Paper Teeth

by Lauralyn Chow

  “Because we don’t speak Chinese, or sing Chinese. And, no one in the choir sings English.” Lizzie’s whispered words come out faster and faster.

  “You could go to Chinese school, like I did. You could go to school for three hours a day, after regular school, just like I did.”

  “Where?”

  “I could find a school. You should sing in the choir, you have a lovely voice.”

  Mumma takes one of the Chinese Bibles from the stand attached to the back of the pew facing her, opens it, and pretends to follow the scripture reading. With all her Chinese schooling, the kids know Mumma still doesn’t read Chinese. Lizzie’s eyes roll clockwise, her mouth curls downward at one corner, a rhetorical question mark lying on its side. She’s not shy, but she doesn’t know what to say. Both Mumma and Dad’s eyebrows tell her she better not say, I don’t speak Chinese, or read it, or understand it. She shakes her head, opens the Bible she brings from home to where the Miss Chatelaine article on “Healthy, Glowing Skin and How to Get It” lies, each page carefully cut in quarters to fit the pages. Lizzie used to look up at the Minister, Reverend Fahn See (to the English-speaking world, “Jerry”) Muon, once in a while, pretended to comprehend, to follow along in her Bible, but the minister lobbed ball after ball to absolutely everyone else he faced and not her, so Lizzie, an avid tennis player, felt her gesture an unnecessary net ball interfering with a game in progress.

  Tom rubs his red cheeks with both hands, his feet swing back and forth. He already has folded one Order of Service paper airplane, and if he hadn’t kicked Jane and got the pencil taken away, they could have played Hangman, even though he’s a terrible speller and she can’t read.

  The game started out all right, “You wanna play Hangman, Jane?”

  “No.”

  “Yeah. Let’s play Hangman.”

  “No. I don’t want to.”

  “OK, I’ll go first. Here,” he said, handing her his Order of Service, with seven pencilled dashes at the empty space near the bottom, and a line drawing of a gallows.

  “I’m not plaaaying,” Jane pushed the Order of Service back into Tom’s hand.

  “Oh, so you guess, ‘A’. Nope, no ‘A’. That’s your head.” He drew a round circle under the gallows with a short pencil wedged into the wooden holder for offering envelopes.

  “Stop it. I’m not playing.”

  “Right, now you’re guessing, ‘P’. Yeah, there’s one ‘P’.”

  “I said I’m not playing. Stop, Tom.”

  “Make me.”

  “I haven’t got the recipe — Mumma!”

  Now Jane’s sitting beside Lizzie, and Pen will give his arm rope burn if he bugs her, so no Hangman today. Too bad. Tom pokes Dad’s arm and opens the front of his little black blazer, pointing to the inside towards his heart. Dad reaches into his suit jacket and, clicking it down, passes Tom a black ballpoint pen. Tom draws a stick figure hanging from a noose with almond-shaped eyes, and little braids, just like Jane’s. He shows Jane the picture, then pantomimes her demise, his hands around his neck, choke choke choke, eyes rolled back, tongue out, head bobbing. Dad slides the pen out of Tom’s hand, clicks it shut and pockets the pen. He takes the airplane with the Chinese girl effigy out of the Bible rack, where Tom has stuffed it, and puts it in Tom’s hand. Tom thinks, dim sum after church. Yum. At least there’s dim sum after a whole hour of this. Char siu bao, har gow, siu mai, pai gwut. Didn’t get him very far in Sunday School the last time he went, but it’s the only Chinese he knows. Tom bends forward from the waist and considers his dad’s profile, Dad who can read, write and talk Chinese. Dad’s good at fake paying attention, Tom thinks. Just a sec now, looks like Dad’s actually paying attention. Holy cow and a calf. Tom shakes his head, whatever bangs your bongos, as Pen would say. Barbeque pork buns, maids’ caps, shrimp balls, black bean spare ribs. Mmmm. Tom reaches over to turn Dad’s wrist towards him. Only one big notch after the 12 and the little hand still on the notch before, Tom inhales one deep breath. Both hands have to be on 12 for dim sum. Tom fingers the small plastic wings keeping his comes-already-tied tie under his shirt collar. The air blows out of Tom’s rounded lips. Oh, Tom shuffles to his feet as everyone else stands. They must be singing a hymn. Why does Church take a hundred times longer than an hour of cartoons?

  Pen flips quickly through her fashion pictures in the centre of her Bible that she, too, brings from home. Thirteen now, she’ll never have a Seventeen magazine that isn’t cut to pieces. Sometimes, she has to cut one picture in half, to fit inside the pages. The pants, shoes and the body of a handbag captured in one clipping, and the crocheted top, hair, makeup and jewellery in the next. She studies the magazine photos without even noticing the caption, “It’s All About Hue.” Pen needs less than five minutes to prep a Seventeen, Glamour, or Ingenue for church, flipping with her ring and baby fingers past the articles to the next segment of photos, the rest of her hand holding impatient scissors. Pen isn’t interested in reading in church or anywhere else for that matter. Her knowledge of fashion design and colour, of Glamour Do’s and Don’ts came factory installed, no operator’s manual required. Pen plans an ideal wardrobe for hours every day, but once a month, at church, the drawings, the fabric swatches, and colour details have to be sketched into her book later, in her bedroom. Pen does some of her best design work in church, who knows what magic the reverend weaves, maybe good old Muon-go Jerry creates a mood. For that, she bears the monthly gauntlet of church ladies in and out of the building. But today, a stingy, scrubby miasma substitutes for the expansive creative spirit, which ticks off Pen. In the same way Mr. Clarke, her social studies teacher, annoys her by messing up the emphasis in words, putting stress on the wrong syllable, Pen feels her patience barometer dropping very low. Pen can see Mr. Clarke in her mind, bracketed at his wooden desk by pillars of his beloved National Geographic magazines. When they study Italy, he talks about NeapoLItan society, you all know NeapoLItan ice cream, he says, pushing the centre of his glasses higher on his nose. Stupid Clarke, Pen thinks, always has his emPHAsis messed up. This week, God, the AboriGEANIES of Australia. Pen feels for the Aborigines, teachers like Clarke pretending to know all about them, fingering their pictures in the pages of National Geographic, giving them names like AboriGEANIES. Pen picks a piece of lint off her coat sleeve, why is she even thinking about Mr. Clarke at church when she should be pairing coal-coloured knee socks with blanket plaid skirts?

  Jane sits still, fixed on the minister’s mouth. Mumma has read to her the typewritten English words on the Order of Service, “Chinese United Church,” and the street address, but the rest of the page only has some numbers, and handwritten Chinese calligraphy. Doesn’t matter, Jane understands Chinese, even if she can’t read.

  “Mumma, what is ‘Yeah, Sookey Duke’,” Jane asks Mumma one day.

  “What?”

  “What’s ‘Yeah, Sookey Duke’?”

  “Who says that?”

  “At church. The minister says it over and over and over.”

  “Yeay soh gay dew?”

  “Yeah, Sookey Duke!”

  “The House of the Lord. Yeay soh gay dew.”

  “Oh, so every time he says that, that’s what he means?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  The House of the Lord. Big walking dolly. Jane taps her fingers on either side of the pew beside her legs, and then she starts to nod her head from side to side, until momentum quickly has her whole body rocking on her sit bones, toes tapping, just waiting for the minister to say Yeay soh gay dew. He’s been talking a very, very long time, until, Whooap! Jane’s little white-gloved fingers leap up in front of her animated face. “House of the Lord,” she whispers quickly, then lowers her fingers to stroke the top of the pew in front of her.

  That House of the Lord stuff, she figured out a few Communion Sundays ago, and other than walking dolly, no other words since. At this rate, how can you learn all the Chinese words in just one lifetime, she wonders. Jane feels the pretend weight of sand
on her eyelids, and turns Lizzie’s wrist towards her. Big hand only on number 3. No no, only number 3? Jane wags a gloved pointer finger at Lizzie’s naughty watch. About a year ago, Jane started to pretend to fall asleep, have a little nap, after things started rolling, and then she just started to fall asleep, ha, so she didn’t have to go downstairs with Tom and all the other kids to Sunday School. There’s not many kids, but all of them speak Chinese, and really fast, and they give her neh-neh-Neh-neh-neh looks because she doesn’t get it when the Sunday School teacher talks, or at least not as fast as the other kids. It’s not fair, because she’s good at playschool, but not Sunday School. And the kids don’t bug Tom, even though he doesn’t speak Chinese either. As Jane’s eyes close, she wonders why some ladies wear their pyjamas and slippers to church, they must get up even later than Jane. “House of the Lord,” she whispers, as her white gloves flash beside her closed eyes. Jane’s sleep breathing as she dreamwishes that she wakes up in time for Communion, please, because she’s only seen it a few times. When Mumma has coffee with Mrs. Walker in the kitchen, Jane sneaks tiny pastel Tupperware containers, the ones that hold only one extra egg yolk, into the living room, and she does Communion with her dollies, using water from the bathroom and buttered egg loaf bread she tears into tiny pieces.

  “Why don’t you use your tea set to play with your dollies?” Mumma asks.

  As if a tea set would work. As if.

  “I ate too much; I think I’m going to be sick,” Tom says. Every time, Tom eats too much and says he’s going to be sick as they’re walking back to the car, single file. Tom never gets sick, at least never after dim sum on Communion Sundays. [Note: The potential to learn from their personal childhood experiences gets completely overrun by Tom’s incessant post-dim sum lament, his gastro-version of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. And thus, when they have their own children, Tom and his sisters will find out the messy way that, unlike Tom after eating too much dim sum, their children, like the vast majority of kids who say they’re going to be sick, are uncannily prophetic.]

  “Don’t eat so much, Father Brady says gluttony’s a sin,” Dad responds, every time, and then, apropos to nothing, he says, “That was good service.” No one in the Lee family ever knows whether Dad says, “a good service” or, “uh, good service,” whether he means a good Communion Sunday worship service, or, good service from Doug, the waiter at the New World Restaurant. No one ever asks. Although they come only once a month, Doug brings the first large china platter of steamed shrimp maids’ caps to the table as the Lee family settles into their booth in the New World. From the window of the New World, Doug watches Ah Bahk and his family come out of the church from across the street and jaywalk to dim sum, little hand on the 12, big hand sliding from the first notch. Doug walks briskly to the kitchen. He had spotted Dad’s car on the street when he arrived at the restaurant this morning, and set the table for six: six pairs of chopsticks, six tea cups and six small white plates, and six white porcelain soup spoons. When the bell rang at St. Barbara’s up the street, Doug took his place at his window to time the first plate exactly.

  Some families having dim sum order off a menu, but Doug knows the Lee family’s choices never change. Doug flicks his wrist, and everyone watches the white damask napkins, one after the other, spin like a full skirt with deep gores on the tip of his finger. He safely lands one whirling napkin on each of their laps, then brings a big white teapot filled with green tea. Doug talks to Dad and pretends not to watch Mumma wipe out all the Chinese tea cups with a paper napkin from the chrome dispenser on the table. Doug fills each tea cup, and places one in front of every member of the family, saying their family positions in Chinese: respected uncle, respected aunt, eldest daughter, daughter number two, little brother, baby sister. [Note: In the 1970s, when the New World reconstitutes as the Old Cathayan, and then again, with a big catty-corner hop down the street, as The Jumbo, dim sum will evolve into a melee of young women shouting out the names of additive-laden dishes, “there is little bit of MSG,” they will shout, reeling those dishes in institutional metal carts around crowded tables, and God help you if you are seated at the last table to be served near the swinging doors at the back. When dim sum will become like grocery shopping behind the looking glass, where people will sit still and eat off carts of food flying by, Doug will become a successful Assistant Cook II in a hospital kitchen and will never have the time, space or inclination inside the kitchen to spin napkins, let alone listen for the bells at St. Barb’s.]

  Outside the New World, the sun glares off the sidewalk, and Jane and Lizzie use their hands as visors to shade their eyes. Everyone looks both ways, then the Lee family jaywalks back across the street in a clump. The single file line re-forms on the narrow sidewalk in front of the church.

  “Hey,” Pen starts, “let’s go buy some foon kee bean cake. Go ring the bell, Tom.”

  “No.”

  “Go ring it. I dare you. Mmm, foon kee bean cake.”

  “I ate too much; I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “Don’t eat so much, Father Brady says gluttony’s a sin,” says Dad, “That was good service.”

  “We’re going the wrong way,” Jane says from the back, as they cross the avenue, “Hey, we’re going the wrong way.”

  “No, we’re not,” says Pen.

  “No, we’re not,” Tom says, turning around, he tucks a middle finger behind his thumb in a circle, flicks Jane in the forehead, “Dummy.”

  “Owww.”

  “Stop flicking your sister,” Mumma says.

  Two boarded doors down from the Foon Kee Bean Cake Company, and across the road, a long, low one-storey building with baby blue wood siding squats, still recovering, by all appearances, from being slammed down, hard, on the lot. Wrapped inside the baby blue siding, a pawn shop sits on the corner. The sidewalk invites a limitless number of mothers’ broken backs, cement half-blocks, frost heaved and cracked into a dusty grey mosaic. The single file line bumps and rolls as arms reach out for balance, feet take on the multiple slopes of the broken path.

  On the flat roof of the pawn shop, right over the doorway, a big brown bear stands on its back legs, stuffed and mounted, and secured to the roof by four guy-wires. [Note: It will be years before any of the Lee children befriend (then betroth, then beget, hmmm, so many other stories) some naughty biologists who regale the whole family with all the rules for sexing animals, so, with this taxidermied specimen missing obvious markers, think of the bear as Guy, male, only because of the wires keeping him up or possibly holding him down.] Standing, his mouth open, front paws reaching out, the bear does not elicit fear, pity, or reverence for nature, being none of ferocious, pathetic or majestic, but gives the feeling that he is calling out, “Hey. Hello. Hello? Anybody? Hello.”

  As the single file procession rounds the corner, moves beyond the bear’s peripheral vision, the Lee family car comes into view. But the line stops before reaching the car, underneath a high open window at the side of the pawn shop with a thick blue wire screen.

  “They’re still at it,” Pen whispers.

  “Shhh,” Mumma whispers, “get away from that window.”

  Jane’s confusion brings out her forehead worry lines, her mouth a very curved darning needle. Same thing happened on the way to church, that same sound. Jane thought she recognized the sound coming from the window as mah jong tiles being swirled in a circle, then stacked up into long walls like the dads do at house parties. But this was daytime, not nighttime, and where was the Hockey Night in Canada sound from the television, blaring beside the tables set up to play mah jong? And the talk talk talk, and laughing sounds that the dads make, sitting on folding chairs around the square card tables, smoking, long mah jong tile walls in front of each dad. Where’s that sound? And what about the sound of the bossa nova records Auntie Vee brings for the mummas listen to, bossa nova, while they dance a little bit in front of the stereo console, munch on homemade Poppycock, and talk about what Margot Oliver is cooking in Weekend m
agazine? What about the sparkly sounds of the mummas talking, flipping magazine pages, and listening to bossa nova records? No people sounds, no party sounds coming out of the window by the bear, no, can’t be a house party, so, Jane concludes, can’t be mah jong I’m hearing. Sure sounds like mah jong, but in a flash of insight, Jane grasps that the window right there beside the pawn shop is a main floor window, not a basement one, not a window to a rumpus room where the children run down the stairs to stand beside their dads and watch them play, and then, when they’re booted out for making too much noise, come back upstairs to sit quietly with Auntie Vee and the mummas for a moment, begging for bits of sugary popcorn and feigning interest in the stacks of handwritten recipe cards on the coffee table. So, ha, cannot be mah jong she’s hearing.

  Tom jumps for a better view, and Mumma swats him on the arm as he lands.

  “Are they still playing?” Pen asks.

  “Yup, four guys still playing,” Tom replies.

  “Shhhhh,” Mumma whispers.

  “Who’s playing?” Jane asks loudly, “Playing what?”

  “Shhhh,” Mumma whispers a little louder.

  “Mah jong,” Tom says, “four men playing Mah —”

  Mumma grabs Tom by the arm and pulls him towards the car, “Did you hear me?”

  “Anyone we know?” Pen asks Tom as they pile into the backseat.

  “No,” Dad says, last one in the car, closing the driver’s door behind him as the final punctuation to this subject, “No one you know.”

  The sound of mah jong tiles swirling in a circle continues to flow out the window beside the pawn shop, the flow controlled by four anonymous players. Eight unseen hands wash the tiles, funnelling and impelling. Funnelling and impelling the smooth lacquered tablets, four players create a man-made tile whirlpool. And Mumma’s children identify the sounds of the unseen cycle, of tiles being stacked, collected and discarded, included, excluded.