Back at the house, Kum Tai knew what she had to do. She took hold of the rifle by its barrel and smashed it on the cement floor, screaming at the evil spirit in the gun: ‘Get out, get out, get out!’ she cried. But the rifle would not break, so she ran outside and threw it into the duck-pond. It sank to the bottom and was never seen again.
After that night Kum Tai was never the same. She became tense and nervous, and would not go into the plantation. Soon she was unable to work at all and Fat Lum had to take over. She would mumble to herself about how she had shot the monkey god out of the sky, and Father would try to comfort her. ‘It’s like any other meat, Ma,’ he told her. ‘They serve monkey at all the best restaurants in Chinatown.’ But Kum Tai would put her hands together, showing Father how the monkey’s had been clasped in prayer, and she would turn her head and walk away, whispering sadly to herself.
Fat Lum ruled the plantation like a dictator. If a worker arrived a few minutes late he was sacked on the spot, and if anyone was disrespectful he, too, was replaced. Kum Tai did not discuss the farm with him: she had lost interest in it. Father hoped that in time she would regain her health and take back control from Fat Lum, but she did not improve. Instead she began to worry about her only son finding a wife and starting a family.
‘Listen carefully, Poh-mun,’ said Kum Tai. ‘Your father was young when he married me. It is time for you to take a wife. I want to see grandchildren before the end of my days.’
The first time Father saw my mother was at a meeting arranged by the local matchmaker. It happened like this. One day Father and Kum Tai sat at a table near the entrance of a little tea-house in Chinatown and, at the appointed time, a rickshaw, with the hood down, pulled up in front. The matchmaker and the bride-to-be, my mother, were inside.
‘She will make you happy, Poh-mun,’ whispered Kum Tai, pointing to the girl sitting next to the matchmaker. ‘That is Chiew-wah. She will be a good wife, trust me.’
Father told me that she was only fifteen, and he had stared shyly at her, unable to speak. The rickshaw stayed for a few minutes, then left. Kum Tai explained that it was not necessary for him to see Chiew-wah again before the wedding, that love was like the wind and would soon blow through them. She talked to him every night about his duty.
The matchmaker negotiated a dowry to be paid by my father’s family and a trousseau to be given by the family of the bride. Chiew-wah’s mother had discovered that my father’s family were well-off and requested ten tables for the guests of the bride’s family at the wedding dinner; she demanded a fine restaurant and the very best food. My mother Chiew-wah’s trousseau included a set of new teak bedroom furniture, three sets of embroidered linen, a jade bangle, jade and pearl earrings and a thick necklace of pure gold. Father told me that the Singer sewing-machine had been a wedding gift, the very best model, and that was why Mother never let my sister and me use it.
My father told me all of this while we were under the table with the mattresses stacked on top and around it, and I was curled up next to him in the dark, munching my biscuits. Then I could forget the hungry Japanese silkworms crawling towards us with their bombs. I was happy in that place with my father, who had come from the island where the rain had carried the pigs and the furniture down the river to their new home in the sea with the fish.
Father was only sixteen when he was married, and one year later he had his first child, my brother Beng. He told me how Kum Tai had held him in her arms for the first time. ‘First Grandson! You look just like your father, my Po-pui,’ she said, and tears ran down her face.
‘Why are you sad, Ma? Are you not happy with your grandson?’ asked my mother.
‘I am happy, Chiew-wah, very happy,’ she said. ‘When I look at my grandson, I think of a time before. I always wanted more children, but after Poh-mun I was not able to have another.’ She was lost in thought as she stared at the child in her arms. ‘You must not walk too much or carry heavy things, because it will hurt you,’ she said eventually. Then she told Chiew-wah how she had swum after the pigs and how it had damaged her womb. ‘Don’t make the same mistake,’ she said. ‘You and Poh-mun must have many children, a big family. You must rest. And no housework for one month!’
Father told me that Beng’s birth did not interrupt his studies. In fact it made him work harder. He was impatient to pass his exams so that he could get a good job and move to the city, his mother’s dream. Her eyesight was fading and she talked all the time about the monkey with its hands locked in prayer. She never left her bedroom: Father took her meals to her there, and in the evenings he would sit with her, reading the book of Confucius that she had once read to him.
Early one morning, in the middle of a thunderstorm, Kum Tai jumped out of bed, got dressed and mumbled that she was going to inspect the fruit trees. Father was at school and Fat Lum had gone to the city on business. Kum Tai stumbled outside in the rain and Chiew-wah, with Beng strapped to her back, worried until Father returned in the late afternoon.
Dusk set in early because of the heavy rain and Father lit a lantern and rushed out of the house. He met Fat Lum returning from the city and explained to him what had happened, then went straight to the tree where the monkey had been killed but his mother wasn’t there. He breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps she had gone to a neighbour’s house. And then, in the distance, he saw Fat Lum’s lantern. As he ran towards it, he saw that his step-father was bending over a figure on the ground.
Father and Fat Lum carried Kum Tai back to the house, blood pouring from a deep gash on her head. She had fallen and hit it on a stone. When the plantation workers saw her, some left for good because they were frightened of the monkey god’s revenge.
Father told me that Fat Lum changed after his mother’s death: he wasn’t interested in him any more. He made all the funeral arrangements without consulting him. On the last day of the third week after her death, when the prayer rites had been completed, in accordance with the Taoist observance, Father thought the time was right to approach Fat Lum about the plantation and his mother’s property.
But Fat Lum beat him to it. ‘You can forget about lessons today, Poh-mun. We have things to discuss,’ he told my father, as he was leaving for school.
Father was surprised to hear Fat Lum use his name – he always called him ‘my son’. ‘Can we talk when I get back from school?’ Father asked.
‘No. You will not be returning here. This is no longer your home.’
Fat Lum went into the bedroom. When he came back, he had with him a pile of documents that proved the plantation had been transferred to him.
‘My mother would never have signed those papers if she had been able to read English,’ said Father.
It was no use. ‘Take your wife and baby and leave. Your mother is dead. We no longer have any family connection,’ said Fat Lum. ‘Furthermore, the monthly allowance for your education will be discontinued.’
Father told me that he, Chiew-wah and little Beng went to live with Popo, my mother’s mother, in her flat in Chinatown – where I can remember living as a small child. There, Mother gave birth to her second child, my older sister Miew-kin; the nurses thought it a good omen that she was born on the sixth birthday of the elder daughter of the King and Queen of England. Popo was a devout believer in Chinese astrology: ‘A birthdate that coincides with a royal child cannot be more auspicious for your daughter,’ she said to my mother. For