9. “Come-Saw”

When I was growing up, both my parents had to work long hours to make ends meet.  My grandma looked after me for the most part.  “Por-Por” (how I called my grandma) taught me everything I needed to know as a child: how to brush my teeth, how to wash behind my ears, how to prepare simple snacks, how to wash clothes and how to sew loose buttons.  

She also taught me an important lesson in humility.  The occasion took place when I was eleven and she was eighty, but the lesson was deferred until her death ten years later.  This is how it went.

I returned from school one afternoon and was doing my homework from my English class when grandma came to me.  

“How did school go today, Ah Yuen?” she asked.  

“Por-Por, it went very well.  We learnt several new English words today.”  

English was my favorite subject at school.  In Hong Kong during the fifties, most children would begin learning English at school around the age of seven or eight, starting with the alphabets.   

“I’ve heard that you’re doing very well in your English class.  I’m very proud of you.”

“Yes, Por-Por.  Miss Wong, the English teacher, said I was the best student in her class.  I know many English words and I can make sentences with them!  You want me to read some to you?”  

Grandma grew up around the boondocks where her father worked as a longshoreman.  She had never attended school.  In her days, girls didn’t get to go to school.  

“Oh -- that will be nice, but I should let you know, I don’t know any English words except ‘come-saw’”  

“Did you say ‘come-saw’?  What does it mean?”

“You don’t know?” she sounded disappointed.

“No.”

“I don’t know what it means either.  All I know is that when I was a little girl living near the pier, if I spotted any ‘gweilo’ (Chinese for ‘ghost’: a term reserved for Westerners), I’d run to them and said ‘come-saw’ and they would give me a coin or two.”

“Por-Por, I know the word ‘come’ and also the word ‘saw’, but I’ve never heard of ‘come-saw’.  Are you sure it’s ‘come-saw’?”

“Well, yes, it’s commm-sawww,” she said it slowly this time.  “At least that’s what I learnt from the other children.”

“Oh -- so you learnt that from the other children!”

“Yes, of course, there were no schools for girls in those days.”

“Por-Por, I don’t think there’s such a word.  The children probably just made it up!”  I said with all the authority and confidence that could be mustered by an eleven-year old who had started learning the alphabets only three years before.  To consider the alternative which was that the only English word that my grandma knew was not in my vocabulary would be rather unsettling. 

“Well, maybe, but it sure worked with the ‘gweilo’, ha!” she snickered.  “Anyway, as soon as you finish your homework, I’ll show you how to mend the holes in your socks.”

“Great, Por-Por!”  

Just about all my socks had got holes in them.  It felt weird with my big toe sticking out when I put them on.  I was eager to do something about it.  Grandma was great at sewing, but she couldn’t thread a needle on account of her poor eyesight.  That’s where I came in, with my perfect vision and steady hands.

Ten years later…

I left Hong Kong to attend college in the United States when I turned twenty-one.  At the end of my first year, one day after the final exams were wrapped up, I received a call from my sister.  Grandma had died of complications from a hip fracture she sustained when she slipped on the floor two weeks before.  

“Why didn’t you call me earlier, sis?  I’d have wanted to see Por-Por!  I’d have wanted to attend the funeral service!”

 “I’m sorry we didn’t tell you earlier.  We knew you were very close to Por-Por.  It all happened so suddenly.  We knew you were in the middle of your final exams and we didn’t want this to distract you.” 

We didn’t talk long.  There was nothing else to say.  Besides, international calls were very expensive in those days.  My family meant well.  The exams were a convenient excuse.  The truth was we were very poor at the time.  I was attending college on a full scholarship, but we needed to save and scrape to come up with money for my textbooks and room and board.  There was no money left for anything else.  I could not have afforded to fly home to see Por-Por even if I had known about her accident.

For hours, I sat on the edge of my bed thinking of grandma, her kind voice, her wrinkled face and her silvery hair.  I missed the time we spent together and all the things she had taught me.  I missed you so, Por-Por!  Then I recalled “come-saw” from ten years ago, the only English word my grandma said she knew.  Could it be a real word?  Could Por-Por be right?  I needed to know.  She would have wanted me to find out.

Wiping the tears off my eyes, I reached across the desk where I kept my Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged.  Fidgeting with trepidation, I flipped the pages to “com—” and scanned the columns of entries.  I found no words that would even come close to “comsaw”.  So there’s no such word after all!  I felt relieved but oddly disappointed.

Well, don’t give up just yet.  Por-Por deserved more than that.  How about “cumsaw”?   I turned over more pages to “cum—”.  Guided by anxious fingers, I hunted among the columns on the open pages, up and down and zigzag until I came to C-U-M-S… 

And there it was -- snuggled between “cumquat” and “cumulate”-- a word I dismissed offhand ten years ago because I did not think an old, illiterate woman could teach me the only English word she knew.  My heart skipped a beat or two as I read the entry with eager anticipation…

cum.shaw: noun (in Chinese ports) a present; gratuity; tip.   

The only English word Por-Por knew was not only real, it was a wonderful gem.  She tried to show it to me, but I was too conceited and pigheaded to see.  I’m sorry that I doubted you, Por-Por!  I’m sorry that I treated you unfairly!  I had never felt as small as I felt on that day and henceforth.

Por-Por had been dead for nearly forty years now.  I have pictures of her that had faded, but I will always have “cumshaw” to remember her by. 

-To be continued-