China Dog (11 page)

Tony was expecting the café to stay empty for several months. He expected a
lo fon
, someone who didn’t believe in Chinese superstitions, to buy the place. He was surprised when the real estate agent brought him an offer from two Chinese brothers.

Eight years before Johnny Sue’s death, the Lee brothers, Eddie and Jimmy, had arrived in Canada. Eddie, the older brother, chose to go to Toronto to wait on tables for his uncle’s restaurant, the Carlaw Café. He lived upstairs on the second floor with three other waiters and two cooks. Every day for eight years, Eddie put on his loose black pants and white cotton
waiter’s jacket, walked up and down the aisle of the restaurant, and served the guests seated inside the row of wooden booths, carrying plates of grilled cheese sandwiches, hot beef sandwiches, sweet-and-sour spare ribs, and combination plates one, two, and three. On his days off, Eddie went to the Rose Garden Theatre and watched the movie screen fill with stars from Hong Kong. Mesmerized by their lives of wealth and drama, he sat cracking roasted watermelon seeds between his teeth, carefully collecting the shells in his hands, while those around him spat their shells on the floor.

Jimmy found a position as an apprentice cook in a Chinese restaurant in a small town outside Windsor. There he learned to cook grilled cheese sandwiches, hot beef sandwiches, sweet-and-sour spare ribs and combination plates one, two, and three – the identical dishes that his brother carried more than two hundred miles away.

When Eddie found out about Johnny Sue’s restaurant, he immediately recognized an opportunity. He could already see himself seated behind the cash register, taking the money from the customers, while his brother did the cooking in the back. Eddie and Jimmy bargained a third off the asking price and closed the deal in three weeks. When they finally got the key and opened the door to the restaurant, they looked around, then at each other, and nodded with satisfaction.

Jimmy cleaned and scrubbed out the refrigerator, throwing out the trays of rotten meat and bundles of soggy deteriorating vegetables, while Eddie poured gallons of sour milk down the drains. Jimmy polished the tables and painted the walls. Eddie
filled out the orders for fresh supplies. He washed out the ashtrays and the glass sugar dispensers. When each container was dry, he filled it with fresh sugar and screwed on the shiny silver-coloured, conical-shaped lids. Here was a chance to work for themselves, to be independent at last. Their luck had finally changed. They understood their good fortune. Yet it remained unspoken. Even after a new red-and-green electric sign was swinging outside at right angles to the storefront; even after the restaurant was renamed the Good Luck Café, they remembered the stench of rotting meat that greeted them when they first opened the double refrigerator doors. They remembered the way Johnny had died and the legacy in Tony’s stutter.

There were two other Chinese restaurants in Urquhart. Eddie and Jimmy were surprised when, on opening day, each of them sent a large potted plant festooned with red ribbons and a red envelope. A few days later, when Eddie walked over to the Golden Gate Restaurant and the China Palace Café, he understood the acts of generosity. The restaurants were
gohsheng
, high class like the Sai Woo and Kwongchow in Toronto. His restaurant across from the bus station was no threat. As Eddie chatted with Bill Woo, the owner of the Golden Gate, he looked at the large room divider decorated with a golden dragon and phoenix. Eddie sipped at his coffee and nibbled at a tiny delicate almond cookie. He looked at Bill. His full-cheeked, smiling face and confidence made Eddie feel welcomed and humbled at the same time.

Eddie liked managing the dining room, giving the clients the impression that he was the sole owner. He liked pulling down the handle of the cash register and hearing the drawer spring out, then taking the money from the customers, while his brother worked with his hands in the kitchen. For Eddie, though, owning the Good Luck Café meant more than just being a boss. He was anxious to get married and begin a family. He was thirty-two and Jimmy was thirty. Each was desperate to relieve the aching throb that persisted between his legs. Eddie realized that with his new status as a boss and entrepreneur, his chances of acquiring a desirable mail-order bride were much greater. In the past, whenever he visited a matchmaker, the pictures he saw of the girls willing to marry someone who was just an employee were less attractive. The girls were a little on the dumpy side, their skin a little pock-marked. The Good Luck Café was his chance to be like his uncle and sit like a boss at the cash register, to get a wife, to lose his virginity. Who knew the real story about Johnny Sue, the brothers asked each other? Who knew whether Johnny Sue’s death was an accident or suicide? Did he really leave the place cursed? Who cared? Probably – if at all – only Johnny Sue’s son, Tony Sue, cared. After all, these superstitions belonged in China, not Canada.

Six months after the opening of the Good Luck Café, Aunt Lucy visited her friend Mrs. Yee, the matchmaker, and found a mail-order bride from Hong Kong for Eddie. Lucy showed
him a picture of a broad-faced young woman with round eyes and a high forehead. The prospective bride wrote and said that she was five feet tall and weighed one hundred pounds, that she had gone to high school for two years, had two brothers and two sisters, and was nineteen years old. Now, one year later, Eddie stood in the arrival lounge at the airport in Toronto with his brother, Jimmy, Aunt Lucy, and Uncle George. He stood with a rolled-up Chinese newspaper under one arm. Yu Ling’s picture he held in one hand, while the other was in his jacket pocket, turning over in his fingers a small pink silk-covered jewellery box. Eddie craned his neck in various directions as he tried to find a face in the crowd that matched the picture in his hand.

Walking from the plane into the crowded airport, Yu Ling Wong had never felt terror like this. It surprised her. She knew that right now, if someone lunged at her out of nowhere, she would not utter a sound. Her legs had not gone rubbery, as she had thought they might. Instead they felt rigid, like sticks, and she could barely move one in front of the other. She clutched her bag so tightly that the strap stretched taut over her shoulder. Yu Ling had never seen so many
lo fons
before, though she was not unfamiliar with them. In Hong Kong she had seen them in their police uniforms, and the ones from India, wearing turbans around their heads.

When she left the plane she followed the stream of passengers. What if they fanned out in different directions? Who would she follow? the large woman with the brightly flower-printed dress who sat beside her and ate the serving of cubed
fruit in a clear, too-sweet syrup that Yu Ling didn’t want? or the middle-aged man with long stringy strands of hair carefully combed over his bald head? For the moment, she felt safe. She stood and blinked under white lights, surrounded and held upright by bodies, barely able to see over their shoulders, staring into chests and armpits, feeling that any moment she would vaporize into a thicket of coats and towering bodies.

Everyone around her seemed confident, had a sense of purpose as they craned their necks, knowing which face to look for, then the sudden recognition – outstretched arms, laughter, tears, and talk. As the crowd thinned, the terror in Yu Ling’s body turned into panic. Then she saw him.
Oh God! He looks just like the pictures. His ears sticking out at right angles. And his chin looks stubborn. He’s shorter than I thought he’d be
. Yu Ling surprised herself with these thoughts. And then she remembered,
This is the man I’m supposed to marry
. When Eddie finally saw her, a slow smile spread across his face.
Oh my! That’s why his lips were closed in every picture
. The teeth were large and misshapen, growing one on top of the other. Her tongue automatically glided over her own perfectly shaped, even teeth.

Eddie nodded in nervous recognition as he started to walk toward Yu Ling. He looked down and noticed that she was wearing shiny black high heels.
I wonder if she’s really five feet tall
. Eddie was dressed in an ill-fitting brown suit. His hand fidgeted with the roll of Chinese newspaper. His brother Jimmy, half a head taller, stood beside him. He was dressed in a brown suit like Eddie’s, loose and ill-fitting. But there was something different about the body inside. You could sense the
lithe muscles, alert, tense, ready to pounce. By the time Yu Ling noticed Jimmy, he had already looked her over, taken her in.

Eddie stood and blinked at Yu Ling. She stood solidly before him, no longer a black-and-white two-dimensional image on a shiny piece of paper. This woman he would marry and live with. Abruptly, Aunt Lucy stepped forward and said, “You must be Wong Yu Ling.” Yu Ling nodded with a frozen smile on her face. “I am Auntie Lucy. This is Uncle George, Eddie, your husband-to-be, and Jimmy, his brother.”

Yu Ling kept smiling as she remembered what one of her girlfriends had said to her, “Whatever you do, don’t let them name you Lucy. In Chinese it sounds too much like mouse, or worse, loosing your shit.”

Eddie took a step closer to Yu Ling. “Was everything all right?” And he handed to her the pink square box from his jacket pocket. Inside was a bracelet made of five gold petals. Each was engraved with a letter to make up the word H.A.P.P.Y.

Yu Ling arrived in Canada on Thursday. She and Eddie would be married on Sunday. Eddie remembered sitting with Lucy in the living room of Mrs. Yee, the matchmaker. She lived on the first floor of a semi-detached house on Dundas Street in Toronto. Eddie could smell the barbecued meat from the restaurant next door. He was surprised by the age of the matchmaker. He had expected an older woman, someone in her fifties. Instead, he and Lucy were greeted at the door by a woman in her mid-thirties. Lucy handed her a box filled with barbecued pork, steamed buns, and egg tarts. As Mrs. Yee led
them down a narrow, windowless hallway, she held a baby, noisily sucking from a bottle. The floor was covered with a long piece of scratched-up linoleum, randomly patterned in gold paisley. The room at the end of the hall was cluttered with cardboard boxes of various sizes and shapes stacked in wobbly looking piles. Lining the window ledge were jars of different sizes and shapes, each filled with shiny beads and sequins. On a smoky pink couch rested a stack of woollen sweaters in the process of being decorated in intricate, iridescent patterns with the beads and sequins. A matching armchair was jammed in a corner, facing the couch. In between was a wooden coffee table.

They sat down and discussed the date of the wedding. “Should we wait a week or two before getting married – so that she has a chance to get settled?” Eddie asked.

“Tsk! Don’t be so naive,” Lucy responded immediately. “You need to get married as soon as possible. You don’t want to give her a chance to change her mind.”

“Oh?”

Mrs. Yee poured three cups of jasmine tea and explained. “Well, there have been cases of brides refusing to go through with the marriage.” Eddie was now listening intently. “I know of one case where the bride ran away.”

Lucy interrupted, “She’s arriving on a Thursday. She can stay with me and Uncle George until Sunday.”

“On Friday she can be fitted for a gown. I’ll ask my cousin to take her. Her English is not bad. If you pay them a little extra, they’ll have the gown ready.”

Lucy nodded with approval. Eddie sighed with relief and sipped his tea. Mrs. Yee continued, “Do you want my oldest girl to be the flower girl? You won’t have to buy a dress. The one she wore at the last ceremony still fits her. I’ll have to buy her new shoes, though. The old ones don’t fit any more.”

“Yes, that would be good,” said Lucy.

“Yes, thank you for all your trouble,” added Eddie, setting his cup on the coffee table.

When Eddie and Lucy got up to leave, he tickled the baby under the chin and tucked a red envelope under its arm. Inside, there was enough money to make the matchmaker’s efforts worth her while and to pay for a child’s new pair of shoes.

For Yu Ling the wedding was a blur. There was a general feeling of mild, but persistent discomfort. It had to do with the wedding gown. The day after Yu Ling arrived, Aunt Lucy and the matchmaker’s cousin took her to Syd Silver’s. The
lo fon
saleslady looked at her and frowned. She turned smartly on her high heels and marched to a special corner of the store. When she returned, she was holding a white gown in one arm and a veil in the other. “This is the smallest dress we have. But don’t worry, I can make it fit.” The matchmaker’s cousin led Yu Ling to the dressing room. When Yu Ling returned, she stood shapeless and helpless in front of a full-length mirror, drowning in mountainous folds of shiny white satin. Stiff circular layers of netting stuck out sharply from her head. The
saleslady smiled sweetly, armed with a box of straight pins. “No problem, dear. We can make this fit.” Her fingers deftly lifted the shoulders of the dress and pinned in new seams. The corners of her mouth were turned down in grim determination as she clutched the back seam to show how a few strategic nips would make the whole thing fit. “We’ll make this look like it was made for you.” Then she folded back a few layers of the netting on Yu Ling’s head. “See how perfectly it frames your face now.” The saleslady stood back slightly to admire her work. She then looked at Aunt Lucy, who nodded with satisfaction.

Two days later, at the wedding reception, Yu Ling stared at the faces of the guests and could only think about the arm-holes feeling too tight and the starched netting chafing at her forehead. The back seam was too thick and rubbed at the base of her neck.

Then there was the clanging of the spoons. It always started out a few at a time, against the glasses filled with Scotch, or soft drink, or tea. Once it started, it never faded, building up decibel by decibel to a crescendo. As Eddie shyly stole a glance at Yu Ling, they rose stiffly, their bodies rigid as they leaned toward each other, their lips barely brushing – the people at the reception taking sadistic, good-natured glee in their awkward embarrassment. There was not a single person who did not know they had never even held hands, much less kissed. And yet strangely, it was this that brought them together, more than the marriage ceremony. Not the kissing, but the clanging
roar of spoons, forcing them into a narrower, deeper corner – and the audience, it was starting to feel like an audience, crowding in on them. Uncle George with his face red and glowing, Aunt Lucy nodding with brisk satisfaction and Jimmy, catching and holding Yu Ling’s stare as he noisily sucked on a fat lobster leg and then roughly wiped his lips, leaving them red and slightly swollen. The sea of faces locked her into position with Eddie, leaving no choice, no escape, her soul cleaving to his, not out of love, but fear.