As the Earth Turns Silver (12 page)

Mei-lin felt the hand on her arm and turned. Wai-wai had crept up behind her as she sat on an apple box, darning a sock and waiting for customers, and now his face pushed into her belly. She put down the needle and picked him up. He snuggled into her, his tiny fingers holding her breast, sniffing her skin just as she too would bury her face in him, breathe him in. ‘
Ho dak yi
,' he whispered,
adorable, good-to-kiss
. Then more loudly, ‘You good-for-nothing slave girl!'

Mei-lin laughed. She had whispered endearments to him, then called out loudly, ‘Good-for-nothing slave girl!' so the spirits would believe he was just a worthless girl and wouldn't steal him away. And he had remembered every word she had spoken, the exact tone, the love and the desperation, and had echoed them back to her. The words bubbled in her liver, warm and light, until she realised what he'd said, a baby speaking without comprehension. She held him close, felt the smoothness of his skin against her face, smelt his milk-drunk smell. But now he was struggling, wanting to go and play with apple boxes and newspapers, with the cricket his father had placed with fruit peelings in a glass preserving jar. She let him down and watched him toddle away.

Every week in rotation, whenever the father of her son could spare her in the shop, she went calling. On another woman's kitchen; on greengrocery, laundry, Chinese grocery. She'd drink tea and gossip about affairs back home – who had borne a son or who only a daughter, whose house had been swept away in the floods or whose rice harvest had been plundered by bandits. And as they ate and drank and talked, she'd remember the instructions of the father of her son.

‘What hope do we have,' she'd say, ‘unless we are free from Imperial corruption. The new Emperor is only three years old and the Regent is weak and dominated by foreign powers. Why do you think the
gweilo
treat us with such contempt? Do they treat the dwarves from the east like this? No, Japan is counted among the imperialist powers, just as hungry for our land and our blood.'

She'd pause, trying again to remember the way his brother put it, because Yung knew better how to present an argument; because if she thought too long about the father of her son, his words, his face, his hands, she wanted to spit, she wanted to scream, she wanted to . . .

‘Our motherland needs us,' she'd say. ‘But what can we do? We have to overthrow the Dowager. We aren't Manchus, we're people of the
Tong
dynasty, not the
Ch'ing
. We must bring China into the modern age. Speak to your husbands. Persuade them to give to the founding of the Republic. Persuade them to be generous. Sun Yat-sen is one of us. He speaks our language. He has lived overseas. He has trained overseas. He knows our plight. He alone knows how to make China strong again. Only then will we lift our heads high and meet the barbarians eye to eye.'

And so Mei-lin supported the work of Yung – and of the father of her son. And the cause of
Tongyan
and women, because in modern China she hoped women would also be educated, just like the wife of Sun Yat-sen and her sisters. Think of the women of the French Revolution who dared to seize their own destinies, Yung had said. Mei-lin remembered every word of the brother of the father of her son, a man who showed her respect by speaking to her openly, intelligently about the cause.

Most of the women Mei-lin visited, and their husbands, treated her with respect. They knew she worked hard, that she earned her right to be here. Not like the wives left behind who had maids and remittance money. Here every woman worked night and day. And she as much as any of them. Only some of
his
family looked down on her.

Not three months before, when she'd visited Cousin Gok-nam's wife (because Cousin Gok-nam had so far pledged only £5), the stupid woman had jabbered about the planned trip home.

‘Now don't you be worried about Wai-wai, it's for his own good, you don't want him to grow up like the
gweilo la
?
Aaaiyaa.
Big Mother will spoil him rotten, she'll love him to death, he's such a lovely boy, and don't you worry, I'll look after him on the voyage like one of my own and when he comes back you won't know him, he'll be so grown up and clever, just like his uncle . . .'

Mei-lin wanted to slap her. This woman knew exactly how she felt about Big Mother, about Wai-wai leaving, and yet here she was rubbing her face in it.

‘What would you know?' she said, looking hard at her cousin. ‘It's not as if you have any sons.'

‘
Aaaiyaa.
Big Mother has her right
la
, after all you
are
only a . . .' Her eyes narrowed. ‘I hear he paid 500
man
for you, quite a sum considering your father was . . . you're lucky you're pretty, otherwise you could have ended up a slave girl sleeping on the floor in some rich man's house
la
, and then what do you think they would have done to you, if not the master, then the sons and the men servants . . .'

‘Bitch! I may not be a wife, but I've given him a son. What have you done
la
? Why do you think he wants to go back? He'll leave you behind to serve his mother and father, and how do you think they'll treat you? If your mother-in-law beats you, who will pity you? It really won't matter if you live or die. Regardless, he'll tell the authorities you died in China and he'll bring out another wife. A younger and prettier wife. One who will give him a son.'

Mei-lin hadn't gone back, and neither had Cousin Gok-nam's wife come visiting. Usually she came at least once a week, to chatter about who was going home or who had won money playing
fantan
or
pakapoo
, and to eat Mei-lin's steamed white sponge, which had a reputation as the best in Wellington. Shun had asked Mei-lin once or twice whether she'd spoken to her. Cousin Gok-nam still hadn't given more money.

But suddenly it didn't matter. Cousin Gok-nam had lost everything playing
pakapoo
and now he couldn't go back home, let alone give to the Revolution. When Shun told her, Mei-lin excused herself quickly and ran upstairs. She closed the door to their room and burst out laughing. She threw herself on the bed and wiped tears from her eyes, her body shaking and shaking as if something very hard, bound tight inside her, had suddenly sprung free.

*

A small, slimy hand touched her wrist. ‘Eat
la
, eat
la
.' Wai-wai was pushing a soggy, half-eaten biscuit at her, wet crumbs stuck to his lips, right cheek, chin, pieces stuck to his shirt.

Mei-lin smiled. Was that the biscuit she'd given him yesterday? Where had the rascal hidden it? ‘Thank you, good boy.' She pushed the crumbling biscuit back at him. ‘Eat
la
,' she said softly, wiping the back of her hand across the corner of her eye, gathering him up in her arms.

Sundays were always a luxury: the day of the week when everyone slept at least half an hour longer. Mei-lin rose at six. Lit the coal range and boiled the water, opened the tin of Oolong tea and sniffed the dark smoky leaves. She loved that smell, the almost muskiness of it. After her father had gambled everything away, before he had sold her, there had been no tea, only cups of hot water. She put a scant teaspoon into the porcelain teapot, added boiling water, watched the leaves expand and unfurl, the lighter twigs floating on the surface of the colouring water. She put on the lid and replaced the pot in its padded wicker basket. Then she started on the rice gruel. She washed the rice, added pork bones marinated and roasted in garlic, ginger, rice wine, sugar and soy, put the pot on the range, two-thirds filled it with water, added several more slices of ginger, and tilted the lid just a little so it wouldn't boil over.

The brothers rose at 6.30.
Jo san
,
early morning
, they said to each other as they met on the stairs. They drank their tea, then Shun scrubbed out the shop with soda, soap and hot water. He wiped the shelving and benches, the cash register and the scales. He scrubbed the floor. He brought the soft ripe fruit in from the window and replaced it with the freshest, the rosiest fruit. And once, he paused for a moment, looking out through the glass at the empty street, at the dark shop windows – Mackenzie's Butchery, Wilson's Drapery, Krupp's Pharmacy – at the clear blue sky.

Out the back, Yung arranged a line of upright apple boxes. He lit a kerosene lamp, then went into the banana ripening room. He stared for a moment in the semi-darkness, breathing in the gas, then came out again, blinking at the brightness, carrying a case of bananas which he placed on top of an apple box. He brought in three empty banana cases from the stack outside the back door and placed them on either side of the full one. Then he sorted the bananas into three groups – green, semi-ripe, ripe – carefully arranging them in the appropriate case. As he worked he sang arias from Cantonese operas, folk songs, ditties he made up as he went along, bringing case after case out of the gaseous twilight of the banana room. When he had brought out and sorted all the bananas, he put the unripe ones back, the semi-ripe closest to the door, then took the ripe ones into the shop. Any spotty or overripe fruit on the shelves – apples or pears with smooth depressions of brown rot, or bananas blighted with freckles or bruises rising though the yellow skin – he put into the marked-down bins for stewing or baking or frying. Salad bananas. He didn't understand English – the language, like the people, kept changing the rules. They cooked a banana and called it salad; they ate raw lettuce and called it salad. He shook his head and smiled. On special occasions, when he boiled lettuce and poured oyster sauce-flavoured mushrooms on top, did this make it salad also?

At 7.45, Mei-lin called them for breakfast. They washed their hands and came to the table.

‘It's a good day,' said Yung, as he sprinkled spring onion on his gruel. ‘Warm and not too windy.' He slurped happily. ‘Today, I was thinking of doing something different.'

Every Sunday the men went down Haining Street to eat and drink and gossip with their village cousins and others from their county – with any Chinese, in fact: the accents might be different, sometimes even difficult to understand, but here in the New Gold Mountain they were all brothers. Mei-lin stayed home with Wai-wai, or sometimes took him to visit the few other women and children.

But
sai yan
, westerners, took outings on Sundays. In summer time they might go to the Basin Reserve or take the ferry to Days Bay or go for a swim along Oriental Parade. Even the women did it. Yung had seen some of them. There had been a crowd (mostly men) watching, enjoying the daring of the latest attire. Their costumes exposed their arms and shoulders, the tops of their chests and a V of flesh on their backs; they even exposed their thighs. Where the wet fabric covered them, it clung to every curve, leaving little for the imagination.

Mrs McKechnie had told him about the cable car, how there was a tram at the top and one at the bottom, how one slid up while the other slid down, passing in the middle, stopping at each station with a ring of the bell. She told him about the grand Kiosk at the top where the young gentlemen took the young ladies to have tea and cakes for sixpence.

‘It goes up the hill to Kelburne,' Yung said, ‘and you look out at the hills and houses and the harbour. You can come back down on it again or walk through the botanical gardens. I think I'll take a tram and then the cable car. I can take Wai-wai too. It won't cost anything for him and he'll love the engines.'

Shun raised his eyebrows. They'd never been on a tram, let alone the cable car. Trams cost a penny so they walked everywhere.

‘The cable car only costs a penny for a return ticket,' Yung said. ‘Won't it be fun, Wai-wai?'

Wai-wai began to plead louder and louder with his father. Shun always found it hard to say no to him, and he did not like the idea of his son knowing and experiencing more than him. He would go too. He looked across the kitchen table, through the wisps of steam rising from the bowls of gruel, and saw the disappointment on Mei-lin's face.

Why not, he thought and smiled at her. ‘Wai-wai's mother can come too.'

Mei-lin could feel the beginning of tears at the back of her eyes. She blinked, willed them away. She had never been on an outing, never ridden a tram or cable car. She looked across at the father of her son. It had been months and she had barely spoken to him.

That night, Shun woke with Mei-lin in his arms. Why hadn't he done it earlier? He brushed the hair from her eyes, told her he would arrange an adoption. If they could not find a suitable boy in Melon Ridge, then they would look for a Wong from White Stone or Sand Head villages. They would find a number two son for his wife back in China.

It seemed the strangest question to ask after they'd known each other for so long, perhaps the hardest, because it seemed so intimate. If it had been anyone else, Katherine would have known – she knew the baker next door was George, even though she only ever called him Mr Paterson. Everyone knew. (George's pies were famous in Newtown, in all of Wellington by the way people talked.) But no one knew the names of the Chinese. Occasionally someone might say Mr – Mr Wong or Mr Choy. But usually it was the Chinaman next door to Paterson's or the John on the corner of Tory and Webb. They were all called John, the Chinese. And even if anyone bothered to find out, who could remember? Their names were like birds that never came in to land.

Katherine was afraid to ask. Afraid he would speak his name and it would hover close to her ear, her cheek, her tongue, then fly away from her. How could she ask him? Again and again. As if his name Was unimportant. As if he merely provided a service for which she paid and dismissed him.

He was wrapping turnips in a page of the
Evening Post
and she'd expected him to open his full, wide lips. Without realising, she had turned her face a little, still looking intently at his dark eyes, his mouth, straining her ears as if spreading a net. But instead he'd leaned in closer, held out his left hand for her to see. She did not understand, yet she'd looked into his palm, as if to read his life line, his heart line, the lines of the number of his children. And then he lifted his right index finger like a pen, and wrote stroke upon stroke on his hand.

‘
Wong
,' he said, and started over, slowly, kindly, as if to a child. ‘My name has grass on top,' he said, drawing a short horizontal line on his skin and then two small ones down through it. Then a longer horizontal line underneath.

A name, she thought, has a sound which disappears, and now also a physical presence, a shape on skin, an apparition.

‘The belly of my name is a field,' he said, drawing a grid like a window dissected into four small panes. How strange, she thought, the way the Chinese draw windows, how they draw three sides of the frame, then the two bars within and only last the bottom sill, as if there is no need for closure unless there is something of importance to close. No, a field, she thought again, not a window on the future, but something more earthy. Now two strokes underneath, like two short legs dancing, holding his name up to the world.

She watched him write his Christian name (but what does that mean, the word Christian?). ‘
Chung
,' he was saying, and she was lost, somewhere after the symbol for China, the centre of all things, and three strokes of a heart beating. ‘Faithful,' he was saying, ‘loyal,' and she thought about faith, about loyalty and what might be true. ‘
Yung
,' he was saying, ‘courageous,' and she thought about courage, about what she had always been afraid to do, what she'd always been afraid to be.

She thought about how his surname came first, how his family had the ultimate priority. Katherine came first for her. Not McKechnie, which was only her husband's name; not even Lachlan, her father's name. Only Katherine. Whatever she could count on for herself.

She watched his finger move across the skin – this strange intimacy of language – and asked him without thinking for a Chinese name, an opening into his language, a window into his world.