The Kitchen God's Wife Part 12

"People shouldn't say this about my husband's family," I said. "You must never repeat this lie to anyone else." I shook my finger at her.

I thought about what Peanut said all day, all night. I kept telling myself, This is not true. But my stomach fought me, and made me feel the truth another way. I got sick.

Of course, I had other reasons to be nervous, just thinking about my wedding, all the people who would be there, my father, his important friends, my half sisters, their husbands and children. When I told Old Aunt I felt ill, she said, "Of course, you should feel ill. You are about to leave your family, start a new life." She put me to bed and fed me a hot, bitter soup, and I felt I had never known her to be so kind.

Peanut came to see me the next afternoon while I was lying in bed. She said she had been to the porch again, and she had overheard another story.

"I don't want to hear any more stories," I said.

"This isn't about the Wen family," she insisted. "Nothing about business. It's a good story." And then she leaned forward and whispered in my ear, "A s.e.x story."

When I heard Peanut say those words, "s.e.x story," I opened my ears. We both giggled and I sat up to listen.

I was very naive back then, more so than most Chinese girls. I was not like you, watching movies in school about your body, dating at sixteen, falling in love with someone your first year of college, that Randy boy. You were naughty with him, weren't you? See, even today you can't admit this. I saw your face when you were with him. I see your face now, embarra.s.sed. Your mother is not so naive. Of course, just before I was married, that was different.

I thought of s.e.x as something mysterious, like going to a remote place in China. Sometimes it was a cold, dark forest. Sometimes it was a temple in the sky. That was my feeling about s.e.x.

And I also knew some facts-through gossip Peanut told me, or stories we heard or imagined together. I knew that s.e.x was another kind of forbidden thing, not the same as selling ancestor paintings, of course. I knew that a man touched a woman in secret places, her feet for instance. I knew that a woman sometimes had to take off all her clothes. And that a man had a male-thing-n.o.body had ever taught me the proper word, only the little-boy word, because I had seen the ji-jis of my little boy cousins. So I knew what a male-thing looked like: a little lump of pink, soft flesh, as small and round as one of my toes. And if a man did not want to get up and use the chamber pot in the middle of the night, he could just ask his wife if he could put his ji-ji between her legs.

This was all I knew about s.e.x from stories I had heard. I remember Peanut and I used to laugh until tears fell from our eyes. Oh, this was terrible. A man goes shu-shu in a woman, flooding her like a chamber pot! You see how innocent I was?

We thought it was so funny back then-that this was what happened to Old Aunt and New Aunt. But right before my marriage, I started thinking about it a different way. And I was worried that now this would happen to me. I would become my husband's chamber pot! That's why I had bought three for my dowry, one extra to put close to our bed.

So you can understand how eager I must have been to hear Peanut's s.e.x story, especially since I would be married in another two days.

"This afternoon," Peanut said, giggling already, "one of our uncles told a s.e.x story about newlyweds."

"Which uncle was this?"

"Old Aunt's cousin from Ningpo. You know who I am talking about."

"Turtle Uncle!" I exclaimed. We always called him that, after Little Gong put a live turtle in his soup, and he complained to Old Aunt that the soup had not been cooked long enough. This was a very bad name to call a man, "turtle." That's what you said if a man was too stupid to know his wife was fooling around right in front of his face.

In any case, that's what we called him. And Peanut was telling me what Turtle Uncle had said in the porch.

"He was telling everyone how he ran into an old schoolmate friend recently," Peanut said. "And the schoolmate said, 'You remember Yau, my cousin on my mother's side?' And Turtle Uncle answered, 'Of course, the thin young man who was at the horse races with us maybe three years ago. He bet on that nag who couldn't even cross the finish line. How is he? Not betting on horses anymore, I hope.'

"Then the schoolmate became very serious and reported that last year Yau had married a girl his family did not like. Her family was not very respected, some kind of middle-cla.s.s merchant doing a small trade in j.a.panese soy sauce, in any case, much lower than Yau's family position. And she was not a great beauty. So she must have seduced Yau, body and mind, convinced him he should stand up to his family and say, Sorry, Mother and Father, but I must marry this girl, no matter what."

At this point, Peanut leaned toward me. "Then Turtle Uncle whispered to everyone on the porch what he thought the girl had done to seduce Yau." She sat back again. "But everyone was roaring with laughter, so I could not hear exactly, except for the words 'chicken love,' and 'cow-milking hands,' and 'night garden tricks.' "

"What do those words mean?" I asked.

Peanut frowned, thinking about this. "It's some kind of magical tricks a girl can do with her body. I think it means she learned this from a foreigner. In any case, Yau's mother and father resisted his marriage choice, threatened him. They said the girl had very bad manners and was too fierce, too strong. If he married the girl, the family said, they would cut him off.

"But by then, Yau was so drawn to the girl he didn't know how to stop himself. Finally the family gave in, because he was their only son-what could they do? So Yau married her and they lived in his parents' house. For a while it seemed as if all would work out. The girl and her in-laws were having fewer and fewer fights. And Yau grew more and more dazed with love for this girl, even though she was already his wife."

Peanut took a deep breath, sat up, and breathed out in a big smile, as if that were all to her story, this happy ending. But suddenly, she took a big breath and said, "Then guess what happened?"

I shook my head, leaned forward.

"When Yau and his bride had been married only three months-disaster! Late at night, the mother woke up and heard her son and daughter-in-law fighting. Yau was cursing and the girl was crying and begging. And the mother thought, Good, now he is teaching her to be more obedient. But then-funny!-her son's cursing stopped, but the girl was still begging. And after a few minutes, the girl began to scream, just like an animal. She screamed and screamed and wouldn't stop.

"The mother and the rest of the family ran into the son's room. Ai, guess what they saw? The naked couple, Yau lying on top, his bride screaming below, trying to push her husband off. But Yau did not roll off. He was not moving. He seemed as wooden as a carved statue. And the girl was screaming, 'We're stuck together. Help me! Help me!' It's true, they were stuck, just like dogs."

"This can't be!" I exclaimed.

"It's true, it's true! The mother tried to pull them apart, slapped her son's back and told him to wake up. She pushed and pushed, until her son and the girl rolled to the side. That's when she saw her son's gray face, his eyes pressed together in pain, his mouth wide open. And the mother started crying and slapping her daughter-in-law. 'Let him go! Let him go, you fox-devil!' she screamed.

"Now it was the father's turn to save his son. He pushed the mother out of the room. He called to a servant to hurry and bring in buckets of cold water. And the father splashed the water on top of the couple, because he had seen this work with dogs. One bucket, two buckets, another and another-he nearly drowned the poor girl. Then he too gave up and called the herb doctor.

"The doctor arrived, went to the son first and found he was already cold and stiff. But rather than alarm the family, who were already talking about killing the girl to make her release their son, he quietly instructed the servants to bring a pallet. Then he quickly mixed together a concoction of moxa leaves, dried alum, and warm vinegar. He tried rubbing this down where Yau and the girl were stuck. And when they still did not become unglued, he made the girl drink a lot of maotai, until she was a senseless drunk. And as she lay on the pallet, laughing and crying, the servants carried her out of the house with her dead husband still on top of her.

"Turtle Uncle said that at the hospital they finally got the husband and wife apart. And all the other uncles began to murmur among themselves, guessing what had finally worked: 'They put her on a bed of ice until she sneezed him out.' 'They applied hot oil to make them slide apart.' Then I heard Turtle Uncle tell them he truly didn't want to explain-but wasn't it terrible that his old friend Yau had to go to the next world as a eunuch? Wah! And then everyone laughed and spit on the porch floor.

"Can you imagine? They laughed, no compa.s.sion at all for that poor man and his bride. And then Turtle Uncle was telling them to be quiet. He said it was a true story. His schoolmate had gone to the funeral, that's how he found out what had happened. And even though the family tried to keep the scandal a secret, by the time they put Yau in the ground, it was common knowledge that the parents had been right all along. That girl had been too strong. She had too much yin, the woman essence. She had grown to love her husband with so much will that when he connected his body to hers, she locked him in there, wouldn't let go. She began to drain him of all his s.e.m.e.n. And all his s.e.m.e.n kept pouring out, wouldn't stop, until there was nothing left and he died."

"What is this word 's.e.m.e.n'?" I asked.

"Anh! You don't even know this!" Peanut exclaimed. "It is a male essence, his yang. A man stores it like a potion inside his body-in here." Peanut used her finger to draw a line from the top of her head to the spot between her legs. "It's a man's ten thousand generations pa.s.sed on from his male ancestors, father to son. That's why a man is a man, because of this yang potion."

"Then why would a woman want his yang?"

"This is because-" and then Peanut frowned.

"Be frank," I said.

"It's this way. If a woman can get enough yang inside her, she can make sons. Not enough, then she only has daughters. So you can see, if a woman has too much yin, she draws a lot more yang from her husband. That girl took all her husband's potion, his current life and all his future generations."

"What happened to that girl?"

"Of course, the parents now hate her so much. But they didn't kick her out. And she didn't leave. Where could she go? She could never remarry-who would want such a wife? So today she is still living in her dead husband's house. The mother-in-law treats her as bad as she can. They tell her they are only keeping her there so that when she finally dies, which they hope is very soon, they can bury her with their son. That way, he can once again be rejoined with all the yang she took away from him, now swimming in her body."

Peanut slapped my leg. "Don't look at me that way. It's a true story. Turtle Uncle knows that family. Maybe he even knows where that girl lives, somewhere in Shanghai. Maybe we can find out. Maybe we can go by someday and see her in a window. I wonder what she looks like, a girl who loved her husband so much she squeezed all the life out of him. Why are you looking at me that way?"

"This is a true story?" I whispered.

"This is a true story," Peanut said.

Two nights later, on my wedding night, I was scared. When my husband took off his clothes, I screamed. Wouldn't you scream if you saw that your husband's ji-ji looked nothing like that of your little boy cousins? Wouldn't you think all his yang was bursting to pour out?

I have confessed this. I was afraid to love my husband right from the beginning. Of course, I was a foolish young girl then. I believed Peanut, a girl who had a lot of silly pride. But if I was foolish, then Peanut was foolish too. Because she believed Turtle Uncle, a man who was as slow-minded as the creature he found swimming in his soup. And Turtle Uncle was foolish because he believed his schoolmate, who later turned him in during the Cultural Revolution. And who knows who that schoolmate believed?

Why do people say these things? How does anyone know who you are supposed to believe? And why do we always believe the bad things first?

Lately I have been dreaming of that girl, imagining what happened to her. I am dreaming of writing Peanut a letter.

Peanut, I will say, do you remember that girl from more than fifty years ago, the one you said drained her husband? Yesterday I saw her. Yes, that's right, in America I saw her. Her in-laws died during the war, typhoid fever. And then she came to this country and married someone new, Chinese of course.

She is now much older, but you can still tell, when she was young she was pretty, much prettier than the way Turtle Uncle described her. And she and her second husband are still very happy together-that's right, after forty years of marriage.

They live in a big house in San Francisco, California, two stories high, low mortgage payment, three bedrooms, two baths, big enough for all her grandchildren when they come to visit. And the grandchildren visit all the time-four of them-two granddaughters made by her daughter, two grandsons made by her son. Yes, can you imagine-both daughters and sons from a woman with too much yin!

Of course it's a true story. I saw her myself. I found out where she lives. I walked by her house. And she waved to me from her window.

9.

BEST TIME OF YEAR.

After I married, that's when I met Helen. And I can tell you, we are not the same people we were in 1937. She was foolish and I was innocent. And after that year, she still had her foolishness, and became more stubborn about it. And I lost my innocence, and always regretted what I lost. And because I lost so much, I remember so much. As for Helen-she only thinks she remembers.

Whenever Helen talks about the past, she says, "We were both so young and pretty, remember? Now look how thick my body has become!" She laughs and sighs, as if she is letting go of her prettiness just now, for the first time. And then she goes back to her knitting, shaking her head and smiling, thinking to herself, How good it is to remember!

But that's not the way it was. Because I remember what Helen looked like when I first met her.

This was in the spring of 1937 in Hangchow, where Helen and I both lived for maybe five months, while our husbands finished their training at an American-style air force school just outside the old city. I was only nineteen back then, still thinking I could find an answer to every wish. And because I had been married to Wen Fu for only one month, I was still thinking I was lucky too, proud to be married to a future hero. Back then, before the war, everyone thought we were the lucky ones, married to air force pilots, only three or four hundred in all of China.

At the time of my wedding, I did not know I was marrying someone who had just joined the military. I was not a stupid person. n.o.body thought to tell me this. Anyway, two or three weeks afterward, I knew. Wen Fu told me he was going to be a pilot. The pilots, he said, had been chosen from the best families, from the best schools. And now the announcement had come: They would be sent to Hangchow for special training, with congratulations from Madame Chiang on behalf of her husband, the General. Wen Fu said he had to leave in only a few days. What could I say? I went too.

When we arrived in Hangchow, all the pilots were honored at a big banquet given by that famous American general with a lady's name, Claire Chennault. Of course, he was not famous then, not in the beginning. He was not even a general. But I remember the pilots gave him a good-sounding Chinese name, Shan Nao, which sounded like "Chennault": shan as in "lightning," nao as in "noisy." Noisy lightning was like the sound of airplanes racing across the sky-zah! And that was why Shan Nao came, to teach the pilots how to fly.

I was there at that dinner, when old Noisy Lightning told the pilots something that made all the American instructors scream and shout like cowboys, and throw their caps in the air. But all the Chinese pilots remained seated, only smiled and clapped, waiting until it was quiet enough for the translator to tell them: "Shan Nao says we should give the j.a.panese a new kingdom."

Then all the pilots were talking among themselves, disagreeing, saying Shan Nao could not have meant to give the j.a.panese new territory. Whose kingdom did he mean? And finally, after much discussion, more arguments, many translations, we learned what Shan Nao had really said: "With your help, we won't be sending the j.a.panese back to j.a.pan, but to kingdom come. " And everybody was laughing and saying, "It means we will kill them all! Kingdom Come is h.e.l.l!"

I remember many arguments like that: the Americans said one thing, we understood another, everybody fighting someone else. It was like this at the very beginning, when we arrived at the training camp just outside Hangchow, when we learned we had no place to live. The first cla.s.s of pilots and their families were still living in the bungalows, walking around in circles, talking angrily among themselves. And later we heard why: The Americans were telling their leaders that the Chinese pilots were still not qualified to fly, that they had failed the test.

And this made the first cla.s.s of pilots feel they had failed not just a test but all of China! Lost face, big faces. Many of them came from very important Chinese families and they complained to their leaders: It was only because the Americans concentrated on all the wrong things-s.h.i.+ny shoes and ties and hats put on straight the same way. And the foreign-built airplanes were bad, broken down-of course no one could fly them properly. And then my husband's cla.s.s, the second cla.s.s, was shouting, "No more wasting time. We need to be trained too-to save China." Until finally the Americans agreed to give the first cla.s.s more training. And the second cla.s.s would also begin training. But the complaining didn't stop right away, because we still had no place to live.

That's how everything was in China then. Too busy fighting each other to fight together. And not just the Americans and the Chinese. The old revolutionaries, the new revolutionaries, the Kuomintang and the Communists, the warlords, the bandits, and the students-gwah! gwah! gwah!-everybody squabbling, like old roosters claiming the same sunrise. And the rest of us-women and children, old people and poor people-we were like scared hens, letting everyone chase us from one corner to another. So of course the j.a.panese saw an opportunity to sneak in like a fox and steal everything.

The second cla.s.s of pilots and their wives ended up living in a place in Hangchow that had once been a monastery, halfway up in the mountain where the monks grew dragon-well tea, the best tea in all of China. The monks had donated this place temporarily to the air force, because they believed the air force was going to save China. Every Chinese person believed the same: that we were about to push the j.a.panese out of China forever.

Most of the pilots slept in a big common room. But if you had a wife or were an American, you had your own room with a narrow bed. Everyone shared the kitchen located at the end of the building, as well as an unheated bathhouse, which had five small wooden tubs. That bathhouse was also used by some Americans, but fortunately, they took baths only once a week, on Sat.u.r.day nights.

So our housing was not comfortable. Yet we did not complain too much, perhaps because of the clever way the monks had greeted us. We had arrived in the late springtime. The hills were already fragrant with tea. And we were also told that we had come at just the right time. This exact week in spring was the best time of the best season, they said-when the sweetest leaves of the most fragrant tea in the world could be harvested. When the most beautiful lake under all the heavens was at its loveliest. When the weather seemed like a daily blessing. And this news that welcomed the pilots at their new home made them feel immediately pleased with themselves, victors already.

Oftentimes at dusk, a group of us would walk along the lake and someone would say, "This is when the lake is clearest, this time of the year." And someone else would add, "Look, the sun, over the lake, and in the water-two, no, three suns setting at once." And another person would sigh and murmur, "A sunset like this, I can watch it all day."

You can see how none of us was thinking that this small bit of luck-of arriving at just the right time-would soon pa.s.s, and perhaps something less kind would take its place.

All that beauty was almost enough even for me. I would often walk around the lake by myself, and I would not be thinking about my past unhappiness, or my future life with my husband. I was only watching the birds who floated above the lake, then landed so lightly on the water that no ripples appeared. Just that moment. Or I would be admiring the web a spider had woven on a bush, perfectly formed and sparkling with pearls of dew. And I was wondering if I could later knit a sweater in the same design, using only this memory as a pattern.

But then the birds would suddenly call to one another, and they sounded just like a woman crying. Or the spider would feel my breath and clench its body small and tight before scurrying away. And I would be thinking about my fears, the questions I already had in my marriage.

I had known Wen Fu only a short time before we were married. And after the wedding, we lived one month with his parents, in their family house on the island. So in truth, I knew Wen Fu's mother's nature better than I knew his. She was the one who taught me how to be a good wife to her youngest son. This mother who spoiled him-she was the one who taught me how to be dutiful to a terrible person. And I listened, because I had no mother of my own, only Old Aunt and New Aunt, who each raised me to be afraid in different ways.

So this is what my mother-in-law taught me: To protect my husband so he would protect me. To fear him and think this was respect. To make him a proper hot soup, which was ready to serve only when I had scalded my little finger testing it.

"Doesn't hurt!" my mother-in-law would exclaim if I shouted in pain. "That kind of sacrifice for a husband never hurts."

And I believed she was also saying that this kind of pain for a husband was true love, the kind that grew between husband and wife. I had also learned this in the movies, both Chinese and American. A woman always had to feel pain, suffer and cry, before she could feel love. And now that I was living with Wen Fu in a little monastery room in Hangchow, I suffered a lot. I thought my love was growing bigger and bigger. I thought I was becoming a better wife.

And now I have come to the part where I must be frank. I was thinking I should not talk about these things with you, s.e.x things. But if I didn't tell you, then you would not understand why I changed, how he changed. So I will tell you what happened, although maybe not everything. Maybe I'll come to a part where I cannot say any more. And when that happens, you just have to imagine what happened. And then you should imagine it again-and make it ten times worse.

Every night Wen Fu wanted me. But it was not the same way as when we were at his parents' house. I had been shy then, and he had been gentle, always coaxing me, soothing me, stopping when I became too afraid, before I screamed too much. But in Hangchow, he said it was time I learned how to be a proper wife.

I thought I was going to learn something that would make me less afraid. I was still nervous, of course. But I was ready to learn.

The first night in the little monastery room, we were lying on that narrow bed. I wore my nightgown, Wen Fu had only his pants on. He was kissing my nose, my cheeks and shoulders, telling me how beautiful I was, how happy I made him. And then he whispered to me to say dirty words, words for a woman's body parts-not any woman's parts, a salt.w.a.ter wh.o.r.e's, the kind who would give her body to foreign sailors. My ears hurt just to hear them. I pulled away.

"I cannot say those words," I finally told him.

"Why is this?" he asked me, and he looked gentle, very concerned.

"A woman cannot say these things," I said, searching for a reason. And then I laughed, just a little, to show him I was embarra.s.sed even thinking about it.

Suddenly his smile went away, and he was a different person. He sat up quickly. His face was ugly, mad, and I became scared. I sat up too and stroked his shoulder, eager to win him back.

"Say them!" he shouted suddenly. He repeated the words, three or four dirty words. "Say them!" he shouted again.

I shook my head and began to cry. And then he became tender again, wiping my eyes and saying how much he cared for me, rubbing my back and my neck, until I thought I would faint with relief and joy. He was only teasing, I thought happily. How stupid of me! And then he was helping me to stand up. He lifted my nightgown off, and when I was naked, he took my two hands and looked at me sincerely.

"Say them," he said in a quiet voice. And hearing this once again, I started to collapse to the floor. But before I could do so, he pulled me back up, dragged me toward the door like a bag of rice. He opened the door, then pushed me outside into the corridor of the monastery, where anyone pa.s.sing by could have seen me, naked like that.

What could I do? I could not shout. Someone would awaken, look out, and see me. So I was whispering to him through the door, pleading, "Open the door! Open!" And he said nothing, did nothing, until several minutes had pa.s.sed and I finally said, "I will say them."

After that, it was the same way every night. Here is where you should imagine more, here is where you should make it worse.

Sometimes he made me take off my clothes, get on my hands and knees, then act as if I were begging him for a good "stuck-together" time, so desperate I would do anything for this favor. And he would pretend to refuse, saying that he was tired, or that I was not pretty enough, or that I had been a bad wife that day. I had to beg and beg, my teeth chattering, until I truly was begging so I could get off the cold floor. Other nights he made me stand in the room naked, s.h.i.+vering in the night chill, and when he named a body part, I was supposed to say the same coa.r.s.e word, then put my fingers there, touch myself-here, there, everywhere-while he watched and laughed.

And often in the morning he would complain, telling me I was not a good wife, that I had no pa.s.sion, not like other women he knew. And my head and body would hurt as he told me about this woman and that woman, how good she was, how willing, how beautiful. I was not angry. I did not know I was supposed to be angry. This was China. A woman had no right to be angry. But I was unhappy, knowing my husband was still dissatisfied with me, and that I would have to go through more suffering to show him I was a good wife.

I discovered another thing about my husband during that first month. All the other pilots always called him Wen Chen. And this was strange to me, because I knew my husband's name was Wen Fu. Oh, he did have two older brothers, and one of them had been named Wen Chen. But that brother had died two years before, in 1935-of tuberculosis, I think. The family used to talk about him: a smart son, devoted, but always sick, always coughing blood. I thought the pilots were only confused, that maybe Wen Fu had mentioned this dead brother and now they thought it was Wen Fu's name. My husband was just being polite in not correcting them.

But then one day I heard him introduce himself, and-strange!-he said his name was Wen Chen. Why was this, I asked him later. And he told me I was hearing things wrong. Why should he say his name was something else? And then later I heard him say it again, that his name was Wen Chen. And that time he told me that the air force had written his name down wrong. How could he correct the whole air force? He said he would have to tell them Wen Fu was his little-boy name, just a nickname.

I accepted what he said. This made sense. But later, when I was sorting through boxes, putting away some things, I found a diploma and an application for the air force. They were papers for Wen Chen, my husband's dead brother, who had graduated with top honors from a merchant seaman school. And then I knew: My husband was not smart enough to get into the air force, but was clever enough to use his dead brother's name.

I now felt as if my husband were two people. One dead, one alive. One true, one false. I began to see him in a different way, watching the way he lied. So smooth, so calm. He was just like those birds who land on top of the water without making a ripple.

So you see, I tried to be a proper wife. I tried to love the half of him that was not so bad.