Geomancer's Compass

The Grandfather died when Miranda was thirteen. He was not her grandfather, but her grandfather's grandfather. However, given the fact that three generations of the family lived in the big house with the red tiled roof and the moon-shaped doors on Pender Street, it was easier to refer to him by one rather than three titles. The Grandfather's Chinese name was Liu Xiazong, though he was always called Charlie, and he had been born in the back room of a hand laundry in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, in the same year the Canadian Pacific Railroad was completed -- 1884.

"But that means the Grandfather was one hundred and thirty three years old when he died," Miranda protested. "No one lives to be that old!"

"It is unusual," her grandmother conceded - her husband, the Grandfather's Grandson, had died of a stroke several years before. "You see, Miranda, there was something the Grandfather had yet to finish," the old woman began.

But before she could continue, Miranda's mother cut her off. "It was his diet," Daisy Liu informed her daughter. "From the time he was a small boy, the Grandfather ate nothing but rice and vegetables, a little fish. . . ."

"And moon cakes!" Auntie Ev piped up from her wheelchair. "Let's not forget moon cakes!"

The Grandfather had choked to death on a moon cake during the mid-Autumn Festival two and a half weeks ago. Ever since he had lost his teeth fifty years before, the women of the family had been terrified of this happening and then, this year, it had.

"Daisy!" her grandmother protested, bristly as a hedgehog. "The child has to know sometime!"

But Miranda's mother shook her head. "Not now, Mother Liu," she said firmly. "She is too young!"

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2008/Melissa Hardy