The Kitchen God's Wife

  And then this man who was both Chinese and American looked at me. He did not say anything for a few seconds, as if he were thinking hard how to translate this carefully. Finally he said, “It means you are surprised by happiness, so much so you cannot express this feeling in ordinary words.”

  When he said that, I felt he had expressed the deepest wishes of my heart, that someday I too would be caught by happiness, like a fish in a net.

  Suddenly I thought I was standing too close to him. The room was very crowded. I tried to lean back farther toward a wall, and that’s when the heel on my bad shoe broke off once again, and this man had to catch me in his arms before I fell to the floor.

  So that was how I met Jimmy Louie—yes, your father! Can you imagine? I went looking for a schoolteacher crazy for Americans. And instead I found an American man who was crazy for me.

  Many years later your father would claim to his American friends, “I fell in love with her right from the beginning. As for Winnie—she only fell. But what matters is I caught her.” He was charming and funny like that, remember? He was always like that, right from the start.

  And it was true, what he said. I cannot claim I loved him right from the beginning. I had no such romantic thought. I was a married woman, trying to avoid troubles in my marriage, not looking for more.

  Although I can admit I was interested in watching Jimmy Louie, his ease with the Americans. When those big men walked up to the food table, Hulan and I shrank away, trying to make room. But Jimmy Louie, without any hesitation, slapped them on the back, called them by name—“Hey, Smitty,” “Hey, Johnny,” “Hey, Hank.”

  And if I am to be honest, I should also confess that I grew more and more ashamed of the clothes I had chosen for that night, a plain brown dress with long sleeves. Worse, I had taken off both my shoes and was now standing barefoot. I must have looked no better than a local country girl. What would an American think! And all around me were so many girls, all wearing fancy dresses, their hair pressed into shiny curls, no signs of war or unhappy marriages in their faces.

  That night, it seemed all those pretty girls ran up to Jimmy Louie, five or six at a time. Of course, he was very handsome, but he did not encourage those girls the same way Wen Fu did. He was popular because of what he could give those girls: an American-sounding name, so they could introduce themselves to their new Yankee friends.

  Jimmy Louie would examine their giggling faces, as if he could determine their character in a few seconds and the name that suited them best. For most of the girls, he gave out names that were easy to pronounce: Donna, Dotty, Patty, Peggy, Sally, Susie, Maggie, Mattie, Jeannie, Judy. But if a girl was too pushy, or too fussy, if she said she wanted a name that was prettier than her friend’s, he would give her a twisty name that was impossible for the Chinese tongue to say: Gretchen, Faith, Theodora. “These are the finest American names,” he would tell those girls, and then he would turn to us and wink.

  “What about you two?” he finally asked. “You should have American names as well.” He asked us what our Chinese names were. And then he squinted one eye, raised one corner of his mouth, pretending to look at us through an imaginary camera, as if he could capture exactly what he saw in a single word.

  That’s how Hulan became Helen. Jimmy Louie said Helen was a very elegant name, but I thought he chose it because it sounded like Hulan. And I became Winnie, which Jimmy Louie said was a lively and lucky-sounding name. “Win, win, win,” he said. He wrote these names down on a piece of paper.

  At that moment, our husbands found us. Jimmy Louie shook hands with Wen Fu and Jiaguo in the American fashion. He also bowed slightly in the Chinese manner. If he was disappointed to learn I was married, he did not show it then—although he soon found a way to let me know what he thought of my husband.

  Hulan showed Jiaguo her new American name. She ran her finger across the piece of paper—as if she could already read English! “Hu-lan, Hu-lan,” she said, pronouncing it slowly, the same as her Chinese name.

  “Yours?” Wen Fu asked me.

  “Winnie,” I said.

  “Not bad, not bad,” Wen Fu said, then turned to Jimmy. “Since you are being so generous tonight, how about a name for my friend and me?” So Jimmy named them as well. To Jiaguo he gave the name Jack, “Jack like Jack London,” Jimmy said. “An American famous for his struggles and adventure.”

  “Jock! Jock!” Jiaguo repeated several times. “I like this name very much.” And without correcting him, Jimmy wrote down Jiaguo’s new name as Jock. That was how Jimmy was, very polite, never embarrassing someone unnecessarily.

  For Wen Fu, Jimmy suggested the name Victor. “A lucky name for a pilot, and one that matches your wife’s,” he explained.

  But then Wen Fu demanded that his name be even more special than mine, that it should be unusual as well, not the same as everyone else’s.

  “Perhaps the name of a recent hero,” said Jimmy.

  “More important than that,” said Wen Fu.

  “Someone who changed history forever,” Jimmy suggested.

  “Exactly!” answered Wen Fu. “That would be the best.”

  “Judas,” Jimmy said. “Your name is Judas. I know of no one else who has this name.”

  “Ju-dassa! Ju-dassa!” Wen Fu repeated, trying on his new name. “It is a good name, good-sounding to the ear, too.” Jiaguo and Hulan agreed.

  I was biting my lips, remembering what the nuns in school had taught me about this evil name. And now Jimmy Louie could see I was trying not to laugh. He smiled like a schoolboy, pleased that I knew what he had done.

  He wrote Wen Fu’s new name on a piece of paper, then said, “This song that just came on, it’s ‘Moonlight Serenade,’ an American favorite. Would you be kind enough to let me dance it with your wife?”

  Before Wen Fu could say anything against this idea, before I could protest that I had no shoes, I found myself whirling in the arms of Jimmy Louie, away from Wen Fu’s frowning face, and into the crowd of happy dancers. He was a good dancer, almost as good as Min.

  “That was very naughty, what you did, this name,” I scolded him in a teasing voice. “Now I am in trouble with my husband.”

  Jimmy Louie laughed. “Doesn’t he have a sense of humor?”

  “Only for jokes he throws at someone else,” I said.

  “Of course, I was wrong to do it,” said Jimmy Louie.

  “Terrible,” I said. And then I saw Jimmy Louie smile and wink. I slapped his shoulder. He bent my head back and laughed. Then I laughed too. This was not love, but the danger of it. And then Jimmy Louie twirled me out gently to the side, and I saw a terrible sight that left me without words.

  It was the crazy schoolteacher in her blue dress, half an eyebrow smeared away, her eyes more closed than open. She was sleep-dancing in the arms of an American pilot. The pilot spun her into the arms of another pilot, and they both laughed, before spinning her away to someone else. I could not stop staring, to see this story Hulan had told me now in front of my eyes, to see my own self looking back from that woman’s lost eyes. For there she was, a woman who had denounced her Chinese husband and was now worth less than all the words she had spit on him. And here I was, no better than she. I had let an American fool my husband. I was now dancing barefoot with this same American, letting him throw me this way and that, any way he pleased.

  So I excused myself from dancing, telling Jimmy Louie I was a tired old married lady. I left him standing on the dance floor, and I did not think I would ever see him again.

  By the time I found Wen Fu, it was already too late.

  When we returned home, Wen Fu showed me his anger right away. He was not doing this because of the name Jimmy Louie had given him; it was not until many years later that he found out what Judas meant. That night he was angry because I had danced with an American. Another pilot had joked to Wen Fu that perhaps the Yankee volunteers had conquered the women, as well as the Japanese.

  So I was not surprised he was angry
. I was ready for this. In our room upstairs, he cursed and called me all kinds of bad names, the same ones he had used throughout our marriage: “Whore! Fox-devil! Traitor!” Whiskey smells poured out of his mouth. I did not protest. But I also did not act afraid. I let these insults roll over me.

  Suddenly he grabbed my hair and threw me to the floor. “You want to be a whore!” he shouted. “I will let you be a whore.” He went to a table and pulled something out from the drawer. He threw down a piece of paper, and then a pen and a bottle of ink.

  “Now I am divorcing you,” he said. “Write that down. ‘My husband is divorcing me.’ ”

  When I looked up, I saw he was pointing a gun to my head, smiling crazily. “It’s no use! Our marriage is finished,” he said. “If you don’t write this, I will kill you!”

  What kind of fool did he think I was? He thought I was scared. I wasn’t. He thought he was forcing me to divorce. He needed no such force. Instead, I felt I had just been given a crazy kind of luck. I was writing fast. Of course I was writing. My blood was rushing, my thoughts running fast, feeling I would soon be free. I quickly wrote down our names. I wrote the date. I signed my name. I left three spaces so he and two witnesses could also sign the paper. I checked everything twice, then handed the paper to him, trying to keep my anger and happiness in. “You sign here,” I said, pointing to the bottom of the paper.

  He read it, then looked at me with so much hate in his eyes. He signed the paper, almost tearing it with the force of his pen. He threw everything down on the floor. I picked up that piece of paper, so precious to me now.

  “You see, you are divorced,” he said in a strange voice. “Worth nothing. You have no husband. You have no home. You have no son.”

  I looked up, startled. I had not thought what would happen to Danru. How foolish I was! To think my body was my own, something to protect or lose only for myself. I could never leave him. I could never do what my mother did to me.

  He waved the gun at me. “Now beg me not to divorce you,” he said. “Beg me to tear up that divorce paper in your hand,” he said. He moved the gun closer to my head. His mouth was ugly and wild, like a crazy person’s, but his eyes were clear. “Do it!” he shouted. “Get down! Beg me!”

  Right then, I knew he wanted to see me suffer. He would twist his mind this way and that, until I no longer had the strength to turn mine the other way. And he would not be satisfied until he proved over and over again that he had conquered me completely.

  My mind broke. My will to fight was gone. My voice gave one loud cry for myself. And then, with my face to the floor, I begged him.

  “Louder!” he demanded. “Say you are sorry you are such a worthless whore.” I said those words.

  “Bow and say you promise to be an obedient wife.” I bowed and said those words.

  He laughed with delight. “Say you cannot live without me as your husband.” I said those hated words.

  Wen Fu began to laugh more. “I like this, I like this very much.” And then he became quiet. He walked over and took the divorce paper from my hand. I thought the torture was over. He waited until I looked up. His face was sad. He was shaking his head, looking at me, looking at the paper.

  “It is too late,” he said. “I will not give you back the marriage. You are still divorced.” And then he threw the paper on top of my head. “Get up!” he shouted. “Get in the bed.”

  “Kill me if you want,” I begged.

  “Of course I will kill you,” he said. “You and everyone else in this house if you do not obey. Get in the bed.”

  That night, with a gun to my head, he raped me, telling me I had lost the privileges of a wife and now had only the duties of a whore. He made me do one terrible thing after another. He made me murmur thanks to him. He made me beg for more of his punishment. I did all these things until I was senseless, laughing and crying, all feeling in my body gone.

  The next morning, after Wen Fu left for work, I picked up the divorce paper lying on the floor. I found my suitcase. And now I was hurrying. I packed only a few things. I took what money I could find, around two hundred Chinese dollars. I went to get Danru. Hulan and Auntie Du saw me as I came downstairs. I knew by their faces that they had heard our fight the night before.

  “Every woman’s husband has a bad temper,” Hulan said, trying to reason with me. “Your situation is no different.”

  I showed them my divorce paper.

  “What is this?” said Hulan.

  “My divorce. Last night my husband divorced me. So you see, now I have to leave.”

  “Ai!” Auntie Du cried. “Disaster! Disaster!”

  “Who were your witnesses?” Hulan asked, looking at the paper. She pressed her glasses closer to her face. “I see no name seals.”

  “No witnesses,” I said. “Last night we had no time to get witnesses. ”

  Hulan clapped her hands together with joy. “Then you have no divorce! He cannot make you leave. Now sit down, eat your morning meal. Calm down, no more worries. This is only a misunderstanding. Tonight he’ll be sorry, tears of remorse pouring down his face, you’ll see.”

  “You understand nothing!” I cried. “I am the one who wants this divorce. Why should I want to stay in this marriage!” I began to tremble hard. “It is not just his temper. He is a monster. He is more evil than you can imagine.” And then I had an idea. “Here, you two can both be my witnesses,” I said quickly. “Where are your name seals? If you do this, I am in your debt forever.”

  “How can I do this!” said Hulan, shrinking away.

  “She is right, syau ning,” said Auntie Du. “How can you ask a friend to be witness to your tragedy? Reconsider. Think of your little son.”

  “Of course I am thinking of my son. That’s why I am leaving. Divorce or no divorce, we are going.”

  Auntie Du began to wail. “Ai-ya! Ai-ya! Where can you go? Where can you stay? Use your head, syau ning, think. The Burma Road, the railway—both are cut off again. And in every corner dangers, each one worse than the other—bandits, mosquitoes, Japanese.”

  “I am glad to face those kinds of dangers rather than my husband,” I said.

  “It’s no use!” said Auntie Du, and threw up her hands. “We cannot reason with her. A big angry wind is blowing through her head and she cannot hear anyone. She is going no matter what.”

  And that’s when Hulan said in a quiet voice, “Then we must help her. Nothing else we can do.” She turned to me. “I will not be witness to your divorce. Jiaguo, I’m sure, would be against that. But I can help you escape, if we both keep this a secret.”

  I threw my arms around Hulan, like a child against her mother. I cried with thanks and this embarrassed her. “We have no time for this,” she said. “We must think about what you should do, where you should go.” She walked over to her sewing basket and pushed her hand inside. She pulled out some money and put this in my purse. Auntie Du sighed, then went to the kitchen, found dried fish, mushrooms, noodles, and tea, then wrapped each of these things in clean paper.

  That morning they helped me find a rooming house on the other side of the lake, close to the marketplace. It was a poor room in a straw house, as bad a place as I have ever been. But I did not complain, not one word, that’s how happy I was to be there.

  Hulan said I would be safe. She said she would come back when she had found me a ride on a truck.

  In the afternoon, Danru and I played on the floor. I used my chopsticks to pluck bugs out of the mattress. Danru would chase them, smashing them flat with the bottom of a bowl. We did that until there were no more bugs, until we had changed our world, dirty to clean. And when we were done, I congratulated him for our victory. We ate a small meal; then together we fell asleep, his small self curled safely against my side.

  We woke up, hearing Wen Fu’s roaring voice. “Where is she?” He sounded like a bull, ready to crash through a gate. I sat up and pushed myself into the shadows of the corner.

  “Be quiet, no sounds now,” I whispered
to Danru. And he was so good. He understood. He trusted me. He made no cry, no small whimper. He wrapped his arms around me and was quiet.

  “Where is she?” we heard him shout again. Danru pushed his face against me harder.

  And then I heard Hulan’s small voice. “But you promised to be kind.”

  So you see, Hulan helped Wen Fu find me. Of course, she was very sorry later on. She saw his promise meant nothing. He was not kind. I don’t have to tell you what happened.

  So many years gone by, and still the anger can never come out completely. You can hear this in my voice. When I talk about him now, I am still angry. And if you think that was the worst part of my life, you are wrong. The worst was always what happened next, and then after that, and then after that. The worst was never knowing when it would stop.

  One month after it happened, I found out I was pregnant. I went to the doctor and the baby came out before it could be born. Two months later, the same thing. Two months after that, the same thing. We had no birth control, not back then. Wen Fu didn’t care, baby or no baby.

  So now maybe you think I killed lots of babies, and I didn’t care either. It did not mean I wanted to kill those babies. That bad man was using my body. Every night he used it, as if I were—what?—a machine!

  Today you teach your daughters to say to a stranger, “My body is my body. Don’t touch me.” A little child can say this. I was a grown woman, and I could not say this. I could only stop those babies from coming.

  I cried to myself, This is a sin—to give a baby such a bad life! Poor Danru. He trusted me. So I let those other babies die. In my heart, I was being kind.

  Look at my face now. I was a young woman then. I had no more hope left, no trust, no innocence. There were many, many times when I almost killed myself, when I hated myself so much because finally I could not.

  So I ask you: What do you see? What is still there? Why did I want to live so much?