The Kitchen God's Wife

  “I still think we should go see a doctor.”

  “Eat some noodle soup first. See what I made? Same kind when you were a little girl, lots of pickled turnip, a little pork just for taste. On cold days, you were so happy to eat it!” I was hoping she would remember how soothing my soup made her feel. She took off her coat. She sat down to eat.

  “But what did it feel like, the pain?” she said, one spoonful already going into her mouth.

  “Too hot?” I said.

  “Not too hot,” she said.

  “Not hot enough?”

  “It’s good, really.”

  I gave her more. I watched her drink my soup. And then I told her.

  It is the same pain I have had for many years. It comes from keeping everything inside, waiting until it is too late.

  I think my mother gave me this fault, the same kind of pain. She left me before she could tell me why she was leaving. I think she wanted to explain, but at the last moment, she could not. And so, even to this day, I still feel I am waiting for her to come back and tell me why it was this way.

  I never told you about my mother? That she left me? Oh. That’s because I never wanted to believe it myself. So maybe that’s why I did not tell you about her.

  Of course, that does not mean I did not think about her. I loved her very much. In fact, when I was young, and for many years, I kept her hair, three feet long, curled up in a small tin box. I saved it for her all those years, thinking she would someday return, and I could give it back to her, like a gift. Later, when I believed she was dead, I still kept her hair. I thought I could someday find her body, and she and her hair could be reunited. That way, in the other world, she could loosen her hair. And once again she could let all her thoughts run wild.

  That is how I remember her, in her room, untying her hair, letting it down. She let me touch her hair.

  What else? Of course, I do not remember everything about her. I was only six years old when she disappeared. But some things I can remember very clearly: the heaviness of her hair, the firmness of her hand when she held mine, the way she could peel an apple all in one long curly piece so that it lay in my hand like a flat yellow snake. You remember? That’s how I learned to do that for you.

  Other things from my memory are confusing. I saw a painting of her once. This was after she was gone. And I did not remember the mouth in that painting, so stiff, so firm. I did not remember those eyes, so sad, so lost. I did not recognize the woman in the painting as my mother. And yet I wanted to believe this painting was my mother, because that was all I had left of her.

  I used to hold that painting in my lap, peer at her face from one side to the other. But her face always looked in another direction, never at me. She showed no thoughts. I could not tell what she was thinking before or after her painting was made. I could not ask her all the questions I had before she left: Why she talked so angrily to my father, yet kept a big smile on her face. Why she talked to her mirror at night, as if her own face looking back belonged to someone else. Why she told me that she could no longer carry me, that I would have to learn to walk everywhere by myself.

  One day, when I was perhaps ten—this was after she had already been gone for several years—I was again looking at her painting. I saw a little spot of mold growing on her pale painted cheek. I took a soft cloth and dipped it in water, washed her face. But her cheek grew darker. I washed harder and harder. And soon I saw what I had done: rubbed half her face off completely! I cried, as if I had killed her. And after that, I could not look at that picture without feeling a terrible grief. So you see, I did not even have a painting anymore to call my mother.

  Over the years, I tried to remember her face, the words she said, the things we did together. I remember her ten thousand different ways. That is what Chinese people always say—yi wan—ten thousand this and that, always a big number, always an exaggeration. But I have been thinking about my mother for almost seventy years, so it must be ten thousand different times. And it must be that she has changed ten thousand different ways, each time I recalled her. So maybe my memory of her is not right anymore.

  So sad! That is the saddest part when you lose someone you love—that person keeps changing. And later you wonder, Is this the same person I lost? Maybe you lost more, maybe less, ten thousand different things that come from your memory or imagination—and you do not know which is which, which was true, which is false.

  But some things I know for certain, like my legs, how they got to be this way. Look how my legs are still thin, no muscles on the calves! My mother used to carry me everywhere, even when I was six years old, so spoiled. I refused to walk even ten steps by myself. And this was not because I was sick or weak. I always wanted to see the world at her same height, her same way.

  So that’s why I do not remember too much of those early days when we lived in the fancy Shanghai house. I did not come to know that house and the people who lived in it the way you would if you were a child walking around by yourself, discovering how one corner turns into another. Whenever I think about those early days, I remember only my mother’s room, the one I shared with her, and the long staircase that took us down to an entryway with watery patterns on the floor.

  In my mind, I can still see that steep tunnel of stairs that wound down one floor after another, and my mother holding me as she leaned over to look down to another level, where other relatives lived. I think my father’s other wives lived on the floor below, although this is only my guess now. My mother was telling me to be very quiet, not to laugh or ask questions. I was holding my breath, trying to obey, although I wanted to cry out, to tell her I was scared looking at the staircase falling beneath us. And then we heard servants’ voices, and she leaned back. We both breathed deeply at the same time and I held onto her tight, so glad we both did not fall down.

  Whenever I think about that staircase, I remember the room, and then I remember something else, more and more, until it becomes the time just before she left. Or maybe it is all my memories and imagination of her, now gathered into one day.

  After looking down the staircase, we returned to our room. It was early in the morning, and other family members were still sleeping. I do not remember why we were already awake, cannot even guess. To judge from the color of the sky, it would be perhaps another hour before the servant girl would come with our morning meal.

  My mother was playing a game with little red and black tablets spread out on a board. She said this was a foreigners’ game called chiu ke, “prison and handcuffs.”

  It is only now that I think of this game—chiu ke—that I realize she must have been talking about checkers. She was sliding the tablets across the board, explaining that the different colors were people fighting under different warlords, trying to capture each other. But when she started to explain more, my young mind became confused. Of course, I did not know how to say I was confused, so instead, I complained that I was hungry.

  I could do this with my mother, complain and demand things. She was not strict with me, not the way some mothers can be. She was perhaps even more lenient than I was with you. Yes, can you imagine? If I wanted something, I could always expect to receive it, never thinking I would have to give something back in return. So you see, although I knew my mother only a short time, I learned this from her, a pure kind of trust.

  That day, when I said I was hungry, I already knew my mother had a box of English biscuits hidden on top of her tall dresser. She brought the tin box down. These biscuits were her favorites, my favorites too—not too sweet, not too soft. My mother had many favorites from different countries. She liked English biscuits, of course, and also their soft furniture, Italian automobiles and French gloves and shoes, White Russian soup and sad love songs, American ragtime music and Hamilton watches. Fruit could be from any kind of country. And everything else had to be Chinese, or “it made no sense.”

  My father owned several cloth factories, and once a foreign customer gave my mother a bottle of French perfu
me. She had smiled and told the man she was honored to receive such a fine gift from a big, important customer. If you knew my mother, you would have known she did not like this man, the way she called him a “big, important customer.”

  Later, she let me smell the insides of the bottle. She said it smelled like urine, and that’s what I smelled too. “Why do foreigners always pay big money to put such a stink on themselves?” my mother said. “Why not just wash more often? It makes no sense.” She emptied out the perfume into her chamber pot and gave me the round crystal bottle. It was a deep blue color. And when I held it up to the window and shook it, it threw dancing colors all around the room.

  That morning I was eating my English biscuit, playing with my French bottle. I could hear the sounds of the morning. My mother was the one who taught me how to listen. She was always lifting her ears up to catch a sound, showing me how to judge its importance. If the sound was important, her ears stayed up; not important, she went back to what she was doing. I copied what she did.

  Together we heard servants walking up and down the hallway, removing chamber pots, lifting them with a small grunt. We heard someone dragging a box down the stairs and someone else whispering loudly, “What’s the matter, wind in your brains?” Outside, a big bucket of water was thrown out of a high window so that it splashed all at once onto the back courtyard—pwah!—sounding just like hot frying oil. And after a very long time, we finally heard the little ting-ting-ting of chopsticks hitting against the sides of porcelain bowls, an announcement that servants were entering rooms to bring in the morning meal.

  They were all the usual sounds, what we heard every morning. But that morning my mother seemed to be paying attention to all of it. Her ears stayed up, mine too. And it is still a question in my mind—if she heard what she was listening for, if she was disappointed or relieved.

  Before I finished my breakfast, my mother left the room quickly. She was gone for such a long time, although maybe it was only a few minutes. You know how children are, one hour or one minute, it doesn’t matter, they become impatient. You were the same way.

  When I could wait no longer, I opened the door and peeked outside, then toward the end of the hall. I saw my mother and father standing there, talking in harsh voices.

  “This does not concern you,” my father said firmly. “Do not mention it again.”

  “My mouth is already open,” my mother said quickly. “The words have already fallen out.”

  This was not the first time I had seen them argue. My mother was not like my father’s other wives, the ones who used the same kind of fake manner, acting more pleasant than someone else, as if they were in a contest to win something big.

  My mother’s manners were genuine. She could be gentle, of course, but she also could not stop herself from being honest and open. Everyone said this was a fault of hers. If she was mad, she let everything come out, and then trouble would follow.

  So that morning when I heard my mother and father talking that way, I was scared. They were not shouting, but both were angry, I could tell. My father’s voice made me want to close the door and hide. While my mother’s voice—it is so hard to describe a sound according to how a little girl felt it—I can only say it sounded ragged, like good cloth already torn, never able to be mended.

  My father turned to walk away. And then I heard my mother say, “Double Second,” as if the words were a curse. My father did not turn around. “You can never change this,” was all he said.

  “You think I cannot change this?” said my mother, as my father walked away.

  Back then I did not know what these words meant, “Double Second.” I only knew those words were very bad, the worst name someone could call my mother, a name that always made her spend many hours in front of her mirror, accusing the double second that stared back at her.

  Finally my mother turned around. She was wearing a strange smile, one I had never seen before. At that moment she saw me. “Still hungry,” I complained right away in a small voice.

  “Coming, coming,” she said softly. And then her smile changed back to the kind one that I recognized, although I was still thinking, Why is she smiling when she is so angry?

  Back in our room, she told me to get dressed. “Good clothes,” she said. “We’re going outside.”

  “Who else is going?”

  “Just we two,” she said. This was very unusual. But I did not question her. I was glad for this rare opportunity. And then she took a long time to prepare herself. I watched. I always liked to watch my mother getting dressed. She put on a Western dress, looked at herself in the mirror, then took that off. She put on a Chinese dress, took that off, put on another Chinese dress, frowned. Finally, after many more dresses, she put the first dress back on, and that’s what she wore, a jade-green dress with short sleeves and a long straight skirt of smooth pleats running down to her ankles.

  I waited for her to pick me up, so we could finally leave.

  But instead she patted my head. “Syin ke,” she said, “you’re already so big.” She always called me syin ke, a nickname, two words that mean “heart liver,” the part of the body that looks like a tiny heart. In English, you call it gizzard, not very good-sounding. But in Chinese, syin ke sounds beautiful, and it is what mothers call their babies if they love them very, very much. I used to call you that. You didn’t know?

  “Syin ke, my mother said, ”today I will teach you important secrets. But first you must learn to walk by yourself.” And before I could cry or complain, she was walking ahead of me, saying, “Let’s go, let’s go,” as if all kinds of fun lay ahead. I followed, and then we were out the front gate and into one of the new-style pedicabs that darted in and around the city faster than the old rickshaws.

  It was the beginning of summer, so it was still cool in the morning, although by afternoon it would be steaming hot. As we drove farther away from our house, I started to hear different kinds of sounds: the shouts of vendors, trolley cars grinding by, motorcars honking, and so much hammering—old buildings were being pulled down everywhere, new ones being pushed up. Hearing all those sounds, I was so happy! My mother seemed happy too. She became a different person, laughing, teasing, pointing, and shouting in a glad voice, just like a common person.

  “Syin ke, look!” And it was a shop-window display, filled with calfskin gloves for ladies. We stepped out of the pedicab to look in the window. “So many thin hands reaching into the air for customers,” my mother said. I made my hands move like a snake, and we both laughed. We got back in the pedicab.

  “Look!” I cried a little while later. I pointed to a man spitting a long stream of bean-curd paste into a pot of boiling water. I was proud I had found something interesting to show my mother. “He looks like a fish,” I said, “a fish in a fountain!” I stood up in the pedicab. The spit had curled into doughy threads.

  “He is using his mouth just like a cooking tool,” my mother explained.

  We passed so many interesting things that day. It was as if my mother wanted me to open my eyes and ears and remember everything. Although maybe it is just my imagination now that makes me think this. Perhaps she had no such intention. Maybe we saw none of these things as I have described. Maybe we did not go to all the places that I now remember. For how could we have done all this in one day? But that is what I remember, and even more.

  That day we also went to all the places where the best things in the world could be found. To Zhejiang Road, where she said they made the best French-style leather shoes; she did not buy any. To Chenghuang Miao, where she said they sold a beauty tonic of crushed pearls. She let me put some on my cheeks, but she did not buy this either. To Bubbling Well Road, where she bought me the best American ice cream sundae; she did not eat any, told me it was “too messy, too sweet.” To Foochow Road, where she said you could buy any kind of book, any kind of newspaper, Chinese and foreign too. And there she did buy something, a newspaper, although I do not know what it was exactly, since I could not read.
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  And then we went to Little East Gate, where all the best seafood vendors put up their stands. She said she was looking for a delicacy she had not tasted for many years. It was a rare little fish, called wah-wah yu, because it cried just like a baby—wah-wah!—and it could wave its arms and legs. And when we found that fish, I heard it cry out loud, I saw it move just as my mother promised it would.

  “Long ago I loved to eat this fish,” she said. “So tender, so delicious. Even the scales are as soft and sweet as baby leaves. But now I think it is sad to eat such a creature. I have no appetite for it anymore.”

  I was paying attention to all these places and things my mother found. And I remember thinking, This is important. Listen carefully. So many desires to remember, so many places to find them. I thought my mother was teaching me a secret—that my happiness depended on finding an immediate answer to every wish.

  That afternoon we also went to the theater. It was already very hot outside, the full sun was out, and I felt sticky. So I was glad to think we would go into the dark theater. Of course, I was mistaken in thinking the theater would be cool. The last time I had been there must have been during the winter or spring. But that day, it was steaming hot inside, like an oven—and dark. The moving picture was already playing when we arrived, a story about a little blond-haired girl. Someone was playing a piano, loud crashing sounds.

  “I can’t see, I can’t see,” I cried to my mother, afraid to take even one step forward.

  “Wait a little,” my mother said. And when my eyes took in all this darkness, I could see rows of people, everyone waving a paper fan. My mother counted off the rows, “... six, seven, eight.” I did not wonder why she was doing this, looking for the number-eight row from the back. I was interested only in her counting, because that was what I was learning to do. And then we were standing at that number-eight row, pushing our way toward the middle, until my mother came to an empty seat. She whispered to someone sitting on the other side. At the time I thought she was saying, “Excuse us.” It was not until later that I came to think she was saying something else.