Falling Leaves Return to Their Roots Page 5

  I remember watching the various paper images burning furiously and the smoke curling up and believing it would all regroup somewhere in the sky in the form of articles for the exclusive use and pleasure of Grandmother.

  Our relatives and friends then followed us home and a lengthy and elaborate meal was served. Afterwards, we children were sent out to the garden to play. Lydia set up a makeshift urn. We manufactured paper stoves, beds and tables and began our own funeral for Grandmother. Soon the urn, which was a wooden flower pot, started to burn. Ye Ye came out in a fury, turned on the faucet and drenched us and our funeral pyre. We were sent to bed, but the incident helped to dissipate the dread and gloom of the last two days, and we felt that Grandmother was going to be happy in the other world.

  Far away in Shanghai, Father grieved deeply. He could not accept that his beloved mother had died when she was just fifty-five. From then on, he wore only black neckties in honour of her memory.

  The funeral marked the end of an era. We did not know it, but the carefree years of childhood were over.

  CHAPTER 6

  Jia Chou Bu Ke Wai Yang

  Family Ugliness Should Never be Aired in Public

  One day in August 1943, about six weeks after Grandmother’s death, Lydia, Gregory, Edgar and I were taken to the railway station with our bags. There was a long line of carriages waiting at a platform with the placard ‘To Shanghai’.

  In a first-class compartment marked ‘Soft Beds’, we found Father dressed in black, sitting by himself next to the window. We were very much surprised because though we knew he was ‘missing’, none of us had been told that he had returned. His eyes were red, and he had been crying.

  Father had come specially to escort us to Shanghai. Ye Ye, Aunt Baba and Susan would remain in Tianjin for two more months to observe the traditional Buddhist hundred-day mourning period for Grandmother. James, who was recuperating from measles, would stay behind too and travel with them.

  The train journey from Tianjin to Shanghai took two days and one night. Along the way, we stopped at numerous stations where Father bought snack food from hawkers who flocked around. We feasted on tea eggs, barbecued chicken wings, smoked fish, man tou (steamed bread) and fresh fruit. It was extremely hot and humid. Father left all the windows in our compartment open. I slept in an upper bunk above Father’s bed and at night dreamt of being sucked out of the window. I woke up crying for Aunt Baba as our train rushed southwards.

  On arrival, Father took us to the house he had purchased. It was situated in a ‘long tang’ (a complex of houses), deep in the heart of the French Concession. Our long tang consisted of seventy closely packed residences built in the same style, surrounded by a communal wall. On each side, three narrow alleys opened on to a central main lane ending in bustling Avenue Joffre, now called Huai Hai Road. Our three-storeyed home was built in the 1920s. It had Bauhaus features and a simplicity which evoked Art Deco lines. There was a roof terrace as well as a small garden in front, enclosed by a seven-foot wall. Guests entered through a wrought-iron gate into the garden. This was neatly landscaped with a small lawn, flowering camellia bushes and a magnolia tree with wonderfully fragrant blooms. Tucked away in one corner was the wooden dog house in which Jackie, Father’s ferocious German shepherd, slept. Against the wall was a picturesque well where watermelons held in string baskets tied to a rope were cooled and stored in summer.

  Stone steps led up to French windows which opened into the living-room on the ground floor. This room was formally furnished with Burgundy-red velvet couches, matching velvet curtains and a Tianjin carpet partially covering a teak parquet floor. The wallpaper was striped with a raised velvet napping to match the couch and drapes. White lace antimacassars covered the headrests and the arms of the chairs. In the centre of the room was an imitation Louis XVI coffee table.

  The dining-room to the left had large bow windows and a pleasant view of the garden. It was furnished with an oval dining table surrounded by cane-backed chairs. There was a sideboard and a refrigerator.

  At the rear of the house were the kitchen, bathroom, servants’ quarters and garage. We children were required to enter and leave the house through the back door, which opened on to an alleyway formed on one side by the walled gardens of neighbouring homes.

  Upstairs on the first floor, Father and Niang occupied the best room. Besides a large double bed and an ornately carved dressing-table and mirror, it contained an alcove which overlooked the garden and served as a sitting area. James was to nickname their bedroom the ‘Holy of Holies’. It was separated by a bathroom from the ‘antechamber’, Franklin’s and Susan’s bedroom, which opened on to a balcony from which Franklin often threw food or toys down to Jackie prowling below.

  When we first arrived from Tianjin, we, the ‘have-nots’, were relegated to the second floor. Ye Ye had his own room with a balcony. Aunt Baba and I shared a room, my three brothers another. It was tacitly understood that we, the second-class citizens, were forbidden to set foot in the antechamber or the Holy of Holies. However, ‘they’, the first-floor residents, roamed our quarters at will.

  In the beginning, Lydia was also assigned to ‘our floor’. Later she was given a room on the first floor, ‘their floor’, and went over partially to ‘their side’.

  My new school, Sheng Xin (Sacred Heart) primary school, was one and a half miles from home. On the first day, Cook took me on the handlebars of his bicycle on the way to market. Ye Ye and Aunt Baba had not yet arrived from Tianjin. In their absence, no one remembered to pick me up.

  When school was let out, I saw all the other first-graders being greeted by their anxious mothers at the gate. I remember the interminable wait and my mounting panic as I watched my classmates disperse from sight, each clutching her mother’s hand. Finally, I was the only one left. Too embarrassed to return to school, I hesitantly strode into the Shanghai streets. The further I wandered, the thicker the crowds became. The pavements swarmed with pedestrians, coolies carrying large loads on bamboo poles, hawkers, stall-holders and beggars, some of them legless, blind and grotesquely deformed, banging tin cups on the ground for a hand-out. Everyone was going somewhere. Everyone had a destination except me. I wandered desperately for miles in search of a familiar landmark. I was hopelessly lost. I did not know my home address.

  In those lawless days, children were often kidnapped and disappeared into the bowels of Shanghai. They were sold as ya tou (girl slaves), sometimes to brothels. As darkness fell, hunger and fear gripped me. I found myself hovering in front of a brightly lit dim sum shop, drooling over the dumplings, noodles, roast ducks and barbecued pork displayed in the window. The proprietress came out, glanced at my brand new school uniform and asked, ‘Are you meeting your mother here?’ Too terrified to answer, I lowered my head. ‘Come in!’ she said, and I followed.

  Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw it: my lifeline! The telephone! Our new Shanghai phone number had stuck in my mind: 79281. My brother Gregory had a knack for numbers. He had taught me to play with the number the previous week, backwards and forwards, attempting to end up with the number thirteen. The restaurant was very noisy and crowded. Nobody noticed when I lifted the receiver and dialled. Father answered the phone. ‘Where are you?’ he asked quite calmly. No one had missed me. ‘In a restaurant somewhere. I am lost.’ Hearing the racket in the background over the telephone, he asked to speak to the proprietress. She gave him directions and soon he came alone to fetch me in his big black car. He drove in silence, lost in thought. When we arrived home, he patted me on the head and said, ‘You wouldn’t be lost if you had taken a map with you and studied the location of the school and your home.’

  I learned from this experience to rely on myself. I realized that without Aunt Baba, there was no one looking out for me. That evening, I asked Gregory to teach me how to read a map. I never got lost again.

  Two months later, Ye Ye, Aunt Baba, James and Susan arrived from Tianjin. I was ecstatic. Niang had been separated from her
daughter since the spring of 1942, when Susan was only a few months old. By the time they were reunited in Shanghai, Susan had grown into a beautiful little toddler with big round eyes, chubby cheeks and thick black hair. To meet her mother, Aunt Baba had dressed her in pretty pink trousers with a matching padded jacket. Her hair was plaited and stood up on each side. She looked adorable as she rushed around the sitting-room, examining an occasional ornament and running back to show Aunt Baba. Then Niang went over and attempted to pick Susan up. To my two-year-old sister, her mother was a complete stranger. Susan wriggled and fought and resisted with all her might. Finally, she burst into tears screaming, ‘I don’t want you! I don’t want you! Aunt Baba! Aunt Baba!’

  No one dared say a word. All conversation ceased as we watched Susan kick and struggle in Niang’s arms. Finally, to my horror, Niang forced her child down on the couch beside her and gave her a stinging slap across the face. Susan only cried louder. Exasperated and by now no longer in control, Niang began a vicious beating of her daughter, her slaps landing on Susan’s little cheeks, ears and head. Everyone in the room cowered.

  I was totally bewildered. I could not understand why Father, Ye Ye or Aunt Baba did not intervene to stop this torture. I wanted to leave, but my feet seemed rooted to the floor. I knew I should keep silent, but words choked me and I felt compelled to spit them out. Finally, forgetting who I was or where I was, I blurted out in a trembling voice, ‘Don’t beat her any more! She’s only a baby!’

  Niang turned around and glared fiercely, her large eyes seeming to pop out of their orbits. For a moment, I thought she was going to come after me. Aunt Baba gave me a warning look to say no more. Even Susan was barely whimpering. My protest had interrupted Niang’s frenzy but I had become the target of her fury.

  In those few moments, we children saw and understood everything: not only about her, but also about Father and Ye Ye and Aunt Baba. We had witnessed another side of her character. With Grandmother gone, she alone was in total control.

  My apprehension mounted as she glowered at me. A torrent of words escaped her clenched lips. ‘Get out!’ she screamed. ‘Get out of my sight at once! How dare you open your mouth?’ As I hurried out of the door, she added with calculated menace, ‘I shall never forget or forgive your insolence! Never! Never! Never!’

  This was how our family became reunited in Father’s Avenue Joffre house in Shanghai during October of 1943.

  Our lives changed drastically after our move. Father sent us all to private missionary schools where lessons were in Chinese, and English was taught as a second language. While I was at Sheng Xin, my three brothers were enrolled at St John’s Christian Boys’ School and Lydia attended Aurora Catholic Middle School. Father began an austerity programme to teach us the value of money. We received no pocket money and had no clothes except for our school uniforms. We were also required to walk to and from school daily. For the boys, this was a three-mile trek each way. They had to get up at six thirty in order to be at school by eight. Lydia’s school adjoined mine and was one and a half miles from our house. Trams ran almost from door to door.

  After Ye Ye’s arrival from Tianjin, we shamelessly begged him for the tram fare and were each given a small sum every evening. Parallel tram lines ran along the centre of Avenue Joffre, ending at the Bund along Huangpu River. My tram stop was immediately outside the entrance to our lane. On mornings when I was lucky, a tram would be just approaching in the correct direction. The fare was twenty fen for adults and ten fen for children. At the tram’s approach, everyone pushed and jostled to get in. No one ever bothered to queue.

  The first tram stop was Do Yuen Gardens. Two years later, when the Japanese lost the war and Father and Niang flew to Tianjin to reclaim his businesses, Ye Ye would take James and me for picnics there. This was a rare treat because under Niang’s regime, we children were forbidden to leave the house outside school hours. Cook packed us wonderful sandwiches: thick layers of eggs flavoured with garlic, onions and Yunan ham, within two slabs of crisp, fresh, French bread. Amidst towering trees, green lawns and tidy flower beds, Ye Ye practised t’ai chi early in the morning while James and I played hide-and-seek or pretended to be historical characters from our favourite Chinese folk-tales. Sometimes there would be a professional storyteller sitting in the pavilion spinning wonderful yarns.

  The second stop was the Cathay Cinema. How I yearned to see those wonderful movies! Their titles, stills and photographs of the film stars were posted on the walls outside the cinema which at night was lit up like a palace. As soon as the war ended, Hollywood movies swept across Shanghai like a prairie fire. Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier and Lana Turner became household names. Gone with the Wind, cleverly translated into just one Chinese character, Piao, a rather romantic word meaning to float or drift, was a big hit in 1946. At school, we shared film magazines and cut out photographs of American film stars. One day a girl two years ahead received a photograph of Clark Gable, reputedly sent all the way from a film studio in Los Angeles. Mr Gable had even signed his name at the bottom of the picture! During recess, all the girls flocked around her, wanting to catch a glimpse of the famous actor, as if she had become a celebrity herself.

  The third stop was at the street corner leading to the Sheng Xin and Aurora schools. Along the way was a variety of small food shops selling fresh fruit, dim sum, noodles, French bread, cream cakes and sundry pastries. It was often agonizing for me to walk past these establishments because hunger was my constant companion and my pockets were always empty. Gone were the days in Tianjin when we could order anything we fancied for breakfast provided we gave Aunt Baba advance notice: bacon and eggs with toasted French bread; fried noodles with ham and cabbage; steamed dumplings; sweet glutinous rice balls with sesame paste; hot chocolate. Now we were allowed to have only one kind of breakfast: the right kind of food for growing children according to Niang. We were given congee, a soupy gruel made of rice and water, and pickled vegetables. Occasionally on Sundays we were each served one hard-boiled, salted duck egg.

  Austerity did not stop with us, the stepchildren. It included Ye Ye and Aunt Baba. In Tianjin, Father and Ye Ye had a joint account, and Ye Ye signed all the cheques as chief financial officer. On his return to Shanghai in 1943, Ye Ye trustingly transferred all of the Tianjin funds into Father’s Shanghai bank accounts opened two years earlier under Father’s new, assumed name, Yen Hong. With one stroke of the pen, Ye Ye, like King Lear, signed away his entire fortune. The only other signatory on this new account was Niang. Ye Ye and Aunt Baba now found themselves penniless and completely dependent on the largesse of Father and Niang, even for the most meagre purchase.

  Initially Ye Ye had a small amount of cash in his wallet which he had brought with him from Tianjin. We were in the habit of asking Ye Ye for pocket money and he would often slip us an extra coin or two just to see the joy in our eyes. Ye Ye supplied us with our daily tram fares to and from school until his money ran out.

  About two months after school started, the subject of tram fares was raised at dinner one evening. Dinner was almost over and we were peeling our fruit when Aunt Baba started the ball rolling by saying that she had decided to return to work as a teller at Grand Aunt’s Women’s Bank. We could see from the pursed lips of Niang that she was annoyed. ‘You have everything you need here,’ Father said. ‘Why do you wish to go to work?’

  Aunt Baba politely answered that there was too much free time during the day with all of us away at school and so many maids to do the housework. She did not mention what was on everyone’s mind: that the salary would give her some measure of independence.

  Father turned to Ye Ye. ‘Do you think this is a good idea?’ he asked. ‘She will be out of the house most of the day. If she stayed at home, she would be more of a companion to you.’

  ‘Let her do what she wants,’ Ye Ye said. ‘Besides, she likes to earn a little extra money to spend on this and that.’

  ‘If you need money,’ Father said grandly, add
ressing Aunt Baba, ‘why don’t you come to me? I have told you both before, any time you want money just come to me and ask. And if I’m at the office, Jeanne is always available to write you a cheque.’

  A shiver went down my spine at the thought of anyone, let alone my gentle Ye Ye, going to Niang, his young French daughter-in-law, to ask for money.

  Ye Ye cleared his throat. ‘I’ve been meaning to mention this before. The children need a little pocket money now and then.’

  ‘Pocket money?’ Father said, turning to Gregory and Lydia. ‘Why do you need pocket money?’

  ‘Well,’ Lydia answered, ‘first there is the matter of the tram fare to and from school.’

  ‘Tram fare?’ Niang asked. ‘Who gave you permission to ride the tram?’

  ‘It’s so far to St John’s,’ Gregory piped up. ‘If we had to walk, it would probably take us all morning. No sooner would we get there than we’d have to start back home again. We might as well not go to school at all, and just go for a long walk everyday for exercise.’

  ‘! Hu shuo ba dao! (Don’t talk nonsense eight ways!)’ Father exclaimed. ‘You’re always exaggerating. Walking is good for your health.’