Falling Leaves: The True Story of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter (32 page)

’It’s probably her illness,’ James replied. ’I don’t think it’s anything against you personally. I’d better go back myself and see that everything is taken care of. If she told you not to fly to Hong Kong you’d better not go against her wishes. Anyway, I’ll phone you as soon as the biopsy results are known.’

But James did not call. I waited for about a week before phoning him in Hong Kong. My diagnosis had been correct. Niang had cancer of the colon and needed surgery. James gave her the option of having the operation in California but she declined.

’In that case, I’ll fly over to be with her during the operation.’

James hesitated. Then he said quietly but with finality, ’She doesn’t want you to come just now.’

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For a moment I was unable to speak. At the other end I could hear James yelling, ’Hello! Hello!’ then in Cantonese the equivalent, ’Wei? Wei? Are you still there?’

I gritted my teeth. ’Why?’ I asked.

He fielded the question. ’I thought we’d been cut off,’ he yelled, as if shouting would reassure me. ’I think we should hang up now. The connection is very bad. Niang has decided on Dr Lim to perform the operation. He was trained at Harvard medical school. She has instructed me to send you a copy of the biopsy report and Dr Lim’s office phone number in Hong Kong. Niang would like you to phone him and check him out.’

’What’s going on, James?’

’The poor Old Lady’s sick,’ James replied. ’Just do as she says.’

’Right. But what’s going on, James? Why doesn’t she want me to be with her?’

’You’ll be hearing from me by fax,’ he said, leaving my question unanswered. We hung up.

In a few days I received the biopsy report. The news was terrible. Her surgeon excised the lesions from her bowel, but found two large cancerous growths in her liver. Niang refused to have these operated on or undergo chemotherapy. Her sister, Aunt Reine, had died a few years earlier from cancer of the liver despite massive doses of drugs and radiation which had caused tremendous suffering. I tried in vain to persuade Niang to come to America for a second opinion. Whenever I phoned, the nurse told me that she was resting and could not be disturbed. James even called once to warn me not to ’disturb her rest’.

However, a few days after her major operation, Niang phoned to invite my whole family to Hong Kong for a Christmas visit. She sounded friendly and apologized for not writing or calling while in hospital, saying that she wished to forget her illness and get on with her life.

Bob and I took our two children and spent a happy

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Christmas with Niang in Hong Kong. She showed no sign of illness and joined in all the celebrations, exchanging presents and signing her cards ’Affectionately, Mother’. We parted amicably.

During the next eight months she called me quite often to discuss her plans of emigrating to America before 1997. Edgar had helped her get a green card and she had recently purchased a condominium in San Francisco’s Nob Hill. I yearned to have a heart-to-heart conversation with her and fantasized about a soul-baring rapprochement at her sickbed where everything would be explained and she would die peacefully, surrounded by my loving family. I pleaded with her to come and spend some time with us in Huntington Beach but she always declined.

One day in late August when I phoned, Ah Fong informed me that she was back in hospital. Dressed and ready to go for a check-up, Niang suddenly felt weak and was unable to walk. She was admitted to the Baptist Hospital in Kowloon. When I rang her, she confessed to feeling dreadful and then, to my utter amazement, added, ’I wish you would come here and take me to America.’

I could not believe my ears! I had offered so many times to fly over to Hong Kong to help her. And here she was, from hospital, entreating me to take her to America. Gathering my wits, I asked if Dr Lim considered her fit enough to travel. She said that she did not care what the doctors advised: all she wanted was for me to scoop her up and take her to be made well in the United States. Did James know of her hospitalization? No, he didn’t. She became insistent. Was I coming to her rescue or not? I promised I would and hoped that she could rest in the meantime. Her reply was bitter. What was the point of lying there and getting rest and more rest when she could not sleep? And sleep would not come ever since Father died. I asked if her doctor could prescribe some sleeping pills. She answered in an exasperated voice, ’Oh Adeline! I’m very tired. Just do as

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I say. Make the arrangements. Come over here and take me with you to your home in America.’

I phoned her doctor at the Baptist Hospital who revealed that Niang had fluid in her abdomen. He doubted if she would last another month, let alone walk again. As for going to America, she might survive the journey, but only on a stretcher. Regarding her insomnia he had this to say: ’She has taken so many potent sleeping pills for so many years that nothing works on her any more. Quite honestly, the doses are alarming. But maybe I can give her some morphine to make her more comfortable.’

I telephoned James, who was in Boston enrolling his daughter at Tufts College. I repeated Niang’s unexpected request. Should I comply or obey Dr Lim who said she was dying? James advised me to wait until he flew back to Hong Kong and consulted Niang himself. He planned to leave the very next day.

Two days later, James arrived back in Hong Kong. In a sub-’’ dued voice thick with fatigue, he phoned to say that Niang no longer recognized him. I asked if there was any point in my flying over and taking her to California. ’Look! She is on her deathbed and in no condition to go anywhere. Dr Lim says she will die in a few days. You might as well prepare yourself to fly over here for the funeral and the reading of the will. I’m making the arrangements now.’

Niang, although unconscious and dying, was about to deal her last and most triumphant card. Of her own two children, one was dead and one was disowned; but she was left with five stepchildren with whom to play her final game. She had had us ’ believe that she held in her vaults one of the great fortunes of the world. At one time, perhaps in the early 19705 when Father was still competent, the Yen family was considered one of the richest in Hong Kong. By the end of the 19805, Father’s fortune had dwindled. Only James had access to documents and had revealed to us that its real worth was about thirty million dollars.

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For me, the yearning was not for the money as such. After all, both Bob and I had secure, well-paying jobs with good pensions. It arose instead from a basic need: a longing for acceptance, a craving for my rightful place in the family, a primal cry to be included - all of which had been denied in my youth. It was a deep-seated desire for all of us to be treated with justice and equality. I could not bear the idea of me, or anyone of us, being singled out for neglect and discrimination. Although I knew that Niang was neither kind nor good, I hungered for her approval just as I had hankered after Father’s blessing. In this respect, Father and Niang represented a single unit.

Niang played upon our traditional Confucian concept of filial piety to permeate her pervasive influence. Her continued domination transcended all logic. The extension of the family unit has been held to be the motivating force binding all Chinese to their roots. Except for Susan, who through sheer strength of will had made herself independent, all of us were emotionally shackled to Niang throughout our lives.

I phoned Gregory in Vancouver and we discussed Niang’s imminent demise. He sounded concerned that he would not inherit much, if anything, because Niang had always disliked him.

’Do you think she loved any of us?” I asked.

’Of course not! But I think she was most wary of me, because as eldest son, I threatened her position in the family hierarchy.” Then Gregory really startled me. ’Will you help me, Adeline, if James gets it all and no one else gets anything? I am counting on this inheritance.’

I answered as truthfully as I could. ’You know it will be difficult for me to fight James. But I don’t think she will be so unfair. Besides, I think James deserves a larger share. After all, he has given Niang thirty years of his life.’

Gregory was unimpressed. ’No one twisted his arm. Obviously, he felt his chances of making it were better by throwing in his lot with Niang than going out on his own. Don’t be so

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sure of anyone’s behaviour where money’s involved. Jing zhu zhi chi; jing mo zhi hei (Near vermilion, one gets stained pink; near ink, one gets stained black). James has changed a lot over the years.’

Another week went by. On Sunday, 9 September, James left a message on our answering machine. ’The Old Lady passed away an hour and a half ago, at four o’clock on Sunday morning.’

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Wine and Meat Friends

Niang’s funeral was set for 17 September 1990. Before Bob and I left for Hong Kong, James and I discussed arrangements for Niang’s interment. During the course of our phone conversation, I related Gregory’s misgivings.

Niang had taken such excessive quantities of sleeping pills for so many years that Gregory and his pharmacist wife Matilda feared for her sanity. They were concerned that she might have altered Father’s original will under the influence of drugs. Could she have singled out Gregory or anyone else besides Susan for exclusion in her will?

James said that he had never been consulted and consequently had not the faintest idea what was in Niang’s will. He suddenly asked if I remembered Franklin’s old tutor-nanny, Miss Chien. The Red Guards banished her from Father’s house in 1966, after which, for twelve years, she lived in abject poverty with her brother’s family in Hangzhou as the despised spinster-aunt. Fortune did not smile upon her and she developed skin cancer which spread to her bones and liver. One day in 1978, James received an unexpected letter from Miss Chien addressed to Father, who was already senile. Miss Chien was obviously dying. Her body was racked by pain and she had no money for food or medicines. She pleaded for a small sum to ease her last days. James was preparing to send her a bank

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draft when Niang walked into the office. ’Do nothing!’ she commanded. ’Miss Chien has outlived her usefulness.’

’I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck when ] heard her orders,’ James confided. ’No one should expect fairness or justice from Niang. I tell you she was ruthless! Anyone of us could have been disinherited at any time without cause.’

The wake was held at the same mortuary in North Point where Father’s funeral had taken place two years before. Niang lay on a narrow bed in an inner sanctum. Her face appeared mottled, despite the mortician’s heavy make-up. She was dressed in an elaborate black dress with her arms lying stiffly by her side. Her dyed ebony hair was severely pulled back, revealing the prominently protruding forehead she took such pains to hide while she was alive.

Niang’s Cantonese amahs Ah Fong and Ah Gum came, dressed in their white tunics and loose black trousers. They had served Father and Niang faithfully for over thirty years. Her chauffeur made a brief appearance. Two nurses arrived; both had been employed by Niang to keep her company at night.

Susan and her husband, Tony, were the last to make their entrance. Our youngest sister looked stunning in a glamorous black suit, her mane of shining hair stylishly waved. She told us that she had arranged a mass to be said for Niang that evening in a Catholic chapel.

We sat on metal chairs in that chilly, antiseptic room waiting for guests to arrive. I had seen photographs and heard numerous accounts of lavish lunches, dinners, dances and receptions. ’The only bad thing about living in Hong Kong,’ Niang once told me, ’is the constant round of parties and more parties.’ I kept expecting a group of her friends to come marching through the door. But no one came to pay her their respects or say a last farewell.

I thought back upon my miserable childhood and the abuse Niang had dispensed to those around her. I recalled my elation when I finally escaped from her reign of terror and oppression.

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And yet it continued to matter to me whether or not she loved me.

I came out of my reverie and saw Mr Lu, Father’s faithful chief financial officer, get up from his seat and move himself next to Bob. He was whispering, ’I don’t think anyone else is coming. She had no true friends, only jiu rou peng you (wine and meat friends). As you both know, she was an unusual person. She wasn’t fond of many people. Look how she cut Susan out of her life and her will. Susan was her only daughter, her own gu rou (bones and flesh).’

My right eyelid began to twitch involuntarily as I stared at Mr Lu, trying to read meaning into his words. ’What are you trying to tell us, Mr Lu?’ I asked candidly. ’Why don’t you come right out and say it instead of hinting around?’

Mr Lu addressed Bob, though his words were meant for me. ’Nobody seems to tell her anything,’ he lamented. ’Her Niang didn’t want her to know this, but she may get nothing when the will is read tomorrow.’

’I don’t believe you!’ I cried. ’Just three weeks ago, she was begging me to take her to my home in America! Surely, she must have had some feeling for me to wish to die in my home?’

Mr Lu shook his head, while steadfastly avoiding my gaze. ’Her request may have arisen from ulterior motives designed to turn all your siblings against you. She had a green card and was a permanent resident of the United States. The US government would have imposed death duties on her estate if she had died in America. You would have been blamed for taking her to your home to die.’

I began to shiver and found it hard to breathe. I was six years old and it was Chinese New Year. Dressed in bright new clothes, we children gathered at lunch eating traditional, glutinous, sweet rice cakes while festive sounds of firecrackers banged and crackled from the lanes. One by one, my siblings were handed their ya sui chien, a traditional red paper package with gold characters announcing ’Happy and Prosperous New Year’ and containing money. Everyone except me. I was the

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only child left out punished for speaking out against Niang’s beating of baby Susan.