Journey Across the Four Seas (28 page)

By the time Joe had eaten his fill, my turmoil had subsided. I took stock of my situation. The wind had blown me on an irreversible course. Abandoning it meant abandoning my children, my flesh and blood, which I could never do. I also knew that I needed help, and there was only one person who could give it to me. Sam-Koo was my only savior. In a few months, there would be another little one in my bed, draining out what was left of me. I couldn’t do this alone anymore. My husband was no help, and the Thai maids were more trouble than help. If Sam-Koo could take Joe off my hands, even for just a few months, I might be able to brave one more baby.

*

And so the days went by. Sam-Koo came to my aid, and I gave birth to another baby. Right around my due date, a coup d’état shook
Bangkok
. Coups were the usual procedure for a change in government in
Thailand
. Most of them were nonviolent, but occasionally blood was spilled, and this was one of them. From home we could hear the boom of gunfire between the two factions. Many roads were blocked, and a curfew was in force from sunset till dawn. Hok-Ching, sick with worry that I would go into labor, kept rubbing his forehead with tiger balm. He called around and found a doctor who would let me spend the night at his home. Dr. Chat’s house was much farther away, and we didn’t want to risk going that distance.

The doctor gave me a little room to sleep in. I spent the night comfortably. The next day, the two warring parties reached a truce. Hok-Ching came to fetch me. Another day passed before the baby decided that the world was safe enough to enter. Since Hok-Ching had gone back to work that morning, I asked the chauffeur to drive me to the hospital. I checked in on my own. The nurse told me not to push if I didn’t feel pain. I told her I felt no pain, but the urge to push was enormous. Without further ado, my daughter poked her head out. It was
July 3, 1951
.

By then I’d run out of inspiration for Christian names. At her baptism I asked the Italian priest for a suggestion. He flipped through the bible and declared, "Veronica!" Around the same time, her Chinese name arrived in an envelope. Baba wanted to call her "Tai-Ding," meaning "Thai Calm," but it sounded so awkward that I tweaked it a little to "Tai-Ying," meaning "Thai Jade."

As a Catholic, I wasn’t supposed to practice birth control, but I’d reached the point where I’d rather go to confession than risk another pregnancy. The church allowed only the use of rhythm, but I’d never been good at mathematics and couldn’t trust myself to count. Dr. Chat, at the risk of lowering his income, was a strong advocate of family planning. His wife, especially, could put a woman to shame with such a remark as "Oh no, you can’t be having another baby!" With Dr. Chat’s help, I convinced Hok-Ching to undergo sterilization. The night before the appointment, Hok-Ching began to worry that his voice would turn shrill and his breasts would enlarge. Thus it came as no surprise that he missed his appointment. I hung up a calendar and started counting.

3

Hok-Ching was having problems at work again. He and Brother Kin made a combustible mixture. One was generous and daring to the extreme, and the other fearful and anxious, also to the extreme. The only thing they had in common was a short fuse. After an explosion in the office, Hok-Ching would smolder for days. When I asked him what was bothering him, he would bark, "Go ask your brother!" I wouldn’t dare say another word, for whatever came out of my mouth could be interpreted as siding with the enemy.

What I objected to wasn’t leaving
Bangkok
, but the way it was done. Every year Hok-Ching took off by himself on the pretext of visiting his parents. While I stayed home with the children, he flew first to Hong Kong, stayed there "in transit" for a week, and then on to
Taiwan
to see his parents. He never mentioned Yolanda, but I would be very surprised if he didn’t look her up. On one such trip he sent me a letter from
Taipei
, telling me to pack up our things and join him there. He wasn’t coming back to
Thailand
. Just like that! He also asked me to borrow $40,000 from Brother Kin. This money was needed to pay a deposit for a little house he’d found and to tide us over until he found employment. He assured me that landing a job would be as easy as snapping his fingers, because Baba was back in the highest echelons of government.

Mother was furious. We’d been living in
Thailand
for what she thought had been seven happy years. To her, my torment over Hok-Ching’s escapades was a sign of immaturity on my part. She couldn’t see any reason for my wanting to move. In disappointment, she washed her hands of me. Brother Kin, however, understood. He knew that the explosions in the office so far had been merely the stuff of children’s firecrackers. But if he and Hok-Ching stayed together, their conflict could build to the strength of a bomb. The first casualty would be his sister. Without hesitation he wrote me a check in the amount Hok-Ching asked for—not as a loan, but a gift. I was greatly moved, for $40,000 was a lot of money.

Did I really want to move? Yes, for several reasons. Aside from the friction with Brother Kin, Hok-Ching was simply unsuited for doing business in
Thailand
. To be a successful businessman in that country, you needed the guts to break the law and the cunning to get away with it. If you did everything by the book, you might as well close shop. To survive, a trading firm such as Kin Yip would have to engage in smuggling. There was no other way, because every other firm was doing it. If you paid duties on your imports while nobody else did, how could you compete? Hok-Ching, however, wouldn’t dare play this game. He was an honest man, but more than that, he had the courage of a mouse. If he were to commit a crime, he could die of anxiety before the police came for him.

The second reason for my wanting to leave was the Shanghainese playboys with whom Hok-Ching was carousing. At the rate he was carrying on, it was just a matter of time until he met the fate of his two best friends. One of them died suddenly while on a business trip to
Taiwan
. He was barely forty years old. The circumstances of death were hushed up, but one fact was revealing. The dead man’s wife refused to go to
Taiwan
to collect the body. I knew of only one offense that could make a woman so mad. Hok-Ching’s other close friend, Sun-Tong, wasn’t in the best of health either. He’d grown gray and lost much weight in a short time. There were rumors that he’d contracted venereal diseases during his exploits. I feared for Hok-Ching and myself; for this reason alone I left
Bangkok
with no regrets.

The third reason was that Agnes and Patrick were now of school age. Agnes was eight and Patrick seven, and both were enrolled in a private school that taught English and
Thai.
I refused to put them in a public school where they would grow up truly Thai, speaking nothing but Thai. No, that wasn’t what I envisioned for my children. I wanted them to be educated in Chinese, because they were Chinese. No matter what country they lived in, they would always be Chinese. English was also important, because it was the international language. The bilingual system in
Hong Kong
would have been ideal, but since my husband had made the decision without consulting me, I could only hope to find a Taiwanese school that met my requirements.

Deserted by my husband, I had to handle the move on my own. Right at that time, the public works department sent around a notice saying that the street on which I was living was going to be closed for repairs in three days. It didn’t say when the street would reopen. Given the
mai ben rai
attitude of the Thais, the work could stretch over an indefinite period. I was in a panic. How was I going to get rid of the furniture, which was fairly new and could fetch a pretty price? With not a minute to lose, I put on one of my better cheongsams, a light dusting of facial powder, and lipstick. Everyone knows that in dealings with people, a favorable impression often produces favorable results.

I asked the chauffeur to drive me to the used furniture market. Out of the jungle of signs hanging above the stores, I picked the one that looked newly painted. A smiling shopkeeper stepped forward to greet me. He listened patiently to my plight—I was quite fluent in Thai by then, and although it was a kitchen version, people understood me. When he asked to see my furniture, I invited him to come immediately. I must have succeeded in impressing him, for not only did he follow me home, he also offered a price that was very close to the original. We struck a deal on the spot, and before the three days were up, a truck came to empty my house.

In the weeks that followed, I felt as exhilarated as a prisoner who had received a pardon. Life was giving me a second chance, and I was grabbing it before anything changed again. With a whirlwind of energy, I sold the car, packed my belongings, and said goodbye to friends and relatives. Our farewells were inevitably tearful. They pitied me, an abandoned woman chasing after her strange and irascible husband. With watery eyes, I accepted their sympathy. Had they known that these were tears of joy, they would have been offended.

How could I not feel happy? The next day I would walk out of jail, away from the oppression that had numbed my heart and stunted my mind. I would look up at the broad sky above my head and see that a sunny day stretched ahead. Wherever my next home might be, it had to be an improvement over a prison.

TAPE NINE

LAYING FOUNDATION FOR THE FUTURE

1

The turning points in my life had always descended on me like thunder and lightning—sudden and out of my control. My father’s death, the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong, and the communist takeover of
China
were some such milestones. What happened in the next stage of my life, however, was entirely my own doing.

To get from
Bangkok
to
Taiwan
, I had to switch planes in
Hong Kong
. The stopover was a great opportunity to visit with friends. So instead of taking the next connecting flight, I decided to break up the trip with a three-week stay in
Hong Kong
. Stringing along four children ranging from three to eight, I walked into the arrival lounge of
Kai
Tak
Airport
. While Patrick and Veronica clung to me on each side, Agnes and Joe went a step ahead. I watched with amusement as Agnes strutted with self-importance, clasping Joe’s chubby hand in hers.

Several days later, Hok-Ching arrived to meet us. We were to fly to
Taiwan
together at the end of my extended transit. Meanwhile, we stayed at the house of Uncle Ben. He’d moved his primary residence to
Hong Kong
in order to oversee the local branch of his company, Southeast Asia Trading. He was in his early sixties, still a handsome man with clean, sharp features and a youthful, vibrant physique. Although I never asked him about his business, I could see that he’d reached a new pinnacle of success. His home on
Cumberland Road
was a mansion in the exclusive neighborhood of Kowloon Tong. In a city that had become the most densely populated in the world, such a large piece of real estate was a sign of extreme wealth. Uncle and his Number Three wife lived in one wing, while the manager of his company, by the name of Chan, lived in the other. This wife, a half Thai, was Uncle’s favorite. He had three other wives in
Thailand
, each living with her children in a separate house.

The timing of Hok-Ching’s arrival couldn’t have been better. Uncle Ben had just discovered that Chan had been embezzling the company’s funds. Uncle was holding off firing the manager until he found a replacement. When I learned of this development, an important lesson of Chinese history came to my mind. Three elements had to exist for a campaign to succeed: timeliness, favorable geographic position, and human cooperation. The first two had been handed to me; all I needed was the third.

I went to Uncle Ben to tell him that my husband was open to changing his plans. I also reminded him that Hok-Ching had worked as bookkeeper for his company some years ago, and therefore had intimate knowledge of the business. Since then, Hok-Ching had gained a lot more experience, having managed my brother’s trading company for seven years. I then went to Hok-Ching and laid out the benefits that came with the position. The income wasn’t high, but there were year-end bonuses along with benefits such as free housing at
Cumberland Road
. Even Baba, with due respect to his position as advisor to Chiang Kai-Shek, couldn’t top such an offer. Back and forth I went several times until an agreement was reached.

Before the month was over, the Chans had moved out, and we’d moved in. Every morning Uncle’s car took Hok-Ching to the office, and every evening it brought him home. There were no clients to entertain, and no playboys to cavort with. When my husband drank it was at home, under the supervision of his children. After I taught them that drinking was bad for one’s health, they’d made a game of hiding their father’s drink. The only way he could cajole them to return it was to promise to make it his last. Then Veronica would want to sit on his lap, Joe to play Chinese chess, Patrick to arm wrestle, and Agnes would want him to repair her broken doll. I would sit back and watch the scene with contentment. At last, my prodigal husband had come home. The seven years in
Bangkok
had been the most miserable chapter of my life, and it was over.

The clean living must have restored his virility. In spite of my counting, I was pregnant again. This time I didn’t cry. On the contrary, I was delighted. My body felt like a tree that had gone barren for several seasons. It was now rested and replenished, ready to bear fruit again. I would also be getting much more support in
Hong Kong
. My former amah, Number Five, had quit her job with another family and come back to me. "Mistress, you can go to the other end of the sky and I’ll still find you," she’d said in her country lilt. Because we were the first family she’d adopted, she felt that she owned us. I didn’t mind it, of course, for a faithful servant was as good, or better, than a faithful husband.

On
August 9, 1956
, I heard the wail of my fifth newborn, and it was more beautiful than any other I’d heard. The cry meant the end of a long and excruciating labor, the likes of which I’d never experienced in all my previous deliveries. Despite two injections to induce it, the baby had stubbornly resisted for twenty-four hours. When my obstetrician, whose name was Christina Chow, announced that it was a girl, I immediately said, "Her name is Christina. Without you, she would never have come out." Her Chinese name, in accordance with Baba’s system, was Cum-Lun, for our address on Cumberland Rd. Looking at the tiny red face, similar and yet distinct from my other tiny red faces, I swore this would be my last child. At the age of thirty-eight, my elasticity was gone. It was time for my body to retire.

*

When Uncle Ben was satisfied that Hok-Ching was capable of working on his own, he happily handed over the business and took his family on a round-the-world tour. He returned several months later, only to pack up his belongings and move back to
Thailand
. His part of the house became vacant, though not for long. Word got out that Uncle Ben’s house in
Hong Kong
had plenty of room for guests. Friends of relatives and relatives of friends flew in from
Thailand
and checked into my home as though it were a hotel. We were constantly entertaining and footing the bill for the food, the extra domestic help, transport, and so on. Hok-Ching had a reasonably good income, but the visitors were putting our account in the red every month. The $40,000 that Brother Kin gave me was seeping out in a steady trickle.

I complained to Uncle Ben that I couldn’t afford this kind of lifestyle. Hok-Ching suggested selling the house, and Uncle Ben agreed. Our dwelling was transferred to the company apartment at
La Salle Road
, also in Kowloon Tong. The number of bedrooms shrank from ten to four, but for my family alone the space was quite enough. A minor problem arose, however, just before I moved in. My cousin Nancy in
Thailand
wrote to ask if her two eldest daughters could live with me. She wanted them to study in the superior schools in
Hong Kong
. Of course, I couldn’t turn down such a close relative. Thus instead of spreading my boys and girls into two rooms, I put them all in the largest one. My two nieces had a small room, and Hok-Ching and I another. The fourth was a guestroom, used mainly by Uncle Ben when he came to check on company affairs. Living rent-free in his flat, we were obliged to put him up along with whichever wife he brought with him.

I took a good hard look at my finances and felt a chill touch my heart. After a year of running a free hotel, the cash gift from Brother Kin was almost depleted. My family no longer had a cushion against emergencies. With so many mouths to feed, Hok-Ching’s income was stretched to the limit. There was absolutely no surplus to draw on. Lean days lay ahead if we continued in this way.

I decided to get a job. By then, my four older children were in school. Chris, the baby, had the undivided attention of Number Five, who was more patient than I could ever be. The faithful amah was also my eyes and ears. I trusted her to warn me of wrongdoings by the cook and washerwoman, but I also trusted her not to stir up waves where there was no wind. She wasn’t after money or power, but solely the interest of my family, her family. With her in charge, I was free to pursue a career.

Teaching was the first profession that came to my mind, as all the workingwomen I knew were teachers. I approached a
Hong Kong
University
alumnus who had opened a secondary school called New Method. It was known as a "department store" school because of its emphasis on profits rather than education. Its standard was mediocre, but I only wanted a job, not enrollment for my children. The principal hired me, and I started teaching English to thirteen-year-olds in Form One.

It took me only a few months to realize that I wasn’t suited for the job. First of all, my voice was naturally low. To make sure students at the back could hear me, I had to shout at the top of my lungs. Yelling out the rules of English grammar six hours a day was exerting the weakest part of my body. Secondly, I’d never been taught how to teach. Managing a class of forty-some teenagers isn’t a skill everyone is born with. Every time I set foot in a classroom, my heart throbbed as if I were entering a lion’s cage. The students, sensing my fear, had fun toying with me. The boys loved to climb up the window and watch me jump up and down in horror. The girls loved to sass me and watch me blink back tears. I was exhausted at the end of each day.

I considered quitting, but the feel of the paycheck in my pocket was too good to give up. A happenstance saved me from further agony. The cashier at Southeast Asia Trading, a daughter of Uncle Ben’s, was leaving for
Thailand
. Uncle Ben asked me to replace her. Hok-Ching wasn’t exactly thrilled at the prospect of me hounding him at the office, and I could imagine that looking at my husband’s face day-in and day-out could get tiresome. But the advantages of the position were simply too attractive to turn down. The hours were flexible, and if I had to take time off to rush a sick child to the doctor, surely my manager/husband wouldn’t mind. An additional benefit was that I could keep close track of my husband. Although he’d toed a straight line since leaving
Thailand
, it was no reason to let my guard down. In the past men took concubines, but in modern times mistresses were the fashion. I’d heard many stories of managers setting up second homes with their secretaries, doctors with nurses, and so on. If I didn’t watch out, the story could very well be mine.

With Uncle Ben’s backing, my wish prevailed. I tendered my resignation at New Method. The principal, a skinny, tight-fisted man who was notorious for his adeptness at the abacus, called me in to express his displeasure. The returns on his investment in me had been most unsatisfactory. I apologized copiously, while silently hoping that I would never have to ask this man for a favor again.

*

My first day at Southeast Asia Trading started off like a holiday. I woke up at the hour I used to leave for my teaching job. After seeing the children off, I sat down to a leisurely breakfast and even had time to read the papers. Instead of public buses, I rode with my manager in the company car.

Southeast Asia Trading was located in the Western District on
Hong Kong
Island
. This neighborhood was home to many
Swatow
businesses. From the time I could find my way around, Mother had sent me there on errands. As the car drove through the main street, I could see that while the rest of
Hong Kong
had developed into a modern city, this area was frozen in its own time zone. The herbal pharmacies and snake meat restaurants of my childhood were still standing. The reptiles coiled at the shop windows, which had made me stop and stare wide-eyed, were still hissing. The buildings were also the same, but now looking gray and stooped like old people. In my eyes, though, they were more becoming than the glittering high-rises just a few blocks away.

A sea breeze woke me from my reverie. The car had reached a line of dilapidated buildings along the waterfront. This was the rice
hong
row, the distribution center for the most important commodity in the colony. Alighting in front of Uncle Ben’s company, I turned around to watch the activities across the road. Several cargo boats were moored along the shore. They sank low into the sea, weighted down by bags of rice that had been off-loaded from ships in the harbor. Bare-chested coolies emerged from the hulls, bent under burlap sacks heavier than they. Without the least wavering, they trudged down narrow gangplanks from which I would have fallen without carrying anything. They were small men, made of nothing but steel and rawhide. Their burden was inhuman, yet there was no other way to get the rice into the warehouses.

I hurried after my husband into the building. The clerks stood up to greet us. Some of them peeped slyly at me, a sure sign they’d been talking about me. I returned with a broad smile to put them at ease. I might be the boss’s wife, but I wasn’t going to boss them around. Following Hok-Ching up a rickety staircase, I looked down and saw how tattered the place was. The bare concrete floor was the color of mud. The clerks’ desks were clustered in untidy rows. Nowhere was there a single decoration in this all-male environment.

The offices in the loft weren’t much better. The linoleum-covered floor was so flimsily built that it squeaked every time somebody walked on it. On the other hand, an air conditioning unit kept the temperature comfortably cool. Compared to the clerks downstairs, I had it good. Hok-Ching pointed to the desk where I was supposed to sit, and went into his own office on the other side of the partition. Actually, it was only half a partition. From my desk I could see everything that my husband was doing. The design was meant to allow the manager to keep an eye on the cashier, but it worked the other way too.