The Year of Finding Memory (28 page)

When my father started to sponsor family members to Canada, he asked for Mr. Ward’s help with negotiating the maze of immigration bureaucracy. Mr. Ward had died before I arrived in Allandale, but my father spoke fondly of this man who had taken the time to help him fill out forms and to buy money orders to send to China. When his friend died, my father bought a wreath for his funeral—a gesture of profound respect and generosity from a man who deprived himself of even the smallest luxury.

The friendship with the Ward family continued after Mr. Ward’s death, and a few days after my mother and I arrived in Allandale, Mr. Ward’s son and his wife visited the laundry. They took me to Sunday school and enrolled me at the local public school, and on Saturdays I watched television with their daughter, who was several years older than I was. Just before we moved to Acton, they came to the laundry to say
goodbye; Mrs. Ward was crying. She gave my father a letter to give to the teacher at my new school. Each summer they made the long drive to fetch me and take me to their cottage near Kempenfelt Bay. During those weeks, I played in the water, hiked in the woods and memorized the English names of wildflowers, birds and trees. Mr. and Mrs. Ward laughed a lot; they never fought.

NINETEEN

M
y mother often spoke fondly about a family friend she called
Brother
Mau. Earlier in the day, Jeen had told me that
Brother
Mau and First Brother Hing had been students in my mother’s school. I’d had no idea of that. Not only did my father hire my mother, but she had taught his oldest son. This was a part of family lore, Jeen told me. She shook her head in amazement at my ignorance.

Brother
Mau had not been smart in school, but my mother had liked him because of his sweet temper and his willingness to help others and work. He had died several years before I returned to China. After we left my parents’ apartment in Chong Hong See we drove to Ning Kai Lee. Mau’s two sons and his grandsons were waiting for us on the paved forecourt at the village entrance. They led us down a narrow path between the grey brick houses toward my father’s house. Although we were not accompanied by a large contingent from the village this year, everyone we met knew who we were and why we had come.

I stopped every so often to glance at the rooftops. The ornamental dragons were still there, jutting out into graceful curves beyond the peaks of the roofs, guarding the inhabitants against evil spirits, so different from Kung’s village. Again I felt thankful that poverty had at least shielded these buildings from the fervour of the Red Guards.

The squatter still lived in the front room of my father’s house. Clothes were still hanging on a rod, suspended from the ceiling. The same bicycle was propped against a wall. But the room felt more cluttered. Perhaps there was an extra chair or two. The middle room remained unused. My nieces were arranging bowls of fruit, cooked meat and cups of tea on a table in front of the altar. I was still shocked by the primitive surroundings. Once more, I felt a sadness in the air, and now that I’d seen the large apartment above the store in Cheong Hong See, it was almost crushing. The hole in the roof had been patched, at least, and I asked Michael to take a picture so my brothers could see the repair.

Jeen struck a match and lit the sticks of incense. She turned to Michael and me and gave each of us a bundle. I bowed three times before the shrine, hoping the ancestors had remembered our offering from the year before. Once we finished, I gave each village relative a red envelope with fifty yuan for good luck. I had wanted to give them each a hundred, but Jeen and Kim had protested and said that was too much. We then left to walk around the village.

Brother
Mau’s oldest son was keen to show us his home. It was one of the few modern ones in Ning Kai Lee. With three floors, electricity and running water, it was a modest version of the house my cousin Kung had built outside Taishan. Oldest Son had been born after my mother left the village, yet he knew all about my parents. Once again, I heard the stories about the schoolteacher with the elevated background who’d married the learned Gold Mountain guest. Oldest Son took us to his balcony. We emerged to see all the neighbouring rooftops beneath us; they were so close I felt as if I could hop from one clay-tiled roof to another. All around us in the hazy distance were more, similarly compact villages, surrounded by the same green fields and low hills. After chatting with us for a while, Oldest Son reminded Kim that his mother wanted to meet us.

Kim led me through the narrow alleys back to the centre of the village. Michael and my other relatives headed out into the adjacent rice fields. Kim and I arrived to find a woman in her eighties sitting on a low, wooden stool next to her door. Though her house was smaller, Widow Mau’s grey brick home was not unlike the one that belonged to my family. Outside the entrance to her home lay a pile of sticks, fuel for the brick cooking hearth in her kitchen.

Widow Mau was a stout woman; her grey hair, still abundant, was parted at the side and combed behind her ears. Her hands looked large, and the soles of her bare feet were rough and calloused. And like my sister and every Chinese woman of a similar vintage, she was dressed in pyjama-style pants and a loose blouse. She knew who I was and immediately
greeted me with the familiar refrain about that mythical couple: my clever mother who was the best schoolteacher the village had ever had and my respected father, a man of great learning and much generosity. She told me that
Brother
Mau and First Brother had been students together in my mother’s class, then added with a chuckle that Mau had not been good at school but my mother had been fond of him nonetheless. I listened and nodded politely, even though Jeen had just told me all of this.

After the birth of each of his children, Mau had written to my mother in Canada and asked her to bestow a name. And while my parents were alive, they sent money at every Chinese New Year. The widow said that my father was a good man. He’d sent money to many of the poorest families in the village. She then shook her head in disgust and started talking about my father’s brother, Second Uncle, who had gone to Canada with my father in 1914. “Did you know that Second Uncle came home from the Gold Mountain only once?” I shook my head and she continued. “Fathered a daughter here and then never came back. And he never sent money home. Did you know that it was your father who sent money to Second Uncle’s wife and daughter? Now Second Uncle had bought farmland, and with the harvest, his wife and daughter were able to live, but your father’s money made life easier for them.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “People say that in the Gold Mountain, he had taken a
gwei poh
, a ghost woman, that he spent all his money on her. He wasn’t like your father, the best man to come out of this village. There was no one better than your
father.” Mau’s widow wagged her finger at me to emphasize this last point.

“Yes, yes, it’s true,” said Kim, nodding her head.

My mouth had gone dry with listening to this story. All my life the man I’d heard referred to as Second Uncle had been a mystery. By the time my mother and I arrived in Canada in 1955, my father’s older brother had been dead for almost ten years, and apart from his place of birth, I knew almost nothing about him. My mother sometimes whispered to me that my father’s brother had gone crazy and ended up in an insane asylum. The few times that my father did speak to me about his older brother, the words always caught in his throat and his face took on a look of unbearable sadness. While Mau’s widow spoke, I kept thinking of my father. With gut-wrenching loyalty, he had kept all these unflattering things about his brother to himself.

I had always imagined Second Uncle as a tragic figure, going mad far from home in a cold, lonely land, where every day offered nothing but drudgery. Even after hearing what Mau’s widow had to say about him, I still found Second Uncle’s story moving. Whether the rumour about him and a
gwei poh
is true or not I will never know. And if it is true, I pray that he at least found comfort in that intimacy, however brief it might have been. I was almost glad to hear about his “selfish” behaviour. To me, my father was
too
generous,
too
selfless,
too
duty-bound. He left nothing for himself.

Mau’s widow could tell that I was intrigued and seemed quite pleased that she could tell me something I did not
know. She continued:
Brother
Mau’s father was my father’s oldest brother, and he remained in China while my father and Second Uncle went to the Gold Mountain. This made
Brother
Mau and me cousins.
Why had my parents never told me about this older brother, who would have been First Uncle?
I knew that my father had other siblings, sisters who had married out of the village, but I had never heard about a brother other than Second Uncle. I noticed that Kim was silent, smiling with her lips clamped together, almost grimacing. Something was not right.

A few days later she would tell me that she’d checked out the Widow Mau’s story with her mother. Jook had replied that
Brother
Mau’s father was not a blood brother to my father. He’d been adopted, to replace the oldest brother, who had died, and thus Mau’s children were not true relatives. Kim was upset that Mau’s widow had lied and that I’d given her money as a relative. But I didn’t care. These people had so little. To them I must have seemed like a millionaire. I couldn’t blame Mau’s widow, for the sake of her own family, for wanting to establish closer kinship with me, a modern-day Gold Mountain guest.

The sun was still high in the sky. The temperatures were comfortable, without the humidity of the previous year. After Kim and I left Widow Mau, I found Michael and the others on the paths between the rice fields surrounding the village. My husband was bent over, examining some
leaves. Bing and Kung were standing next to him, gesturing, obviously trying to explain something about the plant. Michael suddenly grinned, and I knew that they’d managed to communicate.

By North American standards, the fields were small, but they were intensely cultivated. Kim told me the growing season continued year-round. With the others following, Jook caught up to us and took my hand. Together we walked from one field to another, as I had wanted to do last year. I turned and looked back at my father’s little village. Yes, this community was impoverished, but under the intense blue sky, the simple grey-brick houses and the surrounding sea of lush, green rice paddies seemed like a picture composed for a postcard. There were no modern buildings, no electricity poles or wires in sight. It could not have been much different when my father was a boy. In the distance, low hills were catching the late afternoon sun. My niece Jeen pointed to them. “Over there, that’s where your grandparents are buried and your First Mother.”

My First Mother? What was Jeen talking about? I was about to say something, and then … Of course. In Chinese culture, if you belonged to the same family, you would always have a title that would explain your relationship. The woman buried in those hills was my father’s first wife, and therefore
my
first mother. It made no difference
who
my biological mother was. First Wife would always be number one.

I wanted to rush over, to climb that hill and visit First Mother’s grave, but Jeen put a hand on my shoulder and said
it was not advisable. Grave-visiting ceremonies traditionally took place in the spring, and such an event had to be carefully planned. Jeen needed to look at the calendar, find an auspicious date and make plans for a proper offering. Jook nodded in agreement. I would have to wait.

TWENTY