The Kitchen God's Wife Part 11

And so I have remembered clearly his few words spoken to me that afternoon. I do not think I changed them in my mind to make the meaning of his words go the way I wanted.

His face was solemn, his expression frank. He spoke of no apologies for what had pa.s.sed as twelve years' separation. "Now that you are getting married," he said, "you will learn your true position in life." And then he pointed to an old-style painting that stretched from one end of the wall to the other. It showed one hundred different people: men, women, and children. And they were doing one hundred different things: working, eating, sleeping, all brief moments in life captured forever.

"When you were a small child," my father said, "you would come into this room and look at this painting over and over again. Do you remember it?"

I stared at the painting for a very long time, hoping to recognize it. And at last, I remembered a small figure in the corner. It was a lady looking over a balcony. I nodded.

"When I asked you if you liked the painting, you told me it was a very bad painting. Do you remember?"

I could not imagine myself saying such a thing to my father, even as a young child. "I am sorry, I do not remember this," I said. "I am even more sorry that what you remember is a disobedient child."

"You said the painting was very confusing. You could not tell if the lady playing the lute was singing a happy or a sad song. You could not tell if the woman carrying a heavy load was beginning her journey or ending it. And this woman on the balcony, you said one moment she looked as though she was waiting with hope, the next moment watching with fear."

I covered my mouth and laughed. "What a strange child I was," I said.

My father continued talking as if he had not heard me. "I liked this in you, so unafraid to say what you thought." And now he looked at me and his face looked empty of any thoughts or feelings.

"So tell me, what do you think of this painting now?" he said.

My mind ran fast, trying to think of the answer, one that would please him, that would show him I had not changed in my honesty.

"This part I like very much," I said, nervously pointing to a man pleading before a magistrate. "The proportions are good, the details are very fine. And this part of the painting I don't like at all. You see, it's too dark, heavy at the bottom, and the features are too flat-"

My father had walked away. He was nodding, although I did not think he was agreeing with me.

He turned around to face me. "From now on," he said at last with a stern look, "you must consider what your husband's opinions are. Yours do not matter so much anymore. Do you understand?"

I nodded eagerly, grateful that my father had taught me this useful lesson in such a subtle way. And then he said I would stay in his house for the next week so I could shop for my dowry.

"Do you know what you need?" he asked.

I looked down, still shy. "Something simple."

"Of course," he said. "Always something simple." He smiled, and I was so happy I had said just the right thought.

But then his smile was gone. "Just like your mother," he said, "always wanting something simple." And then his eyes grew small, as if he were still seeing her in some distant place. "Always wanting something else," he said, then looked at me sharply. "Are you the same way?"

His meaning-it was like that painting, changing at each moment. And I was like the lady on the balcony, waiting with hope, waiting with fear, my heart swelling and shrinking with every word. So that in the end, I did not know how to answer him. I said only what flew out of my mouth, honest and true. "The same," I said.

That afternoon, a servant showed me to the room I once shared with my mother, then left me so I could rest up before the evening meal. As soon as the door closed, I inspected and touched everything.

The quilts were different. The paintings and curtains she had chosen were no longer there. Her clothes, her brush and comb, the lavender soap, all her smells-nowhere to be found. But the furniture was the same: the bed, the tall dresser, the stool and vanity table, the mirror that once held her face. I cried, so happy to return at last. And then I cried a different way, just like a little child again, wondering when my mother would come back.

I found out later: No one wanted that room that had once belonged to my mother. It was considered a bad-luck room. And so no one had used that room in all those years, even though the house was filled with many people. San Ma and Wu Ma still lived there. You remember them-my father's other wives. Sz Ma had already died a few years back. And my father's sons, now with wives and children of their own, they lived there as well. So did the servants and their children. All together, the house contained maybe twenty-five or thirty people.

But even with that many people, the house seemed very quiet. When I went downstairs for the evening meal, people were talking in quiet voices. They greeted me politely enough, and of course, no one mentioned the reason for my absence for so many years. I think they didn't know how to treat me.

And then the food began to arrive on the table. I started to sit next to a half brother's wife, but my father motioned that I should sit next to him. Everyone turned to watch me. My father stood up and announced, "My daughter Jiang Weili is to be married in one month." And then we waited-and waited and waited-as the servant slowly poured a special drink into small jade cups the size of thimbles.

Finally my father spoke again, a simple toast in my honor: "In your marriage, may you find all that you wish. Ganbei!" Bottoms up! He tipped his head back and emptied his cup in one quick swallow. We all followed. And soon I found everyone congratulating me, talking loudly in the manner of a happy family. My tongue burned from the liquor, my eyes burned with tears of joy.

As it turned out, my father asked San Ma to help me shop for my dowry. She was the senior wife, the one who approved the spending of household money. And of course, she was also familiar with all the things a girl needs when she marries. She had already done this for Sz Ma's three daughters, who married after Sz Ma died. That's what she told me as the automobile took us to Yung An Gungsi, the first-cla.s.s shopping store on Nanking Road.

"Sz Ma's daughters," she was saying, "they each inherited the worst flaws of their mother. Tst! Tst! Number one lacked generosity, the kind of person who would never put one copper into a beggar's bowl. Number two lacked compa.s.sion, the kind of person who would throw dirt into the bowl. Number three, so greedy-you know what she would do?-steal the dirt and the bowl! So I did not buy them too many things for their dowry. Why should I, girls as bad as those?"

I was very careful how I acted toward San Ma. I remembered she was the wife most jealous of my mother, envious of her hair, her position, her education. I did not want to give her any reason to tell my father that I was greedy.

So when she asked me to choose a chair, I pointed to one with a very simple design, no fancy carvings. And when she asked me to choose a tea table, I pointed to the one with the plainest legs. She nodded and walked over to the salesman waiting to help us. But she did not order the pieces I had picked; she ordered others that were three grades better!

I thanked her many times. And then I thought we had finished our shopping and would return home. That's all I thought we would be buying, a chair and a tea table. But San Ma was already encouraging me in a gentle way to remember what a proper wife needed. "What style dressers?" she said.

Can you imagine how I felt? Do you remember how I had been hoping and praying for a better life? And now everyone was being so good to me. I was no longer lonely. I had all that I wished. I would have no need to wish for anything else, just as the fortune-teller had predicted.

All day long San Ma and I shopped. It was just like that game show-the one where the woman has one minute to grab onto anything she wants from the store shelf. And she has no time to decide-if she sees something, she should just take it. I was doing the same thing, only I had one whole week. So you can imagine how many things we bought, how the dreams of my future life began to grow and grow and grow.

That day we also found a triple dresser and a triple armoire, very handsome. And this was my favorite piece: a vanity table in a modern style I had picked out myself. It had a big round mirror framed in silver. Both sides had two drawers, one short, one long. And the front of each drawer was inlaid with mahogany, oak, and mother-of-pearl in a pattern that burst open like a fan. The drawers were lined with cedar, so that the moment you opened them, a good scent flew out. The center part dipped lower than the rest. It was a square table that was also inlaid on top. And beneath the table was a little curved bench covered with green brocade. I imagined myself sitting at that vanity, looking just like my mother.

Now you know what I am talking about, the same style of furniture I bought for you. I looked so long to find it. So you see, I didn't buy that table to torture you. That was my favorite.

On the second day, San Ma helped me buy fun things: a radio, a sewing machine, an RCA phonograph that changed records by itself, a porcelain fishbowl big enough for me to fit in! Wen Fu and I would have plenty of ways to have a happy life.

On the third or fourth day, San Ma and I went shopping for my private married-lady things. Oh, I was embarra.s.sed! I could only laugh whenever she mentioned what I needed and why. First we found a washbasin, which was really a very nice piece of furniture-a green marble top and a carved wooden cabinet. San Ma showed me the little cupboard down below for hiding female things. We used cloth napkins back then, just like diapers.

And after that came two kinds of tubs, a tall wooden one for washing my whole body in the morning, and then a smaller porcelain one, which was for washing only my bottom and my feet. That's what most people in China always used, because they didn't have time to wash all over every day, only partially. San Ma said, "You should wash your bottom every night before joining your husband in bed. That way he will always welcome you." This made sense. I remembered times when I wanted to push Peanut out of our bed.

But then San Ma said to me, "Later at night you should do a small wash again." And she did not explain why I had to do this. Although I began to think men were more fussy than women, and women were naturally more dirty.

And then San Ma made me buy three chamber pots. My face burned just to look at them, to imagine that Wen Fu and I would share this as well. The pots had wooden lids and the insides were painted red, then sealed off with a very strong-smelling oil.

On the fifth day, San Ma helped me buy travel and storage things: big suitcases, all leather, and two cedar chests. We filled the chests with pillows and quilts. And then it was as if San Ma went crazy! She insisted I buy more quilts-twenty!

"Of course you need this many," she said. "How else can you keep all your future children warm?" So I chose good, thick quilts-all Chinese made, with lots of fine-weave banding around the sides. Inside, they were filled with the finest cotton batting, the most expensive, beaten many times until it rose up high. And for these blankets, I chose beautiful covers, all silk, not one of them cotton. And each one was embroidered with different flower patterns, never the same pattern twice.

On the sixth day, we bought all my things for entertaining guests and honoring ancestors: sofas and chairs, an altar table, four stools, and a short round table. This last piece was made out of very thick dark gleaming wood, and it was carved in the Chinese style with claw feet and long-life characters running around the border. Underneath the table were four smaller tables that could be pulled out, in case more guests arrived.

On the seventh day, the last, we bought all my dishes and silver. By this time, I had been living at my father's house long enough to know what I needed: two sets of everything!

I got one set for banquets, one set for everyday use, ten of everything for each set. And it was not just plates and knives and forks like Americans have, one plain, one fancy. Everything was fancy! Ivory or silver. Can you imagine? This was Chinese silver, pure, soft silver, just like money you can exchange.

At the store they had a big long table, and we set the table with all the things I was choosing. I danced around the store, picking this, picking that, as if I had done this every day of my life, no cares about how much money everything cost. I had silver cups for holding soy sauce, silver cups for drinking tea, silver cups for drinking wine, a silver dish only for holding a little soup spoon. And I had many sizes of spoons, one for drinking a meat soup, one for sipping dessert, like the lily-flower seed soup I loved so much, then two more sizes, one small, one big, although I cannot remember what their purposes were. And to match those I had four sizes of soup bowls, not in silver, but only because then they would be too hot to hold. But they were made out of very good porcelain, painted around the edge in gold. Then I had two sizes of plates, one small, another smaller than that, because as San Ma pointed out, "If you choose a plate that is too big, it is as if you are saying you will never get another chance to eat again."

My chopsticks were the best, silver too, each pair connected by a little chain, so they could never be separated, never lost. And just when I thought I was done with my shopping, the salesman showed me a small silver piece, shaped like a fish leaping up. And I knew right away I needed to have that too, because this little ornament was a place for resting your chopsticks, a way to stop eating for a few moments, to admire your table, to look at your guests, to congratulate yourself, and say, How lucky am I.

On the seventh day of my dowry shopping, only a few weeks before my wedding, that was precisely what I was thinking: How lucky am I. I had nothing but good thoughts in my head. I was sure that my life had changed, was getting better every moment, that my happiness would never stop. And now I would have to pray to the G.o.ds every day, but only to offer my never-ending thanks for so many never-ending blessings.

Imagine me in that store, smiling, sitting at the long, long table with all my things. I tried out my happiness with San Ma and the salesman watching. I picked up my silver chopsticks. I pretended to pluck a delicate morsel off a silver plate. I turned to one side, and I was imagining myself saying, "Husband, you eat this, the best part of the best fish. No, not for me, for you, you take it."

That was how I was, dreaming of all the ways I would respect my husband. And I can admit this: I was also thinking of ways to show off-all the banquets I would hold. One for my father, whom I now respected so much. One for San Ma, to respect her as my honorary mother. One for my future mother-in-law and father-in-law, whom I was sure I would learn to respect. One to welcome my first son, when he chose to be born. One in honor of Old Aunt and New Aunt, for letting me go. And one for Peanut, maybe even her, when I chose to forgive her.

I found out later: San Ma had bought a dowry five times bigger and better for Sz Ma's daughters. I found out: My father knew all along the Wen family character was not so good. So by allowing me to marry into the family, he was saying I was not so good either.

But I'm sure even he could not imagine just how bad the Wen family really was. All that dowry furniture I had chosen over those seven days?-Wen Fu's family took it all, shipped everything to America and England as part of their overseas export business.

The quilts and their silk covers?-Wen Fu's sisters and his brothers' wives took them all. And the wedding gifts from other family and friends, the fancy silver picture frames, the heavy silver hair-brush and mirror, the pretty English basins and painted pitchers?-Wen Fu's mother put those on top of tables in her own room.

There was only one thing from my dowry they did not steal-because someone else stole it first. It happened the day a servant left to care for her sick mother in the south. And Wen Fu's mother, who never liked this servant in the first place, soon came to an angry conclusion. While she was cursing this runaway thief for stealing her ten pairs of silver chopsticks, I was hiding those same things under the lining of my suitcase.

For many years after that, when times were bad, I would take out a pair of those chopsticks and hold them in my hand. I would feel the weight of the silver resting in my palm, solid and unbreakable, just like my hopes. I would dangle the chain that meant a pair could never be separated, never lost. I would pluck at the air, at nothing.

Can you imagine how innocent I was, how strong my innocence? I was still waiting for the day I could finally bring those silver chopsticks out in the open, no longer a secret. I was still dreaming of celebrations I would hold, of happiness yet to come.

8.

TOO MUCH YIN.

Now you see how I once was. I was not always negative-thinking, the way you and Helen say. When I was young, I wanted to believe in something good. And when that good thing started to go away, I still wanted to grab it, make it stay.

Now I am a little more careful. I don't know why Helen criticizes me about this. She should criticize herself! You see how she is. She sees something good-her children acting nice-she thinks something bad. I'm asking you, isn't that negative thinking, to think you are going to die because everyone is nice? We have the same expression in Chinese, daomei thinking, only maybe it is even worse. If you think daomei, daomei will happen. If Helen thinks she is going to die-well, we shouldn't even say these words.

All I am saying is this: I know how it is to hear bad stories and believe they are true. You're lucky this has never happened to you. But that's what happened to my marriage-right from the start.

Of course, maybe my marriage never really had a chance. If you marry a no-good husband, you have a no-good marriage, no avoiding this. But without the worries Peanut put in my head, maybe I would have found a few moments of happiness before all the truth came out.

So this is what happened: Three days before my wedding, Peanut did a very bad thing. She fed me news about the Wen family that soured in my stomach. And the next day, she told me a secret story, about the dangers of loving Wen Fu too much. And the day after that, I left for Shanghai to get ready for my wedding, already worried that my marriage was doomed.

At the time, I did not think Peanut was telling me these things to get revenge for my marrying Wen Fu. After I returned from my father's house, she began to act friendly again toward me. She showed me an American magazine with pictures of brides, told me what style wedding dress would be best for me, a white satin one with a train ten feet long. She pointed to the dress she thought she should wear, even though I had not asked her to be my brides-maid.

I told her Old Aunt had already picked out my wedding dress: a long red chipao with an embroidered jacket. Peanut wrinkled her nose. "Villager wedding clothes," she said, and sniffed. "You must have a Western wedding dress. No respectable Shanghai girl gets married in only Chinese clothes anymore. How old-fashioned! Look at this magazine." Peanut was always that way, rebellious toward the old customs, but with no new ideas of her own.

"Old-fashioned or not," I said, "Old Aunt will never agree to a white wedding dress."

"Only uneducated people think white is for mourning," Peanut argued. "If you let her decide everything, she'll have you going to your wedding in a red sedan chair-with the village band clanging up a parade of beggars along the way! And all those important friends of your father's will get out of their automobiles and laugh." Peanut laughed out loud like a horse to let me know what I would hear on my wedding day.

I had never thought of this.

"Eh! Don't look so serious," she said. "I'm going to talk to my mother about this right away. Also why we must both wear makeup for the wedding. Girls from the best families wear makeup, not just singers and actresses and low-cla.s.s girls. Look at the Soong sisters."

Now that Peanut had told me she was going to help me, I let my excitement about the wedding come out a little bit at a time. I told her about the two banquets that would be given, one at a good restaurant owned by friends of the Wen family, the other at the YMCA, which was a modern, very stylish building in Shanghai, at least this was the case in 1937. Now the name does not sound so good, but I am telling you, back then it was a very good place to hold a banquet.

I also told Peanut about some of the furniture my father had bought me for my dowry, about the vanity table with the inlaid fan design-the same things I told you. I told her that Wen Fu's family had given four thousand yuan as a money gift. "See how generous they are. See how much they value me," I said. And here, I knew I was bragging just a little.

"I expect my future family to pay at least forty thousand," Peanut said, a smug look on her face.

Her remark was like a slap. I stared at her.

"You remember what the fortune-teller said," Peanut added. "My marriage will be to a wealthy family in Shanghai, much richer than the local marriage I gave up."

And then I realized: She was telling me that it was her choice, long before my marriage proposal, to give up Wen Fu for someone better. So in this way she was saving both our faces, hers for losing Wen Fu, mine for taking him away from her.

I thought this was very generous of her, to find an excuse to let both of us accept what had happened. And that's how we came to be as close as sisters once again for the rest of the time I had left with my family. In fact, from that day forward, until I was married, we called each other tang jie, "sugar sister," the friendly way to refer to a girl cousin.

But all that talk about money was not the bad thing Peanut told me. That only made me think she was sincere.

Three days before the wedding, our house was crowded with relatives who had come from far away-Old Aunt's people, New Aunt's people, cousins connected to us by complicated marriages. With so many people, it was too noisy to sleep after the noontime meal. So Peanut went outside for a walk, and I began to pack my clothes and wrap my jewelry in soft cloths.

A few days before, many things had been presented to me at a big family dinner: an oval jade ring from my father's mother, a gold necklace from my father, two gold bracelets, one each from Old Aunt and New Aunt. And there was something else; Old Aunt gave this to me when n.o.body was looking: the imperial jade earrings that had once belonged to my mother, the ones she said would someday be mine.

I was trying them on, remembering what my mother had said-about the worth of the earrings, the worth of my words-when Peanut ran back to our room. She whispered she had to tell me something, that we should go to the greenhouse to talk. Right away I stopped what I was doing and we walked outside. Secrets told in the greenhouse were always the best, dangerous to know, dangerous to others. We wound our way past the broken pots, then found our childhood tea furniture, two wooden lawn chairs with the backs broken off.

Peanut said she had been sitting on the front steps of the New West part of the house. And behind her, in the screened porch, she could hear the men relatives talking. Old Aunt had kicked them out of the sitting room, because they had been smoking cigars, and she discovered a few of them liked to spit on the rug as well. So there they were, in the porch, smoking and spitting.

Peanut said she had heard them talking about the same boring things: the new j.a.panese premier, factory explosions, strikes, and then a new subject-la-sa, or garbage, businesses.

"One uncle was saying how people in Shanghai were crazy to find any kind of way to get rich off foreign la-sa. The Americans, the British, the French-they're always throwing away leftovers from their businesses, throwing away food, just because they made too much. They pack things in wooden boxes, and when they unpack they throw the boxes away. They abandon furniture when they go back to their foreign countries.

"Uncle said it's easy to get rich off foreigners. You don't have to be so smart. You tell them, 'For a small fee, I can take your garbage away-your old clothes, your wood sc.r.a.ps, leftover furniture.' And after they pay you, you turn around and sell these same throwaway things to someone else. That's how you can make three generations' worth of fortune almost overnight."

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked Peanut. I did not think this kind of business talk was worthy of a greenhouse secret.

"I'm not finished," said Peanut. "I only told you the first part, because then another uncle mentioned that at least that kind of garbage business was not as bad as another kind, at least not dishonorable."

"What kind of dishonorable business?" I said, and I was imagining Peanut was going to tell me about "missionary wives." That's what desperate beggar girls said to foreigners: "Be your missionary wife tonight. You save me. Please save me."

But Peanut said instead, "He was talking about the Wen family business. He said they sell Chinese garbage to the foreigners, especially people from America and England."

I immediately felt weak. "What kind of garbage?"

"They sell anything that is broken, or strange, or forbidden," said Peanut. "The broken things they call Ming Dynasty. The strange things they say are Ching Dynasty. And the forbidden things-they say they are forbidden, no need to hide that."

"What kind of forbidden things?"

"Uncle said the Wen father travels to small villages, countrysides plagued by drought or flood or locusts. And he quickly finds out which families cannot pay their rent, which ones need to sell off their last piece of land to keep from starving. And for a few coppers, he buys paintings of dead ancestors. It's the truth! I am not lying. Those people are so desperate they would part with their own relatives' shrines. Can you imagine? All those ancestors immigrating to America against their will. Then one day they wake up, and-ai-ya!-they are hanging on Western walls, listening to people arguing in a language they can't understand!" Peanut was laughing hard.

This was a terrible thought. I was thinking about the painting of my poor mother. Where was it?

"This can't be true," I said. "The Wen family ships only good-quality merchandise, the best. Auntie Miao said so."

"Miao-miao's husband was there too," said Peanut. "And even he thought the Wens ran a bad business. True, they make a lot of money, he said. Foreigners love those paintings. But it is riches made from someone else's tragedy. The reason why they had to sell, that's one kind of tragedy. But the worst tragedy is still to come. Auntie Miao's husband said that when the Wens die and try to go to the next world, you can be sure all those people's ancestors will be standing at the front gate, ready to kick them out."

I jumped up and brushed the dust off the bottom of my dress. "I don't believe it. Those other people are only envious. You know how Miao-miao's husband is, the others. Always lying."

"I am only telling you what I heard. Why are you mad at me? Maybe it isn't true. What does it matter? It's still a good business. They aren't doing anything illegal. That's how they do a modem business with foreigners."