The Surprising Power of a Good Dumpling Read online

  ‘A book with a huge heartbeat and so much love infused in every page. The stoic resilience of the Chiu family is inspiring.’ ALICE PUNG, author of Laurinda

  ‘A heartwarming tale of family, food and first love that captures the pain and confusion of grappling with a parent’s mental illness. Wai Chim will make you cry both happy and sad tears.’ JUSTINE LARBALESTIER, author of My Sister Rosa

  ‘I adored this heartfelt story. Anna truly won my heart: at sixteen she’s caught at the crossroads of responsibility and restriction, labouring under heavy expectations that come from others and herself. Wai Chim has employed a deeply immersive storytelling style to explore the unspoken truths within families, trust, cross-cultural relationships, first love and forgiveness with sophistication and unfailing empathy.’ LEANNE HALL, author of Iris and the Tiger

  For family, whatever form that may take

  This book uses the Jyutping romanisation system for Cantonese language, which includes numbers that represent tones (inflections). Like many of her Western-born contemporaries (including myself), Anna Chiu speaks and understands colloquial Cantonese but doesn’t know how to read or write the much more complex Chinese characters. I’ve selected Jyutping as a way of representing her use of her Chinese tongue.

  First published by Allen & Unwin in 2019

  Copyright © Text, Wai Chim 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76063 158 1

  eISBN 978 1 76087 194 9

  For teaching resources, explore www.allenandunwin.com/resources/for-teachers

  Cover and text design by Romina Panetta Edwards

  Cover and title page images: (woman) © ballyscanlon/Getty Images; (noodles and chopsticks) © kathykonkle/iStockPhoto; (soy sauce) © TheTurtleFactory/iStockPhoto; (dumpling) © lukpedclub/iStockPhoto

  Internal images: (noodle bowls) © Yapanda/iStockPhoto; (lanterns) © diane555/iStockPhoto; (wonton soup, dumplings, teapots, fans) © bortonia/iStockPhoto

  Set by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  www.waichim.com

  Contents

  A Note on Phonetics from the Author

  Mum

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  Mum

  Helpful Resources

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  MUM

  Maa1

  I need to tell Anna about the big black dog.

  Anna, my precious daughter. I saw the dog the other day. It was snarling and snapping, chomping through its broken chain, frothing from the mouth.

  Wo wo. Wo wo.

  Anna, I have to tell you about the dog. Big as a car, ferocious. A beast. It barked and it howled, highpitched like a demon.

  Wo wo. Wo wo.

  I need to tell you, Anna. So you will know, and you will understand. Its eyes were red and glowing like the devil.

  Wo wo. Wo wo.

  1

  Jat1

  The shadows of the leaves on the wall bend to the right, like gentle waves coming to shore. It could be a good day.

  When Ma stays in bed, our mornings are a game of fortune-telling where I’m forever looking for signs. The search begins when I try to coax her up with a cup of herbal tea. I shuffle down the hallway, looking for a shadow that looks like a smiley face, waiting for a shock from the doorknob, or trying to miss the creaking board on the floor. These signs tell me something about what to expect behind Ma’s closed door.

  I can’t say if they work or not. There was definitely a day I missed the squeaking board and Ma ended up throwing the tea I brought her against the wall. Bad day. And then there was the time I thought the shadows outside Ma’s bedroom door looked like a kitten playing with a balloon. That day, Ma went out and bought me and Lily new iPhones because she said they were on special. Good day.

  Today’s shadows look promising and the knob doesn’t shock me. The ceramic lid of Ma’s special teacup rattles in my trembling hands as I push the door open. In here, the shadows look menacing; the thin slats of sunlight threaten to break through the barrier of darkness that engulfs the room. She’s still in bed, bad sign. One for one.

  I set the cup down on the bedside table. Ma’s tiny form is lost in a swathe of thick doona so only a matted black nest of her hair pokes out. I know she’s not sleeping. My heart sinks.

  She’s been in bed for two weeks now. It’s not the first time, and I know it won’t be the last, but I still can’t smother the plumes of disappointment when she gets like this. When she stops being our mother.

  Out of habit, I push my glasses up against the bridge of my nose. ‘Ma. Caa4.’ Tea. I can still detect the tinge of hopefulness in my voice.

  She doesn’t stir. A small breeze makes the blinds tremble and the beams of light shiver, but nothing else in the room moves, certainly not my mother.

  ‘Ma.’ I put a hand on the cushioned part that I think is her shoulder and shake gently. Only then does she move and that’s only to flinch my hand away. I stay by the side of the bed waiting for another sign, some acknowledgement that I’m here. But she doesn’t turn.

  As I leave, I shut the door as quietly as I can. This time, I think that maybe the waves in the shadows look more like spikes on a lizard, so not the good sign I thought they were.

  Or maybe they’re just bloody leaves.

  I plaster on a smile and head into the kitchen.

  It’s eerily quiet, just the sound of the dripping tap from the sink. It’s the only plus side to Ma being in her room. My little brother and sister have been on their best behaviour in the mornings since Ma’s been in bed.

  The two of them are crammed together on one side of the tiny dining room table making breakfast. Ma threw out the toaster a while back—toast is too jit6 hei3 (hot air) and the darkened bits cause sore throats she says—so we are eating butter and jam on plain bread. Lily is helping to spread the jam for our five-year-old brother.

  Michael flattens his slice of white bread into a gooey patty and crams it into his mouth, jam and butter smearing all over his pudgy cheeks.

  I grab a paper towel to wipe it off, but it just spreads the sticky mess around. Now, bits of paper towel cling to his face. I shrug and reach for the tub of butter.

  ‘How’s Ma?’ Lily asks.

  ‘Sleeping,’ I say. Lily will know this is a lie, which
makes it easier for me to say. I’m a terrible liar and I don’t like to argue with my sister. While some people argue to be right, Lily argues just to prove the other person wrong.

  ‘Mummy’s sleeping! Shhhhh, don’t wake her up!’ Michael says this way too loudly, so I shush him.

  As expected, Lily is not buying. ‘Okay, so like talking to herself or not talking at all?’ At thirteen, my little sister is more matter-of-fact and sarcastic than I’ve ever been.

  ‘She’s sleeping,’ I say again, and jam the butter knife into the hardened brick. I gouge out a piece, not caring that it looks like somebody has hacked away a piece of flesh from the middle of the block. I do my best to spread it, then give up and just fold the bread over. I eat my buttered bread in two big bites. The lump of butter melts slowly on the roof of my mouth.

  ‘If Mummy’s sleeping again, are you taking me to school, ze2 ze2?’ Michael asks me, a snarl of paper towel still stuck to the corner of his mouth. His bowl haircut and perfect bangs make his brown eyes look even bigger. He’s so cute, sometimes it hurts my heart.

  ‘Lily is going to have to take you today.’

  Lily’s outraged. ‘I have to meet with my CT partners before our presentation. You can drop him on your way.’ CT stands for Communications Theatre; calling it ‘drama’ is too pedestrian for the students at Montgomery High.

  ‘You start at nine, Lily. If you get going soon, you won’t be late,’ I say.

  ‘Uuuuuugh!’ Lily’s complaining is overly dramatic, but it doesn’t faze me. She is up and running to our room, her sticky plate still on the table. I sigh and pick up my hardly-used plate along with hers.

  I leave the dishes in the sink and wet another paper towel in a final attempt to clean my brother’s face. He sits there and lets me scrape things off with my chewed-down-to-the-nub nails.

  ‘Baba didn’t come home last night.’ My brother frowns.

  ‘I know. Things must have been busy at the restaurant,’ I say. I’ve noticed this has been happening whenever Ma stays in bed, but I keep this to myself.

  Michael reaches up to touch my face. ‘Look, Anna! An eyelash. You have to make a wish.’

  I smile and comply, closing my eyes and blowing on his fingertip, wishing for Ma to be out of bed, for Baba to be home.

  For things to just be normal.

  We smile at each other as the eyelash disappears and Michael looks very pleased with himself.

  ‘Okay, it’s already past eight. Time to get ready for school,’ I tell him.

  ‘But I need Mummy or Baba to sign my permission form.’ He waves a piece of paper under my nose. ‘Our librarian, Miss Holloway, is taking us to an art camp! But she says I have to get my parents to sign it or I’ll miss out. Can’t we just wake Mummy up?’

  I remember Ma’s shape in the bed, all bundled up and still. The last thing I want is for Michael to see her that way. ‘Tell you what, you go get ready, and I’ll see if I can wake her up,’ I say.

  His whole face brightens and the ache in my chest is gone in an instant.

  ‘Are we going yet?’ Lily emerges from our bedroom, already dressed. She has pulled her hair back in a messy ponytail. Her rail-thin body is almost comical with her oversized backpack hanging extra low and bouncing against her bottom. A water bottle dangles from a carabiner clipped to the side. ‘Hurry up, squirt. We have to go,’ she calls after Michael’s retreating form.

  She plonks herself down, backpack and all, onto one of our metal folding chairs. The water bottle makes a loud thud as it hits the chair, but she doesn’t notice, just crosses her arms and stares at me.

  ‘She’s not going to sign the form, you know.’ The know-it-all arch of her eyebrow is so perfect, I wonder if she’s practised it before.

  ‘I know.’ I snatch a pen from the kitchen drawer and scrawl on the line on the form. It’s not the first time I’ve forged Ma’s signature, and I’m sure Lily’s done it a million times too. But we have an unspoken agreement between us: we protect Michael from Ma’s tendencies, the bad ones at least, while we can.

  Lily lets out a not-so-subtle huff behind me. ‘You know, if I get another lecture from Lucy, I’m going to tell her it’s my sister’s fault. I’m not taking the fall.’

  ‘Sure, whatever. And don’t call your teachers by their first name.’

  I place the butter in a used Ziploc bag and put it back in the freezer, where Ma insists on keeping it. The bread bag I tie up tightly and then knot it up in another plastic bag and stick it in the freezer. Everything in our house is tied up in plastic bags of some kind: all our food containers, cleaning supplies, even the picture frames on the shelves are sealed in clear plastic. Ma hates dust but she doesn’t like dusting, so every few weeks, she just replaces the plastic bags because they’re cheap. Any eco-warrior would be terrified stepping into our house, but no one ever comes over, so there’s no worry.

  ‘Lucy tells us to call her that,’ Lily retorts. ‘She says that children are human beings and deserve to be treated with the same respect as adults, so I can express myself to my full potential.’

  I try not to roll my eyes. Thanks to a scholarship, Lily attends a rich private school just outside of Glebe. With a natural penchant for melodrama, Lily’s sounding more and more like her well-off peers. I just hope they don’t rub off too much.

  ‘Ze2 ze2, I can’t find my other sock,’ Michael calls out to me from his bedroom.

  ‘Do you want me to help you?’

  ‘No!’ Michael is going through a phase of being very particular about his privacy, especially with his sisters. He won’t let us in when he’s dressing or bathing, and will only let Mummy see him naked, which is making things harder for me and Lily as Ma’s good moods are getting fewer and fewer. I miss the little guy who runs around naked with his half-done-up nappy trailing behind him.

  Lily rolls her eyes again. ‘Oh gosh! I’m never going to get to school.’

  ‘Be quiet.’ I call through the closed door, ‘Michael, you have five seconds to come out of there or I’m coming in!’

  ‘Noooo!’ The door bangs open and Michael is standing there in his school shirt and trousers, a striped sports sock on one foot and a grey knee-high sock on the other. I walk into his bedroom and get on my hands and knees to look.

  I snatch at what I hope is a grey sock but it turns out to just be a giant dust bunny under the bed. Yuck. If Ma saw this, she’d lose it.

  ‘Anna, I need my socks.’ Michael stamps his feet.

  ‘Aannaaaaaaa! I have to go!’ Lily’s screeching makes me wince.

  ‘Sorry, squirt, no time.’ I beckon him over and fold the knee-high sock over a few times to try to even the two out.

  I help Michael into his shoes and then put on his backpack. It’s almost as big as Lily’s, and he bends backwards slightly from the weight. ‘And good news, Ma signed your slip!’ I wave it in front of him.

  He frowns as he takes it from me. ‘Really? But you said she was asleep.’

  ‘Ah, she was. But she woke up for a bit and then went straight back to bed. I think she’s really tired.’ My lying is pathetic and isn’t fooling anyone, not even a five year old. But there’s no time to argue. I grab my own schoolbag, an over-the-shoulder messenger bag that I bought with the money I saved from the one- and-only paid babysitting gig I ever had, before Ma forbade me to babysit at strangers’ houses. ‘How do I know their house is safe? They could do drugs or sell the guns.’ The woman paying me to babysit worked at the Woolies down the road and was hoping to pick up an extra shift on the public holiday. But there was no use pointing this out to Ma.

  Although these days, it doesn’t seem to matter. She’s so often in bed.

  As I leave for school, I pause by Ma’s door but don’t go in. The shadows are gone now. At least for today, there are no more signs to consider.

  2

  Ji6

  I’ve been dreading today. It’s my Pathways Advisement session, where students are made to talk about their future and what they’re g
oing to do with their lives. Pathways is something the school has been really pushing, and this year it’s a requirement for all Year Elevens to check in by the end of first term, so they can ‘see how we’re going’.

  I go to the office for my appointment. There are three other girls already waiting, taking up the bench so I have to kind of stand and lean awkwardly beside them. I don’t know who they are but I’m pretty sure they’re Year Twelves. They, of course, pretend not to see me.

  ‘Oh my gosh, I literally stayed up studying allllll night. I didn’t sleep at all. I’d be dead right now if it weren’t for this coffee.’ One girl chugs her venti Starbucks.

  ‘Girl, you’re crazy to be doing fourteen units this year,’ another girl chimes in. ‘Why didn’t you do it last year? Year Eleven doesn’t count!’

  ‘I know, uggggh, I’m so stupid,’ Venti Coffee moans. ‘Ugh. If I don’t get a 99.7 ATAR, I’m going to kill myself.’

  I cast my head down and pretend to rub at a spot on my uniform. These girls are pretty much standard Shore Lakes High Asians—smart overachievers who take all the extension classes and get 99.99s on their ATARs. I know the type, with their tiger mums, classical piano training and MD dreams.

  ‘You know, these days it’s sooooo competitive.’ One of the other girls tosses her silky black hair. ‘Like, you could get a 99.5 and still not get into the course you want. Like, what gives?’ She puckers her Insta-perfect lips and I rub harder at the non-existent spot.

  ‘Oh my gosh, can you imagine? You’d end up, like, a real estate agent or have to be a middle-aged barista or something.’

  What’s wrong with that? I wonder, but another part of me is squirming because I know what a huge disappointment it would be if I ever said that to my own Chinese family.

  ‘Anna Chiu?’ I’m spared further ATAR dramas when Miss Kennedy calls me into her office.

  ‘Anna, please have a seat.’

  Miss Kennedy’s office is all white, clean and bright, accented with pastel stationery from kikki.K. I know the brand because I’ve spent too much time at Westfield staring at the pristine notebooks and matching accessories. I have never lusted after anything like I have over fairy-floss-pink paperclips in a matching bird’s nest dispenser.