by Zoë S. Roy
Huidi then made her way to her own bedroom to unpack her things and prepare her bed. She had mixed feelings about moving out of the transition house where they had lived for almost a year. She felt sad about leaving a place that had become “home,” yet she was happy for her newly found independence. Too, she feared being out on her own. She wanted to make a good life for her son and decided to call her new home “independence.” The full-time job she found in a cafeteria at the nearby university campus would make it possible for her to keep up with the rent.
When Huidi and her son sat at the kitchen table for supper later that evening, the room suddenly seemed empty and she found herself thinking about her first day at the transition house sponsored by the Advisory Council on the Status of Women in Sackville, New Brunswick.
***
The kitchen was large and could easily seat ten people. The sunlight passed through its two windows, between which a huge table stood with a few chairs around it. A tall, blonde woman in her early forties was clearing the table. Huidi had met her earlier. The woman’s name was on the tip of her tongue. Then she remembered. “Hi! Susan, is – are you busy?” Huidi tried to use the correct verb. She hadn’t been in Canada long and her English was not very good. Until she left her husband, she hadn’t had much occasion to practice.
“Not really. Do you need anything?” Susan raised her eyes, smiling.
“Yeah, something for lunch.”
“You can have tuna sandwiches if you like.” Susan opened the fridge and took out a plate of sandwiches. “I’ve made some for you.”
“Thanks,” said Huidi. “How much I own, no. I owe you?” She motioned to Wade to come and sit at the table beside her.
“We only pay for things here once a month. I’ll let you know at the end of the month,” Susan replied, placing the plate of sandwiches on the table. “Help yourself. Plates and glasses are in the cupboard.” She turned to Huidi’s son and asked, “What’s your name?”
“Wade.” The boy looked at Susan, his eyes wide with curiosity. He had spotted a chest full of children’s toys in the room beside the kitchen.
“Oh, that’s a nice name. Wade, do you want milk or juice?”
“Juice, please.” He was only five, but after two years in Canada, his English was much better than Huidi’s.
Susan poured apple juice into a glass from a pitcher in the refrigerator and passed it to Wade, a wide, encouraging smile on her face. “After lunch, you can go play with the toys in the living room over there. ”
“Thank you,” said Wade very politely as he took the glass from her hand and placed it gingerly on the table in front of him.
“Susan, please what I can help do?” Huidi asked, picking up a sandwich and handing it to her son beside her. “I like help here. ”
“You know there are three mothers in the house including you. We share housekeeping duties. You’ll meet Janice later. She has a boy, just one year old.” Susan sat at the table and drank water from a glass. “Do you work?”
“I used to be kitchen help, but now I only care my son,” said Huidi. “You?”
“A homemaker,” Susan said, adding as an afterthought, “I’m separated.”
“Why?”
“He was having an affair with another woman. I wouldn’t stand for that and wanted a divorce, but he wouldn’t agree,” answered Susan, frowning. “Then he got very mean.”
“I’ve divorced,” Huidi sighed.
“Why?”
“My ex-husband beat Wade, then he beat me if I try to stop him. He not like Canada and he change here.”
“Good for you to have left him,” Susan smiled encouragingly.
“Without help from here, I would not know what do.”
Huidi’s eyes looked perplexed. “My ex would hit Wade because he not want learn Chinese writing.”
“Beating children, and women, is against the law.” Susan raised her eyebrows.
“I thought father try give child lesson, but he beat too much Wade, too much.” Huidi put her arm protectively around her son’s shoulder. Noticing that the boy had eaten up his sandwich, she said, “You okay play now. ”
Susan said, “Wade, you can play with my daughter later too when she comes back from her drawing class.”
“Okay.” Wade smiled, hopping off his chair and heading for the toy chest.
A few days later, it was Huidi’s turn to cook. That Saturday morning she had gone to the supermarket as soon as its doors had opened. Besides fish, meat, eggs, vegetables, and rice, she also picked up ginger, green onions, garlic, and soy sauce.
After she returned with the groceries, she got busy washing vegetables and cutting the fish and meat into bite-size pieces. She wanted to make a good lunch. Altogether, Huidi cooked four dishes: sweet and sour diced chicken with green peppers, salmon in tomato sauce, stir-fried pork with green beans and onions, and a bowl of mung bean sprout soup with shredded egg.
It was a happy lunch and everyone enjoyed the food. There were three mothers in the house and a number of children who played well together. At suppertime, Huidi stir-fried rice with the leftover food from lunch, and made tomato soup. After supper, Susan, in charge of the food budget, said, “Huidi, it’ll cost too much money to keep eating like this.”
“No, no,” said Huidi, taking the receipt from the store out of her purse. “I calculate how much for two supper. Only $28. About $8 for adult and $2 for child.”
“Really?” Susan couldn’t believe it.
“I buy only what on special and cut up for cooking after get rid of unwanted parts.”
“Gotcha!” Susan said. “You’ve got a head for this. ”
“You’re smart,” said Janice, “I bet it would be at least fifteen bucks a person if we ordered these dishes from any restaurant.”
Huidi loved these meals, the camaraderie.
***
“Mom, when are you going to buy a TV set?” Wade’s question brought Huidi back to the present.
“Soon,” she said. “I’ll check some flyers when I go to work on Monday.” She cleared the table. “You should do your homework now.”
Wade was Huidi’s main focus. She hoped her son would go to university to make up for what she had missed. She even paid a tutor to teach Wade French on weekends. There was little for her to do in the small town they were living in, and she hadn’t been able to make any new friends with whom she could share her loneliness, her worries, her dreams. Meeting Chinese people was difficult as there wasn’t even a Chinese grocery store in town. Once she called a Chinese woman she had known before leaving her husband, but the woman never phoned back. Maybe she thought that Huidi was insane for not hiding her family problems and for divorcing her husband. A male co-worker had once asked her out on a date, but she declined. Even though she had been familiar with faces that were different from Chinese faces, she could not yet understand what was behind blue or hazel eyes. She missed Shanghai very much. A few times, she dreamt that she was lost on her favourite bustling street in Shanghai, unable to find her way home and woke up wondering why she was living in a strange country.
Her only contact was Sandy from the Advisory Council that was in charge of the transition house. From Sandy she heard cheerful news about Susan, who had at last divorced her husband and was happily studying in the Social Work programme at Mount Allison University, and Janice, who was in a six-month training programme and planned on starting up day-care services in her home following her graduation. Huidi felt happy for them but sad for herself. When she lived in the transition house, like Susan and Janice, she had participated in some meetings arranged by the Council and learned about how important it was for women to have life skills. She had begun to understand a link between education and economic independence. So Huidi decided to go to university, and registered for a Home Economics course at Mount Allison.
That September, Hui
di and her son left for school in the early morning and returned in the late afternoon. Out of school for sixteen years and with a limited English vocabulary, Huidi found it hard to be a student. The methods of teaching and learning were so different from what she was used to in China. Once, her mind went blank when the students had a group discussion about how consumer choice affected the market. When it was her turn, she couldn’t think of anything to say.
She had encountered some Chinese students on campus, and wondered if they could help her with her English, and her loneliness. But they were busy with their studies and saying “Hi” in passing seemed to be her only connection to them.
After several weeks of struggle, she narrowly passed only one of three quizzes and had to withdraw from the course. Her bubble burst. And she realized that her limited knowledge of the English language was isolating her in more ways than one.
***
One morning, Huidi served breakfast at the cafeteria’s front counter. Her job was to fill the plates with bacon and eggs, or pancakes and sausages, or muffin and fruit, and pass them over the counter.
“Next!” She was passing another filled plate to the next person in line, when she heard a man’s voice call out, “Pancakes and sausages, please!”
She recognized the familiar foreign accent in his English. Raising her eyes, she saw the broad face of a Chinese man who looked to be in his middle forties. His eyes were bloodshot under his glasses.
“Wait a moment,” answered Huidi, striding to the kitchen. In a few moments, she was back with a plate of freshly cooked pancakes. When she passed the plate to the man, she could not help but ask, “You from mainland China?”
“Yes. You, too?” replied the broad-faced man as he took his plate.
“Yes,” she said in Chinese, her eyes flashing. “How about you? What are you doing here?”
“I am doing research.”
“That’s interesting. The milk and sugar for coffee are just over there,” she said, pointing to a stand next to the counter.
“Thanks,” answered the man. He went to the cashier and then found a table to eat his breakfast.
***
A week went by. Friday afternoon came again. There were many bright orange jack-o’-lanterns on display near the front steps of many houses as she made her way home. Numerous ghost masks and skulls covered with black or white veils hung from tree branches. A few dangling porch skeletons, spookily lit up, swayed slightly in the wind.
Ugh, Halloween again, she thought. She did not like this festival. To her, ghost masks and dangling skeletons were ominous signs of death and bad luck.
At supper, Wade could hardly sit still. “Mamma, remember? Tonight I’m going to meet my classmate, Yolande,” his voice filled with excitement. “We’re going for ‘trick or treat.’” Huidi had reluctantly agreed to let Wade take part in this strange festival. She wanted him to fit in, have friends. Wade wolfed through his supper and as soon as Huidi had also finished, he pulled on the bullhead mask she had finally agreed to buy him and dragged his mother out of the apartment building. They walked to the corner to wait for Wade’s friend and watched the clusters of children dressed as witches, monsters, and ghosts clattering down the street. It wasn’t long before they spied a little girl wearing a green dress and a headband with a fringe of sunflower petals, skipping down the street toward them, her mother in tow.
“Yolande!”
“Wade!” The two children cheerfully joined hands and bounced down the street together, leaving the two mothers behind.
The children knocked on the doors of every house on one side of the street. They were thrilled with each offering of treats. When their bags were almost full, Wade and Yolande plunked down on the sidewalk and counted their candy and apples: “Two! Four! Six…” they shouted gleefully in unison.
Yolande looked up and saw her mother coming toward her. “Leave me alone, Mommy!” She stamped her feet. “Don’t come here!”
“Help me with my bag, Mamma!” Wade asked his mother. Suddenly he realized he was not supposed to let his mother take him home, so he waved his hand. “Mamma, don’t come.”
The two children happily resumed trick-or-treating on the other side of the street, and their mothers continued to follow them. Although Huidi found it difficult at first to talk to Yolande’s mother, gradually the two women turned from strangers into walking partners, sharing small pieces of their lives. When it got late, the children dragged their feet. Waving goodbye to each other, the women hurriedly took their children back home, one hand holding the child’s hand, the other a sack of candy.
Wade pulled away from Huidi to run joyfully ahead of her. Suddenly, he tripped, landing face-first on the sidewalk. He burst into tears, “Mamma, Mamma!” Huidi bent over him and immediately saw a big gash on his forehead. It was bleeding profusely. “Hold on, Wade. I think we need to go to the hospital.” She carefully pulled her son onto her back and shakily stood up under the streetlight.
“Do you need help?” A Chinese voice with a Suzhou accent came from a figure in front of her.
Huidi saw the broad-faced man that she had met when serving breakfast earlier that week. Glad and surprised, she answered, “Yes, please. We must go to the emergency room.” It was a relief to be able to speak Chinese.
The man easily shifted Wade from her back to his. “Where is the hospital?”
“Not far from here.” Huidi hurried with the candy sack, leading the way toward the hospital that thankfully was nearby.
“Do you enjoy Halloween?” asked the man.
“Not at all. I should have known I would have bad luck.” Huidi sighed.
“What bad luck?” asked the man.
“You can see for yourself. My son hurt himself.”
“I know you’re probably uncomfortable with these strange decorations. I was too. It is indeed an odd custom.”
Huidi felt as though he had looked right through her. She wondered if he had also taken a youngster out that night.
The man seemed to be able to read her mind. “I was on my way home from the library.”
Wade sat glumly on the examination table, his eyes wincing as the doctor closed the gash on his forehead with three stitches and then bandaged the wound. “I wanna go home, Mamma.”
The man had stayed with them throughout the procedure. His name was Peng. While they were waiting to be seen, he told Huidi he was a lecturer at a university in Beijing and had come to Canada to do research on the administration of Canadian universities. He had come to New Brunswick after half a year in Toronto with two other Chinese researchers who were doing similar work. Huidi wondered why he would choose to come to a place like Sackville. “I selected Mount Allison University for my case study because of its long history. It has a reputation for opening the first girls’ college and recruiting the first few female students in a university degree programme in Canada,” he said, as they waited for the doctor to finish.
“I’ll take you home now,” Peng said as he carried the boy out of the hospital. A smile on Huidi’s face showed her appreciation. By the time they reached Huidi’s apartment it was almost 11 p.m. Exhausted, Wade fell asleep as soon as Huidi put him to bed.
“Please stay for some tea,” Huidi said. She filled a plate with cookies and put a kettle of water on the stove. She wanted to know more about him.
“Did you know that in 1875, Grace Annie Lockhart graduated from Mount Allison and became the first woman to receive a bachelor’s degree in the British Empire?” Peng said, accepting the cup of tea Huidi placed in front of him at the kitchen table.
She was not interested in his topic. History had nothing to do with her. What she faced was an uncertain future. “How long will you stay here?”
“If I can get an additional grant, I’d stay for another half a year.”
“I miss Shanghai a lot.” It was not often Huidi had a chance to
speak Chinese, so she was eager to talk about her life.
“If it’s too difficult for you here, you could go back.”
“When I think about my son’s future I know I have to stay.” As she said this, Huidi felt tears well up in her eyes. Huidi told him how hard it had been after leaving her abusive husband to start a new life, how lonely she was in Sackville, and how hard she was finding it to make friends.
The tea finished, and the cookies eaten, it was time for Peng to leave. Huidi saw him to the door. Turning his head, Peng was touched by the sad and lonely expression on her face. Suddenly, passionately, he pulled her into his arms. I don’t need to sleep in an empty bed tonight, he thought. To his surprise, Huidi did not resist, but leaned her head on his chest.
That night, he lost sight of his wife, and she forgot her days without a man.
The next morning, she got up early as usual. She helped Wade dress and served him his breakfast. Wade found Peng in his mother’s bedroom and clapped his hands. “Mamma’s boyfriend is a lazy-bones!”
When Peng woke up, Wade was playing outside. He felt at home. He enjoyed the breakfast that Huidi had prepared for him and she felt happy watching him eat. She was only mildly disappointed when he told her he had a wife and a child in China.
A few days later, he moved in and told Huidi he would pay her $300 for a month’s rent plus breakfast and supper. Considering he might be short of money, she only accepted $250.
Peng had a travel bag that looked suspiciously large. Inside were piles of made-in-China instant noodle packages. With her help, he put away his food supply.
“I’ve been eating bags of noodles like this to save money. It’s made me lose my appetite,” he chuckled.
“From now on, you don’t need to eat these noodles. You can eat my food.” She smiled at him.
“I’m looking forward to that,” he said. “I’ll take what’s left of these to the university for lunch. ”