The Kitchen God's Wife Part 9

So that morning, I was reading that book myself, searching for those secret meanings. But after ten pages, I had read nothing wrong, only the usual things I had been taught to obey-how many gifts to give people depending on their importance, how to keep all your relations happy, why you should never think only of yourself and matters of this brief world. And then I thought, Maybe this book is like a riddle and I am too innocent to see what it means. Perhaps this description of beautiful pine trees was really one of those secret words, hidden inside some other kind of knowledge. What about this man receiving two tea cakes from someone else's wife? This certainly did not sound proper. And why two tea cakes? Why not just one? What if she had given him two oranges?

Before I could think about this more, I heard Peanut calling my name in her complaining voice: "Weiwei-ah! Where are you, silly girl?" And I almost did not answer her, same as when I was little. But then, of course, I remembered about the marketplace. I hid my book behind two stacks of pots and hurried out with my basket of clothes.

As we went to our room to get ready, Peanut was again rehearsing which stalls we should visit first, what kinds of things we should buy. Perhaps paper puppets or lanterns in the shape of animals for her brothers. Good tea for the grownups. And little money purses for our other cousins, Old Aunt's daughters, who would come visit with their families sometime during the New Year period. And then we both agreed to flower-shaped hair ornaments for ourselves. And of course, a reading by the fortune-teller to determine what good things lay ahead for the next year.

"We shouldn't go to that woman with the crooked teeth," Peanut said. "Last year she gave me the worst fortune, all warnings, how the bad parts of my character mixed with the bad parts of the new year."

And I remembered what that fortune-teller told her last year. How she was a sheep, always trying to hide behind her thick skin. During the Rat year, the fortune-teller had said to Peanut, someone could chew through her wool coat and expose her faults if she was not careful. Peanut had asked for her money back, she was so mad. The woman refused. Then Peanut raised her voice, letting everyone around her hear: "This woman cheated me, gave me bad advice. No luck to be found here. Better stay away!" I was embarra.s.sed, but I was also thinking, How does this fortune-teller know so much about my cousin?

"This year," said Peanut, "I want to know only about my future husband and his family."

And then Peanut began to think about her appearance, how she should look when walking around the marketplace. She twisted her curled hair off to the side. "I saw this in a foreign beauty magazine," she explained. And I pinched up my mouth to let her know this was not a good style for her, but as usual she did not pay attention to me. And then she spent a lot of her worries on which dress to wear, which coat to put on top.

As the family favorite, she owned many fine clothes, most of them French- or English-made, bought in expensive shops in Shanghai. One coat was a black curly lamb with a stiff rolled collar and shawl of padded brocade. When fastened with tiny clasps down the middle, the coat tapered down to her ankles, making it impossible to walk, except in tiny steps. Ridiculous! That was the coat Peanut decided to wear, along with a pair of new high heels. They were sure to be eyesore luxuries to the local villagers-those people considered themselves lucky if they had one piece of cloth for making a new pair of pants! But this was the New Year, a time to show off wealth.

We were the richest family in our village. Of course, richest only by the standards of that small part of the island, the little village called the Mouth of the River, only a half-mile long and a quarter-mile wide, not counting the road from the port and the small stores scattered in between. A village that small could produce only one top-cla.s.s house, maybe a few middle-cla.s.s people. Almost everyone else who lived there was poor.

I am not saying this was right, to have only one rich family, to have so many poor. That was the kind of life everyone had back then, no questions asked, the fate people were born with. That was China.

Many of those poor people worked for my family's textile factory, so they didn't starve. They lived in small houses made out of clay, rented from our family. They owned no land, only the dirt that gathered on their floors. But once a year they could look forward to the big party our family gave, the New Year's celebration at the Jiang family house by the Mouth of the River. At least that, a big feast three days after the New Year.

Of course, I did not think about these matters when I was getting ready to go to the marketplace. I was like Peanut, putting on pretty clothes: a festive long skirt with bright red bands, my best padded jacket on top. I wound my braid into a grown-up knot at the back of my head. And then I saw Peanut tiptoeing out into the covered walkway. She listened for sounds coming through the courtyard, heard her mother's voice across the way, still shouting instructions. She came back, opened a drawer, then took out a package wrapped in thin white paper and tied with a red ribbon. From this she removed three round boxes of different sizes. She sat down in front of her mirror. Face powder! In a few minutes, she had covered her plump cheeks and small nose with a fine rice-white coating.

"You look like a foreign ghost," I said quietly, and bit my lips. I was scared for her, for myself. I was one year older, and New Aunt might blame me for not guiding Peanut properly. But if I scolded Peanut, Old Aunt would say, "Who are you to criticize? Criticize yourself first."

So I said nothing. I watched as Peanut took out another box, this one smaller, with a pearl-colored top. She painted her lips cinnabar red.

"Wah, your mouth looks like a monkey's bottom," I teased, thinking this might discourage her.

She twisted open the last box, the smallest, then opened up her foreign beauty magazine. And with a smiling movie star as her guide, she quickly dabbed two dark smudges above and below each eye, then drew a thick line on her eyebrows so that they resembled two dark cricket legs about to leap. Really she looked quite frightening, not pretty at all. When she looked down, the dark smudges looked just like a pair of evil eyes staring back at me.

Lucky for Peanut, she was able to hide behind the stiff collar of her coat and flee down the dark walkway and out the back door before anyone noticed her new face. I fetched Little Gong and Little Gao and brought them to the road. And when they saw their older sister, they laughed in whispers, then out loud, until Peanut walked over and slapped both their heads. They shrieked and ran off, carrying their laughter farther up the road, then turned around to dance and point once again.

The walk to the marketplace usually took us ten minutes. But that day it required nearly forty. Peanut walked with three high-heeled steps to each one of mine. And as villagers on the road walked past her, they stopped to stare and bow, then laughed as they went on their way. Oyo! You should have seen Peanut! She huffed like this-hnh! hnh! hnh!-looking as mad as a queen whose servants had run off with her sedan. If she was blushing under her white powder, I could not tell.

Look at my skin, how smooth it still is. When I was young, I wore no makeup. I had no need-no dark spots, no little dots, no scars or marks. Many people told me I had a lucky face, so why would I have to cover this up?

Now let's go in the kitchen and make some tea. And then I will tell you how Peanut changed my luck for the new year.

The marketplace was already crowded at eleven o'clock that morning, and everyone was doing a good business. And all this busyness raised my excitement even more. That day even the woman who sold soup from the front of her house did not have to cry out, "Wonton! Try some, best wonton!" Both tables were full of people with cold red cheeks poised over steaming bowls, and a dozen more were squatting on the ground, bowls balanced between their legs.

We pa.s.sed the usual stalls that sold fruit and vegetables, eggs and live chickens. But that day, the fruit looked bigger, the chickens more lively. Red banners hung everywhere. Firecrackers exploded at every step, and babies were screaming as their mothers reached for pears and oranges, pomelos and persimmons. Little Gong and Little Gao were watching a monkey dancing. At the end of the show, they threw two coppers on the ground. The monkey picked them up, bit them to see if they were true, tipped his hat to the boys, then handed the money to his owner, who gave him two dried lizards that he crunched on right away. We all clapped.

And then Peanut found a fortune-teller she liked, a fat woman with a big smile who promised she knew everything-love, marriage, wealth. A sign in front of her stall bragged that she had the luckiest fortune sticks, knew all the lucky numbers, the right lucky marriage combinations, the best days for making lucky business decisions, remedies for changing bad luck into fantastic luck. Everything guaranteed.

"Little sisters, ah," she said to us, then patted her stomach. "See how rich and fat I've become following my own advice. I don't need to do this to make my living, not at all. I do this only because the G.o.ddess of Mercy asks me to, to advance myself in the next world. So you see, my good fortune for you does us both a favor. Come see, best fortune, hanh, I can prove it to you."

And then the fortune-teller did a remarkable thing. She said to Peanut, "Your lucky number is eight, isn't this true?"

And Peanut remembered that she was born in the eighth month, that her eighth year had been especially happy, and she would be eighteen as soon as the new year came. And so, with half her mouth dropped open and half the money New Aunt had given her, Peanut bought a fortune that promised that within the year she would marry a man who would make both her parents happy. Her mother-in-law would be too good to be true. Her future household would have enough riches that she would never desire anything else. And of course, she would have many children, one right after another.

"What will my husband look like? Not too old, I hope," Peanut said in her complaining voice. "And where does his family live? Will I have to stay here forever at the Mouth of the River?"

The woman picked up another stick, then frowned, looked puzzled. Another stick, more frowns, and then another. "Mm," she said. "Your husband is young enough, it seems, only a few years older than you. But your destined family lives close by here, that's what I see. This is not too bad, but perhaps I can make it better for you."

After more money was exchanged, the woman wrote Peanut's name on a piece of red paper, along with her birthdate and the date of the fortune, then added a piece of paper with some sort of rhyming poem. It went something like this: "Happiness comes from nearby, as far-reaching as the East Sea."

"What does this mean?" Peanut asked after reading the rhyme.

"Ah," said the woman, and she held the poem close to her eyes. Finally she pointed to the words "nearby" and "happiness," and said, "See this? This is the local man you were supposed to marry, but now I've chased him away, sent him to someone else." And then she pointed to the words for "East Sea." "And this means your new husband is someone who lives farther away-not as far as another country, of course, but not from this island. Maybe as far north as Yangchow."

Peanut had an ugly scowl on her face.

"Maybe as close as Shanghai," the woman said. And when she saw Peanut smile, she added, "That's what I see. And riches beyond imagination. Five sons, all of them dutiful. And no other wives, you are the only one."

The woman put all the slips of paper and the poem on top of a golden tray, along with Peanut's money, and laid this in front of a statue of the G.o.ddess of Mercy.

"Now there are no more worries in your life," the woman told Peanut. And then the fortune-teller smiled at me. "But how about you, little sister? I feel there's a husband in your future too."

And then she peered at my face, looked at me closely, and her mouth dropped open. "Ai-ya! But look, there is a problem, I can see this now, sitting right above your eye! This little speck here, it can make everything you see turn black."

And she pointed to the mole just above my eye, below my eyebrow. "I can fix this," she said quickly. "It is not easy, of course, to find a charm to fix bad fate. But I can do this for you, remedy this before the new year. Your decision." She wrote down a number, the amount I should pay her.

But Peanut was already pulling my elbow in another direction, telling me she had heard about a stall that sold foreign-made chocolates shaped like all twelve animals of the horoscope. Of course, I wanted to hear my fortune, get my charm, change my bad-luck future. But how could I say this in a crowd!-"Eh, Peanut, give me money so I can find a better husband too."

Maybe that fortune-teller could not have told me anything to change my fate. Maybe she used only the most ordinary tricks and nothing she said was genuine. But what she said was certainly true about me: Unhappiness was coming my way, and I did nothing to keep that speck from blowing in my eye. And this came true as well: Peanut did not marry the local boy she was supposed to get with the first fortune. She married someone from Shanghai. And the local boy she chased away with a rhyming poem? Those leftovers went straight to me.

No, I'm not being superst.i.tious. I am only saying that's how it happened. And how can you say luck and chance are the same thing? Chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterward. Your kind of chance makes no sense, it is only an excuse not to blame yourself. If you don't take a chance, someone else will give you his luck. And if you get bad luck, then you need to take another chance to turn things from bad to good. Of course everything is connected.

How do I know? Well, you can see for yourself-one thing was said, then the same thing happened. We lost Little Gong and Little Gao, then we found Wen Fu. I did nothing about it, then-well, here's what happened.

We were looking for Little Gong and Little Gao, walking through the marketplace. Peanut scolded them as if they were there: "Bad boys, always getting in trouble. Why don't you listen to your big sister?" We walked from one stall to another, pushed our way through the thick crowds, always looking for them, unable to rest our eyes for even one moment on interesting trinkets.

At last we found them. They were standing at the front of an audience, everyone waiting for a play to begin. The audience was enclosed in what looked like an arena part.i.tioned off by ropes. A big sign over the stage said: "A New Year's Play in Honor of the G.o.d of the Village. Debtors Welcome."

"You remember this," I said to Peanut. "Same as last year." And we decided to stay with the boys and watch. This was the mock play the village people put on every year on the last day, the same old tradition. In the old days, if someone owed you money, you could chase him down and make him pay. But only until the last hour of the last day before the new year. After that, too bad. So landlords and merchants were always running after poor people, chasing them until dark. And the only safe place a poor person could go was to this play, a play dedicated to the G.o.d of the village. As long as you stood inside the roped-off area, n.o.body could demand payment from you.

Of course, it was still true that you were supposed to pay your debts before the end of the year. That was the honorable thing to do. But now the village play was only for fun. And the people inside the ropes were not really debtors; they had been pushed inside to become part of the play itself.

I can still see and hear it. Cymbals and drums sounded loudly, and actors in cheap-looking costumes appeared on the stage. An old woman walked on, sweeping a straw broom, crying over her lost son, the bandit. Off in the distance a dragon was rising out of the sea, his tail rippling like waves. The dragon was bellowing about his hunger for the ships of greedy men. These were two operas all mixed together, awful.

Suddenly the actors stopped what they were doing. A beggar man in a tattered jacket jumped up from the audience and went running up and onto the stage. He raced around the old woman and the dragon, grabbing a broom, grabbing a tail, crying to someone behind him, "I don't have your money! I swear it!"

Another man jumped out of the audience, this one holding a lantern high in one hand. "Ah!" whispered the crowd. "The evil landlord!" He too rushed across the stage, and three times almost caught the beggar-by his hair, an ear, the tail of his tattered jacket-but the beggar managed to spin away each time. The audience roared with relief and laughter.

The actress playing the old woman pretended to be annoyed.

"Stop! Quiet! We are performing an important play," she cried, and as the two men whirled around her again, she threw her broom at them, but missed-ponk!-striking the dragon's tail instead. More laughter! And then the man holding up the tail of the dragon peered out, rubbed his aching head, and asked, "Where am I?" The audience laughed even louder.

Then more shouts: "Make way! Stand clear!" And two men in the audience were pushing everybody back. One moment later, the beggar ran off the stage, sprang onto his hands, then bounced forward three times, head over heels, before landing within the safety of the ropes. The crowd clapped. The landlord with the lantern was now on the other side of the ropes, stomping his feet, while everyone jeered at him.

Little Gong and Little Gao did not tire of this until the whole scene had been repeated two more times, with different acrobats playing the beggar and the same actor playing the landlord. At the very end, the landlord was so mad he broke his lantern in two, then announced he was going home. "Forget the debt," he shouted. Everyone cheered in victory, as if they too had won. But as the landlord started to walk away, he suddenly turned around and called to the audience, "I'm going home, it's true, but all of you now owe our fine actors a token of your New Year's generosity!"

And then all the actors jumped into the audience with begging bowls in hand. The tail of the dragon was nudging Peanut, and he turned out to be Wen Fu. He must have thought Peanut would give him a big donation, to judge by the way he eyed her fine clothes and called her "generous lady."

Let me tell you, he was not the kind of man that would make you say, Oh, this man is very handsome. I should marry him. Not like your father. But Wen Fu had a way that made your eyes follow him right from the start, a manner that was unusually confident, very bold. When he said "generous lady," his tone sounded so sincere, yet his face was teasing: turtle eyes that blinked slowly but did not look away, a wide grinning mouth. He was-how do you say it here?-charming.

And there were other things I saw about him-which Peanut later told me she noticed too-signs that he was raised in a good family, that he was elegant, a person you did not have to look down on. His clothes fit him well, everything falling to the exact length of his arms and legs. And he wore Western-style clothes: a wide-collared shirt, open at the neck, tailored pants with a thin belt at the waist and sharp cuffs at the bottom. His hair was full and shiny, cut neatly all around, not stringy or chopped off at the bottom like a farmer's. His eyebrows-we both liked his eyebrows. They were thick and nicely tapered, like two ends of an inkbrush. And he had strong-looking teeth, all straight, not one tooth missing in front.

He held out a small money bowl. "Not for me," he explained again in that soothing, sincere voice. "For the hospital we are building at the south end of the island." His eyebrows rose up in the middle, a look of concern. He looked at Peanut, then at me. Of course, I was embarra.s.sed that I had no money to give. So I gave him a stern look instead, as if he should not be bothering us.

Peanut smiled at him. "Such hard work to be a dragon," she said. And then she gave him a few coins, and we both turned to walk away. But now Wen Fu was calling to Little Gong and Little Gao: "Hey, little brothers, I have some lucky money for you in return." He pulled out two red money envelopes from his pockets and tossed a packet to each of them. In a moment, they discovered the envelopes contained some sort of candy in the shape of coins, wrapped in gold foil. "Are they real?" Little Gao cried, holding one up to the sun, watching it shine. They put their coins back in the envelope with much respect.

"Thank you, Uncle," they said.

"Did you see how well I worked the dragon tail?" Wen Fu asked them. They nodded shyly, smiled. "Maybe you would like to see the whole dragon?" And then they threw all shyness away, jumped up and down, and ran to the stage. Wen Fu looked at Peanut, then me, and shrugged as if he had no other choice.

For the rest of the afternoon, Wen Fu followed us. Or rather, he led the boys to see different sights-a c.o.c.kfight, a game with wooden boats being sunk by sand bombs, a stall that claimed to sell tiger teeth-and we were the ones who followed. Of course, we protested at first, saying, "No more, you've already gone to too much trouble." But I think both of us secretly thought he was exciting. We sighed as if we had no other choice, then giggled because we did not know how to express our excitement any other way.

He carried our packages, spent his own money on little treats for the boys. And then he tried to buy things for Peanut and me, luxuries he saw us admire-a paper dragon on a string, a chocolate candy in the shape of a sheep that Peanut had been eyeing. "You should not do this!" we protested each time. Or maybe only I protested. Peanut only smiled.

So you see, I never took those gifts from Wen Fu. Peanut did. She said she would tell her mother she bought them herself, so many good bargains. But I knew this was wrong, not just the lying but taking something from a man. There were many sayings about that: Take even one sweet, and lose your whole life to bitterness. Eat forbidden candy and your stomach pops out.

And I could see how those sayings were right. Something was already happening. Wen Fu was winking at Peanut, his inkbrush eyebrows dancing. All afternoon it went like that.

You have an American expression for what Wen Fu did to Peanut: He swept her off her feet. That's what he did, exactly that. At the end of the day, when Peanut complained that her feet ached like two burning coals, he found a farmer willing to rent his wheelbarrow for a few coins. And then he lined the dusty insides of the wheelbarrow with his own jacket, and invited my giggling cousin to ride home in her new sedan. As he pushed her home, he sang to her, happy songs, sad songs, songs about secret gardens and dark pavilions. I kept thinking to myself, Are these like those words from Chin Ping Mei?

By this time, most of Peanut's white powdery face had rubbed off onto her coat. And I could see her cheeks were as flushed as mine. She was happy. And I can admit this: I was sick in my heart, such a bad feeling.

You see how he was? Always flamboyant, showing off in a big way, just like the actor he was that day. Charming!

A man with good manners would have found a pedicab. He would have secretly paid the driver before we knew it, then sent us home. Or maybe he could have shown his concern by inviting the girl and her cousin to rest a little, to take some simple refreshment at a teahouse. He would not have remarked about her feet, how small and delicate they looked, no wonder they were tired. And a good man would not play favorites, filling one girl's heart with pride, the other's with envy. And whatever interest he showed, he would never ask the girl for anything in return.

But Wen Fu asked. He pushed Peanut down the road. He saw our big house. He saw the banners for our celebration. He asked to come in four days, the third day of the first month of the lunar new year, to pay his respects to Peanut, her family, and of course, me.

The next day was the new year. Everyone pretended to be happy and kind, shouting, "Ten thousand generations!" "Long life!" "Highest position!" "Biggest prosperity!" That sort of thing, all meaningless, but good-sounding.

The servants were especially happy, because they did not have to work that day. All the cooking was done, and now no knives could be touched, no sharp words could be thrown. We ate sweet things and cold dishes.

Peanut and I talked about Wen Fu, wondering if he would come in three days. We wondered what kind of house he lived in on the other side of the island. We wondered if his mother was too good to be true. I did not say anything to Peanut about the rhyme she had used to chase this local marriage away.

The next day Peanut woke up crying. She said she must refuse to see Wen Fu! How could she see him? He had seen her when she was a vision of beauty, with her face powder and lipstick on, wearing her most sophisticated clothes. She could not put powder on her face, wear that in front of her mother and father. She could not show Wen Fu what she looked like underneath. I tried to tell Peanut that Wen Fu would find her even more attractive when she looked natural. I did not say this only to be kind. It was true. If he liked her when she looked ridiculous, why should he not like her the other way?

But I could not convince Peanut in time. When Wen Fu came, she hid herself. She was there, of course, watching him from different hiding spots: at the top of the stairs, behind the door of a dark room, through the windows of the greenhouse.

And then Old Aunt and New Aunt met Wen Fu. He called to them in such a sincere voice, "Auntie, Auntie," as if this were a happy reunion. At first they were puzzled. They could not recall who he was. Then he presented them with a basket of expensive fruit. He sent respects from his mother and father, especially from his mother, who seemed to be a longtime friend of Old Aunt's. Eventually, Old Aunt thought so too. She struggled with her memories until she found one that matched. "Ah, you are Mrs. Wen's son. Only a little baby the last time I saw you, I think."

I heard this and laughed. I admired Wen Fu. If I had any good feelings for him in my entire life, it was at that moment, maybe a few others like that. He was so bold, so clever, funny, and daring. So you see, even now I can still remember a few good things about him.

Lucky for Wen Fu, the house was soon filled with hundreds of people, all the villagers who had come to eat nian gao, the sticky rice cakes with a name that sounds like you are saying "Happy New Year." So if Old Aunt and New Aunt were confused by Wen Fu's visit, it seemed only a natural part of the day. Too many people to keep track of anything.

I was ladling out bowls of boiled dumplings when Wen Fu approached me. "Where is she?"

"She's shy," I said.

"She does not like me?" he asked. His eyebrows were pushed into a frown, but he was smiling.

"Only shy," I said again. It did not seem proper to confess that Peanut liked him.

"Why suddenly shy?" he said with a laugh. "Does shy mean she likes me?" And then he turned to me. "You aren't shy. Does this mean you don't like me? Ha! Is this the case?" He had that same teasing look.

I almost could not answer him. "I'm not that way-that is, not shy."

"So perhaps you also like me," he said right away.

"Being shy does not mean you like or do not like," I said.

On and on we talked that way, until my head hurt from trying to be polite, from trying to hide from his tricky questions. Finally he pulled an envelope from his pocket.

"Little sister, please give this to her," he said. "Please tell her to answer me tomorrow." And then he left.

Peanut had been watching all along. So when Wen Fu left, she dashed out from behind the kitchen door and demanded the letter from me.

"What does he say?" I asked her. I felt I had as much claim on reading the letter as she. I had worked so hard for her. Peanut hunched her shoulders over the letter, protecting it from me the same way a mother duck places her wing over her babies. She was giggling, biting her fingers, squeezing her fist, pulling a strand of her hair.

"What does he say?" I asked again.

Peanut looked at me. "He needs an answer tomorrow," she said. "Tell him I have no answer yet. Tell him to wait." And then she walked away.

So I helped Peanut and Wen Fu: carried their love letters back and forth, brought them to the marketplace, to the middle of our road. I was helping them to each other. I did not have it in my mind to steal Wen Fu away from Peanut. I swear this. I am not remembering this differently so as not to blame myself.

Each time I delivered a letter to Wen Fu, I used my words to carry a picture of Peanut to him. I told him what color dress she was wearing that day, rose-colored, the same as her cheeks. I reported how she had put a little decoration in her hair, a dragon pin, thinking about him. I hinted that she was unable to eat and was becoming thin.

Of course, none of this was true. I was only using my imagination to talk about all those silly, lovesick things girls did for romance back then.

So how did I come to marry him? Sometimes I think about asking Peanut. If she is still alive in China today, she would agree, I'm sure of it. I did nothing to make Wen Fu turn his eyes and look at me, nothing at all. Wen Fu changed his own mind.

I had a good heart, just like you. I was innocent, just like you. So maybe you can understand how your mother once was: a lonely girl, a girl with no expectations, wanting so much. And suddenly someone came knocking at my door-and he was charming, a reason to dream about a better life.

What else could I do? I let him in.

7.