Hawaii - James Michener [366]
He was seventeen years old when Wu Chow's Auntie made her decision, and the family had practically no spare cash to spend on their living in Hawaii, let alone to send a boy to America. Yet in those important days Nyuk Tsin started many ventures. She made Asia and Europe, who were already in business, borrow money to pay Africa's ship passage. She sold pineapples and vegetables six hours a day, tilled her fields eight hours and kept two for scouting around. Finally, one evening when the scholar at the Punti store assured her that the time was auspicious, she washed her muddy feet, brushed her one blue uniform, tied a widow's cloth about her sparsely haired head and topped it with her wicker hat. Brushing her cheeks with her hands so that she might look as presentable as possible, she left home without speaking to anyone, and walked resolutely down Nuuanu, where she purchased a bag of brown, chewy candies covered with poppy seed.
Clutching the candy in her hand, she entered busy Hotel Street, in the heart of Chinatown, and turned right, walking past Asia's restaurant and Europe's vegetable stand, while she looked for a narrow alley that cut back among a maze of Chinese shacks. At last she found it, and with a prayer to Kwan Yin for mercy on her mission, she ducked beneath the bamboo poles that suspended drying laundry completely across the alley. Finally she reached the kitchen door which belonged to a house somewhat more pretentious than the rest, yet one of which few haoles could have known the existence, for it was well hidden by hovels. This was the home of Ching, Honolulu's wealthiest Hakka, and it was presumptuous of Nyuk Tsin to be calling there. She knocked and waited obediently until the tall, well-fed mistress of the house appeared and looked out in the darkness to identify her impecunious visitor. The taller woman did not speak, and Nyuk Tsin said deferentially, "May a thousand benedictions fall upon you on this auspicious night, my dear mother-in-law." The phrase was an honorary one and implied no relationship, so the wealthy woman accepted it imperiously and said, "Come in, my dear sister-in-law. Have you had your meal?"
This again was a formality, so Nyuk Tsin replied, as custom required, "I have eaten, but how about you?"
She was impressed by the munificence of the kitchen and its close attention to detail. The two windows were sufficiently high so that the Ching money could not leak out; the doors were not in a straight line, which kept the dragon of happiness from escaping; and the land leading up to the doors did not slope away from the house, so that good fortune did not drift away. The kitchen had a brick stove on which a permanent teapot rested, and now the Ching woman poured Nyuk Tsin a cup of the stale stuff, not too big a cup, which would have accorded Nyuk Tsin an esteem she did not merit, nor too small, which would have brought reflections of niggardliness upon the Chings.
"Be seated, my dear sister-in-law," the wealthy woman said. In her outward appearance, nothing betrayed the fact that she controlled a good deal of money. She wore no jewelry, no paint, no combs in her hair. Her simple dress was the same as Nyuk Tsin's and she also was barefooted; but to her visitor's calculating eye Mrs. Ching was obviously a person of wealth: her kitchen was crowded with food! Three hams hung from bamboo poles, and five glistening dried ducks, their