The Bridegroom: Stories

The Woman from New York

Nobody in our neighborhood expected Chen Jinli would come back. When she was planning to go to America four years ago, many people had tried to dissuade her. What else did she want? She taught math at our city’s Teachers College; she had a considerate husband and a lovely daughter, who was about to attend kindergarten; her family had just been allotted a three-bedroom apartment on the ground floor of a new building. We couldn’t understand why she was so determined to go abroad. A few people said she wanted to make money. Most of us didn’t think so. Although it was rumored that in America banknotes were as abundant as tree leaves, who would believe that? If she were a young girl, we could have guessed her motive, either entering college there or marrying a foreigner — an overseas Chinese or a white man. But she was already in her early thirties and had her family here. In spite of others’ admonition, she left early that summer. Soon afterwards, her parents-in-law, both being high-ranking officials in Muji City Administration, told their colleagues and friends that Jinli wouldn’t come back anymore. Old people would say, “What a heartless woman. How could she abandon her family like that? What’s so good in America?”

Now she was back. She looked like a different woman, wearing a gold necklace, her lips rouged, her eyelashes blackened with ink, and even her toenails dyed red. We wondered why her shoes’ heels needed to be four inches high. She could hardly walk on those stilts and often held out her hand for support when walking with others. In a way, her makeup and manners verified the hearsay that she had become the fifteenth concubine of a wealthy Chinese man in New York City.

During the first few months after she left, her husband, Chigan, had told us that she was studying English at a language school there, to get herself ready for a graduate program in math. Then we heard she was ill, unable to move about. A year later, word came that she was running a jewelry store in New York’s Chinatown. Some people believed her business must be a gift from the rich old man.

Her last letter to Chigan said she decided to come back and stay with him and their child forever. By her appearance, we doubted that. Yet whenever asked whether she was going back to New York, she’d say, “No, I’ve lost my job there. The jewelry store was closed.” A few relatives of hers were curious about how much money she had made, but she always told them, “I’ve no money. How could you make lots of money by waiting tables? In America half your income goes to taxes. You earn more, but you spend more, too.”

Young people, eager to know of “the Beautiful Land,” wanted her to talk about New York, but she would shake her head and say, “It’s a nice place for rich people.”

“Come on, Jinli, aren’t most New Yorkers millionaires?”

“No. There’re a few millionaires, but most people work harder than us. Some are homeless, sleeping on the streets.”

What disappointment her words gave those credulous young ones, who believed Wall Street was paved with gold bricks.

She came back at a bad time. It was midsummer, the best season in the Northeast when the weather is congenial and fresh vegetables and fruits appear on the market, but her daughter, Dandan, had no school and could stay with Chigan’s parents day and night. A week before Jinli’s return, Dandan had been moved out so as to avoid her. In fact, the child had almost forgotten her mother. Whenever we asked her if she missed her, she would say, “No.”

Jinli was disappointed not to see her daughter and got mad at Chigan. He tried to calm her by assuring her that Dandan would be back in a few days.

For a week Jinli was busy cleaning their home, which had been littered by Chigan. He was a clumsy man, though in his work he maintained machines at the Boat Designing Institute. Spoiled in his childhood, he didn’t know how to keep things tidy and clean. Jinli found eggshells under the beds and dust cloaking the organ, the chests, and the wardrobe. Cobwebs hung in every corner of the ceilings; the rooms smelled musty, and she had to keep the windows open for days. All the quilts were shiny with grease, and a few had holes in them, burned by cigarettes. She was told that the washer she had sent home from America two years ago was kept at her parents-in-law’s. Worst of all, her jasmines and peonies were all dead, standing like skeletons in the flowerpots, and the soil beneath them was covered with cigarette butts and half-burned matches. Within three days, the once-familiar door-slamming and clatter of dishes and pans resounded through the apartment once more — the couple began quarreling again.

“Gather your dirty socks and underwear. Go to your parents’ house to wash them,” she ordered him.

Without a word he was putting them into a cardboard case. She went on complaining about the cigarette ash in the kitchen and the bathroom. “This is like inside a crematorium,” she kept saying.

He pushed up his wire-rimmed glasses with his fingertips and said finally, “If you don’t like this home, why did you bother to come back?”

“You think I came back for you?” She bit her lower lip, her teeth showing neat and white. That was another miracle about her: before going to America she’d had compressed teeth, but now they were all regular and pearly, and her upper lip looked normal, no longer protruding. For sure, American dentists know how to straighten out teeth.

Indeed, she didn’t return for Chigan. She missed their daughter. That was why Chigan’s parents had prevented Dandan from meeting her. They despised Jinli, declaring they had no such daughter-in-law, even calling her “hussy” in the presence of others. Naturally, when Jinli stood at their doorstep one evening and begged them to allow her to say a word to Dandan, her mother-in-law refused to let her in, saying, “She doesn’t want to see you. She has no such mother as you. Get away with your penciled eyes.”

Chigan’s father was standing in the living room, holding a flyswatter and shaking his gray head. His back toward the door, he pretended he hadn’t seen his daughter-in-law.

“When — when will she come home?” Jinli asked.

“This is her home,” said Chigan’s mother.

“Please, let me have a look at her.” Tears were gathering in her eyes, but she tried suppressing them.

“No. She doesn’t want to be disturbed by you.”

“Mother, forgive me just this once, please!”

“Don’t call me that. You’re not my daughter-in-law anymore.”

The door was shut. Jinli realized they’d never allow her to see her child. Hard as she tried, she couldn’t get in touch with Dandan, who was kept from coming out of that brick house, a Russian bungalow. She didn’t beg Chigan, knowing he dared not oppose his parents’ will, and he might prefer such an arrangement as well.

When we heard she couldn’t see her daughter, some of us thought it served her right, because hadn’t she abandoned the child in the first place? But a few felt for her and said that since she couldn’t see her daughter, she shouldn’t stay for Chigan, who didn’t deserve that kind of devotion. We were all eager to see what she would do next.

Two years after she left for America, her name had been removed from the payroll of the Teachers College, so now she no longer had a work unit and belonged to the army of the unemployed. How can she live without a job? we wondered. This is China, a socialist country, not like in New York where she could get along just by pleasing an old man. She didn’t know she had lost her teaching position for good, assuming the removal of her name was temporary. She was shocked when they told her that because of her lifestyle in America, she was no longer suitable for teaching.

Somehow she found out that it was Professor Fan Ling who had spread the concubinary story. A few people urged her to go slap Fan Ling. Nobody liked Professor Fan, who was a smart tigress and had earned a master’s degree in education from Moscow University in the early 1950s. According to Jinli, Fan Ling had slandered her because she wouldn’t agree to be the sponsor of Professor Fan’s nephew, who wanted to go to college in the U.S. “You see,” Jinli told others, spreading her slim hands, revealing a chased gold ring on her third finger, “I’m not an American citizen and it’s illegal for me to do that.” Her words might be true, but we were not fully convinced.

She was informed that Fan Ling was going to attend the faculty and staff meeting on Tuesday afternoon. This would be a good opportunity for her to catch the professor and disgrace her publicly. We were eager to witness the scene, though also ready to intervene in time so that she wouldn’t rough her up too much. Fan Ling was old, suffering from high blood pressure and kidney disease.

To our dismay, Jinli didn’t show up in the auditorium on Tuesday afternoon. Professor Fan sat there in the back, dozing away peacefully, while the principal spoke about how we should welcome a group of heroes coming from the Chinese-Vietnamese border to give speeches on campus.

Later Jinli declared she would “sue” Fan Ling for calumny and make her “pay.” That was an odd thing for her to say. Who had ever heard of a court that would handle such a trifle? Besides, there was no lawyer available for a personal case like this, which should be resolved either through the help of the school leaders or by the victim herself. Some people thought Jinli must have lost her nerve; this might prove that she had indeed led a promiscuous life abroad. Also, why on earth would she think of “pay” as a solution? This was a matter of name and honor, which no money could buy. She ought to have fought for herself, that is, to combat poison with poison.

One morning she went to the city’s Bureau of Foreign Affairs to look for a job. She had heard there was a need for English interpreters. Our city was just opening to foreigners. To attract tourists, an amusement park was being constructed on one of those islands in the middle of the Songhua River. Jinli filled out six forms, but no official in charge of personnel received her. A young woman, a secretary, told her to come back next Thursday; in the meantime, the bureau would look into her file. Jinli pinned to the forms a copy of the certificate that confirmed she had studied English at an American language school and passed the standard exams, her spoken English rated “Excellent.” She told the secretary that ideally she’d like to be a tourist guide.

“We need nine of them according to what I heard,” the young woman whispered, her eyes still fixed on the applicant’s lips, rouged so heavily they looked purple.

Jinli thought she would be asked to take an English test for the job, so she began listening to the BBC and Voice of America for at least three hours a day and reviewing a volume on TOEFL. Even when she was washing laundry, she’d keep the radio on. She returned to the bureau on Thursday afternoon and was referred to a section director. The official was a large man, fiftyish, with a bald patch on his crown. He listened attentively to her describing herself and her qualifications for working with foreigners. She grew excited, a bit carried away in her enthusiasm, and even said, “I lived in New York for four years and visited many places in America. As a matter of fact, I have lots of connections there and can help our city in some ways. I have an international driver’s license.”

The man cleared his throat and said, “Miss Chen, we appreciate your interest in the job.” She was taken aback by his way of addressing her, not as a “Comrade,” as though she were a foreigner or a Taiwanese. He went on, “We studied your file the day before yesterday. I’m afraid I have to disappoint you. That’s to say, we can’t hire you.”

“Why?” She was puzzled, knowing there couldn’t be enough applicants for the nine positions.

“I don’t want to be rude. If you insist on knowing why, let me just say that we have to use people we can trust.”

“Why? Am I not a Chinese?”

“You’re already a permanent resident in the United States, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but I’m still a Chinese citizen.”

“This has nothing to do with citizenship. We don’t know what you did in New York, or how you lived in the past few years. How can we trust you? We’re responsible for protecting our country’s name.”

She understood now and didn’t argue further. They had gotten her file from the college and must have been notified of her lifestyle in New York. Anger was flushing her face.

“Don’t be too emotional, Miss Chen. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I am just passing the bureau’s decision on to you.” On the desk a shiny ant was scampering toward the inkstand; he crushed it with his thumbnail and wiped the dead ant off on his thigh.

“I understand.” She stood up and turned to the door without saying goodbye.

Waiting for the bus outside the office building, she couldn’t stop her tears. Now and again she wiped her cheeks with pinkish tissue. She fished her makeup kit out of her handbag and with the help of the mirror removed the smudges from her cheeks. The leatherette case in her hand attracted the eyes of a teenage girl, whose gaze roved between Jinli’s necklace and the glossy case.

Having failed to get the job, she came up with another idea, which surprised us. She began trying to persuade Chigan to go to America with her. This terrified him. He didn’t know Eng-lish except for a few phrases like “Good morning,” “Long live China!” “Friendship.” For three decades, no family in our city had moved that far — clear across the Pacific Ocean — though a few had left for Hong Kong and Japan. One young woman, we were told, had been sold by her husband to a whorehouse in Hong Kong the moment they landed there. Understandably Chigan was frightened by his wife’s suggestion. He believed that once they were in New York she’d sell him as a laborer or a gigolo. Physically he looked all right, a bit short but solid, with a flat face and round shoulders, but he would perish in America in no time if he did that kind of work. So, he resolutely refused to go with her, saying, “I’m a Chinese, I don’t want to be a foreign devil!”

“You know,” she said, “New York has a big Chinatown. You don’t have to speak English there. There’re so many Chinese around. Books, newspapers, TV, and movies are all in Chinese. You don’t have to become an American devil at all.”

“I won’t go!” His beady eyes glittered and his nostrils were flaring.

“Come on, we’ll make lots of money. Life’s better there than here. You can eat meat and fish every day.”

“Then why did you come back?”

“I came back to take you with me.” Her apricot eyes winked at him, the long lashes flapping. “Did I go abroad just for myself? Didn’t I say I was leaving to look for a new life for our family four years ago?”

“Yes, you did.”

“You see, now I’m back to fetch you and our child. If we work hard, we’ll get rich there and have a big house and two cars. Don’t you want to drive a brand-new Ford?”

“No, I don’t know how to drive.”

“You can always learn. I can drive, it’s much easier than riding a bicycle.” Her hands gripped an imaginary wheel, turning it left and right, while her head tilted back, her eyes half shut.

He swallowed. “No. Even if you give me a gold mountain, I won’t go.”

“You know, Chigan, we can have more kids there.” She winked again and smiled with a dimple on her chin.

This seemed to sink in, because he always wanted a son but wasn’t allowed to have another child here. Yet after a moment’s silence, he said, “Dandan is enough for me. I don’t want another kid.”

“Come on, will you be happy to remain a mechanic in the boatyard for the rest of your life?”

“Happy is the man who’s content.”

“All right, if you don’t want to leave, let Dandan go with me. She’ll have a good future there. She will go to Harvard.”

“What’s that?”

“The best university in the world.”

“No, it can’t be better than Oxford.”

“Please, let her go with me.” She tried to smile again, but her face twisted.

Of course he wouldn’t trust her with the child. She couldn’t bear his refusal anymore and burst into tears, begging him to let her see Dandan just once. Her crying softened him a little, and he agreed to talk to their daughter and see what the child thought.

The next afternoon he pedaled to his parents’. Onto the carrier of his Flying Pigeon bicycle was tied a long carton containing an electronic keyboard, a gift Jinli had brought back for her daughter.

Chigan’s father scolded him and called him a thickhead, saying that if Jinli saw the child she could easily talk her into leaving with her. “Why can’t you see through such a simple trick?” the old man asked, pointing a half-eaten tomato at his son.

The keyboard was put away; they would give it to Dandan at the right time. The grandparents then asked the child, who was upstairs watching the TV program “Baby Science,” to write to her mother. Chigan returned with the short letter before nightfall. After reading it, Jinli was heartbroken and locked herself in her room, weeping quietly. The letter said: “Go away, bad woman. I don’t want a mother like you!”

That stopped her from attempting to take the family abroad. What was she going to do next? Probably she would return to New York soon. But when asked about that, she said she would stay, since neither her husband nor their child wanted to leave.

To our surprise, a week later Chigan filed for divorce. Who could have imagined this feckless man was capable of taking such a step? It must have been his parents who planned it and used their connections to make the court give priority to the case, for without delay the divorce was granted. Jinli didn’t seem to mind losing her husband, though she did fight in court for custody of her daughter. The judge said she was an irresponsible parent, then announced to her, “Out of our concern for the child’s physical and mental health, this court declines your request.” She was, however, ordered to pay thirty-yuan in child support a month. Strange to say, she insisted on paying a hundred instead. This puzzled us. People began to wonder how much money she actually had. Perhaps she was a lady of wealth.

Then word went about that Jinli had a lot of money. Some people said she was small-minded and stingy. If she was so rich, why not buy her parents-in-law a twenty-seven-inch color TV — either a Sony or a Sanyo? Had she done that, surely they’d have let go of the child. Yet some people didn’t believe she was rich. They proved to be wrong.

On a windy afternoon Jinli arrived at Five Continents Commons to buy a new apartment. Recently our city had put up a few residential buildings on the riverbank to attract foreign customers, mainly overseas Chinese from Southeast Asia and businesspeople form Taiwan. Jinli seemed still set on staying in Muji, or at least spending a few months a year here.

“Your passport, please,” said a slender young man, the manager of the estate.

Having handed him her passport, she felt something was wrong and wiggled slightly in the chair.

The man looked through the maroon-covered passport and said without raising his eyes, “This was issued by the People’s Republic of China. You’re a Chinese citizen?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I can’t help you. These apartments are only for foreign customers. We want hard currencies.”

“I’ll pay you U.S. dollars.” She blushed a little and clasped her hands. Her interlaced fingers made the ring invisible.

A gleam crossed his dark eyes, but he shook his head and said, “No. I’m allowed to do business with foreigners only.”

“What’s the difference if I pay the same money and the same price?”

“I’m sorry, Comrade. This is a rule I have to follow or I’ll lose my job.” He combed back his soft hair with his fingers.

So she gave up the idea of buying an ultramodern apartment, which would cost twenty thousand dollars — about a quarter-million yuan according to the exchange rate on the black market at the time. None of us would dare dream of having so much money! Not even a medium-sized factory here would have that amount of cash. Finally we realized we might have a millionairess among us. Some people began to suck up to Jinli, saying they would help her find a job or a place to stay. But she didn’t seem interested anymore. Whenever people condemned Chigan and his parents in front of her, she would say drily, “When I left I thought I could always come back.” And she began to avoid others.

Nobody knows when she disappeared from Muji City. It’s said that she left for Shenzhen or Hong Kong. Professor Fan, however, claims Jinli returned to New York to rejoin the old man and has changed her name. Chigan refuses to comment; maybe he doesn’t know her whereabouts either.

A month after the divorce, he got married again. The bride, who was a young widow with a four-year-old boy, works in the same institute with him. She’s a decent woman, loves her new husband, and takes good care of him and their home. We often see the newlyweds walking hand in hand in the evening. Never has Chigan looked so happy and healthy. His stomach has begun growing into a potbelly like a general’s.

More amazing is that Dandan adores her stepbrother. She tells others she always wanted a younger brother and now she finally has one. The boy is attached to her, too; together they read picture-storybooks and recite nursery rhymes every day after school. Asked whether her stepmother is kind to her, Dandan will say, “My dad found me a good mommy.” Sometimes she plays hopscotch with other children in front of the apartment building. A pair of huge butterflies, made of yellow ribbons, dangles at the ends of her braids as she capers around. Smiles widen her gazelle eyes.