Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [270]
1961
Vancouver, British Columbia
Amy sat in the back seat of the blue Ford as it roared through the streets to Uncle Bill’s house with her mother at the wheel.
The car was so old, it had lost its suspension and Amy’s bottom had pins and needles from the juddering and shaking.
Someone had given her mother the car, perhaps Uncle Bill, or perhaps it was Uncle Shaun, the one before Uncle Bill, or Uncle Joseph who was around at the same time as Uncle Shaun. There had been a succession of uncles around her mother, too many for Amy to remember them all.
Amy was five years old. She had brown eyes in deep-set sockets, chestnut-coloured hair and a prominent nose. Her skin was so pale she might have been anemic. Unless you looked carefully, there was no trace of her Chinese parentage. And that was just how her mother, Yin Ling, wanted it. Sometimes Yin Ling would look her daughter in the eyes, and say deliberately: “Don’t ever … ever … change.” When that happened, Amy would feel her mother’s eyes jabbing her all over, and she would feel like crying. But then Yin Ling would smile and say: “Don’t get upset. Mummy likes you just how you are.”
Yin Ling never told a soul where she had been in the dozen or so years she was away. She had come back three years ago and since then she had had a succession of jobs. For the last few months, she had been working as a waitress in a restaurant. When she was on the day shift, she left Amy with a neighbour. When she was on night shift, she would leave Amy with one uncle or another, and pick her up the next morning. Amy spent the night in many uncles’ houses. Sometimes when she woke in the morning, she would call: “Uncle Shaun!” and Uncle Bill would appear. Sometimes she knew quite well that it was Uncle Joseph who was making her breakfast, but would find herself saying “Thank you, Uncle Luke.” But of all the uncles, it was Uncle Bill who had lasted the longest.
The pins and needles felt like ants crawling over Amy’s bottom as the car juddered and shook. While her mother applied her lipstick in the mirror, Amy quietly put her hand down her skirt to give the ants a good scratch. Once. Twice. Three times. At the third, her mother spotted what she was doing.
“Amy Smith!”
When her mother called her by her full name, Amy knew she was really angry. Sure enough, Yin Ling threw the lipstick cover at her, scoring an accurate hit on the back of Amy’s hand.
“How many times have I told you that well-brought-up girls don’t do things like that?”
Her mother’s English went to pieces under stress. Of course, it would be some years before Amy understood that her mother had an accent. And several more years passed before she realized that that accent had something to do with a childhood that Yin Ling wanted to put behind her forever.
“Lots … Lots of times,” stammered Amy.
“Then you tell me what I’ve taught you!” shouted her mother.
“I must not pick my nose, scratch myself, or fart, in front of other people. I must cover my mouth with my hand when I sneeze.”
“If you know it, then why do you still do it?”
“But it wasn’t … it wasn’t in front of—”
“Shut up!” Yin Ling brusquely interrupted Amy. “Bad habits start behind people’s backs!”
Amy shut up. She did not dare ask her mother what a well-brought-up girl was supposed to do when she had an itch, though she wanted to. She knew her mother was in a very bad mood today and anything Amy said might make the storm break over her head.
It had something to do with Uncle Bill.
Uncle Bill had told her mother he would take her to Ottawa on Victoria Day to see the tulips flown in from Holland. But the day before they were due to go, he had gone back on his word. And for the last three days, he had not called her mother either.
“Uncle Bill must be ill,” said Yin Ling. “Last time we saw him, didn’t he keep sneezing?”
Yin Ling kept on and on asking the same question. The first time, Amy answered that, no, he hadn’t been sneezing. Her mother got so angry, she would not speak to her for the rest of the day. So the next time her mother raised the subject