into the space of everything

[image: strokethyfrost]
[currently listening to: boards of canada - in a beautiful place out in the country]

dear angelo,

did i ever tell you about my grandmama - my po-po.? when i look at her eyes, they're always lost under layers of papery skin. a sitting temple in her chair, i sometimes wonder how she could see out of them. my aunties and uncles all call her 'fei ma', which literally translates to fat mother.

when i was 12, she used to take me out on walks along main street through the punjab markets to buy curry pastries on weekends. she had a small vegetable garden at the back of her house where she grew tomatoes, zucchinis, peas, lettuce and other vegetables i cannot recall. i remember the huge plum tree that towered over the house - i used to hang from its enormous branches on idle summer days and clamoured through her mossy yard in search of unknown insects. po-po's house always smelled of cantonese soup and incense. fresh fish was always mandatory during dinners. her favourite part was eating the head and picking apart the meat from the fish bones. all the children would always looked disgusted as po-po sucked on the goopy eyeballs and spat out a white pearl afterwards. with a chuckle, she'd giggle and always say that it's good for the brain. it was my grandma who taught me how to eat the cheeks and lips of the fish, which was the tenderest and best part of the whole fish.

my aunties and uncles always made fun of my grandma's terrible chinese writing. in reality, she only had 3 years of formal schooling... the rest, she learned on her own. this is why she's always reading the newspaper. perhaps most intriguing to the family was po-po's ability to calculate in her head - she could accurately multiply taxes and numbers faster than punching them into a calculator. despite having 10 children, my grandma was a businesswoman. she knew how to bargain, run businesses and invest.

when po-po was 12, she had 2 brothers and a sister. in december, the alarm sirens rang in hong kong. po-po's youngest brother was running a high fever but my po-po's mom insisted he attend school. bombs fell, one of them had hit the school. no one could find po-po's little brother, just arms and legs from all the students strewn throughout the rubble. there was no point in crying. weeks continued on as bombs continued to pummel the city. starvation was everywhere as people tried to flee. the ija army had arrived by foot, bringing death. po-po could never forget the sound of the clopping pig-skin boots and the screams of neighbourhood girls irregardless of age being raped in front of family members before being tortured and killed. po-po had to rub charcoal all over her face and hair to appear like an old woman in fear of being the next victim. there was hunger, a biting starvation burned through the stomachs of thousands of civilians that would last for years. as the eldest, po-po and her family had to survive so she turned to the sea. in the early morning, po-po and her mother would go out to the shores. the bombs from the sea had killed fish and they washed up ashore amongst bloated dead bodies. on the outskirts of the city near the mountains, po-po and her family had managed to cultivate a small vegetable garden of bak-choy and lo-bak (daikon). food could be traded for rice and other goods. one day, po-po was caught. the fate of others caught if they didn't kow-tow (bow) in front of the ija soldiers was immediate beheading, bayoneting or torturing. she remembers how some men were dragged to their deaths as they were tied to a horse from the top of a large hillside. when po-po was caught, she was beaten, especially to her hands which remained swollen for months. she was alive. po-po's other little brother had picked up some bits and pieces of broken japanese from listening to the ija soldiers. they were fortunate enough to have met a forgiving group of soldiers who were amused by the brother's attempt at the language and agreed to trade lo-bak for some rice. this was how po-po and her family survived in the end. the entire city of hong kong was reduced from 1.6 million to 600,000 people during the 4 year ordeal. no apologies from the government was ever formally addressed by the japanese government over the millions of lives taken in china, russia, korea, philippines and so on.

today, po-po never talks about that part of her past. she is still the gleefully happy old woman with wrinkly papery eyelids who talks excitedly like a child. in the end, my grandma will always be my po-po.