The Year of Finding Memory (20 page)

Growing up in a country where everyone attended school and where I had always assumed I would attend university, I never fully appreciated the significance of my mother’s schooling. She carried the memory of those years like a badge of honour. Throughout my childhood I met women who were about the same age as my mother, many of whom came from small farming villages in the south of China. Most of them were illiterate, and they treated my mother with a certain deference. They were impressed not just because my mother could read and write, but because she could read and write so well. No wonder she reminded me, when I was entering university, that she too had gone on to higher education and in no less a place than the city of Nanking.

The year before I started university, I showed my mother a brochure with a picture of the campus I hoped to attend. We were sitting at the kitchen table, only a few feet from the barrel-shaped washing machine. My father was in the adjoining room, finishing up the week’s ironing. My mother turned to me and smiled. “Your school looks very nice,” she said. “It’s too bad that you will never see Nanking, where I was a student. It was a magnificent city with lovely gardens for strolling. The roses and peonies were like none I have seen since. My favourite place though, was Sai Woo, West Lake, in the city of Hangzhou. The lake is in the middle of the city, with hills in the distance. I used to watch the light change on the water, depending on where the sun was in the sky. I
walked along those shores many times. It’s one of China’s most famous sites. I’ve seen lots of China—Nanking, Shanghai, Canton, the gardens in Suzhou. Not like your father—never been anywhere except his little village. Only passing through cities like Hong Kong and Canton.”

“One day when I have lots of money, I will take you back to China,” I said in response to her yearning.

My mother’s mood suddenly changed. “Don’t think about going anywhere,” she said sternly. “Just think about school and working hard. Save your money.”

She folded my university brochure and handed it back to me. I then placed my red photo album in front of her. I’d added some recent pictures of high school friends and wanted to show them to her. As she turned the pages she said that she too had once kept an album with photographs of her schoolmates in Nanking. She told me about a girl with whom she’d become close and how they’d vowed they would always be friends, her voice choking with regret and sadness. My mother hesitated for a moment and said, “I wasn’t always like this, the way I am here. Useless, depending on others to help me. People used to come and ask for my advice, for me to help them. I know you don’t believe it.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll look after you.”

As it turned out she never completed her studies in Nanking. Everything had started out with such promise. My mother was a good student; she was popular with the teachers. If it hadn’t been for the Japanese, she would say, those hateful Japanese. Because of them her ambitions had turned to ashes.

After capturing Peking in July of 1937, the Japanese started a series of air raids on Shanghai and Nanking. The residents of these cities were ordered to build bomb shelters and to paint the red roofs and white walls of their houses black. The Japanese bombed everything: factories, government buildings, schools, even hospitals. The streets were filled with rubble. Whenever the sirens screamed their warnings, my mother would start to tremble. People would flee the streets, searching for safety. That summer in Nanking was so hot and humid, it was like living in a furnace, she told me. And the Japanese only made it worse.

Big Uncle and her
thoh
sent a telegram, telling her to leave as soon as possible. But she would have left anyway. The bombing raids were becoming more frequent, and she was afraid of being trapped in Nanking. Everywhere around her people were departing in droves; she had to escape while she still could.

The night before my mother fled Nanking, she sewed a secret cloth pouch inside her underpants. The next morning, she packed only a small bag with personal belongings and tucked her money into the pouch next to her belly. Even with a ticket already in hand when she went to the station, it was almost impossible to board the train. People were pushing, shoving, shouting, eyes wide with desperation. Their faces were dripping with sweat from the searing heat. The air had a sour odour that my mother had never encountered before,
and she asked herself if this was the smell of fear. As she elbowed her way through the clamouring mob, the press of bodies was so close, she nearly suffocated. But she somehow fought her way onto the train. When she found her seat she was panting, and her clothes were damp against her skin. She heard stories about people climbing on top of the cars and of people tying themselves underneath the train, so desperate to leave the city they were willing to risk death. Some people, especially the poor, had no recourse; they had to remain. Others, who had the means to leave, decided to stay.
Why?
my mother would ask.
To see what might happen?
As far as she was concerned, they were even more foolish than the ones who tied themselves to the bottom of the train.

My mother made it to Shanghai just in time to catch the last boat south to Canton. A few days later Japanese soldiers would invade Shanghai and then march on to ravage Nanking. She had left her album of class photos in Nanking and would never see her best friend again. She was lucky just to get out alive, she told me. Her gratitude would quickly evaporate, however. In the next breath, she would say how unlucky she was to have survived the war, to have witnessed the atrocities that she would eventually see.

Exhausted and relieved, my mother arrived at Big Uncle’s mansion in Canton late in the night, after everyone had gone to sleep. One of the servants took her to her old room. The next morning, her
thoh
wept when she saw her and told her she loved her more than anyone else in the world, even more than her own children. With the Japanese now so far away, my mother could finally feel safe.

In her excitement she did not immediately notice the change in her
thoh.
But as my mother looked across the breakfast table, she saw a wraith, a shell of the radiant woman she had left behind a few years before. She stared at her beloved
thoh
and remembered that the previous night, she had heard a raw and incessant cough that seemed to come from the floor above. But she had been bone-tired, and the sound had been muffled by the thick walls of Big Uncle’s mansion. In the morning, her worst fears were confirmed.

Throughout my childhood, the disease
fuh loh
was spoken of in hushed, secretive tones. It had a dreaded mystery about it, like leprosy in the Bible, and if you spoke its name too loudly, you might give it life. People who were not ill, buttested positive for the disease, were stranded in China, not allowed to immigrate. My mother once told me about a distant cousin who had been betrothed and, in spite of being healthy, had tested positive for the illness. When the prospective groom’s family found out, the marriage was cancelled. The girl was crushed and wept for weeks.
Fuh loh
could ruin your chances at happiness. What did it matter, my mother asked, that this sad girl was born in Canada, well-educated and from a wealthy family? When she finally married in her late thirties, people whispered that it was only because of her father’s money. Why else would someone take “tainted goods”?

Fuh loh
was tuberculosis, and my mother’s
thoh
was very sick with it. Not long after my mother’s return to Canton, her
thoh
died.

My mother closed my photo album and picked up a skein of wool from a basket on the floor. She loosened the skein, fitted it over the back of a chair and started to coil the yarn into balls for knitting. When I picked up another skein to fit over another chair, she asked if I had finished my homework.
Yes, yes
, I answered, bristling with impatience over what I felt to be excessive concern. My father was still at the ironing table, now bent over his abacus, tallying the cost of laundry supplies. I could hear the gentle clicking of beads as he slid them up and down on the rungs.

“My
thoh
was a lucky woman, even though she died in her thirties,” my mother said to me. My photo album was still triggering memories, ones that I had heard many times before. “She died before the hateful Japanese invaded. She never knew anything but comfort and wealth. Not like me, always unlucky. Born under the wrong signs. It doesn’t matter how smart you are or how hard you work. The things I’ve seen … Life was never the same without my
thoh.
When Big Uncle brought her back to the family home as his bride, I was three or four years old. I was six when my own mother died. So you see, it was really my
thoh
who raised me and Little Aunt. And after she died my brother became very cold. I knew I wasn’t wanted. But it wasn’t all my brother’s fault. It was because of Foy Hoo”—
-fat woman.

“You never liked Foy Hoo, did you?” I said.

“Nobody liked Foy Hoo,” answered my mother without missing a beat. “She had designs on my brother as soon as
she started working for him. She was just a servant girl, no one special. You wouldn’t think a man who’d passed the Imperial Examinations could be so easily manipulated, would you? Foy Hoo tried to make things look accidental. Running into my brother in the hall, those tight dresses she wore. But I saw through her. That’s why she didn’t like me. She knew my
thoh
was dying. She was such a schemer. I saw those secret glances between my brother and her. I once caught them together in an embrace, but they didn’t see me. I never told my
thoh;
I didn’t have to. Even though she was sick, she knew what was happening.

“Once she walked into the kitchen and saw Foy Hoo sitting at the table, sharing tea with my brother. The two of them were laughing and talking, their heads close together, fingertips touching. My
thoh
was so angry that she picked up a pair of chopsticks and hurled them, knocking over a cup. That woman got up right away and fetched a cloth to mop up the spill. ‘Look at her,’ my
thoh
said, ‘instincts like a low-class servant.’ A low-class servant, that’s what my
thoh
called her.”

My mother finished coiling her skein into a ball and threw it in a basket with the others before loosening another one. I was taken aback at the force of her toss. After all these years, she was still angry with her brother for his betrayal.

“You couldn’t fool my
thoh.
She saw the look that woman exchanged with her husband. And Big Uncle pretending he was baffled by his wife’s anger. He was just having a cup of tea. What was wrong with that? But my
thoh
knew better. She saw through that Foy Hoo.

“My
thoh
turned out to be right. Not long after she died, Big Uncle took Foy Hoo as a wife. How could he so soon after his first wife’s death?
Tseee!
I was more faithful to her memory than he. Can you imagine, I cared more than her husband? And Foy Hoo, that lifeless woman, a mere servant in the house! Unlike my
thoh
, smart and educated. To be replaced by a servant girl. Foy Hoo never liked me, but I didn’t care. It was still somewhere to live.”