Jen Sookfong Lee - The Better Mother

ALSO BY
JEN SOOKFONG LEE

THE END OF EAST
SHELTER

PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF CANADA

Copyright 2011 Jen Sookfong Lee

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2011 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited.

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Knopf Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Lee, Jen Sookfong
The better mother / Jen Sookfong Lee.

Issued also in an electronic format.

eISBN: 978-0-307-39952-6

I. Title.

PS8623.E442B48 2011 C813.6 C2010-907206-5

v3.1

For Annelise

D anny is eight years old and skinny, a boy who fingers his kneecaps every night, wondering if the sharp bones will pierce through his skin if he gets any taller. Its summertime, and his black hairthick and straight and glued in place with three generous dollops of Brylcreemshines in the sunlight as he bobs and darts through late-afternoon crowds on Pender Street. A white woman in a greyish-pink straw hat (the colour Danny imagines is called dusty rose) stops to stare, her green eyes lingering over his cut-off jean shorts. He tugs at his almost-outgrown, striped T-shirt, but soon recovers; its not he who should feel out of place, but this knobbly-faced woman. She is, he thinks, the kind of person his father complains about, the kind who comes down to Chinatown on weekends and holidays to gawk at the mysterious dried seahorses in the herbalists window, taking in the stacks of Chinese newspapers on the street corners, the lined and tanned men leaning against the buildings, their fingernails yellow and split from cigarettes and weekday work.

Danny grins sweetly at this woman until she tentatively smiles back. She isnt to blame for being one of the many tourists who troop through the neighbourhood and hog all the parking spots big enough to fit his parents boat of a car. Satisfied, he continues weaving between people until he spies his fathers favourite caf. Standing at the counter inside, he can see, behind glass, the rows and rows of apple tarts, their flaky tops sprinkled with sugar. But he knows that looking isnt any use. Money, it seems, is always tight and the familys curio shop always on the verge of closing. Besides, he had lunch at home with his mother and little sister just four hours ago: a bowl of bland but filling rice, that leafy green he can never remember the name of, a steamed pork patty dotted with the pickled snow cabbage he hates.

He waves at Mr. Gin behind the counter. One pack of Sweet Caps, please.

Sure thing, Danny. Hows your dad?

Danny shrugs. Same as always.

Mr. Gin nods. I bet all these tourists are making him grumpy, eh? All right then, here you go. He hands over the pack of cigarettes.

Danny digs in his pocket for the coins his father gave him, but its empty. He checks his back pocketsnothing. Bending down, he searches his socks and the insides of his shoesstill nothing. He stands up and stares at Mr. Gin.

I must have lost the money.

Dont worry, Danny. The cigarettes will be here. You can come back later.

No. Dad will be so mad! He always says that I have holes in my head.

Youll have to tell him the truth. Here, why dont I give you this apple tart to make you feel a little better.

But Danny is gone, blindly rushing down Pender Street, spooking the live chickens on display in their cages. They flap their wings, peck at their own toes in anger. Maybe if he runs fast enough, hell escape Chinatown altogether and never have to face his father again. Or watch his mother wipe away stray rice grains with her thin, mud-coloured sleeves. Danny makes a tight right turn into an alley. The trail of a womans voice shouting in Chinese follows him: Slow down, little boy! Youll knock down one of my customers. Youll get it then, I tell you!

He slips into the shadows, hears the click and clack of mah-jong tiles from the third-floor windows echoing off the tall buildings. The air is damp, as if all the rain that fell during the spring has been trapped in the cracks between bricks and uncovered garbage cans, and sharpens the smell of barbecued pork and overripe fruit that stings the insides of his nostrils. He slows to a walk, keeping one hand on the exterior wall of the building on his left so he can trace the roughness with his fingertips, feel the mortar crumbling as he passes. Sometimes he thinks that he could walk all these back streets with his eyes closed, using the texture of the bricks and rhythm of his footsteps to find his way to the shopor somewhere else far, far away.

The alleys are the only places left where it is almost always silent. Sunlight still filters through the power lines, but it is a very particular light, striped with darkness, sharply defined by the shadows it tries to burn away. Through the half-gloom, he sees a woman leaning against a wall, a line of smoke with a familiar smell rising from her mouth and floating into the air.

He creeps toward her. With every step, more and more of her comes into focus. The lines around her legs begin to sharpen. She is wearing fishnet stockings and red T-strap heels. Her hair is jet black like his, but hers seems to absorb light, not reflect it, and her head is like a storm cloud, all heavy and moody and maybe dangerous. A green robe hangs around her, hastily tied and partially covering her black satin one-piece. She crosses her left leg over her right, and a row of green sequins around the tops of her thighs catches a wayward beam of light.

When she turns to look at him his stomach lurches. Instantly, he is aware of the toothpaste stains on his shirt, his mismatched socks, even the tiny hole over the baby toe on his right shoe. She is everything beautiful that he has ever imagined, more beautiful than Lana Turner or Rita Hayworth or even the stars in the night sky. This woman stands before him, breathing and shifting, more real than any actress or far-off constellation, as real as his own mother, but so, so much more dazzling. She would never pin up her hair without looking in a mirror or wear her husbands old corduroys rolled up to her knees because theyre still too good to throw away. For a second, he sees his mother in that same green and black outfit, but he realizes she would still be the mother he has always known, just squeezed into clothes she has no business wearing. A familiar surge of disappointment rolls through his chest.

He imagines running down the alley and resting his cheek against the smooth satin barely covering this womans body; he is sure her muscles wont give, that there will be no extra rolls padding her belly. But he stands motionless, hoping that he will somehow melt into the grime and slick of the alley and that this perfect creatureso powdered, so fleshywill not see him and the telltale signs of his unsophisticated life.