All That Matters (40 page)

“People are saying he must have done something to offend Poh-Poh’s spirit,” Liang had told me, delighted to report to me every detail of a grown-up conversation she had been allowed to overhear.

“People talk,” Third Uncle said. “What can you do? Sek-Lung and Mrs. Lim, they tell everyone they see the Old One.”

People in the newsroom said Father must have failed to do the correct filial ceremonies for her. But Father had done as much as he could afford to, with Stepmother’s and Third Uncle’s approval, spending a lot of money on the Old One’s eight-table memorial dinner, on piles of funeral “cash” and on symbolic
paper ingots of gold and silver, all to be burned for the Old One’s use in her afterlife, and on her polished coffin.

“The Old One very stubborn,” Third Uncle commented. “Maybe need something more.”

And then, as if aware of Father’s loss of face, of the pressures he was creating in our household, Sekky stopped talking about Poh-Poh’s ghost.

Arrangements had been made to cut down on Stepmother’s sewing shifts so she could watch over Sekky in the daytime. And Jung and Liang each took a turn rushing home from school to be with him when Stepmother left for her shift. I assigned him his take-home school work, telling him that Poh-Poh would have wanted me to check only his best efforts, that she always wanted him to go to school. He agreed, and his work was faithfully done every day, ready for me to check over the pages with him at night. Stepmother took him shopping and visited the mahjong ladies at their houses and Gee Sook at American Cleaners, and he gave her no trouble. His behaviour was as Poh-Poh herself would have wished it to be.

Of course, when things go too well, the gods strike. Poh-Poh had often have warned us about that.

It was Christmas Day, and Sekky had not even opened his presents when he confronted Father and Stepmother. He wanted them to take down the picture of the Kitchen God and burn it, as Poh-Poh always did as the New Year approached.

“We’ll see,” Father said, and afterwards consulted me.

“What harm will it do?” Stepmother said.

“We’re not back in Old China,” I protested.

“Sekky still thinks Poh-Poh is with him,” Stepmother said. “So does Mrs. Lim. She tells the mahjong ladies.”

What harm could it do to burn a cartoon picture? But still, I felt stuck. I told Father that I agreed with Stepmother. We should burn the picture of the Kitchen God at least, this last time, for the sake of peace in the house.

During the six days between Christmas and the New Year, Sekky began mumbling about seeing Poh-Poh again. And Liang, who was now staying in the Old One’s bedroom, said she was feeling uneasy—and kept the door open so that Father or Stepmother could check in on the room at all hours. When Father brought his last editorial of the year to his colleagues at the newspaper office, he told them that his youngest was seeing a ghost again. He had hoped his Gold Mountain workmates would enjoy the joke.

“I wondered,” Grey Head said, with not even a smile crossing his lips, “when you would be ready to hear the truth.”

The other reporters nodded, as if to agree.

“Talk to your old mother’s spirit,” Mr. Wen at the
Daily Republic
told him. “Tell her that you respect her old ways. Then she’ll leave your little boy alone.”

On New Year’s morning, my head still pounding from celebrations with Jenny and our Chinatown friends the
night before, I woke up thinking that the pounding had grown even louder. Then I heard Father run out of his bedroom and Stepmother calling me.

I struggled out of my tangled sheets, grabbed my kimono and, in spite of my headache, found myself standing at the top of the steps watching pint-sized Sekky dragging and bouncing a big urn down the staircase. It thumped with each step he negotiated. It was the special urn, of porcelain and brass fittings, that Poh-Poh would have had Father or me carry down for her to set on the back porch. I would fill it with some dirt and Poh-Poh would stick in some incense.

“You go help him,” Father said to me, shaking his head. There was no going back. We were going to do what Sek-Lung wanted us to do. We would watch the Kitchen God, Tsao Chung, rise in the smoke to journey to the Gates of Heaven.

I lifted the heavy urn and carried it down the rest of the stairs. Sekky followed me to the back porch. He had dressed in his best shirt and new pants, and he wore the Buster Brown shoes he got for Christmas. Jung and Liang, in their pyjamas, rushed down to watch the event unfold. Stepmother ordered us all to put on our winter coats.

I went into the soggy garden and brought up a shovelful of loose dirt for the urn. Stepmother, curlers in her hair, found some sticks of incense in the pantry, lit them, and let Sekky push them into the urn. Father unstuck the picture of the Kitchen God and was ready to strike a match.

“No! No! Not yet!” Sekky grabbed Father’s hand. “We have to do everything right! You forgot the honey!”

That was true. Poh-Poh always smeared some honey on Tsao Chung’s lips so that he would report sweet things about our family to the Jade Emperor.

Stepmother came back with a honeyed spoon, and the task was done.

Father lit one corner of the picture. Liang and Jung stood back. The flames licked up the side of the colourful poster, which was made of a special paper so it would burn slowly and produce the greatest amount of smoke. Sekky watched the cartoon picture drop into the urn. We all watched as it curled gradually into fuming ashes, the white smoke mingling with the sandalwood incense. Father and Stepmother could not help smiling at the bright eyes following the trail of smoke as it rose and dispersed into the morning air. Everything seemed to have gone well. I had even momentarily forgotten the thumping in my head.

Then Jung-Sum said, “Shouldn’t we have waited until Chinese New Year?”

“Yes,” Liang said. “Poh-Poh only did this on Chinese New Year.”

Stepmother tried to shush them up.

I held my breath, counted each terrible second that went by.

The small head shook. Every vein and muscle on the slim neck strained to hold back the wetness now rimming his eyes, until the tide of heartbreak all at once sent him shuddering into tears. Father, distraught, picked him up and carried him into the
house. Liang and Jung ran after him, trying to take back what they had said. But it was too late for Sekky, howling in the kitchen.

Stepmother held me back to whisper in my ear. “Very bad sign. Very bad, Kiam-Kim.”

“No harm done,” I said, with too little conviction even to convince myself.

“Yes, no harm,” Stepmother repeated with the same uncertainty, but looked hopefully towards the empty sky.

By March of that year, 1941, pressured by so many of the elders in Chinatown for the family to have a proper ceremony to exorcise Poh-Poh’s ghost, and deeply troubled by Sekky’s continued sightings of the Old One, Father relented. On the auspicious day selected by the exorcist, Father, Jung, and I moved Liang’s bed and things into the hallway.

With a bald-headed monk attending in the empty bedroom that had been the Old One’s, the
bai sen
ritual, the three-times bowing ritual, took place before the Old One’s portrait, an oversized enlargement that the Yucho Chow Photo Studios had prepared for Father. We dutifully lit some incense, and each of us, including Third Uncle and weeping Mrs. Lim, took our turns bowing before the Old One. The robed monk and his helper, a stringy-haired geomancer, had made sure the
feng shui
were in harmony. The curtainless windows were opened. Two large bowls burned with incense. The monk chanted
blessings to set Poh-Poh’s spirit free. The smoke rose into the air, and the smell of jasmine permeated the room.

Sekky was impressed to see me fall on my knees and say a few words to Poh-Poh’s portrait. I thought of Jack O’Connor, who went to church even when, as we both knew, he didn’t put much credence in all that ritual, in the wafer and wine, the ten thousand miracles of the saints. But he did go at Christmas and Easter, and to mass, and even confession, when his mother wore him down, because he felt he had to for her sake.

It made sense to me. Poh-Poh had taught me, as she had instilled in Father himself, that duty to those we love must come first, before our need to please ourselves. And so I knelt before Poh-Poh’s stern eyes and barely smiling lips.

Shortly after that day, though both Sekky and Mrs. Lim swore to everyone that a stubborn old spirit had come back two or three more times, to say that things were fine, Poh-Poh finally left them alone.

“The Old One has gone,” Mrs. Lim reported to Stepmother. “Poh-Poh say a good ceremony, a good leave-taking.”

When Stepmother asked Sekky about this, he solemnly nodded. “Poh-Poh just said goodbye to me in the kitchen.” And then, matter-of-factly, “She just left.”

Late one night, restless from too full a day of playing war with his playground pals, Sekky came to my room and woke me up. He whispered that the Old One said she would never leave him. But she had.

He held in his hand the pinkish jade amulet that Poh-Poh had slipped into his pants pocket before she was taken to St. Paul’s.

“Would you like to give this to Jenny?” he said, in a hushed voice.

“No,” I said as calmly as I could. “You keep it safe.”

He looked doubtful.

“Poh-Poh gave it to you for safekeeping,” I reassured him. “She loved you very, very much.”

His small fingers clutched the carved peony. He climbed into my bed for warmth and quickly fell asleep against me.

I don’t know if Sekky believed that Poh-Poh was gone, but he did not mention her ghost again, at least, not to me. And that night, exhausted from a full day at the warehouse, I dreamed of the jade peony falling from the night sky into Jenny’s palm.

It was just a dream, like any other.

The war never left us, and through the spring of 1941, the newsreels would break up the Hollywood dream sequences that starred Astaire and Rogers, Rooney and Garland, Carmen Miranda, Hope, Lamour and Crosby with scenes of bombs dropping, of soldiers firing machine guns, of refugees fleeing and ships blown apart, jolts of reality that reminded us all that we had a duty to serve King and Country. But our talk was more about whether we could afford the latest tightly cuffed pants or the new shoes or buy the right suit for the graduation prom two months away.

Then, one April afternoon, Jack sat astride our porch rail, waiting for me to come home.

“Need to talk,” he said. He lifted his leg and swung himself around to face me. “Got some news.”

To keep my eyes from squinting at the sunlight behind him, I leaned against the wall of the house and fell back into the shade thrown by the porch roof. At first he glanced away from me, as if to check whether anyone might overhear our conversation.

“What’s the news, Jack?”

“You’re the first to know, Kiam,” he said. “Then I have to figure out how to let my mother know.”

He hesitated. I could tell the news must be serious, and that made me pull him off the rail to stand with me.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“I’ve done it,” he said, stepping into the shadow with me. “Told the school that I was dropping out today, and next week I’m headed for Manitoba.”

“You got a job?”

“No. I’m leaving town in five days for Winnipeg. Joining up with the Grenadiers. Nice outfit. I checked out their history. Sign up. Go fight for the good guys. No matter what, it’ll take me as far away from my parents as I can afford. Got the bus ticket in my pocket.”

“Jeez, Jack, you’ve just got two more months till graduation. Look, I’ll help you with your chemistry. Everything will be fine. Get your diploma first.”

“I can’t concentrate too much these days, Kiam.
Besides, the government’s going to call me up any day, and this way I can make my own choice.”

“But why leave so suddenly? I know guys that went to—”

“Not the same for me, Kiam.” He turned away from me and slammed his fists on the porch rail. “I have to let you know something.”

“We can study together, Jack, you’ll ace the finals and—”

“Kiam!” He spun back to face me. “Jenny saw you in the library basement that day she and I—
You saw us
, goddamn you! An hour ago I went to tell her that I love her but she shut me down with these words: ‘Kiam was there.’ All this time you’ve let on that there was nothing wrong between you and me.”

I couldn’t fake that I hadn’t known. The same knife was stuck inside each of us, and the honed blade began twisting inside our guts.

“Best friends, eh? All this time, it’s been killing me, Kiam. I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t. And you, you bastard, you could have said something to me! Made it easier for me!”

I thought I had safely put away that day, put what I’d seen in some memory box that I could avoid, if not forget. I felt pushed against the wall by his guilt. I hadn’t thought that what happened with him and Jenny was of any consequence to him. But now I pushed back. How was I supposed to make things easier for him?

“How far did you get with Jenny?”

I could see him trying to figure out what to say. He didn’t have too many choices.

“Doesn’t matter, Kiam,” he said finally. “We stopped when she pushed me away a second after she must have seen you going up the ramp.”

“And that was the end of it?”

“You want to know what happened next?”

I shoved him against the rail. Jack jumped in front of me and blocked my way into the house.

“Hang on,” he said. “Goddamn it, Kiam, you’ve got to listen to me!”

I tried to push him aside. “Listen to all that bullshit? No, thanks!” I drew back my fist. My knuckles landed hard on his chin, stinging. Jack stumbled and fell onto the deck. Anyone with half his smarts could have seen my fist coming a mile away and blocked the blow. And Jack knew how to fight. But he had done nothing to stop me.

Liang’s face appeared at the front window. She must have heard him falling. She waved to me, and I signalled her to stay inside, smiled like an idiot Big Brother and made it seem that Jack had somehow tripped, tumbled, an accident. She frowned, suspicious. I put out my hand and Jack gave her his idiot’s grin, too, and we both gripped, and I yanked. He got up, putting his weight on my arm before he recovered his balance. We were leaning against each other like two drunks. Liang laughed and turned away from the window, went on with whatever she had been doing.