On Gold Mountain Read online

  After they’d pulled the weeds, Sissee said, “Mom, let’s see if any of your brothers still live around here.”

  Ticie walked back to the car, remaining silent through the drive to the filling station, where Sissee looked in a telephone directory. “There’s a Pruett listed,” Sissee called out.

  “I don’t care,” Ticie said.

  “We’ve come all this way. Don’t you want to go over and meet this person?”

  “No, I don’t want to do anything like that. I just want to go home.”

  To see so much change in your lifetime wasn’t such a wonderful thing, See-bok thought. What was it the lo fan said? No cloud without a silver lining? He thought there was no silver lining without a cloud. Here he was, a man in his eighties, an astute businessman, respected, feared. He had a beautiful young wife who had given him many children. He was sure she would bear him more, too. But he couldn’t help feeling bitter.

  He’d developed a different feeling about white people since marrying Ngon Hung. He’d had ideas. He’d had dreams. If just one fan gway had helped him … He didn’t mean the friendship of Richard White or the simple business deal with Sugarman, but a real, true financial investment, then he could have been someone. He could have been someone out there. If he had been white, he would be famous and rich. He would live in Pasadena or Hancock Park. He would have a mansion filled with the most exquisite things the world had to offer. Now, as he looked back over his more than sixty years in this country, he could see the foolhardiness of his dreams.

  So he’d become more Chinese. He’d abandoned his neatly tailored three-piece suits for mandarin robes. He’d relinquished his natty lizard-skin shoes for the comfortable cloth slippers he sold in his shop. He’d forgotten his English—or pretended to have done so. With a household of children babbling in Cantonese, he remembered the old sounds, phrases, and axioms of his youth. All those ideas of child-rearing that Ticie had laughed off, he now embraced unabashedly, knowing that Ngon Hung would never have the courage to speak up to him.

  He had always been considered a far-ahead thinker. It became more difficult for him now. He thought about Ngon Hung. She was beautiful, but he was an old man. What if there were other men, younger men, who wanted her? He locked her up. He wouldn’t let her out. Sometimes he wondered if she was unhappy, but his own jealousy made him dismiss those concerns. He never discussed business with Ngon Hung. She was neither his confidante nor a part of his business. The fact that she stayed home and had time to polish her fingernails gave him status in the community. She was young and attractive, even if she didn’t have the latest hairdo or the newest clothes. He liked it that way.

  He insisted that his second family act properly toward his first family. He made the children from his second family show respect for Ticie by visiting her regularly. (They reported that she was elegant but didn’t speak much.) Each Saturday, See-bok arranged for Ngon Hung to send lunch over to Ticie and whoever was working in her store. Sometimes it would be a Chinese lunch, but mostly it came from See Yuen, on Alameda, which served American meals. The deliveryman walked up the small incline of Marchessault Street with a big tray heavy with silver-domed dishes of roast pork. These tribute meals paid off. The children of his first marriage—all grown now—called his wife Ahpo—giving her the respect of a “grandmother” though she was just a little older than Sissee—or Ahji-ah—”sister.”

  Try as he might, he never stopped thinking about Ticie. Sometimes he wondered, Do the others see I have a soft spot for her? He knew that Ticie still carried her love for him. Lately he wondered if she was ill or ailing in some way. Yet how could he go to her and not start gossip? Only when he went on his walks with his little Sumoy, his youngest daughter, did he stop at Ticie’s store so he could talk to her.

  Wives. It made him strong to have so many. It increased his esteem in the community. It was also good to have a warm young wife in his bed at night, but sometimes he thought it would also be nice to have some quiet time, too.

  Children. When his children had come back from China in 1937, they were like low-class immigrants fresh off the boat; their English was terrible. Uncle’s family, the same thing. See-bok didn’t care. “One day we will all go back to China,” he told his children. “We won’t spend our money here. We’ll save it for China.” As for Chinese school, Fong See had come a long way from how he felt with the children from his first family. “Don’t worry about your American education,” he said these days. “You won’t be living here forever. That’s why you go to Chinese school. Pay attention and learn.”

  He ruled them with an iron fist. No bicycles. No roller-skating. No ice-skating. No movies. No radio. No sports. No football. No baseball. No dancing. No girlfriends. No boyfriends. No kissing. All of this went double—triple—for his daughters. When his children said that other fathers let their sons do or have these things, he answered, “Ah, but these things represent decay. These things are a bad influence.” The difference between his second family and his first was that this time everyone obeyed him.

  Grandchildren. At family banquets—weddings, births, deaths—all of his sons from the first marriage came with their families. He couldn’t keep them straight. Ngon Hung did that for him. Oh, he knew Richard. That boy. But the rest? Some freckle-faced girl or long-boned, skinny girl would be presented to him. His wife would say, “This is Pollyanne, the daughter of Ray,” or, “This is Marcia, the daughter of Bennie.” He’d look them over, his attention already wandering, nod his head, say, “Yes, yes, yes, yes,” then wave them away. Maybe a pat on the head depending on how he felt. These lo fan children were strangers to him.

  Business. Mr. White was still a regular at both the F. Suie One and F. See On companies. He had dinner once a week with Ticie over on Maplewood, and dinner once a week with Fong See in his store, where the evening meal had always been provided for the employees. Mr. White came in, sat in a straight-backed chair or on a porcelain garden stool right next to the register, and calmly waited. But most of his old customers had died off, to be replaced by young decorators who knew nothing! See-bok had to teach them how to recognize a good piece of art. He worked even harder to cajole them into buying, to make them feel smart and clever.

  He sized up these new customers just as he had the old government officials. Sometimes he put on a no-speakee-English routine. Sometimes he feigned to forget past negotiations, so that a young upstart would think he had bested See-bok and therefore came back to the store again and again. But just as in the old days, if a tourist walked in, See-bok yelled, “Get out! Get out! Don’t bother me. If you can’t afford to buy, then don’t come in here. Go to another shop.” He treated his few Chinese customers even worse: “I don’t need your business. I don’t want to bargain with you. Go away!” On the other hand, he still had his private den for those who had proved themselves worthy.

  More business. He gave big parties in China, and he gave big parties here. He invited business associates home for tea cakes. He entertained them. When the delivery boy came, See-bok tipped him in front of all those business associates so they could see what an important man he was. Tipping wasn’t a Chinese custom, but he had picked it up. Twenty-five cents, fifty cents, what was that to him? Was it for show? Of course, but it was always a big thing for the tea-cake man or the delivery boy from See Yuen. See? He was still a far-ahead thinker.

  Business and family. He’d never wanted outsiders. “I’ll bring someone from the family to help us,” he’d always told his brother when they needed help. Why was this? His family had always helped when Caucasians wouldn’t. Certain things were still important to him: money, property, and being a businessman, instead of a laundryman or grocery-man. He had never deviated from that course. Now people came to him for advice and guidance just as they did in the village. He had his favorites, and called in his markers when he had to. He didn’t care what other people thought, as long as they agreed with him. He always had the last word.

  “I need extra cash to brin
g someone over,” someone might request.

  “Who is this person?” See-bok would ask, then decide his or her fate depending on the answer.

  “I need a job,” a young man might say. “Can you help me?”

  “What are your skills?” See-bok would inquire. “What do you know? What do you want to be?” When he had learned all he could, he would find a job for this or that young immigrant.

  “Should I go into business with Lee Horn?”

  “He has never been able to hold down a job,” Fong See would opine. “You should look for someone else.”

  Someone might ask, “Arthur Chung has asked me for a ten-thousand-dollar loan. Should I lend it to him?”

  Again, See-bok would consider. “No, two thousand is enough.”

  Even men with established businesses sought his advice.

  “That boy from my home village, Jimmy, isn’t working hard. Could you talk to him?”

  And when Jimmy, a boy with the invincible attitude of youth, walked in, See-bok would question him: “Why aren’t you doing your work in your uncle’s laundry? Why are you not obeying him?”

  If Jimmy was foolhardy enough to say, “I don’t like to work hard,” sure enough by the end of the day he would be without a job and learning what happened if you didn’t follow orders.

  The Japanese crisis. Some people in Chinatown still grumbled that See-bok kept Japanese goods in his store. That gossip had been started by no-accounts and people who talked too much. Why shouldn’t he sell Japanese goods? It was his merchandise. He’d bought it before the war started. Who were they to tell him what to do? Why should he care what a bunch of no-accounts were yelling about? He remembered how his neighbors had come into his store to complain, then, later, had thrown paint on his windows. Did they think he would forget that?

  When Mrs. Leong had come to call with her little tins for China Relief, he’d turned her away empty-handed. He knew how word of that had spread through Chinatown, but he didn’t care. When his niece, who sometimes worked in the store, asked him about it, he explained, “I do my own charity. I give money to my village. I bring relatives over. You should give from the heart, and I do. Besides,” he went on, “you don’t know what they’re going to do with the money. They’re so greedy.” To the son of the owner of Man Gen Low, he said, “I won’t get involved with this anti-Japanese thing. Those people are corrupt. You give them money and they put half in their pockets. Why should I give my money to people like that? I don’t need them. I don’t rely on them. If I want to be patriotic, I’ll do it the way I want.”

  Partners. He didn’t have partners since he’d sold his business to Sugarman. Instead of simplifying his life, it seemed to make the most basic day-to-day affairs hard. Just a few years back, Fong Lum had been the family chef. He was a relative and a “partner.” Each night he cooked a full Chinese feast in the back of the store. Everyone pulled up a chair to a round table like those in a restaurant. Fong See, who always liked fresh food, insisted on the freshest possible ingredients. He also liked chicken that weighed between three and four pounds. “They’re the most tender,” he told his sons.

  One day Fong See had gotten the idea to buy a live chicken and slaughter it, thereby guaranteeing the freshest meal possible. Lum took the chicken out to the back alley, slit its throat, and threw it in a trashcan to thrash out its last moments. It jumped out, then scooted and dragged itself all around until there was blood everywhere and they’d all lost their appetites. Those days were gone, because Lum had deserted to work for Sugarman. That was that. Now Ngon Hung, who had never cooked before, had taken over.

  Life story. When newspapermen interviewed him about Chinatown, he lied and told them he had been in Los Angeles since 1871. When customers called him Mr. See, Mr. On, or Mr. Suie, he never told them that his last name was actually Fong. When people asked how many wives he had, he answered one, two, three, or four, depending on his mood. When they asked him how he’d come to this country, he tried his best to make it into a good story, one that had never been heard before. Personally, he was sick of the whole thing. Why tell it again and again the same way? By now he had told so many stories to so many different people that he could no longer remember which was true or not.

  On a Saturday morning in late 1941, Ngon Hung worked the woven frogs through their corresponding loops until each one had been fastened into place at her daughter’s neck, armpit, and down her side. Then Ngon Hung pinched Sumoy’s cheeks until they were a pleasant rosy color. “You’re ready now,” Ngon Hung said, gently pushing Sumoy through the room with the old organ and out into the main room of what had once been the Methodist Mission’s main sanctuary. “He’s waiting for you. Go on, walk with the old man.”

  Sumoy did as she was told. Born in 1935, Sumoy was the youngest girl in the family—the sweetest one, the most cherished. She was always good-tempered and never cried. Every day until she was old enough to go to school, she’d taken this walk with her father. Now she did it just on weekends and holidays.

  Sumoy and her father left the apartment, walking down the two flights of dimly lit stairs. Pa took firm hold of her hand, reminding her, “Don’t let go.” Today they walked over to Soochow Restaurant, down to Dragon’s Den, then to the Jin Hing Jewelry Store, the Eastern Grocery Store, and the Hop Sing Tong, where she sat on her father’s lap and listened to him talk to the other old men.

  On their way home, they stopped to visit “Mother” downstairs from where Sumoy and her family lived. Mother’s store was a lot like Pa’s. Mother was an old ghost woman. Even though she had many wrinkles, she was still very pretty. Sumoy knew Mother was part of the family; she just didn’t know how or why. Sometimes Sumoy sat quietly while Pa and Mother chatted. But today Pa said, “You sit out here. Go over there and play.” Mother handed her a toy butterfly on a stick. Then Mother and Pa disappeared behind a curtain that tinkled when they walked through it. Sumoy sat outside and waited.

  Sumoy waved the butterfly back and forth, watching its paper wings flutter soundlessly. She had done something like this many times before, because Mother always gave Sumoy a book or crayons and paper to amuse herself. She never knew what Mother and Pa talked about. Even though Sumoy was only six, she knew she shouldn’t ask.

  Sumoy was in school and had learned that not everyone lived the way she did. She remembered her first day of kindergarten. Her mother had dressed her in Chinese cotton pants and a crossover frog jacket, just like today. When she’d gotten to school, all the other girls were wearing dresses. That night she’d begged her mother to let her wear a dress. But it had taken a long time for her parents to relent.

  They didn’t want her to do a lot of things. Pa didn’t want her to join the Girl Scouts. “You’re not the type of person to go on an overnight trip,” he said. “Besides, I don’t want my daughter to be viewed as sleeping on the ground.” He didn’t want her to go to the library: “If there’s a book that’s important for you to read, then you will get it at school. Otherwise you don’t need it.” He didn’t like for her to go to church: “Don’t spend active time there. No one should make up your mind for you. Don’t give up your life for someone else.”

  Instead, her father wanted her to do her embroidery. He wanted her to learn how to knit. He wanted her to take piano lessons. She wasn’t interested in those things. She watched her mother making shirts for her older brothers. She saw how her older sister, May Oy, was passive and shy, a good listener. May Oy was so quiet she was hardly there. Her oldest sister, Jong Oy, was lively. But everyone was always upset with her. They wanted Jong Oy to sit quietly and string macaroni necklaces to sell at Olvera Street.

  Find joy in your family members only, Pa said. Sumoy thought that was okay for her older brothers and sisters; they had cousins their same age. Sumoy didn’t. She was alone, so she spent her time with the adults. But she liked it when Pa took her over to China City to see Uncle and Auntie for lunch. Auntie was so nice to her! “Sit down,” Auntie said when Sumoy visited. “Sit in this
chair, because it is most comfortable.” Auntie always asked Sumoy if she was happy. Auntie always retied the Shirley Temple bows in Sumoy’s hair and whispered sweet words into her ear. Then Auntie would bring out sweets—sponge cakes, dumplings, coconut candies, or moon cakes made from winter melon and cut into thin slices. Sumoy would sit there feeling utterly content, because at home her father was so domineering and her mother always scolded, “Too many sweets. That’s too sweet for the children. Why do you let them give those to her?”

  The beaded curtain tinkled again, and Pa stepped out. Sumoy said good-bye to the ghost woman called Mother and followed her father. “Take my hand,” he said when they got to the door. With one hand in her father’s dry, papery palm and the other holding her butterfly on a stick, Sumoy went back out onto the street, blinking a few times as her eyes readjusted from the dimness of the store to the bright California sunshine.

  Today she was too tired to remember her manners, and began asking questions. As they walked the few steps to the stairwell that would take them back upstairs to their apartment, she asked, “Pa, why don’t you get a car so you can drive us around instead of walking all the time?”

  “I’m too old to learn how to drive,” he answered.

  They began climbing the stairs. “Pa, why do we have to live here?”

  “In fifty or one hundred years from now the city will still be growing,” he said. “We are near the railroad. You want to be where people are coming and going. If we stay here, we will always be in the forefront of things.”

  Her father paused on the first-floor landing to catch his breath.

  “Pa, don’t you ever get tired of walking up and down these stairs?”

  “We live up,” he responded. “This building could be taller. If City Hall can be thirteen stories high, then other buildings can be higher than that.”

  “They’ll be too heavy. They’ll fall down,” Sumoy said.

  Pa turned the key in the lock and pushed her through the doorway into the comforting familiarity of their apartment in the old Methodist Church. “Sumoy, one day the whole city will be filled with buildings so tall that you and I can’t even imagine them. We need to be ready for that.”