Journey Across the Four Seas (3 page)

Then one night, when there were only Seventh Aunt and Mother at the table, Mother said, "So it has come to this. Big Have has turned into Big Nothing. Will I get my money back?"

"Oh, please don’t ask my old man that question. Many people are after him already. He’ll have to pay them first or they’ll put him in jail. Afterwards, I’m sure he’ll do his best to pay you back. Don’t worry, I’m your sister. If you can’t trust me, whom can you trust?" Seventh Aunt laughed, but I could tell it was a naughty laugh, as if she’d done something bad and was trying to cover up.

Mother got up to return to our room. I pattered after her. As soon as we entered, Brother Yung looked up from his studies and said, "I need money to buy books tomorrow."

Mother jumped. It was as if her eldest son had poked her with a needle.

"Books, books, books, why are you always talking about books?" "Book" in Cantonese sounds the same as "lose." Mother always forbade us to mention that word on the day she played mahjong. "That’s all you ever think about, your books!" She reached for something, and before any of us could react, the stick end of a duster landed on Brother Yung’s back. He cried out. Mother whacked him again, this time across the cheek. A red welt swelled up. Brother Yung covered his face, sobbing.

"You’re always crying," Mother screamed at him. "That’s what brought bad luck to this family. You cried your father to death, and now you’re crying my money away. See if you’re going to cry again!" She dealt him a blow on the neck. Brother Yung leaped from his chair, shielding his face with both hands as Mother lashed out in blind fury, striking him everywhere. Brother Yung danced and jerked like a monkey. With tears streaming down my face, I begged Mother to stop.

"You bag of tears!" Mother shrieked at me. Her eyes had turned yellow. She didn’t look like Mother anymore. "You cried your father to death too! You’re lucky I haven’t sold you as a slave girl! Stop crying!" She whipped me on the leg. My flesh stung, and I burst out with a "Wah!" "I told you to stop crying!" Mother said, hitting me again. This time I sucked in my breath and held back my tears.

Even the baby Ngai got a smack. "You’re the biggest culprit! If I didn’t have you, I would have gone to your father when he was sick, and he would be alive today!"

The only person who escaped unscathed was Brother Kin. She only glared at him and told him to stay out of the way. For some reason that Mother never explained, Brother Kin was the only one exempt from blame for our father’s death. People said my second brother was Mother’s favorite because he was as handsome as Father. The most important reason, I thought, was he could make funny faces that made Mother laugh. The rest of us couldn’t get a smile out of her no matter what we did.

*

Our living conditions went down another step. From half an apartment, we moved into one room. I remember vividly the dump we called home at
47 Elgin St.
, fourth floor. We slept, ate, played, and studied in that one room. Fat Skinny squeezed in with us, and so did Father. His portrait followed the altar, which used to be in the living room but was now wedged between the beds. Sometimes I wished he would close his eyes and go to sleep like the rest of us.
 

The worst part about this room was that it was right above the kitchen. Every time Mother stir-fried on the coal stoves, the smoke would billow up. Even if we rushed to open the windows, it took a while for the air to clear. In the meantime, our eyes watered, we choked and coughed, and the odor clung to our hair and clothes. We always smelled like our dinner. The poor ventilation no doubt contributed to my weak lungs.

One good thing happened here, though. Shortly after we moved in, Mother reordered our sleeping arrangements due to something Fat Skinny said. I was six and Fat Skinny twelve, almost an adult in my eyes. I was especially impressed when she came home from the charity school she attended, flaunting her newly acquired knowledge on the facts of life.

"You’re in deep trouble," she said to me. "A girl can get pregnant sleeping with men. You sleep with two men every night. You’re going to get pregnant!"

The thought of growing a big belly scared me. I protested to my mother. For a second, she looked as if she were going to laugh. But the smile went away and she was stern again. "I have to tell Skinny not to put such things in your head. Well, don’t just look at me. Go bring your blanket over to my bed." From that night on, the three boys shared one bed, and Mother and I the other.

To escape the dingy room, Mother turned to mahjong. It was fine by me, for though she left the boys at home, she always took me along. I got to see better homes than my own, and if there were children around, I would play nicely with them. Most of the time, I just sat quietly, watching with fascination the noisy drama of the game. Mother’s mahjong partners were full of praises for my good behavior. One of them liked me so much that she became my godmother. Although we never held a formal adoption ceremony, everyone knew she was the woman to whom I owed my education and my life.

Her name was Sam-Koo, which means Miss Number Three because she ranked third in her family. I never knew her real name. Sam-Koo was a primary school graduate, a remarkable achievement for a woman of her generation. She had sharp eyes, a sharper tongue, and a pointed mouth like a parrot’s beak. She remained single because, in her own words, she hated men to death. In those days, every man had at least two wives, some as many as seven or eight. A woman either accepted it as the way it was, or stayed single. Spinsters usually became dependents of their fathers or brothers, but Sam-Koo didn’t want that either. She got herself a job as a schoolteacher and became an independent woman. Whenever I was cranky, she would threaten me with, "If you carry on like that, I’m going to get married!" Nothing scared me more, and I would shut up at once.

Our family became her family, and I the daughter she never had. She often came to spend the night at our place, squeezing into the bed with Mother and me. She treated me like a doll, dressing me up, braiding my hair, and decorating it with colorful bows and flowers. My brothers used to sing out at the sight of me, "Here comes the flower shop." They were jealous. I was the only girl and getting all the attention.

Sam-Koo worked at Yeuk Chih Elementary and lived there as well, sharing a dorm room with a fellow teacher. Narrow as her bed was, my slender body slipped comfortably into the sliver of space left for me. I stayed there for weeks on end and got to know everyone. One day, the school’s principal came to visit Sam-Koo. When she saw me drawing a picture of a person, she asked me who it was. I told her it was my mother.

"Do you know your mother’s name?" she said, her eyebrows arched as if she didn’t expect me to know the answer.

My head bounced up and down with confidence. I’d often heard the mahjong aunties address my mother. In a loud voice, I said, "My mother’s name is Lan Do Sei."

The principal couldn’t stop laughing. I had no clue that what sounded like a legitimate name was only a nickname. Lan Do Sei means "The Rotten Gambler."

The principal must have taken pity on me. She allowed me to sit in the classroom for first graders. The teacher even put my name on the roster. Whenever she called, "Li Shing Ying," I would spring to my feet and shout, "Present." This went on for two weeks until Mother ordered me to come home, bringing my education to a halt.

Sam-Koo dropped by on the weekend. As usual with her visits, she ended up spending the night. Lying in bed with Sam-Koo on one side and Mother on the other, I latched on to every word of their exchange. Sam-Koo said the principal would "open one eye and close one eye" to my tuition. Mother said that even if I got to study for free, getting me to school was still a problem. My home was in a district called Wanchai, which was on the flat ground of the island. Yeuk Chi was halfway up
Victoria
Peak
. The distance was too far for me to walk, and the tram ran only along the shore. Sam-Koo said she would think of something, and told Mother to think hard too. Sam-Koo went on about how important education was for girls, how men couldn’t be relied on, and so on. Mother answered with a loud snore.

The next day, after Sam-Koo had left, Mother took me to a mahjong party at the baker’s house. I loved going there because this was no ordinary house, and the owner was no ordinary baker. From listening to the mahjong table chatter, I’d learned that he was the supplier of bread to the British garrisons. Feeding the large number of hungry men earned him such a good income that he could afford eight wives and countless children. His house had three stories, which were sectioned into many units, each one the private domain of a wife. Treading a few steps down here and a few steps up there, I would enter what seemed like different apartments. The privileged class was the sons, and to them the entire second floor belonged. The girls slept with their mothers.

While Mother played mahjong with the baker’s wives, I played with one of his daughters, Yung-Jen, who was my age. We spent hours mothering her doll. It was made of cloth and had a white porcelain face with large round eyes and long eyelashes. Such a doll was called a
yeung wah wah
, which means foreign baby.

When dinner was announced, Yung-Jen and I tucked our baby into bed and went down. The house was strangely quiet without the clatter of mahjong tiles. In the dining room, I could see that the mahjong players were already seated at one of the three round tables. My instinct was to go to Mother, but a loud voice called out, "Pretty girl, come and sit next to me." A hand dragged me to the other side of the table. I looked up and shivered at the sight of the baker’s Second Wife. Her head was huge and her hair unruly, reminding me of a lion I’d seen in a picture book. Mother had told me to beware of this Number Two wife. This woman had nothing good to say about anyone, nor did anyone have anything good to say about her. She was also the most powerful, being the controller of the family’s purse strings.

The Lioness bared her crooked teeth and drew me close to her. For some reason this much-hated woman had taken a shine to me. She was always threatening to adopt me as a godchild. As the servant placed a steaming dish on the table, the Lioness roared, "Oh good! We’re having bitter squash tonight. My mouth waters when I see bitter squash. Don’t you like it too?" I looked up to find her large wet mouth gaping down at me. Before I knew what to say, she’d spooned a dollop of the bitter squash in my bowl. Having been trained to eat whatever was served me, I shoved it into my mouth. The bitterness almost knocked me off my chair. I wanted to spit it out, but one look from Mother stopped me cold. I shut my eyes and swallowed.

"She loves it!" the Lioness bellowed. She raised her fat arms and plopped another serving of bitter squash in my bowl. I gulped it down as eagerly as I did the first helping.

"I just love to look at your thousand gold," she yelled across to my mother.

"Don’t call my daughter thousand gold," Mother shouted back. "A girl is a money-losing merchandise. When her father died, I should have sold her to a rich family. But she was an obedient girl and no bother to me. That was why I kept her by my side."

"I should call her not only thousand gold but ten thousand gold!" the Lioness roared. Cocking her head back for a better look at me, she added, "She has such a pretty face. She’ll have no problem finding a rich husband."

"What’s the use of a husband, rich or poor?" Mother said. "Look at what happened to mine. That’s why I always say, a girl should have an education. It’s the best security she can have."

I looked at Mother with astonishment. The voice was Mother’s, but the words were Sam-Koo’s.

While the aunties nodded agreement, Mother went on: "I just got my girl enrolled in Yeuk Chi. The problem is that it’s so far away. I don’t know how I’m going to get her there every morning."

Without hesitation the Lioness said, "I don’t see any problem at all. Yung-Jen and her sister go to the same school. We hire a rickshaw to send them every morning. The driver can go by your place and pick up your thousand gold." Turning to her co-wife Number Seven, Yung-Jen’s mother, the Lioness demanded, "Isn’t this a good solution?" Number Seven bowed and replied that it was indeed a good solution.

So that was how my formal education began. I joined the baker’s children’s rickshaw pool. As there was seating for only two, the driver put me on a footstool and pulled us three girls up the hill.

2

There are many benefits to being a daughter. Even in a society where men were supreme, the advantages of being a girl, especially the only girl, outweighed the disadvantages. For one, Mother loved me the most. No matter how much she grumbled about girls being money-losers, she lavished whatever she could afford on me rather than my brothers. How could she not? I was closest to her. Sleeping in her bed every night, I could feel her every breath, every heartbeat. I turned when she turned, sighed when she sighed, and opened my eyes when she got up. We were one in our dreams, and she could trust me to know what she wanted of me.

A daughter has another advantage—access to information. While my brothers walked around in a fog, I always had an older woman to light my way. Sometimes she was Mother, other times she was Sam-Koo or some other mahjong auntie. One of them would warn me of the hazards ahead. My brothers, however, had no idea of the disasters that hit them, either before or after. The unique position I had as the only daughter would greatly influence the next stage of my life.