The Year of Finding Memory (36 page)

Hardly a single day goes by without my thinking of my father and his suicide. For the most part these thoughts are fleeting, but sometimes they refuse to be pushed aside and chill me to the core. The word
why
rings in my head. I can still see him, the way he looked at that last lunch, a man eaten away by despair and humiliation. After I left their house, did my parents pick up their quarrelling? Was his final act a moment of selfish impulsiveness? An extension of that long-ago threat to remove his tongue? Or was it simply that his will to go on was exhausted. I can hear him still, after a fight with my mother, after an interminable day of ironing
lo fon
shirts, washing
lo fon
clothes, his voice dripping with bitterness, muttering to himself.
This
gow meng,
this dog life, this worthless
gow meng.

My father was an old man when he fitted that rope around his neck. Why could he not give us the gift of a peaceful ending? Was this his only way of making sure he would be remembered? Were we, his wife, his children, in some way culpable? I cannot forget my mother at his funeral, griefstricken. Was she thinking of their unhappy life together, their inability to reach out and comfort each other? Had she said something unforgivable to him on the day of his death? Or was it even deeper? Now that I’ve heard these stories about them when they first met, I cannot help but wonder if, for a short time, there was a moment when the future
held promise, when they might have been in love. At my father’s funeral, what was my mother really crying about? how love, transformed into contempt, had poisoned and wasted their lives? These unanswerable questions … These sad, unanswerable questions …

TWENTY-FOUR

M
iss Wong, our young, attractive travel agent, wore an unusual and rather garish top with her blue jeans. During our previous meetings at the Kaiping travel office, she had dressed in a style not unlike that of young women in the West. But today I found it hard not to be distracted by this dark red, silky tank top and her lacy, cream-coloured overblouse, which together created a garment that was halfway between lingerie and an ornate lampshade. But with Miss Wong’s help, Michael and I reserved an overnight train to Shanghai from Guangzhou and accommodation in Shanghai, Suzhou, Nanjing and Hangzhou. We’d be leaving the next day.

It was plain that Miss Wong and another young woman did all the work in that small office, while an older, but not yet middle-aged man (whom I presumed to be her boss) spent most of his time talking on the phone. By the time we’d completed our arrangements, Boss Man had put down the telephone receiver. He wished us a pleasant journey, then
asked where we were going. I listed the cities and told him that before the war, my mother had been to Nanking to attend school. Boss Man had been listening politely, but with the mention of studies in Nanking, his curiosity was suddenly piqued. He said that my mother must have been very smart to have pursued education in Nanking and that it was still regarded as a major centre of scholarship. Seventy years later and people were still impressed. My mother would have been pleased that I was basking in her former glory.

My mother always referred to the quilted jackets that Chinese people wore as being stuffed with
min.
Our final family dinner in Kaiping was at a restaurant called
Hong Min
, Red Kapok, and when Kim saw me looking at a picture of the kapok flower and seed on the wall, she confirmed my thoughts and told me that the filling for traditional Chinese jackets and quilts was made from the fluffy white down inside the seed pod of this plant. The
Hong Min
was her favourite restaurant, and when Michael and I said we wanted to host a farewell dinner, she suggested that we rent a private room with a TV at the Red Kapok. I had come to rely on Kim and Bing for so much. Once again, she took charge and chose each of the nine courses with care.

Fifteen people gathered around the table that evening. I knew each one by name, and knew something about most of them. One worked at the post office, one had a father who was ninety-four, one repaired small machines, one was
in university, one had a daughter living in Detroit, one was the family nuisance. But we were all together at that table, eating, talking and laughing. Michael took pictures of everyone in the room, in every possible combination. Afterwards, he hooked up his digital camera to the TV and showed the photographs he’d just taken. And we laughed some more.

Hours later, Michael and I sat in a taxi on our way back to the Ever Joint Hotel. The sky had turned dark as we drove along the river. I gazed out the window at the shiny black, watery surface shimmering in the moonlight. Our banquet had been a resounding success. Everyone would have left with a good memory. It had been a year since my first trip back to China, and in that year I had learned so much about the land of my birth and my family. Nevertheless, none of them knew the truth about my father. Several times I’d felt ready to tell my sister; she had a right to know. But each time something would constrict my throat, and my secret would stay inside me. What was the point? I asked myself. What was the point of destroying the image she held of her father as a powerful, confident man? In the depths of my soul, though, I knew that I was rationalizing my lack of courage. As hard as I tried, I could not rid myself of the shame that lurked inside me. I could not bring myself to utter the truth.

We were about to cross over the bridge that connected the city with the island where the hotel was located. Michael
was speaking to me, but I had been lost in my thoughts. “That was some dinner we had,” he repeated. “What do you think your father would have said if he could have seen you tonight?”

“He. …” The question did not surprise me, yet I hesitated, not knowing how to respond. For some unknown reason on that particular night, my husband’s innocent comment stirred up the grief and anger I’d so long ago buried, settled and smoothed over, roused it like silt from the bottom of a riverbed. Those emotions swirled and seeped, unbidden, into every molecule of my being.

When I was a child, my father used to invoke an old Chinese proverb.
The first generation plants the tree; the next generation enjoys the shade.
By the time I was a teenager, this little homily had been repeated so often that I simply dismissed it.
Yeah. Yeah. I know … the next generation. …
I was sick of being reminded of my good fortune and the terrible deprivations my parents had survived. I could only think about myself, how I could hardly wait to strike out on my own. But now.

I pressed my forehead against the glass and peered into the darkness. The moon was smaller than it had been a few nights ago, when I’d seen it at the orange grove. My body felt limp; I bit my lip and willed myself to speak clearly. “He would have wept,” I finally whispered. “He would have wept.” Michael reached over and held my hand.

What would my father have said? Would he have said that his
gow meng
, his dog life, was finally worth it? Would his tears at least have been tears of joy?

I was sitting next to First Brother’s widow in Lew’s apartment. Again, I watched Jeen roll the round table out to the centre of the living room. Michael was on the balcony with Bing, looking at Wei’s potted plants.

Later in the afternoon, we would leave for Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou and Nanjing before returning home to Canada. Jeen had insisted that we have a final lunch with her, Bing, Lew, Wei, and First Brother’s widow.

For our last meal together, my nephew had gone to even greater expense than usual: a plate of shrimp, a whole fish, vegetables stir-fried with black truffles, roasted duck. Jeen brought over a large bowl of steaming soup and set it down in the middle of the table. Wei started to ladle the broth into individual bowls. Lew was not only First Brother’s son, he was also the spirit son of the brother “who lived above my head.” He was my blood nephew and my spirit nephew, honouring the return of his aunt to the land of her birth.

I wondered when I might return to China. I thought of those green hills behind my father’s village and how the sun sparkled off them on the day we’d visited, how they beckoned me to walk up the gentle slope. Sitting at the table and seeing my relatives around me, I knew that my next trip would be soon.

Then Jeen spoke, as if she had read my mind. “The next time you come back,” she said, “I will pick an auspicious date and we will visit the graves. You can make an offering to First Mother.” I agreed.

She then told me that after my mother’s death, everyone in my family in China dressed in white mourning clothes and went back to Ning Kai Lee. They returned to the ancestral home and made an offering of cooked meat, sweet biscuits, tea and fruit in front of the shrine. They burned spirit money to bribe the evil spirits in the afterlife so my parents would have safe passage. Each person lit candles and sticks of incense, bowed three times and prayed to the ancestors, requesting their protection and blessing. Afterwards, they walked to the stream that flowed beside the village, and there they performed another ceremony and sang song after song, calling and calling the spirits of my father and my mother, over lakes, Prairies and mountains, across the deep Pacific, all the way back to their home.
Yes.
Their spirits were here in China where they belonged, a place where they might grasp the happiness that had eluded them in life.

I dipped my spoon into my bowl of hot soup. The broth was delicious, the goodness warming my heart.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The one thing that my parents agreed upon throughout their difficult life together was their love for me. I am forever grateful.