BETWEEN 9 AND 10: Images in Time and Mind

“Images in Time and Mind” is a piece I wrote in the mid-90s. Although the story is a fiction set in the Prairies, I feel it has a place in this blog.

“Family exists only because somebody has a story and

 knowing the story connects us to a history.”

~Fae Myenne Ng

Sam crouched and held out his arms. The young child took his first halting steps and tumbled into a father’s embrace. Sam swung the child high in the air. For a moment, Sam could not see his son’s face eclipsing the morning sun. For a moment, Sam caught the glee in his son’s eyes. In another moment, his son was gone.

The cramp in his neck was a reminder of how unpleasant it was to fall asleep sitting upright. Sam shifted his body and allowed his head to drop to the counter. He struggled to find himself once again in the dream, but the persistent yowling from outside brought him to reality.

Ordinarily, he was glad to hear the tom announce himself. The wailing signaled a few moments of kinship. Over the years, visits with this cat and the one other before him had been a pleasant interlude in what had become a bleakness bordering on despair.

The aloof tom would eagerly devour his proffered fish scraps. He would accept Sam’s generosity but not condescend to this touch. In return, the cat offered his presence. Although Sam would not see the cat for long periods of time, each time the tom did return was an unspoken promise fulfilled. Yes, the tom’s presence was enough.

Tonight was different though. Sam resented the intrusion of the cat into his dreams.

“Howl. Perhaps someone will douse you. Justice for disturbing my sleep. Cursed animal! Stop!” The words flowed forth in a language he had not spoken aloud for so long.

Sam lifted his head and surveyed the tiny café: four stools, two small tables and a single booth – his life.

All was as at closing time. He rose slowly to his feet and tried to stretch the stiffness from his limbs. A glance at the clock above the doorway confirmed what the dull ache in his muscles told him.

He shuffled through the swinging doors into the dingy kitchen and rinsed the dishrag in the sink. The water had turned cold and gray. He considered running some fresh, hot soapy water to wash the dishes. It might wash away some of this tiredness.

“No, the dishes can wait. Tomorrow is Sunday. No one will dare to be about until after church.”

If he hurried, he might yet find the refuge of sleep, if not the dream, in the comfort of his bed. He must clear the counter of the last of the coffee cups and then do the corner booth, for if anyone saw him working out front on Sunday morning, there would be talk.

The corner booth was always occupied in the evenings. Mostly by rude youths, but of late, by the same couple, Miss Jones and Balasko.

“They are a nice couple. They do not make loud chatter and create a mess of straws and soda.”

“Courting,” youths in the café had snickered about the couple.

“Shame” Sam had heard whispered about them in the bank.

He did not really understand why: “Both are not young. Miss Jones is a teacher. Balaski takes care of the town’s garbage and cleans the school. Not lazy. Balaski is a good man. The heavens have not treated him kindly. Too bad about his leg. Yes, Miss Jones and Balaski are all right.”

Sam knew they only came here because it was more private than the restaurant that the white folk frequented. Sam was a Chinaman and a straw dog after all.

Almost invisible to the good God-fearing folk of the town, they strode past him in silence, seeing right through him or averting their gaze, and even sometimes, crossing to the opposite side of the street. However, Sam was too visible to the ruffians and children in the town. To them, he was the source of a continuous joke, strung together by taunting refrains. The social outcasts – working men with dirt under their fingernails, women who shared their company too freely, people with secrets – came here to his café. And of course, the youths. Their parents tolerated their indiscretion for they were young and did not know any better.

“No,” Sam chastised himself. “Balaski and Miss Jones are not like the rest.”

By now, their meetings were well known by all, yet they still came to sit in his booth. He did dishonor them thinking such thoughts.

Occasionally as Sam had passed by to clear the tables, he glimpsed Balaski’s hand resting on Miss Jones’ hand. There was something so tender about the slight blush upon her cheeks and the shyness with which she withdrew her hand when new customers entered the café.

Sam choked back the lump forming in his throat.

Perhaps it was the lateness of the hour. Perhaps it was the air of springtime. Caught unprepared, the calm of his emptiness rose and the crest carried the face of his own Fa-Lin. The weariness of the day lifted. A flood of images swept him along: the festivity of his wedding day; his trembling hands upon the corners of the veil; the hesitancy; the relief in discovering nothing unsightly about his bride; and then, of course, later in the bedchamber. He had been someone that day.

         The wave of desire crashed over him and left him so alone in a foreign land. The emptiness that he had grown accustomed to grew into such longing. His insides threatened to explode into the overbearing silence of the café.

Taking up the last of the dishes, he gave the tables a quick wipe and headed into the kitchen. He filled the huge kettle with fresh water and lit the gas ring on the stove. From a shelf, he withdrew the worn basket, undid the polished clasped and pulled forth the porcelain teapot. With careful precision, he measured out the fragrant chrysanthemum petals and mixed in a scoop of black tea.

So began a practiced ritual of his life here. When the tea was ready, he would pour it into one of the eggshell thin cups. While he conjured forth times when he had stood tall in the sunlight amidst family and friends, Sam would first drink in the fragrance of those days and then finally, the bitter tea.

Tonight, he filled the pot to the brim and then nestled it back into the basket. Before closing the lid, he fingered the rim of the extra cup, the one that had never been used: the one for Fa-Lin, or perhaps a guest.

Sam entered the corner of the storeroom where he slept and proceeded to the black lacquer trunk beside the bed. He swept the clutter aside to the floor and flipped the tarnished bronze clasp open. It had been a simple task to open up the trunk in the beginning when there had been only items of clothing in it. As the trunk grew heavier, so did his heart.

Full of hopes and dreams, Sam had brought the trunk with him form Guangdong. The long passage in the damp hold of the ship had caused the lacquer to bubble and crack. The dry hot summers here had faded its luster. Still the trunk served him well: holding the shadows of unkept promises.

         He remembered the day that he had purchased the trunk. The three of them had gone from their small village to the nearest town to see if they might get a few extra fen for their vegetables. Their greens went for very little money that day. Times were hard for everyone. They heard the news in the square: Passage to Saltwater City – the gateway to Gold Mountain.

          Sam looked into the eyes of Fa-Lin and wordlessly, they both knew what must happen. Sam turned to his son and as the son took his first steps towards the father, so the father took his first step away from the son. As Sam swung his child high in the white morning light, he basked in the warmth of love and devotion and heard the call of family duty.

A month later, Sam and the lacquer trunk were gone.

Sam turned over the head tax certificate. Even today, he kept it at the top of his belongings just in case some government official should ask to see it. He looked at the date on the bottom and flung the paper aside.

He had been so full of himself back then. Decades later and he still felt the swag in his steps down the gangway in Victoria. He would come home from Gold Mountain a wealthy sojourner. He would have many sons.

He shook his head. He had been so young . . . so foolish.

The immigration official had quizzed Sam on his kinships. Sam was confident. He had rehearsed my times during the voyage.

Sam held out a fistful of money for which he would come to suffer so much.

“Name?” the official had muttered.

“Lei Tham Min” came the reply. The certainty in his response still echoed in Sam’s head.

“Last name – Lee. First name – Sammy” the official called out as he finished stamping the documents.

So, Tham Min Lei became Sammy Lee and no longer the man whom he thought he was. In that moment, he knew that the heavens would never let him go home. They had borne witness to his arrogance.

For a time, he believed his family would join him but then as Sammy grew into Sam, that dream ceased as well.

Atop the clothing lay the kite he had made one spring. He had crafted a marvelous tiger for his son to fly across the prairie skies. Sam had sat out on the back stoop, fiddling with old newspaper to try and get the shape right. Balaski had appeared out of nowhere bearing all sorts of wondrous scraps of coloured paper salvaged from the refuse.

Sam stretched his arm down the inside of the trunk, and from beneath the winter clothing, he withdrew a faded red bundle. Unfolding it, he carefully laid out a brush, comb and mirror; the silver back tarnished black.

In addition to the remittance he sent home each month, Sam had put aside a few coins until he had enough for the purchase. At the local store, he had waited patiently. The salesgirl continued to turn from one customer to another and then finally turned away.

At the next counter, Balaski had stood looking at work gloves. He turned up at the café the next day to show off the new gloves and, coincidentally, had a mail-order catalogue tucked under his arm.

         Balaski took Sam’s order away to the post.

Sam had imagined how Fa-Lin would untie her braid and her long black hair would cascade across her back. He cradled the brush handle in his palm as if he might stroke her hair with it but quickly re-wrapped the bundle and slid it deep into the safe darkness of the trunk.

Sam now hesitated as he had so many times before. He had struggled long to reconcile the images in his mind with the one resting within his reach. It had been too long. He picked up the cardboard folder and withdrew the picture.

The sepia tones held Fa-Lin - her youth gone except around her eyes, her hair grown thin - and his son, no longer a child who might stumble after a kite but a young man. And strangely, there was Sam wearing western garb, juxtaposed in the same photo.

“Balaski – Balaski had arranged this, too.”

Sam had ventured to show a similar photograph to Balaski the day it had arrived. Sam could not conceal his joy for a son grown, nor mask his own anguish for a life that had not been. Sam was absent from the picture.

The next day, Balaski brought a camera, took Sam’s picture, and then took all the images away with him. Months passed without mention and then one day, Balaski slid the cardboard folder across the counter. There in a composite photograph, Sam and his family stood suspended in a fragile moment of time.

Sam stared at the photograph until the details of what was now and what was so long ago rested side-by-side in his mind.

As the early morning light began to filter through the cracks around the doorjamb, Sam heard the howling of the tom resume. Sam closed the trunk lid, tidied the clutter, and stood up. He took the photograph and tacked it to the wall.

First he would see to the tom and then seek out Balaski. The tea would still be hot when they came back.

I have three treasures which I hold and keep.

The first is mercy; the second is economy;

The third is daring not to be ahead of others.

From mercy comes courage; from economy comes generosity;

From humility comes leadership.

~Lao Tsu