The Kitchen God's Wife

  I wondered how she knew this about Loyang, whether she had come from a village near there. She spoke in a slow but loud manner, with a countryside accent I could not identify. And all her movements were large and clumsy, not refined at all. If she dropped a hairpin, she would simply bend over with her bottom sticking out, pick up the pin, and poke it back anyplace in her hair. When she walked, she took big, wide steps, swinging her arms, just like someone who had always carried two buckets of water back and forth for someone else.

  Really, she had the manners of a village servant. And this made me wonder how she had come to marry a vice-captain, someone who was educated and handsome, certainly from a refined family. I had known other girls who had been born poor, who had later married well. But their beauty had been exceptional, and their mothers-in-law had quickly trained them how to behave properly.

  Hulan could not be called pretty, even if you judged her with an old-fashioned eye. She was plump, but not in that classical way of a peach whose pink skin is nearly bursting with sweetness. Her plumpness was round and overflowing in uneven spots, more like a steamed dumpling with too much filling leaking out of the sides. She had thick ankles and large hands, and feet as broad as boat paddles. While she had cut her hair in a popular Western style—parted deep on one side like this, combed back smooth, and curled halfway down—she had applied the curling sticks to her hair unevenly. So here it was lumpy, there it was flat. And she had no sense of fashion, none at all. One day I saw her wearing a Western-style flowery dress on top of a yellow Chinese dress that hung down like a too long slip. On top of this she wore a sweater she had knit, with the sleeves too short. She looked just like laundry hung out to dry.

  I am not being critical in remembering her features just because I am angry with her now. Why am I angry? Because she wanted to tell you my story, throw everything into the open before she died. Of course I would have told you eventually myself. I was waiting for the right moment. And you see, now you are here and I am telling you everything.

  Anyway, even though I am angry I can remember many good things about Hulan as well. Yes, her eyes were kind-looking, big and open. And her cheeks were nicely rounded, pushing in her mouth to make it seem small and sweet. And she had a nice-shaped chin, not too big, not weak-looking either. And she was honest. Most important, she was honest, spoke frankly, never tried to hide her feelings.

  Or maybe this was not honesty, but foolishness, a lack of modesty, no understanding of when to hide herself. Yes, that’s how she was. Show everything, doesn’t matter!

  Look how she was. When we washed together every evening, she sat on the stool with her legs wide open like this, scrubbing herself vigorously—her breasts, under her arms, under her legs, between her legs, her backside, the crease of her bottom—until her skin was covered with red streaks. And then she would get on her hands and knees, just like a dog, and naked like that, she would dip her hair into the basin of cloudy hot water left over from her bath.

  I was embarrassed for her—and for myself, knowing this was the way I appeared to my husband every night. I tried not to look at her. I would pretend to be busy washing myself, my thin arms folded in front of my breasts, one large cloth over my lap, while I used another cloth to wash what was underneath without showing any obvious motions. But I could not stop myself from watching Hulan. How ugly she looked this way. And then I would see how she was thrashing her head back and forth in the basin like a crazy woman, how she lifted her head, squeezed her hair with her strong arms, twisting it like a mop. Then she would stand up, poke a towel in her ear, wipe her nose, and rub herself all over, laughing at me and saying, “Look at you! Your water is going to evaporate before you finish with your bath.”

  Soon after we met each other in the tea room bathhouse, Hulan and I began to take walks together. It was always Hulan’s idea to look for the strangest things. She would mention she had heard about an interesting site, that she learned this from another wife, or a pilot, or a shopkeeper in town. She seemed to talk to everyone, asking what was unusual to see. One time she had heard about a magic spring.

  “The water from this spring,” she said, “is heavy as gold, sweet as honey, but clear as glass. If you look into the pool you can see your face, just like in a mirror. If you look another way, you can see the bottom of the pool, covered with black rocks. I heard you can fill a cup with this water, then drop the black rocks into the cup to try to make the water overflow. But not a drop will spill out, it is that thick! A monk told me this.”

  But when we reached that spring, it turned out to be only a teahouse that charged a lot of money for a strange-flavored drink. Hulan drank that tea and said it was truly magic. It ran through her blood, immediately entered her heart and her liver, then made her feel completely peaceful. But I think she was only sleepy for her usual noontime nap.

  Another time, she said she knew of a place in town that served a noodle soup called “cat’s ears,” and in the window of this restaurant were half a dozen cats with their ears cut off—proof that the restaurant used only the best ingredients. But we could never find the place. And later I heard that “cat’s ears” was only a local expression for wonton soup.

  I began to think that people liked to fool Hulan, to watch her mouth drop open as they told her fantastic lies, to laugh behind her back. I felt sorry for her, so sorry that I did not want to be the first to tell her the truth, that somebody had only made a big joke on her. But later I became annoyed. I thought she was only pretending to be so innocent, so willing to believe when someone said, Go see the white snake with the figure of a lady. Go see the cave with the singing flutes. And when she invited me to see these things, I began to give her excuses, that I was tired, or my stomach did not feel well, or my feet were too swollen that day to walk so far. I said these same excuses so often they became true. Daomei thinking.

  That is how it was between Hulan and me. She grew a field of hope from a little seed of imagination. And although I did not know this, from all my excuses, I began to grow a baby.

  10

  LOYANG LUCK

  And then the war began, and I did not know this either. Now you must think your mother is a stupid person—didn’t even know a war had started.

  But you should know, if I was this way, many people were this way—not stupid, only ignorant. Nobody told you anything back then. And you didn’t know where to go for official information, who to ask. Our husbands didn’t tell us. We could only overhear.

  And if you read something in the newspaper, you couldn’t trust it, not one hundred percent. The newspapers reported only what the government wanted you to hear, just a little bit, only good things about their side, bad things about the other. I am not just talking about what they do in China today. It was already this way during the war, even before that. Maybe it’s always been that way, keeping people ignorant, like some kind of strange custom, although nobody calls it that.

  So we got most of our information through gossip, passed from one mouth to another. We did not talk about the fighting so much. We talked about how we were directly affected, just like what you do here—if the stock market is up or down, if prices are up or down, what you can’t buy anymore, that sort of thing.

  Of course, now when I look back, I know what started the world war. You thought it started in Europe? You see, maybe you are ignorant too. It started in China, with a late-night shooting up north in Peking, a few people killed, but the Japanese were beaten back.

  You didn’t know that? Even I knew that. But of course, when I heard it, I didn’t think too much about it. This kind of small fighting had been growing inside China for many years. So it seemed like it was only a small change, like the change within the summer season, when we all began to complain about the heat earlier in the morning than the day before. That is how I remember the start of the war, only the weather, the hot damp making my mind move as slowly as my legs.

  During that time, Hulan and I could think of nothing but which dishes to eat to cool
us inside out. We were busy fanning ourselves, or chasing away biting flies with a tassel. In the daytime we did nothing except drink hot tea, take cool baths and long naps, or sit on a veranda, moving our chairs farther back as the sun moved across the sky and ate up our shade.

  I was often sick or too irritable to talk. Hulan chattered like a noisy bird. She said she knew exactly why I was not feeling well: “The food they serve, nothing is fresh, and all the same sour taste,” she said.

  And when I did not answer, she continued with other complaints. “Down there,” she said, pointing toward the city, “it is worse, as steamy-filthy as a lice-infested bathhouse. Down there, the stink from the waterways can shrivel your nostrils.” This kind of talking did not help my stomach.

  In the evenings, the pilots and advisors would return to the monastery for dinner. We all ate in the same big hall. But the Americans would eat their own kind of food, perspiring into their plates. Too much heavy food, the rest of us always whispered, for such hot weather. I was sick just to see it.

  Hulan and Jiaguo would eat with Wen Fu and me. We ate many dinners together like this, and I remember thinking how different Hulan’s husband was from mine. He was older than Wen Fu, perhaps by ten years or more. And because he was Wen Fu’s boss, the vice-captain, he was certainly more powerful. And yet he was not.

  One night we heard Hulan scolding Jiaguo, telling him not to eat this or that because of his bowel condition. Another night she announced she had found the book that his absentminded self had misplaced. Still another time, she said she had washed his dirty laundry that day, but the stain on his pants did not come out.

  And hearing all this, Wen Fu and I would look at Jiaguo to see what explosion would follow. Wen Fu had told me that Jiaguo had a boiling-point temper, that he once threw a chair at another pilot, missing him by only one hair. But each time Hulan scolded him, Jiaguo did not seem angry or embarrassed. He ignored her, that’s what it looked like to me. He would continue to eat, answering, “Anh, anh, anh,” as Hulan made one remark after another.

  If Wen Fu could have forbidden me to see Hulan, he would have, I’m sure. But how could he tell me not to be friendly to his boss’s wife? So instead, he often had bad words to say about Hulan. “A woman like that,” he said, “is a whore and a fox-devil, all mixed into one. I would rather have a dead wife than a wife like that.”

  I said nothing. But secretly, I envied Hulan, that her husband was so lenient to her, even though she was not a very good wife. At the same time, I did not admire Jiaguo. I pitied him, all his weaknesses exposed in front of others like that. Of course, I did not know then the true story about their marriage, why he had to let her be this way.

  After dinner, all the men, Americans and Chinese alike, would remain in the hall and play cards. If we women went outside to find a breeze, mosquitoes would immediately cry with joy to see us—zzzs! zzzs!—and chase us back inside. So Hulan and the other women and I usually remained inside. We would watch the men play, amid the smell of cigarettes and cigars, foreign sweat, and Chinese whiskey.

  Watching like that, I learned that my husband was very popular with the other men. One man would always save him a seat at the table closest to a ceiling fan. Another would always offer him a drink or a cigarette. And Wen Fu would reward them by laughing out loud, very loud, while banging his hand on the table. The other men would begin laughing too, pounding too.

  One time I saw Wen Fu jump up and announce, “Want to know what the American instructor taught me today?” And two other men cheered him on, then laughed with tears in their eyes as he puffed his chest out, hands on hips, and swayed back and forth, barking out nonsense.

  I saw how his boldness, his recklessness, made other men want to be the same way. He acted as if he were already a hero: never can lose, no matter how dangerous. And the others must have believed that by being in his company, by laughing his big laugh, this feeling could swell in their lungs as well.

  But he also scared them, made them feel his danger. I saw this too. One time he leapt up from the table, so angry, and everyone became alarmed. He was shouting at a young man opposite him, tapping the man’s cards already showing on the table, and asking repeatedly, “Are you throwing tricks at me? Are these really your cards?” And the young man—in fact, all the men at that table—were unable to move or speak as my husband continued to shout. And then, while he was still standing, both hands leaning on the table, he suddenly smiled.

  “Good, then.” And he threw down his cards—“Wah!”—his winning hand. The men stared at each other, then roared with laughter and slapped the accused man on the back, while congratulating my husband on his good joke.

  Hulan, Jiaguo, the other men in the room—they all thought Wen Fu was clever, so funny, so charming. I laughed out loud too, a nervous laugh. I saw that my husband did this laughing-scaring game not just with me, but with his friends. And I also began to see that what he did was wrong, cruel, but no one else seemed to see this.

  So maybe I was not so ignorant. The other pilots—they were smart, they were nice people. But they didn’t see what I could see: He accused and tormented, shouted and threatened. And just at that point when you did not know which way to move, he took the danger away, became kind and forgiving, laughing and happy. Back and forth, this way and that.

  Of course, we were confused, fooled into thinking we always wanted to please him. And when we did not, we tried hard to win back his good nature, afraid we would be lost without it.

  During the summer afternoons, the sky would often darken, then thunder would come. Whenever we heard this, Hulan and I would hurry and gather together a small hamper of food, our embroidery, that sort of thing. This was like an adventure!

  We would walk quickly up the pathway behind the monastery, up three terraces of steps, until we had reached the little outdoor pavilion sitting atop a mound with the wet-green hills in back, the lake below, and the festering city beyond that. And in that tiny heaven we would watch the world being washed down, until we could no longer see the city or the hills, only the soft gray curtain of rain surrounding us completely.

  This pavilion reminded me of the greenhouse on the island. It made me homesick—although not for the house where Uncle, Old Aunt, and New Aunt lived. I was longing to be back at that place where I had hidden myself, where I pretended to be lost, where I imagined somebody would find me. I was remembering my poor little broken treasures: my mother’s painting, the wings of a butterfly that crumbled into dust, a dried flower bulb that I once watered every day, thinking it would grow into a fairy maiden who could be my playmate.

  Of course I did not tell Hulan these childish thoughts. We sat quietly in the pavilion, like two proper married ladies. But I also think we were both pulling from our own memories, trying to recall how it was that we had lost our girlhood so quickly.

  I remember one afternoon in particular when we sat in that little world. The lightning came, and the rain fell, faster and stronger every minute as if it would never stop. It seemed unnatural for rain to fall so hard and for so long. When two hours had passed, we became nervous, although we tried not to show this.

  “We have to go back soon,” said Hulan, “even if the rain keeps falling.”

  “Well, what can we do, then? Can’t worry it to stop, that’s for certain,” I said.

  “Who said anything about worry? You are looking at someone who lived with floods all her life. The water used to come up to my waist before I’d think about moving my teacup off the table.”

  While waiting for the rain to stop, I searched through an old Shanghai newspaper I had found in the dining hall a few days before. So many good stories: A famous actress was involved in a big scandal. A Russian Jewish singer had just arrived from Manchukuo and was singing in a benefit play. Money had been stolen from a bank, the same one robbed just two weeks back. A British horse named Go the Extra Mile had won a race the week before.

  An advertisement claimed a medicine called Yellow could cure the br
ain of confusion and bad-luck thinking, worries and slow-mindedness. Old Aunt had once bought Uncle a bottle.

  There was not very much news about fighting anywhere, only a big declaration from Chiang Kai-shek, saying China would not give up anything to Japan, not even one more inch of land.

  While reading, I would reach into my hamper of food, which had been quite full at the start. Perhaps it was my own nervousness about the war that had turned my appetite upside down. I often did not know what I could eat until the moment I was hungry. One minute I wanted one thing, the next minute I could not swallow another bite, and in another minute—hungry again for something completely different! So I had packed a little of everything. And I ate a little of everything, a taste at a time, according to the desires of my tongue and the moods of my stomach. A salty dried fish, a sweet beef jerky, a sour-sweet pickled vegetable, and even a spicy cabbage that punished my mouth and steamed my eyes until tears poured out. Snacks, you would call them here.

  And when even these different foods did not seem enough, I asked Hulan what she had brought to eat, if she had anything crisp and salty. That’s when Hulan told me I was carrying a baby.

  “I know this,” she said, as if she had sent a hundred babies into this world. “It’s a sure sign when something inside you is hungering for all the tastes of life. Probably a boy, judging by the demands of your appetite.”

  When she told me this, I did not believe her. I was only nineteen, still growing myself. And Hulan was even younger than I was, so what did she know? I jumped up and put my hands over my hips, pressed them against my dress to see my stomach. Nothing, no baby’s head pushing to come through my belly button. Yet I could feel something, so hungry for life it might devour me.