Paper Sons and Daughters

by Ufrieda Ho

  I imagined the ants were his friends; they were his most potent connection

  to all things alive in a world where living was a stutter.

  I quickly stopped being frightened of this uncle. We took him stacks

  of paper and crayons so he could draw. He clutched the crayons that we

  brought to him with his distorted fingers and he drew the ants that were

  his only friends. He also sketched them on the walls of the stark room that

  was more like a prison cell than a home.

  My father asked him questions as we spent a few more minutes in his

  room. He mumbled responses but they did not prompt any meaningful

  exchange. He always seemed happy to see us but I wished he could share

  more. In his muteness he faded into the space of phantom uncle for me,

  another person I shared DNA with but did not have a full picture of.

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  The staff were kind mostly, or at least when we visited. They left him to

  draw the ants on his wall. But it was clear that their care, like the facilities,

  was basic. There was a metal frame bed, a metal cupboard and a wooden

  table and desk.

  My mom always set out food for him while we were there because she

  said she did not want staff to take the treats from him once we had left.

  Yee Buk was a good eater. He enjoyed the cakes or the baos and siu mais

  my father would have made sure to pick up from Chinatown before our

  trip to Pretoria. We watched quietly as he ate, the crumbs falling on his

  pyjamas. He was always in pyjamas even though we had bought ordinary

  clothes for him through the years. I guess it was too difficult for Yee Buk

  to work through buttons and zips with his weakened hands and staff were

  not too concerned about spending extra energy to get the residents dressed

  each day.

  I remember my mother always being concerned that items we left for

  our uncle would be stolen. But there was nothing really valuable. The

  crayons, pens and sheets of papers held a treasure that was important only

  to my uncle.

  One of my favourite artists today is Dumile Feni. Before I even realised

  he was famous I was drawn to the intensity of his works the very first time

  I saw his drawings as a student in Pretoria. There was a struggle in the

  images that he made on bedsheets and on walls. I understood the need to

  draw away from the convention of a piece of paper, a kind of impatience

  and urgency like a desperate way to break out. My Yee Buk’s drawings were

  perhaps a way to break out of the imprisonment of a broken body and the

  imprisonment of long isolation from normal, loving human contact.

  My real sadness was for my father. I remember driving back after one

  of those infrequent visits to the leper colony. We four children were packed

  into the back of the Cortina. As the journey home dragged on in the late

  afternoon, we would nod off. But I leaned forward to speak to my dad.

  Good Fridays were one of the public holidays on which we visited my

  uncle. I know because it was one of the few days a year that my fahfee

  dad did not work and therefore one of the few times we could make the

  trip out to see my uncle. I also remember that my father thought a trip

  to the Voortrekker monument, planted on the capital’s horizon, was a

  good place to visit as a family, but because it was a Christian holy day the

  monument would always be closed.

  My father talked about his brother as he drove and I inhaled all of my

  father’s sadness, a heavy breath of melancholy that he could not do more

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  for this brother and that their destinies had not turned out to be happier.

  By the time my father arrived in South Africa, the imagined reunion with

  his older brother had been dashed by fate. The leprosy ate at my father’s

  heart, too, because it put up a wall between him and his brother, shutting

  them out from each other forever.

  Years later, when it was estimated that my uncle was around 60 or

  65, or old enough, some people in the Chinese community allowed him

  to be admitted into the Chinese old-age home in Malvern, recognising

  that contagion was no longer a concern. The home was not far from our

  house, also in the east of Johannesburg, and we were eager that he could

  be moved closer to us.

  Payments and paperwork were needed, which were not things that my

  parents had readily for my Yee Buk. Because he had been state-managed

  for so many years, my father and mother had little to do with the official

  details of my Yee Buk’s life.

  A man from the old-age home arrived late one evening at our house. He

  pushed through our squeaky, short pedestrian gate. He was one of those

  talking heads in the community and one of the old-age home’s trustees.

  We made him tea and he and my dad worked out the costs of admitting

  my uncle. We did not sit in on those discussions, of course, and at the time

  it was not anything we would really have wanted to understand anyway.

  We did know that it was serious adult talk and that it was a situation that

  father, too, did not wish he was in.

  I imagine my father during the meeting, running his thumb over the

  tips of his fingers, tapping his foot. I know my father could not bear much

  more financial pressure and here was this man reminding my father about

  what he could not pay.

  My father cut his fingernails close to the quick and he also bit them;

  they were always pink and raw as a result of his worrying. Eventually,

  when the man was convinced that he had flexed enough muscle, without

  being rude beyond the bounds of what Chinese custom allowed, he left.

  They had worked out a sum and agreed that the home’s charity funds,

  collected from the community, would make up the shortfall along with a

  pension that they could now apply for on behalf of my Yee Buk.

  The home was a better space for my uncle. There were other Chinese

  people there, all living under crocheted blankets in rooms that never quite

  got enough fresh air. Still, they gave him a sense of kinship and maybe a

  better level of attention than the perfunctory care at the leper home. We

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  visited more often and it was comforting to see him surrounded by the

  ordinariness of homely things like pictures on the wall and plastic flowers

  gathering dust, and even the odd staff member or resident trying to engage

  with him as a human being. But it was clear that too many years had

  passed for him ever to be able to be integrated in a meaningful way.

  Though I am sure he could understand a lot of what was going on around

  him, it was as if the gates of that place of quarantine had imprisoned his

  mind forever even after his body had been freed from that small cell-like

  space. My Yee Buk died in 1988 but I think his life had been shattered

  many, many years earlier.

  The day that the news arrived about my uncle’s death my father came

  home earlier than usual. The fahfee banks generally kept him away for

  many hours each day. His long work days were the norm we were used to.

  An unexpected early arrival was either on the rare occasion
my father felt

  so ill he would head straight to bed, or because something horrible had

  happened. On this day it was sad news that brought him home.

  We had already heard the news about our uncle’s death from my mother

  who had taken the call from the old-age home’s matron. My father arrived

  home already knowing the news, or knowing that something tragic had

  happened, even if my mother had not given him all the details over the

  phone. I remember him gripping the back of the sofa as he retreated behind

  a faraway gaze with the knowledge that his brother had died. He stood

  there, just holding on, not saying a word.

  The same day my uncle died was also the night of Yolanda’s graduation

  from a course at hotel school. My father’s firstborn child had reached

  a milestone and was entering that portal where childhood dependence

  is set down and a child must pick up the mantle of adult responsibility.

  She would go on to study some more after that, but this was her first

  graduation and it was a night for parents to share in the achievement.

  This night was my father and mother’s success, too; it marked the fruits

  of their hard work and sacrifice. My broken-hearted father smiled for his

  daughter, truly proud as she took her steps on to the graduation stage,

  as her name was read out and she received her diploma rolled up in the

  dollied-up toilet-roll inner. Yet his heart must have been aching for his

  brother who had died that same day.

  Yolanda remembered: ‘Dad was so excited that I was graduating but at

  the same time his brother had died. I remember that evening when we had

  the celebratory dinner at Litchee Inn. He tried to be happy, and I think he

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  was. I also remember that dad wore white shoes with his blue suit that he

  had bought especially for my debutantes’ ball when I was in matric, but

  the reason he wore those shoes was he had come back late from sorting

  out Yee Buk’s things and he could not find his dark shoes and we were

  in a hurry to get to the graduation ceremony. I remember it like it was

  yesterday.’

  I loved how my father looked in that suit my sister remembered. It was his

  only good suit – dark blue-grey with a slight shimmer to it. We children

  liked to match it up with a silky greyish-coloured tie that had a feather

  motif on it; my dad always obliged our childish fashion sense. There is

  even a photograph where he deliberately wore the tie on the outside of a

  V-neck jersey he had on under his jacket. He kept the tie we had chosen

  on display. I also still have a tie we bought our dad one Father’s Day. It

  had three shades, offset with a goldish-coloured thread running through it

  along a diagonal. He loved it anyway even if it was probably impossible

  to match with anything.

  The suit was posh; it was almost like a costume to me. It was so far

  from my everyday dad of casual rolled-up shirt sleeves and buttoned-

  down collars. The shirts he preferred were worn until the collars started to

  fray and fine ink trails from ballpoint pen marks congregated around the

  pockets. And they always had a breast pocket so that he could stab in a

  pen or two alongside his glasses case that clipped on securely.

  He had bought that suit for Yolanda’s debutantes’ ball when she was a

  matric student a few years earlier. Yolanda always loved community events

  and activities and would throw herself into the commotion of things like

  cake sales and selling raffle tickets. By contrast, I was not interested and

  Unisda loathed the idea. Each year the young debutantes raised funds for

  charity and the primary beneficiary was the Hong Ning Old Age Home,

  the same home where my Yee Buk saw out his last days, so my parents had

  agreed to let her get involved.

  Yolanda had also managed to cajole and beg my parents to buy two

  tickets to the crowning event of the debutantes’ year, the glitzy ball. For my

  parents it was the most swanky thing that had happened since their own

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  wedding and that was why the suit was bought and my mom had a dress

  made along with Yolanda’s teenage glamorous gown. Yolanda’s gown was

  an ice-white creation, an off-the-shoulder satin poof with diamant detail,

  topped off with a dubious perm.

  My mother’s dress was a long blue gown, simple and satiny with a

  little floral beaded detail at the décolleté. I think she loved its all-shiny

  frivolity.

  I remember, though, that when my father got home early that night to

  get ready for the big ball at the Carlton Hotel he was in one of his bad

  moods. The fiery dragon’s tail was twitching and we knew the irritability

  would burn and then ignite. Yolanda had been picked up by her date

  earlier but Kelvin, Unisda and I were trying to dodge the sparks.

  I hid under the dark wooden table in the lounge. It was a mighty table

  in my child’s mind. It was always covered in a plastic, hard-wearing

  tablecloth but its true magic showed when the tablecloth came off and

  it was pulled on either side to reveal a centre piece that flipped out to

  accommodate extra people. The table still dominates in my mother’s home

  today and I am always delighted when it is unfolded to its maximum and

  its neat wooden bolts are pushed into place to create a perfect seam for the

  joined sections of wood.

  Children know the comfort of small dark spaces like climbing on top of

  a stack of clothes in a wardrobe, listening to the world grow muffled and

  dark behind a closed door. In wardrobes the darkness would be taken over

  by the faint smell of mothballs from the small drawstring bags filled with

  the ice-white balls that my mom tied to the clothes rails.

  The hiding place under the table, with its tucked-in chairs, was a forest

  full of forgiving dark places to creep away and not be found. On the night

  of the debutantes’ ball, it was a perfect place to wait for my dad to cool off

  long enough to leave for their evening.

  My parents must have felt a little out of place in that posh Carlton

  Hotel ballroom, but they did not care too much about airs and graces,

  even other people’s. Once my father’s irritation dissipated, it would have

  been a night for enjoying the food – a Chinese menu, of course, outsourced

  catering as always to a reputable Chinese restaurant to please the fussy

  palates of Chinese guests. Mom and dad would have caught up with a few

  friends and acquaintances who would have also been at the glitzy function

  and they would have taken some delight in my sister’s moment to shine.

  Someone would have commented on my mom’s dress and she would have

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  said: ‘Oh, it is just something simple; Yolanda insisted I have it made.’ But

  she would have loved this bespoke creation, all silky and shimmery and

  garnering compliments.

  Chinese families traditionally are not big on demonstrative shows of

  affection. There would be no hugs and kisses for my sister, no outwardly

  saying to her: ‘We love you and we are proud of you.’ The love would

  be shown by their
presence, in their smiles for her as she showed off her

  practised waltz across the ballroom floor.

  In some way this was a night for my parents to taste the city of gold

  at last. Here in the swish ballroom of one of the city’s top hotels, with its

  bow-tied waiters, chandeliers and mirrored everything, they could almost

  believe that once there were gold coins scattered in the streets of the city.

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  7

  Of Phoenixes and

  Dragons

  Marriage is considered the most auspicious of events for Chinese families.

  It is rivalled only by the birth of a fi rst-born boy child or maybe the 80th

  birthday of a man who has accumulated wealth, success and a brood of

  children and grandchildren he can be proud of.

  Every parent’s dream is to see their child succeed and that success is tied

  up with marriage and procreation. It was no different for my mother after

  she had been in South Africa for a year or two. She was nearing 25 when

  my grandparents felt she should fi nd a husband who could take care of her

  and make a good life for her.

  For my mother, like many women of her generation, the prospect of

  marriage came as the natural order of things and the validation of being a

  fully fl edged grown-up. Marriage and a family is a guarantee of a new kind

  of social capital. It was like her dead brother moving up the rung of the

  family altar after joining with his own ghost bride. In my parents’ day, many

  marriages were still unions set up by a mooi yan bor. This older woman

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  was an unofficial matchmaker and go-between for families looking to be

  joined by marriage. Such busybody aunties would find prospective suitors

  and remind mothers that their daughters were not getting younger. This

  was how many introductions were made in those days. It was how many

  people found their birth charts drawn up by the stars and the seasons and

  elements of the Earth being scrutinised along with their family lineages so

  that a good match could be guaranteed.

  My Ah Goung and Ah Por had heard from the small web of Chinese,

  including the odd nosey mooi yan bors, about my father. They would have

  heard that he had no family members in South Africa and was a fahfee

  man, a gambler, and that he was at least a decade older than my mother,