The Kitchen God's Wife

  “What? Me, not nice?” He blinks back at me, the wrongly accused husband.

  “It’s a wedding,” I reason, although I am also aware of a curious urge to protect Bao-bao.

  “And then I introduced Roger to ‘oy vay,’ ” we hear Gary saying. “And he introduced me to—‘ai ya.’ Well, let me tell you, folks, Roger owes me one. Because I also introduced him to the lovely lady who is now his lucky bride. Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce you to Mimi Wong Kwong!”

  Mimi stands up with a wobble, her face already rosy from too much champagne. Her wedding dress looks like a costume from Les Misérables, torn sheafs of custom-faded ivory silk gauze. Bao-bao looks at her with adoring eyes.

  “Ha-bu?” I hear Tessa calling to my mother. “What happened to that lady up there?” She points to Mimi.

  “She got married,” my mother shouts back.

  “No, not that,” Tessa says. “I mean why is she wearing a ring in her nose? She’s weird.”

  My mother looks at the bride with a new critical eye. “Oh, this,” she says. She thinks awhile, then gives her conclusion: “She is weird because she did not listen to her mother.”

  “It’s true,” says Phil. “Look at your mother. She listened to Ha-bu. Now she’s not so weird.” Tessa regards me with new respect.

  The co-best buddy is back on the microphone. “And now we want to introduce you to the immediate family. On Mimi’s side, we have the father of the bride, Mr. Thomas C. Y. Wong of Friendly Adventures Travel, and his lovely wife, Maggie.” The crowd claps.

  “So young-looking,” my mother says.

  We are now listening to an endless buzz of names, clapping politely for each of Mimi’s scores of aunts and uncles, most of whom, it seems, hail from Arizona, land of cactus, a place about as far removed from China as I can imagine. And then Gary moves on to Roger’s side of the family, patting Uncle Henry’s shoulder in emcee fashion.

  Uncle Henry, looking stiff in his rented tuxedo, bows and waves, then quickly sits down. Auntie Helen smiles broadly, does a half-curtsy, and throws a kiss to the right, then to the left. She is happily swirling in a pale green chiffon dress with tiny seed pearls sewn in curlicue patterns around the bodice. I notice she has on the imperial jade earrings my mother told me about.

  And now Frank, and Mary, Doug, and their children jump up, smile and wave. I clap and clap, wondering when this torture will end, knowing what will come next.

  And suddenly, the co-best buddy is saying, “Will the groom’s aunt stand up—Winnie Louie! I heard she’s responsible for all the lovely floral arrangements on the tables tonight.”

  My mother stands, nods shyly. She had been complaining loudly this morning about all the extra work she had to do in the flower shop to get ready for tonight’s reception. “Helen wanted roses! Pink and yellow and white,” she had fumed. “Why not just yellow, I asked her. Why not carnations?”

  “Thanks, Auntie!” Bao-bao shouts, and my mother waves back to him. She actually looks proud.

  “And Roger’s favorite cousin is also here tonight—” And we’re starting to stand up. I’m thinking this is about as corny as it gets, when my left heel catches on the carpet and Phil grabs me just before I fall. A big whoop goes up in the crowd, so loud that if this had been measured on a laugh meter, I would have surely won. I sit back down, embarrassed.

  “Are you all right?” It’s Mary, breathless, already at my side. And at that moment I realize: I had forgotten.

  “I’m fine,” I say. She stares at me with unspoken concern. “Really,” I say. “And it’s not the MS. It was my high heel. See?” I show her my shoe.

  “Oh, right.” She smiles uncomfortably.

  “Mary,” I say, with as much patience as I can muster, “just because I have MS doesn’t mean I’m not entitled to the usual quota of klutziness.”

  She laughs. “Oh, I know. I was just, you know, checking.” She keeps smiling. “Come to think of it, I just about broke my neck the other day, coming down some stairs in the mall—”

  I put my hand up and stop her. “Mary, it’s okay. Stop trying so hard.”

  “What do you mean?”

  And then I see my mother looking at me. And I can’t stop myself. “In this matter,” I say in a mock formal voice, “you should not concern yourself for my sake.” My mother shakes her finger at me.

  And Mary is still smiling, wondering why I’m giggling. I do feel mean, so I apologize.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “Maybe we can talk about this later.”

  At that moment I hear the rustle of chiffon and satin. Auntie Helen claps her hand on my back.

  “Enough to eat?” she says, surveying the disaster on our table. There are mounds of food still sitting in serving dishes. A napkin lies draped over the duck’s head, something Cleo insisted my mother do.

  “Too much food,” my mother complains. “Wasted.”

  Auntie Helen beams, taking this as a compliment. “Mimi’s parents, this is their fault. They insisted we have twelve courses. Plus soup! Plus cake! I said, Too much, too much. They said, We are doing this the American way, girl’s side pays. So what could I do? Ai! Who didn’t eat this last scallop? This is too good to leave behind. Winnie-ah, you take this.”

  “Too full,” my mother says. She is now busy retying a bow in Cleo’s hair.

  “Don’t be polite.” Auntie Helen grabs Cleo’s unused chopsticks, picks up the scallop, and holds it above my mother’s plate.

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Take it,” Auntie Helen insists again.

  My mother makes a face at the scallop. “Not fresh!” she declares.

  Auntie Helen frowns, then pops the condemned scallop into her mouth.

  “You see,” my mother says as she watches Auntie Helen eating. “No flavor. Am I right?”

  Auntie Helen continues to chew thoughtfully.

  “Too chewy!” my mother calls back.

  Auntie Helen turns to me. “Your mother is a good cook,” she whispers. “That’s why it is hard for her to appreciate other good things. I already told her, When we go to China, maybe the food will not be like you remember. Everything is changed.”

  “You’re going to China? Ma, you didn’t tell me this.”

  “Ahh! We were only talking,” my mother says. “I said only maybe. This is not for sure that we are going.”

  Auntie Helen continues talking to me. “I asked your mother to go with me—to do this one last favor. You know.” Auntie Helen gives me a stoic look, then sighs. “Anyway, Mimi’s parents, they own a travel business. So if we go, maybe we can also get a discount.”

  She picks up an oily pea with her chopsticks and rolls it back and forth with the tips. “Then I can see the place where I was born,” she says. “I can give a banquet in my village. I heard you can treat fifty people, twelve courses, the best food—only two hundred dollars. Cheap to show off.” She laughs to herself.

  “Tst! Three hundred!” my mother says. “Prices went up.”

  “Three hundred, then!” Auntie Helen says in an exasperated voice. “Still a bargain.” And then she turns to me. “Besides, that is not the only reason why we are going.” She waits for me to ask.

  “So why are you going?” I say.

  “We are going to buy Chinese medicine,” explains Auntie Helen, “rare things you cannot buy here.”

  “Medicine for what?”

  “Auntie Helen wants to see if they have something for her brain,” my mother reminds me with a deadpan face.

  “Oh, right.”

  “Chinese medicine can cure anything,” declares Auntie Helen. “I knew a lady, she had some kind of woman cancer. She went to the doctors here, nothing could be done. She went to the church and prayed, nothing. She went to China, drank some medicine every day—the cancer went away. The next time, she got lung cancer, same thing happened, cured.”

  “What did she take?”

  “Oh, this I don’t know. She only told me it was very bad-tasting. And now i
t is too late to ask her. She died of a stroke.”

  Auntie Helen stands up suddenly. “Pearl,” she says sternly. “Come help me cut the cake.” And before I can protest, she has her hand cupped around my elbow.

  So there I find myself with Auntie Helen, standing in front of a plastic bride and groom perched on top of white frosting. And she says the inevitable: “Now I have to tell you a secret.”

  “No, Auntie Helen, no more secrets,” I say, laughing. “I made a Chinese New Year’s resolution. No more secrets.”

  She frowns. “We don’t make resolutions on Chinese New Year,” she says. “That’s an American custom.” And then she smiles coyly. “Anyway, this is a good secret, about my brain tumor.”

  How can I say I don’t want to listen?

  “I only wanted to tell you that your mother and I are not going to China for my brain tumor.”

  “You’re not going?”

  “No, no. I mean we are not going for me, we are going for you.”

  She sees my puzzled face. “It’s like this. Your mother wanted to go to China to find medicine for you. She thinks she gave you your sickness. She thinks the sickness came from an imbalance in her nature. She thinks the imbalance started in China. But she did not want to go alone. So I said I needed to go for my brain tumor, and she said, Yes, yes, your brain tumor. I said she should go, for my sake, for my last peace of mind. And how could she refuse? But guess what?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t really have a brain tumor.” She threw her hands up, empty.

  “What?”

  “That’s right. I made it up! Oh, I was worried at one time. I saw the X rays, everything B nine. But that time I thought I was going to die, that made me think, What if I die, what if I die? I was thinking, What have I forgotten to do? And you know what? I forgot to thank your mother, all those years. What a good friend your mother is.”

  “I don’t understand. What does this have to do with thanking my mother?”

  “Well, you had a secret, your mother had a secret. I said I was going to die so you would both tell each other your secrets. Isn’t this true? You believed me, hanh?” She giggles to herself like a naughty girl.

  I nodded, still not understanding what this was leading to.

  “And now you are closer, mother and daughter, I can already see this. This is my way to thank your mother. You know how she is, very hard to thank, very hard to give advice to.”

  Now it begins to sink in. “Does my mother know this, that you never really thought you had a brain tumor?”

  Auntie Helen smiles and shakes her head, glad her lie is still intact. “Of course, when we go to China, you must pretend it was the magic spring that cured me, the same one that can cure you. Otherwise she would be mad I made her come.”

  “What do you mean, I must pretend?”

  “You are coming, of course! Why would your mother go to China without you? She is going for you, not for me! I already told you this. I am only pretending to be her excuse. And you must pretend to go for my sake. But really you should go for hers. You owe this to her for all the worry you have caused her. Only you should never tell her this. This will still be our secret.”

  I am laughing, confused, caught in endless circles of lies. Or perhaps they are not lies but their own form of loyalty, a devotion beyond anything that can ever be spoken, anything that I will ever understand.

  “It’s a good secret, hanh,” says Auntie Helen. “You think so?”

  I shake my finger at her. “I think so,” I say finally. And I don’t know what I’m agreeing to, but it feels right.

  Phil has already taken the girls to my mother’s house. And Auntie Helen will drop me and my mother off. We are scooping wedding-banquet leftovers into take-home cartons.

  “The fish you can leave behind,” my mother tells me. “Steamed fish doesn’t taste good the next day.”

  “Take it, take it,” says Auntie Helen. “We can decide tomorrow if it doesn’t taste good the next day.”

  “It’s steamed,” my mother protests.

  “The outside is fried,” says Auntie Helen, ignoring my mother.

  I avoid the strafing. I take care of the chicken and pork leftovers. And in between I pour myself a cup of the chrysanthemum tea before the waiters take it away. “This sure is good, this tea,” I say, trying to move my mother and Auntie Helen into neutral terrain.

  “Oh, you haven’t tasted tea until you go to Hangchow,” says my mother. “The best tea in all the world.”

  “Oh,” says Auntie Helen, her eyes lighting up. “We should go to that magic spring we once visited. Winnie-ah, you remember, that time we lived in Hangchow.” She turns to me to explain. “The water coming out was heavy as gold. Your mother tasted it too.”

  “Very sweet,” my mother says. “They put too much sugar inside.”

  “Not sugar,” says Auntie Helen. “It was some kind of flower seeds, a very rare flower. It bloomed once every nine years, something like that. You crushed the seeds and put them in the water.”

  “Very expensive, too,” my mother says. “Only this much”—she indicated a thimbleful—“and you had to pay lots of money.”

  “That’s all you needed,” adds Auntie Helen. “You swallowed that little amount. It went down inside you, changing everything—your stomach, your heart, your mind. Everything sweet.”

  “Peaceful,” my mother says. “Everything inside you is peaceful, no worries, no sorrows.”

  “Your mother is going to buy some for you.”

  “If we go,” my mother reminds her.

  Auntie Helen laughs. “If we can go. Also if we can still find it. Maybe I won’t remember where it is anymore.”

  “I remember,” my mother says.

  “You remember?” Auntie Helen says, frowning.

  “Of course, I know exactly.”

  “How can this be? I was the one who took you there.”

  “I can find it,” my mother says.

  I watch them continue to argue, although perhaps it is not arguing. They are remembering together, dreaming together. They can already see it, the walk up the mountain, that time they were so young, when they believed their lives lay ahead of them and all good things were still possible. And the water is just as they imagined, heavy as gold, sweet as rare flower seeds.

  I can taste it too. I can feel it. Only a little amount and it is enough to remember—all the things you thought you had forgotten but were never forgotten, all the hopes that can still be found.

  26

  SORROWFREE

  Today a new customer came into the flower shop, and she bought expensive things, big bouquets, many tangerine plants for a restaurant grand opening. Today Pearl’s husband called me from work and asked if I can baby-sit next weekend, it is their second honeymoon. Today Helen and I were eating leftovers from Bao-bao’s wedding dinner, and she told me, “You were right. That fish—no good taste the day after.”

  I was thinking, Today is my lucky day.

  And then Helen said, “Now I have to admit something. The something is this: I have said many wrong things.” I thought I was luckier yet.

  She said, “I always told you Wen Fu was not a bad man, not as bad as you said. But all along I knew. He was bad. He was awful!” She waved her hand under her nose, chasing away a big stink.

  So now Helen was confessing everything. Thinks she’s going to die, so at last she tells me the truth!

  “I tried to make you think he was a nice man,” she said. “I told you it was only the accident, that’s what made him mean. Do you know why?”

  “You couldn’t see clearly!” I answered. “You didn’t know how much I suffered, how I could never forget. Finally you can see!”

  “I said this so you would not blame Pearl.”

  “What are you saying?” I asked, suddenly scared. “Why should I blame Pearl?”

  “Because if you thought Wen Fu was born bad, then you might think Pearl was born bad. But now I see this could never be
the case. You always hated him. You always loved her. And she is nothing like him. So now I don’t have to worry anymore. Now I can be frank. He was mean, a very bad man.”

  “You always knew this?” I asked. “That maybe Wen Fu was Pearl’s—”

  “Of course I knew!” Helen frowned. “How could I not know? I’m not so stupid. I come into the room, he’s there, you have a gun in your hand, a crazy look on your face. And later, all those years—I saw how much you fought to make Pearl yours, just in case. You were never that way with Samuel. Daughters are different, of course. But still, I knew.”

  “And Auntie Du knew?”

  Helen nodded.

  “Ai, how could you both know and not say anything?”

  And Helen patted my arm. “Eh, little person, who are you to ask such a question?”

  After lunch, I told Helen I was going shopping. She said, “Where? Maybe I’ll come.”

  I said, “I don’t know where yet.”

  And she said, “Good, that’s where I want to go too.”

  So then we went next door, to Sam Fook Trading Company. Right away, Mrs. Hong opened up her cash register, thinking we were coming in to trade twenty-dollar bills.

  “No, no,” I said. “This time I’ve come here to shop, something for my daughter.” Mrs. Hong smiled big. So did Helen. I was standing in front of the porcelain statues: Buddha, Goddess of Mercy, God of Money, God of War, all kinds of luck.

  “Do you want something for decoration or something for worship?” Mrs. Hong asked. “For worship, I can give you thirty-percent discount. For decoration, I have to charge the same price.”

  “This is for worship,” said Helen right away.

  “Not just for decoration,” I said. And then I turned to Helen.

  “This is true. This is for Pearl. I’m finding something to put inside the little red altar temple. I promised Auntie Du. For a long time already I have been thinking about this, before Pearl told me about her sickness.”

  And then I was thinking to myself once again-about that time she told me about the MS. Oh, I was angry, I was sad. I was blaming myself. I blamed Wen Fu. After Pearl went home, I cried. And then I saw that picture of Kitchen God, watching me, smiling, so happy to see me unhappy. I took his picture out of the frame. I put it over my stove. “You go see Wen Fu! You go to hell down below!” I watched his smiling face being eaten up by the fire. Right then my smoke detector went off. Wanh! Wanh! Wanh! Oh, I was scared. Wen Fu—coming back to get me. That’s what I thought.