The Great Canadian American Chinese Jewish Novel

 

It’s 4:13 a.m. Hong Kong, 4:13 p.m. New York, and here I am, on jet lag patrol, playing peek-a-boo with 9-month-old Dina on the floor of our “Superior” room. For now, until our shipment arrives and we move into our “flat,” this – wood paneled room with its mauve velvet headboard and matching mauve velvet curtains is home. Everything we need is tucked into closets or corners. Books, toys, clothes, cosmetics, a small fridge stacked with drinks. The staples of portable life. Dina’s exersaucer and high chair sit in one corner of the room, her port-a-crib, in the other, the TV, the vertex of an acute angle. David, who has to work tomorrow, is snoring across the room. I’m cranky and tired and tempted when I pull my hand away from my face to flash Dina an expression that more accurately reflects my mood. But when I peer through my open fingers, I see her two-teeth smile and smile back.

Dina’s now onto these stacking cubes that she likes to heap into a tower and then knock down. Whenever they fall, she giggles, and as a first-time mom, I worry what this says about her character. While she’s busy, I once again flip through the red leather binder that says Guest Services. After three previous nights of jet lag patrol, I have mastered its contents, attaining a kind of critical perspective. I question, for example, why the list at the front of the binder isn’t alphabetical and if there’s another kind of order at work. What explains the decision to put Shoe Polishing before Minibar and Room Service? If I were writing the list, I’d include the white terry robes, the three fruits, arranged on a fern leaf in the middle of a black square plate, and the lily bud floating in a bowl of water that they change every afternoon at 4 p.m.

I draw the curtain slightly, sit on the window ledge, and look out on Hong Kong harbor, the view cut in ungainly pieces by towering cranes and tractors that pound and clobber the earth all day...