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 B
Authors: Elaine Lui
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people ask her about how big I was as a baby. “She make my stomach so ugly.”
Ma delivered me at 1:23 a.m. under the sign of the Ox. Ma said: “What’s an ox usually doing at one o’clock in the morning? Sleeping, right?” Toronto is twelve hours behind Hong Kong. Had I been born in Hong Kong, it would have been the middle of the day, when an ox is expected to be hard at work in the fields. Ma took this opportunity to credit herself, again, for giving me an easy life, as if she had always planned my nocturnal birth.
During this time, the rest of Dad’s family started settling in Canada. His parents were among the last to arrive. They came shortly after I was born. Ma recalls that there was a family summit to decide where my grandparents would live.Everyone had an excuse about why it wasn’t convenient for them to take in my grandparents until they were able to secure permanent residency. In the end, the responsibility fell to my parents, and they moved out of their cozy apartment and bought a bigger house to accommodate the older generation. Filial Piety was at work once again. Ma believed it was their duty to take them in.
So Ma went back to work when I was just a few months old. By then, she was working full-time at a hardware store and then driving downtown to wait tables at a hotel. She’d leave me with Dad’s parents and return home well after I’d been put to bed. The new house was an ambitious purchase. Dad had to put off his studies to make enough hours in the accounting department of a computer company so that they could keep up with the mortgage payments. He was frustrated that his life plans were constantly being rerouted because of the demands of his family. Ma was the one, between them, who rationalized their decisions, who refused to indulge in bitterness and instead kept them focused. She found herself in a familiar position. Just as when she was a young girl, she was looking after everyone else and feeling unappreciated.
And it turns out she was an easy target. The Squawking Chicken was the Squawking Chicken: loud, outspoken, honest. She was not like the other Lui wives and daughters, relegated to the corners of the room while the men stayed in the center. The Squawking Chicken belonged in the center too. But the Luis were intimidated by Ma’s behavior and style of communication. Ma came to realize, too late, that they lacked confidence and were therefore threatened by hers. They misinterpreted her volume for arrogance. Their insecurities prevented them from seeing that Ma was always well intentioned. It’s just that they couldn’t get past the voice . . . and the nails.
One night Ma was summoned into her living room after she’d come home from work, tired and hungry, to answer to charges from my uncle. My grandparents were upset that they were being forced to babysit me, and Ma’s attitude wasn’t grateful enough. She was ordered to kneel and apologize. In her own home, a home she struggled to pay for, a home that she bought so that her in-laws could be comfortable, even though it meant taking time away from me, her only child. At first, Ma refused. But she had no support. Because Dad could not act. Shamed by what he believed were his own inadequacies, and unable to overcome his insecurity and weakness—the same characteristics he shared with his kin—he was, then, a man incapable of defending his wife. He stayed in the basement, smoking, hating himselfbut paralyzed by fear. Without an ally, without anyone to have her back, the Squawking Chicken had no choice but to drop to her knees. Dad’s inaction rendered Ma powerless. For the second time in her life, she’d been betrayed by family.
My parents’ marriage deteriorated after that. For the next six years, the Squawking Chicken was silenced. Until one night, after a brutal fight with Dad, she realized it was time to set herself on fire again. The phoenix was molting. She had given his family everything and there was nothing
Ma delivered me at 1:23 a.m. under the sign of the Ox. Ma said: “What’s an ox usually doing at one o’clock in the morning? Sleeping, right?” Toronto is twelve hours behind Hong Kong. Had I been born in Hong Kong, it would have been the middle of the day, when an ox is expected to be hard at work in the fields. Ma took this opportunity to credit herself, again, for giving me an easy life, as if she had always planned my nocturnal birth.
During this time, the rest of Dad’s family started settling in Canada. His parents were among the last to arrive. They came shortly after I was born. Ma recalls that there was a family summit to decide where my grandparents would live.Everyone had an excuse about why it wasn’t convenient for them to take in my grandparents until they were able to secure permanent residency. In the end, the responsibility fell to my parents, and they moved out of their cozy apartment and bought a bigger house to accommodate the older generation. Filial Piety was at work once again. Ma believed it was their duty to take them in.
So Ma went back to work when I was just a few months old. By then, she was working full-time at a hardware store and then driving downtown to wait tables at a hotel. She’d leave me with Dad’s parents and return home well after I’d been put to bed. The new house was an ambitious purchase. Dad had to put off his studies to make enough hours in the accounting department of a computer company so that they could keep up with the mortgage payments. He was frustrated that his life plans were constantly being rerouted because of the demands of his family. Ma was the one, between them, who rationalized their decisions, who refused to indulge in bitterness and instead kept them focused. She found herself in a familiar position. Just as when she was a young girl, she was looking after everyone else and feeling unappreciated.
And it turns out she was an easy target. The Squawking Chicken was the Squawking Chicken: loud, outspoken, honest. She was not like the other Lui wives and daughters, relegated to the corners of the room while the men stayed in the center. The Squawking Chicken belonged in the center too. But the Luis were intimidated by Ma’s behavior and style of communication. Ma came to realize, too late, that they lacked confidence and were therefore threatened by hers. They misinterpreted her volume for arrogance. Their insecurities prevented them from seeing that Ma was always well intentioned. It’s just that they couldn’t get past the voice . . . and the nails.
One night Ma was summoned into her living room after she’d come home from work, tired and hungry, to answer to charges from my uncle. My grandparents were upset that they were being forced to babysit me, and Ma’s attitude wasn’t grateful enough. She was ordered to kneel and apologize. In her own home, a home she struggled to pay for, a home that she bought so that her in-laws could be comfortable, even though it meant taking time away from me, her only child. At first, Ma refused. But she had no support. Because Dad could not act. Shamed by what he believed were his own inadequacies, and unable to overcome his insecurity and weakness—the same characteristics he shared with his kin—he was, then, a man incapable of defending his wife. He stayed in the basement, smoking, hating himselfbut paralyzed by fear. Without an ally, without anyone to have her back, the Squawking Chicken had no choice but to drop to her knees. Dad’s inaction rendered Ma powerless. For the second time in her life, she’d been betrayed by family.
My parents’ marriage deteriorated after that. For the next six years, the Squawking Chicken was silenced. Until one night, after a brutal fight with Dad, she realized it was time to set herself on fire again. The phoenix was molting. She had given his family everything and there was nothing
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