Not just the people who could afford the nicest neighborhoods.
When I was six, he took me on a ride along part of his route.
I sat behind the driver area while he worked.
At one stop, an elderly Chinese woman boarded carrying two
heavy grocery bags.
My father immediately recognized her.
"Good afternoon, Mrs. Lau."
She smiled.
"Good afternoon, Marcus."
He waited until she was seated before driving.
Then she turned toward me.
"Your daughter?"
My father grinned.
"My oldest."
Mrs. Lau leaned closer.
She had silver hair, a small face lined with age, and bright eyes that seemed to notice everything.
"Very beautiful."
I smiled shyly.
She spoke another sentence.
I didn't understand it.
My father laughed.
Chapter 5 - A Millionaire Bet $400,000 That a Waitress Couldn't Speak Cantonese — Then Her Answer Made His Business Partner Stand Up - News
"What'd she say?"
Mrs. Lau repeated it in English.
"She looks smart. Maybe smarter than her father."
He laughed so loudly that several passengers turned.
I hid my face.
Mrs. Lau smiled.
Then reached into one of her bags and handed me a small paper package.
Inside was a pineapple bun.
It was sweet, warm, and covered with a crust that crumbled against my fingers.
I had never tasted anything like it.
My
eyes widened.
Mrs. Lau laughed.
"Good?"
I nodded enthusiastically.
She smiled.
Then said, "菠蘿包."
I stared.
She repeated it.
Slowly.
"Bo lo bao."
I tried.
My pronunciation was terrible.
Mrs. Lau laughed gently.
Then tried again.
By the time we reached her stop, I could say the words well enough that she clapped.
That was my first Cantonese lesson.
I didn't know it would eventually save a one-hundred-and-sixty-million-dollar transaction.
I only knew I'd learned the name of something delicious.
Mrs. Lau lived above the bakery beneath our apartment.
Her first name was Mei.
She had immigrated from Hong Kong decades earlier and built the bakery with her late husband.
By the time I met her, she was in her sixties and had become the unofficial grandmother of half the children on our block.
She spoke Cantonese with extraordinary speed.
Her English was strong enough to run a business, negotiate with suppliers, and argue with landlords, though she sometimes preferred Cantonese when expressing complicated emotions.
She loved food.
Loved stories.
And loved correcting anyone who used
language carelessly.
When I was seven, my father died unexpectedly from a heart attack.
The loss shattered our family.
One evening he was sitting at the kitchen table helping me with multiplication.
The next morning, he was gone.
I remember adults speaking softly.
My mother's eyes.
The funeral.
The smell of flowers.
The confusing silence that settled over the apartment afterward.
I remember standing beside the window expecting to hear my father's key in the lock.
For months, I couldn't understand how someone who filled so much space could simply stop being there.
My mother tried to be strong.
She went to work.
Paid bills.
Cooked dinner.
And made sure my younger brother, Elijah, and I continued going to school.
But I often heard her crying after she thought we were asleep.
The apartment became quiet in a way that frightened me.
Mrs. Lau noticed.
She began inviting me downstairs after school.
Sometimes I helped fold paper bags.
Sometimes I counted coins.
Sometimes I sat near the kitchen watching her prepare food.
She didn't force
me to talk about my father.
She simply made room for me.
At first, I went because I liked the bakery.
Then I began going because the sound of people speaking Cantonese made the world feel alive again.
Chapter 6 - A Millionaire Bet $400,000 That a Waitress Couldn't Speak Cantonese — Then Her Answer Made His Business Partner Stand Up - News
Mrs. Lau taught me words for ordinary things.
Water.
Tea.
Bread.
Rice.
Thank you.
Excuse me.
Wait.
Be careful.
Then she began teaching me sentences.
She made me repeat them until I could hear the tones properly.
If I got something wrong, she corrected me.
Not cruelly.
But with the seriousness of someone who believed language deserved care.
"Listen first," she would say.
"Then speak."
I learned that Cantonese wasn't simply Mandarin with a different accent.
It was a language with its own pronunciation, expressions, and rich everyday speech.
Mrs. Lau taught me through conversations rather than textbooks.
We talked about food.
Weather.
School.
My brother.
The bakery.
And the stories
she remembered from Hong Kong.
She told me about crowded streets.
Ferries crossing Victoria Harbour.
Family meals.
The importance of Lunar New Year.
And the first winter she spent in California, when she was astonished that people complained about rain while enjoying weather that would have felt mild elsewhere.
Sometimes she laughed at my questions.
Sometimes she answered with more questions.
And sometimes, when she missed her late husband, she became quiet in a way I understood.
We had both lost someone we loved.
Perhaps that was why we became so close.
By ten, I could speak enough Cantonese to hold simple conversations with her customers.
By thirteen, I could understand stories she told without translation.
By sixteen, I was studying written Chinese and learning to distinguish between the formal language used in documents and the Cantonese we spoke in the bakery.
Mrs. Lau was delighted.
But she never let me become arrogant.
One afternoon, I translated a customer's question badly and nearly gave him the wrong order.
Mrs. Lau corrected me.
I complained.
"But
I understood most of it."
She shook her head.
"Most isn't always enough."
I rolled my eyes.
She pointed toward the customer.
"If someone says no peanuts and you hear most of the sentence, what happens?"
I stared.
She raised one eyebrow.
Then said quietly, "A little missing meaning can become a big problem."
I remembered those words years later when I first saw a forty-million-dollar difference hidden in a bilingual contract schedule.
But at sixteen, I was mostly embarrassed that I'd made a mistake in front of someone.
Mrs. Lau smiled.
Then handed me another pineapple bun.
"Eat. Then try again."
Language became the thing that made me feel capable when everything else seemed uncertain.
I loved mathematics too.
Numbers behaved differently from people.
They didn't care where you lived.
They didn't care what your parents earned.
They didn't care whether somebody thought you belonged in a room.
If a calculation was wrong, it was wrong.
Chapter 7 - A Millionaire Bet $400,000 That a Waitress Couldn't Speak Cantonese — Then Her Answer Made His Business Partner Stand Up - News
If it was correct, anyone who understood the method could verify it.
I found comfort in that.
In high school, I took advanced mathematics and economics courses.
I joined a student business club.
And I helped Mrs. Lau organize her bakery's receipts after she complained that her bookkeeper's invoices were becoming too expensive.
I wasn't an accountant yet.
But I could create spreadsheets.