In bed that night, I was hypnotized by the sound of the train travelling through the valley, rumbling over the tracks that had been laid there decades earlier by other hopeful migrants. I wondered how Father, like those migrants, could leave the land of his birth and turn his back on it forever. How could Mother be so devoted to returning to her homeland? My parents were two sides of a magnet; the same place repelled one and pulled the other.

山Mountain

WHENEVER MOTHER REGALED US WITH FANTASTICAL TALES of her exotic birthplace, bursting with the sultry equatorial heat, the mangroves’ briny clutch, the sweetness of the rambutan, the sharp spiciness of fresh galangal, and the salty shrimp paste, Father brought my mind back to the Rockies, reminding me that I had never been to the beaches and rainforests of Brunei. Draped with shawls of coniferous trees, strewn with silver rocks, and capped with snowy barrettes, the mountains surrounded us in Sparwood. We worked in them, played on them, and lived among them. We could never escape them.

My father told me that the mountains reminded him only of work. He gazed sadly at the belly of the mountain—where the coal mine was—squinting, drawing on a cigarette. The mine’s smokestacks—four of them crowning the mountain—resembled the cigarette perched between his lips, its ashes building like the coal waste pushed from the mountain’s burning innards. Father spoke with such sullenness about working in the mine that I imagined the mountain casting a shadow on his face, like a ghost clinging to his stubble.

To my mother, the mountains were the walls of a prison. They contracted like an accordion, teasing her by giving her space, and then rapidly closing. She grumbled that Father had promised her excitement and adventure in a modern city, that he hadn’t thought of her when he brought her to this secluded town. It didn’t help when I pointed out the sound of the trains echoing in the valley. “Nobody knows we are here. I can’t die here,” she would vow. “Nobody knew you lived in the sultanate of Brunei before either,” Father would remind her. “It’s better to die here than rot in the heat back home.” It was as if they were pollen that was lifted by the wind and landed in this place when the air quieted, unplanned, unprepared, planting themselves in soil they did not choose.

Bea and I saw the mountains as our playgrounds. We biked on their paths, hid among the pine, spruce, and fir trees, walked along the creeks, and played with the bugs and frogs. We sought refuge within the greenness of the mountains.

Sparwood was a modest town, with just 5,000 inhabitants, most of whom were employed by the mine. Those who did not work for the mine worked for the people in the mine. The library, post office, grocery store, mall, and recreation centre were all built in part by the mine and for the benefit of those working in the mine.