Chapter Three
Before she became my mother, Mama was called Lei Yuk Fong, and to all appearances she was a sensible, ordinary girl.
The eldest daughter of a farmer, she grew up in the countryside and was neither beautiful nor well educated.
Her lips were as thin as compass needles, she had wide feet and caterpillar eyebrows, and while she was competent with an abacus, she was more comfortable slaughtering a chicken than reading a letter.
Her father didn’t believe in educating his daughters.
He was a stern man with stern beliefs, set on the faith that through his hard work his grandsons would become gentlemen instead of farmers.
Though he wasn’t nearsighted, he wore brass spectacles to project authority, and his greatest pride was his long waterfall of a beard, which he trimmed daily with meticulous care.
After his wife died, he set my mother and her sisters to work on their farm.
There, in the frigid North, Mama grew up harvesting cabbage and eating it with every meal—boiled, steamed, pickled, and braised.
She revered siu choy as the backbone of her family; it had ensured their survival during hard times and had brought her and her sisters closer as children.
Even years later, in middle age, she considered it a jewel among vegetables.
She’d chew its pearl-white ribs and emerald leaves slowly and deliberately, her eyes brimming with unspoken memories.
By the time Mama was fourteen, her father had become moderately prosperous from exporting his produce to Korea.
Life would have been splendid for him had the years continued on as before.
But with the political unrest escalating around Nanjing, he moved his family farther south and settled in a village west of Jiangmen—only a few hours from Tunglam.
There, he strived to find good matches for his children once they came of age. My mother was the first to benefit.
Old Lei Senior had heard of the Ha family.
The Has were among the oldest clans in Guangdong, whose fortunes had dwindled over the generations, thanks to a series of lazy and weak-minded sons.
In spite of this, their name still carried respect, and my father became determined to marry my mother into the family.
His proposal was refused. The Ha matriarch—my Ah Ma—would not consider such an unsophisticated girl as a wife for her youngest son, the favorite.
Lei Yuk Fong had big feet and shoulders like an ox, she presented herself in public wearing her brothers’ clothes, and though she was appropriately soft spoken, her northern accent grated my Ah Ma’s sensitive ears. Unsuitable.
Old Lei Senior was persistent. By nature he was a miserly man, but when he wanted something, he would defy his habits to see it done.
He went into Jiangmen and purchased a lavish gift of gold jewelry and French wine, and he brought his daughter to a tailor to have a cheongsam made, and paid a cobbler to fit her with proper shoes.
He warned her not to say anything strange, and if she couldn’t look anyone in the eye, to keep her gaze down.
Then he met with the Ha matriarch once more.
His timing was good. The day before, Ah Ma had quarreled viciously with her two elder sons, whose wives showed more interest in going to nightclubs than in extending the bloodline.
So when Old Lei came with his gifts and his daughter, whose appearance had improved considerably, Ah Ma decided it might be best for her youngest son to take a more traditionally minded wife.
Lei Yuk Fong wasn’t so bad, Ah Ma allowed—she was tall and docile, a girl of few words, and she had the ideal hips for childbearing. The promise of a dowry helped.
Mama was born in the year of the monkey, and Baba was a dragon. A good match, it was declared. They married when she turned seventeen, and she came to live with him in Tunglam.
My parents were not a good match. Mama never lost the frugality of a farmer’s daughter, while Baba had been raised by Ah Ma to think he was richer than he really was.
This made him vain and extravagant, and he harbored petty grudges that changed as often as the handkerchief in his pocket.
Every evening, he invited his friends to the house.
They’d stay up until dawn smoking opium and playing mahjong if they were still lucid.
Should Mama dare complain—should she be anything less than the perfect hostess, Baba humiliated her in front of his friends.
He’d invite them to heckle her, and he’d pinch her buttocks and bemoan that making love to her was like sleeping with a fish.
It was a miracle Mama didn’t hate him. Then again, she was a country girl inexperienced with men, while my Baba was so charming he could coax an ant out of a sugar jar.
He was handsome, too, sometimes mistaken for a movie star when he went into the city—which wasn’t too regularly.
He resented his older brothers for leaving him behind with Ah Ma while they sought their fortunes in Guangzhou.
His resentment would spur him to leave us too, one day, for Hong Kong.
In the mornings, while Baba slept off the previous night’s revelry, Ah Ma summoned Mama to keep her and Ah Ma’s daughter—my Gu Ma—company.
Monkey-born women were supposed to be vivacious, but Mama was nothing of the sort.
Her reserve bored them, so they entertained themselves by deriding her for the dowdy jackets she wore, for chewing with her mouth open, for wearing her hair in an austere braid.
But for all her plainness, Mama had beautiful eyes.
Even Baba thought so. They were dark and smooth like the finest clay, framed by shutters of thick, long lashes.
And when she laughed, which wasn’t as often as she deserved, their corners crinkled into the points of a star.
Things got better after she gave birth to my brothers.
Dai Gor and Yi Gor were born one year apart, and they were both plump and healthy boys, constantly hungry.
They suckled at Mama’s breasts with a relentless greed that would have drained any new mother, but Mama bore it without complaint, and Ah Ma praised her sturdy physique.
Having two male children established Mama’s position in the household, and with her newfound freedom, she settled herself in the kitchen.
She’d always been a good cook, and her food gradually won her favor with the Ha family. Sadly, none of it would last.
Do not forget, I said my mother had a secret.
She was twenty-three when she became pregnant again.
All was well until the winter before the baby was due.
At night, Mama fell into alternating fits of screaming and weeping.
She lashed out at Baba when he came to her bed, shouting obscenities and trying to strangle him.
When the servants came to restrain her, she slashed at them with scissors.
In the day, she’d be fine again, as though nothing had happened.
Word spread that a demon had possessed her. Although the Ha family suppressed such tittle-tattle to save face, they too began to suspect there was something off about their youngest daughter-in-law.
An exorcist was hired. He found a raised red spot on Mama’s back that was the size of a quail egg and declared it a mark of bad luck.
When he tried to carve it out, Mama threw an oil lamp at him, making a mark of her own on his face.
After that, she was confined to her room, her limbs tied to the bed.
All windows were shuttered, the maids burned incense to cloud her senses, and the doctors encouraged Baba to smoke opium beside her bed so the vapors would dull her mind.
In the spring, she delivered twin girls, both stillborn.
Ah Ma dismissed the incident as a piddling misfortune, less terrible since the babies had been girls, but the loss affected Mama deeply.
Her violent episodes ended, and she became even more reticent than before.
Day after day she sat alone in her room by the window.
Numb to the world, she barely slept and instead drank tea, so much that her teeth were stained brown, and the whites of her eyes turned gray.
Around this time, Mama became a Catholic. How exactly it happened was a mystery, but her new faith calmed her. Rather than passing her days in stupor, she recited verses from the Bible and prayed.
Soon my father returned to her bed at night, and a year later, I arrived in this world.
I was born the morning after a lunar eclipse, and unlike my brothers, I didn’t holler as soon as I left my mother’s womb.
I was a scrawny blue thing with weak lungs and a sickly complexion.
At the look of me, Ah Ma predicted that I wouldn’t survive the night.
But Mama held me tightly, and according to my aunts, she snarled at anyone who tried to take me away.
Obviously, I lived.
I was named Yut Ying, meaning “shadow of the moon.” Mama thought shadow sounded unlucky, and the Ying she called me instead became a play on words, from baby when I was little, to brave when I was older.
Baba, on the other hand, called me his little bengyun, his mooncake mold—because everyone said I was a copy of him, with the same crescent mouth and scoop in our nose bridge.
Since my brothers took after Mama, my resemblance to him delighted him, and he’d bounce me on his lap while he smoked in the den, showing me off to his friends.
For most of my childhood, Baba was the world to me. That made him my first disappointment.
I was four when he left. The sun was high that day, and even the ants had the sense to stay in the shade—though in hindsight, maybe they were hiding from the rain that was to come.
I was squatting in the courtyard, nursing the mosquito bites between my toes.
Yi Gor was bouncing a ball, and Dai Gor wanted Baba to fix his bicycle’s flat tire, but Baba was shouting at Mama.
Through the window I could see Mama twisting her hands, her knuckles pale as teeth, her eyes red as though she were trying not to cry.
At last the door opened, and Dai Gor sauntered up to Baba with his bicycle. Baba scowled. He had a headache, he said, and he needed to nap. He didn’t pat me on the head when I brought him his pipe and wished him a good rest.
While he slept, rain poked out of the clouds and flooded the courtyard. When evening came, I called Baba to dinner, only to find that he was gone.
Mama said nothing, but she took away his bowl and his chopsticks, placed them back in the cupboard, and latched the doors shut. That was all we needed to know.
A few months later, the Japanese invaded China.