In my bedroom, I did some shadowboxing while Bruce, in spandex shorts and boxing gloves, rope-a-doped and air punched rapidly.

I was doing a pretty good job, but Bruce refused to accept imperfection. “You are too rigid. Relax, bend, and shapeshift to respond to whatever comes at you mentally and physically.”

I told him to calm down.

“I do this by working hard,” he said.

Bruce trained and worked day and night. I wondered about his kids. I’ve seen the footage of his funeral in Hong Kong, where his kids looked so stunned. “Maybe you should have relaxed more. I’m sure Brandon would’ve loved more daddy time.”

“Don’t talk about my kids, okay?”

The happiest moments of my life were just hanging with Baba. “Trust me, every boy wants more of his father. That’s just a given. Even Shannon, I bet, wanted more daddy time.”

“I said, don’t talk about my kids.”

“Now look at who’s suddenly forgotten to bend and go with things,” I teased.

“Shut up.” Bruce pointed at me and scowled. “I’m warning you.”

“Okay, okay. It’s just that when my dad left, I was all busted up.” I knew Bruce’s father died when Bruce was just a bit older than me, and that his dad never got a chance to see Bruce at his pinnacle.

He stopped moving, and I froze, as the look on his face was so not him. I couldn’t tell if it was panic or desperation. You’d think Linda had just left him. You’ll never find Bruce sad or melancholy in the movies. Even when he didn’t win, he didn’t lose.

Whatever it was, we’re not supposed to go there.

My stomach kicked with hunger, and I hadn’t eaten since lunch, so I stepped into the restaurant through the back and into the kitchen. Once in a while, I want some Wonder Bread. No rice, ginger, soy, garlic, or green onions. Just plain white toast slathered with butter.

A couple of egg rolls were on the counter when I got downstairs. I hadn’t had one in a while, and though my mind was on toast, the rolls were still hot, almost like Mama knew I would be coming. I bit into one. It was hot! So hot I had to roll it around in my mouth. After a few bites, I peeled back the fried wrapper and looked inside. It really was good. It might even explain some of the extra sales.

I heard clanging and banging coming from the restaurant’s dining room. The warm glow of golden hour and a single overhead light shone on Mama who sat with her back to me. In front of her was a bowl of egg roll filling and wrappers. Beside that was the beat-up Tele-Tone portable record player Baba had dug out of someone’s garbage. She’d gotten it going, had cued the needle on the record player, and had put on one of her Chinese operas—all gongs, cymbals, and fiddle. It was pure torture—worse than the junior band tryouts.

Mama had tried to explain Chinese opera to me, but you might as well have made me eat cold, lumpy porridge. It wasn’t until she told me that Bruce’s father was a famous classically trained opera singer and that his training included weapons, acrobatics, and kung fu that I’d agreed to listen to her albums.

Mama told me when she was a girl, she fell in love with the Qingyi character and wanted to play her someday. But her mother laughed and said women were banned from performing. Looking closely at Qingyi at the next opera, Mama realized a man was playing her.

Mama has said the key to understanding who’s who is to recognize the patterns in the face masks. Each actor has unique techniques and interpretations, and each character has a set face type between which audiences can distinguish. They all just looked hideously over-made and exaggerated to me.

Her egg rolls had formed into a pile as she sang along.

“Gwo lai.” She called me over and said to bring the other hot egg roll.

She slid the plate of square wrappers and the filling bowl between us, then kicked a chair out for me.

The song soon ended and an awkward silence followed as I started filling and rolling.

“Too much filling,” she scolded.

“I know what I’m doing.” At least, I thought so—until I saw how she did three perfectly tight, chubby cigar rolls out of my two. Mine were perfect if you didn’t compare them with how even and aligned every fold of hers was. She lit a cigarette with her left hand and continued rolling with her right.

“When I was your age, I thought I knew what I was doing. I had a dream. I was going to be an opera star. Then I came to Canada, and things happened. It doesn’t matter. A long time ago.”

I just about fell out of my seat. That was as revealing as she ever got.

“These are magic egg rolls.” The corner of her mouth gripped her cigarette as she exhaled.

I nodded without looking up. “Ho sik wa.” They were delicious.

“Did you change the recipe?”

She listed the usual ingredients: the addition of tiny bits of homemade diced barbeque pork and oyster mushroom are flavour bombs no one else is doing.

She gave me a sharp look. “Same egg roll. Why is it so popular all of a sudden?”

She had this tone where I didn’t know whether it was a statement or an accusation, and I was left off-balance, unsure of what to say.

“And on days you work. Funny.”

I sped up, hoping to get through this batch. “I work most days, Mama.”

“And mustard. Funny. Very funny.” She switched to Toisanese, which I always struggled to keep up with. The needle on the record player skipped, repeating crackles and hisses. She ignored it. I overstuffed a roll and threw it upside down into the pile, hoping she wouldn’t notice.

“People phone and hang up all the time now. Sometimes, they come in for an egg roll, look around, and leave mad. They don’t even try the food. They are just mad. Not funny.”

I tore a wrapper accidentally and attempted to patch it up, but it looked awful. I know she noticed.

“Business is good, Johnny. But I worry—”

“Worry about what? Making money? Since when is that a problem?”

“I worry you are getting yourself into something. Am I wrong?”

My last two rolls were all uneven and sloppy. “I’m fine, the restaurant’s fine, school’s fine.”

The skipping on the record player was driving me crazy.

“This restaurant is not everything,” she said.

I stopped rolling. “It’s not? Because it’s not paying off your debt to Auntie?” That came out like a killer mahjong hand I’d revealed prematurely because I’d gotten impatient and foolish.

She stopped rolling. “That is none of your business. You do not understand. Do not—”

“What don’t I understand? What?”

“There are things we must do in a family.”

We finished wrapping the remaining egg rolls, sitting in our awkward silence. I slid my chair out and went to the kitchen to clean up. Before going upstairs, I glanced back at her. She was unwrapping some of my egg rolls, redoing my work. Making perfect the imperfections I’d created.

More about Johnny Delivers:

Eighteen-year-old Johnny Wong’s dead-end life consists of delivering Chinese food and holding his chaotic family together in Toronto. When his sweet but treacherous Auntie, the mahjong queen, calls in their family debt, he fears the family will lose the Red Pagoda restaurant and break apart.

Invoking the spirit of Bruce Lee and in cahoots with his stoner friend Barry, Johnny tries to save his family by taking up a life of crime delivering weed with a side of egg rolls. He chases his first love, but his hands are already full with his emotionally distant mother, his dream-crushing father, and his reckless, sardonic little sister.

As he fights to stay ahead of his Auntie, sordid family secrets unfold. With lives on the line, the only way out is an epic mahjong battle. While Johnny is on a mission to figure out who he is and what he wants, he must learn that help can come from within and that our heroes are closer than we think.

Dripping with 1970s nostalgia, Johnny Delivers is a gritty and humorous standalone sequel to the much-loved and award-winning Letters From Johnny.

More about Wayne Ng:

Wayne Ng was born in downtown Toronto to Chinese immigrants who fed him a steady diet of bitter melon and kung fu movies. Ng is a social worker who lives to write, travel, eat, and play, preferably all at the same time. He is an award-winning author and traveler who continues to push his boundaries from the Arctic to the Antarctic. He lives in Ottawa with his wife and goldfish.

Ng is the author of The Family Code, shortlisted for the Guernica Prize; Letters From Johnny, winner of the Crime Writers of Canada Award for Best Crime Novella and a finalist for the Ottawa Book Award; Johnny Delivers.