Paper Teeth

by Lauralyn Chow

  It’s Dad who complicates their lives, Mumma thinks. Dad gets tangled in the burrs of other people’s lives, and then drags them all in with him. Where most mothers in the neighbourhood worry about their kids bringing home stray kittens and lost dogs, Dad brings home whole families.

  Or he goes to them, an endless ledger of honour debts that distant relations, friends of old, paper Uncles, friends of acquaintances always call on Dad to settle. “He knew my father and wanted to be buried in China,” Dad says, “His widow doesn’t speak any English, doesn’t know anyone there who speaks English very well.” Dad pocketed the train ticket for Vancouver in the inner pocket of his coat. “We talked about this, it’s the right thing to do, God knows, to help someone get to the place where they want to be laid to rest.”

  Mumma wipes invisible dust from the body of her navy going-out purse using her closed fingers as a dust cloth. What Dad does is right, but what comes out her mouth never talks to her mind first.

  “You make it sound like he’s still alive,” Mumma said as she folded tissue around two white dress shirts and placed the packages into Dad’s brown leather suitcase, “Why Wing, why would someone want to be buried in China? Why would they never go back, would they work and raise families and retire here, but be sure that’s where they want to be buried?”

  “I don’t know, Mumma,” Dad said.

  “What about the store?”

  “Store’s fine, you know it is. Gee Bahk’s son is going to be fine on his own for a couple of days.”

  “Well, have you thought about just burying him in the Chinese cemetery in Vancouver? I’m sure his widow could use the extra money.”

  “ ”

  “Well?”

  “You know Mumma, you tell the kids the same thing when they’ve lost something. You say, ‘Where did you see it last? Where did you have it last, and if you retrace where you went from there, you’ll find it again.’ Who knows what he’s looking for, but if he’s saying China, I say, ‘Sure, why not?’”

  Mumma tenses her shoulders, runs the navy purse straps through her hands. Mind is right, still right, she thinks, but something just out of view hides in there, wrapped under layers like a head of cabbage leaves.

  When Mumma shut Dad’s suitcase, that time packed for Medicine Hat, the snap of brass locks reminded her to try this time to have mouth talk to her mind first.

  “I’ve known them since the Imperial Cafe days, and now Diamond and his brothers have saved enough for a business. They can run a store, I’m pretty sure, but they have no idea what fixtures to buy, how to set up their books, what they need to watch out for, how to bargain,” Dad said as they waited at the bus station, the neighbour babysitting the younger kids, one of Dad’s feet resting on the brown suitcase, a bus ticket to Medicine Hat in his coat pocket.

  “Oh. Yes. Hmmm. Now if you get cold, put on your chamois vest,” Mumma said.

  “Thanks Mumma,” Dad said.

  Thanks Mind, Mumma thought, but frowned as she felt something slip to a better hiding place in her mind.

  Mumma carefully pats her hair and pokes the tail of her comb here and there to get the curls to stand. Dad travels all over the place. Travel is almost always involved.

  “Well, the problem was that they didn’t understand that they had to get more pills from the drugstore after the ones from the hospital ran out,” Dad explained, dusting the dirt off the back of his pant cuffs as Mumma’s hand felt the heat emanating from the hood of the car, “So I took them to the drugstore and the druggist filled the prescription.”

  “Good for you, Wing,” Mumma said, the edge of her lower teeth combing her upper lip gently, as she reached up with her left hand to finger the permy curls under her ear.

  At home getting ready, Dad wipes the lenses of his binoculars with a soft cloth, and eases the binocs into their leather case. Freddy insists that Wing and Mumma be his and Fairy’s guests this afternoon at the track. Dad usually doesn’t want anything other than to finish the business, get everything in place and be out, but Freddy insists and Dad loves the ponies. Starting gate, Horses, one chute for every horse, post position, ready, doors open finally all at once, the sound of the bell. Sound and light, Fire connects mind and body, spirit gushes into blood, Spur, crop whips air whips silk, mind and body, Fire connects beast and rider, faster, Mind body mind body, One three two four, muscle bone, faster, Tendons linking muscle bone, faster, faster, Ligaments link bone bone, faster faster, Muscle bone, One body, down the stretch, Pounding, sound light, pounding hoof heart, Faster faster faster.

  Photo finish, invisible finish line.

  Dad snaps the latch on his binocular case, and takes a man-sized Kleenex from his night table. Wednesday afternoon, the store’s closed anyway. Dad loves the ponies.

  Dad’s not a juicy joyful altruist and he knows it. Rather, Dad fights the weight of what probably will happen if he doesn’t help. He’s the last chance to steer people clear of disaster, Wing Lee, the reluctant Samaritan. He’d rather be playing tennis, building kites with his son, tending his African Violet collection, or reading African Violet Society journals. But, what about the people on the verge of signing leases they can’t read, leases that would have their families, months later, sitting on the front lawn of the place they called home, with their white enamel pots, darned socks, long underwear, flour sack nightshirts, and one or two spare shirts mounded beside them. Or people who can’t read prescription labels for themselves or for their children, so Dad improvises a primitive blister pack dispenser with folded tan-coloured kraft paper from the store, paper-clipped around the edges of a piece of cardboard.

  Dad also helps with all the translations and arrangements involved in the aftermath of a death in a family. A family grieving a death need not die twice by holding a funeral they can’t afford. A financial disaster in the aftermath of a death leaves a rusty metallic taste that lingers on the tongue, so this should be avoided. Like that Vancouver business, “Yes I know these are not very common arrangements anymore,” Wing choosing his words carefully, to the reluctant man at the funeral parlour who said that he could not recall the last time that he had to arrange “one of these hincty Chinaman burials.” God knows Wing Lee bears up to Gravity in his choice of words most days of the week, believing that his children will not have to choose their words as carefully as he does.

  “Ready Mumma?” he calls down the hallway.

  Turning from the mirror in the bathroom, Mumma catches a whiff of her face powder, a fleeting reminder of life before becoming Mumma. Surely the right thing, helping Freddy and Fairy with their son. Fairy’s a good mother, knew enough not to let anyone close the door on the boy. He couldn’t go to the neighbourhood school, so how could the brand new School for the Deaf, the publicly-funded school for the deaf, try to bar his admission because English wasn’t spoken in the home? That’s when Freddy called Dad for help, at Fairy’s urging. Fairy, Ng Fei-lan in Chinese, “Fairy,” a given name a bureaucrat literally gave her, Fairy was what rubbed the Immigration Officer’s whimsy and the tip of his pen, as Fei-lan presented her papers in Victoria, B.C. [Note: Here’s a Venn diagram for Immigration Officers back in the day: All of them creative writers, by necessity, assigning names, recording subjective visual assessments; Immigration Officers (A) and Creative Writers (B); A, a small circle entirely inside and hugging the arc of the much larger circle, B. However, only a few Immigration Officers also belonged in the circle Compassionate Humanists (C) when creating Anglophone names for certain newcomers; those few used (the rest, abused) the discretion given to them in the policy directive to create a homophone of the Applicant’s name in the applicable mother tongue; the union of circle A and C a very small intersection. Ask any of the many naturalized citizens and landed immigrants whose given names mimic children’s storybook or cartoon character names, not of the King or princess but more of the dog, duck and cow subgenre.] [Note to previous Note: How big should you draw Circle C? — draw it wide.]

  Dad always does the ri
ght thing, no doubt Dad does good things for lots of families, but with so many people, Dad is spread as thin as the skin of a soap bubble. And here we are, Mumma shakes her head at the thought, going to the racetrack in the afternoon with Freddy and Fairy when I’ve got the capital C, Curse.

  Ohhh. Mumma feels the hot slippery wet leave her body. Damn capital C, Curse, oh please God, no accidents today.

  Yesterday, Tom stayed home, sick, so this morning, he needed a note. Grabbing the first pen out of the Fry’s Cocoa tin, Mumma scribed a quick note.

  “Mumma, I can’t take this to school,” Tom looked at her, his chin tucked under indignant eyes, “You’ve written it in red pen. Red ink, Mumma. Don’t you get it? Everyone will think you’re a Communist. Everyone will think we’re all Communists.”

  Mumma’s little visitor had just come that morning, day one, first is the worst. “Oh give it here then,” she said to Tom, scribbled on the note, and handed it back.

  Under her signature, Mumma had written in faint red letters, “The Communist.” She volleyed Tom’s I-mean-business eyes right back into his court, and he turned away when he couldn’t volley back. He folded the note in quarters and tucked it into the pages of his Speller.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” Mumma calls back to Dad.

  What a combination, Mumma thinks, the track and capital C, Curse. In her mind, Mumma pictures the sweat-glistening flanks of bay thoroughbreds pounding the metal out of their shoes, four hooves in rhythm, the counterpoint dance of the field of eight horses, drumming the track, their sticky black manes and tails whipping the air. At least the racing program details what’s happening and will happen next; a clear starting point and an equally clear finish line; and only one route, only one direction the race can go. Mumma feels the hotpot-steamy bundle between her legs and thinks the track may be the perfect place to go. The kids are all in school and can take care of themselves once they get home.

  Jane sits in her wooden desk and inhales Grade 1: the lead and wood shavings smell of chubby yellow HB pencils with the lousy hard erasers that rub holes in practice books; the good pink erasers, dangling from a long white string tied to the arm of each student’s desk; the heady smell of the amber mucilage bottles topped with a red rubber nipple, the small slash opening on the flat angular side of the nipple gaping like a tiny red mouth under Jane’s fingers; the perfume of mimeographed pages fresh from the Gestetner machine; the earthy suffusion of clayish-wet poster paint thickly applied to pulpy manila paper. Jane raises her hands and cups her nose to capture the super-duper Grade 1 aroma.

  Grade 1 presents a visual feast for Jane too, a gallery of autumn leaves ironed between two pieces of wax paper and hung like laundry in two diagonal lines from each corner of the room; gold foil stars; unbroken series of red-pencil check marks, check, and check, and check; a large poster of a hair comb, a toothbrush, and a drawing of clean, unbitten fingernails attached to a washed hand, with a graph tracking the daily personal hygiene assessments for each child; and of course Nicky Staples’s bum-bum. Nicky Staples has the pinkest, roundest bum-bum, an exquisite, non-replicable shade of pink, in any medium, be it flesh or flower, tint or dye, eraser or bubblegum. She only sees Nicky’s bum-bum once ever, when Nicky, finished his work, stood quietly beside his desk and easing his hands into the elastic waistband of his husky boy pants, pulled the back of his pants down to scratch his bare buttocks, just at the moment when Jane looked over her shoulder two desks behind her.

  For Jane, every day of Grade 1 is the wildest dream come to life, Grade 1 is dessert after every meal, riding on a parade float, an unending supply of grape Life Savers. Some days, you learn how to lay your coat on the floor, upside down, stand by the collar, bend your knees, put your hands inside the armholes, then swing that coat over your head to leave for recess and for home. Some days, you watch a film on safety near train tracks and rail yards, and even though you’ve never seen a train except from Dad’s car and you live twenty-seven miles from the nearest train tracks, for sure, you will never play in or near an open box car. Some days, you practice hiding under your desk when Mrs. Shaw blows her whistle and Gregory Bailey falls asleep, again, because his mumma gives him little bits of her calm pills. Some days, Muriel Dubbick’s father and another man come to school and give each child a soft, burgundy leather Bible, and Jane calls it her Dale Evans Bible because Mr. Dubbick and his friend say the Bible is from the Giddyups.

  But then Muriel Dubbick teaches you how to make angel hair and nothing prepares you for angel hair.

  Who knew? Who knew that the amber-coloured glue in the bottle with the red rubber nipple, [Note: Grade 1 Jane calls this a dauber or red thing. She knows but in Grade 1 never says the word, nipple, could never have called a nipple a nipple, after all, she is her Mumma’s daughter.] who knew that amber glue, when rubbed between a thumb and pointer finger, then pinching and opening, pinching and opening those fingers around the pointer finger of the other hand would spin a tiny muff of white iridescent floss. Muriel slipped the glue bottle into her jacket pocket after she threw her jacket over her head at the start of recess bell. On the tarmac, the white cocoon grows more fragile-looking and yet lush on the creator’s pointer finger, with each pass of Muriel’s finger loom.

  “See? Angel hair,” Muriel declares.

  Connecting Muriel’s act of creation and confident declaration with Mr. Dubbick’s role as deliverer of Dale Evans Bibles, Jane sees Muriel’s angel hair literally. Maybe, this is part of what goes on at church, once a month. Maybe, if Jane went to church where people spoke English, angel hair would not come as such a surprise. Angel hair. Until this very day, Jane never had the notion of starting with English words to be translated into Chinese. Maybe, she thinks, maybe I am getting closer to understanding about church and House of the Lord. Jane hears Dad tell her to “make a mental note like Mumma does” to remember to ask Mumma how to say angel hair in Chinese, then Jane adds a note to the note to listen for angel hair, whatever angel hair sounds like in Chinese, in the minister’s sermons, but there’s a hole in the pocket of her mental jacket where she stuffs the note, and when she throws that jacket over her head to leave for home, the note gets permanently lost in the mental lining.

  “Can I see?” Jane asks.

  “Sure,” Muriel says, “You can even hold it.” Muriel touches the tip of her pointer finger to Jane’s and uses the third and ring finger of her other hand like a fork with two tines, transferring a delicate morsel from one shish kabob skewer to another.

  Jane feels the coolness of Muriel’s fingertip as the white angel hair moves down Muriel’s tiny digit. Jane swallows, and feels the greasy armpit, sticky palm feeling she gets when Mumma says Jane’s becoming over-ragitated. As the circle of angel hair moves onto Jane’s finger, it hugs her finger in a snug feeling, but very quickly, Jane feels the angel hair hug slacken. The angel hair begins to dissolve from around Jane’s finger.

  “You’re too hot. Look at your finger, it’s melting,” Muriel complains, “Give it back, give it back before it all disappears.”

  Jane wants nothing more than to have the angel hair restored intact on Muriel’s cool white finger. However, the disappearing angel hair has become trapped by a sticky crust of amber-coloured glue on Jane’s pointer finger, and when Jane tries to imitate Muriel’s finger fork with her other hand, the angel hair sticks to those fingers, and melts completely, covering Jane’s fingers with sticky, amber crusts.

  “I’m sorry, Muriel. I’m really really sorry.”

  “Well, I guess it’s not your fault. I mean, not really,” Muriel says, shaking her head, “I suppose it’s not something that just anyone can do, spin angel hair. Seems like some people can’t even hold it. Your fingers are just too hot,” she concludes, the end of recess bell sounds to confirm her findings.

  Jane looks at her dirty sticky fingers, more amber brown than usual. Jane feels her heart pressing against the muscles of her chest wall, feels the same dead eye feeling she felt when they were reading a
loud in class and Muriel raised her hand and said, “I think Jane in Dick and Jane looks more like a real girl named Jane, than Jane Lee looks like a real Jane,” and everyone laughed, until Mrs. Shaw shushed them. Jane tries following Dad’s advice from a while ago, before starting playschool, to “think and be positive, that’s what Father Brady would say,” then, slumping her shoulders, Jane realizes, of course, the good Father would never have any problems with angel hair. Jane mimics the motions of Muriel’s finger loom, but Jane’s shuttles are lousy with brown sticky crusts.

  Jane balls both hands as she stands by the line of brass coat hooks at the back of the classroom and shrugs her coat off her shoulders. She picks up the cord hanging-loop sewn in the collar of her jacket with a clean pinky finger and hooks the loop over an empty hook in the middle of the row. Carefully, she smoothes her coat into the wedge of space left between the two adjacent coats with the back of her wrist.

  “Jane Lee, what’s that on your hands?” Mrs. Shaw asks.

  Angel hair, Jane wants to say, yes, hair of the very angels that she has heard on high. Oh yes, all the time, Jane imagines declaring to Mrs. Shaw, Yes, and they have white wings that bend near the earth, so close, they are really only a hand’s grasp away, angels with beautiful white angel hair.