Read Online Listen to the Squawking Chicken: When Mother Knows Best, What's a Daughter To Do? A Memoir (Sort Of) by Elaine Lui - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Elaine Lui
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bad clothes and no car, they were disappointed. They thought Dad was beneath her, beneath
them
.
But Ma believed in Dad. She knew he was tenacious and hardworking. She encouraged him to pursue night classes and advance through the government employment system. They were married a year after they met and moved into a modest but comfortable apartment in a good neighborhood. They were young and excited and he had a promising career ahead of him. He earned enough so that Ma didn’t have to work anymore. She had never been happier.
And then family obligations interfered. Dad’s oldestsister, Sue, who was the third child in their family of ten, had immigrated to Canada with her husband. There were fewer opportunities in Hong Kong for his siblings, and many of them were hoping to follow Sue’s lead and build their futures overseas. Sue was now settled in Toronto with three children and ready to help other family members. According to my ma, Dad was Sue’s favorite brother; she wanted him to come over first, even though my parents had no complaints about staying in Hong Kong. They were better positioned than the rest of Dad’s family and weren’t looking to relocate. Ma’s life was leisurely. When Dad went to work, she’d go for dim sum with her friends and then play mah-jong until it was time for dinner. They had a housekeeper. On weekends, they’d leave for romantic getaways on Lantau Island or Macau, just short ferry rides away. Dad had found his princess and she was introducing him to experiences he never thought he’d have. Ma finally found someone she could trust completely, and he was her family now. But Ma claims that Dad’s family, the Luis, believed Sue would be discouraged if Dad turned down her offer, and that she’d be hesitant to extend it to anyone else. Dad felt pressured to follow Sue’s lead to go to Canada and Ma didn’t fight it. In that generation, women followed their husbands and, besides, Ma was no longer contributing financially to their home. In the end, my parents decided to do what was best for the rest of thefamily and packed up to go to Canada, to start over in a new country. “I was just twenty-one years old,” Ma told me in the coffee shop, still stirring her coffee that had long gone cold, the spoon caught in her long red nails spinning around and around.
Ma went from being a pampered housewife in Hong Kong to working two jobs in Canada. Suddenly she was scrubbing dishes at a restaurant, those nails now chipped and softened, and trying to understand English. Nobody showed her to the best table at dim sum and there were no more afternoon mah-jong games. Nobody recognized her at the grocery store. She had nowhere to go but to work and back, and eventually she even took on a second job waiting tables.
But she had reinvented herself before. She was the phoenix who rose from the ashes of her rape. And her phoenix-like characteristics served her well again here, not unlike many immigrants who find themselves in new countries, shocked by a new culture. She was adaptable. She learned how to drive on the other side of the road. She went about creating a new circle of friends with the local Toronto Chinese community, mah-jong their uniting force. (Ma has a radar for mah-jong. She can sniff out a mah-jong player within a fifteen-block radius.) She and her friends would go shopping for North American goods to send back to Hong Kong,writing to friends and family about her new and thoroughly modern Canadian lifestyle. The Squawking Chicken takes over Canada! No matter how hard it actually was, back home they would never know. Back home the Squawking Chicken’s mythology was intact.
I was born two years after my parents’ arrival in Toronto. Ma said she knew I’d be a big baby because one day she ate a bowl of cherries and she could feel a new set of stretch marks extending across her belly.
“From the very beginning, Elaine is always wanting more,” she likes to repeat, whenever
them
.
But Ma believed in Dad. She knew he was tenacious and hardworking. She encouraged him to pursue night classes and advance through the government employment system. They were married a year after they met and moved into a modest but comfortable apartment in a good neighborhood. They were young and excited and he had a promising career ahead of him. He earned enough so that Ma didn’t have to work anymore. She had never been happier.
And then family obligations interfered. Dad’s oldestsister, Sue, who was the third child in their family of ten, had immigrated to Canada with her husband. There were fewer opportunities in Hong Kong for his siblings, and many of them were hoping to follow Sue’s lead and build their futures overseas. Sue was now settled in Toronto with three children and ready to help other family members. According to my ma, Dad was Sue’s favorite brother; she wanted him to come over first, even though my parents had no complaints about staying in Hong Kong. They were better positioned than the rest of Dad’s family and weren’t looking to relocate. Ma’s life was leisurely. When Dad went to work, she’d go for dim sum with her friends and then play mah-jong until it was time for dinner. They had a housekeeper. On weekends, they’d leave for romantic getaways on Lantau Island or Macau, just short ferry rides away. Dad had found his princess and she was introducing him to experiences he never thought he’d have. Ma finally found someone she could trust completely, and he was her family now. But Ma claims that Dad’s family, the Luis, believed Sue would be discouraged if Dad turned down her offer, and that she’d be hesitant to extend it to anyone else. Dad felt pressured to follow Sue’s lead to go to Canada and Ma didn’t fight it. In that generation, women followed their husbands and, besides, Ma was no longer contributing financially to their home. In the end, my parents decided to do what was best for the rest of thefamily and packed up to go to Canada, to start over in a new country. “I was just twenty-one years old,” Ma told me in the coffee shop, still stirring her coffee that had long gone cold, the spoon caught in her long red nails spinning around and around.
Ma went from being a pampered housewife in Hong Kong to working two jobs in Canada. Suddenly she was scrubbing dishes at a restaurant, those nails now chipped and softened, and trying to understand English. Nobody showed her to the best table at dim sum and there were no more afternoon mah-jong games. Nobody recognized her at the grocery store. She had nowhere to go but to work and back, and eventually she even took on a second job waiting tables.
But she had reinvented herself before. She was the phoenix who rose from the ashes of her rape. And her phoenix-like characteristics served her well again here, not unlike many immigrants who find themselves in new countries, shocked by a new culture. She was adaptable. She learned how to drive on the other side of the road. She went about creating a new circle of friends with the local Toronto Chinese community, mah-jong their uniting force. (Ma has a radar for mah-jong. She can sniff out a mah-jong player within a fifteen-block radius.) She and her friends would go shopping for North American goods to send back to Hong Kong,writing to friends and family about her new and thoroughly modern Canadian lifestyle. The Squawking Chicken takes over Canada! No matter how hard it actually was, back home they would never know. Back home the Squawking Chicken’s mythology was intact.
I was born two years after my parents’ arrival in Toronto. Ma said she knew I’d be a big baby because one day she ate a bowl of cherries and she could feel a new set of stretch marks extending across her belly.
“From the very beginning, Elaine is always wanting more,” she likes to repeat, whenever
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