Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [194]
Her name was Au Hsien Wan and she lived in Wai Yeong Village; she was distantly related to the Au family in their village. So his mother’s letter had said.
His mother wrote that the girl was eighteen years old, that she had had a few years of primary school, that she could read and write and do math. Their horoscopes had been done and matched perfectly.
It was not the first time Kam Ho had looked at such a photograph. When Kam Shan came back from his visit home three years ago, his mother had sent him with half a dozen pictures for Kam Ho. The matchmaker had given her many more to choose from but she had rejected any who had not been to school; she liked women to be literate. Six Fingers had not got on with Cat Eyes for the whole two years that she spent in Hoi Ping with Kam Shan and Yin Ling because Cat Eyes could not even write her own name. Kam Ho kept the photographs his mother sent him over the years and looked at them every now and then. He would spread them out on the bed as if he had suddenly become the Yellow Emperor of old in the Forbidden City, selecting his empress and concubines from a bevy of beauties.
Kam Ho’s head may have been in the clouds, but his feet were firmly on the ground. He knew he could not marry any of the girls in the photographs because anyone he chose to marry would be condemned to live life apart from him while he toiled in Gold Mountain. He did not want marriage like that of his mother and father. He would rather be a lonely bachelor than pine for a wife he could never see.
Some Gold Mountain men felt the same as Kam Ho but were not as stoical, and shacked up with Redskin women. These unions produced children, but no marriage documents were exchanged and they did not ask for the ancestors’ blessings. When well-meaning friends suggested that Ah-Fat should get his son a Redskin woman, he grimaced. “He might as well marry a sow.” When he heard this, Kam Shan laughed. “Lots of Redskin women are good-looking and hard-working, and lots of Chinese women are ugly and lazy. Don’t tar them all with the same brush!” “And what about when they have children, whose ancestors do they pay their respects to?” retorted Ah-Fat. “Any grandson of mine may not be royalty but he’ll be every bit a Chinese and not a barbarian.” Since Kam Shan’s woman had been unable to give the Fongs a grandson, he had nothing to say to this.
Kam Ho had plans of his own. He was secretly saving money to take his father back to China for good. With the money he had borrowed from his son a few years back, Ah-Fat had opened a small café. Since he knew nothing about preparing restaurant food, he was dependent on a cook. The cook had slovenly habits but there was nothing Ah-Fat could do about it. The café brought in so little money that after he had paid the man’s wages there was almost nothing left. The business limped along for a few years and even though his sons urged him to give it up, he insisted on keeping it going. He had borrowed money from his son and was duty bound to pay it all back. But Kam Ho knew that his father was secretly hoping that he could make enough money to put on a show of respectability when he went back home to his wife. With increasing age, Ah-Fat did not swagger as he once had, but he still had some pride. He would not let Six Fingers down.
The truth was, however, that Kam Ho was not as desperate for a woman as Chinatown’s other bachelors. Kam Ho had a secret that he guarded so closely that no one could have dragged it out of him.
Working for the Hendersons had changed him. Under Mrs. Henderson’s watchful