The Year of Finding Memory by Judy Fong Bates Read Free Book Online Page A

old lady, in the village, she said people weren’t surprised when my father came back from Canada to marry my mother. What do you think she meant by that?” I asked Michael.
    “Probably nothing,” he said and put down his pen. “Why?”
    “It was her tone, intimating that there was something between my parents before they were married.”
    “Well, maybe there was.”
    “You don’t get it,” I said. My voice started to rise. “My parents didn’t like each other. They married each other for practical reasons. It was like a business transaction.” I suddenly felt exasperated, the words coming out sharper than I had intended. I was being unfair, of course, expecting my husband to read my thoughts. “Never mind …,” I muttered in a weak attempt at an apology.
    The woman’s words had attached themselves to my brain, and I couldn’t shake them. My parents, as far as I could see, were the most unlikely couple on the face of this earth, without so much as a hint of romance between them. But if that old woman’s words were true, I would have to believe that at one time my mother and father had been attracted to each other, might even have liked each other. “Impossible,” I said to myself.

    I met my father for the first time on a warm day in May. He was the oldest person I had ever seen. Fong Wah Yent had adeeply wrinkled face; the skin around his neck was lined and loose; a few wispy, white hairs grew on the top of his shiny, bald head; a pair of wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. He was a slight man, not much taller than my mother, who was less than five feet. He wore a suit that had obviously belonged to someone larger. The sleeves had been altered to fit his arm length, but the shoulders and the body of the jacket overwhelmed him.
    My mother and I had arrived in Toronto the day before. An aunt and uncle from our village met us at the airport, and we spent the night with them at their house on Gerrard Street. The next day, my father came to the city by bus to take us back with him to the small town where he operated his hand laundry.
    My parents had not seen each other for more than five years, and now my mother and I were in a strange country, inside a strange house, her hand holding mine in a firm grip. When my father entered the room, she stood up from the sofa where we were sitting beside each other. My parents spoke each other’s names, but they did not touch. My father turned to me and said in a quiet, gentle voice, “A nui, a sai nui , my daughter, my little daughter.” His eyes were wet. I looked down, afraid to meet the gaze of this strange man. He reached over and rested his hand on my cheek. His calloused palm felt rough against my face.
    Later that afternoon he wrestled with our massive suitcase while we followed him onto a bus that would take us to Allandale, now a part of Barrie, Ontario. I sat between the window and my mother; my father sat across the aisle fromus. My mother had her arm hooked through the handle of her purse. The bus drove past cows, horses and barns, but when I pointed them out to her, she wasn’t interested. Every so often I heard her sigh. When I glanced over, she was biting her lower lip and twisting a handkerchief in her lap.
    My father unlocked the door to his hand laundry, which occupied the first floor of a rundown building near a set of railroad tracks. The inside was dark. He reached up and pulled a string, turning on a bare light bulb attached to the ceiling. My mother and I would live with my father less than a year in this laundry, yet in my mind’s eye I see it as plainly as if I was still there.
    Just inside the front door, to separate the customers from the work area, was a handmade, wooden counter with a hinged top. My father lifted it and folded it back so my mother and I could walk through. We passed shelves of neatly stacked, finished laundry wrapped in brown paper, tied with string. My mother held my hand as we followed my father and the suitcase