Read Online All That Matters by Wayson Choy - Free Book Online
Authors: Wayson Choy
Tags: Historical
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wagged her finger at me. “Only a fool give lucky money away! Are you a fool?” Shortly afterwards, Stepmother’s shadow crossed my bed. I shut my eyes and refused to acknowledge her. She tucked me in and slipped some extra coins in my palm.
TWO
POH-POH WARNED ME THAT I was no longer the same
Tohng-Yahn
boy she took by the hand when we first struggled up the crowded third-class gangplank in Hong Kong to board the CPR steamship to Vancouver. “You old enough now to keep secrets.”
Grandmother was right. I was eight years old that fall of 1930, as I stood waiting in the doorway of our cramped, stuffy Chinatown kitchen to help her wash and prepare the vegetables. The door jamb had lines that Father pencilled on to record my height. Father had said that when I reached a certain height, I would be trusted to know more, to know family secrets that even my very best friend, Jack O’Connor, could never be told.
“I’m taller now,” I said, looking as grown-up as I knew how. “I’m bigger, too.”
The Old One laughed.
“You not
Tohng-Yahn
like before, Kiam-Kim,” she said, displaying her old know-it-all village manner and shaking her wrinkled head at the fierce-faced, nearly cross-eyed Kitchen God stuck on the wall. Even
he
agreed. Poh-Poh unhooked Stepmother’s flower-printed apron from the doorknob. I looked at the dangling garment and took a step back into the dining room. Poh-Poh shook her head again.
“You not
Chinese
like before. Now you just a
mo no
boy, a no-brain boy!”
Poh-Poh did not mean that I didn’t have a brain; she meant that I didn’t have the right kind. One day when I sat in my room, bent-mouthed and feeling crushed, Stepmother told me to pay no attention.
“When you count up Father’s invoices to match up his bookkeeping entries, what does the Old One always say?”
I thought for a moment. “Poh-Poh says, ‘Kiam-Kim has a Number One Brain.’ Then she pulls my ear.”
“Yes, yes …,” Stepmother said. She sighed. “To keep First Son humble.”
I protested and punched my pillow.
“Father always laughs.”
“You must laugh, too!” A delicate hand brushed away my tears. “Yes, laugh. Then you have a
Tohng-Yahn no
, a Chinese brain like your Poh-Poh.”
Stepmother smiled when I got her meaning: never take Poh-Poh too seriously. Smile. Laugh. Stepmother herself barely reacted to any of Poh-Poh’s abrupt suggestions: “Steep tea longer.” “Fold sheets this way:tight-tuck every corner.” “Hold the baby …
firmly.”
“Eat more meat.”
To each command, Gai-mou would respond with a faintly pleasant smile, as if Poh-Poh’s take-charge voice should not be taken too seriously. After a moment, she would submit to Poh-Poh’s way: the green tea was steeped longer; bedsheets were stretched just so and all four corners stiffly tucked in; the baby
firmly
held; and, finally, another morsel of meat was politely swallowed.
“Ho, ho!
Good, good!” said Poh-Poh, satisfied that Gai-mou had not disregarded her. However, even as the Old One increased her pushy ways with me, Stepmother began gradually to fold the bedsheets in her own way. In the midst of her breast-feeding my sister, she lifted Liang-Liang to burp, not as
firmly
as Poh-Poh would have liked: the tiny head limply propped over the towel-padded shoulder and slowly slid down again to feed. Stepmother was doing more and more things in her own way.
Mrs. Lim remarked on how the dinner table was set. Poh-Poh said, waving her hand dismissively, “Gai-mou work too hard to do everything right.”
Eventually, even Father noticed that certain habits had changed in our house: now the Old One folded her own sheets exactly in the way Stepmother did, with three corners tightly tucked in but with one inviting corner flipped back.
Father was relieved to see that the two women got along most days, though once I saw him wink at Stepmother as if they had agreed upon a secret strategy to use their Chinese brains to contain
TWO
POH-POH WARNED ME THAT I was no longer the same
Tohng-Yahn
boy she took by the hand when we first struggled up the crowded third-class gangplank in Hong Kong to board the CPR steamship to Vancouver. “You old enough now to keep secrets.”
Grandmother was right. I was eight years old that fall of 1930, as I stood waiting in the doorway of our cramped, stuffy Chinatown kitchen to help her wash and prepare the vegetables. The door jamb had lines that Father pencilled on to record my height. Father had said that when I reached a certain height, I would be trusted to know more, to know family secrets that even my very best friend, Jack O’Connor, could never be told.
“I’m taller now,” I said, looking as grown-up as I knew how. “I’m bigger, too.”
The Old One laughed.
“You not
Tohng-Yahn
like before, Kiam-Kim,” she said, displaying her old know-it-all village manner and shaking her wrinkled head at the fierce-faced, nearly cross-eyed Kitchen God stuck on the wall. Even
he
agreed. Poh-Poh unhooked Stepmother’s flower-printed apron from the doorknob. I looked at the dangling garment and took a step back into the dining room. Poh-Poh shook her head again.
“You not
Chinese
like before. Now you just a
mo no
boy, a no-brain boy!”
Poh-Poh did not mean that I didn’t have a brain; she meant that I didn’t have the right kind. One day when I sat in my room, bent-mouthed and feeling crushed, Stepmother told me to pay no attention.
“When you count up Father’s invoices to match up his bookkeeping entries, what does the Old One always say?”
I thought for a moment. “Poh-Poh says, ‘Kiam-Kim has a Number One Brain.’ Then she pulls my ear.”
“Yes, yes …,” Stepmother said. She sighed. “To keep First Son humble.”
I protested and punched my pillow.
“Father always laughs.”
“You must laugh, too!” A delicate hand brushed away my tears. “Yes, laugh. Then you have a
Tohng-Yahn no
, a Chinese brain like your Poh-Poh.”
Stepmother smiled when I got her meaning: never take Poh-Poh too seriously. Smile. Laugh. Stepmother herself barely reacted to any of Poh-Poh’s abrupt suggestions: “Steep tea longer.” “Fold sheets this way:tight-tuck every corner.” “Hold the baby …
firmly.”
“Eat more meat.”
To each command, Gai-mou would respond with a faintly pleasant smile, as if Poh-Poh’s take-charge voice should not be taken too seriously. After a moment, she would submit to Poh-Poh’s way: the green tea was steeped longer; bedsheets were stretched just so and all four corners stiffly tucked in; the baby
firmly
held; and, finally, another morsel of meat was politely swallowed.
“Ho, ho!
Good, good!” said Poh-Poh, satisfied that Gai-mou had not disregarded her. However, even as the Old One increased her pushy ways with me, Stepmother began gradually to fold the bedsheets in her own way. In the midst of her breast-feeding my sister, she lifted Liang-Liang to burp, not as
firmly
as Poh-Poh would have liked: the tiny head limply propped over the towel-padded shoulder and slowly slid down again to feed. Stepmother was doing more and more things in her own way.
Mrs. Lim remarked on how the dinner table was set. Poh-Poh said, waving her hand dismissively, “Gai-mou work too hard to do everything right.”
Eventually, even Father noticed that certain habits had changed in our house: now the Old One folded her own sheets exactly in the way Stepmother did, with three corners tightly tucked in but with one inviting corner flipped back.
Father was relieved to see that the two women got along most days, though once I saw him wink at Stepmother as if they had agreed upon a secret strategy to use their Chinese brains to contain
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