The Jade Peony

During the early mornings, in the 1920s and ’30s, nuns came out regularly from St. Paul’s Mission to help clean and take the bodies away. In the crowded rooming houses of Chinatown, until morning came, living men slept in cots and on floors beside dead men.

Could we help out with Wong Bak? Perhaps a meal now and then, a few visits with the family…? asked the officer from the Tong Association. It turned out that Poh-Poh indeed knew Wong Bak when they were in China, more than thirty years ago.

“Old-timers know all the old-timers,” Third Uncle Lew said, taking inventory of his warehouse stock with an abacus. “Why not? The same bunch came over from the same damn districts,” he laughed.“We all pea-pod China men!”

And now, tonight, Wong Bak was coming for dinner.

I looked up past Stepmother’s swelling stomach, at the kitchen counter beside the sink with the pots and pans. Father had splurged on groceries: a bare long-necked chicken’s head, freshly killed, hung out of the bag he had carried home. Poh-Poh also unwrapped a fresh fish, its eyes still shiny. Once it was cooked, Kiam and Jung would fight over who would get to suck on the hard-as-marble calcified fish eyes. I wanted the chicken feet. I wondered which part Wong Bak would want.

Father was worried about our meeting him for the first time. Wong Bak, I sensed from Father’s over-preparation and nervousness, was indeed not an ordinary human being. He was an elder, so every respect must be paid to him, and especially as he knew the Old One herself. Grandmother must not lose face; we must not fail in our hospitality. Excellent behaviour on the part of my two brothers and me would signal our family respect and honour for the old ways.
Father looked at his watch and put down his writing brush.

“Let us talk a moment,” he said to my brothers, and they left their game and stood before him. He told Kiam and Jung that Wong Bak might appear “very strange,” especially to me, as I was so young, and a girl, and therefore might be more easily frightened.

“Frightened?” Stepmother said.

My ears perked up.

Father answered that the boys, being boys, would not be as easily scared about you-know-what. He spoke in code to Stepmother but whispered details to Kiam first, then Jung, whose eyes widened. After the whispering, Father delivered to the three of us a stern lecture about respect and we must use the formal term Sin-saang, Venerable Sir, as if Wong Bak were a “teacher” to be highly respected, as much as the Old Buddha or the Empress of China.
Respect meant you dared not laugh at someone because they were “different”; you did not ask stupid questions or stare rudely. You pretended everything was normal. That was respect. Father tried to simplify things for my five-year-old brain. Respect was what I gave my Raggedy Ann doll. I knew respect.

“I don’t want you boys to stare at Wong Sin-saang’s face,” Father warned, which I thought was odd. Old people’s faces were all the same to me, wrinkled and craggy. “Wong Sinsaang’s had a very tough life.”

“We know how to behave,” First Brother Kiam insisted, waving the toy sword over the buck-toothed “WARLORD” nodding on the edge of the kitchen table. Jung poked his sword, bayonet-fashion, and two other heads nodded away, waiting for decapitation.

Third Uncle Lew had given Kiam the ENEMIES OF FREE CHINA game for his tenth birthday. Third Uncle had imported some samples from Hong Kong with the idea of selling them in Chinatown.Kiam read the game instructions written in English: “USE SWORD TO SMACK HEAD. COUNT POINTS. MOVE VICTORIOUS CHINESE AHEAD SAME NUMBER.”

The Warlord was one of three Enemy-of-China “heads.” The other two were a Communist and a Japanese soldier named Tojo. All three had ugly yellow faces, squashed noses and impossible buck teeth. It was a propaganda toy to encourage overseas Chinese fund-raising for Free China.

Watching Kiam and Jung jump up and down was far better than having them force me to play dumb games like Tarzan and Jane and Cheetah. Kiam had seen the picture Tarzan three times. Kiam got to be Tarzan; Jung, Cheetah; and I got to be Jane doing nothing. I embraced my Raggedy Ann and watched another swing of Jung’s sword Whack! take off Tojo’s head. Father said that Tojo, a Japanese, was in command of the plot to enslave China for the Japanese.

Whack! The third head went flying.

“Don’t forget,” Father repeated, thinking of the worst, “no staring at Wong Sin-saang’s face. No laughing.”

“Tell Liang-Liang,” said Jung, waving the wooden sword at me.“ She’ll stare at Wong Sin-saang’s face and behave like a brat.”

“Jook-Liang will be too shy,” Stepmother said. “I promise she’ll do nothing but run away. At five, I would.”

“Jook-Liang almost six,” Grandmother interjected. “She look. I look.”
Stepmother turned away. Jung swung. Whack!

“Liang-Liang’ll say something to Wong Sin-saang,”Kiam said.“She’ll say something about Wong Sin-saang’s face.”

“You will, won’t you, Liang-Liang?” Jung said, following First Brother’s cue to be superior at my expense.

I looked up at them through the flowered wall and tiny windows of my Eaton’s Toyland doll house. I put Tarzan’s Jane, whose doll legs would not bend, in the front room. At Sunday School, I had learned how all visitors, like the Lord Jesus, for example, and even Tarzan and his pet chimpanzee, Cheetah, should always politely knock first, before you invited them into the front room of your house. At Kingdom Church Kindergarten, I also learned to say the words “fart face,” and that upset Miss Bigley.

“Fart face,” I said.

Jung opened his mouth to reply. Kiam looked darkly at me.

“If you have eyes, stare,” Poh-Poh said to me. “Eyes for looking.”