Without Wood
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Rose Hsu JordanI used to believe everything my mother said, even when I didnt know what she meant. Once when I was little, she told me she k would rain because lost ghosts were cirg near our windows, calling "Woo-woo" to be let in. She said doors would unlock themselves in the middle of the night unless we checked twice. She said a mirror could see only my face, but she could see me i even when I was not in the room.
And all these things seemed true to me. The power of her words was that strong.
She said that if I listeo her, later I would know what she knew: where true words came from, always from up high, above everything else. And if I didnt listen to her, she said my ear would bend too easily to other people, all saying words that had no lasting meaning, because they came from the bottom of their hearts, where their own desires lived, a place where I could not belong.
The words my mother spoke did e from up high. As I recall, I was always looking up at her face as I lay on my pillow. In those days my sisters and I all slept in the same double bed. Janice, my oldest sister, had an allergy that made one nostril sing like a bird at night, so we called her Whistling Nose. Ruth was Ugly Foot because she could spread her toes out in the shape of a witchs claw. I was Scaredy Eyes because I would squeeze shut my eyes so I wouldnt have to see the dark, which Janid Ruth said was a dumb thing to do. During those early years, I was the last to fall asleep. I g to the bed, refusing to leave this world for dreams.
"Your sisters have already goo see Old Mr. Chou," my mother would whisper in ese. Acc to my mother, Old Mr. Chou was the guardian of a door that opened into dreams. "Are you ready to go see Old Mr. Chou, too?" And every night I would shake my head.
"Old Mr. Chou takes me to bad places," I cried.
Old Mr. Chou took my sisters to sleep. They never remembered anything from the night before. But Old Mr. Chou would swing the door wide open for me, and as I tried to walk in, he would slam it fast, hoping to squash me like a fly. Thats why I would always dart bato wakefulness.
But eventually Old Mr. Chou would get tired and leave the door unwatched. The bed would grow heavy at the top and slowly tilt. And I would slide headfirst, in through Old Mr. Chous door, and land in a house without doors or windows.
I remember oime I dreamt of falling through a hole in Old Mr. Chous floor. I found myself in a nighttime garden and Old Mr. Chou was shouting, "Whos in my backyard?" I ran away. Soon I found myself stomping on plants with veins of blood, running through fields of snapdragons that ged colors like stoplights, until I came to a giant playground filled with row after row of square sandboxes. In each sandbox was a new doll. And my mother, who was not there but could see me i, told Old Mr. Chou she knew which doll I would pick. So I decided to pie that was entirely different.
"Stop her! Stop her!" cried my mother. As I tried to run away, old Mr. Chou chased me, shouting, "See what happens when you dont listen to your mother!" And I became paralyzed, too scared to move in any dire.
The m, I told my mother what happened, and she laughed and said, "Dont pay attention to Old Mr. Chou. He is only a dream. You only have to listen to me."
And I cried, "But Old Mr. Chou listens to you too."
More than thirty years later, my mother was still trying to make me listen. A month after I told her that Ted and I were getting a divorce, I met her at church, at the funeral of a Mary, a wonderful wo-year-old woman who had played godmother to every child who passed through the doors of the First ese Baptist Church.
"Yetting too thin," my mother said in her pained voice when I sat dowo her. "You must eat more."
"Im fine," I said, and I smiled for proof. "And besides, wasnt it you who said my clothes were always too tight?"
"Eat more," she insisted, and then she nudged me with a little spiral-bound book hand-titled "Cooking the ese Way by a Mary ." They were selling them at the door, only five dollars each, to raise money for the Refugee Scholarship Fund.
The an music stopped and the minister cleared his throat. He was not the regular pastor; I reized him as Wing, a boy who used to steal baseball cards with my brother Luke. Only later Wio divinity school, thanks to a Mary, and Luke went to the ty jail for selling stolen car stereos.
"I still hear her voice," Wing said to the mourners. "She said God made me with all the right ingredients, so itd be a shame if I burned in hell."
"Already cre-mated," my mother whispered matter-of-factly, nodding toward the altar, where a framed color photo of a Mary stood. I held my fio my lips the way librarians do, but she did.
"That one, we bought it." She ointing to a large spray of yellow chrysanthemums and red roses. "Thirty-four dollars. All artificial, so it will last forever. You pay me later. Janid Matthew also chip in some. You have money?"
"Yes, Ted sent me a check."
Then the minister asked everyoo bow in prayer. My mother was quiet at last, dabbing her h Kleenex while the mialked: "I just see her now,<bdo>..</bdo> wowing the angels with her ese cooking and gung-ho attitude."
And when heads lifted, everyone rose to sing hymn number 335, a Marys favorite: "You be an an-gel, ev-ery day oh…"
But my mother was not singing. She was staring at me. "Why does he send you a check?" I kept looking at the hymnal, singing: "Send-ing rays of sun-shine, full of joy from birth."
And so she grimly answered her owion: "He is doing monkey business with someone else."
Monkey business? Ted? I wao laugh—her choice of words, but also the idea! Cool, silent, hairless Ted, whose breathing pattern didnt alter o in the height of passion? I could just see him, grunting "Ooh-ooh-ooh" while scratg his armpits, then boung and shrieking across the mattress trying to grab a breast.
"No, I dont think so," I said.
"Why not?"
"I dont think we should talk about Ted now, not here."
"Why you talk about this with a psyche-atrid not with mother?"
"Psychiatrist."
"Psyche-atricks," she corrected herself.
"A mother is best. A mother knows what is inside you," she said above the singing voices. "A psyche-atricks will only make you hulihudu, make you see heimongmong."
Bae, I thought about what she said. And it was true. Lately I had been feeling hulihudu. And everything around me seemed to be heimongmong. These were words I had hought about in English terms. I suppose the closest in meaning would be "fused" and "dark fog."
But really, the words mean much more than that. Maybe they t be easily translated because they refer to a sensation that only ese people have, as if you were falling headfirst through Old Mr. Chous door, then trying to find your way back. But youre so scared you t open your eyes, so you get on your hands and knees and grope in the dark, listening for voices to tell you which way to go.
I had been talking to too many people, my friends, everybody it seems, except Ted. To each person I told a different story. Yet each version was true, I was certain of it, at least at the moment that I told it.
To my friend Waverly, I said I never knew how much I loved Ted until I saw how much he could hurt me. I felt such pain, literally a physical pain, as if someone had torn off both my arms without ahesia, without sewing me back up.
"Have you ever had them torn off with ahesia? God! Ive never seen you so hysterical," said Waverly. "You want my opinion, youre better off without him. It hurts only because its taken you fifteen years to see what aional wimp he is. Listen, I know what it feels like."
To my friend Lena, I said I was better off without Ted. After the initial shock, I realized I didnt miss him at all. I just missed the way I felt when I was with him.
"Which was what?" Lena gasped. "You were depressed. You were manipulated into thinking you were nothio him. And now you think youre nothing without him. If I were you, Id get the name of a good lawyer and go for everything you . Get even."
I told my psychiatrist I was obsessed with revenge. I dreamt of calling Ted up and inviting him to dio one of those trendy whos-who places, like caf?Majestic or Rosalies. And after he started the first course and was nid relaxed, I would say, "Its not that easy, Ted." From my purse I would take out a voodoo doll which Lena had already lent me from her props department. I would aim my escargot fork at a strategic spot on the voodoo doll and I would say, out loud, in front of all the fashionable restaurant patrons, "Ted, youre just su impotent bastard and Im going to make sure you stay that way."Wham!
Saying this, I felt I had raced to the top of a big turning point in my life, a new me after just two weeks of psychotherapy. But my psychiatrist just looked bored, his hand still propped under his . "It seems youve been experieng some very powerful feelings," he said, sleepy-eyed. "I think we should think about them more week."
And so I didnt know what to think anymore. For the few weeks, I ioried my life, going from room to ro to remember the history of everything in the house: things I had collected before I met Ted (the hand-blown glasses, the macrame wall hangings, and the rocker I had reed); things we bought together right after we were married (most of the big furniture); things people gave us (the glass-domed clock that no longer worked, three sake sets, four teapots); things he picked out (the signed lithographs, none of them beyond wenty-five in a series of two hundred fifty, the Steuben crystal strawberries); and things I picked out because I couldo see them left behind (the mismatched dlestick holders from garage sales, an antique quilt with a hole in it, odd-shaped vials that once tained ois, spices, and perfumes).
I had started to iory the bookshelves when I got a letter from Ted, a ually, written hurriedly in ballpoint on his prescription notepad. "Sign 4x where indicated," it read. And then in fountain-pen blue ink, "enc: check, to tide you over until settlement."
The note was clipped to our divorce papers, along with a check for ten thousand dollars, signed in the same fountain-pen blue ink oe. And instead of being grateful, I was hurt.
Why had he sent the check with the papers? Why the two different pens? Was the che afterthought? How long had he sat in his office determining how much money was enough? And why had he chosen to sign it with that pen?
I still remember the look on his face last year when he carefully undid the gold foil , the surprise in his eyes as he slowly examined every angle of the pen by the light of the Christmas tree. He kissed my forehead. "Ill use it only to sign important things," he had promised me.
Remembering that, holding the check, all I could do was sit on the edge of the couch feeling my head getting heavy at the top. I stared at the xs on the divorce papers, the w on the prescription notepad, the two colors of ink, the date of the check, the careful way in which he wrote, "Ten thousand only and s."
I sat there quietly, trying to listen to my heart, to make the right decision. But then I realized I didnt know what the choices were. And so I put the papers and the check away, in a drawer where I kept store coupons which I hrew away and which I never used either.
My mother oold me why I was so fused all the time. She said I was without wood. Born without wood so that I listeo too many people. She khis, because once she had almost bee this way.
"A girl is like a young tree," she said. "You must stand tall and listen to your mother standio you. That is the only way to grow strong and straight. But if you bend to listen to other people, you will grow crooked and weak. You will fall to the ground with the first strong wind. And then you will be like a weed, growing wild in any dire, running along the ground until someone pulls you out and throws you away."
But by the time she told me this, it was too late. I had already begun to bend. I had started going to school, where a teacher named Mrs. Berry lined us up and marched us in and out of rooms, up and down hallways while she called out, "Boys and girls, follow me." And if you didnt listen to her, she would make you bend over and whack you with a yardstick ten times.
I still listeo my mother, but I also learned how to let her words blow through me. And sometimes I filled my mind with other peoples thoughts—all in English—so that when she looked at me i, she would be fused by what she saw.
Over the years, I learo choose from the best opinions. ese people had ese opinions. Ameri people had Ameri opinions. And in almost every case, the Ameri version was much better.
It was only later that I discovered there was a serious flaw with the Ameri version. There were too many choices, so it was easy to get fused and pick the wrong thing. Thats how I felt about my situation with Ted. There was so much to think about, so much to decide. Each deeant a turn in another dire.
The check, for example. I wondered if Ted was really trying to trick me, to get me to admit that I was giving up, that I wouldnt fight the divorce. And if I cashed it, he might later say the amount was the whole settlement. Then I got a little seal and imagined, only for a moment, that he had seen thousand dollars because he truly loved me; he was telling me in his own way how much I meant to him. Until I realized that ten thousand dollars was nothing to him, that I was nothing to him.
I thought about putting ao this torture and signing the divorce papers. And I was just about to take the papers out of the coupon drawer when I remembered the house.
I thought to myself, I love this house. The big oak door that opens into a foyer filled with stained-glass windows. The sunlight in the breakfast room, the south view of the city from the front parlor. The herb and flarden Ted had planted. He used to work in the garden every weekend, kneeling on a green rubber pad, obsessively iing every leaf as if he were manig fingernails. He assigned plants to certain planter boxes. Tulips could not be mixed with perennials. A cutting of aloe vera that Lena gave me did not belong anywhere because we had no other sucts.
I looked out the window and saw the calla lilies had fallen and turned brown, the daisies had been crushed down by their ow, the lettuce goo seed. Runner weeds were growiween the flagstone walkways that wouween the planter boxes. The whole thing had grown wild from months of .
And seeing the garden in this fotten dition reminded me of something I once read in a fortune cookie: When a husband stops paying attention to the gardehinking of pulling up roots. When was the last time Ted pruhe rosemary back? When was the last time he squirted Snail B-Gone around the flower beds?
I quickly walked down to the garden shed, looking for pesticides and weed killer, as if the amou itle, the expiration date, anything would give me some idea of what was happening in my life. And then I put the bottle down. I had the sense someone was watg me and laughing.
I went ba the house, this time to call a lawyer. But as I started to dial, I became fused. I put the receiver down. What could I say? What did I want from divorce—when I never knew what I had wanted from marriage?
The m, I was still thinking about my marriage: fifteen years of living in Teds shadow. I lay in bed, my eyes squeezed shut, uo make the simplest decisions.
I stayed in bed for three days, getting up only to go to the bathroom or to heat up another of chi noodle soup. But mostly I slept. I took the sleeping pills Ted had left behind in the medie et. And for the first time I recall, I had no dreams. All I could remember was falling smoothly into a dark space with no feeling of dimension or dire. I was the only person in this blaess. And every time I woke up, I took another pill a back to this place.
But on the fourth day, I had a nightmare. In the dark, I couldnt see Old Mr. Chou, but he said he would find me, and when he did, he would squish me into the ground. He was sounding a bell, and the louder the bell rang the closer he was to finding me. I held my breath to keep from screaming, but the bell got louder and louder until I burst awake.
It was the pho must have rung for an hour nonstop. I picked it up.
"Now that you are up, I am bringing you leftover dishes," said my mother. She sounded as if she could see me now. But the room was dark, the curtains closed tight.
"Ma, I t…" I said. "I t see you now. Im busy."
"Too busy for mother?"
"I have an appoi…with my psychiatrist."
She was quiet for a while. "Why do you not speak up for yourself?" she finally said in her pained voice. "Why you not talk to your husband?"
"Ma," I said, feeling drained. "Please. Dont tell me to save my marriage anymore. Its hard enough as it is."
"I am not telling you to save your marriage," she protested. "I only say you should speak up."
When I hung up, the ph again. It was my psychiatrists receptionist. I had missed my appoihat m, as well as two days ago. Did I want to reschedule? I said I would look at my schedule and call back.
And five minutes later the ph again.
"Whereve you been?" It was Ted.
I began to shake. "Out," I said.
"Ive been trying to reach you for the last three days. I even called the phone pany to check the line."
And I knew he had dohat, not out of any for me, but because when he wants something, he gets impatient and irrational about people who make him wait.
"You know its been two weeks," he said with obvious irritation.
"Two weeks?"
"You havent cashed the check or returhe papers. I wao be nice about this, Rose. I get someoo officially serve the papers, you know."
"You ?"
And then without missing a beat, he proceeded to say what he really wanted, which was more despicable than all the terrible things I had imagined.
He wahe papers returned, signed. He wahe house. He wahe whole thing to be over as soon as possible. Because he wao get married again, to someone else.
Before I could stop myself, I gasped. "You mean you were doing monkey business with someone else?" I was so humiliated I almost started to cry.
And then for the first time in months, after being in limbo all that time, everything stopped. All the questions: gohere were no choices. I had ay feeling—and I felt free, wild. From high inside my head I could hear someone laughing.
"Whats so funny?" said Ted angrily.
"Sorry," I said. "Its just that…" and I was trying hard to stifle my giggles, but one of them escaped through my h a snort, which made me laugh more. And then Teds silence made me laugh even harder.
I was still gasping when I tried to begin again in a more even voice: "Listen, Ted, sorry…I think the best thing is for you to e over after work." I didnt know why I said that, but I felt right saying it.
"Theres nothing to talk about, Rose."
"I know," I said in a voice so calm it surprised even me. "I just want to show you something. And dont worry, youll get your papers. Believe me."
I had no plan. I didnt know what I would say to him later. I knew only that I waed to see me one more time before the divorce.
What I ended up showing him was the garden. By the time he arrived, the late-afternoon summer fog had already blown in. I had the divorce papers in the pocket of my windbreaker. Ted was shivering in his sports jacket as he surveyed the damage to the garden.
"What a mess," I heard him mutter to himself, trying to shake his pant leg loose of a blackberry vihat had meandered onto the walkway. And I knew he was calculating how long it would take to get the place bato order.
"I like it this way," I said, patting the tops of rown carrots, their e heads pushing through the earth as if about to be born. And then I saw the weeds: Some had sprouted in and out of the cracks iio. Others had anchored on the side of the house. And even more had found refuge under loose shingles and were on their way to climbing up to the roof. No way to pull them out oheyve buried themselves in the masonry; youd end up pulling the whole building down.
Ted ig up plums from the ground and tossing them over the feo the neighbors yard. "Where are the papers?" he finally said.
I hahem to him auffed them in the inside pocket of his jacket. He faced me and I saw his eyes, the look I had once mistaken for kindness and prote. "You dont have to move ht away," he said. "I know youll want at least a month to find a place."
"Ive already found a place," I said quickly, because right then I knew where I was going to live. His eyebrows raised in surprise and he smiled—for the briefest moment—until I said, "Here."
"Whats that?" he said sharply. His eyebrows were still up, but now there was no smile.
"I said Im staying here," I announced again.
"Who says?" He folded his arms across his chest, squinted his eyes, examining my face as if he k would crack at any moment. That expression of his used to terrify me into stammers.
Now I felt nothing, no fear, no anger. "I say Im staying, and my lawyer will too, once we serve you the papers," I said.
Ted pulled out the divorce papers and stared at them. His xs were still there, the blanks were still blank. "What do you think youre doily what?" he said.
And the ahe ohat was important above everything else, ran through my body and fell from my lips: "You t just pull me out of your life and throw me away."
I saw what I wanted: his eyes, fused, then scared. He was hulihudu. The power of my words was that strong.
That night I dreamt I was wandering through the garden. The trees and bushes were covered with mist. And then I spotted Old Mr. Chou and my mother off in the distaheir busy movements swirling the fog around them. They were bending over one of the planter boxes.
"There she is!" cried my mother. Old Mr. iled at me and waved. I walked up to my mother and saw that she was h over something, as if she were tending a baby.
"See," she said, beaming. "I have just plahem this m, some for you, some for me."
And below the heimongmong, all along the ground, were weeds already spilling out over the edges, running wild in every dire.
Without Wood Up
Best Quality
Jing-Mei Woo
Five months ago, after a crab dinner celebrating ese New Year, my mave me my "lifes importance," a jade pendant on a gold . The pendant was not a piece of jewelry I would have chosen for myself. It was almost the size of my little finger, a mottled green and white color, intricately carved. To me, the whole effect looked wrong: toe, too green, too garishly ornate. I stuffed the neckla my lacquer box and fot about it.
But these days, I think about my lifes importance. I wonder what it means, because my mother died three months ago, six days before my thirty-sixth birthday. And shes the only person I could have asked, to tell me about lifes importao help me uand my grief.
I now wear that pendant every day. I think the carvings mean something, because shapes aails, which I never seem to notitil after theyre pointed out to me, always mean something to ese people. I know I could ask Auntie Lindo, Auntie An-mei, or other ese friends, but I also know they would tell me a meaning that is different from what my mother intended. What if they tell me this curving line brang into three oval shapes is a pomegranate and that my mother was wishing me fertility and posterity? What if my mother really meant the carvings were a branch of pears to give me purity and hoy? Or ten-thousand-year droplets from the magic mountain, giving me my lifes dire and a thousand years of fame and immortality?
And because I think about this all the time, I always notice other people wearing these same jade pendants—not the flat regular medallions or the round white ones with holes in the middle but ones like mine, a two-inch oblong ht apple green. Its as though we were all sworn to the same secret ant, so secret we dont even know what we belong to. Last weekend, for example, I saw a bartender wearing one. As I fingered mine, I asked him, "Whered you get yours?"
"My mave it to me," he said.
I asked him why, which is a nosy question that only one ese person ask another; in a crowd of Caucasians, two ese people are already like family.
"She gave it to me after I got divorced. I guess my mothers telling me Im still worth something."
And I knew by the wonder in his voice that he had no idea what the pendant really meant.
At last years ese New Year dinner, my mother had cooked eleven crabs, one crab for each person, plus ara. She and I had bought them on Sto Street in atown. We had walked doweep hill from my parents flat, which was actually the first floor of a six-unit building they owned on Leavenworth near California. Their place was only six blocks from where I worked as a copywriter for a small ad agency, so two or three times a week I would drop by after work. My mother always had enough food to insist that I stay for dinner.
That year, ese New Year fell on a Thursday, so I got off work early to help my mother shop. My mother was seventyone, but she still walked briskly along, her small body straight and purposeful, carrying a colorful flowery plastic bag. I dragged the metal shopping cart behind.
Every time I went with her to atown, she pointed out other ese women her age. "Hong Kong ladies," she said, eyeing two finely dressed women in long, dark mink coats and perfect black hairdos. "tonese, village people," she whispered as we passed women in knitted caps, bent over in layers of padded tops and mes. And my mother—wearing lightblue polyester pants, a red sweater, and a childs green down jacket—she didnt look like anybody else. She had e here in 1949, at the end of a long jourhat started in Kweilin in 1944; she had gone north to gking, where she met my father, and then they went southeast to Shanghai and fled farther south to Hong Kong, where the boat departed for San Frany mother came from many different dires.
And now she was huffing plaints in rhythm to her walk downhill. "Even you dont want them, you stuck," she said. She was fuming again about the tenants who lived on the sed floor. Two years ago, she had tried to evict them on the pretext that relatives from a were ing to live there. But the couple saw through her ruse to get arou trol. They said they wouldnt budge until she produced the relatives. And after that I had to listen to her ret every new injustice this couple inflicted on her.
My mother said the gray-haired man put too many bags in the garbage s: "e extra."
And the woman, a very elegant artist type with blond hair, had supposedly paihe apartment in terrible red and green colors. "Awful," moaned my mother. "And they take bath, two three times every day. Running the water, running, running, running, op!"
"Last week," she said, growing a each step, "the waigoren accuse me." She referred to all Caucasians as waigoren, fners. "They say I put poison in a fish, kill that cat."
"What cat?" I asked, even though I kly whie she was talking about. I had seen that cat many times. It was a big one-eared tom with gray stripes who had learo jump oside sill of my mothers kit window. My mother would stand oiptoes and bang the kit window to scare the cat away. And the cat would stand his ground, hissing ba respoo her shouts.
"That cat always raising his tail to put a stink on my door," plained my mother.
I once saw her chase him from her stairwell with a pot of boiling water. I was tempted to ask if she really had put poison in a fish, but I had learned o take sides against my mother.
"So what happeo that cat?" I asked.
"That cat gone! Disappear!" She threw her hands in the air and smiled, looking pleased for a moment before the scowl came back. "And that man, he raise his hand like this, show me his ugly fist and call me worst Fukien landlady. I not from Fukien. Hunh! He know nothing!" she said, satisfied she had put him in his place.
On Sto Street, we wandered from one fish store to another, looking for the liveliest crabs.
"Do a dead one," warned my mother in ese. "Even a beggar wo a dead one."
I poked the crabs with a pencil to see how feisty they were. If a crab grabbed on, I lifted it out and into a plastic sack. I lifted one crab this way, only to find one of its legs had been clamped onto by another crab. In the brief tug-of-war, my crab lost a limb.
"Put it back," whispered my mother. "A missing leg is a bad sign on ese New Year."
But a man in a white smock came up to us. He started talking loudly to my mother in tonese, and my mother, who spoke tonese so poorly it sounded just like her Mandarin, was talking loudly back, pointing to the crab and its missing leg. And after more sharp words, that crab and its leg were put into our sack.
"Doesnt matter," said my mother. "This number elevera one."
Bae, my mother uned the crabs from their neer liners and then dumped them into a sinkful of cold water. She brought out her old wooden board and cleaver, then chopped the ginger and scallions, and poured soy saud sesame oil into a shallow dish. The kit smelled of wet neers and ese fragrances.
Then, one by one, she grabbed the crabs by their back, hoisted them out of the sink and shook them dry and awake. The crabs flexed their legs in midair between sink and stove. She stacked the crabs in a multileveled steamer that sat over two burners oove, put a lid on top, and lit the burners. I couldo watch so I went into the dining room.
When I was eight, I had played with a crab my mother had brought home for my birthday dinner. I had poked it, and jumped back every time its claws reached out. And I determihat the crab and I had e to a great uanding when it finally heaved itself up and walked clear across the ter. But before I could even decide what to name my new pet, my mother had dropped it into a pot of cold water and placed it oall stove. I had watched with growing dread, as the water heated up and the pot began to clatter with this crab trying to tap his way out of his own hot soup. To this day, I remember that crab screaming as he thrust one bright red claw out over the side of the bubbling pot. It must have been my own voice, because now I know, of course, that crabs have no vocal cords. And I also try to vince myself that they dont have enough brains to know the differeween a hot bath and a slow death.
For our New Year celebration, my mother had invited her longtime friends Lindo and Tin Jong. Without even asking, my mother khat meant including the Jongs children: their son Vi, who was thirty-eight years old and still living at home, and their daughter, Waverly, who was around my age. Vi called to see if he could als his girlfriend, Lisa Lum. Waverly said she would bring her new fianc? Rich Schields, who, like Waverly, was a tax attor Price Waterhouse. And she added that Shoshana, her four-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, wao know if my parents had a VCR so she could watch Pinocchio, just in case she got bored. My mother also reminded me to invite Mr. g, my old piano teacher, who still lived three blocks away at our old apartment.
Including my mother, father, ahat made eleven people. But my mother had ted only ten, because to her way of thinking Shoshana was just a child and didnt t, at least not as far as crabs were ed. She hadnt sidered that Waverly might not think the same way.
When the platter of steaming crabs assed around, Waverly was first and she picked the best crab, the brightest, the plumpest, and put it on her daughters plate. And then she picked the best for Rid anood one for herself. And because she had learhis skill, of choosing the best, from her mother, it was only natural that her mother knew how to pick the -best ones for her husband, her son, his girlfriend, and herself. And my mother, of course, sidered the four remaining crabs and gave the ohat looked the best to Old g, because he was nearly y and deserved that kind of respect, and then she picked anood one for my father. That left two on the platter: a large crab with a faded e color, and number eleven, which had the torn-off leg.
My mother shook the platter in front of me. "Take it, already cold," said my mother.
I was not too fond of crab, every since I saw my birthday crab boiled alive, but I knew I could not refuse. Thats the way ese mothers show they love their children, not through hugs and kisses but with stern s of steamed dumplings, ducks gizzards, and crab.
I thought I was doing the right thing, taking the crab with the missing leg. But my mother cried, "No! No! Big one, you eat it. I ot finish."
I remember the hungry sounds everybody else was making—crag the shells, sug the crab meat out, scraping out tidbits with the ends of chopsticks—and my mothers quiet plate. I was the only one who noticed her prying open the shell, sniffing the crabs body and theing up to go to the kit, plate in hand. She returned, without the crab, but with more bowls of soy sauce, ginger, and scallions.
And then as stomachs filled, everybody started talking at once.
"Suyuan!" called Auntie Lindo to my mother. "Why you wear that color?" Auntie Lindo gestured with a crab leg to my mothers red sweater.
"How you wear this color anymore? Too young!" she scolded.
My mother acted as though this were a pliment. "Emporium Capwell," she said. "een dollar. Cheaper than knit it myself."
Auntie Lindo nodded her head, as if the color were worth this price. And then she pointed her crab leg toward her future son-in-law, Rich, and said, "See how this one doesnt know how to eat ese food."
"Crab isnt ese," said Waverly in her plaining voice. It was amazing how Waverly still souhe way she did twenty-five years ago, when we were ten and she had annouo me in that same voice, "You arent a genius like me."
Auntie Lindo looked at her daughter with exasperation. "How do you know<dfn>99lｉｂ?</dfn> what is ese, what is not ese?" And theuro Rid said with much authority, "Why you are ing the best part?"
And I saw Rich smiling back, with amusement, and not humility, showing in his face. He had the same c as the crab on his plate: reddish hair, pale cream skin, and large dots e freckles. While he smirked, Auntie Lindo demonstrated the proper teique, poking her chopstito the e spongy part: "You have to dig in here, get this out. The brain is most tastiest, you try."
Waverly and Rich grimaced at each other, united in disgust. I heard Vi and Lisa whisper to each other, "Gross," and then they snickered too.
Uin started laughing to himself, to let us know he also had a private joke. Judging by his preamble of snorts and leg slaps, I figured he must have ..practiced this joke many times: "I tell my daughter, Hey, why be poor? Marry rich!" He laughed loudly and then nudged Lisa, who was sittio him, "Hey, dont you get it? Look what happen. She gonna marry this guy here. Rich. Cause I tell her to, marry Rich."
"When are you guys getting married?" asked Vi.
"I should ask you the same thing," said Waverly. Lisa looked embarrassed when Vi ighe question.
"Mom, I dont like crab!" whined Shoshana.
"Nice haircut," Waverly said to me from across the table.
"Thanks, David always does a great job."
"You mean you still go to that guy on Howard Street?" Waverly asked, arg one eyebrow. "Arent you afraid?"
I could sehe danger, but I said it anyway: "What do you mean, afraid? Hes always very good."
"I mean, he is gay," Waverly said. "He could have AIDS. And he is cutting your hair, which is like cutting a living tissue. Maybe Im being paranoid, being a mother, but you just t be too safe these days…."
And I sat there feeling as if my hair were coated with disease.
"You should go see my guy," said Waverly. "Mr. Rory. He does fabulous work, although he probably charges more than youre used to."
I felt like screaming. She could be so sneaky with her insults. Every time I asked her the simplest of tax questions, for example, she could turn the versation around and make it seem as if I were too cheap to pay for her legal advice.
Shed say things like, "I really dont like to talk about important tax matters except in my office. I mean, what if you say something casual over lund I give you some casual advice. And then you follow it, and its wrong because you didnt give me the full information. Id feel terrible. And you would too, wouldnt you?"
At that crab dinner, I was so mad about what she said about my hair that I wao embarrass her, to reveal in front of everybody how petty she was. So I decided to front her about the free-lance work Id done for her firm, eight pages of brochure copy on its tax services. The firm was now more than thirty days late in paying my invoice.
"Maybe I could afford Mr. Rorys prices if someones firm paid me on time," I said with a teasing grin. And I leased to see Waverlys rea. She was genuinely flustered, speechless.
I could rubbing it in: "I think its pretty ironic that a big ating firm t even pay its own bills on time. I mean, really, Waverly, what kind of place are you w for?"
Her face was dark and quiet.
"Hey, hey, you girls, no more fighting!" said my father, as if Waverly and I were still children arguing over tricycles and crayon colors.
"Thats right, we dont want to talk about this now," said Waverly quietly.
"So how do you think the Giants are going to do?" said Vi, trying to be funny. Nobody laughed.
I wasnt about to let her slip away this time. "Well, every time I call you on the phone, you t talk about it theher," I said.
Waverly looked at Rich, whed his shoulders. She turned bae and sighed.
"Listen, June, I dont know how to tell you this. That stuff you wrote, well, the firm decided it was uable."
"Youre lying. You said it was great."
Waverly sighed again. "I know I did. I didnt want to hurt your feelings. I was trying to see if we could fix it somehow. But it wont work."
And just like that, I was starting to flail, tossed without warning into deep water, drowning and desperate. "Most copy needs fiuning," I said. "Its…normal not to be perfect the first time. I should have explaihe process better."
"June, I really dont think…"
"Rewrites are free. Im just as ed about making it perfect as you are."
Waverly acted as if she didnt even hear me. "Im trying to vihem to at least pay you for some of your time. I know you put a lot of work into it…I owe you at least that for even suggesting you do it."
"Just tell me what they want ged. Ill call you week so we go over it, line by line."
"June—I t," Waverly said with cool finality. "Its just not…sophisticated. Im sure what you write for your other ts is wonderful. But were a big firm. We need somebody who uands that…our style." She said this toug her hand to her chest, as if she were referring to her style.
Then she laughed in a lighthearted way. "I mean, really, June." And thearted speaking in a deep television-announcer voice: "Three bes, three needs, three reasons to buy…Satisfa guaranteed…for todays and tomorrows tax needs…"
She said this in such a funny way that everybody thought it was a good joke and laughed. And then, to make matters worse, I heard my mother saying to Waverly: "True, ot teach style. Ju sophisticate like you. Must be born this way."
I was surprised at myself, how humiliated I felt. I had been outsmarted by Waverly once again, and now betrayed by my own mother. I was smiling so hard my lower lip was twitg from the strain. I tried to find something else to trate on, and I remember pig up my plate, and then Mr. gs, as if I were clearing the table, and seeing so sharply through my tears the chips on the edges of these old plates, w why my mother didnt use the new set I had bought her five years ago.
The table was littered with crab carcasses. Waverly and Rich lit cigarettes and put a crab shell between them for an ashtray. Shoshana had wandered over to the piano and was banging notes out with a crab claw in each hand. Mr. g, who had grown totally deaf over the years, watched Shoshana and applauded: "Bravo! Bravo!" And except for his strange shouts, nobody said a word. My mother went to the kit aurned with a plate es sliced into wedges. My father poked at the remnants of his crab. Vi cleared his throat, twice, and then patted Lisas hand.
It was Auntie Lindo who finally spoke: "Waverly, you let her try again. You make her do too fast first time. Of course she ot get it right."
I could hear my mother eating an e slice. She was the only person I knew who ched es, making it sound as if she were eating crisp apples instead. The sound of it was worse than gnashih.
"Good o９９lｉb.ake time," tinued Auntie Lindo, nodding her head in agreement with herself.
"Put in lotta a," advised Uin. "Lotta a, boy, thats what I like. Hey, thats all you need, make it right."
"Probably not," I said, and smiled before carrying the plates to the sink.
That was the night, i, that I realized I was er than who I was. I ywriter. I worked for a small ad agency. I promised every new t, "rovide the sizzle for the meat." The sizzle always boiled down to "Three Bes, Three Needs, Three Reasons to Buy." The meat was always coaxial cable, T-1 multiplexers, protocol verters, and the like. I was very good at what I did, succeeding at something small like that.
I turned oer to wash the dishes. And I no longer felt angry at Waverly. I felt tired and foolish, as if I had been running to escape someone chasing me, only to look behind and discover there was no ohere.
I picked up my mothers plate, the one she had carried into the kit at the start of the dihe crab was untouched. I lifted the shell and smelled the crab. Maybe it was because I didnt like crab in the first place. I couldnt tell what was wrong with it.
After everybody left, my mother joined me i. I utting dishes away. She put water on for more tea and sat down at the small kit table. I waited for her to chastise me.
"Good dinner, Ma," I said politely.
"Not so good," she said, jabbing at her mouth with a toothpick.
"What happeo your crab? Whyd you throw it away?"
"Not so good," she said again. "That crab die. Even a beggar dont want it."
"How could you tell? I didnt smell anything wrong."
" tell even before cook!" She was standing now, looking out the kit window into the night. "I shake that crab before cook. His legs—droopy. His mouth—wide open, already like a dead person."
"Whyd you cook it if you k was already dead?"
"I thought…maybe only just die. Maybe taste not too bad. But I smell, dead taste, not firm."
"What if someone else had picked that crab?"
My mother looked at me and smiled. "Only you pick that crab. Nobody else take it. I already know this. Everybody else wa quality. You thinking different."
She said it in a way as if this were proof—proof of something good. She always said things that didnt make any sehat sounded both good and bad at the same time.
I utting away the last of the chipped plates and then I remembered something else. "Ma, why dont you ever use those new dishes I bought you? If you didnt like them, you should have told me. I could have ged the pattern."
"Of course, I like," she said, irritated. "Sometime I think something is so good, I want to save it. Then I fet I save it."
And then, as if she had just now remembered, she unhooked the clasp of her gold necklad took it off, wadding the and the jade pendant in her palm. She grabbed my hand and put the neckla my palm, then shut my fingers around it.
"No, Ma," I protested. "I t take this."
"Nala, nala"—Take it, take it—she said, as if she were scolding me. And then she tinued in ese. "For a long time, I wao give you this necklace. See, I wore this on my skin, so when you put it on your skin, then you know my meaning. This is your lifes importance."
I looked at the necklace, the pendant with the light green jade. I wao give it back. I didnt want to accept it. A I also felt as if I had already swallowed it.
"Yiving this to me only because of what happeonight," I finally said.
"What happen?"
"What Waverly said. What everybody said."
"Tss! Why you listen to her? Why you want to follow behind her, chasing her words? She is like this crab." My mother poked a shell in the garbage . "Always walking sideways, moving crooked. You make ys go the other way."
I put the neckla. It felt cool.
"Not so good, this jade," she said matter-of-factly, toug the pendant, and then she added in ese: "This is young jade. It is a very light color now, but if you wear it every day it will bereen."
My father hasen well since my mother died. So I am here, i, to cook him dinner. Im slig tofu. Ive decided to make him a spicy bean-curd dish. My mother used to tell me how hot things restore the spirit ah. But Im making this mostly because I know my father loves this dish and I know how to cook it. I like the smell of it: ginger, scallions, and a red chili sauce that tickles my he minute I open the jar.
Above me, I hear the old pipes shake into a with a thunk! and theer running in my sink dwio a trickle. One of the tenants upstairs must be taking a shower. I remember my mother plaining: "Even you dont want them, you stuck." And now I know what she meant.
As I rihe tofu in the sink, I am startled by a dark mass that appears suddenly at the window. Its the one-eared tomcat from upstairs. Hes balang on the sill, rubbing his flank against the window.
My mother didnt kill that damn cat after all, and Im relieved. And then I see this cat rubbing more vigorously on the window aarts to raise his tail.
"Get away from there!" I shout, and slap my hand on the window three times. But the cat just narrows his eyes, flattens his one ear, and hisses back at me.
Ameri Translation Up
Queen Mother of the Western Skies
"O! Hwai dungsyi"—You bad little thing—said the woman, teasing her baby granddaughter. "Is Buddha teag you to laugh for no reason?" As the baby tile, the woma a deep wish stirring in her heart.
"Even if I could live forever," she said to the baby, "I still dont know which way I would teach you. I was once so free and i. I too laughed for no reason.
"But later I threw away my foolish innoce to protect myself. And then I taught my daughter, your mother, to shed her innoce so she would not be hurt as well.
"Hwai dungsyi, was this kind of thinking wrong? If I nnize evil in other people, is it not because I have bee evil too? If I see someone has a suspicious nose, have I not smelled the same bad things?"
The baby laughed, listening trandmothers laments.
"O! O! You say you are laughing because you have already lived forever, over and ain? You say you are Syi Wang Mu, Queen Mother of the Western Skies, now e back to give me the answer! Good, good, I am listening….
"Thank you, Little Queen. Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innoce but not your hope. How to laugh forever."
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