Three Mothers

In 1934 I was born in Shenggang, Hemei, Changhua, in Taiwan under Japanese rule; our ancestral home is Lukang. At birth I was the fourth child in the family, and a twin sister arrived in the world with me. At that time the Tsai family of Lukang enjoyed a good reputation locally and we were comfortably off.

My mother had given birth to Eldest Sister, Second Sister, Eldest Brother, and Third Sister, and then me and Fifth Sister. The year I was born she was thirty-five.

Raising five children was very hard work. Even with maids to help, her health grew weaker and weaker. When my sister and I had turned one and were just learning to walk, one day she went to a neighbour’s house to visit an elderly woman who was critically ill. Two days after she came back, a chill brought on a cold that turned into acute meningitis.

From the onset of illness to her death took only nine days. She was only thirty-seven that year. Everyone was helpless; no one could accept that Mother had died so suddenly.

I was told that Mother’s body was taken back to the old family home in Lukang and laid in a room beside the parlour. Third Sister was only four and did not understand that Mother had passed away. She kept crying and shouting: ‘Mummy, get up! Don’t sleep! Take me out to play!’ She kept shaking Mother’s body. All the adults standing by wept until they were one sobbing mass.

At the time Eldest Sister was only ten, Second Sister nine, Eldest Brother seven, Third Sister four, and my sister and I only a year and a half. Father was a policeman and very busy with official duties. Not long after Mother’s funeral, through an introduction, he married a second wife—our Stepmother. Before Stepmother entered our household, my twin sister had already been given to the Ko family as an adopted daughter, and Second Sister was given to Great Aunt because Great Aunt could not bear children. The family had originally intended to give me to the Ko family as an adopted daughter, but once I was at the Ko home I cried and cried without stopping until they could not bear it; they sent me back and sent my twin sister instead.

The year Stepmother married into our family she was twenty-eight. She was not a bad person; Third Sister and I were both raised by her. Eldest Sister and Eldest Brother occasionally clashed with her over differences of opinion, but fortunately nothing too serious. In 1944, when Eighth Sister was a little over two, Stepmother sadly died of tuberculosis.

She had been in our family exactly ten years and died at thirty-eight. She left Third Sister and me, plus Stepmother’s four children of her own—a younger brother and three younger sisters. After Stepmother died our days became very hard.

In 1945, when the war between China and Japan was at its fiercest, Taiwan was bombed terribly by American B-29s. We were living in Taichung then; Father worked at a tyre company. Father could not look after so many children on his own, so he temporarily placed the two youngest with an aunt and with friends.

Third Sister had just finished primary school; I was about to enter fifth year. Younger Brother was seven and Sixth Sister five. Father, a man on his own, had to bring up several children and still go to work. Third Sister could take on the housework, but many things were beyond what we children could do.

Household life and managing expenses were a tangle of threads without a mistress of the house to hold them together—we truly did not know what to do.

Just then, neighbour Uncle Chen introduced a twenty-seven-year-old Miss Chen to Father.

He said she was willing to marry an older man, because at that time many young men had been drafted to the South Seas as army labourers. Uncle Chen brought her to see our home and the children.

Third Sister, Younger Brother, Sixth Sister and I happened to be eating lunch. Uncle Chen told her: ‘This family still has two daughters fostered elsewhere who will have to be brought back—you must think it through carefully.’ She thought a moment and said: ‘As long as the two little ones are not brought back, I will agree to marry him.’ Uncle Chen relayed her conditions to Father. Father thought for two days and actually agreed to them. By then Third Sister was old enough to understand. She felt Father was wronging the two little sisters and argued with him, but Father’s reason was: ‘These are extraordinary times. There is no adult in the house. When the air-raid siren sounds, I am at the office in a panic, not knowing what to do, thinking of you children at home alone—do you know how worried I am?’ Third Sister did not want it, but because Father insisted, she stopped objecting. Before long, Miss Chen became the third mistress of our household.

The war grew worse and worse. Fighter planes often patrolled near our home, because right beside us was a sugar refinery; the sound of machine-gun fire was terrifying and Third Mother was very frightened.

One day Fifth Uncle came from Beishankeng, Puli, Nantou County, to meet the new sister-in-law. They got on well at once. Once they started talking, the conversation turned to the war between China and Japan.

When they spoke of air raids, Third Mother told Fifth Uncle: ‘Where we live is very close to the sugar refinery, which is also a target the enemy planes want to destroy. I am afraid—with so many people in the house I am really worried.’ After hearing this, Fifth Uncle suggested she persuade Father to evacuate the whole family to where he lived—Beishankeng, a small village ringed by mountains on all sides. Fifth Uncle ran a small factory there making palm fibre (‘brown’), which at the time could be used for rain capes, brushes and the like.

Third Mother suggested evacuating the family to Fifth Uncle’s place. At first Father did not agree, because there was this large household plus Grandmother, and Grandmother still had bound feet. If they moved into the mountains Father would have to give up his job; with no income, so many mouths to feed—the cost of living would be a serious problem.

Father said: ‘No one knows how long the fighting will go on. If we move into the mountains and our savings run out, then what? Think it through before deciding.’ After Fifth Uncle left, Third Mother kept pressing Father to move into the mountains to escape the alerts. Father could not withstand her and had to agree.

Just after the New Year in 1945, our family of eight hired a large removal lorry. We dodged three alerts along the way and only with difficulty reached Fifth Uncle’s place at nightfall. From that day we spent eight months in the mountains—days we would never forget.