Paper Sons and Daughters

by Ufrieda Ho

by everyone’s estimates. These were not particularly great attributes for a

  potential husband for your only child, but importantly for my grandparents,

  they heard that he was a good man, and enough people vouched that he

  would likely be a responsible husband and provider.

  My father had a few loyal friends. Many were older community

  members who had come to know him in the years since he had arrived

  in Johannesburg. They became like older brothers and uncles to my dad.

  They spoke for him, recognised his loyalty and his reliability, his sense

  of responsibility and his respect for elders. Importantly their voices did

  matter.

  So, my grandfather agreed to have my father around for tea on their

  small plot outside Silverton in Pretoria.

  My granny and mother must have frantically cleaned up the little house

  and my grandfather would have been sent out that day to buy something

  special for tea. My grandfather would have taken his old green station

  wagon Passat to Chinatown in Johannesburg. The pastel green tank

  would have chugged into the city centre for my grandfather to pick up

  a cake along with the specialities of Chinese dim sum, maybe bao, the

  sweetish white buns filled with smooth, dark lotus seed paste or sweet

  roasted pieces of pork, char siu, and also small minced pork dumplings

  steamed piping hot in their paper-thin, doughy sheaves.

  My dad arrived for tea with another man and his wife. The man’s

  nickname was Daai Sak (Big Stone). I remember this man we called

  ‘Uncle’, even though he was not my dad’s relative by blood. He had a

  booming voice that was matched by an equally big laugh. He had tufts of

  greyish hair that stood out around his ears that made him look a little like

  an owl as he greyed more and more. I liked this misbehaving hair; it suited

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  this tanned, hard-working fahfee man who had grown into his role as a

  community elder, solid and unfussy.

  The clincher of that meeting, though, was if my mother liked what she

  saw; she still had the final say.

  ‘The first time I saw your dad he seemed quite tall to me and a bit on

  the thin side. He was fidgeting with his fingers a lot and he seemed quiet

  and shy. He did not say much when I brought out the tea from the kitchen

  to be introduced to him. But he seemed nice,’ my mother recalled of that

  first encounter as she flipped aside the curtains that stood in for doors in

  my grandparents’ simple home to have a look at this would-be husband.

  I can imagine my mom and gran fussing over the tea in the kitchen and

  my gran reminding my mother to be polite and ladylike. My mom, in her

  typical way, pretended not to care too much, even though the butterflies in

  her stomach would have been fluttering up a storm.

  And my father fiddled with his fingers rather than lighting up a cigarette,

  which he thought would not have made a good impression. His hair was

  probably impressive, oiled back but full and pitch black. The meeting was

  full of hopeful maybes, so it was a success.

  There was at least one other suitor my mother remembers coming

  around for tea over those few weeks. But she says she did not like the

  look or manner of this other man and she agreed instead to be courted by

  my father when he also expressed interest. Being courted was the orderly,

  proper way to do things and that was what my mother and grandparents

  expected.

  Theirs started out as a long-distance relationship because my father

  was running a few small fahfee banks in Johannesburg and my mother

  was in Pretoria helping her parents run the butchery.

  When my father could make it out to Pretoria over weekends, he took

  my mom back to the haunts of Sophiatown and Ferreirasdorp, where

  there were cinema houses that Chinese people were allowed into. These

  were the areas where Indian and coloured communities lived and traded.

  The few photographs my dad had from that time all bear the shop stamps

  of small studios in Sophiatown. Around the corner was Chinatown and a

  little further west was the Newclare cemetery for coloureds, Chinese and

  Indians. It was also in these suburbs that a guy could take his gal out for a

  Sunday afternoon and not be harassed by the white cops.

  In one of my mother’s stories, she remembers being mad with my father

  for not pitching up one day for a long-awaited date when he said he would.

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  She said it was nearly a deal-breaker because she was not going to be stood

  up, even though this was, of course, not my father’s intention and the life

  of a fahfee man did not have predictable regularity.

  But there was no negotiation with my mother if she felt someone had

  stepped out of line with her. Throughout her life those lines of appropriate

  behaviour have been based on her idea of correct behaviour towards her,

  defined by her own ideas of social hierarchy. ‘I am the older cousin’, ‘I am

  the mother-in-law’ or ‘I have no responsibility because I have married out,’

  are my mother’s easy, but flawed (at least to me) reasoning.

  My father took a far more relaxed attitude about matters of social

  order and correctness. He was less bound to the standards that my mother

  took as gospel. A particular barb in my mom’s side while they were dating

  was a woman my dad was friends with from before he started dating my

  mother. This woman, a few years older than my father, had two small

  children but her husband had left her or something else that seemed

  scandalous when we asked about it as teenagers. My father would look in

  on the family from time to time and try to help out the single mom when

  he could but I know my mother disapproved of the friendship that she

  felt just was not proper. There is still a photo or two of a lanky woman

  and two small children that survived in the family albums. I remember my

  father chuckling at my mom’s jealousy and her jibes that this woman was

  my dad’s ‘girlfriend’. I understood my mother’s insecurity. My mom has

  always been a proud woman and as a young woman dating someone who

  could be her future husband she would not tolerate the intrusion into the

  social rules that she felt had to apply to her picture of perfect.

  Perhaps my father was more easy-going because without family

  members in South Africa there were not so many busybodies to prop up

  conventions.

  My parents did marry, within about a year of dating each other. For

  the longest time I could only picture their wedding day in black and white

  through the images printed on that special photographic paper with wavy

  edges and white borders, which proved that something extra special had

  taken place inside the frames. There are a few stiff photographs, all neatly

  posed on the steps of the University of the Witwatersrand.

  My mother had a bob and dark eyeliner and a long-sleeved white

  wedding dress with a simple cascade of satin and lace detail. Around her

  neck was a gold chain, in heavy yellow Chinese gold, with a heart-shaped

  jade pendant. I recognised this later when as a girl I rummaged through

&
nbsp; my mother’s jewellery.

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  My father was in a dark suit, with a thin tie and an attitude.

  It was not like back in China where a wedding couple will, still today,

  wear traditional garments for at least part of the wedding day ceremonies.

  The bride’s dress is also a central feature as it is in Western custom. It is

  an embroidered cheung saam in silk brocade with intricate beading and

  glittering thread offset on a mostly red background – red is the colour of

  all things lucky, happy and auspicious. The bride in China or Hong Kong

  will have a headdress or at least plastic flowers with dangling beads in her

  hair.

  Back in South Africa, my mother’s wedding dress was white in the

  Western custom of the time. White is a traditional colour of mourning

  in China, in fact, but the widespread adoption of Western-style outfits

  was a sign of the mingling of cultures and traditions under an African

  sun. My parents’ wedding party was tiny compared to that of some other

  Chinese families. On my dad’s side, the people who stood in for the family

  photographs were brothers of a different kind, men like Daai Sak, who had

  come to know my father in the years almost as a brother or a son. On my

  mom’s side, there were my grandparents and my granny’s older sister and

  her husband and children. Because my mom was an only child, there was

  also a group of made-up siblings lined up in pretty dresses, ironed shirts,

  topped with stiff, hair-sprayed dos and big smiles. In my parents’ group

  photos, it is friends and extended family of cousins and their children

  that make up the sprouts of a family tree all standing on the steps of

  Wits University, the most common venue for wedding photographs at that

  time.

  Years later, Kelvin and his own bride, both then Wits University alumni,

  would repeat that wedding ritual on the Great Hall steps; she in her cascade

  of satin and beads and Kelvin with a cravat under his chin and a carnation

  in his buttonhole.

  I liked to look at those static posed images from my parents’ wedding

  and search for clues of the emotions of that day. In some photos my father

  looked stern to me. I later found out it was because some of his cousins had

  made a fuss about being in photos because there had been a death in their

  extended family. My father would have felt that it was not disrespectful to

  the dead person for these cousins to choose to show him a bit of respect

  by being in the photo. It was one of those conventions that must have

  irked my father and his expression showed it. I could not tell much from

  my mother’s sweet composure as the young bride. She would have been

  told how she should stand and place her feet. For years when we were

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  growing up, we three girls have photographs in which our feet are placed

  at specific angles to create an impression my mother would say was pretty

  and ladylike. Mostly my expressions in these photos also showed how I

  felt about fussy rules and customs.

  We did not get to see my mom’s wedding dress ever. It was not bundled

  away with mothballs and memories in the back of a wardrobe. Instead, it

  was cut up by the time we children came along, reincarnated as something

  that outlived the expiry date of a single event. The veil, she told with

  thrifty contentment, was turned into a net to cover food from pesky flies.

  My sentimentalist heart sank, but I grew up to know better about what

  matters to my mother.

  Decades later it was an aunt, Aunt Ah Peng, who offered to trawl

  through her old boxes to find the invitation to my parents’ wedding close

  to 40 years ago. She said she knew she still had it somewhere.

  I never even thought of asking my mom about the invitation. It never

  occurred to me that a sentimental memento like a piece of red cardboard,

  embossed with the double happiness – two identical Chinese characters

  written together to form a unity of happiness – as most traditional wedding

  invitations are designed, could be stashed somewhere in and among

  my mother’s things. It still remains missing at this stage. How I would

  love to see my parents’ names, written in gold or red, announcing their

  auspicious union. By contrast to my mother, I grew up as a hoarder of

  everything sentimental. I have held on to letters from teenage pen pals

  even though I have never re-read them, my soft toys all have names and

  when they were loved threadbare I sewed them up, patched them with

  sellotape and glued on new eyes. There are wedding invitations from

  friends and family members that I have never thrown out. Their gilded

  cards in bundled piles are packed in boxes alongside old birthday cards

  and teddy bears with chewed-up ears and scuffed eyes that I cannot say

  goodbye to.

  One day, when I was about seven, I noticed an oddly shaped item on

  top of our pale blue, steel kitchen cupboards, a unit with tinny shelves and

  a simple counter covered with a thin waterproof sheeting that had a mock

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  marble pattern. It was simply pushed up against the wall, leaving a small

  gap that collected dust and grease and little things you think you have lost

  forever.

  Like everything else on the top of the cupboard, it was sheathed in a

  greasy plastic bag and rested on a bed of yellowed newspapers that lined

  the top of the cabinets. I nagged my mom until eventually she brought it

  down to show me. I settled on top of our blue Formica table so that I could

  have a bird’s-eye view as the plastic sheath was pulled back. It revealed

  an oddly shaped straw basket that had a hinged lid and an intricate metal

  lock. I loved it immediately.

  On the inside, the basket had a material lining that was bright red.

  It had moulded sections that were snug nests for a Chinese tea set. My

  mother handled the small cups with a tender relish. The cups were each

  painted with a phoenix and a dragon and rimmed with a gold trim. As

  my mom lifted up the teapot from the centre, it was more cylindrical than

  squat and its handle was not porcelain but a woven kind of straw. My

  mom told me it was the tea set she had used for her wedding ceremony, the

  one that my grandparents sipped from to give their blessing to the union.

  A marriage tea ceremony has the bride and groom kneel in front of the

  older members of the families and offer a cup of tea. It is called sun poh

  chai (daughter-in-law tea). They offer up the tea and after the relative has

  sipped, they set aside the cup and congratulate the couple with a lei see,

  the double red packets of monetary gifts or a piece of jewellery that has

  been handed down through the family. The amounts given are linked to

  lucky numbers. There are no numbers with fours as that in Cantonese is

  sei and sounds similar to the word for dying. Instead, the numbers would

  be eights or threes, baat or saam, numbers that sound similar to the words

  for prosper and for being alive.

  Memories of kneeling on the cool drapes of her white wedding dress to

  offer tea to he
r parents and her new family elders would have come back

  to my mother. Then she returned the cups and the pot to their crimson

  nests, hooked in the lock on the basket, refreshed the grimy plastic bag

  with a new one and returned her treasure to its spot on top of the yellowed

  newspaper.

  Many years later we found something else that had survived. When

  Yolanda was at university, a friend’s boyfriend told her that he thought he

  still had some old 8-mm footage from our parents’ wedding. His father

  had long since passed away but he had given some work to my father and

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  taken him on as a general farmhand when my dad first arrived in South

  Africa. Growing up on a smallholding this friend, Anthony, said he could

  remember my father as a cool young man that he wanted to hang out with;

  my father taught him how to tie his shoelaces, he had said with affection.

  Anthony gave the cassette to us in a yellowed cardboard case and for

  years it was like a locked jewellery box that we could not look into because

  we did not have a projector.

  It took some years still for the footage to be freed. Our dad had died by

  then. The man with the technological magic did not stay far from us and

  he accepted the coil of film from me with a nod of his head, assuring me

  that he was absolutely able to do something with it and told me to return

  in a week’s time.

  One week later he had a video tape for me. We gathered to watch

  the video the night I collected it. The video man had decided to dub on

  some sound because there was no audio track on the original. He had

  chosen a haunting instrumental rendition of ‘Somewhere My Love’. For

  the first time I could see that my mother’s bridesmaids had peach-coloured

  mini-dresses and my granny’s neat two-piece outfit was a brocade of pale

  blue and silver. The static black and white photos came to life as the film

  footage betrayed the posed and poised silver halide images.

  The film captured my parents walking towards the Wits Great Hall

  steps, the iconic facade of the central block of the university’s buildings,

  my father strutting and puffing on a cigarette. He played up for the camera

  a bit with an exaggerated puff and a wave. My mom was coy, trying to

  keep from tripping over the clumsy froth of her wedding gown train.

  We smiled and laughed in our living room that night. We saw our dad