The Kitchen God's Wife

  I was crying, begging him to let me go. He put the visa and tickets on the table next to us. He yanked my head up by my hair and said, “Beg me, beg me to let you be my wife.” He waved his gun. Next to me, on the table, I saw all my chances for life, the tickets. In front of me, I saw the gun, my life soon leaving me. I knew he might be lying. If I obeyed, he might still take my tickets, he might still take my life.

  What could I do? I was weak. I was strong. I had hope. I had hope. I couldn’t give up my hope. And so I begged him.

  And in the end, I was right. He lied. He said he was taking my tickets away. He put them in his pants pocket. And then he went into the bathroom, left me on the floor crying. But then I saw the gun on the table. I reached for it, held it between my hands, and shouted for him to come back.

  When he saw me with the gun, his eyes widened; then he frowned. “You don’t know how to fire a gun,” he sneered.

  “I will learn killing you,” I said.

  “I was only bluffing,” he said. “There are no bullets in the gun. I just wanted to scare you.”

  “Then why are you the one who is scared?” I said, still pointing the gun, panting with a terrible rage. I truly wanted to kill him. I was not thinking of alibis, or jail, or ways to escape. I wanted only to kill him. And maybe I would have done this, if Hulan had not walked in the door, breaking my spell.

  “Ai-ya!” she cried. “What is going on?”

  “He stole my airplane tickets,” I said. I did not say anything about the rape, although any smart person could have seen this: my hair, my torn dress, Wen Fu fastening his pants.

  “Where are they?” said Hulan.

  “In his pants pocket,” I said. And then I had an idea. I waved the gun at Wen Fu. “Take your pants off and give them to Hulan.”

  Wen Fu stared at me. I pulled the trigger, thinking to hit the floor and scare him a little. But the gun exploded so fast it yanked my hand back, and a bullet flew past Wen Fu’s head and landed in the wall behind him.

  “Are you crazy?” he and Hulan shouted together.

  “Yes,” I shouted. “Take off your pants.”

  I pulled the trigger again, this time hitting the floor. He scrambled out of his pants, then threw them to Hulan. Hulan found the tickets and held them up to me, triumphant.

  “Now throw the pants out the window,” I said to Hulan. She waited only a second, and then, perhaps thinking I might shoot her too, she quickly walked to the window behind me, opened it, and dropped the pants outside.

  “Now go chase your dirty pants!” I said to Wen Fu, and he ran out the door cursing, claiming I would never be through with him. As soon as he was gone, Hulan burst into laughter.

  Helen used to talk about that day with me, until I told her not to remind me anymore. Why should I want to remember? Why should I listen to her talk about that day as if it were only a funny story?

  “Oh,” she would say. “Remember how Wen Fu tried to steal your plane tickets? Remember how you pointed a gun and made him give the tickets back? But the gun went off, an accident! Scared him to pieces. Oh, I can still see his face—he almost jumped out the window with his pants! And the next morning, you were on an airplane. Lucky for you.”

  And this was true. Lucky for me. Six days later I was in America with your father. Five days after that, the Communist flags went up in Shanghai, no more planes or boats could leave. So you see, those other two tickets would have been no use. I left before it was almost too late.

  In America, I saw your father and I had both changed, and yet we had not. Our love was the same, but he now had his love for God. He could always speak English, I still could not.

  At night, he held me the same way he had in Shanghai, so grateful we would never be separated. Yet I would often cry out in my dreams, “He’s found me, he’s caught me!”

  And your father would say, “Baby-ah, shh-shh, don’t think about this anymore, you are in America now.”

  So I never told him. I never told anyone. And nine months later, maybe a little less, I had a baby. I had you.

  25

  BAO-BAO’S WEDDING

  I just about fell off my chair. She had said it so matter-of-factly, “I had a baby. I had you.”

  “And?” I said, waiting for her to tell me the dreaded news—that Wen Fu was my father.

  “And,” she said, searching, “now that man is dead.” She nodded to herself, apparently satisfied. “Now I don’t have to worry. For so many years I thought he was going to fly out of a closet, or jump out from underneath my bed.” Her hands flew, her legs jumped, the instincts still there. “But Beautiful Betty told me in a letter. See? No worries, she said, he’s dead. Died on Christmas Day. Can you imagine? Christmas! Dead and he still finds a way to make me mad.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” I started to say. And then, perhaps because I didn’t know what I meant, I started to laugh, only I was also on the brink of crying.

  “What a terrible life you’ve had,” I found myself saying. “And you thought you had to keep it a secret from everyone?” She was nodding. “Even me?” I whispered.

  She nodded again. And there was no holding back my tears. “Now you know why,” she said, sighing. And I thought, Then it’s true. Wen Fu was my father, that awful man, the one she hated. His blood is running through mine. I shivered at the thought. I hugged my knees.

  “Cold?” she asked. “Heater can be turned up.”

  I shook my head. I was trying to do a quick inventory of myself. I had always thought I looked mostly like my mother: my eyes, my nose, my chin, my cheekbones, my small teeth, and later on, the white hairs that sprouted out of the crown of my head when I reached my thirties. As for my height, the length of my hands and feet, those I had attributed to my father—at least, the one I thought of as my father.

  “Tell me again,” I finally said, “why you had to keep it a secret.”

  She looked away, considered the question. “Because then you would know,” she said at last. “You would know how weak I was. You would think I was a bad mother.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought that,” I said.

  “Yes you would,” she insisted. “I didn’t tell you about my past, and still you thought I was a bad mother. If I had told you—then it would be even worse!”

  “I never thought you were a bad mother,” I said.

  “You did.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You did. ”

  And I thought, What are we arguing about? What is she saying? And then it occurred to me: Maybe she was not telling me that Wen Fu was my father, after all. She had kept it a secret only so I would not think bad things about her.

  “Wait a minute. Who are you saying was my father?”

  “Your father?” she asked, blinking, as if she had not considered this before. “Daddy was your father.”

  I let out a huge sigh.

  “Of course,” she added quickly. “I would never let that bad man claim you for his daughter. He would never have that from me.” Her mouth was set tight, determined.

  And now I was more confused than ever. I thought of ways to rephrase my question to make myself absolutely clear: about blood relations, biological heritage, genetics, blood type, paternity tests, the past that can never be changed.

  My mother patted my hand. “Oh, I know what you are thinking,” she said quietly. “Of course, every baby is born with yin and yang. The yin comes from the woman. The yang comes from the man. When you were born I tried to see whose yang you had. I tried to see your daddy. I would say, Look, she has Jimmy Louie’s smile. I tried to forget everything else. But inside my heart I saw something else.”

  She touched my cheek, tucked a loose strand of hair around my ear. “You looked like Mochou. You looked like Yiku. You looked like Danru, Danru especially. All of them together. All the children I could not keep but could never forget.”

  My mother was in the kitchen putting more water on for tea. I was cracking watermelon seeds between my teeth. I’v
e always thought the pleasure of eating watermelon seeds lies in extracting the thin slivers without breaking them, rather than in their taste.

  “So you never once thought I looked like Wen Fu,” I mused aloud.

  My mother came back with a steaming pot. “Well, if I am honest, maybe I thought this one time.”

  I cracked the seed in half. “What?” “Maybe two times, all together,” she said on reconsideration.

  I held my breath. She poured the tea, not missing a beat.

  “This was right after Daddy died,” she said. “Your temper became so bad.”

  Oh, this was terrible. My character—like Wen Fu’s!

  My mother frowned at me, as if I were fourteen years old again. “At the funeral,” she said, “you would not cry, could not cry. You said Daddy was not your father. Ai! I never wanted to hear this!” She sounded as if this was not simply a memory, but the same heartache all over again. “That’s why I slapped you,” she said. “I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t tell you why.”

  “But I didn’t mean it the way you were thinking,” I said. “It was because—”

  “I know why,” my mother said softly. “Now I know you didn’t mean it the way I was thinking.” Then she frowned again. “But that other time! No excuse! Remember when you wanted to go to the oceanside?”

  I shook my head. I honestly did not know what she was talking about.

  “You were like a wild person,” she said. “You stamped your feet, yelled at me, shouting, ‘Beach! beach!’ I said to myself, Where does this temper come from? And then I thought, Ai-ya! Wen Fu!” Her face was contorted with misery.

  “I couldn’t blame you, I blamed him. All your worst faults I blamed on that bad man. So I didn’t punish you, I let you go to the beach. But then, soon after that, your brother acted the same way. Wild! He shouted the same words, only this time I knew he was not talking about the oceanside. That’s how I found out. Samuel and you both—calling me ‘bitch, bitch.’ ”

  “No!” I said, amazed that I had done that. “I didn’t say that.”

  “Yes!” my mother said. “You did, he did too.” She was smiling, glad to prove she was right after all these years. “And I was so glad I could no longer blame this on Wen Fu. This came from you—all by yourself! You thought I never figured this out? And I knew the other bad word you used, the one you say when you raise your fist with one finger sticking out. We have the same expression in Chinese, and others—even worse than you probably have in English. You think Grand Auntie was just an old lady? When somebody treated her bad—oyo!—all those expressions popped right out. Go do this! Go do that! I think that’s what she was saying at her funeral when that banner fell down on top of her.”

  And now my mother and I were both laughing. “Auntie Du was so strong!” she said. “Oh, what a good lady! Oh, what good times we had together!” And then my mother smiled at me like a young schoolgirl, the way I imagined she must have looked when she and Peanut shared a greenhouse secret. “Maybe you should say you’re sorry.”

  “To Grand Auntie? For what?”

  “Not to Grand Auntie, to me. For saying that bad word.” She was still smiling.

  “But that was over twenty-five years ago!”

  “No excuse.”

  “Maybe we should keep blaming those things on Wen Fu.”

  “Going to the ocean, that was Wen Fu’s fault, too? Everything bad was his fault?”

  And we started laughing again. I was giddy. Here my mother had told me the tragedy of her life. Here I had just been told that Wen Fu might well be the other half of my genetic makeup. Yet we were laughing.

  And that’s how I knew it was the right moment to tell her.

  I took a deep breath and said it as casually as I could: “Maybe we have something else we can blame on that bad man.” And then I told her about my illness.

  For all those years I had imagined how it would be to have my mother know: She would be upset that this had happened to me. She would be angry that I had not told her sooner. She would try to find reasons why this illness had struck me. She would be vigilant in her pursuit of a cure.

  I had imagined all this, and I was wrong. It was worse. She was the Furies unbound.

  “Why did you go to Doug first? He’s not a real doctor—a sports doctor! How do you know his friend is the best doctor? Why do you believe what other people tell you? Why do you believe them when they say there’s no cure? Why do you believe them when they say ‘mild case’? If you are tired so easily, this is not mild! This is serious! Why is your husband not more worried about this?”

  The pitch of her voice rose higher and higher. I was watching her arms flailing at an enemy she could not see but was determined to find. I was hearing her rant about everything I had tried to hide about my illness. And I was helpless. All I could do was say, “I know, I know.”

  “Ai-ya! Wen Fu gave you this disease!” she cried. “He caused this to happen. And the microwave oven. I told you to check if it is leaking. Did you check?”

  “Ma, stop,” I pleaded. “It’s not genetic. It’s not the microwave. That’s the way it is. It’s nobody’s fault. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

  But there was no stopping her. She glared at me. “How can you say this! ‘Nothing you can do’! Who told you this? How can you think this way? What do you call this disease again? Write it down. Tomorrow I am going to Auntie Du’s herb doctor. And after that, I will think of a way.” She was rummaging through her junk drawer for a pencil, a piece of paper.

  I was going to protest, to tell her she was working herself up into a frenzy for nothing. But all of a sudden I realized: I didn’t want her to stop. I was relieved in a strange way. Or perhaps relief was not the feeling. Because the pain was still there. She was tearing it away—my protective shell, my anger, my deepest fears, my despair. She was putting all this into her own heart, so that I could finally see what was left. Hope.

  On the way into Bao-bao and Mimi’s reception, Cleo tried to hold onto one end of the wedding present. And Tessa insisted she could carry it herself. So now, what used to be a martini set sounds like a glass jigsaw puzzle. Both girls were stricken speechless, each unable even to accuse the other.

  Phil sighs, then points to a table and tells them to sit down. He shakes the box again and grins, and gingerly places it at the very end of the gift table. “We’ll just let Bao-bao and Mimi exchange it for something they like better,” he whispers mischievously.

  I laugh and slap his arm. “You can’t do that.” And then I see my mother coming over with her present in hand. She stands on her tiptoes and puts her square box on top of another present, so that it is the highest one on the table. The gift is encased in shiny red foil, with the telltale creases showing that it was the same wrapping we used on our Christmas gift to her.

  “Ma,” I say, and shake my finger at her.

  “Red is a good color for Chinese weddings,” she insists, as if that’s what I was scolding her for. “Anyway, inside is what counts. What did you get them?”

  “A martini set,” says Phil.

  “What’s that?” she asks.

  “Six glasses, shaker, and stir stick. It comes in eight pieces, comes apart in eight hundred.”

  My mother seems satisfied with Phil’s answer. “I almost got a six-piece cook set. I saw it in the paper, Emporium Capwell. Such a good deal, I thought, only forty-nine dollars. Then I went to see it. You know what it was? Three things, three lids. They consider three lids are already three pieces! The rest was just one fry pan, two little pots. I got salt and pepper shakers instead. Real crystal.”

  And now we are in a line, trudging slowly into the banquet area of the restaurant. My mother looks at me, frowning. “Ai-ya! This dress is too thin.” She pinches the fabric. “Too cold is not good for you. I already told you this. You have to listen to me.” She pulls Phil’s sleeve. “Take this off. Give her your jacket. You have to be a better husband to her. If you don’t pay attention, how will you h
elp her pay attention too?”

  I nudge him. “Yeah, Phil,” I say. And he sighs, resigned—and yet pleased, it seems to me, that this is his fate, always to be reminded of his duty to me.

  My mother pokes Phil’s arm. “You should get her one of these,” she says, nodding toward the back of a woman’s full-length mink coat.

  “It’s not politically correct,” says Phil with a grin.

  “She would be warm,” says my mother.

  “She would be in trouble.”

  “She would be warm,” insists my mother.

  During the reception dinner, we have to shout to one another in the cavernous din of the restaurant. For the fourth time already, one of Bao-bao’s five “co-best buddies,” as he calls his ushers, taps into the microphone and booms, “Ladies and gentlemen, can I have your attention?”

  The microphone screeches and goes dead, everyone groans and resumes talking. And then we hear the co-best buddy boom into the microphone again with a nasal voice.

  “Is this on? Ladies and gentlemen, as you know, I’m Gary. When I first met Roger at college, I was just a young kid from Brooklyn. There we were, college roommates, thrown together by chance, not choice. I introduced Roger to the food of the gods, lox and bagels. Roger introduced me to—guess what?—chicken feet and jook. ”

  As the best buddy continues with a barrage of ethnic comparisons, Bao-bao beams happily, content with the abuse being heaped upon him. It reminds me of the way he looked when he was a little boy, delighted that Mary and I let him play doctor with us, unaware that we had just made him the patient who dies in the first five minutes.

  Phil rolls his eyes and mutters a bit too loudly, “Get the hook.” I notice my mother is laughing, although perhaps it’s because everyone else is chuckling politely. Or maybe they’re not being polite. They actually like the jokes.

  “Just pretend,” I say to Phil. “The agenda tonight is to be nice.”