Chapter Five. the White Man Pays Respects
CHAPTER FIVE
THE WHITE MAN PAYS RESPECTS
Adeline considered how to dress for her first dinner with the entire Hwang family.
Until now she had been allowed isolation on pretext of shock and grief.
But tonight the older boys were back from university and national service respectively, and Mr. Hwang had called for a proper family dinner before the funeral started the next day; Genevieve had been overseeing the cooking all afternoon.
Looking put together would work in Adeline’s favor, as the outsider who needed what leverage she could produce.
She ended up in two braids and a blue cotton dress.
It made her look a bit like a bad Chinese Dorothy, but it couldn’t be helped.
The Hwangs had four children. For the past two days, Adeline had been sharing the house with their daughter, Cecilia, who attended St. Mary’s two years below Adeline, and their youngest son, Gerald, who went to St. Andrew’s like his father and two older brothers before him.
Now, seated between Marcus, the university student, and James, the serviceman with a fresh buzz cut, Adeline remembered that Genevieve and her mother had joked about her marrying one of them.
She ate her pork and vegetables with a silent grudge as Marcus began gossiping about student protests at the Chinese university about some English adoption policies, and James updated his parents on his rehearsal schedule for the upcoming National Day parade.
Every time she swallowed her throat stung a little, and a couple of times picked at the scab under her chin where Tian had cut her.
“Do you have everything for the wake? Need anything?” Mr. Hwang asked his wife. “I can send some of the guys to help.”
“We’re okay, dear,” Genevieve said, ladling more soup into James’s bowl. “The Sons are coming down.”
Genevieve Hwang. Adeline had spent the past few days ushered around by her and thus got the chance to study her mother’s partner more closely than she ever had.
Unlike Fan Tai Tai or even Adeline’s mother, whose well-to-do image had always been brittle, you could tell that this big house and the pearl earrings tucked under her elegant updo—even the English at the dinner table—were Genevieve’s natural set.
So, it seemed, were various undertakers, florists, caterers, and other funeral services.
Adeline had been left out of all the planning; it was the first time she was hearing any details.
“The Sons?” she asked quietly.
To her surprise, Mr. Hwang responded: “The Sons of Sago Lane; they’re an old clan that used to run the death houses for all the coolies in Chinatown.
Now they have a big funeral business. They oversaw my grandfather’s funeral; he still swore by their practices.
According to my wife, your mother did, too. ”
“They’re kongsi?”
“No, no, no, no. They’re not gangsters, they run a proper business.
Although of course I’m sure they take money on the side to clean up all the crime, too.
You know, back in my day”—this elicited eye rolls from Cecilia and James—“if you were a Chinese man in business, you had to be dealing with the kongsi. They were so influential—I tell you, last time, even the politicians had to have their backing. After the war everyone was involved with a clan. Now they’re just thugs.
The police know how to deal with them.” He chewed conspiratorially.
“You know, I was even kidnapped by them once.”
Gerald spluttered. “What?”
“I didn’t tell any of you?” Mr. Hwang pointed at Adeline with his chopsticks. “Actually, your mother saved me.” Now he grinned like a man who had her full attention. “I was twenty-three, before we got married—”
“Twenty-four,” Genevieve said.
“Ah, same thing. A gang called the Blackhill Brothers wanted to extort money from my father. I was on my way home at night when they forced me into a car at gunpoint. A real gun, you know. I saw my life flash before my eyes. They kept me for six days in a room with no light. Apparently, your mother lived in their territory and had seen them moving about … She reported it to the police, and imagine our surprise that she was Genevieve’s childhood friend!
Of course my father rewarded her once the police found me.
And the gang members responsible were all executed. ”
James was positively agog. “Ba, that’s so cool.”
“What’s cool?” Marcus whapped his brother’s hand. “You think kidnapping is cool?”
Mr. Hwang was looking for Adeline’s reaction, though.
It was clear that someone hadn’t told him the whole story—she thought she knew how her mother had gotten that information, and it had nothing to do with living in Blackhill territory.
She glanced at Genevieve, who was studiously tearing apart the fish.
“What was the gang like?” Adeline asked instead.
Mr. Hwang looked pleased by her interest. He dropped his voice. “Have you heard how gangsters have magic?”
Adeline thought briefly about letting him talk even more, but decided she’d rather get to the point and nodded, to his disappointment.
“Yes, well. The Blackhill Brothers ran rackets around the quarries; I guess they worked there once. But they were able to sense metal. They took me out of the car into the jungle, into the hills. The lead man would close his eyes every few steps. I thought he was falling asleep. But then he stopped, bent down, and dug in the soil to unearth a metal grate. It was a tunnel! The whole hill was full of tunnels and caves. They brought me underground into the basement of a house, and that’s where I was kept. They fed me bread and water.”
“But the gang members,” Adeline said, unable to help herself, “what were they like?”
Mr. Hwang frowned, as though she were herself unearthing a tunnel he’d left buried.
“Well … normal thugs, most of them. But their leader was … Have you seen a mole? No? You know what it is? They live underground, so they don’t see very well.
They have tiny eyes like pinholes and their noses twitch …
He reminded me of them … Fellow moved quicker in the dark. ”
“Did he have a lot of tattoos?”
“He was covered in them.” Mr. Hwang looked askance. “You’re very interested in the kongsi, ah.”
“Just learning about how my mother grew up.” Mr. Hwang nodded sympathetically. How could he not? “Their leader, he was executed?”
“Hung like his followers. Zero tolerance, that’s how we progress as a country.” But he looked unsettled for the first time, drawn somewhere into the depths of a lost memory. Perhaps he imagined the man twitching, still, at the end of the rope.
Afterward, while the maids cleared the dishes, Adeline volunteered to help Genevieve cut fruit for dessert. “No one told me that’s how you met my mother.”
“That’s not how we met.” Genevieve chopped the papaya with a thud.
“My mother swore by her mother’s qipaos.
Only person she would ever buy from. So I grew up visiting that shop a lot, and we became friends.
During the war, I knew her family didn’t have enough rations, so I shared some with her as mine had plenty.
Then one day we went back and the shop was simply boarded up.
Later I learned your grandfather died in the war and her mother had died from illness and heartbreak, and she had run away from home.
I grew up and met my husband, and then didn’t see her again until the kidnapping. ”
“It was Red Butterfly’s information, not hers.”
“Yes, of course. I’d kept track of her and knew she’d become influential there.
I knew the police weren’t going to find him easily without inside knowledge, and at the time, the Blackhill Brothers were known for being brutal and desperate.
So I asked for her help—and she gave it.
Red Butterfly’s information led to his recovery, and the Blackhill’s entire leadership was executed.
In exchange she asked for my help to start a business. ”
“You never told your husband?”
Genevieve smiled wryly. “There are things you don’t tell your husband. You’ll learn that when you’re older.”
“I’m not marrying your sons.”
Genevieve gave a short, incredulous laugh.
She braced herself against the counter and tilted her head at Adeline as though trying to see a different angle of her.
“Don’t worry. James and Marcus both have girlfriends now.
Although who knows how long James’s will last now that he’s away at camp every week.
And”—unexpectedly, she wiped her hands off on her dress and cupped Adeline’s face—“I think you would be too much for them, Adeline.”
Adeline blinked. She had heard she was too much before, but it was the first time it had ever sounded like a compliment.
She suddenly felt guilty. She’d always thought Genevieve the frilly, airy counterpart to her mother’s work—the tycoon’s wife giving them charity and taking credit for the cameras.
Now she thought that assumption had been wrong, too.
How many other truths did this week plan to undo?
Genevieve touched her wrists to her eyes and shook her head. “Go bring out that plate, and then you should get ready for bed. We should be there early tomorrow.”
“I don’t have a picture of her.” It had occurred to Adeline earlier, when she was thinking about the funeral.
The few framed pictures her mother owned had gone up in flames.
It was surprising how grief could find new places to strike, and with it came anger.
Someone had not only killed her mother but destroyed everything they had owned together.
And she was just expected to go on with her life?
The police had ruled it an accident: faulty wiring, a burner left on.
Her mother had a sixth sense for even lingering embers across the house.
There was no world in which her mother accidentally let a flame run so big it killed her.