The Kitchen God's Wife Part 8

She was also smart and clever, quick-thinking too. I have already mentioned that she was educated. She went to a missionary school in Shanghai, the first Chinese school girls could go to. That's because her father, my gung-gung, was very educated himself, a scholar-official, like a bureau chief in charge of reforms for foreign affairs, something important like that. In any case, many of the officials at that time were sending their daughters off to get an education. That was the modern thought-educate sons, educate daughters a little to prove you were not too feudal-thinking. But Gung-gung did not want to send her to France, or England, or America, the way some families did just to prove how rich they were. All those girls came home with short hair and dark faces from playing tennis outside in the sun. Why should he educate a daughter only to turn her into a girl he did not like? So in 1897, when the missionary school first opened in Shanghai, Gung-gung sent my mother there.

I heard my mother even learned English at that school, although I never heard her say any English words, except "biscuit." New Aunt, who went to the same missionary school, said my mother was not a good student, not very good at all, maybe that's why I was the same way. She said my mother had a fighting temper, maybe that's why I was the same way. She was naughty, maybe that's why I was the same way.

New Aunt said that once, during prayers at that school, an old nun let out a loud fart-by accident, of course-and my mother burst out laughing and said, "G.o.d heard that!"

"I don't know why the nuns liked her so much," New Aunt said to me. "They told her, 'We're praying hard for you, little one. If you become a Christian, you can go to heaven when you die.' And your mother, so willful, she said, 'When I die, I don't want to live in a heavenly foreign concession.' Do you know what those nuns did? Laughed-only that!"

New Aunt was so jealous. She used to say, "I was never bad like your mother. So why didn't the nuns pray hard for me?"

Old Aunt, on the other hand, did not go to that school, no school whatsoever. She was raised in a feudal family, the traditional way: The girl's eyes should never be used for reading, only for sewing. The girl's ears should never be used for listening to ideas, only to orders. The girl's lips should be small, rarely used, except to express appreciation or ask for approval. Of course, all this feudal thinking only made Old Aunt more opinionated on all kinds of matters.

"Her education was the cause," Old Aunt would always say.

"They put Western thoughts into a Chinese mind, causing everything to ferment. It is the same way eating foreign food-upset stomach, upset mind. The foreign teachers want to overturn all order in the world. Confucius is bad, Jesus is good! Girls can be teachers, girls do not have to marry. For what purpose do they teach this? Upside-down thinking!-that's what got her into trouble." And then Old Aunt would warn me, "Weiwei-ah, do not follow your teachers too closely. Look what happened to your mother."

If you were to ask me, what happened to my mother was not a bad education but bad fate. Her education only made her unhappy thinking about it-that no matter how much she changed her life, she could not change the world that surrounded her.

Uncle used to say that none of this would have happened if my mother had not been the only child. All the will and stubbornness that should have been given to a boy went into her. Worse, her parents let her stay at home and grow stronger and stronger. They were thinking they could wait and pick a husband for their only daughter when she was maybe twenty-two.

Before that could happen, the revolutionaries came and threw the Manchus out. That was in 1911, when my mother was just twenty-one years old. No more Ching Dynasty, no more scholar-official job for Gung-gung.

A servant told Gung-gung this bad news while he was eating his noontime meal. He was chewing a piece of steamed tendon. Suddenly Gung-gung yelled like a wild animal, then bit his tongue right in half. Or perhaps he bit his tongue first, then yelled. In any case, he fell over backward, chair and dead body together. And in one fall, my mother's family plummeted ten thousand feet. Because everyone said Gung-gung committed suicide, so sorry to see the Ching Dynasty end.

Now my mother's mother, my ha-bu, was a widow, not so rich anymore. She was in no big hurry to marry off her daughter. Her daughter could take care of her into her old age. That's what Confucius would have said. I don't know why everyone always thought Confucius was so good, so wise. He made everyone look down on someone else, women were the lowest!

In any case, my mother was already twenty-one years old, and she had been educated against Confucius thinking. Maybe she wanted to marry, maybe she did not. Who knows? In any case, she would choose for herself. Uncle used to say, "That's what got her into trouble, thinking for herself."

New Aunt did not agree. The real trouble, New Aunt said, was romance, a foolish desire on my mother's part to marry for love. She had met a student from Fudan University, a journalist. He was older, maybe twenty-nine, so he was very late in starting his education. My mother was already twenty-six years old at the time.

This student was a man named Lu, a Marxist, just the kind of person Gung-gung would have hated. New Aunt said she knew all about him, because after my mother left, New Aunt searched through her belongings and found a newspaper story about a student revolutionary named Lu. It must have been the same student she loved, New Aunt said. Why else would my mother have saved the article?

The newspaper story, New Aunt said, was very badly written. A tale of inspiration and heroes, so maybe only part of it was facts, the rest just more and more water added to old rice. In any case, this is how the story went, like an old revolutionary tale, something like this, very romantic.

Lu had been born in Shandong, that place up north of Shanghai where all the good seafood swim. He was a fisherman's son, so all he could look forward to in life was inheriting the holes in his father's nets, the ones he repaired every day. He had no education, no money, no way to change his life. And really, this was the kind of life everybody had, except for, of course, the scholars, the foreigners, and the most corrupt. But one day, a good Marxist came up to him and showed him a piece of paper.

"Comrade, can you read this for me?" said the man with the paper. And Lu said, "Sorry, I was born a fool."

Then the man said, "Comrade, what would you say if I told you I can teach you to read this and anything you want in ten days? Come to a meeting and find out." This good man told Lu about a new method for teaching laborers and peasants how to free themselves from slavery. It was called One Thousand Characters in Ten Days.

At this meeting, the Marxists said that if a person was hardworking enough, he could learn to read and write one hundred characters a day, one thousand characters in ten days. He could be instantly educated, able to read common newspaper stories, write letters, conduct business, free himself from the bad life given to him!

When they asked Lu to join, he answered, "The only plentiful thing I have is hard work and bad luck."

So Lu worked hard and changed his luck. But he did not stop at one thousand characters. He kept learning more and more, his diligence was that strong. He learned two thousand, four thousand, then ten thousand. He learned enough until he was able to pa.s.s examinations and get into Fudan University. And because he was so grateful for being able to change his life, he vowed he would someday write about the hards.h.i.+ps of peasants and laborers, to be their mouth, to tell their story, to tell them they could change their fate-by revolutionary ideas!

So now you see why New Aunt said my mother ruined her life for romance. How could my mother not fall in love with such a man?

I think this Lu person also must have been handsome. Maybe he had the same features my mother admired in herself: big eyes, light skin, a face that was neither too broad nor too thin, small lips, and very black hair. And he must have been modern-thinking in other ways, because he asked my mother to marry him, no waiting to ask permission or use a go-between. That must have been very exciting to my mother-a revolutionary marriage! She said yes immediately, and then went home to tell her mother what she had done.

Ha-bu shouted at my mother, "How can you even think such a thing! How could you even talk to such a man! This is what happens when there are no emperors to rule the country."

That's when my mother threatened to swallow gold if she was not allowed to marry Lu. In fact, that afternoon she melted down half a gold bracelet. She showed her mother how serious her threat really was. "Half a bracelet!" New Aunt used to say when she told this part. "That's how fierce her will was."

Of course, my mother did not swallow her bracelet. Otherwise, she would have died. She only pretended to swallow it. She painted a gold drop on her lip, then lay down on her bed, very still. Meanwhile, Ha-bu kneeled in front of the family altar and prayed in front of her dead husband's shrine. She begged for forgiveness, for guiding her daughter to such a bad conclusion. While praying like that, Ha-bu thought she heard her dead husband say, "Go see my old friend Jiang Sao-yen."

So Ha-bu went. She told Jiang about my mother, how bad she had become, how she threatened to kill herself-over love for a revolutionary! She asked Gung-gung's longtime friend what she should do.

That afternoon, Ha-bu and Jiang Sao-yen made a contract. Jiang agreed to take the bad daughter of his old dead friend and make her his second wife.

Whenever I remember this part of the story, I always think to myself, Why didn't Ha-bu protest? Why didn't she say to Jiang, "Second wife? Why not make her the first?" After all, the first was already dead.

But maybe Ha-bu was happy only to have her big problem solved. In any case, she agreed to everything. And that's how Jiang got a beautiful woman for his second wife-not a slave girl or some girl from a low-cla.s.s family, but an educated girl from a once respectable family.

The next day, my mother saw the contract. She ran to Lu and asked him what she should do. Perhaps they kissed. Perhaps they squeezed tears from their eyes. I'm still thinking my mother was very romantic.

And Lu said, "You must resist. That is the only way to put an end to the old marriage customs." And then he told her a story about a revolutionary who did exactly that.

She was a young village girl, very beautiful, and she too had been told she had to marry an old man she did not even know. She said to her family, "I want to choose my own husband, or I refuse to marry." Her father was so angry he locked her up in a pig shed. Every day she shouted she would not marry the old man. She shouted until the day of her wedding. When she came out of the pig shed she was very quiet, also very dirty, as you can imagine.

Her mother and aunts cleaned her up, dressed her up, then put her into a locked-up wedding sedan. Six hired men carried her the long distance from her village to the old man's house one village over. When they arrived, many people were already celebrating-playing loud music, ladling out good food. They laughed and shouted good wishes, then opened the sedan door to welcome the bride. Welcome! Welcome!

Ai!-she was dead. She hanged herself with the rope of her own hair, tied to the sedan slats on top.

"So you see," Lu said to my mother, "you must resist too-not just for love, but for your country."

My poor mother, all she could think about was that girl hanging by her own hair. She thought this was what Lu meant when he said, "You must resist." She went home, wondering if she was strong enough to fight fate, brave enough to die for love. In two days, she left to go to Jiang's house as his second wife.

Yes, that's what I'm saying. She married that man Jiang, my father, your grandfather, an old man before I was even born.

Worse than that, when my mother arrived, she found there was already a third, fourth, even fifth wife. The servants told her the first had died of tuberculosis. And the second had killed herself when Jiang did not promote her to take the first wife's place. And now everyone said my mother had come to take over this bad-luck position-a replacement for the dead second wife.

So that's how my mother became the Double Second. And even though the other wives did not want my mother's bad-luck spot, they still envied her, made her miserable for having a higher position. They often told her, "Hnh! Second Wife. Really, you are only the Double Second, half her strength."

Sometimes I think my mother was finally chased away by those other wives. They made her life miserable, complaining if she ordered a special kind of noodle for herself, making fun of the foreign French shoes she liked so much, teasing her for reading newspapers, since they were not educated. And they envied her hair, her black-black hair-saying that was the reason my father had married her, for her hair.

So maybe that's why she cut off her hair. She left it for those wives to fight over.

But then I think: My mother was strong enough to stand up to those other wives. Anyway, all wives in a family did that, complained all the time, fought over little things. And I knew those wives, San Ma, Sz Ma, and Wu Ma-that's what I called them, Third Mother, Fourth Mother, Fifth Mother. They were not so bad, not really. San Ma, for example, she had a typical Shanghai manner-teasing people if they acted too proud, criticizing everything equally so you didn't know what she really liked or didn't like.

So maybe the real story is this: My mother ran away to go back to Lu. Of course she did. She loved him from the beginning. And that man in the movie theater the day before she disappeared?-that was probably Lu. They were arranging how to meet, how she should run away, that's probably what she was doing.

Perhaps she was becoming revolutionary in her thinking as well. That's why she took me into the city that day, to show me all the imperialist evils in Shanghai, to teach me what Lu had already taught her-what things were too messy, too sweet, too rare, too sad. And that's why she cut off her hair, too, to show she was just like that girl who hung herself in her sedan chair, free at last.

But then I think, If she did run away with Lu, then she would have been alive and she would have come for me. I was her syin ke! She would have tried to visit me at my school, the same school she had gone to. She would have made a secret boat ride to the island, hidden behind some bushes. She would have popped out to say, "I've come to take you back. Meet my new husband."

So then I think she must have run away because she was sad, too sad to stay in this world. Maybe she found out Lu had died. She was reading the newspaper, the one she bought at Foochow Road. Perhaps she had bought it earlier in the day than I remembered. And she read that he had been shot, killed while teaching more peasants how to read. Many revolutionaries were killed that way. And her sudden grief reminded her of their long-time-ago love. While I slept in the dark theater, she thought about this, crying to think of her loss. While we were shopping for wah-wah yu, she was overcome with guilt, remembering how she did not resist eating this fish or resist her loveless marriage. As I slept in the pedicab on the way home, she felt shame that she had grown comfortable with her imperialist life-style-all the things Lu hated and fought against. And when she stared at herself in the mirror that night, she hated herself, decided to purify herself all at once.

So she cut off her hair, a sure sign she could not turn back. She became a revolutionary in hiding, and her leaders ordered her not to see anyone from her past. And she obeyed without question-that's why she did not come back and get me.

But then I think: My mother was not the kind of person to obey anyone. She followed her own mind. And maybe she followed her mind until she became lost. Maybe that's what happened: She ran out the door, crazy, not knowing where she was going.

And sometimes I think my mother cut off her hair and became a nun. It was those nuns at her school, they prayed my mother would follow G.o.d's will. And that's what happened, after that no will of her own.

And sometimes I think it was the dead second wife-so jealous of my mother. Her ghost came back and took my mother away.

And sometimes I think it is what everyone said. She suddenly took sick, then died that same night, and now she is buried on Tsungming Island.

Now I no longer know which story is the truth, what was the real reason why she left. They are all the same, all true, all false. So much pain in every one. I tried to tell myself, The past is gone, nothing to be done, just forget it. That's what I tried to believe.

But I cannot think this way. How can I forget the color of my mother's hair? Why should I stop hoping I will see it again?

Of course, in my mind, I know she will never come back. But I still remember. Many times in my life I remember. And it is always like this.

In my heart, there is a little room. And in that room is a little girl, still six years old. She is always waiting, an achy hoping, hoping beyond reason. She is sure the door will fly open, any minute now. And sure enough, it does, and her mother runs in. And the pain in the little girl's heart is instantly gone, forgotten. Because now her mother is lifting her up, high up in the air, laughing and crying, crying and laughing, "Syin ke, syin ke! There you are!"

6.

PEANUT'S FORTUNE So you see, I did not have a mother to tell me who to marry, who not to marry. Not like you. Although sometimes, even a mother cannot help her daughter, no matter what.

Remember that boy you thought you could not live without? What was his name? Randy. You don't remember? He was the first boy to pay you any attention. You brought him home one time for dinner.

I watched how you smiled every time he spoke, how he paid no attention when you spoke. You said, Have something to eat. And he did not say, No, no, you first, you have something to eat yourself. He said, Do you have any beer in the house? And you were so embarra.s.sed, you said, Sorry. I'm real sorry.

Later I told you, Be careful, be careful. And you said, What are you talking about? I said, That man considers himself first, you second, and maybe later you will be third or fourth, then never. But you would not believe me. So I said, If you always tell him you are sorry now, you will always be sorry later.

You know what you said to me? "Ma, why are you so negative-thinking?" This was not negative thinking! This was thinking for my daughter because she could not think for herself.

And later, you did not mention his name anymore. But I saw your broken heart, your good heart, trying to keep all the pieces together, trying not to let me know. So I said nothing. You said nothing.

I wasn't going to tell you "I told you so." Nothing of the kind. My heart was breaking for you too. Because I know how it is to have a good heart, an innocent heart. When I was young, I had a good heart too. I did not know how to look at a person like Wen Fu and think to myself, This man can cause me lots of trouble. This man can take my innocence away. This man will be the reason why I will always have to tell my daughter, Be careful, be careful.

When I met Wen Fu, he was already in love with my cousin, Huazheng. She was New Aunt's daughter, the one we called Huasheng, "Peanut," because she was small and plump like the two rounds of a peanut sh.e.l.l. So you see, she was the one who was supposed to marry him. And now I am wondering why it happened the other way.

At the time, I was living in the house on Tsungming Island, my home for almost twelve years. In all those years, I had not seen my father, not even when I was sent to boarding school in Shanghai. And every time I returned to my uncle's house, I had to act like a guest, never asking for things, waiting instead for someone to remember what I needed.

If I needed a new pair of shoes, for example, I would wait until guests came to visit. We would all be sitting downstairs having tea, and Old Aunt and New Aunt would make the kind of easy conversation that meant they had no problems or worries in this world. That's when I would let my old shoes peek out under everyone's nose. I would tap my foot a little, something Old Aunt always scolded me for. And then I would wait for her face to turn red when she and all the family and guests saw my big toe sticking out of a hole.

So you see, I never felt I belonged to that family. Yet they were the only family I knew. They were not mean to me, not really. But I knew they did not love me the way they did Peanut and my boy cousins. It was like this: During the evening meal, Old Aunt or New Aunt might say to Peanut, "Look, your favorite dish." They might say to the little boys, "Eat more, eat more, before you blow away with the wind." They never said these things to me. They noticed me only when they wanted to criticize, how I ate too quickly, how I ate too slowly. And there were other differences. When Peanut and I returned home from boarding school, Uncle would always give Peanut a secret gift-candied plums, money, a peac.o.c.k feather. To me, he would give a pat on the head and say, "Weiwei, you're back." That was all. My own father's brother, he could not think of anything more to say.

Of course, I hurt. Remembering this now, I hurt. But how could I complain? I was supposed to be grateful. They took me in, leftovers from my mother's disgrace. By their standards, they were good to me. They had no intention to be mean, no intention at all. And maybe that was why I hurt-they had no intentions for me. They forgot I did not have my own mother, someone who could tell me what I was really feeling, what I really wanted, someone who could guide me to my expectations. From that family, I learned to expect nothing, to want so much.

And then one year, all that changed. This was when I was eighteen years old, during the Small New Year, right before the Big New Year celebration began, when everyone turned one year older. So maybe it was 1937 by the Western calendar, in any case, before the start of the war.

The New Year was a time when you could change your luck. Oh, we didn't have a kitchen G.o.d, not like Auntie Du. We were country people, but not that old-fas.h.i.+oned. Of course, maybe the servants had a G.o.d like that and I don't remember it. In any case, we still had ways to think about luck, some just for fun, some more serious. And that day, I too was dreaming of a better life. Better than what, I don't know. I wasn't dreaming of winning a million dollars, not like you do with the lottery. I had only a little hope in my heart that something would change. Maybe I wanted to be less lonely. So you see, maybe that's why it happened, why I met Wen Fu.

Our New Year celebration was not like what you have in the United States today-parades and firecrackers, lucky money for children, only fun, fun, fun. It was a day of thinking. According to our custom, when the new year began, not one single speck of dust from last year could remain. Not a single copper's worth of debt could be left unpaid. And not a single bad word could fall from anyone's mouth for three days. I loved the New Year for that reason, no scolding from Old Aunt no matter what. But three days before-that was different-you should have heard the shouts.

As the sun rose on that last cold morning before the new year, Peanut and I could already hear her mother ordering the servants around: Clean this, clean that, not that way, this way!

Peanut and I shared the same bed, although, of course, we each had our own quilt. We did not have blankets and sheets the way you do in this country, everything lying flat on top of you. Our quilts were rolled around us, like two thick coc.o.o.ns, very warm.

That morning, Peanut was pulling her quilt over her head to find where her sleep had gone. But then we heard New Aunt calling, "Peanut, you lazy girl, where are you?"

You see how she called for only Peanut, not me? Her mother was not being nice to me, letting me sleep. She wanted her daughter to get up and learn how to put a house in order, so that one day Peanut would know how to be a proper wife. New Aunt did not consider these were skills I should learn too. But I watched. I learned without anyone telling me what to do.

I saw how the cotton batting of quilts had to be pulled out and beaten just so, the covers washed fresh, no dirty spots left. Table legs had to be wiped down with oil until the wood s.h.i.+ned back l.u.s.trous bright, not greasy-looking. And everything had to be pulled back from the walls-cabinets and armoires-so you could see where all the dust, spiders' nests, and mouse droppings were hiding. And I too heard the right way to scold a servant, the way New Aunt said: "Why is this dirty when you say it is clean?"

And later I watched Old Aunt in the kitchen. She was ordering the cooks to chop more meat and vegetables. And then she checked all her supplies. She lifted the lids on jars of peanut oil, soy sauce, and vinegar, smelled each one. She counted the number of fish swimming in a wooden bucket, the number of ducks and chickens pecking in the courtyard. She poked the sticky rice cakes filled with date paste to see if they had steamed long enough. She scolded a cook's helper for letting too many clouds of fat float in the chicken broth, scolded another one for cutting strips of squid the wrong way: "Stupid girl! They must curl up into a lucky ball when cooked. The way you've done it, they'll look like leftover strips of cloth. Bad luck."

I learned all those lessons for my future. Oh, I tried to teach you these same things when you were growing up. But you never listened. You said, "It's boring. Too much trouble. I'd rather eat McDonald hamburgers instead." Yes you did, you said those things! You see how eager I was to learn? When I was young, I already knew everything must look good, taste good, mean good things. That way it lasts longer, satisfies your appet.i.te, also satisfies your memory for a long, long time.

What else happened that day? Oh, I remember, everyone had a task to do, not just the servants. As for me, I had to finish sorting through the family's clothes. For one week I had been doing this, mending anything that showed unlucky signs of prosperity coming apart-a loose thread, a little hole, a torn spot, a missing clasp or b.u.t.ton. That morning I was in a big hurry to finish, so Peanut and I could later go shopping in the marketplace.

The night before, New Aunt had given us enough money to buy New Year's gifts at the special stalls set up at the marketplace. I was one year older than Peanut, but New Aunt did not hand me the money. She counted it into her daughter's hand. Of course, Peanut was supposed to share. Without New Aunt's saying so, Peanut was supposed to do that. But I knew what would happen. Peanut would spend that money fast on her own desires, or hold it tight in her hand until I had to embarra.s.s myself and throw big hints her way.

"Both of you, finish your tasks early, then you can go," New Aunt had said. "But don't forget, even with luxuries, be frugal." That meant we were supposed to bargain down the shopkeepers. "And do not let your brothers eat too many sweets." That meant we were supposed to take Little Gong and Little Gao, who were ten and eleven.

I took my mending outside, thinking I could sit on a quiet bench at the front of the house and dream about my secret desires. But Lao Gu, the servant who was head of the household, was already out on the lawn, showing hired workmen what needed repair. He pointed to the dark wicker-woven fence that surrounded our house like a large fish steamer. One workman was shaking his head. He stuck his hand through a big hole that Little Gong had made two weeks before while riding his new bicycle.

And then Lao Gu pointed to different parts of the house, saying, "For Old East, fix this. For New West, fix that." He was talking about the styles of the two halves of the house.

Old East was the part where everyone lived, slept, and cooked, where babies were born, where old people died. It was a big Chinese house, only one story, with a square courtyard bordered by walkways and living quarters, all the doors and windows facing in. The most important rooms faced east: the kitchen at one end, Uncle's room and the sitting rooms at the other.

New West had been added later, maybe fifty years before, when our family first became rich on foreign money, selling silk thread for velvet, curtains, and carpets. True to its name, New West faced the west and stood two stories high, with three chimneys sticking out of the roof. It was fas.h.i.+oned after a fine English manor, that's what Old Aunt once said. But over the years, everyone kept building something else onto the front of the house, and after a while all the good parts were covered up. So now it looked just like the back of an old farmhouse.

That's where I went, up the front wooden steps of old New West and into the porch area, thinking I would do my mending there. Uncle had added this porch maybe ten years before. The summer after that, Old Aunt enclosed it top to bottom with wire-mesh screens to keep insects out. But a few always managed to sneak in, and Old Aunt promptly squashed them with the bottom of her slipper. So here and there I still could see the broken remains of mosquitoes and dragonflies stuck to the mesh, their wings flying in the breeze like torn rice paper. Everything was rusted, the porch door sang with the wind-yee-yee! yee-yee! I felt I was stuck inside a cricket cage. This was not a good place to dream about my future.

So I left the porch, and that's why I finally ended up in the greenhouse, the secret hiding place of my childhood. I looked in to see if it was empty. I wiped a windowpane as carefully as if it were the eye of a waking child. Empty, so many years empty.

When he first came to the island, Uncle had added the greenhouse to the south side of New West, the side facing the sun. It looked like a drawer pulled out, left out. He used to boast that this was what English gentlemen did for a "hobby"-grow roses, grow orchids, grow luxuries that had no lasting value. He always called it "hobby," just like the English, no Chinese word for doing something only to waste time, waste money. I don't know why he thought this was good, to imitate what foreigners did, as if everything Western were good, everything Chinese not so good. Every year, Uncle found a new hobby. And Old Aunt would shout at him, calling his new hobby ha pi, "breathing out farts," which meant his ideas were worthless.

After Uncle tired of the greenhouse, he became interested in English dog-racing, greyhounds, animals he could starve on purpose to make them run faster. And when the dogs died, he bought rifles and shot pigeons, real pigeons because the clay ones were too expensive. And after that, it was smoking pipes that made him sick, then English books wrapped in leather that he never read, then insects stuck on pins. He could have sat in the porch for that one.

But the greenhouse was the first hobby. And after he abandoned it, the greenhouse was used only as a strange storage place. When New Aunt sat down one day and broke a chair-into the greenhouse. When Uncle tired of his hobby of shooting rifles or sticking insects-into the greenhouse. When Old Aunt complained that Uncle kept too many paintings of unknown ancestors, too many memorial scrolls-into the greenhouse. That place was where things went when someone decided they belonged nowhere else. When I was little I used to sit on the broken chairs. I would touch the rifles, imagining their noise. I would have pretend-tea with my unknown ancestors. Every year more things were thrown in there that n.o.body wanted, and I saw them all.

One day, when I was nine or ten, I found a painting of a pretty woman, wearing a plain blue dress, her hair pulled back, looking straight ahead, so somber I almost did not recognize her. "Mama?" I called, and I truly thought she would look at me. I imagined her climbing out of her picture frame, looking as flat as her painting, asking me, "Weiwei treasure, what is this place with so many tiny windows?" And I realized that was the kind of place my mother and I belonged to, only that kind of place, where things are thrown away. Even when I was older, I still felt that. Anyway, that's where I did my New Year's mending.

I was working on my cousins' clothes-the boys who always fell down on purpose. Big holes at the knees and elbows! So many stains! I decided most of those clothes were too bad to fix. Maybe I could give them to the servants, not to fix, but for their children to wear. If Old Aunt scolded me later, I would tell her I was thinking only of my cousins, how they would be destined to roam the streets as beggars if they wore clothes as poor as these. And then I smiled, remembering how I had secretly left a little hole in one of Old Aunt's jacket pockets. Maybe some of her powers would drain away.

Why are you laughing? You thought your mother was always well behaved? You thought I did not know how to be naughty in a secret way? How else did I know you were being naughty? Like that time you hid that dirty book, Catch Her in the Ride. I knew you were not reading the Bible.

I did the same thing at that age, hid a book in my mending basket. It was a romance story called Chin Ping Mei, a forbidden book. Sister Momo at our boarding school told us many times that we were not allowed to read it. So I borrowed it from a girl named Little Yu, a naughty student who always did what she was told not to do. She said it was a book about s.e.x things: what a husband likes, what a wife likes, what a husband likes more than a wife, how often a husband needed to perform his duties, how often for a wife. She told me it had many secret words too-"jade pavilion," "playing the flute," "clouds and rain"-but she would not tell me the meanings. Read it yourself, she said.