1a

"May I have this dance?" The man's engrish was awful but Barbara gave him points for trying. At least he had more daam than the rest of the boys standing around ogling her and her cousins. She grabbed his hand and led the way to the dance floor.

The four person band blared out a nice Frank Sinatra tune. She jigged, she jagged, she did all the moves she had been practicing in her room all week and it seemed to do the trick. The eyes behind the glasses seemed to twinkle at her under the flashing lights of the nightclub. She smiled broadly at him but he didn't smile back; it was more of a smirk.

Va da hau queu she thought to herself. Not very good looking. His glasses were on the thick side; and his mouth was sort of meh, crooked. Ah, that explained the reluctance to smile.

After the dance was over, he led the way back to her group, bought a round of drinks for her friends, and left. Barbara looked after him and asked Jimmy, the boy her sister was dating, who that guy was. "Yee sze Wong Er Liu" Jimmy replied in Shanghainese even though they were in a nightclub in Hong Kong. She raised her eyebrows in surprise. "Mm muh Ying Wen ming tze?" No English name? A shake of the head was her reply.

In the 1950's in Hong Kong, most of the younger generated sported English names. Most names were taken from names of movie stars but since the movies usually took 3-5 years in being distributed in Hong Kong, the names taken were from yesterday's stars. There were lots of Bettys after Betty Grable, and Rosalinds after Rosalind Russell. Judys after Judy Garland, and Joans after Joan Crawford.

To have no English equivalent for his name indicated to Barbara, a sense of identity that needed no borrowing from others for justification. She smiled. Then promptly forgot him.

[330 words] to be continued

Prologue

She glanced over to make sure that her husband's ashes were still in her daughter's arms. Yes, there it was, encased in the cheapest case her daughters would allow. If it'd been up to her, the ashes would've been in a sack - he doesn't deserve such niceties as a box.

*Harumph*

Barbara's youngest daughter looked at her with concern. Let her look. Ngo hung bei nei tsai lyung meh? You'd think I'd let you pity me? She harumphed again.

Anger drenched Barbara again and again with each thought that carried her husband's name. Anger would make her snarl and she'd catch herself with the snarl at the back of her throat, ready to pounce like the tiger she felt like. She'd catch herself and force the snarl back, back, back into her stomach where the snarl would rumble, readying itself to pounce again at the next thought.

"Nei toh ngoh ah, Mommy?" It's strange that both her daughters still called her that occasionally. Almost as if they still want her to take care of them. *Harumph* It's her that had been wronged, not them! The snarl leapt up her throat again and she swallowed it down. Shaking her head, she indicated that it was an upset stomach that was rumbling, not hunger. Her eldest nodded in understanding.

Her anger almost erupted again. Nei tsee meh! What do you know! Were you the one he lied to for 40 years? No! Were you the one he cheated on for 20 years with a woman half his age? No! You were only the one he lied to that ONE time you asked. *Harumph*

Her youngest shifted in the seat furthest away from her. The three of them had managed to secure the four seats in the middle of the jumbo jet but her youngest somehow in her magical way, had ensured that at least one empty seat separated them. Barbara chuckled despite herself.

How on earth did she end up like this? Her comfort were that both her children were with her and that finally, they understood the indignities she had put up with over the years. They kept taking his side! But now, they knew. Didn't their aunt, her husband's own sister say it out loud finally? That their father had a mistress, maybe several?

That her youngest took it in stride, she wasn't that surprised. She and Vickie had talked about the possibilities over the years. That her eldest felt so personally affronted did surprise Barbara though. Jackie had said she suspected her father of cheating. Was she really that gullible in believing him when he had told her no when she had asked, point-blank? Barbara shook her head. Sometimes, she didn't understand her children at all.

Again, she looked over at the box in Jackie's arms. She permitted herself a little sneer of the lips as she thought, Tai nei deem. Yee gah neh wing yuen doh hai Mei Gok, loh yeh. Let's see how you'll prevent this. Now you're going to spend eternity in America, old man.

Take Two

[Author's Notes] Ugh. That so didn't work and I knew it. Bratworse read it and agreed. So, she's making me rewrite a new Chapter One. This time, from a different time and place and with a different voice. Ugh.

Chapter 1 - part 2

Weirdness was a way to both emulate and yet repulse my mother. See? I take after my mother in temperament. My sister once said that my compliments always came backhanded. I made a deferential bow to my mother at the time; I said I had a great teacher. (Yes, that was a backhanded compliment and no one noticed at the time) My mother cannot abide by strangeness. She fears it but at the same time, respects it. Among Chinese her generation, my mother is already construed as weird. Therefore, to outweird her... well, that was strange indeed then.

Aside from these two things that I know about my mother from her time in Shanghai, that she was great and popular in school, and that she'd hop from movie house to movie house on Saturday (Sunday was reserved for church activities and there was this superstitious belief that bad luck would befall you if you went to the movies on Sunday), I know very little else.

I once asked her what life was like under the Japanese occupation (something my sister would never think to ask, she just isn't curious about those kinds of questions), all she would tell me was the reason why she won't eat white rice. According to her, during the Japanese occupation, rice was so scarce that often, there were maggots writhing in the rice, posing. I've noticed recently, she'd eat half a bowl with dinner though.

I would ask about her grandparents, and all she'd mutter was that her grandfather was very mean, very angry. I'd ask about how her siblings treated her back then, and she 'd just say that both her brother and sister ignored her which was how she liked it. I'd ask how did my grandparents treat her and she'd repeat that she was ignored.

Yet it seemed that everyone was jealous of my mother, according to her. She had the quickest wit, the quickest mind. And to prove it, she would have me race her; she using her abacus and me using a calculator. Or sometimes, she'd have me race her multiplication skills against the calculator. I'd give her a 5 digit number to multiply by a four digit number, and inevitably, she had the answer before I finished finding the numbers on the calculator.

Sometime during the mid to late 40's, my grandparents saw the writing on the walls for themselves. They were scholars, purveyors of Western influences including art (my grandmother taught piano), and worse, they even worshipped a foreign god. The Communist Party was taking over and none of these things would be tolerated. Therefore, they decided to uproot the whole family and become refugees.

This decision couldn't have been easy to come by even though a lot of the peripheral family (To the nuclear family, these would seem peripheral. However, to the Chinese especially at that time, second and third cousins were considered close) had left in search of easier and/or better places to live. My grandfather left his school and with three teenagers and a wife in tow, moved them to Macau. My mother didn't seem too bereft at leaving Shanghai. I don't think she was happy there, except when she was goofing off at school, or when she was escaping, through the movies.

[550 words]

Chapter 1 - part 1

"How's your room-mate?" With three words, my mother, Barbara Ching Wan Sze managed to contort herself into a moebius strip and simultaneously acknowledged yet disavowed my relationship to my lover. My mother should've joined the Cirque du Soleil of words.

*****

Though I take after my father's side in looks, in temperament, I am my mother's daughter. And it is because of the similarity that I can look at my mother and truly appreciate the injustice of her birth being 30-40 years too early. Don't get me wrong, I don't pity my mother. A tremendous amount of her circumstances came as a result of her own doing; nonetheless, I recognize that had she been born when I had been born or even later, that perhaps she wouldn't have made the choices she had.

Barbara Ching was born in Shanghai, China in the early 30's. Exactly when is unknown, if you are referring to the Western Calendar aka the Gregorian Calendar aka the Solar Calendar. According to the Lunar Calendar that most Asians referred to, she was born 5 days before the New Year. Because there are sometimes 13 months in a year according to the Lunar Calendar (just like sometimes a woman will bleed 13 times in a year), it was best to count backwards from Chinese New Year.

Sometimes, she'd joke that that her birthday fell on the Chinese Christmas and she never minded that December has 31 days. It were these lapses of logic that defined my mother to some of us. Okay, okay, it defined her to me, one who prided herself on being fairly logical.

The 30's in Shanghai was an odd mix in time for the Chinese. Since Shanghai was one of the if not the largest port in China, it was bombarded with Western influences. To illustrate just how successful this bombardment was, my family on my mother's side is very proud that my generation is the fourth or fifth generation Christian. My grandfather was born in 1902 and he was a 2nd or 3rd generation Christian. He was also a freemason.

My family was apparently very proud of their ties to the Western influxes. Barbara Ching's uncle was the president of one of the largest banks with ties to Sun Yat Sen; her father was the principal of the largest English schools for girls. Barbara Ching happily spent the mid 40's breezing through school and running to the movies on Saturday.

"Ngu patchok hough. Yi nieyk tee koo yi kuew sze tsok!" That's Shanghainese for "I planned it out. One day can see 4 movies!" She'd apparently go to the morning show on Saturday, dash out as soon as it ended and stop at an uncle's stall to get some food. She'd then see three other movies and end up home by bedtime. "Mom," I'd ask puzzled, "Didn't Booboo (grandma) and Kungkung (grandpa) mind?" She'd laugh and say they were too busy and by the time they had her, it was hands off parenting.

These movies weren't Chinese movies. Well most of them weren't. I'm sure my mother watched some Chinese movies, but apparently, they didn't compare to the ones that came from the United States. She grew up watching any and every movie she could, from the Katherine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy teamups, to Cary Grant's elegant comedies, to Joan Crawford melodramas, to Bing Crosby's croonings. You name a movie star, she could probably tell you what movies they'd been in.

My fondness for movie trivia grew as direct result of listening to my mother speak of those days with such fondness. We'd watch old movies together, her turning up the volume to cover up my wheezing. She'd name this star and that, (a habit I acquired) and then would remember to show me the movies she particularly liked. I cannot tell you how many times I watched Imitation of Life with Sandra Dee. In some ways, I may have had to do her one better, as offsprings are wont to do; I got into behind the scenes trivia. I often know who directed and/or wrote a movie.

The other thing I know about this period is that my mother was always at the top of her class. Barbara Ching was apparently the class clown, but also the top of the class. Though the two titles aren't mutually exclusive, it's hard to embody both and yet my mother seemed to have, according to her own words.

The image of being the popular and smartest girl in class is an image both my sister and I have had to contend with. Though neither of us talk about it, we both know we fell short and that forever, mother'd find us lacking. My sister and I reacted differently. She chose to be the one with the most education, thereby nullifying any concept that she might be stupid (a word my mother used often on us. I just knew it wasn't true, but my sister doubted herself enough to be influenced by the word). I chose to be the weird one.

[To be continued] [849 words]

The Start of Something New

[Author's Notes] So, I'm going to try and write a semi-autobiographical account of the turbulence between my mother and I. This story has been burbling in my head for the past thirty years and maybe, just maybe, putting it down on paper will help alleviate some of my frustrations. So yeah, this year's Nanowrimo exercise will be an exorcism of sorts.

Here it goes! Wish me luck or tell me to break a finger or wrist or something (y'know, along the lines of "break a leg").