The Kitchen God's Wife

  I almost could not answer him. “I’m not that way—that is, not shy.”

  “So perhaps you also like me,” he said right away.

  “Being shy does not mean you like or do not like,” I said.

  On and on we talked that way, until my head hurt from trying to be polite, from trying to hide from his tricky questions. Finally he pulled an envelope from his pocket.

  “Little sister, please give this to her,” he said. “Please tell her to answer me tomorrow.” And then he left.

  Peanut had been watching all along. So when Wen Fu left, she dashed out from behind the kitchen door and demanded the letter from me.

  “What does he say?” I asked her. I felt I had as much claim on reading the letter as she. I had worked so hard for her. Peanut hunched her shoulders over the letter, protecting it from me the same way a mother duck places her wing over her babies. She was giggling, biting her fingers, squeezing her fist, pulling a strand of her hair.

  “What does he say?” I asked again.

  Peanut looked at me. “He needs an answer tomorrow,” she said. “Tell him I have no answer yet. Tell him to wait.” And then she walked away.

  So I helped Peanut and Wen Fu: carried their love letters back and forth, brought them to the marketplace, to the middle of our road. I was helping them to each other. I did not have it in my mind to steal Wen Fu away from Peanut. I swear this. I am not remembering this differently so as not to blame myself.

  Each time I delivered a letter to Wen Fu, I used my words to carry a picture of Peanut to him. I told him what color dress she was wearing that day, rose-colored, the same as her cheeks. I reported how she had put a little decoration in her hair, a dragon pin, thinking about him. I hinted that she was unable to eat and was becoming thin.

  Of course, none of this was true. I was only using my imagination to talk about all those silly, lovesick things girls did for romance back then.

  So how did I come to marry him? Sometimes I think about asking Peanut. If she is still alive in China today, she would agree, I’m sure of it. I did nothing to make Wen Fu turn his eyes and look at me, nothing at all. Wen Fu changed his own mind.

  I had a good heart, just like you. I was innocent, just like you. So maybe you can understand how your mother once was: a lonely girl, a girl with no expectations, wanting so much. And suddenly someone came knocking at my door—and he was charming, a reason to dream about a better life.

  What else could I do? I let him in.

  7

  DOWRY COUNTING

  You remember how Helen always tells people she was my brides-maid. She tells people I had a big, big Chinese wedding.

  And this was true, just the way Helen always tells people. Only, Helen was not there. Peanut was, with her whiteface makeup, and red monkey-bottom lips, smiling big, as if she truly were happy for me.

  But the month before my wedding, you should have seen Peanut, so mad she would not look at me. She said it was my fault that I was marrying Wen Fu and she was not. She pretended she had no ears when I reminded her how I had helped her and Wen Fu.

  This was true. I continued to carry their letters back and forth, the ones she didn’t let me read. And later I found a secret place in the greenhouse where Peanut could put on her makeup. I told Wen Fu when to come, where to hide his bicycle. I took him to Peanut so they could talk while everyone slept for two hours after the noontime meal. And I stood by the door, watching out for Old Aunt and New Aunt, while Wen Fu and Peanut kissed.

  Of course, I didn’t see this, the kissing part. But I knew that they had done this—kissed like crazy lovesick people!—because later, when they came out from behind the broken pots, Peanut’s face and neck were covered with red smudges, all those places where Wen Fu’s mouth had been. And Wen Fu’s own mouth was stained red from Peanut’s lipstick, his cheeks were dusted with her white face powder. He looked like an opera singer. I watched him as he pushed off on his bicycle, a big, satisfied grin on his face.

  And then I had to hurry to help Peanut wipe off those kiss marks, clean off her makeup. I scolded her: “Why did you let him kiss? Why not just talk, hold hands?”

  This was a terrible thing to do, giving your mouth to a boy your family did not know. Of course, it was not as bad as giving away your other body parts.

  “I liked it,” Peanut said, so naughty the way she smiled.

  “What! You like it, so you throw your family’s name in the gutter just to satisfy your own desires? Just like two mindless dogs, running up to sniff each other’s dirty tails!”

  But as I scrubbed Peanut’s face, she was still dreaming about Wen Fu, telling me the praises he had for her soft cheeks, her delicate hands. “Ai!” she squawked. “You’re rubbing my skin off completely!”

  “Your fault,” I said. “This one won’t come off. He bit your neck like a spider. And now everyone will be waking up soon. Ai, trouble now.”

  Peanut only giggled, reached for the mirror, and said, “Let me see. Ayo! Look what he did!” She pulled her collar up and giggled some more.

  She wasn’t considering what a big risk I took to help her. She knew that if her mother found out about this, I would be in more trouble than she. Peanut was younger than I was, so I was responsible for her behavior. And I was scared of what Old Aunt and New Aunt would do.

  Of course, you probably don’t understand this kind of thinking, how I could be in trouble for Peanut, why I was scared. In China back then, you were always responsible to somebody else. It’s not like here in the United States—freedom, independence, individual thinking, do what you want, disobey your mother. No such thing. Nobody ever said to me, “Be good, little girl, and I will give you a piece of candy.” You did not get a reward for being good, that was expected. But if you were bad—your family could do anything to you, no reason needed.

  I remember the threats. “Do you want to be sent away forever and become a beggar, just like your mother?” Old Aunt would say. “Do you want to get a terrible disease that eats away your face, same as your mother?” From the time I came to live on Tsungming Island, Old Aunt told me things like that—didn’t matter if they made no sense. I did not know what had happened to my mother—whether she had escaped from her marriage, the way Peanut said she had; whether she had died of a strange sickness, the way my father said she had; whether she had been sent away because she made my father angry for some unknown reason, the way some people whispered when they thought I was not listening. When I first came to the island, Old Aunt had only to say my mother’s name—and I would burst into tears.

  Later, I no longer cried. I tried not to remember my mother so much, or the feelings of hope I once had that she would someday come back for me. So Old Aunt thought of new threats to make me afraid. Once, she took me and Peanut to visit a family in Shanghai. She pointed to a servant girl, sweeping the courtyard.

  “Look at that poor girl,” Old Aunt said with a pitying voice. The girl was wearing ragged pants too short for her thin legs. Her eyes had no feeling left behind them. And then Old Aunt said the girl was a slave, sold by her father because she would not behave after her mother died.

  And there were more threats. When Old Aunt thought I was not acting fearful enough—when I didn’t bow down fast enough and beg for forgiveness—she would slap the side of my head. “So willful, that rebellious! What kind of family would want you for their son’s wife? Maybe I should marry you off to Old Shoe Stink!”

  She was referring to the old beggar shoe-mender who walked from door to door, whose breath and body smelled as bad as the old shoes he fixed and tried to sell. I think all the mothers in our village threatened to marry their daughters to Old Shoe Stink. And those daughters must have obeyed. Otherwise, Old Shoe Stink would have had twenty wives!

  I do not think Old Aunt said these things to be mean to me or to lie for no reason. I am not being generous in saying this. Giving threats to children was the custom in old families like ours. Old Aunt’s mother probably did this to her when she w
as a child, handing out warnings about another kind of life, too terrible to imagine—also giving examples of obedient children too good to be true. This was how you made children behave. This was how you drove selfish thoughts out of their foolish heads. This was how you showed you were concerned for their future, teaching them how they too could keep order in the family.

  But this was also the reason why I was afraid for myself that day in the greenhouse. How bad Peanut was to let Wen Fu kiss her! She could have cost me my own future. So of course, the next time Peanut asked me to carry a letter to Wen Fu, I refused.

  “Carry it yourself,” I said. “I am no longer your go-between.” Peanut had cried and begged, then shouted names at me. She did not speak to me for the rest of the day. And I thought I had put an end to my troubles. How could I know I was only making them worse?

  I found out later: Wen Fu became angry too. He waited many hours for me to come down the road with Peanut’s letter. And when I did not come the next day or the day after that, he didn’t wait any longer. He found a real go-between, a woman who could deliver not only letters but a marriage proposal.

  You see, Wen Fu decided he really did want to marry Peanut, not because he loved her sincerely—he wanted to marry into her family. And really, he was no different from most men back then. Getting married in those days was like buying real estate. Here, you see a house you want to live in, you find a real estate agent. Back in China, you saw a rich family with a daughter, you found a go-between who knew how to make a good business deal.

  The matchmaker he found was an old lady we called Auntie Miao. She was famous for matching the right girl to the right boy so that they would both produce the highest number of sons. She had helped arrange marriages for Old Aunt’s two daughters several years before. Now that I think about this, Auntie Miao was also the one who helped Old Aunt chase away another boy, a son from a family named Lin. I never met him, but he was the one I should have married. But before I could even get my hopes up, that chance was gone.

  “No money in that match,” Auntie Miao had told Old Aunt. “The Lin father is educated, this is true. But to what purpose? He never received even the lowest-ranking official position. And look at his wife—almost forty years old when she had her last baby. No morals, no shame.”

  But that was not the real reason Auntie Miao did not like the Lin family. The real reason was a feud that had happened many, many years before. Peanut overheard Uncle talking about it, how the Lin family had made another marriage contract with a local girl. “A few months before the wedding,” Peanut said, “the Lin son ran off and married a girl from Shanghai instead—married for love, just like that! Of course, the family could have forced the Shanghai girl to become the concubine, while the local girl still became the wife. But how would that look? A man who dislikes his future wife so much he takes on a concubine first to spite her.”

  And then Peanut laughed. “That local girl from a long time ago was Auntie Miao. So embarrassed, so mad—she had to wait another three years before anybody would consider her for a daughter-in-law.”

  This was the same Auntie Miao who now often dropped by our house for tea, to chat with Old Aunt and New Aunt, to mention who was sick, who got a letter from overseas relatives, whose bad son had run off and joined the Communists.

  To her face, Peanut and I called her Auntie Miao. But behind her back, we called her Miao-miao, because she was just like a cat. Her ears turned in every direction, ready to pounce on a secret.

  I’m sure Auntie Miao must have told Wen Fu all kinds of secrets about our family: How Uncle owned a good business, but lost a lot of contracts. How New Aunt was his second wife, the one who pleased him. How Old Aunt was his first wife, the one everyone had to please. How Peanut was the youngest daughter, the favorite of the family. How I was Peanut’s cousin, sent to the island right after my mother disappeared—killed or captured by bandits, drowned in the sea or swallowed up by the earth, nobody knew. How I was also the daughter of a man so rich he could afford to give his younger brother an entire factory and the richest house in the Mouth of the River, because he had more, much more, in Shanghai. I know Wen Fu must have asked these questions, because this is what happened next:

  Soon after I refused to carry any more letters, Auntie Miao came knocking on our door, and she brought Wen Fu’s mother and father. The afternoon they came, Peanut was so excited she almost dropped the tea she was serving them. She was giggling so much New Aunt had to scold her twice for not giving Uncle more tea as well. But I saw that Wen Fu’s mother was not noticing Peanut and all her silly ways. She was staring at me with a critical eye.

  She asked me if I had made the dress I was wearing. She examined the stitches at the ends of my sleeves, then said my workmanship was not too bad, but could be improved. She asked about the paleness of my skin—Was this my natural color, or had I been ill recently? Why was I so quiet? Did I have a cough? Was I easily tired?

  The next day, Old Aunt and New Aunt went to pay a visit at the Wen family house on the other side of the island. Peanut was so excited she was already deciding what kind of Western wedding dress she would wear. And the day after that, Old Aunt announced a marriage proposal from the Wen family—not for Peanut, but for me.

  I did not say yes. I did not say no. Nobody asked for my answer because it was not my choice to make.

  Of course, I did not clasp my hands and thank my aunties for planning such a good future for me. But I also did not run into my room and refuse to eat, turn white and threaten to die, which is what some girls did when their families chose bad husbands for them.

  If you asked me how I felt when they told me I would marry Wen Fu, I can say only this: It was like being told I had won a big prize. And it was also like being told my head was going to be chopped off. Something between those two feelings.

  After the announcement, I continued to sit at the table, blank-faced, too confused to say anything. Peanut was pouting. “Why does Weiwei have to marry?” she asked.

  New Aunt mistook her daughter’s complaints for a better meaning. “Don’t be selfish! She can still come visit you often. But now she must marry and leave us. She’s the oldest. She’s the right age, five years younger than her husband. Later, you can go visit her at her new family’s house.”

  I sat quietly, trying to imagine Wen Fu as my husband. I saw myself running to meet him on the road, the way Peanut did. Only now he was kissing me, not Peanut. He was laughing and grinning. He was telling me I had pretty cheeks, rose-colored like the dress I was wearing. He was giving me a love letter. And I could already feel my heart jumping, ready to read his letter.

  I looked at Peanut, still pouting, unable to speak, her anger blowing out of her nose. Hnh! Hnh! Just like a dragon whose tail had been stepped on. She did not know how to hide her feelings the way I did. And so it was only then that I realized I had hidden my true feelings for so long and so well that I did not recognize them myself—until now. All those times I was angry at Peanut for letting Wen Fu kiss her—now I knew. I had wanted him for myself.

  No, this was not love! That’s not what I am saying, no such thing. This was a foolish kind of hope. This was learning to hope for myself.

  You don’t believe me? Did Auntie Helen tell you this story herself? Well, she wanted to. I stopped her. I knew if she told you she would get it all wrong. She would tell you, “Your mother fell in love. So romantic.”

  But you know how she is. If something is false, she thinks it is true. If something is true, she thinks it is false. Like her brain tumor—she has no brain tumor. I told her so, but she didn’t believe me. She thought I was saying that just to be nice. “Why should I be nice?” I asked her. “Because I am dying,” she said. How can you argue with someone like her?

  That’s why I’m telling you this story, not Auntie Helen. And you must believe me, because I am your mother. I did not love Wen Fu, even at the beginning. I was happy, of course, but only because I saw my marriage as a new chance. Although maybe I too
confused my happiness for love, just a little.

  A few days after the announcement, I listened to my aunties carefully, keeping my head bowed in a respectful manner. I heard them tell me what a good family the Wens were, how lucky I was. Old Aunt said my in-laws accepted me, in spite of my mother’s bad background. They told me that the Wens ran a successful overseas business, that Wen Fu could help my father and Uncle sell our family’s silks and cottons in foreign countries. He had already promised this. They said that Wen Fu’s mother was very talented, a seamstress and a landscape painter, a good cook and an efficient manager of the house. She could teach me lots of things. And the house itself—of course, it was not as good as ours, but it was a very fine house, with plenty of servants. They even had an automobile!

  The more I heard, the more I wanted to believe them. I imagined Wen Fu driving up in the automobile to take me away, and I would be so glad to leave my old life. I dreamt of living in a happy household where nobody ever complained. I was thinking of a mother-in-law who was too good to be true, who praised me, never scolded me. I could already see servants filling my teacup before I even knew I had a thirst. And running through my mind were many children, all the same size, chasing my skirt, one after the other, making me laugh. When my aunties told me I was marrying Wen Fu, that’s what I imagined, what the fortune-teller had told Peanut.

  Of course, with all these good things about to be mine, I felt sorry for Peanut. But then she began to accuse me, told me I had betrayed her. During the time before the wedding, we still had to share the same bed. When I walked into our room, she spit on the floor. At night, she kicked my legs, pushed me and my quilt off to the side, whispered that I was worse than worms that ate a dead animal.

  “You heard your mother,” I protested. “I am the oldest. I have to marry first. I have to obey. If you want to change this, you argue with your mother.”