Toward the North

by Hua Laura Wu

  I know a place where the sun is like gold,

  And the cherry blooms burst with snow,

  And down underneath is the loveliest nook,

  Where the four-leaf clovers grow.

  One leaf is for HOPE, and one is for FAITH,

  And one is for LOVE, you know,

  And GOD put another in for LUCK—

  If you search, you will find where they grow.

  But you must have HOPE, and you must have FAITH.

  You must LOVE and be strong—and so—

  If you work, if you wait, you will find the place

  Where the four-leaf clovers grow.1

  The new mower was terrific and I finished my work an hour earlier than usual. Before I left, Sean gave me two books from C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia series: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia.

  “C.S. Lewis’ books are easy to read,” Sean said. “I hope you like them.”

  I left Sean and his place, holding the books in my hand. My palms felt much warmer than they used to. The two books were like magic charms, linking Sean’s world to mine.

  Winter rushed in uninvited and unexpectedly. After one or two cold snaps in early December, the Welland Canal froze over. All ships, big and small, stood docked at the Port Dalhousie piers. Without tourists’ presence and sailors’ laughter, the port became deserted and silent.

  Christmas Eve happened to be my cleaning day at Sean’s. I called him to ask if he wanted to cancel it. He asked me to come.

  When I walked into his house, Sean was sitting beside the fireplace flipping through a photo album. “It’s very cold. Do you want to warm up a bit first?” he asked.

  The fire burned briskly, radiating an enticing warmth that I found hard to resist. I hesitated for just an instant and then declined with a shake of my head.

  When I finished working, Sean asked me, “Do you have any plans for tonight?”

  Again, I shook my head.

  “I’ve decided not to join my family for Christmas. I want to have a quiet evening,” Sean said.

  Isn’t his life too quiet? I thought. “What about your parents?” I asked. “Won’t they be disappointed?”

  He snorted. “My parents have been divorced for ten years. They couldn’t care less. Especially my mother.”

  I was shocked by his bitterness. “Don’t say things like that.”

  “In her eyes, I will always be a loser, a pathetic drowning dog….”

  “How can that be?”

  “She wanted me to go to university to become a lawyer or a doctor, just like my older brother and sister, but I never enjoyed school, even when I was a little kid. I skipped classes all the time….”

  “But you love reading. You have so many books!”

  “But they’re all ‘useless’ books.”

  “I thought Canadians didn’t place as much weight on education as we Chinese.”

  “Education and social status go hand in hand, and no one in the world thinks lightly of social status,” he replied with a grim look on his face.

  I could not reply.

  Fortunately, Sean changed the topic. “Can you cook Chinese food?”

  “Sure.”

  “How about,” he suggested timidly, “we cook dinner together? I’ve never had Chinese food on Christmas Eve.”

  “No problem.”

  “Can you make sweet-and-sour chicken?” he asked with eager expectation.

  I started to laugh. “I’ve never made that dish. Sweet-and-sour chicken is American Chinese food; it’s not authentic.”

  “Then make whatever you’re good at. Give me a list, and I’ll do the shopping.” Sean gave the clock on the wall a quick look. “I hope the supermarket is still open.”

  An hour later, I was busy deep-frying and stir-frying. Sean fussed about, but he was of little help. I made a vegetable soup and four dishes: shrimp and mango salad, chicken braised in Coke sauce, snow peas with minced garlic, and Gong Bao fish filet with hot peppers and peanuts.

  Sean and I sat down at the dining room table facing each other. He opened an aged French red wine and poured us each a glass. It swirled quietly, a suggestive scarlet red. “It’s snowing,” he whispered as he raised his glass.

  I turned and saw snowflakes dancing among the trees. Although the TV weatherman predicted no snow for today, we were having a white Christmas after all.

  Sean loved my dishes. He poured the Gong Bao fish sauce on his rice and finished the last mouthful. We talked, on and off, about our respective families. Despite my faulty English, I managed to tell my story.

  I came from a very ordinary family. My father was the taciturn type, and my mother was the real head of the household. My mother always said that the greatest achievement of her life was giving birth to two children, a daughter and a son. But her greatest disappointment was giving birth to a homely girl. I was that homely girl. To use my younger brother Yang’s words, I would have scared the audience if I were an actress. I have long and narrow eyes, a low and flat nose, and thick lips—not a single feature meet the conventional Chinese idea of beauty.

  My mom asserted repeatedly that Yang and I should have had a “face swap.” It was a total waste for a boy to have a pretty face. But heaven did not attend to my mom’s bid. Consequently, both my brother and I had trouble: Yang was spoiled by women who found him attractive, and he dumped girlfriends so frequently that he was still single when he was thirty. As for me, no man noticed me even when I was eighteen, and at thirty, I was also unspoken for.

  When I graduated from university, I was given a teaching job at Donghai College. Because my mom was in poor health, I lived at home and did all the household chores. My parents had a two-bedroom apartment. They lived in one bedroom, and I had the other. Yang had to sleep in the living room. Later on, Yang carelessly got his girlfriend of the day pregnant, so he had to marry her. I gave up my room to them and moved into a dorm room for young and single faculty members at my school.

  I had done nothing spectacular in my career or in my personal life. There is an old saying: “When transplanted, a tree will die but a human will flourish.” Perhaps if I moved to a different country, I might have some hope. So I immigrated to Canada. But I have since learned that the flourishing part of the transplanting process can take years.

  Yang was laid off recently, and then my mom called me asking for money. I had to send back all the money I had saved over the past six months, and I had to start from scratch once again. “When I save money, I save one dollar at a time,” I explained. “But, when I send money back home, I send by the hundred.”

  “But you aren’t obliged to do it,” Sean said.

  “In every family, there is one child who has to sacrifice. Also, I owe my mom. She gave me life and raised me, and no matter what I have a duty to her, and to my family.”

  “You don’t owe anybody anything. When she chose to bring you into this world and bring you up, she should not have expected you to pay her back.”

  “But how could I not repay her?”

  “You feel guilty, don’t you? And your family takes advantage of your guilt!”

  “Sean, this is too complicated. I … I am different from you.”

  “You are wrong again. You and I are the same. You must get rid of your guilt, and then you’ll be at ease and can relax.”

  “It’s not that easy. I can’t do it. You see, I escaped to Canada, but I am still under my mother’s thumb.”

  “Did you come to Canada just to be a cleaning lady?”

  I lowered my head and said, “No, actually I wanted to go to school.”

  After dinner, Sean asked me to sit by the fireplace, and this time I accepted his invitation.

  “You have really sexy lips!” he said.

  This was the first time in my life tha
t someone praised my lips. I could not believe my ears. Back in China I had heard many disheartening comments about my looks. Yet, now I was being admired. It was true that there was no accounting for taste and that “if you lose on the swings, you may win on the roundabouts.”

  “I once saw a Japanese supermodel, and she looked just like you.”

  “She is really lucky if she can make it with looks like mine!” I laughed.

  Sean chuckled, squinting at me. “I like your sense of humour.” Then he reached out and embraced me. When his lips looked for mine, I, out of character, met them willingly. If they were sexy, why not put them to good use? Like two snowflakes falling into the fireplace, my lips quickly melted in his kiss. On this snowy, despondent Christmas Eve, I felt my hunger for loving caresses rise up from the very marrow of my bones.

  Sean climbed up the stairs, leading me by the hand. My hands were trembling. I saw a smear of dim light before me, a dimness that was full of evocation and temptation…. I blamed that bottle of old French wine for whatever was about to happen .

  Sean did not turn on the light. He sat me down, gently, on the bed. Soon I felt like a small sailboat gently bobbing on a lake. His caresses were tender, like warm breezes and gentle raindrops He steered me through a winding passage between soaring mountains and rugged cliffs. And, finally, he brought me to rough water and rode me to the crest of a huge powerful wave. The scream that came up from deep inside me could have been heard over the sound of crashing ocean surf…. When the waves subsided into calm ripples, I heard his laboured breathing. Then the ripples calmed down, the water became as tranquil as the surface of a mirror, and everything fell into a peaceful silence.

  Waking up the next morning, I found myself on the bed in the guest room. Sean did not take me to his bedroom, the room that was always locked. I put on my clothes and went downstairs. Sean was making coffee in the kitchen. We said good morning to each other rather awkwardly. He did not look at me; his eyes were fixed on the coffee maker.

  I said goodbye quietly.

  He turned and asked, “Would you like to have some coffee before you go?”

  I shook my head and left.

  It was unexpectedly cold outside. The streets were so quiet that I could almost hear the snowflakes fall. After a night of revelry, tiny St. Catharines was sound asleep. But Sean’s kisses were still on my lips, burning.

  To me, a man was a tome filled with mysterious writings. Back in China, relatives and colleagues had tried to match me up a couple of times, mostly with men who studied science or applied science. However, in the game of love, I was like a poor writer: I often started the story, and then it went nowhere. Only once did the courtship proceed beyond the first date. The man was a chemist with a lanky figure. Even though I was over thirty, I was still very green, and I did not know how to flirt and be coy. I also tried my best to keep my feelings of being a complete failure buried deep inside. So when he showed just a tiny bit affection, I gave myself up to him eagerly. Soon afterwards, he was informed that his mother had cancer. Being an extremely dutiful son, he decided to return to his hometown in Shanxi to care for her. So he did not turn out to be my Mr. Right. He did not plead for my hand in marriage, and I did not pledge my eternal love for him. Our romantic interlude ended quickly.

  “Sean … Sean….” I practised saying his name out loud while driving home. Will he be the protagonist’s name in a story that will become my new life?

  On New Year’s Eve, Angela disappeared. She didn’t come home after work, and when her parents did not see her the next morning, they called the police. Sean and I searched for her everywhere, but could not find her. How could “Miss Sunshine” evaporate like a droplet of water?

  “She must have run away and didn’t want to tell us why,” Sean whispered repeatedly.

  Angela’s absence from the staff lounge robbed it of the sweet breath of youth, and the room was left with a stale, sour odour. My heart felt like a puppet controlled by numerous invisible but pitiless strings: it hurt.

  The next Saturday, I went to Sean’s place to do the cleaning as usual. He wasn’t there. He returned when I was about to leave. He gave me a gentle kiss and asked, “How about a walk along the canal?” A stroll along the canal in the coldest days of the winter? This was perhaps Sean’s idea of romance.

  The canal had turned from the clear blue water of the fall into a wintery grey ice that merged into the grey, overcast sky. There was literally no one around, just a chilly wind blowing that accompanied us as we walked. I shivered. Sean held out a hand and pulled me closer.

  “Winter is the worst season of the year,” he said. “I can’t sail and have to stay home. It bores me to death. Married sailors can stay at home with their wives and children. Single ones like me have to tough it out.”

  “But … why don’t you marry?” I could not help but blurt out the question. I was invading his privacy, but I felt compelled to ask, even if it offended him. I didn’t want to admit to myself that his answer to the question was very important.

  “I….” Sean spoke haltingly. “No woman would be willing to wait for me. I am away for so many months.”

  “But many of your colleagues are married.” I didn’t want to give up.

  Sean let go of my shoulder and replied with some awkwardness: “Probably my damn personality is to blame.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with your personality,” I said lightly.

  “When you’re married, you have to deal with the endless little things in life. I’m afraid I’m not cut out for it.”

  “Perhaps those little things are not as hard to handle as you think.”

  “Let’s not talk about this,” he said with a sigh.

  I fell silent. Perhaps like many men and women in this world, he and I were like two porcupines in winter time: they want to cuddle up against each other, but at the same time they are afraid of being hurt by the quills. Sean and I were two porcupines born and raised on opposite sides of the globe, and this made things even more difficult.

  That evening, Sean invited me to a restaurant. On the walls, among the usual pub décor, were a dozen tartan kilts in bright red, dark green, and greyish-blue. A white tag bearing a girl’s name was attached to each of the kilts.

  A polite middle-aged man greeted us. When he recognized Sean, he smiled and said, “Good evening, Sean!”

  “Evening, my old buddy!” Sean introduced us: “This is Lei and this is Jim. He’s the manager here.”

  “Welcome!” Jim cupped my hand with his and placed a kiss on the back, very much the gentleman. Then he turned to Sean and asked, “The usual place?”

  Sean nodded and Jim led us to a corner booth with padded seats.

  “Why the kilts on the wall?” I asked out of curiosity.

  “Those are the kilts of our former waitresses. When they left, they gave us their kilts as a souvenir.”

  What a great idea to use the kilts as markers of the past! This restaurant certainly was unique. Sean’s cell rang, and for some reason he walked outside to answer it. Did he do it out of politeness, or did he have something to hide? Through the window, I could see him shivering in the cold wind.

  Jim asked me what I’d like to drink. I answered, “A cup of English tea, but I don’t know what Sean wants.”

  “Rum. For years he has been drinking nothing but rum here.”

  “Do you know him well?”

  “Of course. His ex worked here for three years.”

  I looked at Jim, shocked by what he had said.

  “That was already more than twenty years ago,” he added. “Time sure does fly! It was here that Sean got to know Sharon. What a shame their marriage didn’t last. See, Sharon’s kilt is right there, behind you.”

  I turned and saw a bright red kilt with black checks. A small white cloth tag was affixed to it by two tiny clips in the shape of a clover. The name on the t
ag was Sharon. I recalled Sean’s expression of happiness when he saw the clovers in his garden. Was that just a coincidence? I wondered. I also noticed a couple of photos beside the kilt. “Is Sharon in those pictures?” I asked.

  “This one.” Jim pointed at one picture over our table.

  I suddenly felt Sharon’s presence! In that picture were two waitresses, one brunette and one blonde. They stood in front of the restaurant holding a huge burger, laughing innocently yet provocatively. All of a sudden I recognized the waitress wearing the red kilt with black checks. She was the blonde woman who had chatted with me in Sean’s garden the other day.

  I pointed at the blonde and asked, “Is this Sharon?”

  Jim nodded. “You got it.”

  “She’s beautiful.”

  “It’s very easy for a pretty woman to make a man lose his head, but beauty is not the fountain of happiness.” Jim excused himself and went to fetch my order.

  Sean apparently came to this restaurant often. But why would he bring me here? Why would we sit beneath Sharon’s photo where, with a mere lift of head, we could see her kilt? I felt as if Sean had locked me in the dark cellar of his memory. It left me confused and suffocated.

  Sean returned to his seat, his brows knitted tightly.

  “Something bothering you?” I asked.

  “My mom called. She gave me another lecture, complained that I’m not living a so-called ‘normal’ life.”

  Our dinner went on in silence. I wanted to comfort him, but I wasn’t good at expressing myself in English. I also wanted to talk about Sharon, but I was afraid of upsetting him.

  That night Sean and I lay in bed in the guest room. We were in complete darkness, and lost in thought, as if we were two deep ponds of still water, worlds apart. The poem about the clover lingered in my memory: “One leaf is for HOPE, and one is for FAITH, and one is for LOVE.” How I longed for an evergreen leaf of love!

  Spring arrived, reluctantly. Flowers and plants in Sean’s garden began to appear in cheerful colours. Sean set out on his voyages and was seldom at home. I anxiously waited for his call, but at the same time I was trying my best to smother my hopes. I suddenly felt very lonely. I realized that if you cherish hope, you start to understand where loneliness comes from.