The Kitchen God's Wife

  But we all knew this was just talk, the same old talk. So after a while, we began to remember the villages we had come from, stories from there, very pleasant kind of talk. And then we were singing.

  We took turns remembering silly village songs, the kind people sing when drinking or celebrating.

  One of the pilots could make his voice sound almost like a woman’s, and together we sang a very silly love song, then laughed and sang it again: “Ten thousand clouds, one thousand birds, one hundred tears, my two eyes look to heaven and see only you, my two eyes—”

  Suddenly we heard heavy steps coming down. And then—bwang!—something was knocked down. I jumped out of my chair and saw Wen Fu, his head wrapped in a bandage. He was leaning on a stick. His face was pale and sweaty, looking like a ghost’s. On top of his pajamas he wore his air force jacket.

  “You are too sick to be up!” I cried, rushing over to help him back into bed. Jiaguo and the pilots started to get up too.

  Wen Fu waved his stick in the air. “How can you sing that?” he roared. “I am a sick man, you are a healthy woman! I am a hero, you are a whore! Your two eyes see other men!”

  I did not know what he was talking about. “You’ve had a bad dream.” I tried to soothe him. “You are still dream-talking. Come back to bed.”

  “Liar!” he shouted. He marched over to us and used his stick to knock over the rest of the food on the table. “You are wrong. Kneel down. Bow your head and beg me to forgive you. Kneel down!” He slammed the stick on the table.

  I looked at his face. His one good eye was wild, like a drunken man’s. His face was so ugly—and I wondered how I could have married such a person. How could I have let this happen?

  Wen Fu must have seen my thoughts with his bad eye, because right then he reached over and slapped me, gave me a real big slap in front of all those people. I gasped. I did not feel any pain. I thought the stinging was just my embarrassment. Everyone was staring, not moving.

  “Kneel down!” he shouted again. He started to raise his stick, and that’s when Hulan pushed me down by my shoulder.

  “Kneel down, kneel down,” she cried. And I found myself falling to my knees. “Just listen to him. Say you are sorry, what does it matter?”

  I remember this: All those men, Hulan—nobody tried to stop him. They watched and did nothing as I lay with my head touching the floor. They said nothing when my husband ordered me to say, “Sorry, I am wrong, you are right. Please forgive me.” They did not protest and tell Wen Fu, “This is enough,” when he told me to beg for forgiveness, again and again.

  And as I bowed and begged, cried and knocked my head on the floor, I was thinking, Why doesn’t anyone help me? Why do they stand there, as if I were truly wrong?

  I am not blaming Helen today for what she did back then. She was scared, same as the others. But I still can’t forget: What she did, what the others did—it was wrong, it was dangerous. It fed Wen Fu’s power, made him feel stronger.

  But if I brought this up with her today, she would not remember what I was talking about. It’s the same with that peach-colored cloth I gave her. We were at House of Fabrics recently, and I said, “Hey, doesn’t this look like the same cloth I gave you in China?”

  “What cloth?” she said.

  “The cloth! The cloth! Peach-colored with red flowers,” I reminded her. “I gave it to you because you told Jiaguo not to put Wen Fu in jail. You knew what he did, the girl he killed in the jeep. You took that cloth and made a summer dress. And you were so happy and then mad the day the war ended—remember?—because you tore that same dress jumping up and down.”

  “Oh, that cloth,” she said, remembering at last. “You didn’t give me that cloth. I bought it myself, went to the old part of the city before it was destroyed and bought it from a girl sitting at a table. That’s right, I remember now. She wanted too much money, and I had to bargain her down.”

  So you see—how can I argue with Helen’s memory? Her truth lives in a little confused part of her brain, all the good things she still wants to believe.

  Sometimes I envy her. Sometimes I wish I never gave her that cloth.

  15

  A FLEA ON A TIGER’S HEAD

  One time your father gave a sermon called “Jesus Forgives, Can You?” I liked that sermon a lot. It gave me a peaceful feeling, letting go of my anger.

  I remember right after that, the Italian man who owned the hardware store treated me mean, yelled at me just because I wanted money back for a light bulb already burnt out when I bought it. He pretended he could not understand me. My English wasn’t good enough, so no money back.

  I got mad. But then I said to myself, Forgive, forgive. I was thinking about what your father said, letting Jesus’s tears from the cross wash all my anger away. And it worked. I was no longer angry.

  So I tried to tell the hardware man how I put the light bulb in my socket. Right away he interrupted me, said, “You bought it, you broke it.”

  I got mad again. I said to myself, Forgive, forgive. Again it worked. I stopped my anger. But then the man said, “Lady, I got a business to run.” And I said, “You should have no business!” I let myself get mad. I forgave and forgave, and that man didn’t learn anything! Who was he to criticize me? His English wasn’t so good either, Italian accent.

  So you see, that’s the way I am, easy to get mad, hard to forgive. I think it is because of Wen Fu. I can never forgive him. I can’t excuse him because of that accident. I can’t excuse what happened later. Why should I?

  I only feel bad that maybe your father will think my heart is not big enough.

  But then I also think, When Jesus was born, he was already the son of God. I was the daughter of someone who ran away, a big disgrace. And when Jesus suffered, everyone worshipped him. Nobody worshipped me for living with Wen Fu. I was like that wife of Kitchen God. Nobody worshipped her either. He got all the excuses. He got all the credit. She was forgotten.

  About a year after Wen Fu’s accident, at the start of 1939, I returned to that same hospital, this time to have another baby. Hulan was with me. She saw me pay one hundred Chinese dollars out of my dowry money for a first-class, private room. That was a lot of money back then, like paying one or two thousand American dollars today.

  Wen Fu did not come to see me until two days later, after I had the baby, another girl. So the first time I saw my baby, I was by myself. When she opened her mouth and cried, I cried too. When she opened her eyes, I hoped she liked what she saw, her new, smiling mother. When she yawned, I told her, “Oh, how smart you are to learn this so quickly.”

  By the time Wen Fu came, his eyes were red-drunk from too much celebrating. He was wearing his air force uniform, and whiskey smells followed him into the room. The baby was asleep. He peered into her face and laughed, saying “My little thing, my little thing” over and over again. He tried to open her curled-up hand.

  “Oh! She’s very ugly!” he joked. “Bald as a monk, fat as a greedy one. How could I come to have such an ugly child? And so lazy too. Wake up, you little Buddha.” Watching the way his eyebrows were dancing, I could tell he was happy. He was trying to charm his own daughter!

  And then he picked her up in his drunken hands. And the baby flung her arms out and began to cry. He bounced her up and down in his arms, and she cried louder.

  “What’s this?” he said. “What is the matter now?”

  “Softer, be gentle,” I suggested, but he did not listen to me. He began to lift her up and down, as if she were a little airplane. He sang her a loud drinking song. Still she kept crying.

  I held my arms out, and he gave her up. In a few moments, she was quiet. And then I saw Wen Fu’s face. He was not relieved, smiling with joy. He was angry, as if this little baby had insulted him—as if a baby only one day old were choosing favorites. I was thinking to myself, What kind of person would blame a baby? What kind of man always puts himself first, even before his own child?

  And then the nurse came into the ro
om to give me some medicine. Right away, Wen Fu told her he wanted something to eat: a good hot soup—noodles and beef tendons. He ordered this dish, fast, like a customer in a restaurant. He told her not to be skimpy with the meat. That’s what he always said in a restaurant. He also told her to bring him a good rice wine, not the cheap local brand, but the best.

  Before he could continue, the nurse interrupted him: “Sorry, no food for visitors, only for patients.”

  Wen Fu stared silently for a moment. And then he banged his fist on the wall. “You’re the one who still has two eyes!” he shouted at the nurse. “Don’t you see I am a war hero?” He pointed to his eye, the one still drooping from the accident.

  I wanted to tell the nurse, He’s no hero! That was not the way it happened, how he got his bad eye. Just the opposite. But the nurse had already left the room.

  And then I made a big mistake. I told Wen Fu not to be a nuisance. Actually, I did not say this word “nuisance.” I could never have said something so directly like that to my husband. So what I probably said was this: “They are busy.”

  And because I was excusing them, Wen Fu became even more angry. He was cursing the hospital, shouting at the top of his voice. I was begging him to calm down. “For the baby,” I said. “A baby has just come into the world. A baby should not hear such things.” But already the baby was crying again. Wen Fu stopped shouting. He stared at his little daughter, so angry at her new outburst. Then he left.

  Good, I thought, he’s gone. Not even five minutes had passed before the nurse ran back into my room, trembling mad. “That man who is your husband, what kind of crazy person is he?”

  And then she told me how Wen Fu had gone downstairs to the hospital kitchen. He had pushed the cooks out of the room. He had picked up a big cleaver, the kind you use to chop a large bone in half. And—pah!—he chopped up the table, the walls, the chairs. He knocked over jars and dishes. He smelled each pot, cursed its contents, and dumped out all the food they were cooking. Finally, when the blade broke, he threatened all the cooks and their helpers, who were watching from the door: “If you report that I did this, I will come back and chop your bones in half.”

  When I heard this, I was so ashamed. I could think of no excuses to offer. I asked the nurse to forgive me for bringing this trouble into the hospital. I promised to pay the hospital another one hundred yuan. I promised to later apologize myself to all the workers in the kitchen.

  After the nurse left, I thought about this question she had asked: What kind of crazy person was my husband? This time I was not blaming myself for having married him. I blamed his mother!—for having given birth to him, for tending to all his desires as if she were his servant, for always feeding husband and son first, for allowing me to eat only after I had picked off bits of food stuck to my father-in-law’s beard, for letting the meanness in her son grow like a strange appetite, so that he would always feel hungry to feed his own power.

  And perhaps this was wrong of me, to blame another woman for my own miseries. But that was how I was raised—never to criticize men or the society they ruled, or Confucius, that awful man who made that society. I could blame only other women who were more afraid than I.

  And now I began to cry, and my baby cried with me. I put her to my breast, she would not eat. I rocked her gently, no use. I sang her a soft song, she was not listening. She cried for so long, until she no longer had enough breath to cry out loud. She cried from down below, in her stomach. And I knew she was scared. A mother knows these things instantly about her own baby, whether she is hungry or tired, wet or in pain. My baby was scared. So I did something I thought was right. I lied.

  “What a good life you will have,” I murmured to her. “That man who was shouting? Nobody we know. Not your father, certainly not. Your father is a gentle man. Your real father will come see you soon, better not cry.” And soon, she calmed down, she went to sleep.

  That night I named her Yiku, “pleasure over bitterness,” two opposite words, the good one first to cancel out the bad one second. This was when characters were written one on top of the other. In this way, I was wishing my daughter a life of comfort winning out over hardship.

  I loved that baby right from the start. She had Mochou’s same ears. But Yiku opened her eyes and searched for me. She would drink only my milk, refused that of her sau nai-nai, her milk nurse, so I sent the sau nai-nai away. You see, Yiku knew I was her mother. I would lift her high in the air, and we would laugh together. She was smart too—not even three months old and she already knew how to put her hands together and touch my hair, never grabbing.

  But whenever Wen Fu began to shout, she always cried, cried all night long, and would not stop until I told her more lies. “Yiku, be good, and your life will be good too.” How could I know that this is how a mother teaches her daughter to be afraid?

  One day, perhaps six months after Yiku had been born, the servant girl came to me, telling me she had to leave. She was fourteen years old, a small girl, always obedient, so Hulan had no reason to scold her. When I asked why she wanted to leave, she excused herself and said she was not a good enough worker.

  That was the Chinese way, to use yourself as an excuse, to say you are unworthy, when really you mean you are worth more. I could guess why she was unhappy. Over the last few months, Hulan had started asking the girl to do lots of little tasks that turned into big ones. And that poor girl, who never knew how to refuse anyone, soon had twice as much work for the same amount of money I paid her.

  I did not want to lose her. So I told her, “You are an excellent servant, never lazy, deserving of even more money, I think.”

  She shook her head. She insisted she was unworthy. I said, “I have praised you often, don’t you remember?”

  She nodded.

  And then I thought maybe Hulan had been treating her in a mean way, scolding her behind my back, and now this girl couldn’t take it anymore. Oh, I was mad! “Has someone else been causing you problems?” I said to the girl. “Someone is giving you trouble, am I right? Don’t be afraid, tell me.”

  She began to cry, nodding her head without looking at me.

  “Someone is making it hard for you to work here? Is this so?”

  She nodded again, more tears. And then she told me who. “Tai-tai, he is not well, very sick. I know this. So I am not blaming your husband.”

  “Blame? What is your meaning for bringing up this word?” I said. It was summertime, but a chill rushed over my body and I ordered the girl to speak. I listened from a faraway place as the servant girl begged me to forgive her, slapped her own face twice, and confessed she was the one who was wrong. She said she was the one who was weak for letting him touch her. She cried and prayed for me to not say anything to my husband.

  And now I don’t remember exactly how I got all her words out, how I pulled them out, one by one. But that afternoon I found out that my husband had started to put his hands on her while I was in the hospital, that she had struggled each time, and each time he had raped her. She did not say “rape,” of course. A girl that young and innocent, how could she know such a word? She knew only how to blame herself.

  I had to ask her many times: The bruise on her face that she claimed was her own clumsiness—was that the time he had tried once before? The times she claimed to be ill, always in the morning—was that after it happened?

  Each time the girl confessed something, she cried and slapped her own face. I finally told her to stop hitting herself. I patted her arm and told her I would settle this problem for her.

  Her face became scared. “What will you do, tai-tai?”

  I said. “This is not your worry anymore.” And then I felt so tired and confused I went upstairs to Yiku’s room. I sat in a chair and watched my baby daughter sleeping, so peaceful in her bed.

  What an evil man! How could I have known such an evil man existed on this earth! Last year’s accident had taught him nothing!

  And then I thought, What will people think when they f
ind out? What will they think of me—if I take sides against my husband and defend a servant girl instead? I imagined Hulan scolding me, accusing me of seeing only the worst in everything and everybody. I saw others criticizing me for not managing my house better. I could imagine people laughing—a husband who chases after a servant girl because his own wife is not enough—the classic old story!

  And then I thought to myself, What he did was wrong, maybe it was a crime, but not a big one. Many men did those kinds of things with servants. And who would believe a servant girl? My husband would say she lied, of course he would. He would claim that the girl seduced him, a big hero. Or he would say she had already slept with many pilots. He could say anything.

  And what would I gain by accusing my husband? I would get a big fight from him in return, pitiful looks from Hulan and Jiaguo, all that shame. So what would it matter if I tried to help that girl? What would I gain? Only trouble in my own bed. And then what would I lose? I could not even begin to imagine that.

  I sat down and remembered a saying Old Aunt used to tell me whenever I complained that I had been wrongly accused: “Don’t strike a flea on a tiger’s head.” Don’t settle one trouble only to make a bigger one.

  So I decided to say nothing, do nothing. I made myself blind. I made myself deaf. I let myself become just like Hulan and Jiaguo, that time they said nothing when Wen Fu slapped me.

  I gave the servant girl three months’ wages. I wrote her a good recommendation. She went away, I don’t know where. I think she was grateful she could quietly leave. And when Wen Fu asked two days later where the servant girl was, I said, “That girl? Oh, she got an offer from her mother to marry a village boy. So I sent her home.”

  Several weeks later I heard the servant girl was dead. Hulan told me while I was nursing Yiku. She said the girl had gone to someone else’s house to work. And one morning, after the girl knew she was pregnant, she used the old country way. She took a piece of straw from a broom, poked her womb until she began to bleed, but the bleeding never stopped.