Paul Yee fonds, City of Vancouver Archives
Monthly remittances cut from a swath of trees
wash up across the ocean
a source of cheap labour from a sawmill
tears and sawdust fell by Gung Gung
seedlings of heartache planted in his wake
dignity stamped out with a tree planter’s boot
upending roots of a family tree
with her Cantonese village dialect
Poh Poh steps off the boat
years cheated by a piece of legislation
Gung Gung reunites
with a child bride he left behind
the space between 1918 and 1954
a marriage depleted of water and sun
uprooted by The Chinese Exclusion Act
two married strangers
speak in Venn diagrams
circling apart
a daughter born after a brief visit to China
all grown up
Nee hai bin gor? Who are you?
the distance between them is hard to shrug off
a legacy of trauma passed on
in an alley off Pender Street
smelling of rotting garbage
I hold my breath, trailing behind my mother
up the stairs of a SRO
Poh Poh stokes the fire on her wood stove
to light a handful of incense sticks
Humiliation Day burns in our throats
in a high-rise on Gore and Keefer
Gung Gung rolls a pinch of tobacco
a lit cigarette becomes a sigh
heaving short breaths
the pain of isolation catches for air
transplanted like a lotus root submerged in mud
empty holes pockmarking lives
left behind
spilling a diaspora
of lotus seeds
I watch the smoke rise up
Lillian Au is a broadcast journalist and writer. Her short stories are published in “Upon a Midnight Clear” and in the upcoming book, “Not the Same Road Out.” Her grandfather arrived in Vancouver from China in 1918. Her mother, uncle, and grandmother came later in 1954, seven years after the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act. Her father was a paper son and operated a printing business on Pender Street in Chinatown.