This is a serialization of short story collection, Staring into the Sun. Start here for more info and the full index.
Previous installment: Magic, Part 3
Moss Beach, August 1995
Channing went back to his showman’s tone. “The Ed Sullivan Show was my big break. First time it was transmitted in color. I was just about to give up, go back west with my tail between my legs and become a social worker, a teacher. Or a minister like Naomi’s father always wanted. I went into New York to see the best agent in the country, Mark Leddy. I told him, ‘I’m the greatest magician alive today.’
“He called everyone, ‘baby.’ He said, ‘OK, I’ll come and see you. Where are you playing, baby?’
“I was doing a show that night in Philadelphia. He got on the train and came to see it. Afterwards, he came backstage and said, ‘You’re fantastic. You’re great. You’re in. You’re going to make it, baby. I’m going to bring you to the top. Your first show will be at the Palace Theater, The Ed Sullivan Show, and you’re in. Don’t worry.’”
Though Poa-Poa and Patrick must have heard Channing’s backstory many times, they were as rapt as I was. There was a long silence. My grandfather seemed to be done talking, so I tried one more prompt. “Did you get stage fright?”
“Always,” he said. A small, apologetic smile flashed across his lips. “It was pure fear that made me look sophisticated. I never spoke during my act. It made me that much more enigmatic—and it also meant that my show traveled well, internationally. No Italiano, no Français. Non parlo italiano. Je ne parle pas français.” He sloshed more wine into our glasses.
Patrick, picking up on Channing’s mention of fear as if given a cue, said, “Fear. Delight. Surprise. These are our human emotions. Love. Regret. We all have good days and bad days. On the bad days, we need something to give us hope. We need to find something special. The magic of everyday life.” He placed his crumpled napkin on the table.
“Making something out of…nothing.” He nudged the napkin, and a nickel-sized crab ran across the table until it found shelter under the curve of the salad bowl. I applauded spontaneously, only then realizing why we had climbed down to explore the tidal pools. Poa-Poa smiled and faint amusement flickered across Channing’s face.
“Magic isn’t just tricks,” Channing said. He wouldn’t indulge Patrick with an easy win. “It’s a belief, a way of being. People want to believe in things. Nietzsche declared that God is dead. If our gods are dead, we need something else.”
He got up from the table and stretched with languid, feline agility. He started rocking his hips. It looked like he was doing tai-chi. “Look at this. This movement. It’s the same as when you ride a horse, when you make love. It’s a universal motion. The ocean in motion.”
More bottles of wine disappeared and the conversation between Channing and Patrick grew increasingly philosophical. When Poa-Poa started clearing dishes, I jumped up to help. My grandmother, I thought. She was married to a millionaire and is now the wife of a magician. Two things people need in their lives: money and magic.
The next day, Channing went out and Poa-Poa invited me to keep her company in her room. I occupied Channing’s side of the bed, reading.
Poa-Poa was underlining passages in her blue-leather-bound A Course in Miracles and writing notes in the margins. I wondered if she’d see a number seven, or seventy-seven, and feel something as pure as the clear bell of a harmonic note, sensing the universe clicking into place. She paused and looked out at the ocean. Then she turned to gaze at me for a moment and said, “You really look like your mother.”
My heart thumped a few times. Poa-Poa rarely mentioned my mother. It was doubly strange because Grandpa Milt had said something similar just the week before. As a young woman, I must have grown into resembling her.
I decided to tell Poa-Poa something I thought often and never said out loud. “I wish I could have known her. I wish I could go back in time and be with her.”
“I really miss her,” Poa-Poa said softly. “Every day. She was so much fun.” Her eyes filled with tears.
I too started crying, quietly. I starkly felt the void—the generation, the physical space, the spirit—where my mother should have been. It was Bonnie who should have been there to connect Poa-Poa and me. But she was gone, so I had to understand her like an extrapolation of data, an invisible line that connected two dots.
“I need to show you something,” Poa-Poa said. “Come with me.” She led me to one side of the living area where two large Chinese screens stood proud and tall. One was in four vertical sections of intricately carved rosewood and the other was in six sections, with multi-color stone inlays of pots, vases, a rhinoceros, a camel, fu dogs, horses and an ox. Behind the screens, a dozen plastic storage boxes were piled up.
Poa-Poa shifted boxes, refusing my help, until she could access one in the bottom layer. She unclipped the top and handed me a half-inch-thick report with ACROSS THE BORDER TO CANADA stenciled on the cover. Next to it was a drawing of a red flag with a Union Jack in its top left corner. Bonnie Shoong, written in the hand of a schoolgirl, overlaid a drawn banner at the bottom.
In my life, I had held few objects that my mother had touched, much less created herself. My fingertips traced her name as if I were reading braille. I leafed through the pages of neatly-written facts which were complemented by maps and drawings. Bonnie seemed like a careful and diligent student. I understood why Poa-Poa wanted to share this with me.
But she was still going through the box. In her hands was an issue of National Geographic. I could tell it was old because the magazine’s unmistakable yellow border surrounded only a decorative frame and text rather than a color photograph like in modern issues. The cover was printed only in black and yellow. Poa-Poa gave me the magazine. Bonnie had written her name in cursive on the top right corner of the cover. Below the masthead, The National Geographic Magazine, was the date, August 1956, then a list of articles and page numbers: the table of contents printed as the cover. I had started to work as a graphic designer in Italy, so I was particularly interested in the layout. After I began that job, my dad told me that Bonnie too had worked in graphic design for a short time, or “commercial art,” as it was called in the ‘70s.
Poa-Poa pointed to an article and said, “Boom on San Francisco Bay. That’s the one.” Page 181. I flipped to the page and started reading. “Keep going,” she said.
There was a colorized photograph taken in a Chinese restaurant of young Poa-Poa and Grandpa Milt, my mother, her older brother, and her toddler sister. Bonnie would have been eleven. The caption said, “The Milton Shoong family observes the Chinese custom of dining out once a week,” and detailed all the dishes on the table. Wow. National Geographic.
“That’s cool,” I said.
Poa-Poa was back to excavating the sedimentary layers of her daughter’s artefacts. Almost ceremonially, using both hands, she passed me a document with a sky-blue acetate cover, bound with a plastic clip along the spine. It gave the office-supply vibes of a sales report. The writing was facing me: POEMS in Gothic Letraset type—the all-caps so ornate, they were barely legible—in the middle of the page and by bonnie at the bottom.
My guts clenched.
I slowly turned the parchment-style pages. The first few poems were in the same Gothic Letraset as the cover.
LIFE
the power that destroys
LIFE
the power that creates
Then, typewritten, six pages in, the poem Poa-Poa wanted me to read. The closest thing to a suicide note my grandmother ever found.
Apology to Life
Please forgive me for halting my
search for you. At times I felt your
nearness—the real happiness, the real
warmth, the real love. Then, other
times, I saw you at a distance not
feeling anything but only seeing you.
Many times I have imagined how you are,
but since I did not know you, you remained a
figment of my imagination—a fantasy.
Many times I have tried to understand
your ways and be a part of you; I have
failed and I apologize.
I have always collected mothers. Losing my mother so young was like having an invaluable and irreplaceable prize card go through a paper shredder. Collecting others, collecting mothers, could never compensate, but they would help shape my life. I could love them and they would love me.
My first new mother was my stepmother. I was told later that my dad and Bonnie had a fraught relationship, which I’ve put down to my mother’s mental health problems. There was one diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. Of course, there must have been a world of complexity behind their difficulties and simplifying things down to one cause can only be a shorthand approach.
When I put myself in my father’s shoes, I can only imagine how untenable and heart-wrenching the situation was. They got divorced when I was one. My dad gained custody of my four-year-old brother and my mother kept baby me. She remarried some loser ten days after the divorce came through: from a doctor to a violent deadbeat. That marriage lasted less than six months before they divorced. The deadbeat also ended up taking his own life, three days after Bonnie’s suicide.
My dad and stepmother-to-be started dating not long after my parents’ divorce, so Pat has always been in my life—I don’t remember the first time I met her or even when I started calling her “Mom.” They got married when I was five.
I didn’t appreciate my stepmother enough until I myself became a mother, experiencing the myriad tasks and responsibilities it takes to be a parent. With my children, they are daily devotions.
My boyfriends’ mothers and later, my husband’s mother, became mine. I spent the summer of 1991 working at a camp near the Worm Farm and in nearby Half Moon Bay, I made an older female friend whom I added to my mother collection.
Perhaps it’s not a surprise that Poa-Poa was also one of my mothers. There is one moment that embodies her maternal love. It was in summer 1992. I was going to live in San Francisco doing temp work and taking Italian lessons in preparation for my year in Bologna. I had arranged to rent a room in the Mission District from friends of my brother’s. Poa-Poa came to the airport to pick me up and give me a ride into the City.
As I was loading my suitcases into the trunk, she pointed out the things she had brought. “Here’s a comforter for you, and pillows, and some sheets. I wasn’t sure what would be in your room. And yesterday I went to Ho & Ho and got you some things. Some dim sum.”
I took in everything: the ride from the airport, the bedding that would smell like Moss Beach, the dim sum. The magic of a home-from-home.
She reached in the trunk and opened the plain pink cake box to display all the tasty delights. She repeated, “dim sum,” this time in Cantonese tones. She put her fingertips on her chest and looked at me intently.
“It means ‘to touch your heart.’”
End of “Magic.” The next chapter will be published on 6 December 2025.