“No. I’m sure,” Li-Ting replies.
The kettle whistles and Jane swirls hot water in the bottom of the Brown Betty. She takes a box of assorted teas out of the cupboard, and flips through the box, “I have cinnamon, mint, chamomile, orange spice, and Darjeeling. That sounds kind of Chinese-y, Darjeeling. What would you like?”
Auntie Li-Ting takes one of the flat foil packets from the box and says, “What this?”
“It’s tea. Tea bag tea.”
“You don’t have gun jam or pu-erh neh cha?”
“No, I guess I pitched it,” Jane says, remembering the black broken sticks in the mayonnaise jars Mumma brought down from Edmonton and Jane threw out soon as Mumma went home.
“Tea should be loose, stored in a glass jar.”
“Well, we don’t have a tea ball.”
“A Chinese girl without a tea ball? A Chinese girl without a tea ball? A Chinese girl —” “without a tea ball,” Leo interrupts, “is like a day without sunshine.” He laughs, fist bumps the air, pleased with himself.
Li-Ting puckers her lips to one side. “If I knew, I would have brought some tea for you from Chinatown,” she says quietly, “That’s where you should buy your tea.”
“But Auntie, it’s so far away from here.”
“I know.”
After Li-Ting retires, Leo turns out all the lights in the living room while Jane rinses the dishes. A brackish scum floats on top of the contents of the white teacup. Jane pours out the amber liquid. A thickish green-amber ring remains near the lip of the cup. Turning on the tap, Jane rinses the tea residue out of the bottom of the cup, then pours her watery drink down the drain.
Hours later, there’s a knock on Jane and Leo’s bedroom door.
“Hallo,” with each knock, “Hallo. Hallo.”
Leo wakes up first. “What’s wrong? Hello. Li-Ting, are you all right?”
“Oh. Yes. I need to know where to catch the bus to Chinatown.”
“What? What time is it?”
“Seven oh clock. How long it will take me to get there?”
Leo clears his throat. “No. That’s OK. I’ll take you,” he whispers in his morning voice.
Jane keeps her eyes closed, her breath steady.
“No, no. I don’t want to be any trouble. Is Jane up?”
“No, she isn’t.”
“Wake her up. She knows what bus to take.”
Jane rolls on to her back. “Auntie, we’ll take you. It’s no trouble.”
“Oh. You are up, Janie. I don’t want to be any trouble.”
“Just give us a while to get ready. Where? Why do? Auntie, are you worried about your apartment?”
“I have seniors tai chi classes in the church basement this morning. I don’t want to be late.”
“Oh. OK. We’ll be ready in a bit.”
“My classes start at nine-thirty.”
“OK. We’ll get you there in time. We’ll be ready in a bit.” Jane listens to the dragons dance away from the door.
“I don’t get it,” Leo whispers, “If she’s up this early, she would have beat the fumigators off the mark.”
Jane puts her pillow over her face.
“But I guess she needed to get settled here, with her stuff,” Leo continues. “You think she might have said something last night.”
Jane pulls the covers over the pillow.
When they descend the stairs, half an hour later, Leo and Jane find Li-Ting standing in the front hall, hat on, purse looped over her forearm. She fans one side of her ski jacket open and shut.
“Li-Ting, it’s Saturday morning, it’ll only take twenty minutes to get to Chinatown.”
“I don’t want to be late,” she says.
“Auntie Li-Ting, did you have any breakfast?”
“No. I don’t want to be any trouble. I don’t think I should eat your food.”
“Auntie, please. Take off your coat. We’ll have some breakfast, and then we’ll go. I promise you won’t be late.”
Li-Ting smiles, “Well, you are up now. You can come to class with me.”
“Why don’t you just tell them you don’t understand Chinese?” Leo says without taking his eyes off the row of diminutive elderly Chinese women in front of them. They take turns talking to Jane in Chinese, smiling, asking her questions and waiting for a reply. Auntie Li-Ting ditched Leo and Jane as soon as they arrived. She talks to another group of men and women in the kitchen of the church basement, chatting excitedly, and pointing in their direction and laughing.
Because I don’t know what else to do other than stand here, and pay attention politely, until Mumma bails me out, Jane thinks. That’s what I’ve done my whole life. At least I’m too tall for cheek pinching now. She doesn’t answer his question, but smiles and politely turns for a moment to acknowledge Leo as if she doesn’t understand him either.
There are about thirty older men and women, but it sounds like sixty. She looks at a white-bearded man with a Detroit Tigers baseball cap, studies the waffle weave triangle of long underwear peeking out from his shirt collar. Two women stand with their hands behind their backs, jade and gold earrings pull long holes in their thin earlobes. Jane surveys the room of old Chinese people, wonders what personality and life wrote on the pages of each of their lives leading up to this day, silently criticizes herself for being so ignorant of her own cultural history. She exhales, feels she comes up short, a runt dividend, a disappointing return in this room of investors in the Sacrifice for Future Generations fund, all the hard work and selfless reinvestment sunk into hope for a Big Payoff.
Auntie Li-Ting joins them, and holding on to Jane’s arm, pats it as she speaks Chinese. Whatever she says satisfies the group, which disperses, some laughing behind the bony hands they hold over their mouths.
“You see that man there?” Li-Ting asks in a loud whisper.
“Don’t point, Auntie,” Jane whispers.
“His daughter-in-law ran off with a man. Left three children with his son. Ran off with a lo-fahn,” she says at Leo.
“Shhh. Auntie.”
“It’s OK,” Li-Ting says, pointing at the man with her thumb, “he knows.”
An old man in an argyle cardigan mounts the Sunday school stage, and the seniors move to form horizontal rows on the basement gym floor in front of him. Li-Ting takes Leo and Jane, one on each arm, up to the front row.
“I don’t like looking through everyone’s behind,” she tells them.
Years of ballet and jazz dance classes make it easy for Jane to follow the slow, fluid motions of the instructor. A set form of movements, silently executed, without pauses or strain of any kind. Jane feels her body relax, as the class turns away from the stage. She matches her curving motions to the people around her. Leo looms head and shoulders above the group. What he lacks in flowing execution, he more than makes up in enthusiasm, his broad grin contagious in the semi-circle around him. Leo shrugs and turns 180 degrees when he realizes he is the only one in the room facing east.
In the coatroom at the end of the session, Jane sits beside Auntie Li-Ting, refreshed by the tai chi class and the budding hopeful insight that anticipation can be worse than outcome — so far, so, not so bad. Leo joins them with some papers in his hands.
“Hey, that was great,” he says, “You know, Jane, they have classes on weekdays at five. I thought we should check into them.”
“Now?”
“We don’t have to right now,” he says, “but let’s grab a bite to eat while we’re down here.”
“Sure,” Jane says slowly, “a restaurant in Chinatown. OK. Good.”
“And afterward,” Li-Ting suggests, “we walk around Chinatown. Do some shopping. Buy a few grocery.”
“No,” Jane says, loud and fast, “I mean. Uh-oh. No, I think I left the iron plugged in. We should go home and check.”
“I’ll go home and meet you later,” Leo offers.
“No,” Jane responds quickly, “No, I, uh, we all should go. And I told Sandi I’d call
her around lunchtime.” Looking at Auntie Li-Ting, she confides, “My friend, she’s got too many good-looking admirers and big business deals on every single burner, and sometimes she just needs someone to help her back up from the stove and take a longer view.”
“Less go, then,” Auntie Li-Ting says, standing up and rubbing her palms on her pant legs.
“Wait,” Leo says, “No use in all of us going home. Li-Ting, would you like to have lunch and shop with me this afternoon?”
“I don’t want to be any trouble.”
“I’ve never been shopping in Chinatown,” Leo says, “You can show me the Sights.” [Note: This is true, Leo’s never been shopping in Chinatown. Jane and Leo have attended exactly one local Chinatown festival, with a market and lion dances, martial arts demonstrations and men offering to translate people’s English names and write them in Chinese calligraphy. They didn’t shop, but Leo happily carried his long strip of paper around all afternoon, and when he walked by a poster on a travel agency’s window that had the word, Barclay, in English, the Chinese calligraphy for Barclay on the poster looked nothing like any characters on his name tag. “What do you think this says?” Leo asked Jane. She replied, “Stay away from our women.”]
“But Leo.”
“No buts, Jane,” Leo says firmly. “Take the car and go home. Talk to Sandi. And check the iron,” he says, “Li-Ting and I will have a great old time, I’m sure.”
About “the great old time,” Auntie Li-Ting looks less than fifty percent convinced, but from the “we’ll see” jut of her lower lip, Jane knows she will go home alone.
“Fine,” she says, “I’ll come and pick you up. When and where?”
“No, that will cramp our style,” Leo says, taking Li-Ting’s coat off the brass hook and holding it for her. “We’ll grab a taxi.” Li-Ting smiles as she clamps her cloche down over her forehead.
Well what’s the worst thing that could happen to them, Jane thinks, Leo signs us up for tai chi after work? She perches on her kitchen nook bar stool, flips through the pages of Bon Appétit. Jane subscribes to a number of glossy food magazines, more of a reader of cookbooks than a cook who enjoys reading. Leo will keep Auntie in check. She flips the pages faster, closes the back cover and throws the magazine on the kitchen counter. Jane pulls from the stack of new magazines in front of her and wills away the images of Leo bringing home a Trojan horse box of dried Chinese mushrooms, legions of Asian brown bugs overtaking their cozy home; of Leo mesmerized by barbeque ducks lacquered by smoke and heat to a deep mahogany colour, Leo glued to a spot in front of the heated glass display case where the ducks hang by butcher string, while Auntie Li-Ting and all the other shoppers in the big queue at the Chinese BBQ House wish the big tall lo-fahn would just get out of the way; of Leo and Auntie Li-Ting enthusiastically rummaging through a plastic bin of bloody contraband turtle fins, then two policemen loading the greengrocer, Auntie Li-Ting, and Leo, all handcuffed with white plastic zip ties, hands (still turtle bloody) wrapped in plastic evidence bags, into the cage at the back of the police van, the TV camera footage also showing the other evidence bags held up by the nitrile-gloved policeman, to contain a handful of White Rabbit candies and a small roll of plastic produce bags.
Zingg-bang. The screen door hits the doorframe, followed by wiry vibrations. Jane inhales deeply, breath escapes through the O of her mouth.
“Hi! Boy did we have a good time,” Leo calls from the front hall. “We saw. Everything.” Two red-cheeked smiles enter the kitchen. Leo and Auntie Li-Ting wear the same thick white tube socks. They each carry several plastic bags, some pink and some white, all bulging and exaggerating the red Chinese calligraphy printed on their sides.
“Jane,” Leo continues, “there were these dried fish that looked like they’d been cranked through an old-fashioned wringer washer. Must have been smoked or cured, because they were just lying there, no wrappings, in open cardboard boxes, big flat things, flat, flat, flat. But the best, and I mean the best thing had to be these boxes filled with dried plants. And the lids were all plastic so you could see inside. And on top, God, I still can’t believe this, a little shrivelled up dried lizard. A real honest to God dried lizard in every box.”
Something the cereal companies should think about test marketing, Jane muses. She shakes her head. Leo, my love, you can be such a turd — big hairy deal, dried up lizards. Leo, she says to him in her head, You should know that in the wonders of Chinatown context, dried lizards are chicken pickin’s. You should be there when they’re shaving dead pigs for roasting, she thinks, real honest to God dead pig shaving.
“Really?” she says, “Did you buy one?”
“No. They cost twelve bucks. And Auntie Li-Ting says it’s the wrong season. No good,” he mimics, moving his head as if he is being rotated from the nose in half-turns.
Auntie Li-Ting smiles. “Your Leo. Good shopper. Knows his price. Asks good question. Not bad for lo-fahn.”
“Auntie —”
“No. No insult. I go wash my hands.”
“Jane, come look,” Leo whispers. He lifts a large package wrapped in brown paper out of a bag and places it on the kitchen counter. He’s got Christmas morning eyes.
“Oh, geez. Leo. Gross.” Jane feels the skin on her arms bump up coldly. Without feathers, it looks especially grotesque, from its brilliant red comb to its claw-tipped feet, the legs covered in peeling patches of yellow bumpy skin.
“Isn’t it great? And it’s not even eviscerated. So we’ll do that.”
Jane skims her mental dictionary, eviscerated. . .viscerated. . . viscera! “Euwww,” she recoils. “No, no. Thank you. No. You are on your own. Cheque please, I am outta here.”
“But Li-Ting says there might even be eggs inside,” he whines.
“Look. It’s not that I haven’t seen dead chickens before. I’ve been to the farmer’s market, went every Saturday when I was little. And Chinatown. It’s just Mumma never brought them home. I mean, look at it. It looks like a, well, like a dead animal.”
“This is a compromise. Li-Ting wanted to bring home a live chicken. Can’t you see me, bundling a live chicken into a cab? I mean the comic possibilities, fantastic, but no, I knew that was going too far. See, you can trust me. But she really wanted one. She says they don’t let her have them in her apartment. She even said I could hold its feet while she sli —”
“Stop! Stop. I get the picture. Thank You for not bringing home a live chicken, I guess. But I don’t wanna touch this thing.” Jane makes chopping motions with her hands, “And will you cut off, you know, the top and bottoms, so it doesn’t look so —”
“Much like a dead bird.”
“Yeah.”
With Leo’s prodding, the bluish membrane covering the eye peels open, revealing a wet shiny marble of an eye. As he pokes around more, the red comb wiggles.
“Sorry. No can do. Li-Ting says she cooks it whole just like this. Well, without the guts. She wants to make a feast for us. C’mon, get into it.” Leo gingerly grasps the bird’s beak with his two hands and manipulates the beak open and shut. In a squeaky pitched voice, he says, “See Jane, we don’t have lips.”
“Knock it off.” Jane reaches into the utility drawer and places the stainless meat cleaver on the counter. She takes a plastic cutting board out. Pinching a corner of the chicken’s brown paper blanket, she pulls carefully until the chicken slides on top of the board.
“When I come back,” she says, “I want this thing looking like something I bought at the Co-op.”
“But your aunt wants to cook it for us tomorrow. Whole. Geez, I don’t know why you’re being so sensitive. Can’t you be a good hostess, or niece?”
“Don’t tell me how to behave. I’m not eating this chicken with its head on. That’s gross. And probably unsanitary.”
“Well, talk to your aunt. And what about that song and dance about leaving the stupid iron on.”
“ ”
“Don’t you think she knew?”
�
�Just chop that stuff off.”
“You don’t like it. You chop it off.”
Yeah. I’ll chop it off, Jane thinks, Chop you off. Calm down, she says to herself. Calm down. “I-asked-you-to-chop-it-off,” she repeats.
Neither of them hear the red satin dragons slide across the kitchen floor. By the time they smell the bandages, Thwok. Thwok.
Leo and Jane start at the sound of the metal cleaver chopping through bone, vibrating against the plastic board. The chicken lies in three separated sections on the brown paper, feet, body, head, like a drawing where the connections between sections are illustrated by parallel dotted lines. Auntie Li-Ting turns on the tap, and running the cleaver back and forth under the stream of water, says, “It makes no difference. No more head. No feet. I don’t want to be any trouble.”
“I’m sorry, Auntie Li-Ting. It’s just. Well, I am kind of squeamish, you know, sensitive, about some things.”
“Many things, Janie. You always been,” Li-Ting says. She vigorously wipes the counter.
“So Li-Ting, do we unpack the groceries, or do the chicken first?” Leo asks, rubbing his palms together.
“Chicken first.”
Jane fills the bathroom sink with hot water and plunges her hands in, trying to take the edge off the goose bumps. In the mirror, puffiness around her eyes. Puffiness that makes my eyes look like narrow slivers, she thinks, almond slivers, makes me look mean. Jane adds more hot water.
Returning to the kitchen, Jane finds everything gone. The chicken. The bags of groceries. The shoppers.
“Leo? Auntie?”
“Your aunt’s getting ready to go out,” Leo calls from the living room. “She came out to the front hall and turned on the outside lights.” Jane joins him on the sofa.
“What?” she asks, “What’s happening?”
“She plays mah jong every Saturday night with three of her neighbours. They’re all going to Mrs. Something’s son’s house for dinner and M.J., as she calls it. He’s going to come and pick her up.”
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