Lives of the Family (20 page)

Now she was pregnant for the third time in less than three years of marriage. Dr. Daykin, Carp’s only doctor, whom she
saw in his home office up the street, said he would schedule her for monthly injections of synthetic hormones, which he hoped would prevent a miscarriage. But he was firm that Janet had to do her part: “Go home and relax, put your feet up. Get lots of sleep and rest.”

This time, Janet felt it necessary to speak to her mother-in-law, to tell her what the doctor had advised. Mrs. Lang’s response was swift: “Work still has to get done. Okay, you’re pregnant, but until a baby comes, everybody has to work.”

THE HIGHWAYS OF NORTHERN
Ontario linked villages that had their heyday in the lumber trade at the turn of the century. Now, as before, they also brought travellers seeking the amenities of Ottawa. In this way, Highway 60 introduced old Mr. Lang to Mr. Tam, who ran a café 125 miles from Ottawa in the village of Barry’s Bay, on the shores of Kamaniskeg Lake near Algonquin Park. The two men had first met when Mr. Tam, on his way to Ottawa, had stopped in at the Golden Café. Later, Mr. Tam invited the Langs to the wedding and reception of his son and a girl from Hong Kong. He also invited Janet and Golden, as he wanted Golden to take pictures.

On the wedding day, the Tams’ chartered bus collected guests en route, ending up at Ottawa’s Cathay House restaurant, the only place large enough to accommodate a banquet. Bill Joe, a son of the laundryman Shung Joe, had taken over ownership and management from its original sixteen shareholders. He had not only expanded the restaurant but added a second kitchen dedicated to the Chinese food on the menu and headed by an expert chef from Montreal.

One day, to Janet’s surprise, the Tams’ new daughter-in-law showed up in a highly agitated state at their door in Carp. Janet was alone; the others were on the café side. The girl had hitched a ride on a transport. The truckers all knew “Goldie’s place”: on any given night, as many as five or six drivers chose the Langs’ lot as the place to park their rigs and catch a few hours’ sleep.

The girl said life was so unbearable with her mother-in-law that she’d tried to kill herself by walking into the lake. She pleaded with Janet: “Help me buy a bus ticket to Vancouver.” She had an uncle there who would take her in.

Janet was wide-eyed. “I don’t know where to buy a ticket, or even how to buy one.” The girl explained that it was money she needed; she had only the tips she’d earned in her father-in-law’s café.

At this point, Mr. Lang came through the doorway from the kitchen.

The girl was bemoaning how she felt like a prisoner. She said Mrs. Tam was holding her Hong Kong passport and the jade and gold jewellery that she’d brought with her to Canada. And, she confessed, she was pregnant: “If I don’t escape now, how will I be able to after the baby is born?”

Mr. Lang was outraged. “You cannot run away! Chinese people never do such things!” He dialled the café in Barry’s Bay and spoke to Mr. Tam, who immediately sent his son down to Carp to collect his runaway wife. Janet later heard that the next day, the girl had to be restrained again from throwing herself into the lake.

As her third pregnancy advanced, Janet sought out a neighbour, Greta Armstrong, who had a one-year-old. The
language barrier meant they didn’t get far in conversation, but Janet was interested in learning how to knit. She wanted to have two sets of baby outfits ready. Between Greta and Lillian Reid, who delivered the mail and whose husband drove the Canada Bread truck, Janet was also introduced to quilting and pie-making.

One day in her seventh month, Janet had to make a dash to the toilet. She had passed blood. By the time Dr. Daykin arrived, she was already pushing. He was just in time to preside over the birth of a five-pound baby girl. Clifford Cox obliged with his car and delivered mother and baby to the hospital, half an hour away, in Arnprior. After a week in the incubator, the baby was ready to go home.

Janet’s crying bouts ended with Arlene’s birth, as she now had somebody other than herself to talk to. In time the toddler was charting an indiscriminate course between the living quarters and the café and Janet began to relinquish some of her isolation. When she’d come upon her mother-in-law in conversation with her husband, she would interject: “Is there news?” She persisted, even though Mrs. Lang always gave her the brush-off, telling her it was none of her business.

Janet found her own ways to get news. She read the weekly Chinese newspaper from Toronto that Mr. Lang subscribed to. She made a concerted effort to read the daily
Ottawa Journal
and the weekly
Carp Review
. She’d been excited when Mr. Lang bought a radio, thinking it would speed her learning of English, but to her disappointment, he kept it on the café side to provide music for the customers.

Determined, Janet worked on her English by listening to customers, and eventually, venturing small talk with the
neighbourhood regulars. She knew she’d made progress when she could understand the teasing between Clifford Cox and her father-in-law. Clifford would start to talk insurance, and Mr. Lang, after humouring him briefly, would arbitrarily declare the start of Chinese New Year: “Chinese don’t like to talk about death in the new year!”

Janet became matter-of-fact about the strain of life with her in-laws. These are not bad people, she thought. We’re not really warring with each other; we just don’t have much in common.

BY
1965,
A DECADE INTO
their marriage, Janet and Golden had three children, Arlene, Pearl and David, aged seven, five and two, and Janet was expecting again. That same year, the household suffered a blow that affected the rhythm of daily life much more than the arrival of any baby. Old Mr. Lang suddenly fell ill. For once, Golden, the new owner of a used car, a 1961 Plymouth that he’d bought cheap because it had suspect brakes, didn’t have to rely on a neighbour in a medical emergency. He drove his father to the Arnprior hospital, but a couple of days later, the older man succumbed. The business of running the café left little time for mourning, as the work of four now fell on three.

One day early in her seventh month, Janet’s water broke and, feeling the immediate onset of labour, she told Golden there was no time to drive her to the hospital. Call Dr. Daykin, she said. Tell him to come to the house. Sweating profusely, she lay down on their bed.

Given Janet’s experience with Pearl, Dr. Daykin admitted her to the hospital early with David. Her only memory of Pearl’s birth was a sudden feeling of cold, then of standing on
a cloud. She came to at the sound of a nurse’s voice: “You awake? You were in real danger there for a while!” But David had been a full-term baby and his delivery uneventful.

Old Mrs. Lang came into the bedroom. “The doctor hasn’t come yet?” Not seeing him, she left. Janet considered her mother-in-law’s behaviour to be predictable, worrying less about her daughter-in-law being in labour than about keeping her son away until the baby was born.

Left on her own, Janet finally could no longer fight the urge to push.

The baby slid out, face down.

Waiting for a cry and hearing none, Janet panicked. With as much energy as she could muster, she called out: “Help, help!”

Mrs. Lang returned.

“Turn the baby over,” Janet whimpered. “Hurry.”

The old lady approached, then recoiled: “It’s so dirty. Dirty and slimy!” While Mrs. Lang willingly, even happily, minded her three grandchildren, she refused to change a single diaper. Now she strode out of the room.

Janet struggled to sit up. She reached and grasped the baby’s bottom, but the baby squirted away from her. She reached again, but it only slid farther. On her third try, the baby slipped off the end of the bed. She prayed: If this baby lives, it will be God’s doing. Good luck to us all.

Suddenly the baby let out a cry. Dr. Daykin arrived and when he discovered that Janet had delivered the baby on her own, he shook his head. “You both were lucky,” he said.

Janet thought something else ought to be remembered about Peter’s birth—that he was the first Chinese boy to be born in Carp. David, after all, was born in Arnprior. Janet
would take ownership of other memories in her life. When her daughters, Arlene and Pearl, were old enough to play dress-up, she went into her closet, collected the high-heeled shoes she’d packed from Hong Hong and never worn, and let the girls play with them. Might as well get some enjoyment from them; one could hardly walk around in heels carrying a pot of hot coffee or pumping gas.

WHEN ARLENE WAS A YEAR
from starting high school, Golden and Janet decided they ought to make a move to Ottawa. Carp finally had a new elementary school, built two years earlier to commemorate Canada’s hundredth birthday, but high school students still had to be bussed to Arnprior.

Also influencing Golden’s decision was his sense that the family business held no future for his children. Keeping the café had become more onerous with just three adults, one of them an aging grandmother, and the other two, a busy mother and a father who also held down a part-time job. Golden had parlayed his photography hobby into work making offset plates for the
Carp Review
.

In fact, Golden wanted to try his hand at making a living from photo finishing. The Eastman Kodak company had recently introduced colour film, which was growing in popularity among professional photographers, including the portrait and wedding photographer favoured by Ottawa’s Chinese community, Tsin Van, a Chinese national who had settled in town. Inconveniently for Ottawa-based photographers, the nearest processing facility for colour film was in Toronto. Seeing an opportunity, Golden offered colour processing and, in order to attract clients, provided pickup and delivery
service. He traded his aged Plymouth for a more reliable used car. As his client base grew, he remembered what his father had said when he made the move to Carp: “The money won’t come to you; you have to go to the money.”

So Golden and Janet purchased a modest postwar house in Ottawa on busy Carling Avenue, one of the city’s main west–east arteries. At the same time as they were selling the café and preparing to move, Janet received unexpected news. Her parents had immigrated to New York City, taking with them her two young brothers but leaving her married sisters behind in Hong Kong. They said they wanted to visit Canada. One of the first things she would stock her new kitchen with, Janet decided, was a set of cookbooks. Already, she imagined the spread she would put on for her visiting family, and equally, the disbelief on their faces.

Three generations—Golden’s mother, the couple and their four children—moved in to the Langs’ new house in Ottawa. Golden decided to set up his business, “Golden Colour Lab,” in the basement. Upstairs, in the living room, on the upper shelf of a built-in bookcase, Janet carefully placed
Fook, Luk, Sau
, the set of three figurines she’d brought with her so many years ago from Hong Kong.

Lai-sim Leung and her son, Billy, her grandfather, Harry Yee, and Chun Yee (wife of Lai-sim’s brother, Henry) in front of Harry’s Café and Confectionery, Altona, Manitoba
.
Courtesy Linda Lim

LIVES

ONE CAN IMAGINE
, for a moment, the process of immigration as similar to passage through a sieve that separates two worlds, the homeland from the new world. The family begins with the weight of yearning for a better life and hopes to be left with the essential attributes of success. For many Chinese who immigrated from China or Hong Kong after Canada lifted exclusion, life abroad seemed like an exile, so isolating that they had to keep reminding themselves why they’d come. Adding to the stress of living abroad, the terms by which they’d entered Canada—as sponsored family members or fiancées—worked to both unite and to separate families. To borrow another analogy from the kitchen, sending a family member abroad was like separating an egg white from the yolk. It allowed a family to treat its parts in different ways, but in its memory, they were still one.

THE MOMENT HIS FRIEND
, visiting Hong Kong from Ottawa, departed, the eldest son of the Ha family took out pen and paper to compose a letter to his sister.