Zhang take sick. I call Morrison and tell him to come take a look because Morrison only last six month in Scotland before he tell Margaret he can’t take it no more and she say she want John finish his education in Edinburgh and it alright with her if Morrison do what he got to, so he come back to Jamaica and breathe a big sigh of relief. When him come he say Zhang got pneumonia. Him say Zhang probably got more than that wrong with him but he would have to go to hospital to find out. But Zhang say him not going to no hospital. So that was that.
When Morrison ask Zhang how old he is him say he dunno. I dunno how old Zhang is and it turn out Ma dunno either. It seem like Morrison think Zhang just sick from old age, which don’t surprise me none because when I come to Jamaica thirty-seven years ago Zhang was already a old man with grey on his head.
‘I can treat the pneumonia but I suspect this is just a secondary infection. My guess is there is more to it, but if he won’t come for tests I don’t know what else we can do.’
When I tell Zhang what Morrison say, he say he not taking none of Morrison’s medicine. He say him live this long time without a doctor and he going go to the herbalist and get something fix himself. But just as he try get up off the cot he fall back again. This make him vex so he just lay there and start mumbling and grumbling to himself.
Ma say it alright, she going go to the herbalist and sort it out. Zhang don’t need no medicine from the imperialists. And she give Morrison a look and brush past him as she going up the yard with a bowl of red-wine broth for Zhang.
The day after that Ma tell me she going have Hampton move Zhang’s cot into her room and I say no, she can put him in my room. It bigger and it got better light what with the two wooden doors that open out on to the little concrete square that catch the sun. When Hampton move the cot, Ma also get him move Zhang’s rocking chair and she put it in the room with him and that is where she start sleep every night.
I move into the room next door that was Ma’s room and every night I hear them talking and talking to one another till I fall asleep to the sound of it. And when I wake up next morning it still going on.
I can’t get over how much they got to say to one another, because in all these years I can’t remember ever seeing them talk to each other, not even once. It get so I start think that Zhang nuh talk to no women, because the only women I see him with is Ma and Tilly and he nuh speak to neither of them. It make me wonder what go on between the two of them all the time I not there. Maybe that is when they talk. But then I can’t understand why they would do that. Why it would matter whether I see them talk to one another or not. Or maybe that not it. Maybe they just save it all up till now. Maybe they catching up on everything that happen since Zhang leave China in 1912.
Some nights I even lay there awake on purpose, just listening to them hushed voices. Just so I can marvel at it. Because even though I can’t make out what they saying I can hear the tone of it, and I can hear them laugh. And that, the laughing, I never hear before, not from either one of them.
Ma got Zhang’s cot in the middle of the room with his head lying eastward. She tend to everything he need, and three times a day she boil up the herbs and give it to him. On the days him well enough to sit up, Finley and Tartan Socks McKenzie come play dominoes. When him too weak, Ma read the Chinese newspaper to him, and on other days McKenzie read him the Gleaner and they talk ’bout politics just like they always do. McKenzie telling Zhang all ’bout what Manley doing and it seem to lighten his heart.
Ma go to temple while me or McKenzie sit with Zhang because she don’t like leave him on his own. She tell me she praying to the Buddha for a peaceful passing for Zhang and enlightenment on him rebirth. She stop tell me that she praying for me to be a better man. She stop chastise me ’bout how I supporting the imperialists by doing business with them. She stop sniffing at me every time I go see Gloria or when anything get mentioned that connected to Gloria in any way whatsoever. All she concentrating on now is Zhang. Funny thing is it seem like she happy. There is a lightness in her spirit. Not that she happy Zhang sick, but that she happy she caring for him.
Zhang pass away one night in him sleep with Ma sitting there in the rocking chair still talking to him. Next morning she tell me I have to take care of things because I the eldest son. I dunno what to do because when they bring my father back from Shaji I was too young to know what was happening. So Ma show me and she help me. We lay Zhang’s body on a mat on the floor and we cover it with a white muslin shroud. We place two Chinese coins in a large porcelain bowl and cover it with a cloth. And then we go outside and catch some water in another bowl and burn some candles and firecrackers and throw them into it. And this is the water that we pour into the other bowl on top of the coins to wash Zhang’s body. Afterwards the whole house join in wailing.
We announce Zhang’s passing by pasting a notice on the outside of the gate. And the evening before the funeral, when Zhang’s body come back from the undertakers, the Chinatown merchants come ’round to pay their last respects.
I write a letter to my brother in America.
Dear Xiuquan,
Zhang died peacefully in his sleep. He missed you these past years. He tried to imagine your life in America but could not. Ma is well, although she also misses you, as do I.
Pao.
The reply I get from him vex me, so I didn’t bother say nothing to Ma. I just pretend to her like I never hear nothing from him.
On the day of the funeral Ma have me place a pearl in Zhang’s mouth and put a willow twig in his right hand to sweep away demons from his path, and a fan and handkerchief in his left. She put up the ancestral tablet bearing Zhang’s name.
The funeral procession wind its way through the neighbourhood to the Chinese cemetery, with its white paper lanterns and banners and the musicians them playing some godawful twing-twang, because one thing the Chinese cannot do is make music. They can make food, so there was plentiful roast pig and fruit and cakes and such. But music, no. That was just a damn racket. The whole of Chinatown turn out including Merleen Chin, Clifton Brown, Finley and his wife, Hampton, Ethyl, Milton and Desmond.
The coffin completely covered with a silk pall, kuan chao , embroidered in a hundred colours that Chin get from China and bring with him when he come down from Montego Bay. And walking ahead of the coffin was Tartan Socks who scatter the road money to buy the goodwill of malicious spirits so they don’t molest the wraith of Zhang on his way to the grave. Ma, she just walk behind Zhang coffin slow and quiet. Whatever she was thinking or feeling she was keeping to herself. Just the way she do her whole life when it come to her and Zhang. Madame Chin walk next to her thinking she was going to have to give some comfort. But it not so. Ma was straight and upright like it was a walking meditation she was doing, with peace in every step.
When it all done I sit down in my room and I read again the letter I get from Xiuquan.
My dear brother Pao,
I am deeply saddened to learn of the death of Zhang. Like you, I thought of him as a father, so I know how his passing must ache your heart. We have lost two fathers now, you and I, and I wonder to what purpose. China continues to be in turmoil, with the Communists showing, with their Cultural Revolution, that they can be just as cruel and merciless as the warlords and the foreigners they fought so hard to overthrow. And as for the violence in Jamaica, it makes me glad to be so far away. I have taken citizenship so I am an American now and no longer have to feel ashamed of being Chinese.
And then I take the letter out into the yard and I burn it.
Six month after Zhang’s funeral Ma say she don’t want make the fritters no more, or stuff the duck-feather pillows. She say she getting too old for it and I agree. Truth is I been trying to get her to stop for years, but now it her decision she happier with that.
Tilly still coming but she helping more ’round the place now, she doing more of the cooking and cleaning up and washing and such. All the time Ma just getting slower and slower. She stop play mah-jongg. She stop go to temple. She stop read the newspapers. Then one day she sit down in Zhang’s rocking chair and she no get up.
I dunno what to do ’bout the washing and the funeral and everything so Madame Chin come back from Montego Bay to help me, and she make all the arrangements just like how Ma do it for Zhang. And when the day come she let me scatter the road money in front of the procession like McKenzie do for Zhang. We bury Ma right next to Zhang in the Chinese cemetery.
When I go back to Matthews Lane the place empty. Just me and Hampton sit down there look at each other. It seem like me and Hampton not got nothing to say.
Then him say to me, ‘Me and Ethyl plan to go see her family in Oracabessa. You know, with the wedding coming up and all.’
‘You already tell me.’
‘And I was wanting to ask you if you would like it if me and Ethyl come live here with you after we married or if you would prefer to have the place to yourself?’
I look at Hampton and I say, ‘Come on, Hampton, you must have plenty money to go get a place of your own.’
‘That not what I saying. I saying maybe you prefer to have the company. Me and Ethyl already done talk ’bout it and she say she happy to come live here and help keep the place. She still going carry on work for Miss Cicely, but she going do it as a day help. She not going live up there no more. So she say if you want we come live with you here after the wedding.’
I look across the table at him and I remember that first day I meet him when Mr Chin tell him to carry the bags on the handcart, and then afterwards when him follow me ’round town all day and make a friend outta me even though I didn’t want to pay him no mind.
And I say, ‘Thank you, Hampton.’
‘So what you going do for the few days while we gone to Oracabessa?’
‘I go stay with Gloria.’