The Kitchen God's Wife Part 19

"Wait! Wait!" I heard her call after me. "Your scissors, you forgot them."

I was walking fast, and without thinking, I turned back into those crooked streets. And now every place looked the same, yet nothing was familiar. It was like wandering in a bad dream, not knowing where I was, or where I wanted to go, worried that if I stopped, something bad would catch me.

So you see, I made a bad deal, like a deal with the devil. And for what? I found out later you could buy those bird scissors from anybody, for even cheaper. Lots of people made them, and not just in China. Just the other day I saw them-at Standard Five and Ten. Yes, can you imagine? Of course, I did not buy them.

If you think I am only being superst.i.tious saying this, then why did I drop all those scissors that day? Why did something terrible happen right after that?

Hulan was the one who told me. She was waiting for me at the house. She jumped up, put her hands to her mouth, and told me to hurry and go to the hospital. "Accident!" she cried. "Wen Fu is hurt very bad, maybe dying."

I gave a little shout of fear. "How can this be?" And then we were both running out the door to an air force car waiting to take us to the hospital.

On the way, Hulan told me what had happened. "He was driving an army jeep, heading toward the Sleeping Beauties Hills. But a wheel fell off, and the jeep turned over and threw him out."

"Ai-ya, this is my fault," I cried. "I made this happen."

"Don't say this," scolded Hulan. "How can this be your fault?"

And then she told me Jiaguo had ordered Wen Fu to be taken to the French Christian hospital run by Chinese and foreign nuns. Hulan said it was not the local hospital, which was very poor, filled with people who could give you more problems than what you already had. What a good man Jiaguo was!

As I walked down the hallway of the hospital, I could already hear Wen Fu moaning and screaming. It was the sound of a man being tortured, of someone who had already lost his mind. And then I saw him. His head was bandaged all around the top. His face was swollen and purple. This is terrible to admit, but if no one had told me this was Wen Fu, I would not have recognized him. I was staring at his face, trying to find his same eyes, nose, and chin. And then I thought, Maybe they made a mistake. Maybe this is not my husband.

"Wen Fu?" I said.

"He can't hear you," the doctor said. "He has a very bad injury to his brain. He was already dead from shock when they brought him here. But I gave him a shot of adrenaline, and his heartbeat came back." Of course, I thanked the doctor for saving my husband's life.

I turned to look at Wen Fu again, calling his name softly. And suddenly, one eye popped open! I gasped. I could not help myself. His eye was big and dark in the middle, yellow and b.l.o.o.d.y all around. It seemed to be looking out with so much anger, no good feelings behind it. He looked like a monster.

A few days later, when it was certain that Wen Fu would live, Jiaguo came to the hospital and said, "Weiwei-ah, now I have to give you bad news."

I listened to everything, never changing my expression, never crying out. That afternoon, Jiaguo told me he might have to dismiss Wen Fu from the air force, maybe even send him to jail. He told me my husband had not had permission to take the jeep. Instead he had bribed an army driver, who was now being punished. And he did not crash because of a bad wheel. He was driving too fast and when he almost ran into a truck coming the opposite way, he turned too fast and threw the jeep upside down. And then I heard Jiaguo talking about a girl. Who knows how that girl came to be in the jeep with him? In any case, she was killed, crushed underneath.

That was the first time I heard about my husband seeing other women, although I later found out she was not the first. But back then I didn't want to believe this. Maybe Wen Fu was going to the Sleeping Beauties Hills to visit Mochou's grave. Maybe the girl got in the jeep to give him directions. Maybe he was only being kind, because he saw she was poor. Maybe she had never been with him at all. Maybe she was standing on the hill where he crashed, that's how she came to be killed.

Of course, none of those excuses could find a place to rest in my head. And instead, I could see Wen Fu driving along the winding road, kissing someone who looked like Peanut. He was singing the opera song to her. And they were both laughing, as he drove up and down, up and down, swimming in the clouds.

I was still thinking this when I visited Wen Fu the next time. His face was not as swollen as before. He was sleeping and I wanted to shake him awake. I wanted to ask him, "Why did you do this? Now you are going to go to jail, disaster on all of us." But as soon as I thought that, he moaned, making that terrible sound that hurt my heart. And so I wiped his brow and forgave him before he even had a chance to say he was sorry.

When he finally woke up, Wen Fu was fussy and weak. He complained about everything: the pain, his bad eye, the food, the manners of the nurses, the delays of the doctor, the hardness of the bed. Everyone tried to comfort him. At that time, I did not think the accident had changed him, only that he was still suffering. That's why he was being so troublesome.

But then his strength came back, and he became angry and wild. He threw his food at the nurses and called them wh.o.r.es of the devil. He accused the doctors of being so stupid they should not even work on a dead dog. He threw a bedpan at the doctor who saved his life. He would not take his medicine, and when four nurses tried to hold him down to force him, all the strength they didn't know he had flew through his arm and he punched one of the nurses and knocked her teeth loose.

One night, he reached out and grabbed a nurse's breast. The next night, they a.s.signed an old woman nurse. He grabbed her breast too, didn't matter.

Soon n.o.body wanted to take care of him. This was my shame too. He was getting better, but he was also getting worse. The doctor said he was still too weak to leave. His one eye was still blinded. They tied his arms and legs to the bed and told me I had to urge my husband to behave.

Every day I had to listen to him beg me to untie him. He begged me to climb into bed with him. He begged me to take off my clothes. And when I would not do any of these things, he cursed me at the top of his voice. He accused me of sleeping with other pilots. He said this loud enough for everyone in the hallway to hear.

I tried so hard to keep my sympathy for him. I tried to remember that it was the pain that made him act this way. But secretly, I was thinking how Wen Fu would soon go to jail. I was already planning a quiet life when I would no longer have to care for him.

But he did not go to jail. Jiaguo ended up not charging him with any kind of crime. I found out: Hulan was the one who persuaded him not to. She did this for my sake, she told me later.

"If you punish the husband, you punish the wife," she explained. "That's all I said."

I thanked her with many words. I told her I was ashamed she had to go to so much trouble to help my husband and me.

"I did nothing, Jiaguo did nothing," she said. "Now you should forget this ever happened." Even when she told me that, I knew she would never forget. I could never forget. I now had a big debt to pay.

Of course, Hulan did not know what she had really done, how sorry I was that she had done me this favor. I felt so bad, and yet I had to act grateful. It reminded me of that time when I was a little girl and Old Aunt had asked me on my birthday which chicken in the yard I liked best. I picked the one that let me feed her out of my hand. And that night, Old Aunt cooked her up.

Anyway, I showed Hulan my thanks over and over again. I had my cook make the dishes she liked, the way that she liked them, vegetables steamed until they were soft and tasteless. Hulan said nothing, and this was proper, not to call attention to my thanks. I told the servant girl to give Hulan and Jiaguo's rooms a thorough cleaning. Hulan said nothing. And several days later, I gave her many yards of very good cloth, telling her the color was not right for me.

This was not true, of course. I picked that cloth especially because it looked so nice against my skin. It was a very pretty fabric, peach-colored, hard to get during wartime and very expensive.

"This color does not suit me any better," Hulan said frowning, her fingers already stroking the cloth.

"Take it, take it," I said. "I have no time to sew anyway, now that I have to take care of my husband."

So Hulan took my gift without any more protest. She knew what kind of bad marriage I had, and she let me cover it up with a beautiful piece of cloth.

When my husband came home, I already had a special bedroom made up for him. He was still too weak to leave his bed, so I hired a special nurse servant to take care of him, to change his bandages, to bring him food, to listen to his complaints. That nurse stayed only one day. The next one lasted maybe two days. Finally I had to take care of him myself.

Jiaguo and Hulan visited him every day, of course, since they lived in the same house. And one day three pilots came over. I took them to Wen Fu's room and they treated him as if he were a hero. They said that as soon as Wen Fu could fly again, China would be certain to win the war very fast, polite lies like that.

But everyone already knew he would never fly again. How could he fly with only one eye? Still, the pilots were very generous to say that, and Wen Fu was glad to hear it.

They were so nice I invited them to stay afterward for dinner, thinking this was what Wen Fu would want me to say. He always liked to show his generosity to the other pilots that way. And in fact, Wen Fu did say, "Stay, please stay. My wife is an excellent cook." I think he was remembering those good dinners in Yangchow when I made a thousand dumplings. The pilots agreed immediately. And I went downstairs to tell the cook to go out and bring back a fresh-killed chicken.

After our dinner, the pilots, Hulan, Jiaguo, and I continued talking at the table, while the servant cleaned up. At first we were quiet, so we would not wake Wen Fu up. I remember we talked a little about the war in solemn voices, and yes, we were still certain we would win as soon as China could bring in more supplies.

One pilot said he had heard about a contract to buy American-made planes flown in from India, maybe a thousand, enough to fight evenly with the j.a.panese. Another said that airplane-making factories were being built in different parts of China. Maybe there would soon be one in Kunming. And we all agreed that would be best: to make the planes in China, so we knew they were properly built, not full of problems like the old Russian planes or the new Italian ones. Chinese-made was best, bombers and fighters, all very fast and able to fly at night.

But we all knew this was just talk, the same old talk. So after a while, we began to remember the villages we had come from, stories from there, very pleasant kind of talk. And then we were singing.

We took turns remembering silly village songs, the kind people sing when drinking or celebrating.

One of the pilots could make his voice sound almost like a woman's, and together we sang a very silly love song, then laughed and sang it again: "Ten thousand clouds, one thousand birds, one hundred tears, my two eyes look to heaven and see only you, my two eyes-"

Suddenly we heard heavy steps coming down. And then-bw.a.n.g!-something was knocked down. I jumped out of my chair and saw Wen Fu, his head wrapped in a bandage. He was leaning on a stick. His face was pale and sweaty, looking like a ghost's. On top of his pajamas he wore his air force jacket.

"You are too sick to be up!" I cried, rushing over to help him back into bed. Jiaguo and the pilots started to get up too.

Wen Fu waved his stick in the air. "How can you sing that?" he roared. "I am a sick man, you are a healthy woman! I am a hero, you are a wh.o.r.e! Your two eyes see other men!"

I did not know what he was talking about. "You've had a bad dream." I tried to soothe him. "You are still dream-talking. Come back to bed."

"Liar!" he shouted. He marched over to us and used his stick to knock over the rest of the food on the table. "You are wrong. Kneel down. Bow your head and beg me to forgive you. Kneel down!" He slammed the stick on the table.

I looked at his face. His one good eye was wild, like a drunken man's. His face was so ugly-and I wondered how I could have married such a person. How could I have let this happen?

Wen Fu must have seen my thoughts with his bad eye, because right then he reached over and slapped me, gave me a real big slap in front of all those people. I gasped. I did not feel any pain. I thought the stinging was just my embarra.s.sment. Everyone was staring, not moving.

"Kneel down!" he shouted again. He started to raise his stick, and that's when Hulan pushed me down by my shoulder.

"Kneel down, kneel down," she cried. And I found myself falling to my knees. "Just listen to him. Say you are sorry, what does it matter?"

I remember this: All those men, Hulan-n.o.body tried to stop him. They watched and did nothing as I lay with my head touching the floor. They said nothing when my husband ordered me to say, "Sorry, I am wrong, you are right. Please forgive me." They did not protest and tell Wen Fu, "This is enough," when he told me to beg for forgiveness, again and again.

And as I bowed and begged, cried and knocked my head on the floor, I was thinking, Why doesn't anyone help me? Why do they stand there, as if I were truly wrong?

I am not blaming Helen today for what she did back then. She was scared, same as the others. But I still can't forget: What she did, what the others did-it was wrong, it was dangerous. It fed Wen Fu's power, made him feel stronger.

But if I brought this up with her today, she would not remember what I was talking about. It's the same with that peach-colored cloth I gave her. We were at House of Fabrics recently, and I said, "Hey, doesn't this look like the same cloth I gave you in China?"

"What cloth?" she said.

"The cloth! The cloth! Peach-colored with red flowers," I reminded her. "I gave it to you because you told Jiaguo not to put Wen Fu in jail. You knew what he did, the girl he killed in the jeep. You took that cloth and made a summer dress. And you were so happy and then mad the day the war ended-remember?-because you tore that same dress jumping up and down."

"Oh, that cloth," she said, remembering at last. "You didn't give me that cloth. I bought it myself, went to the old part of the city before it was destroyed and bought it from a girl sitting at a table. That's right, I remember now. She wanted too much money, and I had to bargain her down."

So you see-how can I argue with Helen's memory? Her truth lives in a little confused part of her brain, all the good things she still wants to believe.

Sometimes I envy her. Sometimes I wish I never gave her that cloth.

15.

A FLEA ON A TIGER'S HEAD One time your father gave a sermon called "Jesus Forgives, Can You?" I liked that sermon a lot. It gave me a peaceful feeling, letting go of my anger.

I remember right after that, the Italian man who owned the hardware store treated me mean, yelled at me just because I wanted money back for a light bulb already burnt out when I bought it. He pretended he could not understand me. My English wasn't good enough, so no money back.

I got mad. But then I said to myself, Forgive, forgive. I was thinking about what your father said, letting Jesus's tears from the cross wash all my anger away. And it worked. I was no longer angry.

So I tried to tell the hardware man how I put the light bulb in my socket. Right away he interrupted me, said, "You bought it, you broke it."

I got mad again. I said to myself, Forgive, forgive. Again it worked. I stopped my anger. But then the man said, "Lady, I got a business to run." And I said, "You should have no business!" I let myself get mad. I forgave and forgave, and that man didn't learn anything! Who was he to criticize me? His English wasn't so good either, Italian accent.

So you see, that's the way I am, easy to get mad, hard to forgive. I think it is because of Wen Fu. I can never forgive him. I can't excuse him because of that accident. I can't excuse what happened later. Why should I?

I only feel bad that maybe your father will think my heart is not big enough.

But then I also think, When Jesus was born, he was already the son of G.o.d. I was the daughter of someone who ran away, a big disgrace. And when Jesus suffered, everyone worshipped him. n.o.body worshipped me for living with Wen Fu. I was like that wife of Kitchen G.o.d. n.o.body worshipped her either. He got all the excuses. He got all the credit. She was forgotten.

About a year after Wen Fu's accident, at the start of 1939, I returned to that same hospital, this time to have another baby. Hulan was with me. She saw me pay one hundred Chinese dollars out of my dowry money for a first-cla.s.s, private room. That was a lot of money back then, like paying one or two thousand American dollars today.

Wen Fu did not come to see me until two days later, after I had the baby, another girl. So the first time I saw my baby, I was by myself. When she opened her mouth and cried, I cried too. When she opened her eyes, I hoped she liked what she saw, her new, smiling mother. When she yawned, I told her, "Oh, how smart you are to learn this so quickly."

By the time Wen Fu came, his eyes were red-drunk from too much celebrating. He was wearing his air force uniform, and whiskey smells followed him into the room. The baby was asleep. He peered into her face and laughed, saying "My little thing, my little thing" over and over again. He tried to open her curled-up hand.

"Oh! She's very ugly!" he joked. "Bald as a monk, fat as a greedy one. How could I come to have such an ugly child? And so lazy too. Wake up, you little Buddha." Watching the way his eyebrows were dancing, I could tell he was happy. He was trying to charm his own daughter!

And then he picked her up in his drunken hands. And the baby flung her arms out and began to cry. He bounced her up and down in his arms, and she cried louder.

"What's this?" he said. "What is the matter now?"

"Softer, be gentle," I suggested, but he did not listen to me. He began to lift her up and down, as if she were a little airplane. He sang her a loud drinking song. Still she kept crying.

I held my arms out, and he gave her up. In a few moments, she was quiet. And then I saw Wen Fu's face. He was not relieved, smiling with joy. He was angry, as if this little baby had insulted him-as if a baby only one day old were choosing favorites. I was thinking to myself, What kind of person would blame a baby? What kind of man always puts himself first, even before his own child?

And then the nurse came into the room to give me some medicine. Right away, Wen Fu told her he wanted something to eat: a good hot soup-noodles and beef tendons. He ordered this dish, fast, like a customer in a restaurant. He told her not to be skimpy with the meat. That's what he always said in a restaurant. He also told her to bring him a good rice wine, not the cheap local brand, but the best.

Before he could continue, the nurse interrupted him: "Sorry, no food for visitors, only for patients."

Wen Fu stared silently for a moment. And then he banged his fist on the wall. "You're the one who still has two eyes!" he shouted at the nurse. "Don't you see I am a war hero?" He pointed to his eye, the one still drooping from the accident.

I wanted to tell the nurse, He's no hero! That was not the way it happened, how he got his bad eye. Just the opposite. But the nurse had already left the room.

And then I made a big mistake. I told Wen Fu not to be a nuisance. Actually, I did not say this word "nuisance." I could never have said something so directly like that to my husband. So what I probably said was this: "They are busy."

And because I was excusing them, Wen Fu became even more angry. He was cursing the hospital, shouting at the top of his voice. I was begging him to calm down. "For the baby," I said. "A baby has just come into the world. A baby should not hear such things." But already the baby was crying again. Wen Fu stopped shouting. He stared at his little daughter, so angry at her new outburst. Then he left.

Good, I thought, he's gone. Not even five minutes had pa.s.sed before the nurse ran back into my room, trembling mad. "That man who is your husband, what kind of crazy person is he?"

And then she told me how Wen Fu had gone downstairs to the hospital kitchen. He had pushed the cooks out of the room. He had picked up a big cleaver, the kind you use to chop a large bone in half. And-pah!-he chopped up the table, the walls, the chairs. He knocked over jars and dishes. He smelled each pot, cursed its contents, and dumped out all the food they were cooking. Finally, when the blade broke, he threatened all the cooks and their helpers, who were watching from the door: "If you report that I did this, I will come back and chop your bones in half."

When I heard this, I was so ashamed. I could think of no excuses to offer. I asked the nurse to forgive me for bringing this trouble into the hospital. I promised to pay the hospital another one hundred yuan. I promised to later apologize myself to all the workers in the kitchen.

After the nurse left, I thought about this question she had asked: What kind of crazy person was my husband? This time I was not blaming myself for having married him. I blamed his mother!-for having given birth to him, for tending to all his desires as if she were his servant, for always feeding husband and son first, for allowing me to eat only after I had picked off bits of food stuck to my father-in-law's beard, for letting the meanness in her son grow like a strange appet.i.te, so that he would always feel hungry to feed his own power.

And perhaps this was wrong of me, to blame another woman for my own miseries. But that was how I was raised-never to criticize men or the society they ruled, or Confucius, that awful man who made that society. I could blame only other women who were more afraid than I.

And now I began to cry, and my baby cried with me. I put her to my breast, she would not eat. I rocked her gently, no use. I sang her a soft song, she was not listening. She cried for so long, until she no longer had enough breath to cry out loud. She cried from down below, in her stomach. And I knew she was scared. A mother knows these things instantly about her own baby, whether she is hungry or tired, wet or in pain. My baby was scared. So I did something I thought was right. I lied.

"What a good life you will have," I murmured to her. "That man who was shouting? n.o.body we know. Not your father, certainly not. Your father is a gentle man. Your real father will come see you soon, better not cry." And soon, she calmed down, she went to sleep.

That night I named her Yiku, "pleasure over bitterness," two opposite words, the good one first to cancel out the bad one second. This was when characters were written one on top of the other. In this way, I was wishing my daughter a life of comfort winning out over hardship.

I loved that baby right from the start. She had Mochou's same ears. But Yiku opened her eyes and searched for me. She would drink only my milk, refused that of her sau nai-nai, her milk nurse, so I sent the sau nai-nai away. You see, Yiku knew I was her mother. I would lift her high in the air, and we would laugh together. She was smart too-not even three months old and she already knew how to put her hands together and touch my hair, never grabbing.

But whenever Wen Fu began to shout, she always cried, cried all night long, and would not stop until I told her more lies. "Yiku, be good, and your life will be good too." How could I know that this is how a mother teaches her daughter to be afraid?

One day, perhaps six months after Yiku had been born, the servant girl came to me, telling me she had to leave. She was fourteen years old, a small girl, always obedient, so Hulan had no reason to scold her. When I asked why she wanted to leave, she excused herself and said she was not a good enough worker.

That was the Chinese way, to use yourself as an excuse, to say you are unworthy, when really you mean you are worth more. I could guess why she was unhappy. Over the last few months, Hulan had started asking the girl to do lots of little tasks that turned into big ones. And that poor girl, who never knew how to refuse anyone, soon had twice as much work for the same amount of money I paid her.