China Dog (3 page)

As my mother silently read the letter she started to cry. “But Tom makes Lily happy. Life here has been so hard for her. She hasn’t made any friends of her own. And he has spent so much money on us. What can we do?”

“Tom’s feelings for Lily aren’t those of a godfather. You know that. Stop fooling yourself. Do you want Lily to marry Tom?”

“You know what I want for my daughters. I don’t want them to be like us. I want them to marry men, you know, educated, higher class. I want them to be Canadians. Not helpless, like us.” My mother looked desperate. “Tom has been so good to us. How can we tell him to go?”

“Well, if this keeps up, the talk in Chinatown will grow; Lily will have no marriage prospects. And then what?”

My mother put the letter down on the ironing table, looked at my father as she wiped her face, turned and left the room. I tiptoed out of the house and crossed the road to call on a friend.

After that, the line of my mother’s mouth changed. Her lips were pressed tightly together with the corners tucked in, and the two tendons in her neck stood out from her collarbone to her jaw. Her eyes, bewildered, became moist whenever she looked at Lily and Tom.

The quarrelling between my parents grew worse. And it was over little things. My father exploded one night because the soup wasn’t hot enough.

“I’ve been working all day ’till I’m like a worn-out clog. And you can’t even come up with hot soup!”

One humid summer evening, while Lily and Tom were out for a drive to escape the heat, my mother chased after my father as he ran into the backyard. She pleaded with him. “Tom has to leave this house. I know that now. But I can’t bring myself to do it. You have to do it.”

“But Lily is your daughter. You need to take charge.”

“I can’t. Don’t you see. Lily hates me. She hates me because
I left her in Hong Kong, even though I had no choice. If I make Tom leave, she’ll hate me even more. You have to tell Tom to leave, for my sake, for the sake of our family.”

One afternoon in September, I returned home from school, went to my favourite corner, and sat down on a squat wooden stool, opening a book of fairy tales I had borrowed from my teacher. The atmosphere felt different, clouds of tension and relief hanging in the air at the same time. My parents were silently working. My mother was preparing supper and my father was ironing clothes. A few minutes after I entered, Lily walked in. “Where’s
kai yaah
’s car? He’s usually here by now.” Before anyone spoke, Lily understood. Panic and fear radiated from her eyes. She dashed upstairs to the small room that Tom had added. She saw the bed and opened the empty drawers of the dresser.

Lily came hurtling down the stairs. Mother was standing at the kitchen table, slicing vegetables for supper. Lily, her body rigid, walked over and faced her. Rage emanated from every pore in her body. Her words were like knives, slashing the air around her. “Where is he? Why is his room empty?” In the silence that followed, I thought the air around us would explode. I wanted to fade into the flowered wallpaper, to become just a face, flat on the wall, staring out. Any movement would let them know I was there. I knew if I stayed perfectly still, I would become invisible.

Mother laid down the cleaver on its side, lifted her head, and spoke. “He had to leave, Lily. He had to leave on business. He’s opening a new restaurant up north somewhere.”

Lily screamed, “You’re lying. He didn’t have to go. You made him.” Her eyes shot toward my father. He stood in the adjoining ironing room with his back to her, pressing shirts, his arms moving like a robot’s.

Mother implored, “Lily, you’ve got to try and understand. Tom agreed to go. He wants you to have a life of your own. He wants you to marry a Chinese boy, close to your own age, someone who’s educated, so you can be a real Canadian.” She reached into her apron pocket. “Here, he left a letter for you.”

As Lily read Tom’s letter, her disbelief gave way to tears. Then she walked into the ironing room, stopping a few feet from my father. Her rage and anguish rose from deep inside her, lacerating each of us. She glared at him as she spoke. “You’re the one who told him to go. You’re the one who made him leave. I
hate
you. I
hate
everything about you. I
hate
this laundry. The
lo fons
come in here with their dirty clothes and laugh behind your back. And all you do is smile.”

My father carefully placed his iron on the table and turned, facing Lily as he spoke. “Lily, Lily, I know this is hard. But it is for the best. Even Tom knows this.” He held out his arms toward her as he spoke. I could tell that he wanted to put them around her, but did not dare. Instead, she stood alone, covered her face with her hands, and wept, dropping Tom’s letter on the floor. Mother walked over to her and lightly touched her shoulder. Lily immediately recoiled. My mother dropped her arm and took a step back. Lily stopped crying, straightened herself, and wiped her cheeks, staring all the while at my father
and then our mother. Before my eyes, my sister turned into stone: hard, cold, and impenetrable.

After that, I never saw Tom again. I don’t know what happened to him. He never answered Lily’s letters. I spent as much time away from home as possible. Any pleasures that I experienced with friends at school or at play, I hid when I came home. In the face of Lily’s sorrow, I felt ashamed. What right had I to be happy? I grew more and more fearful of Lily. A glass of spilt milk, or my laughing too loud, unleashed in her a torrent of rage. She never spoke to my father again. At first he tried to make amends. He bought food that she liked. When he tried to engage her in conversation she never answered. She always turned her face away. We became accustomed to the silence. An invisible shroud encircled each of us and separated our lives.

Three years later, my mother arranged a marriage between Lily and a young Chinese man, an accountant, only four years older. He was tall and hollow-chested. His cheeks were severely pock-marked, his smile too eager. I remembered Lily at her wedding ceremony. Her eyes were glazed. The “I do” was barely audible.

Afterwards at the reception, Lily sat, stone-faced, next to her husband at the head table. She watched the smoke from his cigarette coil slowly upwards, fading into the air.

THE SMALL TOWN
that was my home was typical of many small towns in Ontario. It had one main street, one elementary school, one district high school, and five churches – Presbyterian, Anglican, United, Roman Catholic, and a Dutch Reform Church on the edge of town. Its distinctive architectural features were the funeral home and the post office. The funeral home was a beautiful whitewashed brick mansion with immaculately manicured lawns and tidy flowering shrubs. It was close to the centre of the town and infused it with a gentle serenity. The post office was neatly built of red bricks. It had a steep roof and a clock tower that rose up like a church spire. And the bell chimed every hour.

The main street of our small town had a dime store that sold everything from
Evening in Paris
perfume to stationery and hammers. It also had a clothing store, a jewellery shop, a hardware store, a drugstore, a barber shop, and a restaurant
that served Canadian food. And, typical of all small towns, it also had a Chinese restaurant and a Chinese hand laundry.

My father operated the hand laundry and the other Chinese family managed the Chinese restaurant. I was the only Chinese child in the town. When my family first arrived, the restaurant was run by two brothers and their father, Sam Sing. The entrance of the restaurant was flanked by projecting glass windows. Just inside the windows on a shelf were several large dusty-leafed sansevierias. The floors were covered with old-fashioned black and red lino tiles laid out in a diamond checkerboard pattern. There was a shiny speckled Formica counter with stools of circular seats upholstered in vinyl, and rimmed with a wide band of shiny chrome. Along one wall was a counter with built-in stainless steel sinks for washing glasses. Above was a shelf where the soft drink, soda, and sundae glasses were all neatly arranged in rows, according to size. Beside this was an ancient cooler with glass sliding doors that housed the milk, cream pies, and miniature china coffee creamers. But what I remembered most were the booths with the wooden seats and straight hard backs. Whenever I sat in one of these booths, I felt as if I had entered a little wooden room surrounded by brown grainy walls. There hung from the ceiling a huge four-blade fan that in the summer hovered and whirred – a huge humming dragonfly.

The proprietor, Sam Sing, stood behind the counter of his restaurant. He was a tall, straight-backed, grim-looking man with deep wrinkles cross-hatching his face. Sam rarely smiled,
but when he did he showed a set of gold teeth that matched his gold-rimmed glasses. He rarely spoke, but when he did his voice had the raspy quality of sandpapers rubbing together.

There was nothing ingratiating about Sam. He glared at his customers from behind his glasses. In his presence, I was always struck speechless. I was afraid to return his gaze; I felt diminished and insignificant.

When I first met Sam Sing, he was already in his seventies; he had a head of thick, almost totally black hair parted at the side. He seemed robust and alert, and for a man his age he moved with amazing agility. My parents told me that Sam owed his exceptionally good health to drinking medicinal turtle soup made with Gilbey’s gin. According to local legend, whenever Sam felt unwell, he asked a couple of local teenage boys to catch him a turtle from the nearby creek. The two boys arrived through the back door of the kitchen with a bulging burlap bag. Once, when I was in the dining room, I saw Sam give the boys a silver fifty-cent piece each from the cash register. The freckle-faced boys looked at each other and giggled, then left, clutching their coins. Sam stared after them, his eyes dark with contempt. I just barely heard the “hrump” he let out under his breath as he shut the money drawer. The older son walked into the dining room and as the wooden door swung away to and fro behind him, I caught a glimpse into the kitchen. The younger son held a cleaver over his head, poised to come crashing down on the squirming, unsuspecting, overturned turtle. The pieces of turtle meat were tossed
into a large pot of water along with medicinal herbs, preserved roots, and dried gecko lizard. Then followed hours of simmering to produce a clear, brown, pungent, tonic soup.

Because of their work in the restaurant, Sam and his sons smelled faintly of cooking oil, in the same way, I suppose, that my father smelled of soap. Sam and his sons dressed alike. They wore white cotton shirts with the sleeves rolled up to their elbows and baggy black pants. And each wore a flat white half-apron tied around his waist.

Sam was proud of the fact that he had fathered two sons who would carry on his business and his family name. In contrast to Sam’s stern, imposing demeanour, his sons were round-faced, smooth-skinned, and smiling. They reminded me of bookends; they looked almost identical, except that one was very fair-skinned, while the other was very dark. Ken, the younger son looked after the kitchen, where he cooked French fries, hot beef and hot chicken sandwiches, fluorescent red sweet and sour chicken balls, and assorted chop sueys. John, the older son, spent his days rushing back and forth through the swinging wooden doors that separated the dining room from the kitchen, reporting customers’ orders, and then cheerfully carrying out their dishes.

John always greeted the restaurant guests enthusiastically. He smiled and gushed in his broken English. Sam Sing spoke only when the customers lined up at the cash register, and then it was to blurt out the price of their meal. John often seemed embarrassed by his father’s gruffness; there was an unspoken apology in his own exceptional friendliness.

The brothers were kind to me. I remember visiting the restaurant and frequently coming out with a double-scooped ice cream cone. Often the brothers came to visit my parents in the afternoon, during the quiet time between the lunch and supper hours in the restaurant. But Sam Sing never entered our house. His enterprise was prosperous, whereas ours was poor. Did he feel that we were beneath him? Or was it that we reminded him of earlier and more meagre times that were best forgotten?

I looked forward to the visits by John and Ken. They took a special older-brotherly interest in me. When one of them came to our laundry, he often brought me a special treat, such as an Oh Henry or Sweet Marie chocolate bar. These were always shyly, but enthusiastically welcomed, for my parents could not afford such luxuries.

What I remember most about Ken and John, though, was that in the winter they visited our house one at a time. Between them, they shared a single coat. It was a shapeless, black, wool garment. The pile was completely worn, the sleeves were permanently accordioned, the buttons were all mismatched, and the corners of the collar curled upwards. Occasionally, when the weather was not too severe, one brother would arrive at the laundry dressed in the coat. A half hour or so later the other brother would dash over wearing just a thin sweater over his white shirt. This made my mother laugh and she teased them about their excessive thrift.

For many years, Sam Sing and his sons lived contentedly in this bachelor existence. The sons each had a clearly defined
role in the running of the restaurant and Sam presided over everything. Ken had come to Canada unmarried, but John had left his wife, son, and daughter back in China. After working through government channels for several years, John was finally given permission to bring his family over.

My mother often helped John compose his letters back to China. Whenever he received mail from home, he rushed over to share it with my parents. One day he showed me a picture, taken in a studio, of his wife, son, and daughter. The wife and daughter had freshly permed hairstyles parted at the side, revealing high broad foreheads. The son was dressed in toolarge overalls, the bib almost touching his chin. The mother was sitting down with her hand resting on her son’s shoulder, while the daughter, who was a few years older, stood slightly but noticeably apart. I looked at this picture and felt the solemnity of their stares. It seemed strange to me that John was really the father. His youth and exuberance were in such contrast to the personality of my own father, who was over sixty when I was born. My mother was pleased that I would at last have Chinese playmates. Although both my parents were proud that I had learned English so quickly, I knew they were concerned that I was becoming “too Canadian.” John told me that I would be in charge of teaching his children English and taking them to school. As he spoke, the brown in his eyes took on a liquid quality and his eyebrows were arched so that dark vertical furrows appeared between them. Once more, I looked at the children in the photograph. Then I looked at John. Did he expect me to be friends with them? I was the only Chinese
child in the town and since coming to Canada I had only played with
lo fon
children. Did these children from China know about
Howdy Doody
and
Captain Kangaroo
? What would I have to teach them besides English? I began to feel a weight on my chest.