The Jade Peony (4 page)

Sitting on the kitchen stool, I bit my tongue. For years, I had been nagged to remember to wash diapers and generally clean up after my baby brother, who was now three years old and sickly. I was tired of his always leaking at both ends.

I liked to think I was almost nine, and much, much older than Sek-Lung. I recalled how Sekky had received twice the number of jade and gold bracelets that I had got as a baby, and how everyone at the baby banquet toasted his arrival and how only the women noticed me in my new dress, and then only for a few minutes to compare Poh-Poh’s and Stepmother’s embroidery.

Poh-Poh and I were alone that cloudy morning, except for Sekky. She was down on one knee between me and the oversized crib, doing me a favour, getting ready to tie ribbons on my tap-shoes. His thumb in his mouth, he looked like a pale China doll sleeping in its wicker crib.

Baby Brother was sick again. Always sick. Always getting all the attention; always snoring because of his congested lungs, though he had no fever. Everyone was afraid his illness might be
TB
. Afraid Sekky might die. Then, our two-storey wooden house would by law be cursed by the Vancouver Health Inspection Board: a cardboard sign would be posted on our front door, a sign boldly visible from the street:
CONDEMNED
. Everyone would pass by our house, pointing at our family as if we were lepers, like the Chau Lims or the Negro Johnstons down the street.

But the official white doctor from St. Paul’s Hospital—so far—could not find
TB
. “Perhaps it’s just a stubborn cold,” he said to my father. “A flu.” It was good that no one else in the family had any signs of illness.

For weeks, Poh-Poh’s Chinese herbalist had instructed her to slip mysterious pink pellets, like tiny
BB
’s, into the warm, honey-sweetened chicken broth she patiently spooned into Sekky’s mouth. We were lucky: Sekky had no fever, and he kept greedily swallowing the soup.

Grandmother glanced at the crib, and her white hair brushed against my creamy taffeta skirt. I took a deep breath. The persistent damp, woodsy smell of our old house reminded me of the oncoming fall.

“A girl-child is
mo yung
—useless,” Poh-Poh grunted, shifting down her other knee to give me, as always, reluctantly, my measure of attention.

I was getting ready for my performance time with old Wong Suk, and wishing, with the will of my almost-nine years, that old people would move faster. I ignored Poh-Poh’s remark about being a girl-child. After all, she was a girl, too, even if she was, as my father respectfully called her, the Old One.

At last, with both knees down, and a great sigh, Poh-Poh began engineering the ribbon laces of my tap-shoes, twisting and turning each end until the satin strips danced between her bony fingers.

My friend old Wong Suk had last week gone tottering on his two bamboo canes through Woodward’s store aisles to buy me three lengths of crimson satin ribbon.

“From Liang’s bandit-prince,” he had said, snatching out of a small paper bag a fistful of red ribbons and, like Robin Hood, scattering the dishevelled strands across our round oak table, “a gift for my bandit-princess!”

There was one length for my hair and two longer ones for my tap shoes.

“How much you spend on that?” Poh-Poh asked, lifting them up to feel their quality.

“Fifteen cents,” Wong Suk proudly announced. It was the Depression. Fifteen cents was equal to an hour of bachelor-man labour.

“A waste of good money,” Poh-Poh pronounced in her contemptuous
Sze-yup
village dialect. She always chose her tone and style of words according to her judgement and mood. “All useless!”

Old Wong Suk gave me his semi-toothless smile and was pleased. Wong Suk liked to irritate Grandmother, and when he succeeded, he always winked at me. The satin ribbons slipped gracefully from Poh-Poh’s hand, falling back onto the dark table. Poh-Poh felt flattered that her worthless grand-daughter merited such bounty. Wong Suk had promised me the ribbons many weeks ago, and my bandit-prince would never fail me, just as our hero bandit, Robin Hood, would never fail Marian, his fair maiden. Wong Suk always called me his
chak neuih gung-jyu,
his bandit-princess.

I shifted restlessly on the stool, impatient for Wong Suk’s arrival.

“Raise your legs.” Poh-Poh needed to see better. Whenever she was alone with me, the Old One snapped at what she saw as my lack of humility.

“Feet so stinky. Not pretty girl feet. Cow feet.”

I stretched my thin child’s legs into the rectangle of grey light coming from the window overlooking the wicker crib. It was a rain-threatening Vancouver morning, but there was enough light for Poh-Poh’s nimble fingers. She knew how to tie knots blindfolded. Besides, I dared not suggest turning on the naked lightbulb hanging over us:
Waste of money!

I had pestered Poh-Poh for days to help me tie Wong Suk’s gift into show-off bows for my tap-shoes.

“But you do everything so prettily,” I said to her ancient head, for it was true. “And Wong Suk spent so much good money on these ribbons...”

Finally, after days of nagging and begging, she was indulging my foolishness, but barely:
Aiiiiyaah! How one China girl be Shir-lee Tem-po-lah?

Grandmother delicately pulled, and commenced twisting and tucking the drawn-out ribbon strands. We decided to make three small blooms for each of my shoes.

“Point your toes down,” she commanded, holding a single dangling strand in each of her hands, “and push your stinky feet away from me.”

I did, pushing down at my steel toe-taps.

Before my eyes, curls of red slowly shifted—lifted—then unfurled into two bouquets of three flowers each. I looked in amazement.

Teach me,
my heart said, but I held back the words.

IT WAS A RIBBON-TYING
trick only Poh-Poh knew, taught to her long ago in Old China when she had served as a “house-daughter” to a refugee Shanghai family. The First Concubine threatened to break her fingers if she did not learn fast enough how to knot pom-pom flowers and how to hand-weave sun-dried, skin-cutting grass stalks into flat “eternal love” patterns so seamless that each design revealed neither a beginning nor an end. Poh-Poh told me how her fingers bled while, as a girl not yet ten, she frantically practised tying rough kelp filaments together, tying them endlessly until she perfected each design. Finally, she could tie even the thinnest silk strands in the most subtle patterns. The rich loved their pleasures in miniature, she told me, like American gold coins, diamonds and carved emeralds.

“Make smaller,” Poh-Poh said, imitating the pitched voice of the First Concubine. “Always that pig-lady say, ‘Make smaller!’”

Poh-Poh refused to teach me any of her knots. Once she did try, when I was six, but I seemed too clumsy, too awkward, not fearful enough of failure. My six-year-old fingers slipped; I clutched at Grandmother’s body, glimpsed her hand raised above me, ready to slap. Then she froze, her hand in mid-strike, held back; tears welled up in her eyes. “No, no,
no!
” Furious, she shook me off. “No more teach!”

At seven, children in Old China laboured in fields, rode bone-crushing oxen, crawled with oiled bodies into narrow coal seams and emerged bent-backed forever. At seven, Grandmother was told how lucky she was to be a house servant and not one of the field servants. Then, the First Concubine’s fists fell on her lucky body; some days, her thin child’s back was whipped with a knotted belt and beaten with a switch. Cowed, shaking, Grandmother was dragged by her long hair and flung back into her narrow bedding by the kitchen door. “Learn or die,” First Concubine screamed, her long fingernails clawing at the air.

Now I was almost nine, swallowing, knowing nothing.

And there was no other way to learn. No one could ever follow her quick-moving fingers. She would later teach Baby Brother some juggling, tell him paperfolding stories, even show him how to make simple toys, like paper cranes, toss rings—or windchimes when he grew old enough. But all her womanly skills she would keep away from me, keep to herself until she died: “Job too good for
mo yung
girl!”

Poh-Poh knelt back to look at her handiwork: each of my tap-shoes was crowned with a perfectly delicate, perfectly brilliant bouquet of red pom-poms. Not even the silk-tasselled shoes of the First Concubine could have been lovelier. Old Wong Suk would be delighted.

Shaking my stiff ringlets (still smelling faintly of Stepmother’s curling iron), I felt like a grown-up girl. I knew to keep quiet, stay properly humble: that is, not play out Poh-poh’s usual games, except to say thank you and hug her jacket-padded body and wait for her to push me away. But the word “useless,”
mo yung,
jumped out at me:

“I’m not
mo yung,
Poh-Poh,” I protested, “even though I
am
a girl!”

“
Aiiiiyahhh—a girl!
” Grandmother shook her head. “Too late then!” She slapped my shoes. “Finish!
Mo yung
girl!” I looked down again to focus on the small petals of those rare, exquisite flowers. My spirits lifted.

“So beautiful,” I said spontaneously, with a hug, which she elbowed away.

“
Mo yung
girl!” she said, as if I would never learn a thing, however much I wanted to be taught. “Too much spoil!”

I hopped off the kitchen stool, smoothed my cut taffeta dress against my spindly legs. The patent surface of my tap-shoes glimmered back at me; the shoes no longer looked second-hand, not at all as if they came from a throwaway church bazaar sale, which they had. I lifted each heel, heard two satisfying
tap taps:
I felt light as air, in control again.

“Looks nice,” I said slowly, in English, catching a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror. The grey morning light softened everything into half-shadows. Poh-Poh refused to look at me. I took my favourite pose, the one Shirley Temple does with her tiny hands tucked under her chin; you know, bright eyed—
My goodness!
—just before all the grownups praise her for a song well sung, a dance well danced. I could hardly wait for Wong Suk. Why was he so late this morning? I looked down at the flowers glowing on my feet.

“Too fussy,” Poh-Poh said, her back to me. “Useless!”

My chin lifted, that stubborn voice of mine charged ahead: “Father says after the war is over, things will change for everybody, even girls.”

“War over?” Grandmother chuckled, shifting her dialect. “Always war in China. First, bandit wars in South China, Communist—
Gung Chang
—wars everywhere, and all those sun-cursed Japanese dogs yapping into North China...”

I thought of the newsreels, smoke and bombs: Europe and Germany were at war. Britain was at war. The Chinese were forever at war with the Japanese invaders. War everywhere but here in Chinatown.

“There’s no war in Canada,” I said. “This is Canada.”

Poh-Poh sighed deeply, gave me a condescending look.

“
You
not Canada, Liang,” she said, majestically, “
you
China. Always war in China.”

I hated the Old One: Grandmother never let me get on with my movie-star daydreams. And now the late morning sky seemed more threatening: if it rained, how could I dance on the porch for my bandit-prince? Surely Wong Suk would be here any minute now, with his semi-toothless smile and wrinkled kind eyes, anticipating my best performance.

The ribbons burned in the half-darkness, and my feet would not keep still. Undaunted, I pushed myself back onto the stool, clenched my fists. Waited. I shuffled. Sekky began to smell of pee; he turned on his side. I grew restless. The wicker crib creaked. Poh-Poh sat down on her rocker. Always waiting.

I waited, just as Poh-Poh once had waited until the First Concubine summoned her to come to her
mahjong
tea table. While learning how to wait, to serve, to obey, Poh-Poh said she thought of her poor mother, the mud-walled room she last shared with her, but mostly her mother’s smile, her mother’s hope that things would turn out lucky. I saw myself on our dilapidated porch, tapdancing and whirling about, and I thought of Wong Suk’s delight. I began to sing, not one of Grandmother’s riverboat songs, sung to amuse the First Concubine and her gambling cronies, but my tapdance song, “Mama’s little baby loves short’nin’, short’nin’...”

“
You
China,” Grandmother said.

I sang louder.

“
Mo yung
girl!”

I could barely keep still. A week of tapdance practice lay coiled in my dreamer’s body: “...
short’nin’... short’nin’
...”

THE WOODEN PORCH
facing the street was the stage for all my performances. There, in good spring or summer weather, wearing Stepmother’s old dresses, her junk costume jewellery protruding from my tied-back hair, hung about with silk scarves, I mimicked the Chinese Opera heroines: the warrior-woman, the deserted wife, the helpless princess. And, lately, in my movie costumes, I tapped steps as deftly as Shirley herself. I hung up old bedsheets for skies, draped ropes for rivers, piled up orange-crates for mountains, just like the Canton Alley operas, with their fine silk and dazzling sequins and plain wood props.

I took care to set a perfect make-believe world before Wong Suk, my old guardian, my adopted uncle:
Wong Suk,
my one and only true friend since I was five. Others said he was ugly, old, with squashed lips that gave him a hapless monkey-face. True, Wong Suk was doubled-up and cruelly crippled, but to me, Wong Suk ambling along on his pair of thick bamboo canes seemed only different, unusual. I, his Shirley Temple princess, always saw only a bandit-prince in disguise.

Wong Suk and I spent Saturday mornings and afternoons together. Often, after I’d sat by his side around our oak dining table, listening to his story-telling (as violent as Poh-Poh’s, but more ghost-driven and fantastical), he would indulge me by watching one of my miniature performances. As I took my bows, I drank in the way Wong Suk applauded, banged his two bamboo canes, and laughed and ooohhhhed and ahhhhhed at my efforts.

Delighting in each other’s company, the two of us would walk as fast as we could down Pender Street to get a snack of Chinese pastry, served with a bowl of “daily soup,” or pace ourselves so that we would arrive in time to catch the movie house matinee at the Lux or Odeon around the corner on Hastings Street.