« insert title here | Main | hurricane frances subway closures »

9.8.4

Akong

A glimpse of a Vivienne Tam shoulder bag in the subway made of thin, slightly shiny red plastic fibers woven together in a crosshatch pattern like one of those big sacks of rice, made me think of Akong, my paternal grandfather. I used to think Akong was his name because our other grandfather was Cantonese and went by "Grandpa." Akong wore a worn white undershirt, of the kind they call wife-beaters here. His pants were simple black cotton and frayed, and he wore slippers or those open Bata sandals. He used to go out to the market to buy us kway teow t'ng for breakfast and sometimes a kind of kuih lapis I've never seen since, whose top layer was white and then eight or so alternating orange and pink layers. I used to pull it apart and eat it layer by layer. As he got older he spent more and more time on a folding chair made of thick strips of plastic woven together, I think, with a bottle of Hennessy XO brandy beside him.

As far back in my family tree as I know of, no two Gaws of different generations spent their lives in the same place, and Akong was no exception. He migrated from Fujian province as a young man and - if I remember correctly - a few years later they shipped my Amah down to marry him. Malaysia treated them well. For a while he ran a grocery store and my dad helped out behind the counter. He also had a pig farm and some kind of rental property and of course the house he lived in, where we used to play hide and seek with our cousins. I need to write more about the house someday.

It's really incredibly humid this morning, but Penang is ten times hotter and more humid. There were roosters crowing all the time, and those tiny expensive orchids growing in pots behind the house. Whose were they? I don't remember. Akong and I never could talk without a translator present. Even my rudimentary Mandarin was better than his. The last time I saw him, I asked him "Ni hao?" and his reply of "Hen hao" was so heavily accented I barely understood it. But I think he was proud of us. Akong died while I was in college and I thought my exams were too important to go to the funeral, so I didn't fly back. Later I talked to my brother on the phone. "Dad was yelling," he said, "and crying" and this chilled me to the bone.

Comments