The Family Law by Benjamin Law Page A

you so sleepy all the time? ’ At that, everyone started laughing at me. Sebastian glanced over with cool pity. When I realised my eye was crusted over with sleep, I rubbed; the sleep fell onto the desk in clumps. Ngan-see , I thought vaguely to myself. That’s what ‘sleep’ is called in Cantonese: eye shit. At least I knew that.
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    Weeks after the course finished, an advertisement for McDonald’s came on the television, featuring Sebastian licking a soft-serve ice-cream cone. ‘Oh my god,’ I said. I called Scott over from the other room. ‘Scott! Scott! This is the Eurasian guy I was talking about. You’re going to cream yourself over him.’
    Scott came over. ‘I resent that,’ he said, before turning his attention to the TV.
    â€˜That’s him,’ I said, ‘the Eurasian dude from the class; that douche-bag I was telling you about.’
    It hurt to look at him. Part of me liked to think that because we shared some racial heritage, I might look like Sebastian from some angles. However, watching the advertisement, I realised that this would require major facial reconstructive surgery. Here was a person who was a better version of me in every single way, and a self-destructive impulse made me want to gauge Scott’s reaction to him. I watched Scott closely after the advertisement finished.
    â€˜Oh, Ben, he’s not that great-looking,’ he said. ‘In fact, I think his face is sort of weird and girlish.’ And just then, with sharp clarity, the Cantonese words for ‘I love you’ darted into my mind. Ngoh ngoi lae.
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    I’m trying to become more disciplined, but my Cantonese is still a joke. Michelle takes the joke further and makes up new Cantonese words, creating an indigenous dialect known only to my family. When it’s Chinese New Year, my dad and grandma will issue the mandatory New Year’s greetings Sun-Leen-Fai-Lok and Goong-Hae-Fut-Choi, and Michelle will respond with Choot-Cheen-Yut-Ding, a popular brand of instant noodles from Hong Kong. I admire that. She takes Cantonese tones and bastardises them. If your Cantonese is beyond a joke, you may as well get to the punchline first. It might seem insulting to make a mockery of an entire language, but we only do it because the language has been mocking us for years.
    A full semester of Cantonese classes had no discernible impact on my vocabulary. Before I left, having failed our final oral assignment, I stole the library’s entire collection of Cantonese language CDs and burned them onto my computer. A single volume usually cost hundreds of dollars, but now I have language lessons whenever I need them.
    When I drive long distances – say, to my mother’s place – I start the CD lessons from the beginning, saying the phrases over and over until they stick. When I park the car and ring the doorbell, I try to drop the phrases into conversation before I forget them. ‘ Excuse me, Miss, but Mister Leung is currently busy ,’ I say. ‘ Would you like me to show you to his office ?’ Mum pretends to be confused, but she knows exactly what I’ve been doing.
    There are other times, though – like right now – when I forget the word for ‘office’ altogether. At times like these I find myself staring at a blank wall, wishing someone had stuck a note there to remind me how to pronounce it, and what it means.

A Room of One’s Own
    Our mother always told us that hate was too strong a word. In our household, you could sometimes get away with bitch , slut and the occasional fuck , but hate was completely off-limits. ‘You don’t hate your brother,’ Mum would say, correcting me. ‘That’s such a strong word. You might dislike him very much, but you definitely don’t hate him. How could you? He’s your brother.’ Hearing this, I wanted to ask her what emotion, if not hate, had once