I was not in the original family photo, although you might say I was, since I was growing in Ma’s belly at the time.  Khoong-Khoong had decreed that a family picture must be taken and that it could not wait for me, because it must coincide with the grand opening of his second coffee shop. 

The whole family had lined up, four rows standing and one row seated, in front of the new shop.  The lion dance troupe had just left, so the ground was littered with shreds of firecracker paper.  It looked as if there had just been a light peppering of red snow.  The lion had come to bestow all the good luck and prosperity he had and perhaps more, for a very generous ang pow, usually an envelope in red or dark pink filled with money, had already been carefully planted inside a head of lettuce earlier by my grandfather, who then had it strung up high above the gilded signboard. 

The magnificent lion, in shining scales of gold, green and red, manned by a crew of six dancers, had made its way around the shop and the premises twice before entering the shop again for the final and most impressive dance.  The lion moved across the shop floor with quick turns to the left and right, opening its mouth often to show its hunger.  When it climbed the ladder, it stopped at each rung to regard its audience before ascending again.  The drums and cymbals that accompanied the lion beat an intoxicating rhythm.  The lion reached the signboard, climbed one more rung, and then whoosh! only the red string holding the lettuce was left swaying, its prize taken.  The rest of the dancers moved as if the lion was having a time of it chewing.  And then from inside the lion’s head came flying shreds of iceberg leaves as the lead dancer broke open the head of lettuce to retrieve the ang pow.  The audience, who had watched the dance with rapt attention, burst into applause when they saw the lion devour the lettuce.  Murmurs rippled through the crowd speculating on the exact amount of the gift.  Khoong-Khoong had wisely kept it to himself.  He would only say that abundant good luck and prosperity was worth it.  Red firecrackers, strung up by the dozen and filled with real gunpowder, were set off to commemorate the success of the dance, deafening everyone momentarily.  And long after the opening ceremony the people in the audience still heard the clashing cymbals and beating drums that had accompanied the dance of the lion.

By the time I was old enough to recognise the picture for a family photo, I could not remember when the little black and white 2×2 of me was slipped into the bottom of the frame, below the rest of the family that had posed for the original photo.  Someone had snapped a shot when I was happiest, holding on to Teddy, my stuffed best friend.  In that close-up of a slight profile, the photographer managed to capture a little girl with thin wisps of curly hair and plump cheeks sporting a very agreeable toothless smile.  And so, by manual inclusion, I became a bona fide part of the only portrait of my paternal family, taken in 1969. 

Years later, after a long absence from the shophouse where that picture hung for decades before it finally became mine, I saw it again.  As I scanned the faces carefully, I felt myself being drawn to the faces of those who have since left us.  And I remembered their stories.  Those stories that were told to me, stories that I carry within me still, that I hope to pass on to succeeding generations.

Khoong-Khoong

He was born in the year of the Tiger.  Always impeccable in public, he dressed in the western style of long-sleeved shirt and trousers and shiny leather lace-up shoes.  His grey-streaked hair was slicked back with Brylcreem and always parted perfectly down the middle with a silver aluminium comb.  When he smiled his gold teeth glistened. 

He carried us grandchildren on his lap and asked if we would look after our Ma and Baba in their old age.  If he was pleased with our answers, he gave us ang pows.  We often tore open the little red packets right away even though we could never spend the money because we were eager to hold and smell the crisp new notes inside.  

His one indulgence was Chinese opera sung in Hainanese blaring from a single- speaker Sanyo cassette player in the back bedroom with the volume set at near maximum.  Although many years in front of brick ovens had robbed him of his good hearing, he still wished to hear every nuance in tone and pitch, every octave shift in voice accompanied by the clashing of cymbals, pounding of gongs and delicate inflections from the strings of moon-shaped Chinese lutes.  It was the fullest experience of opera he could obtain short of being in front of the stage.

He came from Hainan, a small island off the mainland.  Sixteen years old and already with a wife in tow.  He had decided in his sixteenth year to leave the island and seek his fortune in Malaya.  With money mostly saved from wedding ang pows and an old suitcase, he took his new wife on a steamer across the South China Sea, around the tip of the Malayan Peninsula and into the Straits of Malaya where they docked at Port Klang.  They had to be rowed to the jetty because the harbour was too shallow then.  Upon disembarkation, because he could not yet speak Malay, he tipped his hat to the oarsman in thanks.  But he could bake and he could make strong tea for the English.  With that and the courage of the tiger within him he opened his own tea and coffee shop.  It was the first of a successful chain of four.  These shops soon took on the shape of a vision, a grand plan to have the family business prosper and be passed on from generation to generation. 

When Baba was born, it was the culmination of his destiny.  Amidst the rejoicing and the common custom of distributing red eggs to celebrate the arrival of a newborn, he was careful to give heartfelt thanks to his ancestors because the line would be passed on.  The births of his four daughters did not altogether disappoint him, although not one moved him as much as the birth of his youngest child.  At the exact moment when Uncle screamed his way into the world, Khoong-Khoong’s happiness was complete.

He soon saw that his two sons were as far apart as one end of the Yellow River to the other.  Baba was his son, already a young boss who lorded over his siblings, including his older sister because he was, after all, the eldest son.  Uncle meanwhile was completely his mother’s son, sweet and quiet and so undemanding of attention that he at times feared that his youngest son might grow up to remain too much in the shadows.  But of all his children, it was always Uncle who never ceased to surprise him.  The boy loved drawing more than anything, even more than counting the till when the shop closed.  Even more than going to the pictures.  Showing remarkable discipline in pursuing this love without neglecting his lessons, the boy not only earned his acknowledgement and respect, but later on, the awe of his entire family when the drawings evolved into intricate blueprints and architectural drawings.

The fear that Uncle would leave his side first struck him early on, when he saw that the boy had real talent and that there was nothing he could do to stop him from fulfilling his ambition to become an architect.  To do this, the boy would have to further his studies abroad eventually, fly to Australia, England, Canada or America, those traditional countries where well-to-do parents sent their boys to university.  He also knew that if he refused to let his son go he would be obeyed but at the very dear price of his son’s happiness.

A wire from Melbourne broke his strong spirit and forever took the keenness from his eyes.  It arrived nearly two months after a phone call that had had come in the predawn hours and shattered the silence in the shophouse.  Enclosed with the wire was a cheque for ten thousand Australian dollars.  The whole family bore witness as he furiously tore it into many small pieces.  I was very young and that was the first time I had ever seen Khoong-Khoong cry.  He immediately called for Uncle’s beautiful drawings to be taken down from the walls that very instant.  And all of Uncle’s belongings were later gathered and locked up in a tall, unused cupboard in the bedroom that Poh-Poh, Third Aunt, and Fourth Aunt shared.  The key, Khoong-Khoong said, was never to be produced in his sight again.  Later, when I was old enough to be inquisitive, I asked Third Aunt what was in that cupboard and why it was locked.  She looked away momentarily, and when she faced me again there were tears in her eyes.  She stroked my hair and told me no one knew where the key was, that’s why it remained locked. 

He continued to be haunted.  For many nights, asleep and awake, his mind re-created for him the night of New Year’s Eve, 1975.  The lorry lurching as if it, and not the merry young men who had had too much, was drunk.  The exact odds of being the only one among seven passengers, huddled together in a sedan cruising along in the first few hours of a new year, to suffer whiplash and break his neck when it collided with a lurching lorry that did not stop at a junction.  And in the aftermath, the thoughtlessness of a foreign government that would send a cheque to a bereaved family because no persons were indicted in the affair.

Poh-Poh

She studied her face in the mirror as she combed her hair over and over.  Her eyes were too large, her lips too thick, her nose not high enough.  Her features did not blend well together, she thought.  It was a pity she had her father’s coarse, curly hair and not the long, straight hair of her mother and younger sister.  Already too many days had passed after her thirteenth birthday.  Her mother worried that she might never be married.  Where was the matchmaker, she asked constantly.  It was bad luck to have an unmarried daughter so old.  Her mother went on depicting the bad images in her head.  Next four generations will have bad luck, their crops will not grow, and there will be no prosperity.  She knew that it was the fortune-teller from the temple who put those fears into her mother’s head and those words into her mouth.

One day the matchmaker did come.  On that day she had gone to the river to do the washing.  As she beat each piece of her family’s clothing on a cluster of big rocks near the bank she made silent wishes.  Pow!  I wish to be married soon.  Pow!  I wish to live in another place.  Pow!  I wish that girls might someday go to school.  When the clothes were clean she hurried home with two buckets full of clean, wrung clothes, to see if her wishes had been granted.

The matchmaker had brought good news.  A family from a neighbouring village wanted their son to marry before he left the island.  This young man was going to seek his fortune in Malaya, and his parents were anxious that his wife should be a girl from Hainan.  They were not so choosy and were willing to settle for a small dowry because time was pressing.  Her mother told her she was very lucky indeed.

She did not tell anyone of the wishes she made that day by the river.  Not even the young man after they were married.  She had liked the look of him immediately, especially his eyes, which were very keen.  And he always looked at her when he spoke to her.  One day she would tell him, she thought, how she wished for a husband to take her away, and that was how they came to be married. 

On their wedding night, when the last guests had finally left the bridal chamber after hours of teasing and merrymaking, they sat very still on their marital bed, slightly apart from each other.  She was very nervous, but all he could speak of was about their trip to Malaya, a country on the water like their island, only bigger.  A country to which many of the men from Hainan had already gone, to work in the tin mines.

“Have you ever been on a boat?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied, keeping her face down.  A veil of beads trailed from her forehead to her knees.  Her husband had still not removed her headdress, and she dared not ask.

“I mean, out to the open sea, to the mainland, for instance.”

“Oh no, nowhere that far.”

“We will be going very far soon.  Are you afraid?” 

“No.”

He nodded.  “Good.”  He was silent for a while.  “You’re not afraid of me, are you?”

“No,” she lied.

“Don’t worry, my good friend has given us a chicken, just in case.”

She was horrified, but managed to maintain her composure.  “We will not need it,” she said firmly.  She ran her fingers across the smooth white cloth that had been spread out on the bed.  He nodded, then smiled and took her hand. 

When he first told her about his big idea, to open a coffee shop, she did not think it was feasible because of the enormity of the obstacles.  But eventually she began to believe that in could be done, if they scrimped and saved every bit of extra from his tin mining wages, if they asked the right people for advice, if they borrowed some money, and most important, if they were not afraid of working twice as hard as they were already doing.  But mostly it was her steadfast belief in her husband that made believing everything else possible, even easy.

When one by one their children were born, she made mental pictures of each one so that she could look at them during those nights when she found it difficult to sleep.  As they grew she incorporated each change to her images and came to know them all by heart.  She knew their whims and fancies, fears and joys, tendencies, proclivities, and she even knew their hearts, it seemed.  She loved them all the same, until one of them stole her heart completely, and she had no choice but to yield.

The day her youngest showed her his first floor plan of the house he wanted to build was her very proudest.  He told her the house would be for her and his father, for when they were too old to climb the three flights of stairs to the top floor of the shophouse where they now lived.  Tears welled up in her eyes and her heart swelled to a new fullness as he spoke to her animatedly, gesturing to show her the main features of the house, of each room and what it would look like, and of all the built-in conveniences he would design exclusively for them.  She knew then that she would have nothing to fear when she went before the Kitchen God in Heaven because she had done her duty and produced six beautiful children, and that this one, secretly her favourite, was already something of a small miracle.

She could only speak Hainanese but she loved to hear the chatter of us grandchildren in English and Cantonese.  We addressed her respectfully in her native tongue but right after we called her, we would use our hands to rub our bellies and lick our lips to show her how much we loved her cooking.  She smiled all the time and always had a jarful of Hudson and Trebor sweets to hand out to us.  She would draw us close to her and speak in her usual soft-spoken tones while we giggled.  Our aunts translated at top speed to match our quick, insistent chatter. 

She remembered the morning when she heard that the Kitchen God had taken this one so close to her heart for himself as vividly as if it had been happening to her every morning since.  It was drizzling, and had been for so many hours that it seemed as if the water had seeped into the ground, the air, the walls, the clothes she had on, even her wooden chopping block, which felt damp.  As she stood in her kitchen plucking a chicken in preparation for the noonday meal, her husband walked in.  He never interrupted her cooking, so she knew that something had happened.  With her heart heavy as a brick, she turned to face him.  The normal ruddy brown of his face was replaced with an unnatural pallor, but it was his eyes, dead as they looked, that gave it away before he even spoke.  He gently took the limp fowl from her hands and spoke to her in the solemn, rigid manner that a man of the family must always use, without a tremor in his voice.  As he spoke, she looked down at her feet.  Slowly, without being aware that it was happening, she stopped listening after his first few words, conscious only of the fact that the brick in her chest had shattered.

Uncle

He was a darker, younger version of Baba, tall and thin during the few years I knew him.  He had a thick head of hair that he kept combed but it always became dishevelled when he drew.  His other hand, the one not holding the pencil, always came up to run through his hair when the pencil hand paused.  His black rectangular spectacles framed his face well, and his jaw, square and strong, showed him to be the strong and silent type.  He had beautiful hands, the slender fingers precise and steady when he drew. 

He had long ago discovered that his forte lay in drawing.  It was not as if he did not appreciate his father’s grand plans to have the coffee shop business pass on from generation to generation.  Baba’s apparent lack of enthusiasm for their father’s 5-cent, 20-cent business, as he condescendingly referred to it, was not lost upon him either.  At any rate, he obeyed his hands because he had to, they moved as if independent of himself.  He kept on drawing, sheets and sheets of them, graduating from amateurish sketches of buildings to elaborate and detailed floor plans.  He gave himself up to it because it was without question and inexplicable, uncomplicated and non-judgemental.

He was careful to obey his parents, especially his father, and in this respect above all, because drawing was the only thing he wanted to do and to be able to do it was paramount.  Should his father one day forbid him, he should have to stop, and instead of daily fulfilment there would only be insatiable longing in its place.  This irrational fear of having his liberty to draw taken from him abated as he grew older not because he saw that it was increasingly unlikely that his father would do it, but because he knew that his father let him carry on because he loved and understood him.  For this, he was infinitely grateful.  He took on the task of drawing up a full set of plans for a house that he would build for his parents, complete with all the modern amenities and conveniences, as soon as he could afford it. 

His acceptance letter from Monash University arrived when he was out on an errand.  It sat there on the marble table top, propped up in front of a loaf of Chinese bread with a small tub of kaya.  His father paced up and down, sitting one moment and standing still the next, looking at the letter, knowing that the contents of it, if favourable, would mean that his son would soon leave for another country.  His mother meanwhile busied herself in the kitchen, her mind also filled with the ramifications of that letter.

When it became final that he would go studies abroad, when Khoong-Khoong finally agreed to let him go, the family could talk of nothing else.  He was the first in the family to go to university and the first to go overseas.  I was four and begged him to take me with him.  When he said no repeatedly, and it appeared that I could not possibly go no matter what, I said he must telephone immediately, be it night or day, if he ever saw this snow he told me about. 

Poh-Poh cooked him all his favourite dishes in the days leading up to his departure; stewed fatty pork, Hainanese chicken rice, shredded pork and pickled radish, cabbage and bean vermicelli, salted fish and chicken, and all the roast pork dumplings he could eat.  Her way of caring and masking her sadness at his impending departure was to cook and to hound after him.  Had he packed socks?  Enough cardigans and sweaters?  Had he packed enough of the stomachache powder he always needed?  You know how you always get a stomachache, she said.  And what about towels and bedsheets, would he be able to get those there?  It’s Australia, Mama, he would say, of course they have towels.  Well, bring some anyway, his mother would say.  Soon she would launch on the next thing.  Have you checked your tickets?  Your documents?  Your university papers?  Are they in order?  Yes, Mama, he would say.  He was an extremely patient young man.

In Melbourne, he worked hard both in and out of university.  Although his father was sending him money monthly, he knew what a burden the school fees were.  He worked as a dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant for two months before the owner saw his merits and made him head cashier.  He soon became invaluable to his employer, who consulted him on everything from the interior design of the restaurant to large catering orders.  And so, the next time he called home, he laughingly told his father that perhaps he had a head for business after all.

The knowledge of the events that unfurled the evening of New Year’s Eve, 1975 belongs exclusively to the seven occupants in the car, of which only six are left.  At the inquest, each of the six boys who survived gave his own account of the ill-fated evening.  Baba and Ma went to Melbourne in place of Khoong-Khoong and Poh-Poh, who were too old and besides that, too grieved to travel.  Together, Baba and Ma brought home Uncle’s body and everything they could take in regarding the accident. 

It was a rare occasion when the boss closed on the eve of a public holiday, so the boys had decided to go out for a night on the town and usher in the new year together.  They asked him, and at first he declined, citing all the studying he still had to do, but they persisted and finally he gave in.  One of the boys owned a second-hand Peugeot, and it could just manage to cram in seven, if the boys didn’t mind the squeeze.

The city had taken on a life of its own.  There were lights strung up everywhere; storefronts, street lamps, even the trees had been lavishly decorated.  It was so bright that he could clearly make out the cracks in the pavement as if it was mid-afternoon.  People were laughing gaily in front, behind, and all around him.  The atmosphere itself seemed to be palpitating toward the stroke of midnight.  They went from pub to pub, not paying any attention to names or signs, judging only if it would take the lot of them.  It was standing room only in every watering hole, and so they stood at the edges of bars, holding on to their drinks and talking freely about their plans for the coming new year.  When it was time for the countdown they went outside to look at the fireworks that would be set off at the stroke of midnight. 

I have often thought of those final minutes, about what he might have been thinking, what he might have wanted to say.  He must not have seen the lorry until it was too late.  Not one of them in the car did, according to the individual accounts; it was terribly dark and they were rounding a curve in the road.  He would have had only a second, maybe less; the boys had all used the word suddenly, but somehow he would have managed to use that small window of time to remember all that he must.  His father, his mother, his siblings, their faces would have appeared in turn like a slideshow.  And when he saw each of them, he would have had time only to say that he was sorry he could not wait.  He would have wanted to say that.

I had to step back from the picture to fully appreciate the time and coordination it must have taken to line everybody up.  How exasperating it must have been for all, when the photographer called again to have those who were standing divide themselves properly so that exactly half of them faced the left and the other half faced the right.  How those who were seated must have shaken their heads when they were told they had to do it over because one of those standing had moved out of the picture.

When I received the news of Khoong-Khoong’s death, the first thing I wanted to do was talk to him.  Here I was thousands of miles away in America, wanting to talk to my dead grandfather.  But I wanted to tell him that although I had moved far away from home, his spirit lives on in me.  That although he had no grandsons and Uncle’s death had sealed that destiny long ago, a family finds its strength not only in its men but also in its memories.  Most of all, I should have told him that I will always remember the stories. 

So I went home to the see the old shophouse where I had spent every Sunday afternoon from the time I was born until I left for America.  When Third Aunt asked what I would like to have from it, I asked for the picture without hesitation.  It would have satisfied decades of curiosity for me if I had had the courage to ask her if the old cupboard in her room could be unlocked.  For I knew, even as a girl, that they must have had the key.  I also knew that locked up in there must be all of Uncle’s drawings.  But I did not ask her because I knew that in time, Third Aunt and Fourth Aunt, both of whom were now the custodians of all the things in that house, would be ready to part with the precious contents of that cupboard.  I would wait until then.

Instead, I looked at the coffee shop furniture that had been brought home when Khoong-Khoong retired.  He ended up leasing out his shops to outsiders, many of whom did not open coffee shops.  Perhaps he thought that with some of the old furniture in his house he could retain the coffee shop atmosphere that he so sorely missed.  Two old-fashioned pendulum wall clocks were relegated to the back bedroom and remained there, long forgotten.  I counted four marble-top tables and eight rickety shop chairs in all, the dark brown wood of the chairs now almost black from years of use.  I sat down in one and closed my eyes.  These wonderful relics had served those coffee shops from the earliest - for nearly forty years. 

It seemed fitting to take with me a part of Khoong-Khoong’s vision.

“Vision” was first printed in Prism International, Winter ‘02 (Canada). Reprinted here with permission.