Free All That Matters by Wayson Choy Page A

within.
    Sometimes Poh-Poh held me by my shoulders and looked into my eyes as if she wanted to drill deep inside me, to see if anything of value was filling up that hollow domain. I would speak to her, say something that was using my very best half-Chinese, half-English sentences, and she would choke and choke at the apparent absurdity of my statements.
    At those times, I thought of all the wrinkle-faced people, white-haired people with furrowed brows from Eastern European countries and from Italy, who sat on their porches and on the steps along Keefer Street, and how sadly they sometimes looked upon the lot of us white and yellow kids romping together on the streets. Their disapproving glances and shouts for their grandchildren to rejoin them on the porch made me think they all longed for us to be among our own kind, just as they once were: children of a single language and a single community.
    “Fraser Valley …,” I said even louder and kicked the box hard. “Eden Farm.”
    “Kiam-Kim,” Poh-Poh warned, “you soon forget—
you China!”
    I started to protest. She bowed her head and began dabbing her eyes with the corner of her white apron.
    “On—onions …,” she said.
    Just as she turned her back to me, I snatched the chewed-up sugar cane and stuffed it in my mouth to suck out its last bit of pulpy sweetness. Then I loudly and rudely spat the stringy fibres into the compost bin.
    “I’m finished,” I said and jumped off the wooden crate.
    “You clean and cut carrots for me.”
    She did not even turn around. I picked up the dull scraping knife and pulled up a chair. The carrots were thick and twisted. Her old chin rose to beg the tolerance of the Kitchen God for the salvation of her
mo-no
grandson.
    The wild-eyed Kitchen God was only a picture on a placard, an ancient warrior printed on a small poster stuck just above the stove, but she mumbled something to him. Scraping away, I mumbled something, too.
    “Careful,” Poh-Poh said. “Tsao Chung hear you.”
    I made a face at Tsao Chung and didn’t even care if all my few Chinese brain cells withered away.
    She lifted her know-it-all eyebrow. “You ask for more blessing or trouble?”
    At my look of surprise, she burst out laughing and left me by myself in the prickly heat of the Kitchen God’s kingdom.
    As I yanked the green, ferny tops from the knobby carrots, my head began to work out the things both Third Uncle and Grandmother taught me that would either bless me or trouble my life.
    Between hacking into spittoons, the elders were always proclaiming ten thousand this or ten thousand that. “Ten thousand blessings!” Third Uncle would exclaim if his business went well; then, Poh-Poh would laugh and warn him,
“Aaaiiyaah!
Ten thousand troubles!”
    Sure enough, the stock market crashed. Ten thousand troubles landed upon our doorstep.
    Grandmother explained to me that her words were meant to chase away the envy of the gods, but she had not been present to utter the right incantations when Third Uncle boasted of his growing bank account over business lunches with the H.Y. Louie and the Yip Sang merchant families. Women were never invited to those lunches. Poh-Poh told me how in America some months ago men jumped out of buildings when the value of investments dropped. Third Uncle had even thought of killing himself, but Poh-Poh reminded him to think of his new family in Gold Mountain. As a family, Father assured him, we would survive. Third Uncle joined the merchants for their regular luncheon.
    “They never invite women,” Poh-Poh explained. “No woman die for money.”
    The last carrot waited to be scuffed and washed. The idea of having a new brother sent my mind searching for blessings.
    Whenever anyone offered Chinatown children candy, we were taught to refuse at least twice, so one would be humble and worthy of a final third offering. Whenever I expected too much, like lots of lucky money at New Year’s, I would walk past the smallGoddess of