Paper Teeth

by Lauralyn Chow

  “Oh, tch. You’re being silly.” Eileen frowns, and twirls her coffee spoon in her mug. “A lot of people eat cottage cheese when they’re dieting.”

  Wherever would Mumma get the idea that Episcopalians eat naughty food for Lent? Naughty? Eileen pokes the tip of her spoon at the creamy mocha ellipse on the surface of the coffee.

  Dieting, Mumma wonders, did she say dieting or dying?

  For a while, hot liquid being slowly drawn through lips to the curved pool of a wordless tongue produces the only sound in the kitchen.

  Mumma never brings up the subject of Lent with anyone else. She hears the minister say in a sermon that the Chinese United Church, and the United Church of Canada do not make a practice of Lent observance, if that’s actually true. And none of the kids ever brings up Lent in conversations with Mumma. Except Jane. Jane remembers nothing of flagpole salad or cottage cheese for lunch, but every single year since she was eight (God knows where Jane heard about Lent), Jane desperately wants to and does discuss with Mumma giving up something for Lent. She’s relentless. Mumma, she’ll say, what should the two of us give up for Lent?

  Mumma wonders whether Jane harbours creepy baby brain memory, God’s way of punishing Mumma, the infant eavesdropping on her conversations with Eileen Walker and watching her mother’s naughty lunch preparation. In the first few years, Mumma found Jane’s little tradition kind of instructive. Jane and Mumma gave up things like candy, potato chips, soda pop. But as Jane grew older, Mumma feels the tradition became silly and mischievous, no, Mumma edits herself, the tradition became oddly ungodly, Jane proposing that they give up strange things like wrestling in warm jello, chasing greased pigs, hot shaving musclemen in tiny Speedos at the beach, wearing sandalfoot pantyhose with reinforced crotches. What was her baby trying to tell Mumma, that away from home, Jane transformed into a teenaged sensual thrill-seeker with low impulse control, so she needed to reign herself in during Lent? Did Jane think Mumma acted too straightlaced, too uptight and the Lenten proposals acted as a futile prod for loosening Mumma’s laces? Most likely, Mumma concluded, Jane entangled her mother in plain and simple divine punishment, not hellfire and damnation, heaven knows, but that steady, pesky annoyance delivered cheerfully by a child to humble the pluckiest parent.

  When the proposals evolved to extreme sports a few years ago, she agreed with Jane to give up motocross, sailboat racing on ice, the Paris-Dakar Rally. Still and all, Mumma fervently wishes that she just didn’t have to think about what fresh weirdness her Jane is going to come up with every year. Of course Mumma didn’t talk to Jane about Chinese New Year this year, wanting to avoid all talk with Jane about observances and rituals so close to Lent. Why go making trouble for yourself? Mumma didn’t want to trigger the annual potentially sacrilegious Lenten chit-chat that Jane so eagerly posted on Mumma’s mental refrigerator.

  Jane spends the two weeks before Lent, practising different things to give up. This year, the one that’s stuck so far: giving up reading in bed. She loves kidding around with her mom, but the discipline of actually giving up some bad habit makes Jane feel religious, a compliance with a larger plan. Jane never talks to Mumma about actual Lent observances. She read once that it takes seventeen days to establish a new habit and extinguish an old one, and if, in the process, a person can become, well, closer to, or part of, sort of, uhmm Devout, this has to be a blessing, whatever blessing actually means.

  Jane’s embarrassed, too embarrassed to admit to anyone that she determines reading in bed one of her worst vices. But Chinese New Year’s Eve, she sits on the toilet reading the weekend Religion section of the newspaper, this has been Jane’s practice every night for the past six, sitting on the toilet for forty-five minutes, reading. [Note: a pelvic floor physiotherapist will advise that you will pay dearly for reading while sitting on the toilet, one of the worst habits you can adopt, a gigantic down payment on anatomical systems complications in your senior years, so what kind of risk are you willing to run? Depends on you.]

  “Aren’t you coming to bed, yet?” Jane’s husband calls. Leo doesn’t plan to give up anything for Lent.

  Jane rereads the column in the Religion section of the newspaper, reporting that a group of forty Christians planned to spend the forty days of Lent in the Arizona desert on a prayer retreat, eating very spare, albeit daily catered meals, drinking only bottled water, and sleeping on camp cots set up in white canvas tents, to come to a more evolved understanding of Christian discipline and obedience. She folds the paper, runs her right thumb and index finger along the crease to sharpen it, and lays the paper on the bathroom tiles in front of her. The earnestness of the group’s spokesperson as the article went on about atonement and self-denial has settled a leaden weight on Jane’s chest bone. She can’t quite dismiss the article as a bunch of people wanting to get away from it all but taking all the conveniences with them. Jane rests her elbows on her knees, her jaw cradled by the heels of two fists.

  That she didn’t get Lent straight comes as no surprise to Jane. She’s shaky on all religious concepts and observances. She’s tried to shed light on her spiritual muddle, [Note: Yes, a generous share of Mumma’s muddle got scooped out of the pool of wiggly bits and spiral chains, and poured into the DNA-and-mystery bucket that came to be known as Jane.] tried churches, temples, books, TED talks. She hoped for more than tepid and inconsistent results. She thinks about “playing church” at home when they were children, none of the Lee kids understanding very much of what went on in church, Tom breaking open a giant loaf of unsliced sandwich bread, and Jane pouring Welch’s grape juice into a cup. When bread was no longer delivered to the house, Dad brought warm egg loaf bread home from Alberta Bakery. He placed the loaves on the kitchen table, and when he opened the bags so the bread could cool, she and Tom would sneak one slice, cut it carefully into little squares of bread, and put the squares on Mumma’s glass tea plate. Then they would take turns serving each other, with one walking solemnly, holding the plate in two hands and standing in front of the other who would receive communion, sitting properly on a tiny child’s folding chair, and taking only one small square of bread. In the hundreds of versions of make-believe they played together over the years, playing church was the only one that didn’t end in a fight and tears.

  And yet, Jane realizes, she and Tom together in real life church never could be anything but miserable and combative with each other, Tom frowning as Jane drained the last half of the tiny glass communion cup that Dad handed to her after all the adults but no children were invited to drink.

  Jane thinks of the last time she visited Mumma and Dad on her own, and they went to church. Sunday last Fall, no communion, and after a brief, still incomprehensible service for Jane, the congregation went downstairs for lunch. Here it comes, Jane thought, everyone talking Chinese to me, and Mumma still bailing me out.

  A few of the men in the congregation, many of them retired cooks from the best restaurants in the city, had prepared a No Particular Reason feast in the basement of the church, where there was a kitchen and a hall. Turkey with sticky rice dressing plump with chopped up sausage, Chinese mushrooms, scallions, and shrimp; cellophane noodles with eight different vegetables; braised beef hotpot with tofu, onions and Chinese melon; steamed pork buns; roasted chicken with salt crispy skin; barbeque duck from the barbeque place; Chinese broccoli, guy lan, wok-fried then steamed in a ginger garlic broth; deep-fried rock cod topped by a hot and tangy-sweet sauce; round carrot coins carved into rabbit and flower shapes, with green beans, sweet onion, and button mushrooms. All these dishes timed to be ready right at the end of the service, and set up along a series of rectangular tables, large rectangular metal pans fit into an endless line of steaming trays.

  “Happy Sunday, Moi Moi!” [Note: Moi Moi means little sister in Cantonese.] Uncle Kenny said, as he handed Jane a large, clean stainless steel cooking spoon, “You on guy lan, Numbah 5 steamah. Go!” Uncle Kenny was a cook in Maple Creek, Saskatchewan before he retired to Edmonton to live clo
ser to his daughter.

  No discussion, no, “I’m sorry I don’t speak Chinese,” no, I don’t know how to do that, no need for Mumma to make three-decade-old excuses for Jane not talking to people. Suddenly, Jane stood on the serving line, dishing up Chinese broccoli to a stream of hungry people, holding their plates in front of her. Just dishing up greens, no language barrier, only smiling and serving and nodding, then dishing up the next scoop of guy lan. For the quickest moment, she bent forward and looked down the line of steamer trays at all the cooks and all the women who were also wielding steel spoons like hers. Jane felt a sense of kinship and belonging that she had never felt before. One of the cooks came behind her and replaced her almost empty pan, a fresh hot pan of guy lan slipped into the rim of the steamer tray. “C’mon, Moi Moi, people are hungry,” he said.

  Jane looks at the newspaper on the floor of her bathroom. She had forgotten all about how much fun she had dishing up lunch that day, the surprising feeling of lightness and belonging, the delicious food. She stands up, legs all crampy and wobbly, feels the welt of the vivid red ring around rosie, pulls down her night shirt, and goes to bed.

  “Good Morning, Mumma! Happy New Year!” says Jane, the next morning, cradling the phone’s receiver between her ear and her shoulder, as she packs her briefcase.

  “Happy New Year to you too!”

  “I’m just running out the door. But I wanted you to know what I’ve decided we should give up for Lent,” Jane says, as she plucks the receiver out from under her jawbone.

  Uh oh, thinks Mumma.

  “Mumma, I think what we should give up for Lent this year, Ta-da: all this talk about what we’re going to give up for Lent. We should just stop, not just for this year, but just stop. You do whatever you want about Lent, or not, and I’ll do whatever I’m going to do — or not. But this year anyway, I’m not giving up anything, and we’re not going to talk about Lent anymore. What do you think, Mumma?”

  “Oh wow,” Mumma says, “Oh wow.”

  Number 1. A Bowl of Rice, A Plate of Sliced Oranges

  They’re all a little jumpy, sitting in the fin-tailed maroon Pontiac, travelling that day to see God. They have never been on such a long car ride. This is not the annual summer trip through Calgary to visit Li-Ting, Banff, Jasper, then home again. It will take most of the day just to get there. Dad in the driver’s seat, twisting the fingers of his burgundy leather gloves. On the weekends, the gloves double as gardening gloves, the smell of peat moss and cut grass introducing themselves, how do you do, to the new car smell. Mumma, the navigator, fumbles with a road map, and finds home, Edmonton. What exactly a navigator does, Mumma can’t say for sure. But, stove’s turned off, iron’s unplugged, fridge is empty. Garbage definitely out. One of the neighbours at the Old House forgot the garbage once. Chicken guts wrapped in brown paper, an orgy of putrefaction undulating under the kitchen sink while Morris and Nellie Brewin fed chipmunks along the Banff-Jasper parkway. Good old Morris, seized by uncontrollable urges for difficult meals, like homemade fried chicken, just before leaving on vacation. They bleached, they retiled, they repainted that whole kitchen, “bloody floor to ceiling,” as Morris said, his nostrils flaring hairy caves, and still didn’t get the smell out. Mumma pities Nellie at night, Morrie’s red porous nose and those difficult-meal-hungry eyes between dear Nellie and the ceiling. Mumma will never forget to throw out the garbage, and to make sure, she has been throwing out little practice garbages every day for the past week.

  Mumma pictures the suitcases in the trunk. One for her clothes and Dad’s, his blue worsted with the vest taking up more than half the space, and one for the four kids. Each person has a dressy outfit, a cold weather outfit, shorts, two tee shirts, and a swimsuit. Mumma has packed a jar of soap flakes to rinse things out each night. Also a food box, a B.C. Apples cardboard flat, filled with cans of vegetable and chicken noodle soup, a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter and one of grape jelly, two tins of salmon, a sharp knife, and a can opener, just in case they have kitchenettes in the motels nearby to where God lives.

  Last night, as Mumma pictured her husband and four children unclothed, tried to imagine what each one would need head to toe, skin to overcoat, Dad fiddled with the zipper pulls on the empty suitcases. “If the kids wear their dressy outfits, Mumma, I think we would only need one suitcase.” The silvery lines feathering Mumma’s lower abdomen dug in, as she folded three pairs of corduroy pants, brown, navy, and navy. That man. If it were up to Dad, the kids would all drink a quart of orange juice, each, just before getting into the car, so no one would get thirsty and they wouldn’t need to stop all day long, forget about toilet breaks.

  “If the kids wear their dressy outfits, they will be all wrinkly and damp by the time we get there. They would get way too warm. Besides, you’re forgetting something” — Mumma stuck her tongue out of her mouth, a baleful expression twisting her face.

  Mumma turns around to review the troops, the four kids in the back seat. The youngest sits with her feet on the hump in the middle, both knees sporting a flesh-coloured bandage, not really flesh-coloured. Mumma studies each face slowly, particularly the eyes and the jawline, turning her head up and down as if to bring the picture into focus. The kids sit silently, take turns glaring at each other suspiciously.

  “You,” she points to the second youngest, Tom, “in the front seat.” Tom stands up, and with one leg over the front seat, rolls over the top.

  “I don’t feel so good,” he whimpers.

  Dad rubs grey sneaker dust off his right shoulder, and turns the key in the ignition. A burgundy-gloved hand reaches behind the steering wheel to the gear shift lever, as Dad’s driving oxford steps on the brake. He looks in the side view mirror down the long driveway, and then behind him to the three children in the back seat. Dad thinks, This is a good decision, taking the family to see God. “Ready?”

  “You know, we could go to Saskatchewan this summer, ask your second cousin to be a translator when he’s home visiting, reacquaint you with your extended family so they could tell you their stories.”

  “By car.”

  “Well, we’d have to have a car anyway. Why not? Great way to see the country.”

  “No thanks. I’ve had my share.”

  “Of what?”

  “Car holidays. Country. Every year, Calgary for three days, Banff for two, Jasper for two, a day at home, then Dad would go back to work. Year after year, the six of us. We’d even stay in the same places. Number 6F, Chickadee Bungalows in Banff. Number 003, Whispering Pine Cabins, Jasper. In Calgary, we’d stay with Auntie Li-Ting when she still lived in her house. The house that smelled like dried shrimps and sweet rice steamed in bamboo leaves, the house where the rule was Don’t Touch Anything, not that you would, nothing very interesting. Throughout the trip, we kids would take turns getting sick.”

  “Well, a car holiday wouldn’t be like that now.”

  “Someone would start and for the rest of the week, each one of us, but no one more than once. Usually.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “No. You can’t. You really can’t.”

  “Same places. Every year?”

  “Pretty well. And definitely, you could count on it being awful. Every year.”

  Mumma looks back at the house through the rear window. Cary Grant gently says to her, Oh Mumma, you looked back, then solemnly raises his hand slowly to say Goodbye. Vertical wooden siding wraps tightly around the bungalow, looks a paler shade of yellow in the shadow before sunrise. Grey striped canvas awnings shroud the square bedroom windows. The heads of three children form an uneven black, scalloped border on the picture Mumma develops for her memory album.

  They haven’t left the city, but nothing looks familiar, the east side of Edmonton a foreign country. Six heads swivel to observe the cement plant, the red brick Coca-Cola factory, the different but same Safeway store, the Beverly dump. “Traffic circle, Groat Road, 118th Avenue, Highway 16,” Dad chants under his breath. Tom hugs his elbow
s and recites the numbers on the radio. Mumma’s throat catches when farmers’ fields appear in the windshield. This must mean they’ve driven out beyond the circle with the black star inside which marks Edmonton. The flatness initially fills her with a dread of falling off an edge, but the land’s so unrelentingly flat, Mumma soon realizes the edge, if it comes, will be visible miles before they get there, and even Dad will be able to stop in time.

  “Do we still go east, Mumma? We’re coming to a junction. Again. Do we turn?”

  She has enough on her mind, watching Tom turn progressively gill-ier, those creepy little “urps” shaking his round shoulders up and down. No one says anything, but everyone in the car is waiting for the same thing, like the start of a parade.

  Mumma cracks open the map, looks for the circled dot called Calgary, their usual first stop on the annual trip, the customary trip with a familiar route and itinerary. Fools, that’s what we are, she thinks. Fools. Dad, for this crazy notion, and me for going along with it.

  “No, just keep going.” Mumma folds the map back, wonders if this is what’s expected of a navigator, if this is all she has to do.

  Mumma turns her eyes to seven o’clock at Tom, whose eyelids are half shut. Maybe he’ll nod off and they’ll arrive without incident at the border, crossing the map from celery green Alberta to pale yellow Saskatchewan. Mumma wonders, Will the border be visible, miles ahead, fields shorn close in an alternating pattern of dots and dashes? Hmmm. She now regrets not listening when Dad had the map out on the kitchen table, every night for the past four, planning their trip. He said she’d have to be his navigator, that this was new territory for them. Then he talked about legends, touching the map with the tip of a wooden ruler. Writing numbers on a piece of paper, which he gave to Mumma, which she threw away by mistake in a practice garbage.