Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [169]
“When you were at home, you had servants to wait on you. Now you’re going to a yeung fan house to wait on them. Don’t put on any ‘young master’ airs. Any kind of noises—farting, burping, coughing—you do them out of earshot. At mealtimes, if she doesn’t ask you to eat with them, then you eat in the kitchen. Wash your feet every night before going to bed. There’s a piece of salt fish in the bag, so if you don’t like their cooking, you can eat this with it.
“You’ll work six days a week and have one day’s rest. When you’ve cooked the Saturday dinner, you can go. I’ll come and pick you up and bring you back first thing Monday morning.
“You’ll get one dollar twenty-five a day, including your day off, that’s thirty-seven dollars fifty a month. All your board is covered, so you should be able to earn quite a bit in a year.”
As he pushed open the iron gate and walked in through the middle porch, Ah-Fat suddenly put his arm round his son’s shoulder. Kam Ho was so skinny that his bones dug into Ah-Fat’s hand. Kam Ho heard his father’s voice crack a little as he said: “There’s a lot of money in Gold Mountain, and one dollar is equal to several dollars when you send it home. If you and I can keep this up for a few years, we can clear the debts from the diulau.”
His father knocked on the door and a dog barked on the other side so furiously the sound made the windows and door frames rattle. The door opened a crack and a woman’s face appeared. She shut the door and shouted at the dog. The dog gave an answering bark. Dog and woman continued this exchange of shout and bark until finally the dog admitted defeat and quieted down. At that, the woman opened the door.
She was tall and lanky with a pallid complexion and pale eyes. She was so colourless, in fact, she looked as though she had been steeped in water for days until all the flavour had drained out of her. She was wearing tight-fitting top and a floor-length skirt. When she turned around, Kam Ho quickly shut his eyes in case her waist snapped.
The woman and his dad exchanged a few words but Kam Ho understood nothing. He shrank, trembling, against his father. He gripped his bag as if it were the only thing that held him together.
“Mrs. Henderson asked how old you are. I said fifteen, but she doesn’t believe me. She thinks you only look about ten,” Ah-Fat explained.
“Only bloody ten!” Kam Ho swore, but silently. It was the rudest utterance he was capable of.
“Mrs. Henderson asks if you have any questions.”
“I’m not going to make her bed for her, no way,” said Kam Ho after a long moment’s thought.
His father hooted with laughter. Then turned back to the woman and said, with a straight face: “My son says he doesn’t know how to make beds.”
Mrs. Henderson frowned. “From what Rick says, your boy doesn’t know how to do anything. Making beds is the simplest task, but of course I’ll teach him.”
His dad ruffled Kam Ho’s hair and was gone, taking that protective shadow with him and leaving Kam Ho exposed to the woman’s gaze. When Kam Ho turned to look, his father had already jumped onto the cart. “Saturday, Dad, as early as.…” he said, but the words were snatched away by the wind. The horse was already clip-clopping down the street.
Kam Ho threw down his bag and leaned against the door frame, sobbing.
The tears, so long suppressed that they felt like grit in his eyes, fell heavily to the floor. His father was gone and he had no sky to shelter him or earth to hold him up. How was he going to face the world?
The woman stood in the doorway, watching him silently. The dog came out and, extending a blood-red tongue, began to lick the salty tears from his jacket.
“Just a year, Dad, that’s what you said,” Kam Ho said to himself.
It was something he was to repeat to himself countless times in the days to come.
Until finally, he stopped believing it.
“E … gg.”
Mrs. Henderson took an egg from the basket on the