Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [233]
“Not such a bad idea. When the sprouts are ready, Yin Ling can help us sell them after school. Her English is good, the yeung fan understand her.”
Silence fell again.
“I’ve had rotten luck to end up getting old like this,” Ah-Fat said with a sigh. “Just think of that farm I had in New Westminster, and how envious it made the yeung fan. I don’t know how your mother’s managing at home now.
“At least in the village, they’ve got land to sell. That must have kept them going these last couple of years,” he went on. “Not like us. We just have to keep tightening our belts. That paycheque just won’t stretch any further.”
Yin Ling put the last plate in the dish rack, took off her apron and ran up to her room. She shut the door and bolted it, and then blew a long, loud raspberry. This house was like a sardine tin, and she was one small fish squeezed into the crowded, suffocating darkness. The thought of carrying a basket of sopping-wet bean sprouts through the vegetable market with cries of “If ten cents is too much, eight cents will do!” made her break out in a cold sweat.
Downstairs, her grandfather heaved one sigh after another. Then there was the tinkling of boiling water—her father was replenishing her grandfather’s mug of tea.
“Even a dog wouldn’t go out on a night like this, but she won’t stay home,” Yin Ling heard her father say angrily.
She knew her father was referring to her mother. Every Monday, come rain or shine, when her mother got the day off from the restaurant, she went out with her girlfriends for a few sessions of mahjong.
“Kam Shan, don’t keep scolding her all the time,” her grandfather said. “You know, the baby in her belly might be a boy. Maybe it’s the Buddha making sure my family line will carry on after all.” There was a hint of happiness in his voice.
Yin Ling was thunderstruck. It was a few moments before she could pull herself together.
Her mother, a woman old enough to be a grandmother, was pregnant.
The tiny house they shared would soon have to accommodate another. And she knew her share would not be equal to everyone else’s. If the baby in her mother’s belly was a boy, he would take up half the house. They’d have to split the other half between them and not into four equal parts either. Hers would be the smallest. She was not much good at math, but this calculation was not hard to figure out.
Why didn’t she just die?
Yin Ling made a fist of one hand and beat her chest. She felt the card she had hidden in her breast pocket. It was her exam results for the term. She had kept it tucked into her pocket for two days and it was beginning to smell sweaty.
English 62
Mathematics 58
Science 47
History 55
Social Studies 62
P. E. 78
The principal, Mrs. Sullivan, had called her into the office and personally given the marks to her.
“We must fix a time to have a meeting with your mother and father, and discuss retaking your courses and study plan,” Mrs. Sullivan said. She was a washed-out-looking woman, so pale that bluish veins showed faintly through the skin on her neck and forehead. The veins wriggled like worms as she went on “…if you want to graduate this year.”
Her mother and father? A man with a lame leg, teeth yellowed from smoking, speaking pidgin English? A woman reeking of cooking oil and smoke? No way was she going to have those two marching into Mrs.Sullivan’s office under everyone’s gaze.
“Did you see Yin Ling’s Chink Chinaman mum and dad!”
“Look at them! Do they really let men that old make their wives pregnant?”
The snide comments jumped around in her head like tenacious fleas that refused to be slapped away.
She wished the ground would open up in front of her and swallow her. That way, she would not have to listen to her mother grumbling and her father and grandfather sighing ever again. Nor would she have to see the blue veins jumping on Mrs. Sullivan’s neck, or face the nightmare of selling baskets of bean sprouts in the market.
Johnny.
The name suddenly popped up from the recesses of Yin Ling’s mind.
To her surprise, Miss Watson had paired her up with Johnny for