All That Matters (22 page)

“Think of the soldiers and those hungry boys and girls,” Father said. “You speak for them.”

We collected on the few blocks around our house where we knew Chinese families lived, and then we went into Chinatown to knock on doors in the rooming houses along Shanghai and Canton alleys. I hardly had to say my speech at all, because Father would just ask for a donation and I would rattle the box, and that was all it took. We stood in smelly hallways so dark that I could never make out whether pennies or dimes were being dropped into the box. If an old man came to the door, someone so obviously poor, his clothes ragged and patched, Father would say at once,
“Mh’koi, Senshaang!
Excuse, sir! Sorry, sir!—Looking for someone else.” Father would push me aside before I could rattle the box.

Quite a few times a door would slam shut because we had disturbed someone’s sleep. Or window blinds cut off Father’s attempts to peek through the gloom. He couldn’t figure out who was on shift-work sleep and who wasn’t, who was hung over again and who was truly sick. But some opened their door a few inches and dropped coins into my donation box. A few lonely men begged us to visit with them, offering Father tea in stained cups, but he politely told them we were in a hurry.

I glimpsed entrances with stained walls and decaying litter piled under stairwells; stumbled in the murkiness past windowless chambers, tiny rooms with only soiled mattresses in the corner and wooden crates for tables or chairs. Wet clothes were hung across strings
tied to nails. I heard coughing and hacking, the noise of shifting bodies and snoring. Most of the barely lit hallways stank like unflushed toilets.

After the third rooming hotel, Father, choking from the smells, said that from now on we would visit places where people were wide awake. As we walked down the steps into the bright sunlight, I noticed that my shoes were sticky. I hurried over to a patch of grass and rubbed the soles back and forth, back and forth. Coins rattled at my side. The poorest gave what they could.

“Did you say thank-you?”

Stung by the odours and by the sight of such poverty, I couldn’t remember if I had said anything. It seemed to me Father hardly spoke himself but rather nodded as he pinched a handkerchief over his nose.

“Where do we go next, Father?”

“We go for more money,” he said and signalled me to follow him. “March like a soldier, Kiam-Kim.”

I thought of newsreel pictures, those grainy images of uniformed men trooping into jungles. I marched like a soldier.

Thereafter, Father and I spent all of our soliciting time at the all-day gambling houses, at the big and small family associations, the bachelor-men’s clubs where the old men and the unemployed men wanted to hear from Father the latest news from China. In those places, I was always asked to recite my piece.

Someone was always willing to talk to me after my rattling.

“How many blankets will this one box buy?” Yim Sook the barber asked me in Toishan, in front of five old men waiting their turn to test his hand-operated clipper.

“Lots,” I would answer back in dialect, “but none if you don’t help.”

“Gentlemen,” Yim Sook announced, “free haircuts for your donations.”

Money clinked into the box.

On my rounds, I shook some hands, smiled at everyone, and earned some pats on my back. Some people even gave me candy bars or Wrigley’s gum, which I would take home for Jung-Sum to share with Liang and Sekky. At the B.C. Royal bakery, someone bought me a syrupy-sweet butterhorn and a tall glass of milk. Nickels, dimes, and quarters, even fifty-cent pieces, and two or three times silver dollars dropped into the New China donation box.

Everyone seemed to enjoy my cleverness.

“Ho! Ho!”
they said “Good! Good!” and put in extra coins. I filled up five donation boxes, and Father signed up almost double his quota of pledges.

Father and Stepmother said I should teach Jung-Sum my little speech.

Only Poh-Poh resisted.

“You were born a clever boy, Kiam-Kim,” she said. “But you not as smart as you think.”

She was not happy with talk of a New Republic of China, not even of a New Reform People’s China, as if the old Imperial China was beyond useless. Poh-Poh wanted me to respect the Old Ways, to believe in the
forces of
feng shui
, the forces of wind and water, of luck and fate, and of Kitchen Gods and ghosts. She said that Father was a dreamer. But I wanted to be more like Father, who seemed to understand how, in Canada, everything was scientific and modern. Poh-Poh caught me scoffing once as she was telling one of her stories; after that, the Old One did not have much more to teach me.

The men of Chinatown became my teachers.

Third Uncle even encouraged the elders to show me how to fill a water pipe with tobacco, but not to smoke it. I just wanted to see how the thing worked. Others taught me how to pick up wood from the mills along False Creek and, with a paring knife, whittle them into small boats for Sekky to float in his bath. At MacLean Park, some of the younger men encouraged me to put up my dukes and box with them, show them every punch I had learned at the Hastings Gym.

And if my pals and I were playing soccer, someone like champion Quene Yip would step up and teach how to side-kick the ball, jockey the pursuing opponent to the left, feint a swift pass sharply to the right, change direction as elegantly as a gazelle, and kick straight ahead to score. Victoria, his beautiful lady, would cheer us on.

Some of the older men had not seen their own China families for five, ten, or twenty years. The lucky ones, the ones with enough money, started second families in Vancouver. But the men who indulged me must have longed for some semblance of
family life. While Father went about his business of signing up pledges, some of the bachelor-men took me with them as if I were a favourite nephew into their gathering places, the community rooms in the gambling clubs, the narrow smoke shops, the poolrooms and Tong Association reading rooms. They let me listen to their stories of Old China and gave me advice about growing up.

“You finish school,” they said in Toishanese, their voices raised against the din. “Then you go back to China and help your own people.”

“No, no,” another would say, “Kiam-Kim marry a good Chinese girl first! Then go back!”

“No, no,” another said with a laugh, showing off his Chinglish. “Kiam go China. Find goot Chinee gurlee there—my bessee daughter wait see you, Kiam-Kim!”

“Never mind who,” Lau Sook, the pool hall owner, said, “as long as he marry Chinese!”

No one said anything. Everyone knew that Lau Sook had disowned his second son for marrying a white girl whose father was a church minister. “The pair went into the mountains. I think to Kamloops,” I heard Mrs. Leong tell Stepmother. “Had to.”

Lightning flashed and thunder shook the windows as I stood outside another store waiting for Father to finish some business. Old Wen urged me to take shelter with him inside the Hong Kong Café. We sat on stools that could swivel.

“I buy you tea and butterhorn,” he said.

As we waited to be served, Mr. Wen stared a long while at me. The lights hanging over the counter
flickered. Finally, the old man reached into his wallet and slid out a photograph.

“See, Kiam-Kim, my First Son. He be my only boy.” Mr. Wen pointed to a grown-up man standing behind an old lady. “Last time I saw him, he be twelve or thirteen, just like you. Maybe taller. My boy liked to play ball, too.”

People at the counter gathered around, squinting at the creased picture and commenting on how strong the man standing with the hoe looked. A thunderbolt rumbled across the sky and the lights flickered again. I studied the bent, worn picture and wondered if I would grow up as big, or even taller.

“Yes, yes,” Old Wen said to everyone around him. “My own boy.”

“This not a boy, Mr. Wen,” I said. “He’s
old
now.”

“You lucky, Kiam-Kim.” He pushed back his grey hair and stared at the photograph. “You have father and your Poh-Poh and Gai-mou.”

Old Wen brushed the picture with his fingers, as if he might brush away all the years he had struggled in B.C. and sent home his money; brush away all the lost years while his boy grew into this frayed photo of a grown man.

Father came in and sat beside me. He took off his hat and wiped a few raindrops off his glasses.

Mr. Wen showed him the picture.

“My only boy,” he said to Father, then carefully put it back in his worn wallet.

“He’s
not
a little boy,” I insisted.

“Very fine boy,” Father said, pushing me aside. “Number One Boy!”

No one looked at me, and everyone was quiet. The April rain had just started to fall.

There was a big map of China at one of the Tong Association reading rooms. Men would gather around it when Father showed up. He used the glass magnifier hanging on a string to read the tiny print.

“My little village?” someone would ask. “Dog-shit Japs bomb there?”

Father pointed out where the enemy was located. Pointed out the village. Explained that Japanese planes could fly anywhere and drop their bombs at any time, just as they had done in Manchuria. There were now rumours of a road being built in Burma to supply the Nationalist military with food and munitions.

Father always asked if the person had received any news from their village district.

“No letters for six months,” someone answered.

At the social clubs Father and I would visit with our collection boxes, Father would be confronted about his writings.

“Chen Sen-shaang, why don’t you come right out and say ‘Kill the bastard Communists’?” Mr. Lam, the Main Street herbalist, asked him. “You too soft.”

“All the same dog shit to me,” another would say.

Father refused to give up.

“Your village and all of China,” he said, “need a stable government. Look how the Americans support Chiang Kai-shek. Why don’t you donate a few coins, maybe even pledge a few dollars a month? Here, my son
will recite the Three Principles of Dr. Sun for you.”

And I would chant with thirteen-year-old confidence “
San Min Chu Yee
 …,” repeating three minutes of rhythmic sounds I had memorized, understanding the Principles about as much as I had understood every morning at Strathcona the ritual words I mouthed, “Our Father who art in Heaven, Harold be Thy name.”

Loose change clinked into the donation box to save the homeland.

“Teach Kiam to read omens,” an Elder would say. “Old sayings much better than new ones.”

But as many times as some Elders would remind Father that forces such as Fortune and Fate influenced the future, Father politely and patiently spoke to them of economic forces, the Japanese invasion of Northern China, and the secret backing of the mighty United States for the New Republic of China. But every overseas political group said they loved China, it was explained to me, and that was why, in China itself, every Communist or Nationalist, Reformist or Socialist party had to destroy the other groups who also loved China.

And Father would tell me that killing was wrong, and worse, yes, that the Chinese in Old China were now killing each other, even blood brothers and same-village families. But soon everyone would focus on the real enemy, the Japanese, and China would be united again. No more Chinese killing Chinese.

“We all need to sit down and discuss these things,” Father said. “Meanwhile, Kiam, we collect money for peace.”

Third Uncle had promised Father that the money he was collecting was not for bullets or guns but for blankets, medical supplies, food for orphans—the
ho sum
things, the good-heart things. Other fundraising efforts were started, and those were for buying China bonds, for building planes and tanks, for guns and munitions to fight the Japanese menace.

“But we collect for the heart, Kiam-Kim,” Father said. “We help all the people of China.”

I was puzzled. “Even those who kill other Chinese?”

“Yes,” Father said. “Of course.”

“But never help the Japanese?”

“Never.”

Father and I went to small businesses and larger ones, collecting a little sympathy if not always money. Everyone knew how sincere Father was, and perhaps how much a pain. We would go to corner stores, too, like Ben Chong’s.

“Well, well,” Mrs. Chong said, looking up from her cash register. “More politics? Talk to Ben.”

Father nudged me to do the right thing.

Bowing slightly, I said to Mrs. Chong,
“Tso shan
, Chong Sim”—Good morning, Mrs. Chong—and quickly followed Father double-stepping up the stairs to Ben Chong’s book-lined office.

The office had barely enough room for his desk and two visitors’ chairs. Small glasses perched on his nose, Mr. Chong was bent over, fingering an abacus,
working on invoices. He squinted over a pile of papers to look at us. I imagined a scribbler flapping down on his head, like the broadsheets flapping down over the counter of the
New Republic Daily
. He smiled and shook Father’s hand. They talked business at once.

“The Old One agrees with everything?” Mr. Chong gave me a serious looking over. I was eyeing the candy bars, but I knew he was talking about Grandmother.

“If the two like each other, why not?” Father said. “She agrees.”

It must have been private business between our two families. I had overheard Mrs. Chong asking about buying a piece of jade from Third Uncle and Grandmother was always consulted. It was only right that the eldest, especially Father’s own mother, should approve any family concerns. Her blessing mattered: if she died unhappy, we would be cursed by her ghost. And Poh-Poh’s curses, all of Chinatown knew, were fearsome. The butcher who tried to cheat her lost both his business and his health within three months.

The two men looked at me and laughed heartily. I hadn’t caught the joke.

“Your father and I have to talk some more,” Mr. Chong said. He handed me a box of Rosebuds. “Go to the other room and say hello to Jenny.”

The box went into my shirt pocket for later.

“Get to know her better, Kiam-Kim,” Father said.

“Yes, yes,” Mr. Chong said. “You two always be good friends. We are all Chinese.”