Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [210]
During their first two years together, Kam Shan did not touch her once. She knew that to him she was used goods, and he was afraid of catching syphilis from her. Taking her from the brothel made him guilty of abduction, so neither of them could show their faces in Vancouver’s Chinatown again. They took refuge in a town so small and remote even the Thunder God would not find them. She could not find a Chinese herbalist, so, in the end, it was Pastor Andrew who managed to get hold of some Salvarsan for her, so she could treat her syphilis.
Finally, Kam Shan relented and was intimate with her. From the very first time, she knew she wanted to give him a child. He talked with fury about his father rejecting him, but she knew this anger was just a cloak he wore. Underneath it, he concealed the heart of a good son. While he was estranged from his father, he could not settle down with her and marry her properly. The only way that the two men could become reconciled was through a child. And it had to be a boy, of course.
For Kam Shan’s sake, she had dosed herself with a succession of remedies—Chinese, Western and Redskin. She boiled them into broths, burned them to ashes, ground them into powder, kneaded them into pancakes and injected them through syringes. Over ten years, she had taken enough medicines to fill No-Name River, but her belly showed not the slightest tendency to swell into a bump.
Her barren womb did nothing for Cat Eyes’ self-esteem and she could only watch helplessly as Kam Shan caroused with rowdy Redskin women in cowboy boots and Stetsons who sat on his knee, rolling cigarettes for him and putting them between his lips. Sometimes he stayed out all night, but when he returned, she never asked where he had been. She just lit the stove and heated up the porridge for breakfast.
Then, when she had completely despaired of getting pregnant, it finally happened. At first, as she leaned over the gutter spewing her guts out, she thought it was the medicine making her sick. But when three months had gone by without any sign of her period, she realized she had conceived. She did not tell Kam Shan until she felt the first flutter of movement in her belly. Kam Shan said nothing, but one day began to dismantle his photographic studio piece by piece. Tears coursed down Cat Eyes’ face. She knew that he could go home and see his father now, and that, maybe, she could gain a foothold there too.
Though she gave birth to a girl, Cat Eyes was still pleased and proud of her accomplishment. She was still very young. Her body was a field in which paddy rice had grown and sooner or later it would produce a boy too. The fact that her firstborn was a girl meant that she would have help with all those baby boys to come. It never occurred to Cat Eyes that Yin Ling was a miracle baby whose birth was the result of the coincidence of sun, rain and soil. Her womb would remain barren for many years after.
Kam Shan had recently gone to the city of Canton and would not be back until the beginning of the ninth month. That was Yin Ling’s birthday and there was to be a feast to celebrate it. Such celebrations for baby girls were rare in the village but Six Fingers had insisted. For Six Fingers, Yin Ling was life itself and the baby spent most of the time in her granny’s arms. In fact, Cat Eyes hardly got a chance to look after her daughter, unless it was time to put her to the breast. In Six Fingers’ words, Yin Ling was the first of the next generation. Her auspiciously round little face, fleshy earlobes and grooved upper lip were signs, according to ancient belief, that she would be welcoming many little brothers and sisters into the world.
Kam Shan had gone to Canton to get his leg treated. Even before their ship docked, Six Fingers had been