The Wondrous Woo, Chapter 1

Chapter 1

SCARBOROUGH, 1987

Disney World

About a week before he died, Ba brought home a pile of brochures for Disney World. Sophia and I were already in high school, and Darwin, being 11 (but looking more like 7), was more into his Star Wars action figures and drawing wanted signs for Boba Fett, the bounty hunter than he would have been riding around in circles to dolls singing “It’s a small world”. But Ba had been so excited; when he poured the brochures out of his cracked faux leather briefcase on to the kitchen table, he couldn’t stop smiling while he sat down. Ma stopped her usual frantic cooking and wiped her hands on her thighs while peering over his shoulder.

“What do you think, Ma? Time to take the kids to Florida?”

“Wah! Florida? They don’t need Florida. What? You think money grows on trees?” Ma sniffed.

“C’mon, Ma. We’ve never taken them to Disney World, la. They deserve it,” Ba chided.

This was their routine. Ba got excited about something, and Ma would put up a tough front, but eventually she always gave in. She liked having him work for it, and he liked to work for her. It was cute, but it got embarrassing sometimes.

“We haven’t had a vacation since living in Canada. Time for us to relax. Have some fun, huh?”

“Hrmph,” Ma was not going to give it away that easily.

Sophia and I stared at the pictures of Snow White in front of her castle. Sophia flicked her hair behind her shoulder as if she was way above such things. I imagined what it would be like to be in Disney World together. Ma in her giant sun hat, Ba in his sports socks and sandals, the sullen teenage daughters - me the slightly overweight, ginormous glasses-wearing nerd and the cross-eyed beauty Sophia, and a Darwin dressed in his Jedi Knight robes. The perfect immigrant family living out the Canadian dream by visiting the American one.

"What’s for dinner?” Darwin flew into the kitchen, light saber in hand.

“Dar, we’re going to Dis-Nee!” Ba exclaimed as he tried to wrap his arm around Ma’s waist while she pushed him away.

“Disney?” Darwin looked blankly at the wide-eyed Mickey Mouse. “Will Darth Vader be there?” He picked up one of the brochures and eyed it skeptically.

“I don’t think Disney made Star Wars,” Sophia said in her know-it-all voice. “ They're more into the baby animals - Dumbo, Bambi. And the princesses. Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty.”

“Then forget it. I don’t want to go to some baby place!” He dropped Mickey Mouse back on to the pile and ran out. “Call me when dinner’s ready, Ma!”

Ba looked like he had been trampled on. “What about you girls? Don’t you want to see the princesses? You used to love the princesses.” As he said this, his smile fell.

He looked at me, his eldest, his rock, for support. “Miramar? You, too?” he asked quietly.

“Well, yeah, Ba. We’re too old for that stuff.” I said quietly, regretting that I had to say it.

“Ah, OK. I made a mistake. Only that so many of our neighbours have gone with their families. The travel agent said it’s the great Canadian getaway,” Ba said tunelessly as he swept the colourful brochures into his bag.

Ma turned back to her pots on the stove and stirred in silence. Ba clicked his briefcase closed and went upstairs to change like he always did after work. We didn’t talk about it again.

I watched his back retreat up the stairs and turned back to Sophia.

"Maybe it wouldn't be so bad?" I prodded.

"Yeah, right. Like, I want to go anywhere with you guys." Sophia scoffed.

"You're a creep," I told her. She flipped me the bird.

Ma, oblivious to us, continued to jump from cutting board to stove as if she was in the cooking Olympics.


# # #

In our Canadian lives, the only Chinese things that Ba imparted were Chinese New Year and kung fu films. The former was marked by an extravagant meal cooked on the eve of New Year, lanterns, flowers and stories about Hong Kong. The latter was his passion. He was obsessed with martial arts even though he had only taken a smattering of lessons when he was a kid. He took us every other weekend to Chinatown to watch the films where the annoying sound of pumpkin seeds cracking between teeth lasted through a triple bill.

Other than these two things, everything he wanted for us was Canadian. Ba loved Canada. He described himself as gung-ho for Canada, gung-ho being a word he used every chance he got. It was even almost Chinese, he said.

When we were first in Toronto, Ba enrolled us in skating classes and skiing lessons because that’s what Canadian kids did. He even invited neighbours over for a barbeque when we first moved in to our suburban neighbourhood so we would have some friends right away. In his plaid Bermuda shorts, a neon-coloured polo shirt and his fishing hat on his head, Ba had an easy charm about him that won him friends immediately. He worked hard at enunciating his words, never forgetting to round the “r” and “w”s. I used to hear him practice reading the newspaper out loud at the kitchen table late at night. Our barbeques had things the neighbours had never seen before – pork marinated in some red sauce, skewered squid and shrimp, and a salad mixed in a whole jar of mayonnaise. The neighbours treated these events like a trip into the exotic, and asked us polite questions about China. Is there plumbing there? What’s it like to live with communism? How are they enjoying freedom?

Afterwards, we would analyze the gweilos like some anthropological field study. Some gweilos were very hairy, sometimes even the women. Their children were grass-smeared, ketchup-faced, and jumpy as monkeys, but their parents didn’t seem to mind. They liked to talk about things like the weather, insecticide for the lawns, and the cars they drove. The women loved Loblaws and invited Ma to come to their coupon-clipping coffee meetings.

These were things that gweilos clearly liked, and Sophia, Darwin and I also quickly got a taste of what they didn’t. At school, we overheard them making fun of Ba’s accent, his clothes, and our food. Sometimes we’d hear singsong Chinkychong taunts. Once, a girl walked around imitating Ma and the herky jerky motions of her snow-shovelling. Sophia socked her in the eye, sending the bruised and battered kid scampering home while they chanted, Fight! Fight! A Chink and a White!

We never told Ma or Ba that this promising new subdivision, with its young trees and neat cookie-cutter houses was often transformed into a battleground of who belonged, who didn’t and who would survive childhood. It would have especially broken Ba's heart to know that his new people didn't have much love for his old ones.

For me, my whole body shook during these episodes. I hated that these scrawny white children scared me out of my skin. But they did. It was the worst kind of fear too, the kind that would grow and swallow you head first you let it. I knew this instinctively, but wasn’t sure how to stop it.

Sometimes, I wondered if I was translucent, that people could see right through me, select my most unprotected parts and help themselves like I was an all-you-can-eat buffet. But deep inside, I was sure I was a superhero, a rock star, an avenger for the downtrodden. I was the heroine in all the kung-fu movies I ever watched - the humble, peasant girl who was really a warrior princess. I counted on one day, my true self would break through the layers of the scaredy-cat Miramar Woo.

I think Ba knew this about me. What you know best doesn’t have to be spoken. And I was supposed to be his ally, we were a team. It became clear to me later on, after he was dead, that Disneyland was part of his gung-ho plans for us in the new country. It was what real Canadians did.