in the grocery store caught fire and the entire building burned down.
For almost as long as Helen could remember, depression hovered over her mother. Nobody actually said so; she guessed as much because her mother sometimes took to her bed midday.
“I don’t have the energy,” Sarah would sigh. She said it in response to nothing in particular; it was as if she’d accepted that anything of interest in her life had already happened.
WHEN HELEN WAS old enough to beg a story about her parents’ wedding day, her mother allowed that she and her father had been married in a church. She added ruefully, “There were no guests at our wedding.” Helen’s mother wouldn’t acknowledge the existence of family on her side, apart from her sister Eva. The moment Sarah Randall announced her decision to marry Nee Ling, her widowed mother and all but one of her three sisters disowned her.
Sarah Randall and Nee Ling married in 1922. She was twenty-two, he was twenty-seven. She turned their first home, the couple of rooms above a confectionery store on the corner of Somerset and Russell, into their own cozy place. She did all the work herself, the plastering and painting, and the hanging of wallpaper and pictures.
Then, in the first year of their marriage, the couple suffered a tragedy. Soon after giving birth to David, Sarah had an attack of appendicitis. While she recovered in hospital from the appendectomy, Nee decided he’d surprise his wife: to welcome her home, he’d fatten up their baby.
In China, fat equalled prosperity.
To Chinese who’d come to Canada as children, milk loomed like the bogeyman of their earliest memories. Neville Poy dreaded the morning arrival of the glass bottles on the stoop of their row house where his family lived on Sussex Street. His mother, Ethel, pleased at the sight of the clotted cream pushing the paper cork above the lip of the bottle top, would extract the cream, and as if it were a dose of medicine, would feed it to her two young children. Knowing they turned up their noses at drinking milk by the glass, she made it the extra ingredient in her cooking, pouring it liberally even into baked Virginia ham.
To Nee’s palate, milk had a repugnant taste and smell. However, when it came to his trade of French cuisine, milk, butter and cream were essential. If milk was good for a baby, Nee surmised that cream was better. He ended up rushing David to hospital. The baby’s bloated stomach was pumped, but he did not survive. Sarah came home to an empty baby basinette.
Aunt Eva said her sister rallied after David’s death, that she had become pregnant again almost immediately and feltfortunate when June was born. Then the baby started having seizures. Eva kept telling her sister that June had a congenital problem, that she was born mentally handicapped, that seizures were part of it. But Sarah didn’t agree. “I blame myself,” she’d always say. It had happened in winter. She had the baby in her arms and went to climb aboard the streetcar. She slipped on the ice and down they both went, June’s head catching the side of the streetcar. The epileptic fits began soon afterward.
BY APPEARANCES ALONE , Sarah and Nee Ling made an odd pairing. As a rule, men are the taller of a couple; she had six or seven inches on him in her stocking feet. Not only was theirs an interracial marriage between a Chinese men and a non-Chinese woman, but even more unusual, Sarah’s origins were English. The local Chinese often said, “French girls go for the Chinese.” As they understood it, such a girl probably saw a relationship with a Chinese man as having decent odds for success, maybe better than if she threw her lot in with a French Canadian. Chinese men had a strong work ethic and were sure to be savers. And any with the ambition to start a laundry or a café always lived and worked on the premises, so she’d have a roof over her head.
Sarah Randall, the daughter of a lineman for the Ottawa Hydro and
For almost as long as Helen could remember, depression hovered over her mother. Nobody actually said so; she guessed as much because her mother sometimes took to her bed midday.
“I don’t have the energy,” Sarah would sigh. She said it in response to nothing in particular; it was as if she’d accepted that anything of interest in her life had already happened.
WHEN HELEN WAS old enough to beg a story about her parents’ wedding day, her mother allowed that she and her father had been married in a church. She added ruefully, “There were no guests at our wedding.” Helen’s mother wouldn’t acknowledge the existence of family on her side, apart from her sister Eva. The moment Sarah Randall announced her decision to marry Nee Ling, her widowed mother and all but one of her three sisters disowned her.
Sarah Randall and Nee Ling married in 1922. She was twenty-two, he was twenty-seven. She turned their first home, the couple of rooms above a confectionery store on the corner of Somerset and Russell, into their own cozy place. She did all the work herself, the plastering and painting, and the hanging of wallpaper and pictures.
Then, in the first year of their marriage, the couple suffered a tragedy. Soon after giving birth to David, Sarah had an attack of appendicitis. While she recovered in hospital from the appendectomy, Nee decided he’d surprise his wife: to welcome her home, he’d fatten up their baby.
In China, fat equalled prosperity.
To Chinese who’d come to Canada as children, milk loomed like the bogeyman of their earliest memories. Neville Poy dreaded the morning arrival of the glass bottles on the stoop of their row house where his family lived on Sussex Street. His mother, Ethel, pleased at the sight of the clotted cream pushing the paper cork above the lip of the bottle top, would extract the cream, and as if it were a dose of medicine, would feed it to her two young children. Knowing they turned up their noses at drinking milk by the glass, she made it the extra ingredient in her cooking, pouring it liberally even into baked Virginia ham.
To Nee’s palate, milk had a repugnant taste and smell. However, when it came to his trade of French cuisine, milk, butter and cream were essential. If milk was good for a baby, Nee surmised that cream was better. He ended up rushing David to hospital. The baby’s bloated stomach was pumped, but he did not survive. Sarah came home to an empty baby basinette.
Aunt Eva said her sister rallied after David’s death, that she had become pregnant again almost immediately and feltfortunate when June was born. Then the baby started having seizures. Eva kept telling her sister that June had a congenital problem, that she was born mentally handicapped, that seizures were part of it. But Sarah didn’t agree. “I blame myself,” she’d always say. It had happened in winter. She had the baby in her arms and went to climb aboard the streetcar. She slipped on the ice and down they both went, June’s head catching the side of the streetcar. The epileptic fits began soon afterward.
BY APPEARANCES ALONE , Sarah and Nee Ling made an odd pairing. As a rule, men are the taller of a couple; she had six or seven inches on him in her stocking feet. Not only was theirs an interracial marriage between a Chinese men and a non-Chinese woman, but even more unusual, Sarah’s origins were English. The local Chinese often said, “French girls go for the Chinese.” As they understood it, such a girl probably saw a relationship with a Chinese man as having decent odds for success, maybe better than if she threw her lot in with a French Canadian. Chinese men had a strong work ethic and were sure to be savers. And any with the ambition to start a laundry or a café always lived and worked on the premises, so she’d have a roof over her head.
Sarah Randall, the daughter of a lineman for the Ottawa Hydro and
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