All That Matters (5 page)

It was a history that Poh-Poh tried to pass along to me. I listened, but still could not see anything bad in
the
lo-faan
that came my way in kindergarten. Even Poh-Poh relented and thought
lo-faan
Jack could play with me. She had accepted that children were not yet like their parents, but would soon grow up and prove their roots to be from one or another kind of tree.

“White come from white tree,” Poh-Poh warned me. “Chinese come from Chinese tree.”

“White belong to white tree,” Third Uncle explained. “Chinese belong Chinese.” He also told me about cherries belonging to cherry trees, and oranges to orange trees.

Now I looked carefully at Jack’s mother and father. I decided Jack’s mother belonged to a bitter tree. Thin-lipped Mrs. O’Connor rarely smiled, but Mr. O’Connor would at least say something about the weather. If they happened to meet, both our fathers would smile and tip their hats and chat for a few moments. They must have come from the same tree.

“Looks like rain,” Mr. O’Connor would say.

“Yes, yes,” Father would answer. “Rain like yesterday.”

Courtesy mattered, Father told me. After all, our neighbours were here long before we Chinese moved up this far east on Keefer. All these rows of pine-box houses, Father explained, were built by white carpenters. He had been reading picture books about Vancouver and showed me the funny people in cowboy hats. There was a time when nearly every Keefer Street house was occupied by an Irish family or by white people who spoke no English at all. But I didn’t care about
history lessons. “Why is Poh-Poh mad at me for talking about Stepmother?”

“What did you tell little Jack?”

I hesitated. Poh-Poh picked up her chopsticks. Using my best English so that only Father would understand, I half whispered,
“I tell him my new mother coming
.”

Before I could stop him, Father translated my words. And before Father could stop her, Poh-Poh’s chopsticks snapped, stinging, against my head. The voice grew stern and hard:

“Tell white ears nothing!”

I bit my lip. Father patiently explained to me that white people did not understand Chinese ways. In English, I should refer to Gai-mou as Stepmother.

“Say nothing more,” he continued. “Say nothing about our being Third Uncle’s paper family.”

“Not one word,” Poh-Poh stressed. “Or we go back to China on next boat. Starve to death in China!”

I knew that many people in China were starving; that was why I was always told how lucky I was to be able to eat up every grain of rice, how fortunate to be able to chew up every morsel of black-bean chicken and swallow every piece of leafy green.

The next time I saw Jack, he had a few more things to say.

“My mother says Chinamen can have as many mothers as they want, like Solomon the Jew.”

I had no idea what any of those words meant. I sensed he, too, had no idea what he was saying. We both shrugged, knelt down, and went on with our serious game of road building.

Having stood for a week watching trucks of all kinds widening Keefer Street with cobblestones and cement, Jack came up with make-believe construction trucks of his own. He showed me how he used the chunks of waste wood that Mr. O’Connor had cleaned out from one of the freight cars to burn in their fireplace. The half-dozen wooden blocks plowed imaginary roads for us, and the triangular ones made zigzag furrows in the small mixed piles of dirt and cement dust. Clouds rose into the air, inspiring Little Jack and me to make louder and louder engine roars. We bellowed out our version of truck horns until we grew hoarse. The thick greyish dust drifted down and clung to our damp faces.

Standing at our front door to call me in to wash up for supper, Father shouted to Poh-Poh in the kitchen that he thought that he was looking at two
lo-faan
boys playing down on the sidewalk. For a moment, he laughingly told the Old One, he wondered where I had gone to.

“I’m here,” I shouted, using my English words.

Jack took back the blocks of wood. His mother was stiffly calling for him to come into the house.

With a face as grim and bitter as Mrs. O’Connor’s, Poh-Poh threw Father a wet towel to wash me off.

“Not funny,” she snapped.

As the Old One stomped back into the kitchen, I struggled against the impossible thought that Poh-Poh and Mrs. O’Connor must have come from the same tree. I pushed away Father’s hand and took the wet rag from him to wipe my own hands. The cloth was streaked with dirt, but I hardly cared that Poh-Poh
would complain about it. Instead, I kept asking myself what kind of tree would Stepmother be from?

That Saturday afternoon, Third Uncle stopped my outside play and sent me back into the house to tell Father the taxi had arrived to take us to the harbour.

“I’ll get the Old One,” he said, and called Poh-Poh to come away from the kitchen, where she had been plating sweetmeats and special dumplings to welcome Gai-mou to her new home.

I found Father upstairs standing before his bed, busy with the new bedsheets. Finally, he used his knees to push against the large mattress to straighten everything. I was surprised at how his hand lingered for a long moment over the embroidered pillow that peeped out from the bedspread. When I called to him, he stepped away from the bed and gestured for me to stand beside him. A nod of his head directed me to look at my mother’s bamboo-framed picture sitting on the bedside table. Her hair in a tight bun, she had a very pretty girl’s face.

“Tell your Ma-mah you will never forget her, Kiam-Kim.”

“I never to forget you, Ma-mah,” I said, and brushed the picture with my fingers, just as gently as Father had done. He quickly slipped the frame between some silk robes lying in the opened trunk. Just as the heavy lid slammed shut, I noticed Father’s eyes were rimmed with tears. His pupils were stinging, as mine were, from the sudden jolt from the camphor
in envelopes scattered throughout the trunk to keep away the moths.

Father cleared his throat. “Time to meet Gai-mou.” He took my hand, and we walked outside and got into the taxi. Poh-Poh, in her embroidered jacket, was already sitting in the back seat; Third Uncle was beside the driver, listening to the purr of the engine. I shuffled over and sat on Poh-Poh’s lap. She commented that I was much too skinny for a six-year-old.

“
Five,”
I said, correcting her with my Canada years. Next year I would go into first grade with Jack O’Connor.

Third Uncle turned to speak but something stopped him. Over my head, the Old One handed Father a folded-up red handkerchief; he blotted his eyes.

“Soot,” he said.

I bit my lip, disappointed: Poh-Poh did not even think about my camphor-stung vision, nor did she care about the soot that gritted my eyes, too.

“CPR docks,” Third Uncle said to the driver. “Pier A.”

My legs tensed, restless with excitement. Third Uncle held up a small photo for me to see.

“This your new
gai-mou,”
he said to me. “Remember how to greet her.”

I was seeing Stepmother’s picture at last. A small face boldly stared back at me. I was delighted. There were no crossed eyes or pocked cheeks, just as Father had promised me: Gai-mou’s head-and-shoulder picture looked fine to me. Maybe even prettier than my mother’s small-faced one. I liked her long hair, and the shy smile.

“Enough gawking,” Poh-Poh said and poked my cheek.

Father refolded the handkerchief and returned it. I pushed myself back to cross my legs as Father did. Pushed again to get more room.

Poh-Poh knuckled my head. “Sit still, Kiam-Kim.”

I did.

The taxi sped up, humming with all our thoughts. To the right of us suddenly appeared the huge hulls of ships and swooping gulls; between the bobbing vessels, rising across miles of cloud-reflecting waves, loomed the North Shore mountains. The air tasted of salt and smelled of tar. Someone was sniffing. I looked up: in the small frame of the rear-view mirror, the Old One dabbed at her eyes. The soot was bad today.

When I first saw the tall, thin woman walking towards us beside Third Uncle, Poh-Poh reminded me, yet again, “This person your father’s companion, Kiam-Kim. This not your mother. This to be your
gai-mou.”

Father took one of the suitcases from Third Uncle, who said, “This is
Chen Siu-Diep.”

“Your Stepmother Chen,” Father said to me.

The planks on the dock dipped and bobbed beneath my feet. Gulls darted into the waves for scraps. Amid the quaking of the boardwalk and the cries of the birds, everyone exchanged formalities, and I bowed politely, three times, to Stepmother. She bowed back.

The tall lady then bowed to Father. He shook her silk-gloved hand and repeated her formal name—
Chen Siu-Diep. Poh-Poh studied her carefully, her eyes unwavering. The dark prow of the overnight ferry made everyone look small. Crowds of people were greeting each other, calling out names in every language.

Before the Old One, my new Stepmother bent her head even lower. Three times. In her wind-blown, long, dark coat with its China-style frog buttons, Gaimou looked slim and lovely. She turned away from Poh-Poh and bent down towards me. Above the noise of the squawking harbour gulls, she said words I barely could hear.

“This … for you, Kiam-Kim.”

Gai-mou put a
lei-see
, a lucky red envelope, in my hand. I tipped it open right away. Out slipped a tiny butterfly of Chinese silver, its pair of engraved wings no larger than two pennies. “Can you say my name?” Her Toishan tones were soft, unlike Grandmother’s often abrupt sounds, and her voice was sweet.

“Siu-Diep,” I said, making my own voice even softer.

“Means ‘Little Butterfly,’ ” Third Uncle said, as if I didn’t know. “Very pretty.”

“Hold it tight,” said Poh-Poh, bristling, her voice loud and as abrupt as ever. “Like this.”

I tightened my fist.

Stepmother stood up, and Father shyly took her by the elbow and guided her towards the waiting taxi. People with rolling carts of luggage pushed by them.

Third Uncle Chen looked very pleased, and after saying “Be happy” and waving goodbye to us, he took
another taxi to go back to Chinatown to check on the menu for tonight’s welcoming dinner at the Pekin. There would be eight tables, seating ten each, he had proudly told Father. The Chen elders, important associates of Third Uncle, and many of his new friends had accepted, including six of Poh-Poh’s mahjong ladies, and our neighbour, big Mrs. Lim. Poh-Poh refused to let me ask Jack O’Connor to join us. There would be other children there, she said, like the Yip Sang children, the Chongs and Kees. “Yes, yes, lots of
Chinese
children to play with!”

Third Uncle’s taxi drove away. At last, we, too, were headed home.

I sat between the two women at the back and Father sat beside the driver, giving instructions. Stepmother’s trunk needed to be picked up at the landing for another customs inspection. She had been, for almost three weeks, languishing in the Customs House in Victoria, which everyone called the human isolation coop, the Pig Pen—the
Gee-ook
—patiently waiting for her official clearance to come into Vancouver. She did not mind me staring at her, wondering, thinking my thoughts.

When the taxi finally turned south, crossing the familiar streets of Hastings and Pender and then turning east on Keefer, a pain started to throb in my hand. The silver butterfly had impressed its shape into my palm. Stepmother looked down.

“I’m happy you like it,” she said to me.

“Say thank-you,” Poh-Poh said to me, suddenly in her most formal and soft Cantonese tones.

I looked up at the beautiful woman and said, “Thank you, Gai-mou.”

Stepmother bowed her head. She was so much prettier than any lady we knew in Chinatown.

Grandmother shifted herself and made me hop onto her lap and sit still. I held my palm out for her old eyes to study the delicate curve of the wings, as if they were poised to take flight.

“This more for a girl,” Poh-Poh said, and lifted the silver butterfly from my hand. “I take care of this.”

If the piece were more for a girl, and Father did not turn his head or raise his voice to contradict the Old One, I knew protest was futile. I stuffed my empty palm into my pants pocket and sank back, jiggling on Poh-Poh’s bony knees as she shifted with the movement of the taxicab. Why didn’t Chen Siu-Diep give me a silver dragon? Or a tiger? Those were fierce animals made for tough boys. I tried not to sulk. I tried to show respect.

Poh-Poh asked Stepmother to pass over to me the documents she had carried with her from Canton. Gai-mou slipped a long brown envelope, folded in half, out of her handbag.

I remember the dark-coloured papers sticking out of the opening as she let the envelope fall into my hand, its weight a thousand times the weight of the butterfly. Poh-Poh took it away as quickly as she had lifted the silver amulet.

“These your Ma-mah’s documents, Kiam-Kim,” Poh-Poh told me, putting the package into Father’s
reaching hands. She looked at Father. “Belong always to First Wife.”

Stepmother quietly closed up her purse and looked straight ahead at her new world, at the distant mountain slopes across Burrard Inlet, and to our right, at the warehouses and buildings with their mysterious signs.

Father and the taxi driver carried the three suitcases into the house. The trunk would later be delivered by one of Third Uncle’s friends, who had a small van. Far away from the harbour, and five blocks away from False Creek, here the air was sweetened from the last roses in the O’Connors’ front yard.

Stepmother looked up at our pine-board house, so unlike the red-brick buildings surrounding Patriarch Chen’s courtyard. Fearful of some misunderstanding of his situation, Father explained to Gai-mou how we rented this house from the Chen Tong Society, and how Third Uncle helped. He offered his hand and helped Stepmother out of the taxi.

She followed Father up the front steps, across the porch, and through the front door. I caught a glimpse of a scarf of pale silk fluttering from her shoulder.

The Old One looked disgruntled: she should have been the first to follow Father into the house.