Back in Toronto, I checked into a cheap hotel on King Street and started to look at apartments for rent. I saw a bunch, including a flat in an old rambling house in Chinatown. It had peeling red paint on the brick, and it leaned slightly to the left. It stood side by side other houses that also looked to be in various stages of dilapidation. An ancient Italian woman lived downstairs and was officially my landlord although it was her son who rented the upstairs apartment to me.

"She don't speak English." He had waved in his mother's direction dismissively when he gave me the tour.

Downstairs, I looked in the direction of the open front door and saw the wizened woman sitting in a chair in the darkened hallway. She peeked out, her head extending on her neck like a turtle's, and followed me with her eyes.

As I toured the apartment, the son gave me the story of the house. He had grown up there. His parents had emigrated from Italy in the 1940s. His dad was a construction worker.

I was charmed by the place. The ceilings were more than ten feet high. The living room had two large windows that almost spanned the entire wall and looked out into the street. This room would make a good kung fu space.

From The Wondrous Woo by Carrianne K.Y. Leung ©2013. Published by Inanna Press.