The Kitchen God's Wife Part 29

Of course, my father did not answer. And because I thought my father could not understand anything, I continued to talk nonsense. "My life has been like that painting n.o.body wants, the same season, every day the same misery, no hope of changing."

And now I was crying. "That's why I must find a way to leave my marriage. I do not expect you to forgive me."

My father sat up straight. He stared at me with one sad eye, one angry eye. I was startled to see this, that he had heard what I said. He stood up. His mouth moved up and down. But no words would come out, he could only chew the air with "uh! uh!" sounds. A terrible expression grew on his face. He waved his hands in front of his face, as if the words stuck in his throat were choking him.

My father reached out with one shaky hand. He grabbed my arm, and I was surprised how strong he still was. He was pulling me out of my chair, toward the scroll. "I must," I whispered to him. "You don't know how much I have suffered." He waved my words away.

And then he let go of my arm. His two trembly hands were now fighting with the black lacquer rod. I thought he wanted to pick up that rod and strike me over the head. But instead, he suddenly pulled the k.n.o.b off the rod, and out poured three little gold ingots into his waiting palm.

He pressed them into my hand, then stared at me. I was struggling so hard to know his meaning. And I can still see the two expressions on his face when I finally understood. One side was agony, the other relief, as if he wanted to say to me, "You foolish, foolish girl, finally you've made the right decision."

"I cannot take them now," I whispered. "Wen Fu would find them. Later I will get them, right before I leave." My father nodded once, then quickly put the gold ingots back into their hiding place.

I have thought about this many times. I do not think my father was saying he loved me. I think he was telling me that if I left this terrible man, then maybe this terrible man would leave his house too. Maybe my father and his wives would no longer have to suffer. My leaving was their only chance. Of course, maybe he was telling me he loved me a little, too.

The next morning was very strange for me. Everyone came downstairs for the morning meal: Wen Fu, Danru, Wen Fu's mother and father, San Ma and Wu Ma. The servant brought in a bowl of steaming soup.

If you had been there, you would think nothing had changed. My father did not seem to recognize me. Once again, his mind seemed as cloudy as the soup he stared at. Wen Fu's mother had only complaints: The soup was not hot enough, the soup was too salty. Wen Fu ate without speaking. I wondered if I had dreamt what happened the day before, if I had only imagined the gold ingots. I was nervous, but I vowed to go ahead with my plans, what I had decided the night before.

I poured Wen Fu's mother more soup. "Mother," I said to her, "eat more, take care of your health." As she drank, I continued my conversation. "Poor Old Aunt. Her health is not so good. I had a letter from her yesterday."

This was true. I had received a letter, and as usual, Old Aunt complained about her health. She could be counted on for that.

"What's the matter with her?" asked Wu Ma. She worried a lot about her own health.

"A coldness in her bones, a lack of force at the end of each breath. She feels she might die any day."

"That old woman never feels well," said Wen Fu's mother in an unkind voice. "She has an ailment to match every herb grown on this earth."

Wen Fu laughed in agreement.

"This time I really think she is sick," I said. And then I added in a quiet voice, "Her color was very bad the last time I saw her. No heat. Now she says she is worse."

"Perhaps you better go see her," said San Ma.

"Mmmm," I murmured, as if I had not considered this before. "Perhaps you are right."

"The girl just got back!" exclaimed Wen Fu's mother.

"Maybe I could go for a short visit. If she is not too sick, I'll come home in a day or two."

And Wen Fu's mother only said, "Hnnh!"

"Of course, if she is really sick, I may have to stay longer."

But now the cook had brought in the steamed dumplings, and Wen Fu's mother was too busy inspecting and criticizing the food to give me any more trouble.

So you see, she did not say yes, but she did not say no, either. I knew then that if I left the next day holding a suitcase with one hand and Danru with the other, n.o.body would think anything of it. And if I did not return home after three or four days, no one would go looking for me. They would only say, "Poor Old Aunt, sicker than we thought."

That afternoon, while everyone slept, I walked quickly into my father's study and shut the door. I went over to the scroll of springtime. I shook the rod. Sure enough, the weight of those three ingots slid back and forth. Then bright gold fell into my hand. And I saw that what had happened the day before was true, not my imagination.

23.

SINCERELY YOURS TRULY.

I have no pictures of myself as a young woman, from that time I was married to Wen Fu. I threw those pictures away. But your father kept this sc.r.a.pbook. And he took pictures of me, many, many pictures. See how heavy?

These pictures at the beginning, these are American pilots he knew. And these women, they are not girlfriends. I think they are just people your father knew before he met me. I don't know why he put their pictures in the book. I never asked. Maybe he gave those girls American names, so they gave him pictures in return. Like this one here: "Sincerely yours truly, Peddy." What kind of name is Peddy? She could not even spell her name right. My English is not so good, but I know you can be sincerely or truly, one or the other, not both at the same time. Anyway, you can see this, she is not even very pretty.

Turn to this page. Here is where I begin. Here is where I sometimes think my whole life began.

Look at this picture, this one, and this one. See, I was once young. You didn't know this about your mother? This was how your father always saw me, young and fair, he said. Even when white hairs started to come out, your father said I looked the same. And in my dreams, I would always look the same as in these pictures, young and fair. Always, until recently.

But then on my last birthday I had a dream that your father did not really die. He lived around the comer and he just forgot to tell me. I was mad at first. How could he let me grieve for nothing? But then I forgot to be mad, and I was excited. I was getting ready to see him. And then I looked in the mirror. I said to the mirror, Ai-ya! What happened? How did you get so old? And my self looking back at me said, "This is your fault. You forgot." And suddenly I felt old. Suddenly I realized everyone saw me this way, older than I thought, seventy-five years old.

In any case, in 1946, I was young, pretty too.

See this picture, my smile, my puffy eyes. This picture is not so good, but it has special meaning. Your father took that picture maybe one month after I ran away from Wen Fu. That day, we had been walking in a park, arguing. This was because Little Yu's Mother wanted to send me and Danru away from Shanghai. She knew people in Tientsin, good people who could hide me until I got my divorce.

Your father was saying, "Don't go, don't go."

And I said, "How can we not go? Where would we go instead?"

"You two stay with me," he said.

That's what I was hoping he would say. Living in that house with Peanut and all those other women was no fun. Do you think just because they were Communists they never argued? No such thing. But I didn't let Jimmy know.

When he asked me to live with him, I said, "How can we do that?" I let him argue with me for two hours. If someone offers to take your burden, you need to know he is serious, not just being polite and kind. Polite and kind do not last.

After I knew your father was serious no matter what, he took this picture.

Oh, I don't know why your father put this picture in the book. I told him many times to take it out, this picture doesn't look nice. Why take a picture of me in a nightgown, my hair all messy like that? Your father said it was his favorite picture. "Winnie and the suns.h.i.+ne wake up together," he used to say. Every morning when I woke up, he was already awake, looking at me, telling me that. There was a song he sang to me. "You Are My Suns.h.i.+ne." He sang it many times, every morning.

Maybe this is not proper for me to say to you. But now I will tell you something about your father. He was-how do I say this?-he loved me with a true heart. Do you know why? When I went to live with him, from the beginning he never forced me. He did not demand anything. He was gentle. He knew I was scared of s.e.x.

So for the first few nights he kissed my forehead, he smoothed my hair, he talked to me, told me he loved me so many times, until I felt I was floating happily in a dream. And a week later, I told him I was ready. I was willing to make the sacrifice to make him happy as well. I did not say it this way, of course, but that's what I was thinking. And I closed my eyes, waiting for the shameful feelings to begin. But he did not jump on top of me right away. Instead, he did what he had always done. He kissed my hands, my cheeks, my forehead. And he would not stop kissing my forehead. He did not stop stroking my back, until I forgot all my fears, until I was again floating in a dream. And suddenly, I recognized what he was doing, only it was not the same, but a completely different feeling. And I opened my eyes. I cried with joy to see his face, his face watching mine. And he was crying too, the same joy. And afterward he kept his arms around me, afraid to let me go.

So that's why your father liked this picture. In the morning, I was still there. I was his suns.h.i.+ne.

The picture on this page was three months after Danru and I went to live with your father. That's the front of the building, the door. And that woman next to me, she's the landlady who rented us two rooms upstairs. Your father called her Lau Tai Po, "Old Lady." In China, if you called someone Old Lady, you were being respectful, very polite. In this country, people say, "Hey, old lady! Watch where you're going!" They're not being respectful. I see the looks on their faces, mean.

But in this picture I am the happiest I have ever been in my life. See how my eyes look as though they can't stop smiling. Your father was the same way, laughing all the time. Every day we were happy. Every day when he came home from work, he lifted me high in the air, just like people in the movies. And Danru would run to him and say, "Lift me too, me too." Your father would try to lift him, and then say, "Oh! Too heavy. How did you get so heavy?" He told Danru to take a deep breath and fill himself with air, just like a balloon. And then your father would lift him high, high, high.

During that time, I wasn't too worried about Wen Fu. Peanut had already told New Aunt and Old Aunt I was living with another man. And of course, they told Uncle, and Uncle told Wen Fu. And by then Wen Fu had another woman living in the house with him, a woman who was going to have a baby. So I was sure Wen Fu would soon divorce me. Even his mother and father were telling him to do that. As for my father's money, there was not too much left to fight over. Wen Fu had followed government orders and exchanged all the gold and certificates for new paper money. And every week, it seemed, the new paper money was worth one-half what it was before.

Lucky for us, your father was paid in U.S. dollars. But even if we had had no money, we would have been happy. That's how happy we were.

Here is another picture from that same day. I made an extra copy, wallet-size, and sent it to Hulan. She and Jiaguo were still living in Harbin. I wrote to her: "Guess who we met? Guess who we are living with? Someone who speaks English and calls me Winnie. Guess and I'll tell you in the next letter if you are right."

In this picture you can see: Danru is playing with the landlady's dog. Doesn't that dog look just like a lamb? The curly hair, the little ears. Later he turned out to be a bad dog, he ate my slippers. Oh, I was mad! The landlady gave me her own slippers to replace mine. But she had some kind of rotten foot disease, so I was not eager to wear them, not even to be polite.

Of course, I still thought she was very nice. I remember one day, when she and I were alone, she told me about her life. That's how I found out she was married to a Chinese man from the United States. The husband had deserted her, left the dog behind too. He went back to America and married someone else, didn't even bother to divorce the landlady first. But he still sent her money. So she didn't care.

"That's fate," she said. I thought she didn't feel anything, just accepted her life that way, very old-fas.h.i.+oned. But then she told me, "You be careful. Don't you get my same fate." So you see.

This next picture looks like springtime. See the flowers on the trees in back. And now my hair is shorter, more stylish. Oh, I remember this picture. I look happy, but only because your father said, "Smile."

Actually, in this picture I am worried. I had already used two of my gold ingots to hire a good lawyer, a famous lawyer on Nanking Road, known for being smart and clever. He put an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the newspaper, saying I was already divorced, divorced since that time Wen Fu had put a gun to my head in Kunming and made me write, "My husband is divorcing me." The day after this came out in the newspaper, two men went to the lawyer's office and smashed everything to pieces and tore up my divorce papers. The lawyer was scared, mad too. "Is your husband some kind of gangster?" he asked. He wouldn't help me after that.

I started thinking, Maybe my husband is a gangster. Auntie Du thought this, too. I don't know why. Now it is too late to ask her.

This is a funny picture. See the ap.r.o.n I wore. I am at our new place, a two-room flat in Chiao Chow Road. Your father and I registered ourselves as husband and wife. That was like signing "Mr. and Mrs. James Louie." But I still used my real name seal, the one that said "Jiang Weili," my legal name.

Your father took that picture in the morning, just before he went to work. I probably went to the movie theater later with Danru. We went almost every day because I did not want to be in the house all day, just in case. Meaning just in case Wen Fu found us.

Actually, in this picture I am not really cooking anything, only pretending. Your father liked to take natural pictures, not just posed. "Baby-ah," your father said to me-he always called me by that American nickname. "Baby-ah, smile but don't look at the camera." So you see, this picture is natural.

Here is another picture with me and Danru. And another, and another. See how many? See how happy he looks? His face is fuzzy, because he started to move when your father took the picture. You cannot keep a six-year-old boy still when he wants to throw rocks in a pond.

In this one we were in a temple garden. In this one we were at a park with a small merry-go-round with animals shaped like cartoon figures. In this one we were leaning against a tree near a lake. You can't see the lake. But I remember it was there.

I also remember we took these pictures before we sent Danru up north-to Harbin, to stay with Jiaguo, Hulan, and Auntie Du. This was after the landlady told us two men had come by, looking for Danru and me. I wanted to go with him. Jimmy would have gone too. But I decided to stay a few extra weeks, because I had found another lawyer, the one who took my last gold ingot. He said I was very close to getting my divorce, but I had to be in Shanghai when it happened. So I stayed. I told Danru I would follow soon. Of course, he believed me. And I too believed I was doing the right thing. I was saving him.

Late at night, when Danru was already asleep, we took him to the train station with the landlady. She had agreed to take Danru up north, where she had a cousin she could visit. But just before they got on the train, Danru woke up. He began to shout. "Where's my mother? I changed my mind! Now I don't want to go!" He cried loud, in a pitiful way.

I rushed over. "How can you do this?" I said. "Embarra.s.sing your mother in front of so many people?" Still he cried, his little heart breaking to pieces, piercing mine. I scolded him, "Don't cry, don't cry. I am coming to get you as soon as I am free."

Of course, I did this in a gentle way. But I still regret it. I should have held him. I should have praised him for shouting that he never wanted to leave me. I should have never let him go.

But look: In this picture, and this one, and this one, he is happy. You can see this, even in a fuzzy picture. Most of the time, I made him happy.

Here is a picture of me with Auntie Du. This was taken a few weeks after she came to see me in Shanghai. Whenever I look at this picture, I become very sad. Because I remember that day she arrived, how she waited patiently in the hallway until we came home.

I saw an old woman stand up slowly. "Syau ning"-little person-she said. I was so surprised, so happy. Auntie Du-all the way from Harbin! I ran to greet her, to scold her for not writing so we could pick her up at the train station. And then I saw her face, her mouth pushed tight, water at the edges of her eyes. When you see a face like that, you know, you know.

I tried to push her away. I was screaming, "Go back! Go back!" Jimmy had to hold his arms around me to keep me from pus.h.i.+ng her away. And when she told me why she had come, I shouted, "How can you say this? Do you think this is some kind of joke? How can you ever tell a mother her little son is dead? He's not dead. I saved him! I sent him to Harbin!"

But she never blamed me. She made that long journey, knowing I would hate her. And she told me how the j.a.panese had raised thousands of rats with a bad disease. And after the war, they didn't kill the rats, they let them go. More than one year later, disaster-lots of people sick, no chance to escape, then dead from a fast-moving epidemic carried by rats and fleas. Poor little Danru, gone in one day.

Oh, and it was even worse than that. Jiaguo was dead too.

I wanted to rush to Harbin to hold my little son one more time, to make sure they had not made a mistake. After all, he never cried much. He did not wake easily from sleep. They didn't know these things about Danru, how much he trusted me.

But Auntie Du said they put Danru and Jiaguo in the ground the same day they died, before a person could even think, How did this happen? She said they had to burn everything in the house, Danru's clothes, his toys, everything, in case a flea was still hiding. So you see, I didn't have one thing left to hold for a hope or a memory. He was gone forever.

It was not until the next day that I asked Auntie Du about Hulan. "Where is she? Why didn't she come, too?"

And Auntie Du said Hulan was in Harbin, tending the graves. She brought food every day, telling Jiaguo and Danru that she hoped they were growing fat on the other side. "She insists on doing this," said Auntie Du. "She says she'll come to Shanghai later and meet me here. She has no reasons to live in Harbin anymore. At least she is making sense now. But right after they died-it was terrible. For two days she could not cry, she was so confused. She kept arguing, 'How can they be dead? The war is already over.' For two days she could not stop saying this. And then she became very busy cleaning her house, was.h.i.+ng the walls and the floors with turpentine. And when she was done with that, she sat down to write you a letter, telling you as gently as she could what had happened to Danru.

"But she got stuck on an expression she did not know how to write, 'your beloved son.' She went to ask Jiaguo. She could not find him. She called for him. I found her standing in her bedroom, shouting for him, angry tears running down her face. 'Jiaguo! Jiaguo!' she was screaming. 'Don't die now. What will I do without you? How will I know how to write "your beloved son"?'"

Now you see how skinny I've become in this picture. See how the sweater droops on my shoulders. You cannot tell, but the sweater is a dark red color, and the curly pattern on the chest and pocket was embroidered with threads twisted with real gold. Your father asked me to put that on for the picture. He bought it for me when I turned twenty-nine, so this was early spring 1947. I had never received a birthday present before. Americans give gifts on birthdays, Chinese do not. I should have been happy, but I was still very sad, because of Danru. I was still blaming myself. So your father did not ask me to smile. And I didn't. This picture is natural.

And now you see there are no more pictures of me here. Because soon after that, someone saw me walk into a beauty parlor, and when I came out, two policemen took me to jail.

n.o.body would tell me why I had been arrested. They took me to a women's prison with a thick wooden gate and a big high wall. As soon as they brought me inside, I became sick. Such a terrible smell-just like sticking your nose into a toilet! A woman guard walked me down a long dark hallway, past long wooden tables and benches. On the other side were rooms, one after the other. And in each room were five women, people you would be afraid to look at on the street, a sad story on each face. And that's where they put me, in one of those stinky rooms with four other women.

I think those women knew I was there by mistake. They looked at me not with pity but with curiosity. Four pairs of eyes stared quietly at my chipao, the ordinary summer dress of a lady. They stared at my hair, the s.h.i.+ny curls, just fixed by the beauty parlor.

Most of the women there had on dirty long pants and tops. They had rough faces and oily hair.

And then one woman with a hoa.r.s.e voice said, "Eh, little sister, sit down, sit down, stay and visit us awhile!" And everybody laughed, although not in a mean way. I think they thought a little joke would make me feel more comfortable. And then another young woman jumped up from her wooden stool and said, "Sit here," and everyone laughed again as she quickly pulled up her pants. And then I saw her seat was a wooden toilet in a comer of the room. That toilet was used for everything, no privacy at all! And you could not flush the toilet, you could not put a top over it, no such thing. Everybody's business just sat there, like one big ugly soup.

In another corner of the room was a thin padding on the floor, big enough for three people squeezed together. We were supposed to take turns sleeping, three people on the mattress, the two leftover people sitting on the concrete floor.

All night long I stood up. All night long I worried, not about myself but about Jimmy. I imagined him looking for me, running through the park, looking in the movie theaters. He was a good man, considerate and kind, but he was not strong. He had never been through any kind of bad hards.h.i.+p before. So I worried. I was hoping Auntie Du would help him find me.

By morning, my legs were shaky with exhaustion. A prison guard came to get me. She shouted my name: "Jiang Weili!" I shouted back, "Here! Here!" I thought they were releasing me. But instead, the guard put handcuffs on me, as if I were a dangerous criminal. And then I was put in the back of a truck with other handcuffed women, all rough-looking, like people who steal things. Maybe they were driving us to the countryside to be shot, we didn't know. We were just like tied-up animals being driven to market, b.u.mping into each other whenever the truck made a turn.

But then the truck stopped at a place that turned out to be a provincial court building. When I walked into the courtroom, I saw him right away: Wen Fu, smiling like a victor, so glad to see me humiliated. My hair was messy. My dress was wrinkled. My skin was covered with the smells of the night before.

And then I heard someone whisper loudly, "There she is!" And I saw Auntie Du, Peanut, then Jimmy, his happy, painful face. I found out later it was just as I had hoped. Auntie Du was the one who went to my father's house, demanding to know where I was. That's how she learned what Wen Fu had done.

The judge told me what my crime was. I was being sued for stealing my husband's son and letting him die, for stealing valuables from my husband's family, for deserting my Chinese husband to run off with an American soldier I had met during the war.

I was so shaky with anger I almost could not speak. "These are all lies," I said in a quiet voice. I told the judge, "My husband divorced me a long time ago, during the war, when he put a gun to my head and forced me to sign a divorce paper." I said I did not steal anything from my own father's house, I took only what was mine to take. I said, How could I be accused of deserting my husband for another man, when my husband had divorced me and was now living with another woman? I said the other man was now my husband. We had already registered as husband and wife.

I saw Jimmy nodding, and someone took his picture. And then I heard whispering in the room. I saw there were other people there-just like an audience in a movie theater, people who came to watch because they had nothing better to do. And they were pointing to me, then Jimmy, whispering back and forth. Auntie Du later told me they were saying, "Look how beautiful she is, just like a movie actress." "Listen to the way she talks, you can tell by her character she's a nice girl." "That man she ran away with, he's no foreigner, anyone can tell he's Chinese."

But now Wen Fu was smiling and speaking to the judge. "There was no divorce. My wife is confused. Maybe we had a fight long ago and I said I might divorce her if she didn't behave."

He was making me sound like a silly woman, someone who could not remember if she was really divorced or not!

"If we are truly divorced," Wen Fu said, "where is the paper? Where are the witnesses?"

Right away, Auntie Du jumped up. "Here! I was a witness. And my niece, now living up north, she was another witness." What a good woman Auntie Du was! And so quick to think of this. This was not a lie, not really. She heard our fight, she saw the paper. The people in the room were excited to hear Auntie Du say this. They were talking in a happy way.

Wen Fu threw Auntie Du an ugly face. He turned back to the judge. "This woman is not telling the truth. How could she be a witness and sign papers? I know this woman, and she cannot even read or write." And the judge could see by Auntie Du's unhappy face that this was true.

"Do you still have this divorce paper?" the judge asked me.

"I gave it to a lawyer last year," I said. "But after we made an announcement in the newspaper, this man, Wen Fu, destroyed the lawyer's office, tore up all his papers, mine too."