On Gold Mountain Page 42

  When Gilbert, Sissee, and Leslee had first returned from Memphis and moved into the house on Ivadel, Mrs. Leong hadn’t softened just like that. She’d observed Sissee and made careful calculations of her character. Sissee, who had grown up working in the store and at Dragon’s Den, had had to prove to her motherin-law what a hard worker she was. When Mrs. Leong bought some rundown apartments on Bunker Hill, Sissee kept them up. Each time a tenant left, Sissee scrubbed down the apartments with ammonia and Clorox until her hands were raw. She never complained, never said a word. The housekeeping chores also fell to Sissee. She did the shopping and cleaning. (Except on Thursdays, when her father-in-law made dinner at home for all of them, Sissee made dinner nightly for her own family unit. And, except on Thursdays, Sissee and Gilbert were already in bed when the rest of the family got home from Soochow.) When she wasn’t cooking, cleaning, or shopping, Sissee went to the F. Suie One Company to do the books. In her spare time she volunteered at the Chinese Women’s Club and visited her mother’s old friend Mrs. Morgan, which showed she honored older people. Sissee always told Mrs. Leong the truth and showed respect. But more than anything else, Sissee gave the appearance of being willing to listen to and adopt her motherin-law’s advice.

  “If anyone comes to the house, welcome them with a cup of tea,” Mama Leong might suggest, and Sissee would do it.

  “Be careful what you say,” Mama Leong chastised. “In Chinese, a wrong inflection will give a very different meaning.”

  Mama Leong instructed, “At home, we always use serving spoons for the communal dishes. At other houses, or sometimes at banquets at low-class restaurants, people will put their chopsticks into the common bowls. This is not how we do it. But if you are at a place that does it this way, then certainly do the same. To be polite, only pick up what is directly in front of you.”

  Another daughter-in-law might have said, “I know that. I wasn’t born in a barn, you know.” But Sissee kept her mouth shut, allowing her motherin-law to think that she was docile and obedient.

  The hardest part was having a small child in a house full of adults. Even though Sissee had been raised in Chinatown, there were certain things she could see about the way she’d grown up that were completely different from the Leong style. Sissee had been close to her mother. There had always been hugs and kisses and deeply felt expressions of love. In the Leong family, emotional demonstrations were held in disdain. As a result, Leslee never received hugs and kisses from her grandparents. Presents were not to be played with. Christmases came and went, birthdays came and went. Gifts—dolls and miniature ovens—were to be looked at, admired, then stored in the attic.

  The Leongs loved Leslee, of course. She didn’t make noise, run around, or bang into things in the house. “Best of all,” Sissee had heard Mama Leong say, “Leslee looks like a typical Chinese baby.” Although by all rights Leong Jeung should have given Leslee her Chinese name, Mama Leong had done it herself, giving her beautiful, quiet granddaughter the name of Man Gai En, for the famous musician.

  Now, as Leslee got older, Mrs. Leong sometimes scolded, “Don’t let Leslee forget she’s a girl. She must act like a young lady—in how she walks, how she sits, how she talks.” Another daughter-in-law might have said, “Oh, Mom, you’re so chong hai, so long-winded,” but Sissee simply nodded, and reminded Leslee to be quiet and remember that the house was filled with grownups.

  Where other families might have resisted, argued, or harbored resentments, the nine Leongs—Sissee included—had settled into a comfortable routine shored up by tradition. Ed, Gilbert’s older brother, accepted the responsibility of the family business and obeyed his mother. Margie was a social worker, but her schedule brought her back each night to Soochow, where she was still the hostess.

  Elmer? Poor Elmer. Sissee could remember how handsome her brother-in-law had been before the war. He had been in military intelligence and had flown over Germany almost every day. Eventually he’d gotten ulcers, and one month before the war ended, the military had brought him home and he’d spent the next year and a half in a hospital. While he was away, he’d also gotten a bad case of acne. Once out of the hospital, he’d gone to a Chinese doctor, who sanded his skin off. Now Elmer was a wastrel. With his skin brutally scarred, he’d moved outward to the next layer, dressing in expensive clothes and shoes. But Bernice provided Elmer’s real armor. She was a strong woman.

  Bernice had been born up north, near Fresno, and had a life that was in many ways typically Chinese American—persistent in the face of hard times combined with the rare stroke of good fortune. Her family was practically the only Chinese family in the area, so Bernice was very westernized, with a modern haircut and makeup. She spoke English at home, and followed American traditions. Her father had owned a restaurant at the country’s first miniature golf course. When the Depression hit, Bernice’s father had moved his wife and five children into Fresno, where he was hired as a cook in a place that had gambling and prostitution. Bernice said he’d hated it because he was straitlaced and religious. He’d taken a chance and opened a little grocery store, then a restaurant in Fresno Chinatown, where he’d gained a reputation for his coconut cream and lemon pies. “People came from miles around to get them,” Bernice told Sissee. “American people, not just Chinese.” Then her father had contracted double pneumonia; soon after, he’d died of a heart attack. Bernice had been eighteen at the time.

  She’d taken a job at Wu’s Cafe, and it was there that she’d met Elmer, passing through Fresno on his way to a football game in San Francisco. In 1940, Bernice had moved to Los Angeles and gone to work for an herbalist. When she’d gotten tired of that, she’d taken a job as a secretary for an actress, Ona Munson, the woman who’d played Belle in Gone With the Wind. Bernice had a cousin, Pearl Luck, who had a gift shop in China City. Pearl, a Methodist, had gotten Bernice to go to the mission, where she’d renewed her acquaintance with Elmer. Then the war had come. Elmer had been sent overseas and Bernice had gone back to Fresno. After Elmer had gotten out of the hospital, he’d asked her to come back down to Los Angeles. Mrs. Leong had tried to discourage this, but the big difference between Gilbert and Elmer was that Elmer did what he wanted.

  Elmer had listened to all of his mother’s talk about Bernice’s inferior family background and immediately taken Bernice and eloped to Las Vegas. Mrs. Leong had pitched a fit, but there was nothing to be done about it except have another marriage ceremony in a church. Afterwards, Mrs. Leong had wanted Bernice to perform the tea-pouring ceremony, but Bernice had refused. “I’m not going to kowtow to them,” she had said. She hadn’t given in then, and she didn’t give in to Mrs. Leong now. But this wasn’t Sissee’s way.

  Since Ming’s arrival in the house, Sissee had enjoyed the truce with her motherin-law, but she realized there was more to marriage than a good relationship between a wife and a motherin-law. Sissee wanted desperately to move out of the house, but Gilbert repeatedly forestalled her attempts. For this reason, Sissee had spent much of her early marriage redefining her image of her husband. She had seen Gilbert as a sculptor. She had thought he was creative, romantic, bohemian. She had placed him in the same category as Benji and Tyrus. It had come as the biggest shock of her life when Gilbert had turned out to be a rigid Chinese man.

  The more Sissee talked about finding their own house, the more she realized her husband wanted to stay with his mother. Still, every day Sissee looked through the classifieds, hoping to find a solution. This morning her eyes caught an advertisement, and she began to envision what might be. That night, when Gilbert came home, she showed him the ad.

  “Army surplus is selling entire barracks,” she said. “We could go in with Stella and Eddy and buy one. They’d like to get out of the basement and have their own place too.”

  “What? You want us to live all together in a barracks?”

  “No, we’ll take it apart and use the materials to build our own home. You’ll be able to express yourself and build exactly what you want.”
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br />   Gilbert laughed. “It sounds ridiculous. It sounds like something Eddy would do. You’re a dreamer, just like him.”

  And without considering the implications, she said, “I want to get out of here. There are just too many people.” Then, echoing her own mother, she added, “I want to have a house of my own. Either we move out of here, or I’ll move out myself.”

  In a way that Sissee would never fully understand, Gilbert had made his choice when he married her. “Go ahead and check about these barracks,” he said. “Perhaps they’re a good idea after all.”

  In 1948, Sumoy, Fong See’s youngest daughter and Richard’s half-aunt, turned thirteen. She was petite and pretty in an innocent way. All who knew her loved her. “She is so sweet, she was born sweet,” they said. Sumoy was the good daughter, the one who accompanied her father on his Christmas shopping trip to Sears, where she helped him pick out gifts—reindeer sweaters for the boys, Dan River gingham blouses for the girls, a hat and scarf set for Ngon Hung. Sumoy’s father and all her older brothers guarded her for the precious jewel she was. Just as her father wouldn’t let her go on camping trips with the Girl Scouts when she was younger, he now forbade her to go on overnight trips with the church or to the homes of her friends. When she wanted to spend the night at Betty Soo Hoo’s house, Fong See said, “No, she has brothers.” When Betty came over and said she had her own room, Fong See still wasn’t satisfied. “Do you have a lock on the door?” Without a lock, Sumoy wasn’t sleeping anywhere other than her own room. Yet, for all this protection, Fong See didn’t seem to notice that Richard was ga-ga over Sumoy.

  Richard provided excitement to everyone in the extended Fong family. The girls thought he was fascinating. How could he not be fascinating? He was eighteen. He was white, with black hair and skin paler than theirs. Yet he was connected; he was family. When he moved to Chinatown, everyone accepted him as though he’d just returned from a long journey. Richard wasn’t simply another cousin; he was the son of everyone’s absolute favorite uncle/cousin/half-brother. Eddy had never broken the tie. He had given the kids their first radio when Pa had said no. He had taken the boys out to Angeles Forest and cut down Christmas trees to bring back and set up throughout the Fong apartment. (Stella had shown the girls how to make ornaments out of toilet paper.) He was the ideal older brother, so it was only natural that in a family where blood truly was thicker than water, they embraced Richard completely.

  Richard and Sumoy were like Romeo and Juliet—impossible, doomed, the stuff of stories. The other teenagers were bewitched by the pair’s shy looks, their sudden blushes, their eyes locking onto each other, then just as quickly glancing away. “It was so beautiful,” one cousin recalled. “It was love. I could cry when I think about how beautiful it was.”

  Part of the suspense was watching the energy flow between these two—the girl just out of puberty, the boy just graduating from high school. The other part was not knowing if it was real or imagined, because surely, if it was true, wouldn’t one of the adults have done something? But not once did Fong See, Ngon Hung, Eddy, or Stella say anything directly. Rather, Fong See told his wife, “Keep an eye on Sumoy. Don’t let her get out of hand. Don’t let her do anything that will embarrass the family.” Ngon Hung, who, when most girls are experiencing their first crush, was already married and a mother, counseled her daughter, “Men always have time to run around town. Society doesn’t put a brand on them.”

  What none of them appreciated was that Sumoy had a brain. Even though she was a good Chinese daughter who might be expected to follow an inevitable course through a life of childbirth, chores, and early old age like her mother’s, Sumoy wanted desperately to break the pattern, which seemed as immutable as granite. After a day at junior high school she went to the store, sat at a table in the back, and did her homework. Her father ignored her when she complained that it was too dark. Sumoy knew her requests were pointless. It was dark because they didn’t want anyone to see the dust. Having finished her homework, she picked up a feather duster and worked her way from one end of the store to the other.

  “What do you need school for?” her father asked. “If you have to work, be something like a secretary or an office assistant.”

  Her mother shook her head in confusion. “You know about the past, but you care more about the future.”

  Only Richard understood.

  “I can’t go on like this,” Sumoy confided to him with an air of sophistication that belied her years. “I don’t want to spend my life in the store. I want something different. Besides, they’ll never let me in the store. Chuen and Yun are being groomed to take over, not me, not a girl. They’re the ones out delivering furniture, driving the car, helping Father.”

  “You don’t want that anyway,” Richard said. “You can do other things. You could go to college.”

  Sumoy, who was close to her mother and still tied to home, knew she would never overstep any boundaries. She shut her eyes to the lovesick boy before her, preferring to see an understanding brother.

  By late 1948, Gilbert, Sissee, Eddy, and Stella (who had bought a lot on Landa, a street that curved up the back side of Elysian Park and offered a view across the Los Angeles River toward Mount Washington) had made considerable progress in taking apart the barracks. Each weekend they drove out Alameda in a loose convoy: the adults in cars, the boys—Richard and Ted (who was between stints with the merchant marine and the army)—in a pickup truck. Along the way, the group stopped at a farm to buy fresh-picked corn. When they reached Long Beach, they crossed over the drawbridge to Terminal Island, where they drove the short distance to the barracks. There were about twenty barracks in all, and each had been sold to a family motivated by the same sort of wishful thinking as inspired the Sees and the Leongs. Tyrus and Ruth usually came along for the picnic and the jokes.

  The barracks stood two stories high. Each floor had a latrine with several toilets, all hooked up to a single flush, a point that Tyrus couldn’t let alone. “What are you going to do with these?” he jibed Gil and Eddy. “They have one flush, for Christ’s sake.” The toilets were also connected to the same water source—a huge tank, totally impractical for domestic use. The communal urinals took even more ribbing. Other things—like the two-story water heater and all its accessories—seemed to defy comprehension. But plenty of other stuff—wood, wiring, nails, electrical circuitry, faucets, and spigots—was usable.

  The process was like constructing a building in reverse. The men—since much of it was designated “men’s work”—started on the roof and slowly worked their way down. First they pulled off the roofing material and scraped off the tar. Then, very slowly, they extracted the nails and lifted out the wood planks, passing them down from person to person to be stacked in the back of the truck. As the roof and the walls came off the second floor, the men worked like spiders across the webbing of remaining joists and beams. On the ground, the women sat together and talked as they straightened nails and packed them in wooden barrels, wound up balls of electrical wire, wrapped windows in blankets, and stored fixtures in boxes.

  They enjoyed being out here—the camaraderie with the other groups, the time spent with their families. They were middle-aged now. Ruth was still extraordinarily beautiful, with her jet black hair. Her eyes sparkled with an inside humor. Although Sissee was the youngest—if only by a few months—she looked the oldest, with her hair threaded by gray. Stella had undergone an amazing transformation in the last year. On Eddy’s birthday in 1947 she had begun going to a diet clinic on North Broadway. After years of being overweight, she now weighed 112 pounds. The weight had settled into voluptuous curves on top and bottom, tapering in to a twenty-two-inch waist. Her hair was still fiery red, with tendrils that frizzed in the sea air.

  Time had treated each of the men differently. With each passing year, Gilbert would become skinnier and ever more ramrod-straight. Tyrus would never change. He was thin, energetic, and funny, the most successful of them all. He’d left Disney and gone to
Warner Brothers, where he worked on storyboards for John Wayne, George Raft, and Frank Sinatra movies. “I have a lot of freedom,” he told his friends. “I don’t have to punch a time clock, and when it’s slow I can take time off and do my own work.”

  Since being cut out of the family partnership, Eddy had drifted—making jewelry, doing minor repairs on appliances for friends, visiting his father. Eddy still had his “December seventh beard” and was a bit wider through the middle, but these were just physical characteristics. He was an incorrigible goofball. Holding up a length of salami, he might widen his eyes and say, “How would you like to have this between your legs?” And every time he said something along those lines, Tyrus would laugh: “That’s the trouble with you. Everything is always below the belt.”

  After the work was done, the three couples sat in a ragged circle around the fire. Richard and Ted sat slightly apart, talking in low voices. The four little girls—Leslee, and Tyrus and Ruth’s three daughters—pedaled their tricycles in wide, noisy circles. This was the time they all enjoyed the most, when the work was finished and they could cook a pot of corn over a fire, drink coffee, and nibble on sandwiches and cold noodles.

  A year later, in 1949, although the barracks was completely dismantled and all of the wood, electrical wiring, faucets, and spigots were stored in family warehouses and backyards, no dream houses were under construction. Gilbert said he was “too busy” with his own work to design a house. Instead of building the house on Landa, Stella, Eddy, and Richard moved into Stella’s grandmother Huggins’s house on Lantana Street in Glassell Park—close to downtown, and around the corner from Stella’s cousins Ida and Vernon. (Stella had inherited the house on her grandmother’s death.) From here, Richard enrolled at City College and began taking classes. The lot on Landa grew wild with patches of sumac, poison oak, and rye grass.