And when the Lee family gets home, Dad will take out his mah jong set and teach Mumma’s children all the moves, the washing of the tiles, moving and stacking them into bars like refrigerator cookie dough.
And the children will feel the thrill of washing the tiles, all one hundred forty-four tiles making their way towards each child in a moving mass, while all the players simultaneously amass and then push all the tiles away from themselves, leaving each person with the transcendent feeling of possessing everything and nothing all at once.
“See, there are nine balls, nine bamboo, nine characters — see the characters, those are the numbers in Chinese, and the symbol for each number is a simple line drawing of that number,” Dad says, “One to nine. Easy.”
“No they’re not,” Pen says, inverting the seven tile face down and up between her thumb and forefinger, “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Yes, those pictures are ideograms,” Dad says, “Look, every symbol is a little picture of every single number, one is one line, two is two lines, three —”
“Ooo, these are pretty, they look like flowers,” Jane says, cupping her hands around eight tiles that Dad has separated out into a line.
“They are flowers,” Dad replies enthusiastically, “But no, Little One, not those ones, those are the seasons.”
Jane bares her curved darning needle pout, “No. They’re all flowers. They look like flowers. They’re flowers.”
Dad tries another tack. “Son, do you see the winds?” Dad asks Tom, bracing four tiles between his fingers.
Skepticism widens Tom’s eyes. His Boy Scout shoes have a real compass in the heel, covered by a round leather patch, and Tom’s already learned about things like NNW.
“Dad, there’s way more than four wind directions, there’s, I dunno, like, sixteen. This is primitive, way too old timey. And how can you tell those tiles apart anyway?”
Dad resists the teachable moment, the temptation to inform his son that in ancient China, mariners used a 24-point compass that did not fit in the heel of a Boy Scout shoe. Instead, he says, “The game has lasted a long time, but that doesn’t make mah jong primitive. To answer your question, you tell the wind tiles apart by learning to tell them apart, period. Are any of you interested in learning the basic strategy?”
“I guess,” Tom says.
“Sure,” Lizzie shrugs her shoulders, “why not?”
“Whatever.” Pen’s tongue explores the inside of her flaccid mouth.
“I like the flowers,” Jane says, stroking the faces of the eight flower and season tiles.
Dad is an excellent mah jong player, and a great teacher, he’s taught most of them how to play tennis, so how hard can this be, he thinks.
Ball after ball, Dad will gently lob balls from the game of mah jong perfectly into their court, all the rules, the tile properties, basic strategy, how to win. And even though both Lizzie and Tom will be holders of provincial tennis titles, and Pen a runner-up and Jane a somewhat proficient ball girl at the community tennis courts, all of Mumma’s children will stand on their side of the court and watch the mah jong balls bounce in bounds, just slightly beyond them, and roll out of bounds. No ones tries to run after and return even one ball.
And Mumma’s children will invent their own Home Rules combination of Hearts, Poker, and Go Fish, fish your wish, flowers (as Jane classifies them) are wild, round coinies count double. And, unless you go for Power and have all the red swords with the box in the middle, you will be up the creek, a thirteen-point penalty for each one.
“Dad, you’ve barely even got a hand. That just counts up to two, maybe four points,” Tom will say.
“No. I won,” Dad will reply, “This game you kids play makes no sense. Mah jong has been around for generations. The seasons are not flowers. I told you kids, you just have to pay attention.”
“No, ours is better, Dad,” Tom will say, “Ours is fun.”
“Fun? It’s not supposed to be fun, you’re supposed to be learning something!” Dad will shake his head, and folding and pocketing the sheet of hand-drawn mah jong rules he made for the kids, he will walk away, leaving them to play with the tiles on the dining room table. The last thing Dad will hear is Jane saying, “Yay! I get to play! Flowers are wild. I’ll play Dad’s hand. How do you play again?”
“Mumma,” he will say, joining Mumma in the kitchen, “when Janie is old enough, sign her up for community league tennis lessons, OK? I’m not going to teach her.”
“Can do,” Mumma replies, Wing calling his own wife, Mumma, for so many years, she doesn’t even notice anymore.
Dad will never get the Home Rules right. And Mumma’s kids will never play his rules of the game, God knows what those characters on the tiles actually mean.
And Jane will want to keep the tiles with the flowers for her own rituals.
And the bear will never come down. Over the years, the bear will get mangy-looking, covered with snow in winter, matted and grey during spring thaw. He will rock a bit in the wind, but other than that will not move.
And words are never spoken, never heard on those Sundays beneath the bear, out the non-basement, mah jong window.
And down from the pawn shop, around the corner from the bear, the new parking space for the taking it easy getaway onto Jasper Avenue is a great parking space where the Lees will become accustomed to parking.
“I guess this is not bad,” Dad will say, making a smooth, slightly accelerating right turn onto Jasper Avenue.
“It’s only a couple more blocks. Really,” Mumma will reply, the windows of W.W. Arcade disappearing from sight in a fluid arc.
And on that car ride home, as they approach the flatiron building each Communion Sunday after crossing the path of the bear, twice, Mumma will pretend not to notice the empty handle of the Coffee Cup Inn, will pretend that she doesn’t still see the man lying like an upside-down “V” in the handle.
And on Communion Sunday but only on Communion Sunday, the Lees will hear eight unseen hands perpetuate the ritual of the circle, and the bear will hold out its hands and transmit from its open mouth, wordless sounds from the room at the back.
Number 88. Spicy Beef in Lettuce Wraps
How can Auntie Moe stand living with a grave-in-waiting? How can she take it? That’s what I want to know. I think about that every time we go to the Chinese cemetery. Auntie Moe is Mumma’s baby sister and she doesn’t drive, so Mumma and I drive her, once a month, on school days off, as long as there isn’t fresh snow on the roads.
Auntie Moe is cool. She buys me “cutting edge” clothes for my birthday. Lately, she’s started wearing miniskirts under her midi coat. And vinyl boots with square heels. Boots when it isn’t snowing or even raining outside. Auntie Moe dresses so “with it,” she wears cool bangs like Lulu, and frosty eye shadow. So what’s she doing with a grave-in-waiting?
That’s what’s on our minds as we stand in front of Uncle Louie’s gravestone. Gross. A big dark grey stone, bigger than most of the ones around it. The left side of the stone says Chan Gee Gum Kwee, underneath that Born May 20, 1911 and underneath that Died March 13, 1965. All the lettering chiselled right out of the stone, and the insides of the letters and numbers painted white. So the stone doesn’t just say things, it says them forever. Underneath the dates, a bunch of Chinese writing in four long columns, saying God knows what. But the right side of the stone says Maureen Lily Chan, and underneath that Born July 23, 1938 —. The rest of that side, shiny, polished, grey-grey blank. I ate a sandwich before we came, but seeing Auntie Moe’s name and birthday, and all that blankness on her side of the gravestone makes me rub my hand across my tummy. Feels like thick, greasy noodles lumping up under my warm hand. Auntie Moe stands there, her mouth an upside-down sausage painted frosty pink. In her left hand, Mumma balances garden shears, a water jug’s handle, and some yellow dahlias from home. Her right hand grips Auntie Moe’s. But like always, Mumma lets go of Auntie Moe’s hand, squeezes her around the shoulder, and says, “W
ell, the sooner we start.”
Then, and this part always kills me, Mumma will walk straight up to the stone, right over that big rectangle of ground that any fool can see rests slightly lower than all the ground around it. The grass almost looks the same, but dips down in a rectangle. And even that grass rectangle leans a little bit more to the left than centre. Come to think of it, the firm ground to the right, the Auntie Moe side, where the grass grows on the same level as the rest of the world, makes it even more of a puzzle as to what Auntie Moe’s doing with a grave-in-waiting. But how can Mumma do that, walk right over a rectangle of the dead? Me, I can’t even put my toes near the edges. I get dizzy thinking about it. That dirt is softer, shifting. Restless. I know that dirt will move. Dirt isn’t solid powder. Dirt is little round pebbles, marbles that will roll, give way to running shoes and eight-year-old legs. This is serious stuff, not just walking on sidewalk cracks. Even Auntie Moe, who married Uncle Louie, stands outside the foot of the rectangle and watches Mumma lower herself down, her hand holding the top of the tombstone for balance. Mumma plucks dry, straw-brown flowers from last time out of two green cone-shaped metal vases. The vases have big coat-hanger wire stems that push into the ground. Mumma pulls the vases right out of the ground, turns to me and Auntie Moe, smiling. “Well?”
Auntie Moe, who hasn’t said one word, has her arms wrapped around her. She walks along the left edge and crouches down beside my mom, who squats dead centre at the top of the rectangle.
Mumma washes out the vases with a little water from her jug. She dampens a rag and starts to rub at the bird poop on the stone. Auntie Moe still has her arms wrapped around her as she rocks on her square heels. Auntie Moe has excellent balance.
“Well, run along,” Mumma says to me.
Right. Like I’m going to run in the cemetery, let my feet step all over these grave tops. Sure. Maybe it’s just her way of saying, “Get lost,” but with Mumma, maybe the obvious just doesn’t occur to her.
I don’t mind. I heel toe heel toe heel toe along the higher ridges of grass. The ridges are continuous and they intersect, sideways with up and down. They make a grid pattern, like streets on a city map, each gravestone a sort-of house with a sunken front yard. Flowers nod in the breeze in front some of the gravestones, real flowers and fake ones too. A few gravestones have oranges and incense and burnt papers with Chinese writing scattered in front. And almost empty Crown Royal whisky bottles that, Mumma says, are not left by drunks and are filled with coloured water. I picked one up once and it smelled like the real thing. All the stones have a flat polished front with those chiselled-in figures. Almost all have dates. Some with Chinese writing only, some with English writing only, and some with both.
I read as I walk along. If there are dates, sometimes I do the math. Jonathan Wong Gee, Born December 22, 1949, Died December 29, 1959. Oh. Ten years old. That’s so sad. There’s a bunch of little oranges set out in front of the stone. Sad oranges. And babies too, six months, or eighteen months. When I come across the skinny little baby gravestones, I don’t do math, or even read them anymore. I count clouds, keep an ear out for bees. Or, I pull at my hangnails and keep walking. Here’s one of my favourites, Wee Lee, Born October 21, 1901, Died April 10, 1959. Fifty-seven. And the last little piggy went Wee Lee all the way home. I laugh, but quickly stop. I look down and just watch my feet walking. Right left right left. Right beside Wee Lee, there’s one of those gravestones with a photograph, like a cameo locket, embedded in the centre. Once I know where those photo ID gravestones are, I just keep moving. I get prickly ears looking at the little photos. Because now I’ve got a face for who’s underneath that rectangle of grass.
Looking up the hill, I can see Mumma and Auntie Moe talking. Auntie Moe hasn’t moved, still crouching, hugging herself. She talks when Mumma’s hands stop moving. The flowers lie beside Mumma’s feet. So do the green metal vases.
Uncle Louie was way older than Auntie Moe, even older than my Dad. Really tall, and skinny — Uncle Louie’s skin looked like yellowed wax paper. He kind of looked like what Herman Munster would look like if Herman Munster was Chinese. Yeah. Chinese Herman Munster. He wore a man’s felt hat, even in the house, and always had bruise-coloured rings around his eyes. I can picture him, hitting the top of their old console television, then backing up slowly, eyes glued to the screen, until the back of his legs reached that flesh-tone La-Z-Boy and his knees would bend to sitting. Wearing that hat. Looking at the wide white television tower, just outside the cemetery, I have the idea that Uncle Louie must be doing OK.
On that TV tower side of the graveyard, someone built a shrine, this garden shed with a hexagon-shaped Chinese-y looking roof and, instead of walls, four support beams and a wide wooden ledge running all the way around it at my eye level. Every single time we pass the shrine, leaving the cemetery, I say to Mumma, “Slow down. Slow. Down.” From the car, I can see burnt paper banners with Chinese writing hanging down from the ledge. And sitting on top of the ledge, I love seeing the little glass cups filled with amber liquid, oranges, incense sticks, and red paper envelopes for lucky money. I’d like to check out this great stuff, but right beside the shrine is where they bury the recently dead. No grass on the rectangles, no gravestones. Just lots of flowers, or paper banners laying over soft, rounded piles of dirt. Fresh graves.
I keep walking. The farther along I go, the longer the tombstones have been here. Here’s a double. On the Uncle Louie side, probably the man, Wah Keen Sang, 1953 minus 1890. Sixty-three. And, Wah Ng Lee, 1963 minus 1891. Seventy-two. Good on her. Old Wah waited, let’s see, ten years, which is nothing when you compare that to poor old Ng Lee having a grave-in-waiting for the same period of time.
Bits have cracked off some of these gravestones. Lots have rusty cauliflower-looking crud stuck on them, where the paint on the letters has chipped away. Some just have one date on them, like 1924, and a bunch of Chinese writing. Or no dates at all. Out here, No Vacancy, all the double graves are full up. Words and numbers chiselled on both sides. No more waiting. Hardly any flowers or oranges or little red envelopes by the gravestones, even the sad ones.
We don’t put oranges, or incense sticks, booze, or Chinese fake Monopoly money out for Uncle Louie. On account of God. We don’t do ancestor worship, Mumma says, because we believe in God. I’m not going to ask Mumma, but what about the graves where there’s oranges and incense and flowers and chiselled-in words about God? Mumma would say that’s called dealing from both ends of the deck.
I think about God near the end or I guess the beginning, the boundary, of the Chinese graveyard. I don’t think about Him much at church. We go to the Chinese United Church and the whole service is in Chinese. I don’t understand word one. It’s mostly old Chinese people. Hymn singing sounds like everyone got their hair caught in a revolving door. Lizzie says the reason’s because something-something Chinese music has a five-note scale and Western music has an eight-note scale, but that’s not true. What an excuse. People just don’t know how to sing in tune. After and before, the old ladies pinch your cheeks and ask you things in Chinese. Then they repeat the question. You stress smile, which hurts your cheeks all the way up to your eyeballs, until Mumma says something in Chinese. Then everyone laughs, including Mumma. I can’t stand it, the worst sixty-minute hour in the world. But my point is, out here, alone, surrounded by these sunken rectangles of the dead and chiselled words like The Lord Is My Shepherd and He Is Risen, well, He occupies my mind.
Across the cemetery road at the Ukrainian cemetery, their stones are massive, six feet tall. They have graves-in-waiting too. Some of the gravestones have just one word, a name, as far as I can see. Kureluk, Holubitsky. And sometimes that word isn’t spelled in the English alphabet, but the alphabet with the little curlicues and backwards image letters. The Ukrainians are buried in one cemetery, and on the other side of the street, here’s all the Chinese.
And it comes to me all at once, I work out how God and religion and the afterlife fit together. When
you die, you go to heaven, sure. But, you live in heaven with the people you’re buried with. That’s why the graves-in-waiting. Like putting a sweater on the seat beside you at the movie theatre while your mumma is out buying the popcorn. It’s just saving a space no one else can push their bum, well, their whole bod into.
The traffic whizzes by on the other side of the cement barrier. The sunlight shines on the bare branches of the trees, the leaves long gone, and I have that warm feeling from figuring something out, like learning how to add fractions. But suddenly, the rows and rows of tombstones in the Chinese cemetery help me figure something else out. One day, I’m going to spend the rest of eternity with a bunch of old Chinese people who don’t speak English. It will be like going to church every day for the rest, no, beyond the rest of my life. I mean, this is where they bury the Chinese-Canadians. Everyone in my heaven will be Chinese, and hardly anyone will speak English. They won’t have had to speak English for years, so they’ll have lost it. We Lee kids are, as Grandpa holds over our heads, the only Chinese kids in the entire city who don’t really know word one of Chinese. My stomach twinges. My armpits feel warm and greasy. What if I get there before Mumma or Dad, who will interpret?
What kind of heaven is this anyway?
“Shake a leg, Janie! We’re going.”
My feet come off the ground. Mumma waves her garden shears at me. Auntie Moe brushes dust off her coat sleeves. “Janie. C’mon.”
I sit in the backseat beside Mumma’s garden tools. The inside of the car smells like mud and peat moss.
“Mumma, just for instance,” I throw out, casual as can be, “If I happened to die, I guess this is where you’d bury me, right?”
Mumma turns around and gives me her you-gotta-be-kidding-me look. “You worry too much,” she says, turning back to pay attention to her driving, “You’re as healthy as a horse, Janie. You’re going to outlive and outrun us all. No one’s planning a funeral any time soon.”
Paper Teeth Page 3