The Kitchen God's Wife

  The newspaper story, New Aunt said, was very badly written. A tale of inspiration and heroes, so maybe only part of it was facts, the rest just more and more water added to old rice. In any case, this is how the story went, like an old revolutionary tale, something like this, very romantic.

  Lu had been born in Shandong, that place up north of Shanghai where all the good seafood swim. He was a fisherman’s son, so all he could look forward to in life was inheriting the holes in his father’s nets, the ones he repaired every day. He had no education, no money, no way to change his life. And really, this was the kind of life everybody had, except for, of course, the scholars, the foreigners, and the most corrupt. But one day, a good Marxist came up to him and showed him a piece of paper.

  “Comrade, can you read this for me?” said the man with the paper. And Lu said, “Sorry, I was born a fool.”

  Then the man said, “Comrade, what would you say if I told you I can teach you to read this and anything you want in ten days? Come to a meeting and find out.” This good man told Lu about a new method for teaching laborers and peasants how to free themselves from slavery. It was called One Thousand Characters in Ten Days.

  At this meeting, the Marxists said that if a person was hardworking enough, he could learn to read and write one hundred characters a day, one thousand characters in ten days. He could be instantly educated, able to read common newspaper stories, write letters, conduct business, free himself from the bad life given to him!

  When they asked Lu to join, he answered, “The only plentiful thing I have is hard work and bad luck.”

  So Lu worked hard and changed his luck. But he did not stop at one thousand characters. He kept learning more and more, his diligence was that strong. He learned two thousand, four thousand, then ten thousand. He learned enough until he was able to pass examinations and get into Fudan University. And because he was so grateful for being able to change his life, he vowed he would someday write about the hardships of peasants and laborers, to be their mouth, to tell their story, to tell them they could change their fate—by revolutionary ideas!

  So now you see why New Aunt said my mother ruined her life for romance. How could my mother not fall in love with such a man?

  I think this Lu person also must have been handsome. Maybe he had the same features my mother admired in herself: big eyes, light skin, a face that was neither too broad nor too thin, small lips, and very black hair. And he must have been modern-thinking in other ways, because he asked my mother to marry him, no waiting to ask permission or use a go-between. That must have been very exciting to my mother—a revolutionary marriage! She said yes immediately, and then went home to tell her mother what she had done.

  Ha-bu shouted at my mother, “How can you even think such a thing! How could you even talk to such a man! This is what happens when there are no emperors to rule the country.”

  That’s when my mother threatened to swallow gold if she was not allowed to marry Lu. In fact, that afternoon she melted down half a gold bracelet. She showed her mother how serious her threat really was. “Half a bracelet!” New Aunt used to say when she told this part. “That’s how fierce her will was.”

  Of course, my mother did not swallow her bracelet. Otherwise, she would have died. She only pretended to swallow it. She painted a gold drop on her lip, then lay down on her bed, very still. Meanwhile, Ha-bu kneeled in front of the family altar and prayed in front of her dead husband’s shrine. She begged for forgiveness, for guiding her daughter to such a bad conclusion. While praying like that, Ha-bu thought she heard her dead husband say, “Go see my old friend Jiang Sao-yen.”

  So Ha-bu went. She told Jiang about my mother, how bad she had become, how she threatened to kill herself—over love for a revolutionary! She asked Gung-gung’s longtime friend what she should do.

  That afternoon, Ha-bu and Jiang Sao-yen made a contract. Jiang agreed to take the bad daughter of his old dead friend and make her his second wife.

  Whenever I remember this part of the story, I always think to myself, Why didn’t Ha-bu protest? Why didn’t she say to Jiang, “Second wife? Why not make her the first?” After all, the first was already dead.

  But maybe Ha-bu was happy only to have her big problem solved. In any case, she agreed to everything. And that’s how Jiang got a beautiful woman for his second wife—not a slave girl or some girl from a low-class family, but an educated girl from a once respectable family.

  The next day, my mother saw the contract. She ran to Lu and asked him what she should do. Perhaps they kissed. Perhaps they squeezed tears from their eyes. I’m still thinking my mother was very romantic.

  And Lu said, “You must resist. That is the only way to put an end to the old marriage customs.” And then he told her a story about a revolutionary who did exactly that.

  She was a young village girl, very beautiful, and she too had been told she had to marry an old man she did not even know. She said to her family, “I want to choose my own husband, or I refuse to marry.” Her father was so angry he locked her up in a pig shed. Every day she shouted she would not marry the old man. She shouted until the day of her wedding. When she came out of the pig shed she was very quiet, also very dirty, as you can imagine.

  Her mother and aunts cleaned her up, dressed her up, then put her into a locked-up wedding sedan. Six hired men carried her the long distance from her village to the old man’s house one village over. When they arrived, many people were already celebrating—playing loud music, ladling out good food. They laughed and shouted good wishes, then opened the sedan door to welcome the bride. Welcome! Welcome!

  Ai!—she was dead. She hanged herself with the rope of her own hair, tied to the sedan slats on top.

  “So you see,” Lu said to my mother, “you must resist too—not just for love, but for your country.”

  My poor mother, all she could think about was that girl hanging by her own hair. She thought this was what Lu meant when he said, “You must resist.” She went home, wondering if she was strong enough to fight fate, brave enough to die for love. In two days, she left to go to Jiang’s house as his second wife.

  Yes, that’s what I’m saying. She married that man Jiang, my father, your grandfather, an old man before I was even born.

  Worse than that, when my mother arrived, she found there was already a third, fourth, even fifth wife. The servants told her the first had died of tuberculosis. And the second had killed herself when Jiang did not promote her to take the first wife’s place. And now everyone said my mother had come to take over this bad-luck position—a replacement for the dead second wife.

  So that’s how my mother became the Double Second. And even though the other wives did not want my mother’s bad-luck spot, they still envied her, made her miserable for having a higher position. They often told her, “Hnh! Second Wife. Really, you are only the Double Second, half her strength.”

  Sometimes I think my mother was finally chased away by those other wives. They made her life miserable, complaining if she ordered a special kind of noodle for herself, making fun of the foreign French shoes she liked so much, teasing her for reading newspapers, since they were not educated. And they envied her hair, her black-black hair—saying that was the reason my father had married her, for her hair.

  So maybe that’s why she cut off her hair. She left it for those wives to fight over.

  But then I think: My mother was strong enough to stand up to those other wives. Anyway, all wives in a family did that, complained all the time, fought over little things. And I knew those wives, San Ma, Sz Ma, and Wu Ma—that’s what I called them, Third Mother, Fourth Mother, Fifth Mother. They were not so bad, not really. San Ma, for example, she had a typical Shanghai manner—teasing people if they acted too proud, criticizing everything equally so you didn’t know what she really liked or didn’t like.

  So maybe the real story is this: My mother ran away to go back to Lu. Of course she did. She loved him from the beginning. And that man in the movie theate
r the day before she disappeared?—that was probably Lu. They were arranging how to meet, how she should run away, that’s probably what she was doing.

  Perhaps she was becoming revolutionary in her thinking as well. That’s why she took me into the city that day, to show me all the imperialist evils in Shanghai, to teach me what Lu had already taught her—what things were too messy, too sweet, too rare, too sad. And that’s why she cut off her hair, too, to show she was just like that girl who hung herself in her sedan chair, free at last.

  But then I think, If she did run away with Lu, then she would have been alive and she would have come for me. I was her syin ke! She would have tried to visit me at my school, the same school she had gone to. She would have made a secret boat ride to the island, hidden behind some bushes. She would have popped out to say, “I’ve come to take you back. Meet my new husband.”

  So then I think she must have run away because she was sad, too sad to stay in this world. Maybe she found out Lu had died. She was reading the newspaper, the one she bought at Foochow Road. Perhaps she had bought it earlier in the day than I remembered. And she read that he had been shot, killed while teaching more peasants how to read. Many revolutionaries were killed that way. And her sudden grief reminded her of their long-time-ago love. While I slept in the dark theater, she thought about this, crying to think of her loss. While we were shopping for wah-wah yu, she was overcome with guilt, remembering how she did not resist eating this fish or resist her loveless marriage. As I slept in the pedicab on the way home, she felt shame that she had grown comfortable with her imperialist life-style-all the things Lu hated and fought against. And when she stared at herself in the mirror that night, she hated herself, decided to purify herself all at once.

  So she cut off her hair, a sure sign she could not turn back. She became a revolutionary in hiding, and her leaders ordered her not to see anyone from her past. And she obeyed without question—that’s why she did not come back and get me.

  But then I think: My mother was not the kind of person to obey anyone. She followed her own mind. And maybe she followed her mind until she became lost. Maybe that’s what happened: She ran out the door, crazy, not knowing where she was going.

  And sometimes I think my mother cut off her hair and became a nun. It was those nuns at her school, they prayed my mother would follow God’s will. And that’s what happened, after that no will of her own.

  And sometimes I think it was the dead second wife—so jealous of my mother. Her ghost came back and took my mother away.

  And sometimes I think it is what everyone said. She suddenly took sick, then died that same night, and now she is buried on Tsungming Island.

  Now I no longer know which story is the truth, what was the real reason why she left. They are all the same, all true, all false. So much pain in every one. I tried to tell myself, The past is gone, nothing to be done, just forget it. That’s what I tried to believe.

  But I cannot think this way. How can I forget the color of my mother’s hair? Why should I stop hoping I will see it again?

  Of course, in my mind, I know she will never come back. But I still remember. Many times in my life I remember. And it is always like this.

  In my heart, there is a little room. And in that room is a little girl, still six years old. She is always waiting, an achy hoping, hoping beyond reason. She is sure the door will fly open, any minute now. And sure enough, it does, and her mother runs in. And the pain in the little girl’s heart is instantly gone, forgotten. Because now her mother is lifting her up, high up in the air, laughing and crying, crying and laughing, “Syin ke, syin ke! There you are!”

  6

  PEANUT’S FORTUNE

  So you see, I did not have a mother to tell me who to marry, who not to marry. Not like you. Although sometimes, even a mother cannot help her daughter, no matter what.

  Remember that boy you thought you could not live without? What was his name? Randy. You don’t remember? He was the first boy to pay you any attention. You brought him home one time for dinner.

  I watched how you smiled every time he spoke, how he paid no attention when you spoke. You said, Have something to eat. And he did not say, No, no, you first, you have something to eat yourself. He said, Do you have any beer in the house? And you were so embarrassed, you said, Sorry. I’m real sorry.

  Later I told you, Be careful, be careful. And you said, What are you talking about? I said, That man considers himself first, you second, and maybe later you will be third or fourth, then never. But you would not believe me. So I said, If you always tell him you are sorry now, you will always be sorry later.

  You know what you said to me? “Ma, why are you so negative-thinking?” This was not negative thinking! This was thinking for my daughter because she could not think for herself.

  And later, you did not mention his name anymore. But I saw your broken heart, your good heart, trying to keep all the pieces together, trying not to let me know. So I said nothing. You said nothing.

  I wasn’t going to tell you “I told you so.” Nothing of the kind. My heart was breaking for you too. Because I know how it is to have a good heart, an innocent heart. When I was young, I had a good heart too. I did not know how to look at a person like Wen Fu and think to myself, This man can cause me lots of trouble. This man can take my innocence away. This man will be the reason why I will always have to tell my daughter, Be careful, be careful.

  When I met Wen Fu, he was already in love with my cousin, Huazheng. She was New Aunt’s daughter, the one we called Huasheng, “Peanut,” because she was small and plump like the two rounds of a peanut shell. So you see, she was the one who was supposed to marry him. And now I am wondering why it happened the other way.

  At the time, I was living in the house on Tsungming Island, my home for almost twelve years. In all those years, I had not seen my father, not even when I was sent to boarding school in Shanghai. And every time I returned to my uncle’s house, I had to act like a guest, never asking for things, waiting instead for someone to remember what I needed.

  If I needed a new pair of shoes, for example, I would wait until guests came to visit. We would all be sitting downstairs having tea, and Old Aunt and New Aunt would make the kind of easy conversation that meant they had no problems or worries in this world. That’s when I would let my old shoes peek out under everyone’s nose. I would tap my foot a little, something Old Aunt always scolded me for. And then I would wait for her face to turn red when she and all the family and guests saw my big toe sticking out of a hole.

  So you see, I never felt I belonged to that family. Yet they were the only family I knew. They were not mean to me, not really. But I knew they did not love me the way they did Peanut and my boy cousins. It was like this: During the evening meal, Old Aunt or New Aunt might say to Peanut, “Look, your favorite dish.” They might say to the little boys, “Eat more, eat more, before you blow away with the wind.” They never said these things to me. They noticed me only when they wanted to criticize, how I ate too quickly, how I ate too slowly. And there were other differences. When Peanut and I returned home from boarding school, Uncle would always give Peanut a secret gift—candied plums, money, a peacock feather. To me, he would give a pat on the head and say, “Weiwei, you’re back.” That was all. My own father’s brother, he could not think of anything more to say.

  Of course, I hurt. Remembering this now, I hurt. But how could I complain? I was supposed to be grateful. They took me in, leftovers from my mother’s disgrace. By their standards, they were good to me. They had no intention to be mean, no intention at all. And maybe that was why I hurt—they had no intentions for me. They forgot I did not have my own mother, someone who could tell me what I was really feeling, what I really wanted, someone who could guide me to my expectations. From that family, I learned to expect nothing, to want so much.

  And then one year, all that changed. This was when I was eighteen years old, during the Small New Year, right before the Big New Year celebrati
on began, when everyone turned one year older. So maybe it was 1937 by the Western calendar, in any case, before the start of the war.

  The New Year was a time when you could change your luck. Oh, we didn’t have a kitchen god, not like Auntie Du. We were country people, but not that old-fashioned. Of course, maybe the servants had a god like that and I don’t remember it. In any case, we still had ways to think about luck, some just for fun, some more serious. And that day, I too was dreaming of a better life. Better than what, I don’t know. I wasn’t dreaming of winning a million dollars, not like you do with the lottery. I had only a little hope in my heart that something would change. Maybe I wanted to be less lonely. So you see, maybe that’s why it happened, why I met Wen Fu.

  Our New Year celebration was not like what you have in the United States today—parades and firecrackers, lucky money for children, only fun, fun, fun. It was a day of thinking. According to our custom, when the new year began, not one single speck of dust from last year could remain. Not a single copper’s worth of debt could be left unpaid. And not a single bad word could fall from anyone’s mouth for three days. I loved the New Year for that reason, no scolding from Old Aunt no matter what. But three days before—that was different—you should have heard the shouts.

  As the sun rose on that last cold morning before the new year, Peanut and I could already hear her mother ordering the servants around: Clean this, clean that, not that way, this way!

  Peanut and I shared the same bed, although, of course, we each had our own quilt. We did not have blankets and sheets the way you do in this country, everything lying flat on top of you. Our quilts were rolled around us, like two thick cocoons, very warm.