The Wondrous Woo Page 13

  In the next week, I gathered furniture from the local Salvation Army and got creative with milk crates that I pilfered from the corner store, assembling and reassembling the boxes into various pieces of furniture: a coffee table, a bookshelf, a stool, a headboard and frame for my futon. An old floor lamp fringed in long cracked glass beads that someone had discarded on the sidewalk cast a warm tangerine glow at night. In the giant discount store Honest Ed’s, I picked up a pot, some utensils, and a wok. Every time I went in or out, the old lady watched me from her chair in the hallway. I always shouted a cheery, “Hello.” She ignored me the entire first week, and then, she started to nod in acknowledgement. One day, she started to wave back.

  In the mornings, I developed a routine: I would walk to the corner store and a fat ginger cat would greet me with a drawn-out meow. I would reach down and pet her as she languidly brushed against my leg. I would buy a newspaper then walk to Kim Moon Bakery and select a dan tat, a pastry and egg custard still warm from the oven. Back at my apartment, I would sit in my kitchen and nibble the egg tart while flipping through the classified ads. I still had a wad of cash rolled up under my futon mattress, but I knew that would not last forever. I needed to find work because I was determined not to phone the lawyer and redirect my monthly allowance from Ba’s estate and Sophia and Darwin’s earnings to another bank account. There were cashier positions in donut shops and data entry clerks in office buildings. I sent out my meagre résumé to all of them. The rest of the day, I watched my kung fu films and soap operas while I waited for the phone to ring. It never did. All I had to claim was a high-school education and one not too illustrious year of university. Besides my short stint at the Counselling Centre as receptionist, I had no work experience. Nada. Zilch. Nothing.

  Finally, as spring approached, I got a call back. It was for a job as receptionist at a community centre in Toronto’s east end. I went to the Salvation Army and bought a black blazer and skirt for the interview. The blazer had a hint of shoulder pad, and it actually looked nice on me. I pulled my wayward hair into a tight ponytail off my face and stuck my legs into a pair of black pantyhose. My weight had been on a rollercoaster in the last couple of years, but now, it was just between my “rocky road ice cream” phase and my “Jerry-obsessed skinny era.”

  When I got to the community centre, I got nervous. As soon as I walked in, I was met with a sour smell. In the lounge area, a cluster of what appeared to be homeless people sat around a TV. Smoke rose from a giant ashtray in the middle of the table.

  At last, I was called into the interview and sat across from a panel of judges, or should I say, my possible employers. There were three of them. My near hermit-like existence did not prepare me for the questions that came like quick-fire from these strangers. I stuttered. I made incomplete sentences. I uttered too many “uhhhs” and “ummms.” My vision was beginning to blur from the effort of speaking.

  “What would you do if someone came to the centre who was intoxicated and disruptive?” the woman in gold-rimmed glasses asked.

  “Um,” I began, trying to think quickly, “I would ask the person politely to leave. Then, maybe I should call the police?”

  “Well, we do have crisis counsellors on staff,” a man in a sports shirt replied. He seemed to be the most laid-back of the group. He had a ponytail and smiled a lot.

  “Oh, okay. In that case, I would call the crisis counsellor to deal with the situation,” I answered. Was this a trick question? They all nodded at me, writing in their notepads.

  “Miramar, do you speak Cantonese?” the woman in the pink sweater asked as if it had just occurred to her that this was important information.

  “Yeeees,” I answered tentatively. In truth, I spoke Cantonese like a child, my tongue frozen upon immigration.

  “Oh!” Everyone’s demeanour suddenly became warm. Gold-Rimmed Woman looked at Man In Sports Shirt who looked over at Woman In Pink. There were more nods and smiles. Then, “We know you didn’t apply for this position, but would you be interested in being a settlement counsellor?”

  I had no idea what a “settlement counsellor “was, but it sounded like it paid more than a receptionist so I nodded. This seemed to make them happy.

  My job was to do intake. I interviewed the new immigrants when they filed in about their needs and then found the right service to send them to. The interview was standard. I was given a sheet with questions to ask, information to take down, and a progress report to follow up on in six months. All this data was then filed with the federal government so they had a record that newcomers were being fully “integrated” into their new circumstances. Since a large number of them were Chinese, the centre needed someone who could translate this information into the prescribed boxes on the government forms.

  William was right; the Chinese from Hong Kong were streaming into Canada, fearful of what the 1997 change of sovereignty to China would bring. Once upon a time, our family had to go to Chinatown to see groups of Chinese people, and now they (or we) seemed to be everywhere.

  They needed assistance with housing (how did you find an affordable place to settle three generations of a family?); finances (what were you to do when you discovered that despite being a professional, you could not get a job because your qualifications did not actually count for squat in Canada?); domestic violence (where were you to go to be safe when your husband was beating the crap out of you and you spoke no English?); schooling (what were you to do when your kid is being called a “chink” every single day at school and the administration refused to do anything?), and on and on. It was exhausting and exhilarating at the same time. My job was to move these people and their complaints forward. Each problem to its proper channel. After only a month, I knew many of these channels led to dead ends or to an endless loop of more bureaucratic channels.

  My clients looked at me with desperate faces as if I held the map to this strange, new place. Sometimes, I did. Sometimes, the sun and stars aligned and shined on the path to the solution. People got housed, employed, and enrolled in English classes. These moments made me feel useful, like my life had purpose. Other times, the futility of the job made my blood boil. Innocent people were being taken advantage of, were paid below minimum wage, were fired and rehired at the whim of factory owners, and were charged ridiculous rent to live in slums. Then I felt impotent and could only vent my frustrations through kung fu fantasies at home.

  I was continually grateful I had had the prescience to take an apartment with such an enormous living room. At night, after I got home and changed into my sweats, I fought imagined government officials who denied people their rights. A whole village of immigrants was relying on me to topple the government and free them from their troubles. I stormed into the Parliament Buildings, threw open the doors of the House of Commons, and unleashed my furious fists at the MPs. The people (a generic people at this point made up of all colours, ages, and sizes) followed me in, and reclaimed the country as their own. If the old woman downstairs ever wondered what the commotion was overhead, she never let on.

  The trouble with living alone, I began to notice, was that there was no one to temper me, to help me keep my fantasy life and real life distinct. I grew bolder at work, pushing people to answer my questions while my clients sat across from me, fatigue lining their faces. One couple had gotten their heat turned off in their apartment because, according to the calendar, it was spring. Yet the weather couldn’t read that even in April it was still cold and that, sometimes, there were still sudden snow flurries. The couple (he was a sheet worker and she was pregnant), were terrified of being kicked out of their apartment if they complained.

  “I don’t mind for myself. But my wife. She’s pregnant. She’s not used to the cold,” he told me in his rapid Cantonese.

  I called the legal clinic down the street. They told me that the couple had to first come in and qualify for legal aid and then make a complaint with the Landlord and Tenant B
oard, and on and on and on it went. It would be July by the time anything happened.

  “What’s your landlord’s number?” I asked him in my halting Cantonese. He handed me a worn piece of paper. The landlord’s name was also Chinese. This made me furious. Why would he do that to his own people? I dialled the number.

  “Wai? Wai?” a man answered in Cantonese.

  “Hello, may I speak to Mr. Chow?” I asked in a clipped, professional voice. I decided to talk in English. My home advantage.

  “Ah, yes, that’s me,” he answered, his voice heavily accented.

  “I am calling from the city. I have been notified that you do not have heat on in the building at 456 Huron Street. This is your property, is it not?”

  “Yes, yes!”

  “We have become aware that you have shut off heat to that building, violating Toronto Municipal Code Article 497.2. Are you aware of this, Mr. Chow?”

  “No, no violations. No!” he stammered.

  “I understand that you would not want to be fined for this. Since this is your first violation, I won’t penalize you. But you must turn on the heat until the temperature outside reaches eighteen degrees Celsius. Am I clear?”

  “Yes, yes, sorry. Sorry, madam.” I could practically hear him sweating.

  “Good, Mr. Chow. My agents will be coming by to check on the property from time to time to make sure you are operating under the legal terms. Have a good day,” I said and hung up.

  The couple looked at me, their faces crinkled up with questions.

  “It’s okay now. You’ll have heat,” I told them in Cantonese. Relief swept through their faces. They stood up and both of them clasped my hands. “Thank you, thank you,” they said, bowing. The young woman reached into her large handbag and pressed a large cold globe into my hand. I looked down; it was an orange, almost neon in colour with a large navel at its tip. I was touched. It was as if she had given me a pound of gold.

  I could not believe what I’d done. It was my first taste of victory in my life. I could not wait to do it again.

  Chapter 23 ~

  The Monkey King can be charming. But he has no loyalties to anyone but himself. Take care. He is capable of wreaking havoc in both heaven and earth. Or, at the very least, he could just be a player.

  ONE NIGHT IN JUNE, I was on my way home from work on the streetcar, my stomach growling loudly. I bent this way and that in my seat, hoping to suffocate the sounds with the rolls of fat around my waist. I thought about the packet of instant ramen on my kitchen shelf that I would make as soon as I got home.

  Ramen was as basic as it came, so I let my imagination adorn it with slivers of green onion, balls of fried tofu, and baby bok choy, until I was jostled out of my noodle daydream by the boom of a baritone voice, “Hallo, hallo! We’come, we’come.” I craned my neck between the people to see who was speaking, and recognized him right away. It was the guy who had given me a cigarette the night Ma was hospitalized. He had hopped onto the car and was personally escorting passengers off. It would have been hilarious and cute and completely ridiculous if it had been anyone else, but I did not want to see him or him to see me. He jumped onto the pavement, swivelled around on one foot, and turned to the westbound traffic with sweeping arms as if he were conducting a grand orchestra and the cars were his musicians. Around his arms, dozens of bright strips of fabric flew in all directions, giving him the mesmerizing effect of a maypole.

  The streetcar pulled away, and I stayed on. The scene had rattled something in me, and it was worth the extra walk. A murmur ran through the car afterward; some of the passengers were puzzled, some were alarmed, some laughed, and others pretended not to notice. I wondered how many of them tagged him as “a crazy Chinaman.”

  Shortly after that, I saw Mouse again, this time at the laundromat near my apartment. He was leaning against the wall, humming along to something on his Walkman when I approached with my wicker basket full of dirty clothes. His hair was different —the sides closely shaved with long strands in the middle falling to the left and right like a fake mohawk. His face was unlined, his skin smooth and tanned. He could have been anywhere from sixteen to twenty-five.

  He nodded in time and finished his cigarette with a long drag before flicking it onto the road. He turned around and looked straight at me. I quickened my steps into the laundromat. He followed me in and yelled, “Hello,” as if we were long-lost friends.

  “Lang lui, how are you?”

  I turned to face him, my basket in front of my chest. He laughed at me. “Remember? I gave you a cigarette once.” He smiled at me. He didn’t look deranged. The light was streaming through the windows, and I got a good look at his face. He was cute. Maybe he was crazy, but he was definitely cute. His eyes were kind; the colour of milk chocolate. And there was that shapely mouth again, the middle of the top lip forming a perfect heart. He was wearing a Malcolm X T-shirt and jeans and was about half a foot taller than me. Thankfully, his ribbons were nowhere to be seen.

  “Oh, yeah. I remember.” I felt bad for pretending to forget. I put my basket on a machine and started to load.

  “So, how are you, lang lui?” He leaned against the next machine. I had nowhere to escape to.

  “I’m okay. You?” I fumbled in my pockets for quarters.

  “Here, let me.” He inserted two quarters into the slots.

  “Oh, you don’t have to do that,” I protested.

  “Done.” He pushed the slot back and the quarters disappeared.

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “Lang lui, you wanna smoke?”

  “No, thanks. I don’t really smoke,” I said.

  “Want a coffee?” he offered.

  “Do you have laundry here? Or are you just hanging out?” Maybe I was being impolite, but the memory of him at the intersection made me nervous to be so close to him.

  “I’m just waiting around for a lang lui to come along so I can eat her for lunch,” he replied with a straight face.

  I looked at him wide-eyed.

  Then he laughed, a full belly wallop of a laugh and slapped the top of a machine. “I’m doing my laundry, kid. What do you think?”

  “Oh.” I lifted the book I had found at a second-hand bookstore, 100 Women of Ancient China, out of my basket. It was filled with illustrations and descriptions of goddesses and influential women in Chinese history. I was searching for new heroines. The quiet mousy girls waiting in the wings were beginning to bore me.

  “What’s that?” Mouse reached for the book. I tried to pull the book away but was not fast enough. He might have been nuts, but I still didn’t want him to think I was a baby for reading picture books. He flipped through the pages.

  “Wow. This is cool,” he said. He fell into one of the lawn chairs in front of the washers and stared intently into the book. He seemed sincere, and genuinely interested, so while our laundry tumbled around and around in the machines, I showed him my favourite characters.

  There was Hua Mulan, the famous woman warrior who disguised herself as a man to take her father’s place in the army. She was revered for her fighting talents in many bloody battles in the field. Nie Yin Niang was just a young girl when a nun took her away and trained her in sword play in a cave for ten years. Upon her homecoming, many corrupt officials mysteriously died. Liang Hongyu led her army into battle, playing a giant war drum to stir their fighting spirit. There were others too, concubines, poets, and empresses, but, naturally, the kung fu masters were the most exciting.

  We lingered on the drawings of the women. They were only black ink sketches, but they were finely rendered. The artist had painstakingly drawn the women’s hair in detail. The empresses wore elaborate styles, their tresses pinned in layers on top of their heads with ornate combs and jewels. Others, like the dancers, also wore trailing locks that lifted delicately as they spun around. Their robes were inked with peonies, lilies, and poppies
. The warriors’ swords and staffs were embedded with precious gems.

  Page after page, Mouse exclaimed excitedly, “That’s a beaut!” or “Brilliant!” I never imagined anyone else would think this was as special as I did. When we moved our clothes to the dryers, Mouse launched into a lecture on the Shaolin Monastery and the Buddhist monks.

  “Lang lui, haven’t you ever seen The Shaolin Temple with Jet Li?” he asked. When I shook my head, his face widened in surprise

  “Girl, you haven’t lived,” he said and slapped his thigh.

  After I folded my clothes and Mouse threw all his things into a yellow garbage bag, I followed him to his place. He lived in one of the other dilapidated old houses in Kensington Market, about three minutes from where I lived. When he pushed the door open, we were greeted by the scent of dirty socks. Pizza boxes were strewn throughout the long hallway. “Watch your step, lang lui,” Mouse instructed, kicking debris away to clear me a path. “Sorry, my roommates are a bunch of slobs.”

  I followed him up a wooden staircase to the second floor. We creaked our way up, me still holding my laundry basket. Finally, he turned the knob of one of the closed doors and led me inside. In contrast to the mess in the main house, Mouse’s matchbox of a room was immaculate. It was sparsely furnished and had wood crates all lined up against the wall, stacked neatly on top of each other. He used these crates like art frames, organized to hold similar objects.