The Kitchen God's Wife Part 27

What? What was this man talking about?

And then I recognized his voice, the Chinese-American soldier, Jimmy Louie, the one who had named me Winnie.

Yes, yes, your father! Just like that, five years later, our past and future b.u.mping into one another on a strange street in Shanghai. Can you imagine? If I had not gone to see Peanut, if I had not stopped to read a silly magazine, if he had not been looking for a newspaper-one minute later, and our lifetimes would have missed each other. I ask you, isn't that fate meant to be?

That's what I said to your father many years later, after we were married. How lucky we were that fate brought us together. But your father did not think it was fate, at least not the Chinese idea of ming yuan.

"Fate," he told me, "is somebody else deciding your life for you. Our love was greater than that." And here he used the American word "destiny," something that could not be prevented.

Well, that sounded the same as fate to me. He insisted it was different, an important difference. So I told him, "Maybe you see things in an American way, and I see the same things in a Chinese way. You are saying, 'Look at the pretty fish in the bowl.' And I say, 'Look at the pretty bowl with the fish.' And it does not matter what words we use. It is the same pretty bowl, the same pretty fish."

But your father still insisted, "We loved each other from the moment we met, that's why our two wills joined together to find each other."

After that, I didn't say anything. How could I tell your father that I did not love him from the moment we met? Not in Kunming, not at that dance. I did not know such an instant feeling existed, so how could I feel it? Of course, after I b.u.mped into him that second time, my love for him happened very, very quickly.

So maybe we were both right, and it was my fate, and his destiny. But later your father became a minister, and he decided it was G.o.d's will that brought us together. So now I can no longer explain how we found each other. All I can say is this: I was on a small road in Shanghai. Your father was at that same place.

After we b.u.mped into one another, we stood there making polite conversation for a few minutes. And then Jimmy Louie-I still called him Jimmy Louie in those early days, both names, like the Chinese way-Jimmy Louie asked me to have some tea at a place just across the road, to sit down and rest awhile. I agreed, but only to be polite. Really, I had no intention of starting something.

We found ourselves sitting in a small upstairs teahouse, a place I thought was very dirty. I saw the waitress take away cups from one table and rinse them in cold dirty water before she filled them with tea and gave them to us. I had to wash those cups twice with hot tea before I would drink any. I did the same with Jimmy Louie's cup. You see, even back then, I was already worrying about his stomach.

We drank our tea quietly for a few minutes. And then he asked me about Wen Fu. "Does he still use the name Judas?"

I laughed, then pretended to scold him. "That was bad, what you did. My husband was very angry with me."

"But I was the one who gave him that name, not you."

I was too embarra.s.sed to remind him of our dance together, how friends had teased Wen Fu that I had already been conquered by an American. And I could not tell him about the fight Wen Fu and I had afterward, although my face burned with anger just thinking about it. Jimmy Louie must have seen the look on my face, because right away he said, "It was terrible, what I did. I'm sorry."

"No, no," I said. "I am thinking about other matters, how so many years have gone by, how everything has changed, but nothing has become better." Jimmy Louie knew we should not talk about this further. So instead we talked about other people. I told him about Jiaguo and his new job in Harbin, how Hulan did not yet have a child. He told me that most of his friends in the American air force had been sent north to Peking to help with the j.a.panese surrender. He was still with the U.S. Information Service, press relations for the American consulate general.

"A very big job," I said.

"Only a big name," he said. "I read different newspapers every day. I keep an eye on what is reported." And then he said. "You see, I'm a spy." Of course, he was only joking! He always liked to tease people, you remember this about your father. I don't know why Helen still thinks he really was a spy. He wasn't! Don't listen to her. If he really was, why would he joke so openly?

In any case, we had more tea, more and more. Soon I found myself telling him about my uncle's factory, how poor they now were, how hard my boy cousins now had to work. And Jimmy Louie did not look down on them or pity my family. He had sympathy. He said the war was like a bad illness, and when it was over, it did not mean everyone suddenly became healthy again.

I told Jimmy Louie about Peanut. I did not say she was a Communist-I only said she was divorced. And Jimmy Louie did not say, "What a bad woman that Peanut is." He said many marriages could not survive a war.

So finally I told him about my father, what trouble he was in for cooperating with the j.a.panese. He said this was a terrible tragedy, that wartime had led people to mistakes they otherwise would not have walked into.

You see how he was? I felt I could tell him almost anything and find some sort of comfort. For an American, he had a lot of sympathy. And yet I still did not tell him about my marriage, not yet.

"How about you?" I asked. "Back home, how is your family? Do your wife and children miss you?"

"No wife, no children," he said. "No such luck." And then he brought out a little photograph. It showed four young women sitting in a row, youngest to oldest, wearing modern dresses and hairstyles. They were the daughters of Mrs. Liang, a schoolmate of his aunt's. And this Mrs. Liang, he told me, said he could pick any one of her daughters for his wife. "Each daughter is educated," said Jimmy Louie. "Each one plays the piano. Each one can read the Bible in English."

"Very attractive, and stylish too," I said. "So many choices, so hard to decide. Which one are you thinking of marrying?"

He laughed, then became serious. "You," he said. "But you are already married."

This is true! He said exactly that. He could have chosen any one of those four beautiful girls, all of them innocent and young, none of them married before. But he picked me. Why do you think he did that?

In any case, at the time, I did not know if he was teasing or truly being sincere. My face was red. And because I could not look at him, I looked at my watch instead.

"Oyo!" I said. "If I go see Peanut now, I will have to leave as soon as I arrive."

"Better come back tomorrow to see her," suggested Jimmy Louie.

"There's no other way," I agreed.

"Tomorrow, then, I will meet you at the bookshop across the street and walk with you, to make sure you are safe," he said.

"No, no, too much trouble," I said.

"No trouble. I come here every day for the newspapers."

"Every day?"

"This is my job."

"I was thinking I might come at ten-thirty. Perhaps that is too early for you."

"I will be here even earlier, in case you are early too." And as we both stood up and walked down the stairs, I saw what he did. He left the photograph of four beautiful girls on the table.

The next morning I woke up very early, happy and excited. I was thinking about my life, that it was about to change. I did not know exactly how this would happen, but I was certain that it would.

But all these thoughts soon disappeared. Danru's screams rang through the house, and a servant brought him to me, reporting how he had fallen and b.u.mped his head down a whole flight of stairs. While I was comforting my son, San Ma came crying to me, telling me that my father had woken up with a fever and a confused mind.

So I rushed to my father's room. A few minutes later, the cook came running in, declaring she was leaving for good, she would not tolerate any more of Wen Tai-tai's insults to her cooking. And from where I stood, I could hear Wen Fu shouting at the top of his voice and then the sound of something breaking on the floor. I went downstairs and saw the breakfast dishes scattered everywhere, noodles spilled all over the chairs.

I wanted to cry. My life would never change, it seemed to me. I was forever worrying over other people's problems, with no time to take care of my own. And I was sure all these small disasters were a sign that I would not be able to leave the house that day.

But life is so strange, the way it can fool you into thinking one way, then another. Because as soon as I gave up my plans for the day, my chance came back again. When I went upstairs to nurse my father, he was reading a newspaper and was irritated only that I had disturbed him. "He must have been fighting with himself in a bad dream," said San Ma.

When I went back downstairs, Wen Fu had already left for the horse racetrack. And the cook who was mad? She had already cleaned up the mess and had gone to the market to buy food for our evening meal. Little Danru shouted to me from his bed that he wanted to get up. He had forgotten his b.u.mp and was now remembering that Wen Fu's mother had promised that today he could go visit a family friend who had a little grandson just his age.

Finally I could leave the house! But I saw it was too late to change my life, almost eleven o'clock already. I tried to keep all my thoughts on seeing Peanut, what a happy reunion this would be. I was carrying the little package Old Aunt had asked me to bring. To that I had added five pairs of imported stockings. How happy Peanut would be to see this.

But of course, my mind kept turning to that little bookshop across from the teahouse. I pictured Jimmy Louie browsing through books, impatiently looking at his watch. I thought about hiring a taxi. And then I imagined Jimmy Louie looking at his watch once again, then leaving the store. I decided not to hurry myself to what would surely be an empty disappointment. So I pushed my hopes down and waited for the bus.

When I arrived at San Ying Road, it was already almost noon.

I had to force myself to walk slowly, calmly. And as I drew close to that bookshop, I had to force myself not to look. Keep walking, keep walking.

I could not breathe. I told myself, Don't fool yourself. He isn't there. Keep walking.

I did not allow myself to look to the side. My eyes faced the center of the road. Don't look. Keep walking.

I pa.s.sed the bookshop. I didn't look. I kept walking, until I was one block away. I stopped. I let out a big sigh. And I had a little ache in my heart and realized I had let some hope leak out of there. And then I sighed again, this one very sad. And another sigh followed, one of relief, only it did not come from me. I turned around.

To see his face! The joy on his face!

We said no words. He took my hands and held them firmly. And we both stood in the road, our eyes wet with happiness, knowing without speaking that we both felt the same way.

And now I have to stop. Because every time I remember this, I have to cry a little by myself. I don't know why something that made me so happy then feels so sad now. Maybe that is the way it is with the best memories.

21.

LITTLE YU'S MOTHER Peanut's place was just a short distance away. So during that brief walk, we had enough time to say only a few things.

"Why did you wait?" I asked. "I was so late."

"I thought it must have been your shoes," he said. "I was guessing you broke your shoes the same way you did at the dance in Kunming."

I laughed, and so did Jimmy. Then he became serious. "I have always loved you since that day, the way you could do anything, dance with broken shoes or in your bare feet. Fragile-looking, yet strong and brave, the kind of person nothing could stop."

This is true, your father said that. He thought I was a strong person. I had never thought about myself that way. I don't know why he believed that. The rest of his life he believed that about me. Isn't that strange?

Anyway, I told Jimmy Louie how much I had suffered in my marriage, how I had tried to leave Wen Fu during the war but could not because of Danru.

"But now I'm going to ask my cousin what she did," I said. "I'm going to get a divorce too."

And Jimmy Louie said, "You see how strong you are?"

I said, "This is not being strong. I have no more strength to fight him. Sometimes I don't know how I can live another day with him."

And Jimmy Louie said, "This is your strength." And then we were in front of Peanut's place, a rooming house. Jimmy Louie said he would wait at the bookshop.

"I may be gone a very long time," I said.

"Two, three, four hours, it doesn't matter," he said. "I will wait. I have already waited almost five years."

You see how romantic he was? It was hard to leave him there when I had just found him.

I walked into a small common kitchen. On the floor were two little babies. I asked the woman frying her noontime meal if Jiang Huazheng lived in the house. "Anh?" she shouted. "Who do you want?" I stepped closer to her frying pan and shouted above the hissing oil. She smiled, wiped another stain onto her dress, took my elbow, and pointed me toward the stairs. "Up there, little sister. Third floor, room number two. Better knock, she already has a visitor." She went back to her cooking, laughing to herself. "So many visitors!"

I walked up those dark stairs, and with each step I took, I became more and more worried, wondering what I would find at the top. What if Peanut had become one of those roadside wives? Wasn't this what happened to women who lost their husbands and their families? How else could a woman support herself when she had no husband, no family?

I stood outside the door of room number two. I could hear a voice, a man's voice, it seemed to me. And then I heard a woman's voice, and this one sounded like Peanut, the same impatient tone, ending in a complaint. I knocked and the voices stopped.

"Who's there?" Peanut called out in a rough way.

"Jiang Weili!" I shouted back. "Your Jiang cousin!"

And before I could say anything else, the door flew open and Peanut pulled me inside the room, slammed the door. She was pulling my hair, pinching my cheek, shouting, "Look at you! Finally you've come! Why did you wait so long?"

She looked the same. That was my first thought. The same pouting smile, the same mischievous eyes. I was relieved.

But my second thought was that she looked entirely different, someone I would have pa.s.sed on the street without recognizing. Her hair was cut short, parted no particular way. She wore a plain b.u.t.toned jacket of poor quality, and so shapeless I could not tell if she had grown fat or thin. And her face-there was no white powder on it-just her plain skin. You should have seen her. Here was a girl who used to pride herself on the paleness of her skin. And now she was almost as dark as a Cantonese!

"Hey! Meet my friend Wu," she said, and spun me around. I saw a young man with round gla.s.ses, with very thick black hair, swept back. He held a paintbrush in his hand. Large sheets of paper covered the room-scattered on the floor, dangling from the chair, lying across her small bed. They were all about the same thing, a student meeting of some kind, protests about the new land reforms. So it must be true. Peanut was a Communist.

"These ones that are already dry," she said to the young man, pointing, "take them. We'll finish the others in the evening." She said this in a bossy way, but the man did not seem to mind. He quickly rolled up several posters, told me he was happy to meet me, then left.

I did not know what to say, so I gave her the gifts, both of them covered in paper. She looked annoyed, then sighed and took them. I thought she would put them away and open them in private. That was the polite thing to do. Chinese people always do that, so if you don't like the gift, n.o.body has to see the disappointment in your face. But she didn't wait.

She opened Old Aunt's first. It was a small old-fashioned mirror, silver, with carvings on the back and on the handle.

"Ai! Look at this," said Peanut, frowning. "The last time I saw her, she said to me, 'The pretty girl I once knew, does she still exist?' I told her I did not have a mirror to see myself, but pretty or not, I did know I existed. So now you see what she's given me. Hnh! She thinks this silly thing will convince me to come back to my old life."

Peanut looked in the mirror. It seemed to me she still had her old vanity. She patted her cheeks, widened her eyes, smiled at what she saw. And it's true, she was pretty in a way. Her skin was smooth, her eyes were big. Although her face was too broad. Of course, this fault had nothing to do with her becoming a Communist. It was that way even when she was a spoiled girl with no sympathy for a person with a poor background. She put the mirror down and turned to the next package.

"I'm afraid my gift is not suitable either," I said.

She tore open the package, just like a child. When she held up the stockings, she started to laugh, a big, long laugh.

"I can take them back," I said. I was very embarra.s.sed. "Here, give them to me."

"No, no," she cried, holding them close to her body. "These are very valuable. I can sell them on the black market for a good price. It's a good gift." She looked at me, then said in a very frank voice, no apologies, "I have nothing for you. I have no time these days to keep up with all the polite customs."

"Of course," I said. "You did not even know I was coming. How could you-"

"No," she stopped me with a firm voice. "I am saying, even if I knew, even if I had the money, I would not bother with these customs anymore. It is too much bother-and to what purpose?"

I was worried Peanut had grown bitter. She put the stockings on a shelf. But when she turned around, she held out her hand to me and said, "Tang jie"-sugar sister, the friendly name we sometimes used for one another when we were younger.

"Tang jie," she said again, holding my hand and squeezing it hard, "I'm so glad you came. And now you know, these are not just polite words."

That afternoon, we had such a good talk. We sat on the bed and told each other secrets, in the same way as when we were girls, only this time we did not have to whisper. We talked openly about everything. Nine years before, we had argued over who had found the best marriage. Now, nine years later, we argued over who had the worst.

"Just think," I said. "You were once so mad that Wen Fu married me instead of you. Now you know what regrets you avoided."

"Even so, you got the better marriage," said Peanut. "Mine was the worst!"

"You don't know," I said. "You cannot imagine a husband that evil, that selfish, that mean-"

And Peanut broke in: "My husband was zibuyong."

When Peanut said that, I didn't believe her. I don't know how you say it in English, but in Shanghainese, zibuyong means something like "hens-chicks-and-roosters," all the male and female ingredients needed to make an egg that turns into a chick. We had heard Old Aunt tell a story once about a distant relative who gave birth to a zibuyong, a baby with two organs, male and female. Old Aunt said the mother of that baby did not know whether to raise it as a son or a daughter. Later she did not have to decide, because the baby died. Old Aunt thought the mother killed it, because even if she had raised the zibuyong as a son, he could never have had children.

"How could your husband be a zibuyong?" I asked Peanut. "I remember your letter saying he had five sons by the first wife, who died."