Falling Leaves: The True Story of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter (8 page)

Dinner was our only decent meal, and was a formidable affair. Promptly at seven thirty the dinner bell would sound and we would file downstairs to the diningroom. There, around an oval table, we settled into our assigned seats. Ye Ye, token master of the house, presided at the head facing the garden, with Aunt Baba to his right, and Father and Niang to his left. Gregory and Edgar sat next to Aunt Baba. James and I were relegated to the foot of the table. In those Shanghai days, Franklin and Susan did not eat with us.

We presented ourselves nightly in our school uniforms with our hair combed, bladders emptied and hands washed. We sat upright in our seats: anxious and stiff, hoping to be unnoticed. We, the stepchildren, never spoke at the dinner table, not even to each other. Whenever my name was called, an oppressive fear invariably gripped my whole being and my appetite would vanish. Without fail, an unpleasant scene would follow.

There were always six or seven tasty dishes. Two maids brought in the food: pork loin, roasted chicken, steamed fish, Shanghai crabs, sauteed vegetables, ending with a steaming tureen of hot soup. Father genuinely loved to see his children eat during dinner. We were encouraged to have as many bowls of rice as we wished. It was frowned upon to leave behind any scrap of food, even one grain of rice, in our bowls.

James and I both had an aversion to fatty meat. We were forced to eat it and soon developed ingenious methods of hoarding chunks of it in our pockets, socks, trouser cuffs, or sticking it to the bottom of the table. Sometimes we would make a dash for the bathroom with our cheeks bulging with

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fatty meat which would be flushed down the toilet. When all else failed, we swallowed it whole.

Fresh fruit was always served after dinner. When Father had guests, we ate the leftovers. Though there was less food, we liked to eat by ourselves. It reminded us of the good old days in Tianjin. We did not have to hide the fatty meat. We were free to laugh and talk and be ourselves again.

A governess was engaged to look after Franklin and Susan, a supposedly educated woman called Miss Chien. Their meals were served separately in their room, and they ordered what they fancied from the kitchen. Austerity apparently ceased on the first floor. They were served bacon and eggs, toast and cereal, fresh strawberries and melons for breakfast. Franklin’s hair was fashionably cut by the best children’s hair stylist in Shanghai. Susan wore brightly coloured dresses trimmed with lace and ribbons. They often outgrew their elaborate costumes before they had a chance to wear them. They received lots of toys and played on their own private balcony. Every afternoon they had tea with finger sandwiches, chocolate biscuits, sweet buns, cakes and pastries.

Though she was ostensibly Franklin’s tutor, Miss Chien also acted as a spy and informer, reporting back the activities and conversations of those from the second floor. Ingratiating and obliging, Miss Chien never overstepped her boundaries. She and Lydia became friends. Lydia was the only one of us ever to have afternoon tea with them, on the first floor in the antechamber.

We resented the double standards. Lydia held a series of meetings on the second floor. Various strategies were proposed. Hunger strike? Rebellion? An interview with Father alone? An anonymous letter pointing out the injustices? We whispered and complained and felt very conspiratorial. There were many plans. None was carried out. One Sunday afternoon, James got up to go to the bathroom in the midst of a fantasy plot and found Niang eavesdropping outside the slightly open door. They stared at each other for a few dreadful

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seconds. Then Niang placed her fingers on her lips and waved him on. James realized that the game was up. He stayed in the bathroom for a long time, fearing the showdown. Finally he returned. Niang had gone. The door remained ajar. Lydia was still plotting. There was a stunned silence when James revealed his discovery. We were terrified. When the dinner bell sounded, the meeting ended abruptly and we filed down to the diningroom in silence. But dinner came and went and nothing was mentioned. We began to doubt James’s story and his sanity, but not for long.

Niang’s new strategy was to divide and rule. A few days later Lydia was summoned down to the Holy of Holies (Father and Niang’s bedroom), and told to move to a spare room on the first floor. She was given her very own writing desk, a chest of drawers and a brand-new lacy white bedspread with matching curtains. We had to knock on her door before we could enter her domain. We were full of envy.

From then on Lydia straddled the two floors and the two sides of our lives. Like Miss Chien, she too carried tales back to Father and Niang. She gossiped not only about the three boys and me but also about Ye Ye and Aunt Baba. She was rewarded with special favours: candies, treats, pocket money, new clothes, outings with her friends. In time, she developed an air which distinguished her from the rest of us, making us constantly aware of her ’special’ status.

Sometimes, when going up or down stairs, I would catch a glimpse of Lydia at the doorway of Franklin’s and Susan’s room, begging for a slice of chestnut cream cake or a sandwich. Her wheedling posture invariably made me cringe with revulsion. I could hardly bear to listen to her whiny voice, beseeching and badgering the wily Franklin for the ’smallest little taste’ of goodies. I would bounce past her with averted eyes wishing that I could become invisible. James once commented that he would rather starve to death than plead for food from Franklin.

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At school Lydia excelled in English but performed poorly in maths and science. Father asked her to help Gregory with his English homework. Armed with the authority of a teacher, she became increasingly domineering. Uncowed, Gregory fought back. Their English lessons quickly deteriorated into shouting matches.

’You are ignorant, lazy and dumb. I told you to study these English verbs last week!’

’And you’re an idiot! Imagine not knowing how to do fractions and getting a zero on your maths test! Da ling dan (Big fat zero egg!) That’s what you got!’

Enraged, Lydia gave Gregory a resounding slap, forgetting that Gregory had grown taller and stronger. Gregory stood up and gripped her healthy right arm. ’If you do that again, I’m going to knock you down with my fist. Now get out of my room.’

Lydia went to report to Niang. When Father came home, Gregory was reprimanded and told to stand in a corner with his face to the wall for thirty minutes. Gregory muttered that he was doing better in English than she was doing in maths. Besides, anyone could see that his face was all swollen from Lydia’s slap. Gregory claimed that she packed a right as powerful as the American champion boxer Joe Louis, the strength in her right compensating for the weakness in her left.

After this incident, there were no more English lessons. Lydia’s maths did not improve. When report cards were handed out at the end of each term, her average often hovered dangerously close to a fail. The only one of us who scored lower was Franklin, but Father considered his brain not yet mature enough for serious study. Lydia was reprimanded by Father in the Holy of Holies and told to concentrate on her maths. She came out with red eyes and a streaming nose and loudly wailed to the world at large that she had tried her best, but maths was so much more difficult at Aurora than it had been at St Joseph’s in Tianjin.

At St John’s the boys learned to play bridge from their

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schoolfriends and they taught me the game because they needed a fourth, though I was only seven years old. One Sunday, Lydia found the four of us playing bridge. After watching for a while, she became resentful and felt ignored because we were so absorbed in the game. Suddenly she ordered me off my stool because she wished to play. The score was close and competition was keen. Gregory, by far the best bridge player, had chivalrously chosen me as his partner. He took his bridge seriously and would rant and rave whenever I played the wrong card or wasted a trump. Though I disliked being called dumb and ignorant, I accepted the abuse because Gregory’s reasoning was always logical and his skills superior. Now Lydia became Gregory’s partner. The game was more complicated than she had bargained for. Quick mathematical calculation and assessment of probabilities were not her forte. To the delight of Edgar and James, the new partners began to lose hand after hand.

Unwilling to accept Gregory’s criticisms delivered in ever higher decibels, Lydia threw down her cards in a huff and stomped downstairs, swearing that she never wished to play with Gregory again. To this Gregory replied that he would rather take me, Franklin or even three-year-old Susan as his partner than Lydia. That evening at dinner, Father reprimanded Gregory for being disrespectful to his older sister.

The special treatment of Lydia grew apace. One of my vivid memories is Lydia bounding up the stairs one Sunday afternoon, dressed in a pretty pink western dress and matching shoes, singing snatches of a song from the latest Hollywood movie, jingling some loose change in her pocket. Without breaking her stride, she disdainfully placed the exact tram fare for the week in front of each of my brothers, carefully avoided my gaze and hurried back downstairs. Silently the boys counted their coins while her song receded into the background: ’You are my sunshine …”

She entered the antechamber; the door banged shut behind her, and silence filled the hallway. Finally Gregory growled contemptuously, ’Showing off!’

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Undeniably she had become a member of Niang’s elite world.

In Shanghai, Aunt Baba was not having an easy time. She no longer enjoyed the informal yet respected place she held in Tianjin. Niang had demoted her, making her feel like a superflous spinster.

Aunt Baba was always like a mother to me. Now we drew even closer. She paid the greatest attention to everything about me: my appearance, my health and my personality. Most of all, she cared about my education, probably mindful of the fact that her own had been curtailed. She checked my homework every evening. On days when I harl a rest, she woke me at five so that I could set off for school with my head crammed with last-minute revisions. She was determined that I should eventually gain a college degree … the ticket to escape, independence and limitless achievement. Some things she did not say but I understood. I knew that I was the least-loved child because I was a girl and because my mother had died giving birth to me. Nothing I did ever seemed to please Father, Niang or any of my siblings. But I never ceased to believe that if I tried hard enough, one day Father, Niang and everyone in my family would be proud of me.

So I studied hard, not only to please my aunt but also because this was the only time I could lose myself, forget my fears and momentarily escape from this home so full of sinister manoeuvrings and hidden machinations.

At school I gained the nickname ’genius’ because I came top in every subject except art. My classmates sensed my vulnerability and yearning for acceptance behind the irmatmgly perfect scholastic record. They must have realized that there was something pathetic about me. I never mentioned my family. I possessed no toys, trinkets or pretty clothes. I had no money to spend on sweets or excursions. I refused all invitations to visit anyone outside the school and never asked anyone to my home. I confided in no one but went to school every day carrying inside me a terrible loneliness.

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At home, I did my homework, invented my own solitary games and read Kung Fu novels.

It must have been awkward for twenty-three-yearold Niang to acknowledge the presence of five stepchildren in front of Father’s friends. We suspected that she often denied our existence and intentionally gave the impression that little Franklin and baby Susan were Father’s sole offspring. We were therefore pleasantly surprised one day when one of Father’s colleagues came to visit and brought a gift in a large box in which we found, to our delight, seven little ducklings. As usual, Franklin and Susan chose first. Lydia, Gregory, Edgar and James then took their pick. By the time it came to my turn, I was left with the smallest, scrawniest and weakest little bird with a tiny head but soft, fluffy, yellow feathers. I fell in love with it at once and named it Precious Little Treasure, or PLT for short.

PLT soon meant everything to me. I must have been about eight. I used to race home from school to take PLT in my hands and lovingly carry her from the roof terrace into the bedroom I shared with my aunt. I did my homework with PLT waddling between the beds. Aunt Baba never complained about helping me shampoo PLT’s feathers or clean up after her occasional mishaps.

Sometimes, I explored the garden to hunt for worms for PLT’s dinner. One Saturday, I must have come too close to the domain of Jackie, Father’s ferocious German shepherd. He rushed over, barked his terrifying bark and bared his sharp teeth. I tried to calm him by reaching out to pat his head, whereupon he sank his teeth into my outstretched left wrist. I got away and ran up to my room. I was washing off the blood when Aunt Baba entered. At the sight of her, I burst into tears.

Aunt Baba held me and rocked me, dried my tears and understood. Jackie was their favourite pet. It would be best to say nothing, cause no trouble, draw no attention. She dressed the wound with mercurochrome, cotton wool and a small bandage.; We then comforted each other in our usual way: by looking at

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all my report cards from kindergarten to the most recent times.

In these records lay our secret weapon, our ultimate plan. One day, I was going to be a famous writer? Banker? Scientist? Doctor? Anyway, a famous ’something’. And the two of us would leave and set up house on our own.

Meanwhile we had to have good grades. Aunt Baba was inordinately proud of my success at school. She pored over each card, touchingly enraptured. ’Oooh! Look at this! A in four subjects and B+ in drawing! We’ll top the class again this year, I’m sure.’

She made me believe I was brilliant. Her pride in my small achievements was truly inspirational. She filed each report diligently in a safe deposit box and wore the key around her neck, as if my grades were so many priceless jewels impossible to replace. When things were bad, she consoled us by taking them out and looking at them. ’See this one? First grade and all of six years old and getting As in everything already. My! My!’ Then ’I’m certain nobody going to university could have a more perfect record.’ Or ’We’ll be the most successful banker yet, just like your Grand Aunt, and we’ll work together in our own bank.’