Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [214]
Kam Sau graduated from the high school for the children of Overseas Chinese and started at teacher-training college in Canton last year. At high school she had been a weekly boarder. At college, however, she could only come home every couple of months, or at harvest time, when the students were given leave to help their families. Six Fingers missed her daughter. Today was one of the rare days Kam Sau came home to visit, and she was upstairs sleeping. Six Fingers’ two sons had both left for Gold Mountain as teenagers. They had been gone for many years, and each had only come home once. Kam Shan was back six years ago, bringing the woman he had never officially married and their daughter, Yin Ling. They stayed nearly two years, and Kam Shan had spent a great deal of money on treatment for his lame leg. When this proved fruitless, they returned to Gold Mountain. Six Fingers did not know when they would be back again.
Kam Ho came home last year to get married. He stayed long enough to get his wife pregnant and then hurried back, saying his Gold Mountain employers had given him a deadline.
Six Fingers felt that she had put all her energies into ensuring the men in her life grew big and strong, only to deliver them into the maw of the lion that was Gold Mountain. She fought bitterly with the Gold Mountain lion over her men, but she could never win. By the time her daughter had grown up, the Gold Mountain government had passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. The Gold Mountain men were furious about that, but Six Fingers did not share their anger. She was secretly pleased—at least she could keep one child at home.
Kam Sau attended college in Canton with Mak Dau’s son, Ah-Yuen. Kam Sau had wanted to train as a teacher since she was a little girl. Her ambition was to run a school with Ah-Yuen in the village when they graduated. The school in the local town was funded by Gold Mountain men, so only their children were admitted. But Kam Sau wanted her school to be for everyone—including the children of farmers, fisherfolk and household servants. There would be no fees and the school would provide a midday meal too. Kam Sau had always shared her mother’s passion for literacy. When she got home from school, she used to gather the servants’ children together and teach them reading and arithmetic. When she was a young bride, Six Fingers taught all the Fongs’ servants the rudiments of literacy. Now Kam Sau was teaching their children to read and count.
Although Six Fingers missed Kam Sau, she was comforted by the fact that her daughter would not be leaving home to marry as most girls did. She and Ah-Yuen would be home soon to stay. Ah-Yuen lived in the diulau with his father, Mak Dau, so Ah-Yuen would be the Fongs’ live-in son-in-law. If Six Fingers could not count on her own two sons being around, at least Ah-Yuen, a dutiful and good-hearted boy, was as good as a son.
Six Fingers tiptoed from the bedroom, hoping to avoid waking Kam Sau. She was on the point of going down to the kitchen when she saw a crack of light under Kam Sau’s bedroom door. Kam Sau had the room which had been Mrs. Mak’s, right next to Six Fingers’. She pushed the door open, and found her daughter sitting up in bed reading a book.
Kam Sau was a bookworm. She stuck her nose so deep in the pages, she might have been smelling them. “Crazy girl,” said Six Fingers, “have you been up all night reading?” Kam Sau grunted, then roused herself to answer: “I’m just