father at Mr. Gu’s store to pick up Tai Sim’s medicine.”

I knew Mrs. Tai. She always wore a bright kerchief and simple black dresses. She had come to our house one night, along with the midwife Mrs. Nellie Yip, a white lady who was almost as big as Mrs. Lim. The next morning, there was baby Liang-Liang suckling on Stepmother’s breast. Mrs. Tai showed up again when Sekky was born.

I sat up. “Is Tai Sim coming to bring out the new baby?”

Jung was all ears. Liang hushed up Sekky to listen.

Stepmother looked flushed. Poh-Poh gently patted her knee. She reached deep into the sleeve of her quilted jacket and handed Stepmother a handkerchief.

“Tai Sim here?”

“No—not yet,” Poh-Poh said.
“Soon.”

“Kiam-Kim was not told—?” Mrs. Lim said.

“I maybe talk
too soon,”
Poh-Poh said. “Too sure and too soon!”

“Soon?” I said, confused again. “The new baby coming soon?”

“No, no,” Poh-Poh said. “Not
this
time. Maybe too soon!”

She sounded confused herself. Stepmother groaned.

One hour later Tai Sim arrived and said she would sit with Stepmother, that we should go on with our usual business.

“I wait,” I said.

But Stepmother’s tears would not stop. Perhaps she had wanted a new boy sooner.

Father arrived home, took his hat and coat off, and went straight to Stepmother’s side.

Tai Sim stepped back from the sofa. “Madame Nellie Yip come later tonight,” the small woman announced to everyone in the parlour. She quickly knelt down, turned over Stepmother’s wrist and tapped, then she studied Stepmother’s tongue and the rims of her eyes. She rubbed the back of Stepmother’s soaked neck and felt for tension. The towel under Stepmother was wet.

“Madame Yip know what to do,” Tai Sim said.

Madame Nellie Yip had studied in Old China and knew as many dialects as any Chinatown resident, even more than Poh-Poh herself. She told one of her in-laws, in witty Cantonese, “You have perfect hips for having babies! Have a dozen!” Everyone wanted Nellie Yip to oversee their births: she knew both Western and Eastern ways. For years, she had fought to have sick Chinese people served properly in the city hospitals. In her adopted tongue, she was not “Mrs.” but was highly regarded and called Madame.

Hearing that Madame Nellie Yip would be with her, working along with Tai Sim, Stepmother smiled confidently.

“You have the medicine for me?”

Father held up the black, velvety box. A crest of a red phoenix was embossed on its lid.

“Tai Sim thinks I might have the baby very soon.”

“Everything go well,” Father said. “No worry.”

Tai Sim asked for the small box from Father.

“Give Chen Sim some warm soup,” she said, “while I prepare phoenix medicine.” She shook the velvet box. The contents made a soft pattering noise, like rolling BBs. I thought of the loud rattling pebbles coming from another, larger box. That one had had a golden dragon curved over the lid.

“Paid
many
dollars,” Father said. “More than one week’s salary!”

“Cost Gai-mou, too,” the Old One said. Rain began pelting against the porch. “Very soon be over.”

“Maybe too soon for me,” said Stepmother. Her voice sounded strained.

“Maybe count wrong,” Tai Sim said. “No worry.”

A knock came from the front door. Shaking her umbrella, Mrs. Chong stepped into the parlour. With one glance she knew what was going on. Madame Yip had phoned her to bring over from her store a tiny tube of White Flower Essence, a bottle of Lysol, and thick cotton bundles of bandages.
In case
.

Jung-Sum took away her raincoat, I brought some chairs from the dining room. Everyone sat close to the sofa. Sekky and Liang brought out their toys to play at the foot of the big chesterfield. From her cane rocker, Poh-Poh nudged me to pour tea for our guests.

I poured Father’s last. He looked first at Stepmother, then he stared helplessly at Mrs. Chong. Little sympathy reflected back from her. She sat in the sofa chair and reached into her purse for a cigarette. I took the Peter Pan Café matches she handed me. At one of the mahjong games, Mrs. Chong taught me how to be a gentleman with a match, to be like one of those picture-show stars she admired. I struck the match, and Mrs. Chong inhaled. The Sweet Caporal flared with fire and smoke. Then she exhaled and, with her pencilled eyebrows cresting elegantly, smiled at me. Her hand delicately fanned away the smoke. Across the room, Stepmother politely pointed out the ashtray on the end table. I set it on the arm of the sofa. It was the big ashtray Third Uncle used for his pipe.

“Everything fine now, Chen Suk,” Mrs. Chong said to Father. “Chen Sim just have a little bad spell. Nothing more.”

No one believed her.

We all watched Poh-Poh get up and press her palm against Stepmother’s forehead. Tai Sim had taken the medicine box and all the packages into the kitchen. She told Father that the pills would have to be crushed and an assortment of herbs blended together with them. It would take an hour of steaming in a double-enclosed pot before the bitter liquid, distilled and cooled, would be ready for Stepmother.

“Sip when cramp push lower,” Tai Sim had said with authority. “Strengthen muscle.”

Hearing those words, Mrs. Chong grimaced and exchanged some nervous glances with Poh-Poh and big Mrs. Lim. My spine tightened. It was clear Stepmother did not want to move from the sofa. She did not want to move at all. Tai Sim had told her to stay put until she checked her signs again.

Father looked uncomfortable.

“Need more strength,” Poh-Poh said gently to Stepmother.

“I make you very good soup,” said Mrs. Lim. She folded her hands, as if in prayer. “I now go home to make.”

During the wait for Tai Sim to reappear, Father drank his tea and hardly took his eyes away from Stepmother. I could see she was holding her knees together, as if she were in pain.

“Oh, Chen Sim,” Mrs. Chong said, “you must go upstairs into your big bed.”

Poh-Poh looked alarmed. “Not here. I bring you soup upstairs.”