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By Root 1345 0

come home. He had stayed a whole year this time and had gone back last market day. He would still be on his way back to Gold Mountain and she could not expect another letter from him for another two or three months. She opened his last letter and read it again. She had folded and refolded it so many times that it had begun to fray at the folds. She could recite by heart what it said. When she got to the words “after so many years apart, my heart flies back like an arrow, and all I desire is to rest in the arms of my beloved,” her face grew hot. She was secretly thankful that her mother-in-law could not read. Every letter from Ah-Fat had parts meant only for her. She skipped over them when she read the letters aloud to Mrs. Mak.

On his return this time, Ah-Fat had raised enough money to pay the head tax and his original intention had been to take Six Fingers and Kam Shan back with him. He went to ask his mother’s permission. What Mrs. Mak’s response was, Ah-Fat never said. Six Fingers saw Ah-Fat coming out of his mother’s room with a face like a thundercloud. He never mentioned his plan again.

So Six Fingers thought she would write and ask Ah-Fat what he was going to do. If the post was fast, the letter might even get to Gold Mountain before Ah-Fat himself. She laid out a sheet of writing paper, carefully ground the ink in the ink stone, smoothed the wolf-hair brush and had just written the words “My dear husband” when she felt a gush of milk soak the front of her jacket. Kam Ho’s birth had been quite different from Kam Shan’s. He had popped out with hardly any effort at all on her part, as easy as a hen laying an egg. In fact, he was already halfway into the world by the time Ah-Choi got back with the midwife. Ah-Fat had hired an old woman whose sole job was to attend to her during the month after the birth. Three meals a day, with generous helpings of chicken, duck and fish had given her a plentiful supply of milk, enough to feed three Kam Hos and still have some left over.

Six Fingers undid the buttons and wiped herself dry with a towel. She wore a thin silk jacket fastened slantwise across the front, over a fine linen corset that Ah-Fat had brought back from Gold Mountain for her. According to Ah-Fat, Gold Mountain ladies wore hooped petticoats too, but Six Fingers laughed at that. “If I wear both, the stripes will make me look like a bee!” After much persuasion from Ah-Fat, she consented to wear the corset. At first, she felt so tightly squeezed inside the tube of fabric that it made her short of breath. But she got used to it, and now if she went out without it on, her breasts bounced uncomfortably up and down and she could not walk with her usual energy. But she was adamant that she would not wear the hooped petticoat. She could not get any work done in it. Ah-Fat had to give in on that one.

Once Six Fingers had dried herself and changed her jacket, she sat down again and continued with her letter.

Kam Shan and Kam Ho have both been fine since you left. Mum’s eyes have not got any better, but they have not got worse either.

Having got this far, Six Fingers felt that this was not at all what she wanted to say. She crumpled up the paper, threw it into the wastepaper basket and began again with a fresh sheet of paper.

My dear husband,

All the family has been fine since you left. Mr. Auyung has been here once and gave us a children’s story and copying books. Kam Shan can start school sometime next spring. The crops have been good this year and the first season’s rents have all been collected. Next market day, Mum is going to buy two more plough oxen for the spring. She has also arranged a match between Ah-Choi and Ha Kau, and they will marry in the first month of the new year. They have lived with us for a long time, Ha Kau working the land and Ah-Choi in the house, so it will be a harmonious match.

By now Six Fingers’ hand was aching. She had not lifted a brush once during the month after Kam Ho was born, and had got out of the habit. She felt she had covered most of the family news, but there was still something