The Kitchen God's Wife

  She turned to me. “In the meantime, you must put together all your jewelry, whatever money you can find. And when you are ready, you and your son must run away to here without anyone following you. When you come, we’ll know what to do next. Can you do this first part by yourself, or do you need help?”

  “I can do this,” I said right away. And I said those words without knowing how I would make them true.

  22

  ONE SEASON LEFT

  By the time I left Peanut’s place, it was already late in the afternoon. I had to hurry to the bookshop to find your father. The whole way there I was smiling big, I could not stop myself. And it seemed to me other people on the road saw my happiness and smiled back to congratulate me.

  As soon as I saw your father, I told him: “In a week or two, I am leaving my marriage.” I was trembling, both proud and nervous.

  “Is this really so?” he said. He was trembling too.

  “Really so,” I said. He held my hands, and we were laughing with tears in our eyes.

  If your father were still alive today, I think he would agree. We knew then we would always be together. I do not know how two strangers knew this, how we could be so sure. But maybe it was like this: When he put that photo of four daughters on the table, that was like asking me to marry him. And when I ran back and said I was leaving my marriage, that was like saying I accepted. And from that moment on, we were together, two people talking with one heart.

  “And next?” he was asking me. “What must we do next?”

  “We must wait awhile,” I said. “We must wait until the right moment when I can leave.”

  And then we made a plan. When I was ready to run away, I would call him by telephone late at night when everybody was sleeping. I would say something very quick and simple, such as, “Tomorrow I’m coming.”

  But then your father, he was so romantic, he suggested something else, a secret code. So this is what we decided I would say: “Open the door, you can already see the mountain,” which is a classical saying, meaning you’re ready to grab all opportunities and turn them into something big. Your father would answer me this way: “Let’s go beyond the mountain.” And then he would meet me and Danru the next day at the harbor, in front of the booth that sold tickets to Tsungming Island. And there we would get into a car that would take us to Peanut’s place.

  When I returned home that day, I saw my life as if I already knew the happy ending of a story. I looked around the house and thought, Soon I will no longer have to see these walls and all the unhappiness they keep inside.

  I heard Wen Fu’s mother shouting at the cook, and I imagined myself eating a simple, quiet meal without having my stomach turn itself inside out. I saw Wen Fu walk in the door, and I thought, Soon I will no longer have to rub my skin off, trying to remove his stain from my body. I saw Danru watching his father out of the corner of his eye, and I thought, Soon my son can laugh and play without any fears.

  And then I saw my father, his back bent, shuffling into his study. It seemed as if I had never seen my father look so weak.

  And that’s when I remembered, My father! If I leave, Wen Fu will have him killed as a traitor. He would use my father just like a weapon.

  I quickly went upstairs to my room. I began to argue with myself. I should let my father go to prison, I thought. After all, he brought this on himself. Let him see what it is like to suffer.

  And then I thought of more reasons. He was the one who mistreated my own mother! He was the one who refused to see me when I was growing up. He was the one who let me marry a bad man. He did not care that he was giving me an unhappy future. Why should I sacrifice my happiness for him? There had never been love between us, father to daughter, daughter to father.

  But all those angry reasons only made me feel I was as evil as Wen Fu. So I emptied those feelings from my heart. I quietly excused myself: He is old. His mind is already gone. How can I be responsible for what Wen Fu does to him?

  And still I knew: Those excuses would not cover anything up, the real reason. So in the end, all the excuses fell away, and I saw only one thing: Jimmy Louie.

  I no longer denied I was betraying my father. I no longer looked for excuses. I knew what I was doing was both true and wrong. I could not make just one choice, I had to make two: Let me live. Let my father die.

  Isn’t that how it is when you must decide with your heart? You are not just choosing one thing over another. You are choosing what you want. And you are also choosing what somebody else does not want, and all the consequences that follow. You can tell yourself, That’s not my problem, but those words do not wash the trouble away. Maybe it is no longer a problem in your life. But it is always a problem in your heart. And I can tell you, that afternoon, when I knew what I wanted, I cried, just like a child who cannot explain why she is crying.

  The next week I was a person in mourning. I felt I had already lost my father, also a part of myself. I wanted to be comforted. I wanted to be miserable. And then one afternoon, without thinking, I found myself following my father into his study. I don’t know why, maybe I wanted to let him know in some way that I was sorry.

  “Father,” I called to him. He looked up at me, without expression. I sat down in a chair opposite him. “Father,” I said again. “Do you know who I am?”

  This time he did not look at me. He was staring at the wall, at the same ancient scroll painting he had ruined with a cup of tea that afternoon the Japanese came.

  The painting showed the springtime, pink flowers blossoming on trees, the trees growing on a mountain, the mountain rising up out of a misty lake. At the bottom was a black lacquer rod, weighing it down. You could tell the scroll had once been part of a set, the four seasons. But now the three other seasons were gone, sold by Wen Fu, and only their empty spots hung on the wall, like ghost paintings. And you could also tell why this scroll had been left behind—the big tea stain at the center, as if the painted lake had flooded itself.

  “Isn’t that strange,” I said to my father, “that someone would want only three seasons? Like a life that will never be completed.”

  Of course, my father did not answer. And because I thought my father could not understand anything, I continued to talk nonsense. “My life has been like that painting nobody wants, the same season, every day the same misery, no hope of changing.”

  And now I was crying. “That’s why I must find a way to leave my marriage. I do not expect you to forgive me.”

  My father sat up straight. He stared at me with one sad eye, one angry eye. I was startled to see this, that he had heard what I said. He stood up. His mouth moved up and down. But no words would come out, he could only chew the air with “uh! uh!” sounds. A terrible expression grew on his face. He waved his hands in front of his face, as if the words stuck in his throat were choking him.

  My father reached out with one shaky hand. He grabbed my arm, and I was surprised how strong he still was. He was pulling me out of my chair, toward the scroll. “I must,” I whispered to him. “You don’t know how much I have suffered.” He waved my words away.

  And then he let go of my arm. His two trembly hands were now fighting with the black lacquer rod. I thought he wanted to pick up that rod and strike me over the head. But instead, he suddenly pulled the knob off the rod, and out poured three little gold ingots into his waiting palm.

  He pressed them into my hand, then stared at me. I was struggling so hard to know his meaning. And I can still see the two expressions on his face when I finally understood. One side was agony, the other relief, as if he wanted to say to me, “You foolish, foolish girl, finally you’ve made the right decision.”

  “I cannot take them now,” I whispered. “Wen Fu would find them. Later I will get them, right before I leave.” My father nodded once, then quickly put the gold ingots back into their hiding place.

  I have thought about this many times. I do not think my father was saying he loved me. I think he was telling me that if I left this terrible
man, then maybe this terrible man would leave his house too. Maybe my father and his wives would no longer have to suffer. My leaving was their only chance. Of course, maybe he was telling me he loved me a little, too.

  The next morning was very strange for me. Everyone came downstairs for the morning meal: Wen Fu, Danru, Wen Fu’s mother and father, San Ma and Wu Ma. The servant brought in a bowl of steaming soup.

  If you had been there, you would think nothing had changed. My father did not seem to recognize me. Once again, his mind seemed as cloudy as the soup he stared at. Wen Fu’s mother had only complaints: The soup was not hot enough, the soup was too salty. Wen Fu ate without speaking. I wondered if I had dreamt what happened the day before, if I had only imagined the gold ingots. I was nervous, but I vowed to go ahead with my plans, what I had decided the night before.

  I poured Wen Fu’s mother more soup. “Mother,” I said to her, “eat more, take care of your health.” As she drank, I continued my conversation. “Poor Old Aunt. Her health is not so good. I had a letter from her yesterday.”

  This was true. I had received a letter, and as usual, Old Aunt complained about her health. She could be counted on for that.

  “What’s the matter with her?” asked Wu Ma. She worried a lot about her own health.

  “A coldness in her bones, a lack of force at the end of each breath. She feels she might die any day.”

  “That old woman never feels well,” said Wen Fu’s mother in an unkind voice. “She has an ailment to match every herb grown on this earth.”

  Wen Fu laughed in agreement.

  “This time I really think she is sick,” I said. And then I added in a quiet voice, “Her color was very bad the last time I saw her. No heat. Now she says she is worse.”

  “Perhaps you better go see her,” said San Ma.

  “Mmmm,” I murmured, as if I had not considered this before. “Perhaps you are right.”

  “The girl just got back!” exclaimed Wen Fu’s mother.

  “Maybe I could go for a short visit. If she is not too sick, I’ll come home in a day or two.”

  And Wen Fu’s mother only said, “Hnnh!”

  “Of course, if she is really sick, I may have to stay longer.”

  But now the cook had brought in the steamed dumplings, and Wen Fu’s mother was too busy inspecting and criticizing the food to give me any more trouble.

  So you see, she did not say yes, but she did not say no, either. I knew then that if I left the next day holding a suitcase with one hand and Danru with the other, nobody would think anything of it. And if I did not return home after three or four days, no one would go looking for me. They would only say, “Poor Old Aunt, sicker than we thought.”

  That afternoon, while everyone slept, I walked quickly into my father’s study and shut the door. I went over to the scroll of springtime. I shook the rod. Sure enough, the weight of those three ingots slid back and forth. Then bright gold fell into my hand. And I saw that what had happened the day before was true, not my imagination.

  23

  SINCERELY YOURS TRULY

  I have no pictures of myself as a young woman, from that time I was married to Wen Fu. I threw those pictures away. But your father kept this scrapbook. And he took pictures of me, many, many pictures. See how heavy?

  These pictures at the beginning, these are American pilots he knew. And these women, they are not girlfriends. I think they are just people your father knew before he met me. I don’t know why he put their pictures in the book. I never asked. Maybe he gave those girls American names, so they gave him pictures in return. Like this one here: “Sincerely yours truly, Peddy.” What kind of name is Peddy? She could not even spell her name right. My English is not so good, but I know you can be sincerely or truly, one or the other, not both at the same time. Anyway, you can see this, she is not even very pretty.

  Turn to this page. Here is where I begin. Here is where I sometimes think my whole life began.

  Look at this picture, this one, and this one. See, I was once young. You didn’t know this about your mother? This was how your father always saw me, young and fair, he said. Even when white hairs started to come out, your father said I looked the same. And in my dreams, I would always look the same as in these pictures, young and fair. Always, until recently.

  But then on my last birthday I had a dream that your father did not really die. He lived around the comer and he just forgot to tell me. I was mad at first. How could he let me grieve for nothing? But then I forgot to be mad, and I was excited. I was getting ready to see him. And then I looked in the mirror. I said to the mirror, Ai-ya! What happened? How did you get so old? And my self looking back at me said, “This is your fault. You forgot.” And suddenly I felt old. Suddenly I realized everyone saw me this way, older than I thought, seventy-five years old.

  In any case, in 1946, I was young, pretty too.

  See this picture, my smile, my puffy eyes. This picture is not so good, but it has special meaning. Your father took that picture maybe one month after I ran away from Wen Fu. That day, we had been walking in a park, arguing. This was because Little Yu’s Mother wanted to send me and Danru away from Shanghai. She knew people in Tientsin, good people who could hide me until I got my divorce.

  Your father was saying, “Don’t go, don’t go.”

  And I said, “How can we not go? Where would we go instead?”

  “You two stay with me,” he said.

  That’s what I was hoping he would say. Living in that house with Peanut and all those other women was no fun. Do you think just because they were Communists they never argued? No such thing. But I didn’t let Jimmy know.

  When he asked me to live with him, I said, “How can we do that?” I let him argue with me for two hours. If someone offers to take your burden, you need to know he is serious, not just being polite and kind. Polite and kind do not last.

  After I knew your father was serious no matter what, he took this picture.

  Oh, I don’t know why your father put this picture in the book. I told him many times to take it out, this picture doesn’t look nice. Why take a picture of me in a nightgown, my hair all messy like that? Your father said it was his favorite picture. “Winnie and the sunshine wake up together,” he used to say. Every morning when I woke up, he was already awake, looking at me, telling me that. There was a song he sang to me. “You Are My Sunshine.” He sang it many times, every morning.

  Maybe this is not proper for me to say to you. But now I will tell you something about your father. He was—how do I say this?—he loved me with a true heart. Do you know why? When I went to live with him, from the beginning he never forced me. He did not demand anything. He was gentle. He knew I was scared of sex.

  So for the first few nights he kissed my forehead, he smoothed my hair, he talked to me, told me he loved me so many times, until I felt I was floating happily in a dream. And a week later, I told him I was ready. I was willing to make the sacrifice to make him happy as well. I did not say it this way, of course, but that’s what I was thinking. And I closed my eyes, waiting for the shameful feelings to begin. But he did not jump on top of me right away. Instead, he did what he had always done. He kissed my hands, my cheeks, my forehead. And he would not stop kissing my forehead. He did not stop stroking my back, until I forgot all my fears, until I was again floating in a dream. And suddenly, I recognized what he was doing, only it was not the same, but a completely different feeling. And I opened my eyes. I cried with joy to see his face, his face watching mine. And he was crying too, the same joy. And afterward he kept his arms around me, afraid to let me go.

  So that’s why your father liked this picture. In the morning, I was still there. I was his sunshine.

  The picture on this page was three months after Danru and I went to live with your father. That’s the front of the building, the door. And that woman next to me, she’s the landlady who rented us two rooms upstairs. Your father called her Lau Tai Po, “Old Lady.” In China, if you called
someone Old Lady, you were being respectful, very polite. In this country, people say, “Hey, old lady! Watch where you’re going!” They’re not being respectful. I see the looks on their faces, mean.

  But in this picture I am the happiest I have ever been in my life. See how my eyes look as though they can’t stop smiling. Your father was the same way, laughing all the time. Every day we were happy. Every day when he came home from work, he lifted me high in the air, just like people in the movies. And Danru would run to him and say, “Lift me too, me too.” Your father would try to lift him, and then say, “Oh! Too heavy. How did you get so heavy?” He told Danru to take a deep breath and fill himself with air, just like a balloon. And then your father would lift him high, high, high.

  During that time, I wasn’t too worried about Wen Fu. Peanut had already told New Aunt and Old Aunt I was living with another man. And of course, they told Uncle, and Uncle told Wen Fu. And by then Wen Fu had another woman living in the house with him, a woman who was going to have a baby. So I was sure Wen Fu would soon divorce me. Even his mother and father were telling him to do that. As for my father’s money, there was not too much left to fight over. Wen Fu had followed government orders and exchanged all the gold and certificates for new paper money. And every week, it seemed, the new paper money was worth one-half what it was before.

  Lucky for us, your father was paid in U.S. dollars. But even if we had had no money, we would have been happy. That’s how happy we were.

  Here is another picture from that same day. I made an extra copy, wallet-size, and sent it to Hulan. She and Jiaguo were still living in Harbin. I wrote to her: “Guess who we met? Guess who we are living with? Someone who speaks English and calls me Winnie. Guess and I’ll tell you in the next letter if you are right.”

  In this picture you can see: Danru is playing with the landlady’s dog. Doesn’t that dog look just like a lamb? The curly hair, the little ears. Later he turned out to be a bad dog, he ate my slippers. Oh, I was mad! The landlady gave me her own slippers to replace mine. But she had some kind of rotten foot disease, so I was not eager to wear them, not even to be polite.