Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [177]
“… He eats the leftovers. I don’t even know if he gets enough to eat at each meal. Last Christmas, when Rick’s aunt came from Halifax, we didn’t let him go home for the holiday and we didn’t pay him any extra either.… Once he helped Rick into bed and Rick’s shirt tore at the seams, and called him a Mongol ass.… Oh Lord, you know everything that goes on, you know all the injustices there are in this world. Now you’re punishing me, you’ve made him the burden I have to carry. You’ve made me bear the weight of my own sin. I can’t bear it, Lord. I beg you to take this burden from me.… Every life is created by you, even a Mongol’s life.…”
Kam Ho turned over in bed. “Ma’am,” he said softly. The woman started in surprise. She had been kneeling for too long and her legs had gone numb. She struggled to her feet, tottered over and fell to her knees again at the bedside. She suddenly reached out her arms and embraced him. Two warm mounds under the thin nightgown pressed against his chest, so hard he could hardly breathe.
“You’re finally awake, child,” the woman murmured.
The next morning, after Mr. Henderson had left for work, Mrs. Henderson put on a thick fur coat and stood waiting in the hall. “You’re coming with me,” she said, pointing at Kam Ho. He wanted to ask where they were going but did not dare because her face was ugly with rage.
He followed her out the door. She walked today like a mother hen ready for battle, her claws splayed, and her feathers ruffled. Kam Ho had to trot to keep up. His legs felt like cotton wool. He was unsteady on his feet and wavered from left to right and back again. He had been in bed for some days, and although the sun was getting in his eyes now, he still felt cold. The wind whistled down the road, cutting through his cotton jacket and whipping him painfully. He was not wearing a hat—he could not get one on because his head was topped with a thick layer of bandages. He kept his ears warm by covering them with his hands.
Mrs. Henderson crossed the playing field and marched up to the school door. She stood before the janitor, her hands on her hips, and said in a loud, clear voice:
“Go and get the principal this minute!”
Kam Ho sat on the doorstep plucking a chicken.
He had bought the chicken already plucked but it was not up to Mrs. Henderson’s standards. She could not stand the black dots which showed through the skin. They made her think of bluebottle maggots and things like that. So Kam Ho had to go over the chicken once more and remove every last feather root.
The roses in the garden were in a riot of bloom, covering the garden fence in swaths of scarlet. There was a tree in the street—he did not know its name—from which hairy flowers like caterpillars fluttered down in the breeze. Jenny staggered over to where Kam Ho sat, her outstretched hands full of the flowers. “Jimmy, Jimmy!” she cried. “Look … flowers!” Jenny was three and a half years old. She dribbled as she chattered, so she always had to wear a bib around her neck.
She was Mr. and Mrs. Henderson’s adopted child and had been with them for a year. Although the couple had been married nearly twenty years, they were unable to have children. The germ of the idea to adopt a baby had been in Mr. Henderson’s mind for a long time, but his wife would not agree. She was determined to prove her womb was fertile and was just waiting for the right combination of seed and weather. But as her thirtyninth birthday came and went, she grew less confident, and finally agreed to adopt.
But it was all far too late. Mr. Henderson was learning to be a father when he was already old enough to be a grandfather. Once, all three of them were out shopping and he bumped into an old friend he had not been in touch with for years. The friend gripped him by the hand and shook it, exclaiming how well he was looking for his age: “I had no idea your daughter and granddaughter were so grown up,” he said. Mr. Henderson did not enlighten him. From then on, he was reluctant to go out in the company of his wife and