I was never certain what it was, only that it watched me from the top of the old metal closet. A shadow, a blur, too still to be natural and too real to ignore. At five years of age, lying in the cramped musty bedroom I shared with my three sisters, I felt it settle above me like a quiet indictment. My sisters slept peacefully inches away. My breath tightened, my limbs stiffened, eyes widened, and the darkness gathered itself into something deliberate, as if it had been waiting for me. It always waits for me. Sometimes I thought I heard it shift—a faint scrape like curtains brushing the sill at the open window—though no one else ever noticed. One night the fear, so intense, drove me out of bed and into my parents’ room. I squeezed between them, unnoticed.
By day the world was different. In the 1960s, our family of six lived in a rented row house in Vancouver’s Chinatown. The walls were thin enough that the clashing of mahjong tiles, laughter, and rumbling conversations marched into every room. That noise never drowned out my dread of bedtime. My parents never understood why I snuggled tightly on the living room couch every night, choosing to ignore one more drama.
The stairs led to another world. Each night my father carried me up the narrow staircase, never knowing I was pretending to be asleep. Once, he twisted his ankle on those stairs, and the guilt stayed with me into adulthood. Each night I ended up beneath the same shadow. Its focus on just me was exact and forbearing, as if it wanted something I could not give.
I begged my sisters to tell me stories. They obliged, whispering children's books they had read. “The three bears and G…” my youngest sister would begin. I clung not to their words but to the quiet minutes they bought me before the inevitable. Exhaustion was never able to drown out my fear and let me slip into sleep. Many nights I felt myself drifting, only to jolt awake with the sense of eyes on me.
The thing on the closet had no outline, no face—just presence. And yet it felt as real as the corner grocery where we bought fruit-flavoured powdered straws and Mo Jo’s, two for a penny. When I was much older, I understood the darkness to be the pressure of a home stretched far too thin, the tension of starting over as immigrants, and for me, the silent weight of being the only son in a Chinese family. We never knew which frightened us more: waking up and coming downstairs to find our father passed out drunk inside the front door, or our mother screaming she would leave us when she saw my father. At its worst, my mother threatened to burn the whole house down with everyone in it. She once lit a small fire in the hallway. That memory is still painted fresh in my mind.
Sundays carried us into the full-throated life of bustling Chinatown. Familiar voices called out: “Nay ho mah?” How are you? “My yul hai gum, yut yut do hai gum ngai.” Just the same as always, surviving day by day. I remember one Sunday on these excursions I saw Helen from kindergarten. I admired her quietly. When she smiled at me, I froze, gripping my mother’s hand, only to hide behind her long coat. Helen smiled again. That memory stayed with me for years—light, effortless, unbothered by the heaviness that trailed me everywhere else.
My mother’s voice cut through the crowds. “Ah Bee, jow lah!” Baby boy, let’s go. As we headed home, Auntie Fok stepped out of a shop. “Ai yai, your Ah Bee is still so tiny! So small—he’ll never be anybody. How can he make it to university!” Born in late December, I had started school early and was always the smallest, always one of two who sat in the front row for class photos. Her words followed me for years. I told myself quietly, “I will show you, Witch, one day I will!” Even then, I didn’t quite know what “showing” would mean, only that something inside me was straightened in defiance.
Everyone called me Ah Bee. For a long time I thought it meant I was special, the youngest, the favourite. Only it was a nickname to shelter me, as though my family sensed I was soft-hearted and easily shaken. The nickname cushioned me, a small shield against a home that swung between tenderness and chaos.
Chinatown in the 1960s pulsed with colour—crates of bok choy, bitter melon stacked in pyramids, fish swirling in tanks, herbal shops scented with ginseng and chrysanthemum. Yet above all that, my refuge was the BBQ shop. Behind its steamed glass, roasted pigs hung like copper statues, ducks like warm lanterns, soy-glazed chickens gleaming beneath heat lamps. I stood on tiptoe, watching the butcher’s cleaver rise and fall with steady certainty. The warmth behind that window settled something inside me. One night, as my mother bought BBQ pork, the shopkeeper greeted her gently: “Sic ah fan may ah?” Have you eaten yet? She answered, “Mai ah,” not yet. That small exchange carried more comfort than the food itself. It felt like a reminder that even in hard lives, tenderness still existed between people.
Home stayed taut. My mother worked two jobs; my father worked nights at the Ding Ho Café. My sisters and I held each other together in small, wordless ways. Yet each night the darkness returned. Some nights I woke halfway across the room. Others I woke curled—one half of my body on my bed and the other half on my sisters’, unsure whether I had tried to run in my sleep. My youngest sister, barely three, read from picture books in her tiny voice, resting her hand on my arm as if she could anchor me to safety. Those small gestures kept me tethered to the world when fear tried to lift me out of it. I carried that shadow for years—long after we left the row house and Chinatown began to thin and shift.
One spring morning in my twenties, I stood at the entrance to the University of British Columbia, cherry blossoms drifting across Wesbrook Mall like pale snow. I felt small again, but not helpless. Fear nudged me forward instead of holding me still. Students hurried past with backpacks slung carelessly, and I wondered if they carried shadows of their own, tucked away where no one could see.
My first social work class cracked something open. The instructor said quietly, “When the real world is too heavy, children give it horns and claws.” My lungs emptied. The shadow on the closet finally had a name. It lived in the tension inside our home, in my parents’ exhaustion, in an immigrant family navigating survival, in the burden placed on a child who had no words for fear.
UBC became the first place where I could look back without shame. At Sedgewick Library I searched out books that echoed families like mine. On quiet afternoons near the old bus loop, I would sit beneath the cherry trees, listening to petals rustle like distant footfalls. Their soft descent felt like a kind of blessing—gentle, patient, unhurried. UBC was as much my educator as it was my place of solitude. I attended UBC’s volleyball games, which were exciting, yet at times I found myself asking whether I would ever find that kind of joy and passion.
There was one ritual I loved most at UBC. I would slip into the quietest corners of the library, finding a stillness that felt impossible anywhere else. Surrounded by the weight of minds who had passed through before me, I felt, for the first time, that I belonged among them. The silence was never empty; it held possibility, a sense that learning itself could be a refuge as real as any home.
I graduated in 1986. Walking that stage on graduation day with my mom and three sisters in the audience was another soft reminder of the nights I had survived. The day was bright, the air cool, and for a moment I felt suspended between the life I had come from and the one opening ahead of me.
For the next 30 years I worked as a social worker. I entered homes filled with familiar tensions: parents stretched thin, children whispering fears no one else believed in. I never told them their monsters were imaginary. One boy, maybe eight, curled into a chair across from me. “I am afraid of the dark. Is that normal?” he whispered. I did not correct him. I said only, “I know. I was too.” He searched my face, and something eased between us—an unspoken understanding that fear has its own language.
Now retired, I return to Chinatown often. The neighbourhood has gentrified. Only two authentic BBQ shops remain; one is the shop that warmed my childhood afternoons. I stand before its window, watching the meats sway gently on their hooks. The warmth still rises. Some things survive because someone needs them to.
When I pass the spot where Auntie Fok once dismissed me, I feel a quiet satisfaction. My memories carry both pain and peace, but the deepest comfort is knowing I helped my parents build the best life they could.
I feel that same pull when I ride my bike along West 10th and climb the hill toward UBC. The campus is sleeker now—glass buildings, numerous residences catching light like polished stone. Students rush past, laughing, hopeful. Cherry blossoms fall just as they did decades ago. I stand beneath them, older now, married and a father to three sons who grew up without shadows pressing on their small chests, one of them accepted into UBC’s Engineering faculty.
I take a slow breath. Life is better now. Life is good. The shadow above the closet has long dissolved, but the warmth of the BBQ shop remains—copper pigs and lantern ducks behind steamed glass, the cleaver’s steady rise and fall. I think of the shopkeeper calling, “Sic ah fan may ah?” and my mother answers softly, “Mm hai,” not yet, and I feel again the quiet promise of ordinary care.
I have had my dinner. I have found my place. They say life is a journey. I am still travelling.
The alumni UBC Short Fiction Contest
“Ah Bee: Shadows and Light in Vancouver’s Chinatown” is one of three finalists in alumni UBC’s third annual Short Fiction Contest for alumni. The Short Fiction Contest is presented in partnership with UBC’s School of Creative Writing and UBC Okanagan’s Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies.
