The Kitchen God's Wife

  “So stupid, to use a piece of straw like that,” said Hulan. “And that family who took her in—oyo!—so mad that she brought a ghost on them. Lucky for us she didn’t die in our house.”

  While Hulan talked, I felt strange, as if I were feeling that slap to my face all over again, everyone in the room looking down on me, saying this was my fault. I could see that girl lying on the floor, her blood spilled all around, people lamenting only that she had left a big mess behind.

  Of course, Hulan didn’t know it was Wen Fu who got that girl in trouble. Or maybe she knew and wasn’t saying anything. Still, how could she think this way! Criticizing a helpless servant girl, congratulating us for being rid of her before she turned into a ghost. Why was she not thinking of her own sister, the one who died almost the same way? And I was just as bad, because I had become almost like Hulan: no sympathy, only relief that I had avoided troubles for myself.

  After Hulan left, I picked up Yiku and went upstairs. I told her, “Don’t be like me. You see how helpless I am. Don’t be like me.”

  When Wen Fu came home that night, I showed him my anger for the first time. I had waited until after the evening meal, after late rounds of tea and card games, gossip and laughter. “That little servant girl, you remember her,” I said when we were up in our room. “Today she died.”

  Wen Fu was taking his shoes off. “My slippers, where are they?”

  I could hear Hulan and Jiaguo, still talking downstairs in the kitchen. I closed the door to our room. I repeated what I had said, louder this time. “The servant girl is dead.” And when he continued to ask for his slippers, I added, “She died trying to get rid of your baby, you fool!”

  He stood up. “What’s your meaning? Whose lies have you been listening to?” he said. He leaned toward me, staring, one eye droopy, the other large and wide open. I did not look down. I stared back at him, so strong. I had a new feeling, like having a secret weapon.

  And suddenly—whang!—he knocked over a chair. He cursed. He was shouting at me. “Who are you to accuse me?”

  Yiku was now crying in the next room, a scared kind of crying. I started to go toward her room, but Wen Fu shouted for me to stop. I did not listen, and I went to her and saw she was standing up in her crib, reaching with one arm to be comforted. I picked her up and soothed her. Wen Fu followed me, still shouting, knocking things over, but I was not afraid. This time he did not scare me. I put Yiku back in her crib.

  “I know what happened!” I shouted back. “You pushed that girl down, ruined her life, who knows how many others. And now I’m telling you, you do your dirty business somewhere else. In the streets, I don’t care, only not in my bed anymore.”

  He raised his fist. I did not look away or cover myself. “Hit me, I still won’t change!” I shouted. “Hero, big hero! The only one you can scare is a baby.”

  He looked surprised. He looked toward Yiku standing behind me in her crib. She was crying hard. He put his hand down. He walked over to the crib very fast. And I thought he was sorry that he had made her cry. I thought he was going to pick her up and say he was sorry. And then, before I could even think to stop him, he slapped her—kwah!—hit her hard on the face, so hard half of her face turned red. “Quiet!” he shouted.

  Her eyes were pinched closed. Her mouth was open, but no sounds came out. She could not breathe. So much pain! I can still see that look on her face, hurting worse than any slap to my own.

  I rushed over to Yiku, but Wen Fu pushed me away and I fell. And then I heard her cry again. Her breath finally came back! And she cried even louder, higher. Kwah! Wen Fu hit her again—kwah!—again and again. And by the time I could get to my feet and push my body in between, I saw Yiku had rolled up into a little ball. She was making small animal sounds. And I was crying and begging Wen Fu, “Forgive me! I was wrong! Forgive me!”

  After that, every time Yiku saw her father come into the room, she fell down and curled herself up small, just like the first time. She sucked her fingers, making little sounds. This is true, only six months old, and she had learned not to cry. Can you imagine—a baby who learned to be that scared before she even knew how to crawl away?

  She became a strange baby. She never looked at people’s faces. She pulled out hair from one side of her head. She banged her head on the wall. She waved her hands in front of her face and laughed. And when she learned how to walk, she stood on her toes, like a ballerina dancer. She tiptoed quickly across the floor, as if she could lift herself up into the air with each step. But each time she saw her father come into the room, she fell back down again, same as when she was a baby. She did not cry. She spoke no words, only the outside shapes of them, like the voice of a ghost.

  Her voice sang up and down, high and pretty, sounding the way I often called to her, “Yiku, look at me, look at me.” And then her voice would become harsh, grunting the same way Wen Fu shouted, “Yiku, stupid thing. Go away!” Those were the only sounds she knew how to make.

  She was strange all the time. I was worried, so worried. But Hulan kept telling me, “When she’s older, she’ll change. Now she’s just nervous. Everyone’s the same way. When the war is over, she’ll change. You’ll see.”

  I wanted to believe her. Why wouldn’t I? I had never raised a baby. I didn’t want to think my baby had lost her mind. I kept thinking the war would soon be over, then Yiku would get better. I believed that, one hope leading to the other.

  The Double Seventh was supposed to be a lucky day. But it became a day full of regrets. I was already six or seven months pregnant with another baby. Yiku was maybe seventeen months old, so it must have been 1940, summertime and unusually warm, which made everyone irritable.

  That day we learned the British were closing down the Burma Road to make the Japanese happy. That day Jiaguo invited the railway official to come to lunch, so he could discuss other ways to transport supplies. That day Hulan bought the food from the marketplace, and she found plenty of bad bargains.

  The official brought his wife to lunch, a woman who reminded me of Old Aunt, the way she said, “Oh, you shouldn’t eat spicy foods. Otherwise your new baby will be born with a bad temper.” And then she proceeded to take another helping of the spicy noodle dish I liked so much, eating up my share.

  When everyone had finished the meal, I was still feeding Yiku some leftover pieces of vegetables. Jiaguo, Wen Fu, and the official were drinking whiskey, talking about money values. Hulan was fanning herself, her eyes sleepy from the meal.

  “Everything is falling down, down, down,” said the official, with much authority. “Last year’s money is worth half today. That’s how you know if we are winning or losing the war. Look at the money. The enemy can control the country just by controlling the money.”

  “Then China should print more money,” said Wen Fu, wearing his knows-everything look. I knew he was trying to match the official’s arrogance. “Give everybody more money. They spend more. Everyone makes more. Or better yet, get the foreigners to give us more money.”

  Jiaguo shook his head. “Bad idea. Outside interference, that’s what got China in trouble in the first place, divided us into little pieces too weak to fight together.”

  “That’s why the foreigners should pay,” Wen Fu insisted, “to clean up the mess they started. Tell them to give us enough money to win the war.”

  The official laughed. He turned to me and pointed his thumb at Wen Fu. “Eh, Mrs. Chiang Kai-shek, your husband finally knows how to solve all our problems. So simple, get foreign help. Hey, Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Churchill, here’s my begging bowl. Give me one hundred million dollars.”

  I thought the official was very rude. But I laughed too, just to be polite. I knew Wen Fu was not happy. So I tried to tease his humor back. “You’ll need a big bowl,” I said, and smiled. Big mistake!

  Wen Fu’s face got red. “Maybe I should give you a bowl and make you beg,” he said in his angry voice. “How about it?” And right away, everyone became very quiet, embarrassed. I was try
ing to pinch back my tears.

  Suddenly, Yiku started rocking back and forth, singing to herself. She shook her hands in front of her face, singing in her high little voice, then grunting loud and harsh, the same sounds she always made.

  The official’s wife rushed over and touched Yiku’s forehead. “Ai, what’s wrong with your baby? Is she sick?”

  And this made Wen Fu even more angry. “Yiku!” he shouted. He slapped her hands down. “Stop that! Stupid girl, quiet!”

  And Yiku started rocking faster, singing those shouting tones: “Yiku! Stop that! Stupid girl!” I was sick to hear it.

  The official and his wife left soon after that. Jiaguo and Hulan went into their room to take a nap. And when we were alone, Wen Fu shouted for a long time about my being an improper mother, how I had not taught Yiku to be an obedient daughter. My stomach felt bad, very bad, and I thought this was because I was seeing Yiku clearly for the first time, the same way the official’s wife saw her.

  But the next morning, my stomach felt worse, and I knew it was the food from the day before. And then I said to myself, Oh, I hope Hulan didn’t buy cheap vegetables from Burmese people. Those people had so many dirty habits—using their own night soil to fertilize the plants, spreading the germs they brought with them, cholera, dysentery, typhoid fever. And even as I worried about these things, I did notice Yiku was sick, too. She was not crying. She was only sleepy all the time. So how could I know?

  But then her diarrhea started that afternoon. By evening, it still had not stopped and she refused to eat or take any water. And after Wen Fu had gone off to play mah jong at a friend’s house, her eyes were half open, but she did not seem to see anything.

  I was so stupid! I said to Hulan, “Maybe I should take her to the hospital. What do you think?”

  Why did I ask Hulan what to do? I should have taken Yiku right away. But I believed Hulan when she said, “You need to have a doctor give his permission first. You can’t go to the hospital by yourself. ”

  I remembered that the doctor was playing mah jong at the same place as Wen Fu, a house maybe fifteen minutes’ walking distance away. I ran.

  “Your daughter is sick,” I whispered when I arrived. “We need the doctor, so we can take her to the hospital.”

  He acted as if he did not hear me, only continued his betting. The doctor, who was sitting at Wen Fu’s same table, looked at me. “What’s the matter?” he said. I repeated what I had said, told him how sick Yiku was.

  “She’s become very weak from so much diarrhea. A little trouble breathing, her eyes bouncing back and forth from the fever. I’m afraid,” I said. The other men stopped talking. The doctor stood up. “I’ll go,” he said.

  Wen Fu jumped up. “Play! Keep playing! My wife is exaggerating.” He laughed. “She sees an ant, thinks it’s a lion. The baby sneezed once, she thinks it’s pneumonia. Sit down, sit down, keep playing.”

  I would not leave. The doctor kept standing. “This time it is serious, not an exaggeration,” I said quietly. “She could die.”

  And Wen Fu got so mad because I had contradicted him. “If she dies, I wouldn’t care!” he shouted. He sat back down and took a mah jong tile. “Eh, she’s only trying to chase me home before I lose all my winnings,” he said with a big smile.

  The other men laughed in a nervous way, then started to play again, too. The doctor sat down.

  That’s what happened. I’m not exaggerating. He said that in front of all those people: If she dies, I wouldn’t care. Those exact words. Those men heard him. They did nothing. And I was standing there, my mouth wide open, thinking, Where did he get his power over these men? What did he do to scare them too?

  I ran back home. “No use,” I told Hulan. “The doctor won’t come.”

  The next long hour that followed, Hulan and I ran up and down the stairs getting fresh water to keep Yiku bathed, to force clean water into her mouth. But Yiku would not take anything, only turned her head away.

  Maybe another hour later, her little body began to shake, then stretched out stiff, before shaking again. I picked her up, ran downstairs and out the door, and stumbled down the dark road, Hulan following me.

  They were still playing and laughing, drinking and smoking.

  “You see! You see!” I cried to my husband, showing him Yiku. And now all the men stopped playing and stood up at once. The room was so quiet. Yiku’s body was throwing itself up into the air, trying to jump out of my arms. The doctor ran to us immediately.

  “You stupid woman!” Wen Fu shouted, then cursed. “Why didn’t you tell me she was this way? What kind of mother are you!”

  He acted as if he had forgotten everything! And not one person in that room said, “You’re lying. Just one hour ago, she told you.” The doctor said, “Hurry, hurry. Who has a car?”

  On the way to the hospital, Wen Fu cursed me the whole way. I don’t remember what he said. I wasn’t listening, I was holding Yiku, holding her close to me. I tried to quiet her body down, tried to keep her with me. But I knew there was no hope.

  “Now you’re going to leave me,” I said. “What am I going to do without you?” I was crazy with grief.

  And then I saw her eyes looking at me. Perhaps it was the first time she had done this since she was a little baby, looked at me with such clear eyes, as if she were finally seeing me.

  I thought I was imagining this only because her time left was so short. But then I looked again.

  Her eyes were clear. She did not smile or cry. She did not turn away. She was watching me, listening to me. And I was remembering something I once heard: that right before children die, they become as they would have been had they lived a whole life. They understand their life, no matter how small it has been. And in her eyes I felt she was telling me, “This is my quick life, no worse, no better than a long one. I accept this, no blame.”

  In the morning, I watched Yiku die. Wen Fu had gone home earlier, after the doctor told him, “No hope, too late.” But I was in the hospital room with her.

  I thought about all the things I had done wrong, how I had not protected her better, how I had lied and told her she would have a good life. I watched her draining away from my life, growing smaller and smaller. I told her I was sorry. And then she pointed her toes like a ballerina dancer and was gone. I didn’t cry. By then I had no tears left, no feeling.

  I picked her up. And I knew I didn’t have to lie to her anymore. “Good for you, little one,” I told her. “You’ve escaped. Good for you.”

  Tell me. If you saw this happen to your own child, could you forgive?

  16

  THE GREAT WORLD

  If I could have stopped another baby from coming into this world, that is what I would have done. But I was already six or seven months pregnant when Yiku died. And that is why I had to let the baby come, knowing already how bad its life would be. Boy or girl, I would name it Danru—“nonchalance”—a good Buddhist name, as if this baby would never be attached to anything in this life, not even its own mother.

  That was what I thought before the baby was born. But then Danru came, and Hulan looked at him and said, “Oh! He’s the same as his father.” Wen Fu was grinning big. And right away, I wanted to fight for my baby, to protect him from this curse.

  After everyone left, I examined Danru’s small sleeping face. His hair stuck up straight, like new grass. I stroked its softness with the palm of my hand. And then he opened his eyes, not all the way, just a little, as if all the brightness of the world were a very bad thing. He stared at me and frowned, and it was not Wen Fu’s mean expression, but a worried one. He poured all his worries onto me.

  So you see, right away I loved Danru, even though I tried very hard not to. It is that feeling of protecting someone so trusting, and getting back a little of your own innocence.

  I stayed in the hospital five days and Wen Fu came to visit only twice, telling me each time he was very busy with his new job.

  Jiaguo had given him a position at the air f
orce headquarters, training him to do radio communications.

  When the doctor said I was ready to leave the hospital, I did not wait for Wen Fu to come get me that evening. I called for the milk nurse to gather all my things and find us transportation. And within two hours’ time I arrived home.

  It was still early afternoon. Hulan’s door was closed. I told the milk nurse to put Danru upstairs in the crib. I stayed downstairs to ask the cook about supplies and to instruct her on what to make for our dinner. And then as I started to go upstairs, the milk nurse came down and whispered, “Oh, tai-tai, there’s a ghost up there.”

  When servants tell you there’s a ghost, it means something is wrong and they are not in the position to tell you why. I told the milk nurse to go into the kitchen. And then I walked up to my room to see what was the matter.

  Right away, I saw a young woman sleeping on my bed, wearing one of my nightgowns, taking a nap! I quickly closed the door and stood in the hallway, trying to think what this could mean. How could Wen Fu bring a woman into our house—in front of everybody ! I went downstairs and knocked on Hulan’s door.

  “Eh! Look at you, back already!” she said. “Where is the little treasure, sleeping? Come in, come in. You must meet someone from my family.” She did not say anything about the woman sleeping in my room.

  And then I saw another woman. She was sitting on the sofa, her face and hands as brown and cracked as parched earth. Hulan introduced me to her aunt, Du Ching, who had come from the north. To my young eyes, she looked as if she were already ninety years old. Although I found out later she was not even fifty.

  Guess who this woman was? Auntie Du! That’s right, Grand Auntie Du! That’s when I met her.

  She had arrived just that morning.

  “How many days’ journey was it coming here?” I asked her, making polite talk.