Gold Mountain Blues (62 page)

 

With a small shock, Kam Ho realized where he wanted to spend the cheque he had in his pocket.

Would it be enough to buy a plane? he wondered. He would ask his brother tonight.

7

Gold Mountain Obstacles

Year thirteen of the Republic (1924)
Spur-On Village, Hoi Ping County, China

Cat Eyes made her way to No-Name River with a laundry basket on her arm. Yin Ling was sound asleep on her back, nodding against her as she walked. At first glance, Cat Eyes looked just like any other Spur-On Village woman; she wore a sprig of jasmine behind her ear, her blue cotton tunic fastened slantwise across her front, dark blue wide-legged trousers and wooden clogs that clip-clopped along the cobbled road. Even the sling in which she carried Yin Ling was a village-style one, made of black cotton and heavily embroidered with peonies. Its crossed straps framed breasts swollen with milk, pushing them out until they looked like watermelons. Of course, only outsiders could have taken Cat Eyes for a Spur-On villager, the same way they lumped together people from different South China provinces. But the Spur-On villagers were sharp-eyed. They saw straight through Cat Eyes' outward appearance to the Gold Mountain woman underneath.

The first thing that gave her away was the underclothes she wore. The village women found out about the brassiere when Cat Eyes was breastfeeding Yin Ling. Even though she turned her back to feed the baby, they noticed that after she had undone her jacket, she opened up another layer of lacy white cotton underneath. Her panties, too, were a subject of village gossip. No one knew about them except Kam Shan until one day, one of the household servants saw them in the laundry bucket. She went out and told her friends that the woman from Gold Mountain was so stingy with cloth that she had cut down her panties until they hardly covered her buttocks.

Of course, the panties were only the beginning. Although Cat Eyes did not know it, gossip swirled around her. The villagers directed their comments to her mother-in-law, and these comments accumulated in Six Fingers' ears like earwax. Six Fingers looked glummer by the day.

Cat Eyes did not actually need to wash her own clothes. There were plenty of women servants to do the cooking, the washing and the sewing. But Cat Eyes did not want anyone to see her underwear. Besides, she found it comforting to go to No-Name River, because it reminded her of the village where she grew up. Her home village had plenty of water, just like this one, and her family had depended on its water as much as on the land for their food. She had worked in the fields alongside her mother, and when her father went fishing, she rowed the boat for him. She had had no news of her family since the day she and her elder sister were kidnapped and taken to Gold Mountain, so when she arrived in Spur-On Village with Kam Shan last year, she got him to take her back to her home village. There was no one left of her family; on the untended graves of her parents the artemisia grew tall.

It had rained continuously for some days and the waters of No-Name River had risen so high they covered all but half of the topmost stone step on the bank. Cat Eyes put the basket down, sat down on the step, rolled up her trouser legs and, with her clogs still on, stretched her feet into the water. She leaned forward until she could see her reflection. The water rippled in the breeze, elongating her face like a cucumber and stretching it as broad as a tomato. As Cat Eyes laughed, she heard the water whisper something in her ear. Softly, softly the words beseeched her: “Why not come in … come in…?”

Cat Eyes snapped out of her reverie. She remembered her father's warning to her and her sister when they were little. When it rains and the river's in spate, he had said, the water spirits lure people in. But Cat Eyes feared neither the water nor the water spirits. She stirred up the mud with her foot and retorted: “In your dreams!” And the water was silenced. Cat Eyes could not know that a dozen or so years later, another Fong would hear the waters speak and, knowing nothing of water spirits, would be lured in.

Although the water had fallen silent, Cat Eyes was still on the alert. At times like this, it would have been better to have a man with her, but Kam Shan was not the sort of man to go around with a woman. When she ran away from the brothel all those years ago and hid in his cart, he had only agreed to take her in because she threatened to kill herself. That act of kindness had estranged him from his father for many years. She knew he had done it out of pity, the way he might pity a lame horse or a dog with a broken leg. At the time, pity was enough for her. It was the lifeline that pulled her from the bog. But after she reached safety, she realized that it was not enough. She hungered for something more.

During their first two years together, Kam Shan did not touch her once. She knew that to him she was used goods, and he was afraid of catching syphilis from her. Taking her from the brothel made him guilty of abduction, so neither of them could show their faces in Vancouver's Chinatown again. They took refuge in a town so small and remote even the Thunder God would not find them. She could not find a Chinese herbalist, so, in the end, it was Pastor Andrew who managed to get hold of some Salvarsan for her, so she could treat her syphilis.

Finally, Kam Shan relented and was intimate with her. From the very first time, she knew she wanted to give him a child. He talked with fury about his father rejecting him, but she knew this anger was just a cloak he wore. Underneath it, he concealed the heart of a good son. While he was estranged from his father, he could not settle down with her and marry her properly. The only way that the two men could become reconciled was through a child. And it had to be a boy, of course.

For Kam Shan's sake, she had dosed herself with a succession of remedies—Chinese, Western and Redskin. She boiled them into broths,
burned them to ashes, ground them into powder, kneaded them into pancakes and injected them through syringes. Over ten years, she had taken enough medicines to fill No-Name River, but her belly showed not the slightest tendency to swell into a bump.

Her barren womb did nothing for Cat Eyes' self-esteem and she could only watch helplessly as Kam Shan caroused with rowdy Redskin women in cowboy boots and Stetsons who sat on his knee, rolling cigarettes for him and putting them between his lips. Sometimes he stayed out all night, but when he returned, she never asked where he had been. She just lit the stove and heated up the porridge for breakfast.

Then, when she had completely despaired of getting pregnant, it finally happened. At first, as she leaned over the gutter spewing her guts out, she thought it was the medicine making her sick. But when three months had gone by without any sign of her period, she realized she had conceived. She did not tell Kam Shan until she felt the first flutter of movement in her belly. Kam Shan said nothing, but one day began to dismantle his photographic studio piece by piece. Tears coursed down Cat Eyes' face. She knew that he could go home and see his father now, and that, maybe, she could gain a foothold there too.

Though she gave birth to a girl, Cat Eyes was still pleased and proud of her accomplishment. She was still very young. Her body was a field in which paddy rice had grown and sooner or later it would produce a boy too. The fact that her firstborn was a girl meant that she would have help with all those baby boys to come. It never occurred to Cat Eyes that Yin Ling was a miracle baby whose birth was the result of the coincidence of sun, rain and soil. Her womb would remain barren for many years after.

Kam Shan had recently gone to the city of Canton and would not be back until the beginning of the ninth month. That was Yin Ling's birthday and there was to be a feast to celebrate it. Such celebrations for baby girls were rare in the village but Six Fingers had insisted. For Six Fingers, Yin Ling was life itself and the baby spent most of the time in her granny's arms. In fact, Cat Eyes hardly got a chance to look after her daughter, unless it was time to put her to the breast. In Six Fingers' words, Yin Ling was the first of the next generation. Her auspiciously round little face, fleshy earlobes and grooved upper lip were signs, according to ancient
belief, that she would be welcoming many little brothers and sisters into the world.

Kam Shan had gone to Canton to get his leg treated. Even before their ship docked, Six Fingers had been making inquiries about doctors. She tracked down a highly-thought of herbalist in Canton who had once attended to the broken bones and injuries of the Imperial family. He was elderly and had retired long ago but Six Fingers, by dint of turning two
mu
of land into a large amount of silver, persuaded him to see her son.

Kam Shan's lameness meant that he could not walk much or stand for long, so he was unable to go out on photography assignments. He took pictures only occasionally, when customers came to his house. His father, Ah-Fat, was no better off: after his farm went bankrupt, creditors hounded him so mercilessly he did not dare go home. Kam Ho's monthly wages at the Hendersons' were not enough to keep two families, so Cat Eyes was forced to go out to work. A new establishment called the Lychee Garden Restaurant had just opened in Chinatown and was in need of a waitress. Cat Eyes went to see the boss and was immediately taken on.

She knew why that was.

There was a dearth of young women in Chinatown in those days, and very few of them went out to work. Those who did work out of the home were regarded as used goods. In the restaurant, Cat Eyes had to put up with every man stripping her naked with his eyes. But she didn't care. For a girl who had worked in the Spring Gardens brothel, those stares were nothing. In any case, she did not mind being a slut in their eyes so long as it meant her new family did not go hungry.

Prying eyes were not confined to the restaurant. At home Kam Shan stayed up until her shifts ended after midnight. He skulked behind the dusty old curtains, watching her fumble in her pocket for the door key, on the lookout in case some man was escorting her home. In the old days, it was she who had been worried about him messing around. Now it was the other way round—and she liked it that way. She almost hoped his leg would never heal.

Late one night, after finishing her shift at the restaurant, she returned home. Without turning the light on, she went in the door, down the dark passage and into the kitchen. Kam Shan did not speak to her, just followed
her with his eyes. His eyes nibbled her all over. She gave her face a quick scrub, and was ready for bed and sleep. But Kam Shan had been at home all day with nothing to do, and now he wanted her. He pressed her down on the bed and pushed himself furiously into her. In the past, he only bothered to do it once in a blue moon, and then it was perfunctory. But now it was as if, every time he saw her, his body craved her. His eyes gleamed with a green light and she said jokingly that he should change
his
name to Cat Eyes.

It was some time before she found out why. Once, when he was drunk, he blurted out: “If other men can use you, why can't I?” He had completely forgotten he had said it, but she did not. It gnawed away at her, like a nagging pain. Though this man had never liked her, he had saved her from starvation and abuse. And it had cost him dearly; he had not seen his mother and father for ten years as a result. But his cruel words were just that—words—and nothing more, and she blocked her ears against them.

What really made her anxious was her discovery that Kam Shan had booked boat passage home to China. Kam Ho had been squirrelling away money to bring his mother over, until the Gold Mountain government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, trapping Six Fingers on the other side of the ocean. So instead, Kam Ho used the money to buy Kam Shan's passage home to China. Six Fingers wanted to see her first granddaughter, and the baby could not travel without her mother so Cat Eyes went too. Cat Eyes was worried because she and Kam Shan had not performed the traditional marriage ceremonies; she knew how keen the local girls were to get themselves a Gold Mountain husband. If Kam Shan was planning to get himself a proper bride on their trip back home, there would be absolutely nothing Cat Eyes could do about it.

The day they arrived in Spur-On Village, she and Kam Shan completed the final stretch of their journey—from the entrance of the village to the
diulau
—on their knees, as a way of showing respect for his mother. Six Fingers received them and told Cat Eyes to get up. “What's your school name?” she asked. Cat Eyes was confused. “What's a school name?” “The name your schoolteacher gave you the day you started school,” explained Six Fingers. “Mum, Cat Eyes has never even seen a school,” said Kam Shan, “never mind stepped inside one.”

The neighbours and family who crammed the
diulau
hall roared with laughter at Kam Shan's words. Cat Eyes knew that everyone in the Fong household, right down to the plough oxen, could read and write—they had all been taught by Six Fingers. She also knew that the Fongs would scoff at her now they knew she was illiterate. Her own man had thrown the first insult and now everyone would follow suit. Her mother-in-law gave a little laugh, but Cat Eyes did not notice. She was too busy looking for a wall against which she could knock herself. The brothel should have killed her, she thought ruefully, but instead she would be consigned to misery and humiliation in Hoi Ping.