Happy Families by Julia Ma

Author:Julia Ma
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Welbeck Publishing Group Limited

17

1959

Christmas, New Year, Chinese New Year. Then it would be Easter, Whitsun, High Summer and still George hoped to hear the news that Phyllis was better, was well enough to come home, well enough to look after Joanie once more.

In the meantime, there was Ada.

‘Ay yah, who is this?’ exclaimed Ada Fung as she stepped into the kitchen, ‘and what on earth is it doing here?’

Joanie looked up from her colouring book, saw a strange woman shouting in a language she was only just beginning to understand and returned to her green crayon and field of grass.

‘It’s the boss’s daughter,’ Charlie hissed before disappearing into his room with his mother’s overnight bags. He felt the sharp knock of the camp bed against his shin.

A cosy scene greeted him when he returned to the kitchen. The little girl was on his mother’s lap, both of them now bent over the colouring book. The page was turned and they were working on a different picture. A square house with square windows and a triangular roof. Joanie was scratching away with a red crayon at the triangle while Ada swirled a spume of smoke from its chimney.

Ada looked up as Charlie came in, a beatific look on her face.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said.

Charlie had long experience of wiping the smile from his mother’s face.

‘What? You’re here already?’ George was in the doorway still doing up his trousers after his nap. He was used to living in a household of only men.

Ada quickly switched the full beam of her smile back on.

‘Yes, I just got here and met this lovely little dumpling,’ she said.

‘Yes, it’s my daughter,’ said George. ‘She has come back to live with us.’

Later on, Charlie got an earbashing for not sharing this juicy piece of information on the journey from the railway station but for now, Ada cooed.

‘Such a pretty little girl, she looks just like you, doesn’t she?’

Charlie rolled his eyes and left for the lavatory. He’d get a few minutes of peace and quiet there.

*

There was no toilet in the Yau Sum shop back then and each working evening was punctuated by trips up and down the fire escape steps. When it was Charlie’s turn to go, his mother pulled him to one side.

‘She doesn’t speak Cantonese?’ she asked him.

‘No, she doesn’t. She’s been staying with that other family. Don’t worry if you can’t understand her. Even her father can’t make head nor tail of her most of the time. I have to translate. Just make signs and gestures.’

He waggled his hands expressively.

‘If I’d wanted any more children after you, I would have had them myself,’ she said.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he wanted to ask but thought better of it.

It had been just the two of them for a long time since his father died and he loved his mother in a dutiful sort of way. Although that love didn’t blind him to the expert way she held her hand flat when she used to hit him so it would sting as much as it could.

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