The Kitchen God's Wife

  As I planned the evening meal, the planes became louder, making it harder for me to think. I wondered why they had not yet turned away to another part of the city. And when they grew even louder, I became more confused. I walked out into the middle of the street, and I was so mad to see the planes above me. I was thinking, How stupid they are. They must be lost.

  Suddenly machine-gun bullets hit a whitewashed building in front of me—and a long line of holes instantly appeared, just like stitches when the thread is yanked out fast. The piece of the wall underneath those empty stitches crumbled away, and then the rest of the wall on top fell down, like a big pile of flour that had lost its sack. And in that small moment—it was that quick—all my smart thoughts flew out of my brain. I screamed, and dust instantly filled my mouth, burned my eyes.

  I was choking and coughing. I was rubbing my eyes, trying to see again. The sirens were still ringing. I heard more gunfire, the booming sound of the airplanes circling above us. When I could finally open my eyes, the first thing I saw was a woman standing in front of me. She held a poor straw broom in her hand. She was staring up at the sky, her eyes as big as eggs. And then her mouth fell open, stretched bigger and bigger, a terrible look, as though her breath was stuck and she was trying to push it out.

  Now I was looking up at the same sky. Two dark shadows the shape of fish were dropping, wobbling, and growing big. And before I could even say to myself, “Bombs,” I was falling, the ground was shaking, then roaring in my ear, and from all sides I heard glass shattering.

  When my senses came together, I was lying with my face to the ground. I did not know whether I had fallen or whether the explosion had pushed me down, whether one second had passed, or one day. And then I looked up. The world had changed. Sand was raining down from the sky. I thought maybe I was dreaming, because people were walking slowly, as if they were still dreaming too. Or perhaps we were dead and now waiting to go to the next world. But then I coughed and felt stinging dust in my throat.

  When the sirens stopped, I stood up and began to walk. To my left, I saw smoke rising behind some rooftops. Maybe it was from a fire one or two streets away. And lying on the rooftops and in the road were all the things that had blown over the buildings. Bits of blankets and stools, a bicycle wheel, a cookstove and pot, and torn pieces of clothing—only it was not just clothing, but a sleeve with a bent arm, a shoe with a foot, and things I did not want to recognize.

  I walked slowly past all this, unable to look away. And then I saw the same woman with the broom, the one who had been screaming right before the bomb fell. She was sitting on the ground, lifting her arms up and down, wailing to the sky. “Where are you? I told you not to go outside. Now will you listen to your mother?”

  That’s when I thought to myself: Danru!—where is he?

  I started running home. I ran by people who were limping, little children who were crying, a smiling man with blood pouring out of his ear. And then as I ran closer and closer to my house, I saw the streets were filled with the usual happy people, chatting and gossiping in the way they always do after the sirens stop.

  Hulan was already drinking tea when I arrived home, pushing her glasses close to her face, inspecting a dried fish soaking in a large bowl. “Oyo! Gone not even one-half hour and now look—ten bugs at least are swimming in our dinner.”

  “Where are they?” I said.

  “In this bowl, with the fish.”

  “Ai! Danru, Auntie Du—where are they?”

  “Ah! ah! ah!” She laughed a little. “Not back yet. Or perhaps they are coming just now.”

  The door opened and I was already leaping forward—but it was only the cook and servant, the two of them laughing. I hurried to the door to look down the road.

  “Don’t worry,” Hulan called to me. “They’ll come soon, soon enough. Have some tea. You can’t worry them into coming back faster.”

  “How can I not worry?” I shouted back. “I saw a bomb fall, almost on top of me. I saw lots of people dead, injured, terrible sights, shoes without feet, feet without legs—”

  “What are you saying!” Hulan interrupted. “You saw this? Where?”

  And then both of us were running down the road. Along the way, the thunder began. And just as we reached the place where the bombs fell, the rain started. Hulan had to wipe her glasses many times.

  The streets were very busy. The civil police, the army, and American service people—everybody was already there. Fire trucks and ambulances blocked the road. And then we came upon a small hill covered with people, their backs soaked with sweat or rain, mud or blood, you couldn’t tell which.

  “What is it?” Hulan said, wiping her glasses with a finger. “What do you see?”

  We walked closer. I could see many people kneeling on top of a little mountain that once must have been a building of some sort. They were all working hard, digging fast—with shovels, with kitchen pots, with broken boards.

  And then I saw the same woman who was screaming in the street, the one with the broom. She turned and saw me too, a surprised look on her face. And for a moment, it was like looking in a mirror, seeing our same terror.

  She turned away. “Not like that! You’re being too rough!” she shouted to the others. But no one paid any attention to her.

  “Gently, gently,” she pleaded. “Like this.” I saw her kneel on the ground. I saw her use her bloody fingertips to pull up a brick, a board, a rock. And after each dangerous object had been removed, she would bend her face close to the ground, looking, so tenderly, at what she had found.

  I have always wondered what happened to that woman pulling away at that mountain of dirt, brick, and broken bone. Boy or girl, I don’t know which she lost, because when they did find her child, I could no longer watch. She was screaming, “My fault! My fault!” And I did not want to see what child, all broken to pieces, she was now blaming herself for, because at that time we were still looking for Danru.

  But we did not find Danru or Auntie Du in that pile. And we did not find them in any of the other broken buildings that lined the street. Hulan and I stayed for many hours in that part of the city, hearing other mothers calling for lost children, watching layer after layer of hope peeled away, hearing shouts, then screams, then moans of disbelief fading into whispers of regret.

  Each time hope failed for someone else, I made a promise, promise after promise. I said them out loud, a vow to every god and goddess. To be a more watchful mother to my son, Danru. To be sincere and loyal to my friend, Hulan. To be kind and forgiving to my husband, Wen Fu. To respect and follow the advice of my elder, Auntie Du. To accept my life without complaint.

  And after I made the last promise, I saw my servant running toward me, crying and shouting, “At last, I’ve found you,” as if we were the ones who had been lost. Oh, how I cried when she told me!—big, big sobs, the ones I kept inside when I thought I had truly lost him. And now the servant was telling me that Auntie Du and Danru were at home, had arrived not even two minutes after we had left. And everyone felt so heartsick—to think we would worry ourselves to death, looking for them when they were not even lost.

  So Danru was safe. And now 1 knew I had to keep my promises. Hulan heard me make them, especially the part about being her loyal friend. And of course, I could not even consider taking back even one. If I had promised one less, maybe Danru would have died. Maybe he would have been found, but with one eye or one leg missing. Who can say? Who knows how hopes are fulfilled?

  Of course, later, much later, I remembered, lucky for me: I made those promises long after they were already home.

  18

  AMERICAN DANCE

  I did not break my promises. I took back one, only one, the part about being a better wife to Wen Fu. That’s different from breaking promises. That’s like buying something at Macy’s, then getting a refund. I did that last week, bought shoes on sale for Bao-bao’s wedding. And two days later, I saw the same shoes were another twenty percent off. So I took them back, go
t my refund, then bought the shoes again, this time for cheaper.

  I didn’t hurt anyone by taking those shoes back. I bought the same ones all over again. See, they’re right here in this box. The style is almost the same as shoes I once had during the war. They were also high heels, although not too high, and the color was more like a red-brown. They had the same kind of cutout toe, but they were not very well made.

  I wore those shoes to the first American dance I went to. I was dancing in those shoes the first time I fell in love.

  This happened when the Flying Tigers came to Kunming. Of course, back then they were not called the Flying Tigers. They were called the “ah-vuh-gee,” the way we shortened the name for the American Volunteer Group. Although some people called them the Flying Sharks, because that’s what they had painted on the front of their airplanes, shark teeth, very fierce. And later someone thought the shark teeth were tiger teeth. So now you know how they got their name, Flying Tigers. It was a mistake.

  Anyway, we had been invited to an American victory dance. And the day we were supposed to go, Hulan was telling me there was a Chinese schoolteacher who went crazy, left her husband, and now wanted to sleep with the American air force, everyone, married or not, young or old, it didn’t matter.

  “She is openly saying this, a Chinese woman!” said Hulan. “This is true. Everybody is saying she came down with a sickness right after the American victory, then denounced her husband in public. What kind of sickness—who knows? But now she’s crazy about sex, can’t stop talking about it. She’s old, too, maybe already thirty, and not even pretty.”

  Hulan said the crazy schoolteacher was going to be at the dance, the one that would be held at the American Club. The Americans invited the Chinese pilots to their party, wives and girlfriends could come too. Of course we wanted to go! At this dance, there would also be music—a phonograph and records—lots of food, and a whiskey punch that tasted like soda pop and made everyone dance wild.

  I remember that dance party, Christmastime 1941. It was held three days after the Japanese planes had come once again to drop bombs on Kunming. But this time the American volunteers were there to chase the Japanese away. Our first big victory in so many years! Everyone had run into the streets, shouting and screaming, cheering the American fighter planes with their shark teeth painted on the front. Firecrackers were exploding, drums were banging, car horns honking, as if it were the New Year. So maybe we all went crazy for the Americans, just like that schoolteacher.

  As soon as we walked into the American Club, we heard the music playing loud. It was the same lindy-hop song Min once taught me, “Air Mail Special,” we called it, very lively. Wen Fu snapped his fingers, smiling at what he saw in front of him. People were already dancing, the girls with their high heels clicking, the Americans with big shoes sweeping the floor, making nice soft sounds.

  If that schoolteacher was there, I could not tell. There were many crazy Chinese girls there: university students, teachers, nurses, and others who had fled from other parts of the country—all of them now eager to dance with the Americans. Who knows how they found out about the party. Who knows where they got their Western-style party dresses—pink, green, yellow, some with flowers sewn on, many with big full skirts, almost nothing on top, their arms and shoulders all exposed. But there they were, dancing with the tall foreigners, putting the pilots’ caps on their newly curled hair, all kinds of silly behavior.

  Of course, the American Club was not really a nightclub. It was a large warehouse. During the day, the American volunteers used it as a big meeting hall. For the dance, the floor had been waxed many times, so that even though it was only concrete, it was as shiny as wet marble. The benches had been pushed to the side. And on top of long tables sat small buckets with burning candles, the kind used in the summertime to chase insects away; that was the only kind of candle you could get back then.

  And from the rafters and all along the walls, the Americans had hung paper decorations—trees, candy canes, candles, and other shapes in bright colors. They were not very interesting. But then Jiaguo said these were special Christmas charms, made by the missionaries and Red Cross girls in Rangoon, and flown over the hump of the Burma mountains. We knew that such a journey was very dangerous to make, even for important wartime supplies, so we looked again to admire these American Christmas charms with new respect. The Red Cross had even sent a Christmas tree, which Wen Fu said was genuine American, recalling pictures he had once seen in a magazine. To me, that tree looked like some kind of local bush, only cut in the shape of a Christmas tree. It was decorated with greeting cards, red ribbons, white cotton balls, and something that looked like hardened white lotus seeds tied together in a long necklace. Underneath the tree were hundreds of big red socks, wool socks you could wear, and inside each was a piece of chocolate or a candy cane wrapped in shiny paper and tied with a ribbon. I knew what was inside only because Hulan took four socks, insisting each time that the Americans encouraged her to take more.

  Wen Fu told me he had learned how to dance at nightclubs in Shanghai many years before. I could tell he was eager to show off what he knew. And I soon found out: He knew nothing! No rhythm, no technique, no regular footsteps. He did not dance at all like Min, who moved her arms and legs like branches caught by a soft wind. Wen Fu swung me so hard I thought my arms would pull away from my body. And finally he twirled me in such a clumsy way the heel on one of my high heels broke off, and suddenly I was dancing like a wounded person, one leg longer than the other. Wen Fu let me limp away.

  From my chair, I watched my husband walk up to a group of girls, all wearing pretty dresses. He pointed to his uniform, and one girl began to giggle. I turned away. If he wanted to flirt, I didn’t care.

  And then I saw Hulan and Jiaguo dancing. Their shoulders were pressed together, but Hulan’s feet were spread far apart, each foot going in the opposite direction of the other. Jiaguo would squeeze her thick waist closer to him, then shake her a little, as if this would make her feet cooperate. He seemed to be scolding her, but she was laughing. Watching them, I was wondering if finally Hulan had had her wishes fulfilled, if Jiaguo had become a true husband to her. And then she saw me, waved, and broke away from her husband.

  “If I had to dance to save our lives—disaster on all of us!” she said, then sat down, fanning herself with a paper tree. “Did you see her?” she asked.

  “Who?” I said. I was pounding the heel back into my shoe, then stamping my foot to make the nail go in.

  Hulan leaned toward me. “The schoolteacher, of course, wearing a blue dress. She pulled all the hair out of her eyebrows, then painted them back on.”

  “Where is she?” I asked. I looked around the room.

  “She was close to that table with the food, throwing herself at another American. Let’s go see,” Hulan said.

  But we did not find a crazy woman at the table. Instead, Hulan found things she wanted to eat, American delicacies, also sent by missionaries from far away. I can admit this: I was curious to try them too, these foods that had to be sent such a dangerous long ways. So I tried them all, three kinds of taste. The first was a soft dumpling, named for its color, brownie—so sweet it made my teeth ache. The second was the necklace food lining the tree, popcorn. It was very dry and scratchy, and my mouth watered, trying to find a flavor. And then I ate a little cracker with something awful on top. Hulan ate one too, thinking that mine had been rotten by mistake. No mistake. That was the first time we ever ate cheese.

  And then Hulan and I both noticed someone unusual. A Chinese man was walking around to each of the tables, talking to both the American and the Chinese pilots, shaking hands in the Western manner. He was almost as tall as the Americans. He had a very energetic and friendly manner. And this was even more strange, he was wearing an American-style uniform. When he came up to us, Hulan asked him in a rude manner, “Eh, where did you find the American uniform you are wearing?”—as if it were stolen!

  But the man conti
nued smiling. “I am an American,” he said in Chinese. “American-born.” And then he said something very fast in his American language, something about his mother and father and where he was born. Hulan laughed in astonishment, then remarked that his English sounded genuine, just like a cowboy’s. Of course, she said this in Chinese.

  But I surprised this man, Hulan too, by speaking English. “Before, in Shanghai, I study English lessons.”

  He started to ask me lots of questions in English.

  “No, no,” I said, going back to Chinese. “ ‘Study’ does not mean able to speak. I was a very naughty girl, a bad student. The nuns had to pray hard for me.”

  He laughed. “And did God answer their prayers?” he asked in Chinese.

  I smiled and shook my head. “Still I know enough English to tell. To my eyes, you look Chinese. To my ears, you sound exactly like a foreigner.”

  The man laughed again. “By golly,” he said in English, then returned to speaking Mandarin to thank me. And after that—hah!—he switched to Cantonese, then to some sort of tribal dialect, then to Japanese.

  “You change tongues as easily as a phonograph changing records!” I said.

  “Oyo!” Hulan teased. “You are a spy perhaps, although for which side, it’s hard to tell.”

  The man pulled out an identification card from his wallet, and then explained that he was with the United States Information Service, helping the American volunteers and Chinese air force with translation. “The work is not very difficult,” he said modestly. “For example, one of your pilots wanted a way to say thank you to the Americans.” He pointed to a poster on the wall in front of us. “I told him to write those words.”

  “What does it say?” asked Hulan.

  “ ‘Hooray, Yanks.’ ”

  “And what is the meaning?” I asked.