She took a deep breath and puffed her chest like a proud chicken. “There is nothing ugly. It is the truth.”

“The truth? The truth that even here I’m just like a coolie in the pewter mines back in Malaysia. So low that my own daughter is ashamed to write about it in a simple school exercise.”

“Nobody but you is calling yourself a coolie!” my mother shouted back.

“Tell me. What else did your teacher say?” Father asked me.

With tears flowing down my cheeks, I tried to think of something that would not be about Father. “She told me that I don’t speak well enough, and that I need to practise my English.”

Father’s eyes widened, and he glowered at Mother. “I told you that we needed to speak more English! You and your Chinese school upbringing. You should be speaking to her in English! We live in Canada now.”

Father left the kitchen. We could hear loud music bellowing from the belly of the basement. I imagined him looking up at all of us perched on the crater of the mountain, staring at him in the deep hole, watching the darkness from underground consume him.

I truly didn’t understand what Father did at work. I knew he left with his metal lunch box, steel-toed boots, and hard hat and came back dirty. I knew he hated going to the mine. It was only after Mother pulled out the photo of Father standing in front of Titan, the largest truck in the world, that I began to understand. Mother explained the job of a welder, moulding together pieces of metal and steel. Father had helped build something that was in The Guinness Book of World Records, but he wasn’t proud of it.

I felt like we were on a tightrope, carefully tiptoeing across, Father holding my hands behind him. He taught me to tread lightly, to walk slowly. But most of all, he taught me to never look back and to emulate those in front of us.

止Stop

THE MOUNTAINS DIDN’T LOOK SO PEACEFUL TO ME ANYMORE. A light blanket of snow covered them, but it couldn’t hide the distress of the town when a strike suddenly erupted at the mines. People would stop and talk in the grocery store, at the post office, and even in the schoolyard while picking up their kids to try to glean any news about how bargaining was going between management and the union. Although I didn’t fully understand what the adults were talking about, I could feel the weight of the negotiations on everyone. My father started to resemble Bixi, the mythical dragon with a turtle shell. His shoulders seemed more hunched as he lumbered around slowly with no purpose. People clutched their wallets, stayed close to home, and cancelled vacations. When I asked Father what was going on, he told me not to worry and to concentrate on my homework.

The chimneys of the mine still disgorged smoke into the air, but to everyone in town, it was closed. Men were not working, but they were all over town, as if they were in purgatory, smoking, drinking, and grumbling.