The Kitchen God's Wife Part 28

"The family went to little villages and bought a new baby son every year. You should see them-none of them look alike. One is dark-skinned, another very light. Another is lively and chubby, another thin and quiet. Anyone with eyes and brains can see the sons were bought."

"But how could Miao-miao marry you off to such a person?"

"She didn't know. The mother had always raised the child as a son. And for many months after my marriage, I didn't know either. He didn't touch me. I thought he was unhappy with me."

"And then you saw the two organs?"

"I saw him in our bed with another man! The female side of him had enticed a male. I ran to his mother and told her what I saw. And do you know what she did? She slapped me, told me never to repeat such lies about her son again."

"If you never saw the two organs," I said, "how can you be sure he was zibuyong?"

Peanut sighed. "Because I told the mother her son was zibuyong, and she slapped me again and again, as if she could change this fact by making me believe otherwise."

I am telling you this story the way Peanut told it to me. So I cannot tell you if her husband truly was as she said. Maybe she said that only because we had no word back then for "h.o.m.os.e.xual." If a man never married, people whispered, "Maybe he is zibuyong." They did not say this about women who did not marry. They had another word for that. But now I forget what it was.

Anyway, Peanut said she became a mock wife. "After a year, the mother forced me to go into hiding for five months," she said.

"I could see no one. And at the end, the mother presented a new baby boy to the world. I had to pretend that baby was my own. I tell you, I took no interest in that baby. I lost interest in everything, all my pretty clothes. They meant nothing. My life was just like a saying I read the other day: how we are living in a world where everything is false. The society is like bright paint applied on top of rotten wood."

Oyo! When she said that, she sounded just like a revolutionary. And yet she was also the same Peanut I knew when we were growing up: full of pride, headstrong about getting her own way, using words fashioned by somebody else's ideas.

"How did you finally leave?" I asked.

"Do you remember that girl Little Yu, who went to our school?"

I nodded. "Of course I remember, the naughty one who switched everyone's shoes when we were sleeping. What chaos the next morning! Each girl had a big right shoe and a small left shoe, or two right shoes, or two left shoes. We were late to cla.s.ses, trying to sort them out. What a bad girl."

"She helped me leave my marriage," said Peanut.

"Little Yu?"

"In a manner of speaking," said Peanut. "It was after I had been married for four years to that hen-and-rooster, and his mother always pecking at my feet. I was thinking how easy it is to ruin your life with no chance of ever fixing it."

"I have felt the same way," I said. "Exactly the same."

Peanut continued. "I thought about my youth, things I once dreamt."

"All your hopes, your innocence," I added.

"Let me finish," Peanut said. "Anyway, with that feeling in my heart, I decided to pay a visit to the school, to see our old teachers. So I went, and Sister Momo-you remember her, the one with one big nostril, one small."

I nodded. "She was always very strict."

"Sister Momo had become director of the school by then. And she wanted to show me how much money had been donated to the school. She showed me the new library, the chapel with the new Baby Jesus window.

"And then she took me to the back, to the little cemetery. Remember how Sister Momo would send us to the cemetery when we were bad? She thought this would scare us into being good for the next world. The cemetery had a new fountain, water coming out of a baby's mouth. I was admiring this, and that's when I saw a memorial with Little Yu's name. I was so shocked. It was like seeing Little Yu turned to stone.

" 'What happened? What happened?' I asked Sister Momo. And she said, 'Oh, this is a sad story. Only one year into her marriage, and then she died very suddenly, an accident.'

"Sister Momo did not say what kind of accident. But right away I was suspicious. Why was she buried here in the school cemetery? Her husband's family should have buried her body in their family grave. I said this to Sister Momo. And she said, 'She was happy here for so many years. That's why her mother thought she should be surrounded by other happy girls.'

"And I thought to myself, This is a wish, not a reason. And as I puzzled over this, I heard a voice whispering in my ear. 'Go find out,' it was saying. Right away I found myself asking Sister Momo for the address of Little Yu's family, so I could pay my respects. I don't know why I did that. I was no longer myself. Something was pulling me.

"I left the school and went to the Yu family house immediately. This is when I had my second shock. Little Yu was not from a rich family like most of the girls at that school. The family house turned out to be a two-room flat on the second floor of an old building. One level above poor. And the family turned out to be only one widowed mother. That poor mother had taken a small inheritance from her uncle and stretched it into tuition for Little Yu, with enough put aside for a modest dowry. So you see, all her life's hopes went for that daughter, now dead after one year of marriage."

"Ai-ya!" I cried. "This is too sad."

"Even sadder than that," said Peanut. "The mother was so glad to see me. n.o.body, it seemed, ever mentioned her daughter's name anymore. And this was because her daughter did not die from an accident. She committed suicide."

"Suicide!"

"She said the husband's family drove her to killing herself. My body shook when I heard this. Only that morning I had been thinking I might kill myself if I did not find a way out of my marriage soon."

"I have had these same thoughts," I whispered to Peanut.

"The mother blamed herself as well," said Peanut, "because she had helped to set up the marriage-to a nephew of a cousin's friend in a village outside of Soochow. The future husband, she was told, had a high position with his father's noodle business.

"Little Yu's mother had never met the nephew. She saw him for the first time at the wedding. He seemed nervous, she said. People had to keep reminding him which direction to walk in, what to say. He giggled and laughed out loud at all the wrong times, making Little Yu's mother think that he was drunk. He wasn't drunk. He had the mind of a little child! He still wet the bed. He cried when the wind blew too hard. He thought Little Yu was his big sister.

"When Little Yu came to her mother, asking for help to end the marriage, her mother said her life could be worse. At least the family was good to her, gave her plenty to eat. And even though the husband was simple-minded, she had heard he could still father children. He had done this with a girl in the village. So the mother told Little Yu, 'Be good, try harder.' And Little Yu returned to her husband's house. She climbed the tree in the courtyard, tied one end of a rope to a branch, the other to her neck, then jumped.

" 'For one year,' the mother said, 'my only thought was to do the same thing.' Little Yu's mother was crying when she told me this, and I was crying, too. I was feeling my own neck when she told me that. I was talking as if in a dream: 'So this is how a girl ends her marriage.'

"And Little Yu's mother cried, 'No, this was wrong, what happened to her, that she could find no other way, that she had no one to help her.'

"That afternoon, at last, I had a sympathetic heart to listen to my troubles. I now think it was Little Yu's voice guiding me to her mother. Because later that year it was Little Yu's mother who helped me escape from my marriage."

"How did she do this?" I said. I thought I was a few words away from hearing the answer to all my unhappiness.

Peanut stood up. "Why don't you ask her yourself?"

"What?"

"Ask her," Peanut said. "Ask Little Yu's mother. She's downstairs, cooking the noonday meal for all the women of this house who have already left their marriages."

So that's how I found out that whole house was an underground hiding place, filled with women and children. Can you imagine? I was scared and excited at the same time. I'm not saying I wanted to become a Communist, no such thing. I was excited because I was in a house with nine women who had once had awful marriages, nine women who no longer had to obey their husbands and mothers-in-law.

Little Yu's Mother was still cooking when we went downstairs. That's what everyone still called her, Little Yu's Mother. To look at her, you would not think this small woman, frying her dried fish and bittermelon, was an underground worker. But then again, most Communist people did not wear uniforms openly back then. You would be crazy or dead if you told someone you were a revolutionary.

The other women were coming home for lunch, one at a time, from their different workplaces. One tutored students in French. Another worked in a shoe factory. Another made straw brooms and sold them on the street. They came from many different backgrounds. Really, they were like any kind of people you might meet in Shanghai.

So n.o.body said to me, "I'm a Communist. How about you?" But you could tell by the things they said. When we all sat down to eat, for example, Little Yu's Mother said to me, "I hope bittermelon doesn't disagree with you too much. I don't eat it very often myself. But when I do, I remind myself how grateful I am to have other things to eat." She laughed, and Peanut and the other women laughed with her.

They all liked that bittermelon, not for the taste, but for the conversation that went with it. "Oh, you haven't tasted bitterness," one of those women said, "until you have lived a whole winter with only one coal brick for heating and cooking." And another said, "This melon is sweet compared to what I have had to swallow as a slave to a rich family."

I can tell you this. I did not like bittermelon, not before, not after, not now. And I was not revolutionary in my thinking. But I would have joined them if they had told me I had to. I would have eaten bittermelon every day, every meal, if it had meant I could leave my marriage. If I had had to change the whole world to change my own life, I would have done that. I think many of the women at that house felt this way about their lives.

After we finished eating our simple meal, they all asked me questions. And even though they were strangers, I told them everything, about Wen Fu's family, about my family, about how Wen Fu now controlled everything.

"He will not agree easily to a divorce, then," said one of the women at the table. "I too came from a rich family. My husband did not want to give me up, because that meant giving up my family's riches."

"How about your son? Do you want him to come with you?" Little Yu's Mother asked.

"Of course. My husband cares nothing about our son. He only uses him as a weapon to stop me from leaving."

"Money?" said another. "Do you have money of your own?"

"Only a little bit left from my dowry. Just spending money for everyday shopping."

"Don't forget your jewelry," said Peanut. "The two gold bracelets you received for your wedding-do you still have them?"

I nodded. "And two necklaces, two pairs of earrings, one ring."

"Does your husband have a mistress?" Little Yu's Mother asked.

"Many!" I said. "He's like a dog, sniffing from one bottom to another."

"But is there a special woman, someone he sees all the time?" asked another woman at the table. "Sometimes a mistress can force a man to divorce his wife, if his desire for the woman is strong enough." She gave out a hollow laugh.

"He cares for n.o.body that way," I said. "In the past, his habit was to pick up a woman, use her for a few weeks, then throw her away. Now we are living in my father's house, also with his own mother and father. There are too many eyes on him. So he does not bring his dirty business into the house anymore. I don't know who he is seeing."

"And what about you? Do you have a lover?" said a woman with a front tooth missing.

"Of course not!" I said in an angry way. "My husband's morals are the ones that are bad, not mine! How can you think-" And then I became confused, then embarra.s.sed by my confusion. Because, of course, I was thinking of Jimmy Louie. We were not lovers, and yet I felt for the first time the secret feelings that lovers must have, shame and the need to protect that shame.

Little Yu's Mother patted my hand to soothe me. "This question is not meant to insult you," she explained. "Sometimes it's useful for a woman to pretend to have a lover."

"Especially if the husband has a big face he doesn't want to lose," said Peanut.

"That's what we did in your cousin's case," said Little Yu's Mother. "Made up a lover. She got her divorce very fast after that."

"But why should I make this my fault?" I said.

"Fine," said the woman with the missing tooth. "Save your face and keep your miserable marriage! So pretty and proud-it's women like you who can't give up the old customs. In that case, you have only yourself to blame."

"Stop fighting, stop fighting," said Little Yu's Mother. "We are only trying to find out as much as we can to determine the best way."

She turned to me. "In the meantime, you must put together all your jewelry, whatever money you can find. And when you are ready, you and your son must run away to here without anyone following you. When you come, we'll know what to do next. Can you do this first part by yourself, or do you need help?"

"I can do this," I said right away. And I said those words without knowing how I would make them true.

22.

ONE SEASON LEFT.

By the time I left Peanut's place, it was already late in the afternoon. I had to hurry to the bookshop to find your father. The whole way there I was smiling big, I could not stop myself. And it seemed to me other people on the road saw my happiness and smiled back to congratulate me.

As soon as I saw your father, I told him: "In a week or two, I am leaving my marriage." I was trembling, both proud and nervous.

"Is this really so?" he said. He was trembling too.

"Really so," I said. He held my hands, and we were laughing with tears in our eyes.

If your father were still alive today, I think he would agree. We knew then we would always be together. I do not know how two strangers knew this, how we could be so sure. But maybe it was like this: When he put that photo of four daughters on the table, that was like asking me to marry him. And when I ran back and said I was leaving my marriage, that was like saying I accepted. And from that moment on, we were together, two people talking with one heart.

"And next?" he was asking me. "What must we do next?"

"We must wait awhile," I said. "We must wait until the right moment when I can leave."

And then we made a plan. When I was ready to run away, I would call him by telephone late at night when everybody was sleeping. I would say something very quick and simple, such as, "Tomorrow I'm coming."

But then your father, he was so romantic, he suggested something else, a secret code. So this is what we decided I would say: "Open the door, you can already see the mountain," which is a cla.s.sical saying, meaning you're ready to grab all opportunities and turn them into something big. Your father would answer me this way: "Let's go beyond the mountain." And then he would meet me and Danru the next day at the harbor, in front of the booth that sold tickets to Tsungming Island. And there we would get into a car that would take us to Peanut's place.

When I returned home that day, I saw my life as if I already knew the happy ending of a story. I looked around the house and thought, Soon I will no longer have to see these walls and all the unhappiness they keep inside.

I heard Wen Fu's mother shouting at the cook, and I imagined myself eating a simple, quiet meal without having my stomach turn itself inside out. I saw Wen Fu walk in the door, and I thought, Soon I will no longer have to rub my skin off, trying to remove his stain from my body. I saw Danru watching his father out of the corner of his eye, and I thought, Soon my son can laugh and play without any fears.

And then I saw my father, his back bent, shuffling into his study. It seemed as if I had never seen my father look so weak.

And that's when I remembered, My father! If I leave, Wen Fu will have him killed as a traitor. He would use my father just like a weapon.

I quickly went upstairs to my room. I began to argue with myself. I should let my father go to prison, I thought. After all, he brought this on himself. Let him see what it is like to suffer.

And then I thought of more reasons. He was the one who mistreated my own mother! He was the one who refused to see me when I was growing up. He was the one who let me marry a bad man. He did not care that he was giving me an unhappy future. Why should I sacrifice my happiness for him? There had never been love between us, father to daughter, daughter to father.

But all those angry reasons only made me feel I was as evil as Wen Fu. So I emptied those feelings from my heart. I quietly excused myself: He is old. His mind is already gone. How can I be responsible for what Wen Fu does to him?

And still I knew: Those excuses would not cover anything up, the real reason. So in the end, all the excuses fell away, and I saw only one thing: Jimmy Louie.

I no longer denied I was betraying my father. I no longer looked for excuses. I knew what I was doing was both true and wrong. I could not make just one choice, I had to make two: Let me live. Let my father die.

Isn't that how it is when you must decide with your heart? You are not just choosing one thing over another. You are choosing what you want. And you are also choosing what somebody else does not want, and all the consequences that follow. You can tell yourself, That's not my problem, but those words do not wash the trouble away. Maybe it is no longer a problem in your life. But it is always a problem in your heart. And I can tell you, that afternoon, when I knew what I wanted, I cried, just like a child who cannot explain why she is crying.

The next week I was a person in mourning. I felt I had already lost my father, also a part of myself. I wanted to be comforted. I wanted to be miserable. And then one afternoon, without thinking, I found myself following my father into his study. I don't know why, maybe I wanted to let him know in some way that I was sorry.

"Father," I called to him. He looked up at me, without expression. I sat down in a chair opposite him. "Father," I said again. "Do you know who I am?"

This time he did not look at me. He was staring at the wall, at the same ancient scroll painting he had ruined with a cup of tea that afternoon the j.a.panese came.

The painting showed the springtime, pink flowers blossoming on trees, the trees growing on a mountain, the mountain rising up out of a misty lake. At the bottom was a black lacquer rod, weighing it down. You could tell the scroll had once been part of a set, the four seasons. But now the three other seasons were gone, sold by Wen Fu, and only their empty spots hung on the wall, like ghost paintings. And you could also tell why this scroll had been left behind-the big tea stain at the center, as if the painted lake had flooded itself.

"Isn't that strange," I said to my father, "that someone would want only three seasons? Like a life that will never be completed."