Good Chinese Wife

by Susan Blumberg-Kason

  “My parents will be okay.” He laughed. “They’ll be tired. Xiaohong is hosting this party so we can discuss plans for Chinese music activities in the Bay Area.”

  The purpose of the meeting sounded reasonable. “But what about dinner? I don’t think Mama and Baba will like the food I make.”

  “I’ll cook dinner before I leave. Then they can take a rest.”

  • • •

  We arrived at San Francisco International Airport an hour before their plane was to land. The arrivals hall at the international terminal teemed with anxious family members waiting for loved ones to clear customs. I stood with Jake, his car seat secured in his stroller, while Cai paced the narrow passageway in front of the doors separating the arrivals hall from customs.

  When passengers started trickling through the security doors, Cai and I stood at attention. His mouth twitched in nervous excitement, and my hands gripped the handles on Jake’s stroller. After what seemed like hours, Mama and Baba strolled through the security doors. They didn’t look like peasants fresh off the boat. Their heads held high, they appeared to be seasoned travelers, full of confidence.

  “Yan.” Mama screamed when she spotted Cai.

  He ran to Mama, taking her carry-on and placing an arm around her shoulder.

  “Ni hao, ni hao.” Baba bobbed up and down. He peered into the stroller at a quiet, wide-eyed Jake, and giggled.

  Mama greeted me with a smile and then looked at Jake. “Ay yo. Tā zhēn tīnghuà.” He’s so obedient.

  Cai took the giant suitcase from Baba as we made our way to the garage. The five of us piled into our Civic, Mama in the back with Jake and me, and Baba up front with Cai. Driving up Highway 101, Cai wove through the dense Saturday afternoon traffic while Mama gushed over Jake, laughing happily. Baba marveled at how well Cai navigated the streets and steered our car. We exited at Paul Avenue, turning onto San Bruno Avenue, where I pointed out the Chinese barbecue shops, a dim sum restaurant, and a Chinese grocery.

  At home, Cai set about dicing and chopping garlic, ginger, green onion, and tofu before heating the oil in our wok. Mama and Baba oohed and aahed as I showed them their room and the hall bathroom they would use for the next year.

  We sat down to a late lunch of sautéed tofu and minced pork, canned sardines and black soy beans swimming in oil, stir-fried tofu and green onion, and chicken and tomato soup. That’s when Cai broke the news to Mama and Baba about his party that evening.

  “You won’t be here for dinner?” Mama sounded disappointed.

  “I’ll eat at the party. You’re tired and should go to bed first.”

  Mama and Baba nodded and started in on a second can of sardines.

  • • •

  The next morning, they found me in the kitchen as I finished nursing Jake, sitting in the calming sun. Mama pulled up a chair next to me, while Baba made himself a cup of tea from our hot water thermos.

  “Is Yan still sleeping?”

  “Yes. He came home pretty late, but he should be up soon.”

  “When did he get home?

  “A little after two.” I didn’t mean to be a tattletale, but they asked and I didn’t see a reason to protect Cai. After all, these were his parents and he had left them on their first night away from China.

  Mama and Baba looked at one another. “That’s too late.” Mama pouted.

  I shrugged, secretly glad she was on my side. “It’s normal for him. His friends live an hour away.”

  In Hidden River, Mama and Baba ate noodle soup for breakfast, so while Cai slept, I showed them our noodles, garlic, green onion, ginger, and leftover dishes from lunch and dinner, which they’d use as a soup base. Baba set to work on their breakfast while Mama burped Jake.

  Two hours later, Cai strolled downstairs while his parents and I were watching Chinese television and Jake was sleeping in his car seat. Mama stood to greet Cai. “You should come home earlier.”

  “Bùyàojin.” Cai brushed her off, saying it didn’t matter, and headed toward the kitchen. He might not have thought it was important, but I was grateful for Mama’s reprimand. At least I wasn’t the only one uncomfortable with him staying out until the early morning. It’s true I had encouraged Cai to meet people in the Chinese music community and knew these late meetings were crucial for networking. But I hadn’t planned for him to be out almost every night, and certainly not that late.

  Once I took the job at UCSF, we were able to afford cell phones. So now Cai had a way of contacting me from the car. I worried less about him wandering around the Bay Area by himself. But I wondered how these late-night excursions would affect Jake. When Jake was older, would his dad ever be home at night?

  • • •

  During the week, I left the house at seven in the morning to catch the bus downtown. Cai’s day, on the other hand, often didn’t begin until six in the evening when he picked me up at the Sixteenth or the Twenty-Fourth Street BART station. Later at night, after dinner, he would drive down to San Jose, Mountainview, or another city in the South Bay, often traveling a hundred miles round-trip.

  But no matter when Cai left the house, Mama always greeted me the same when I returned home.

  “Tā bù chī.” Mama’s eyes would bulge, telling me that Jake didn’t eat that day.

  “Well, he nurses all night and his diapers are always soaked in the morning. Are they dry during the day?”

  “No, they’re wet.”

  “Then he’s eating plenty.”

  “He should eat more during the day. It’s not enough to just eat at night.”

  That’s crazy. If he ate thirty ounces at night, why shouldn’t he eat less during the day? But arguing with Mama seemed futile. Every day we clashed over the same issue. I cringed when Mama came running into the living room when I came up from the garage. It was hard enough to be away from Jake all day. I just wanted to spend time with my baby and felt worn down by Mama’s unrelenting angst. But there was nowhere to escape. Cai and Baba disappeared with Jake into the kitchen as soon as Mama started haranguing me.

  I also clashed with Cai’s parents over Jake’s clothing. One day after work, I peeled three layers off Jake’s small body, leaving on his cotton onesie. Perspiration covered his forehead and his hair was so sweaty that he looked like he’d just come from a bath. Baba usually was calm and comfortable living in the periphery, but he rushed up to me. “It’s cold outside. He needs all those clothes.”

  “I know, but it’s hot inside.” I pointed toward the thermostat, which controlled the central heat in our house.

  “He’ll freeze with just one layer.”

  But it wasn’t cold inside. I didn’t know how else I could explain central heat and how the outside temperature could be 50 degrees and the inside 72 degrees. Cai stood by, mute as a stone statute.

  “I’ll call the doctor and see what he says.” I picked up the phone and dialed Kwok’s number, which I knew by heart after making Jake’s many well-baby appointments. The pediatrician kept evening office hours a couple nights a week, and luckily that night was one of them.

  “Sorry to bother you, Dr. Kwok, but I have a question about clothing Jake. He’s five months old, about seventeen pounds, and we keep our house at seventy-two degrees. How many layers should he wear indoors?”

  “If you have central heat, a diaper and T-shirt are enough when he’s awake. At night he can wear a medium-weight sleeper. Make sure he’s not too hot.”

  I thanked Dr. Kwok and relayed his message to my in-laws and Cai after hanging up.

  “What?” Baba violently pulled down his collar and revealed a thick sweater I hadn’t noticed before. Under that he showed a thermal undershirt. “If I wear all these layers, there’s no way Jake can wear just a diaper and T-shirt.”

  I stared at Baba’s layers. How did he not pass out in all those clothes? He wore the same clothes here with central heat a
s he did in Hidden River without as much as a space heater. Could he really not tell the difference?

  Baba lovingly replaced Jake’s layers and rocked him in his arms as if he were protecting him from a life of destitution. There was no point in picking a battle with Baba, the only semblance of calmness in this anxious household. I would wait to undress Jake after bringing him upstairs for bed a couple of hours later. Just as when Cai admonished me not to take a shower for a month after Jake’s birth, I pretended to agree but would do as I wished once I put Jake to bed.

  If my in-laws’ protests about Jake’s eating and clothing weren’t stressful enough, his sleeping habits capped the trifecta of cultural child care differences I endured with them. Mama and Baba arrived in San Francisco a couple weeks shy of Jake’s third month, before he’d developed a regular sleeping pattern. Jake enjoyed catnaps in his car seat throughout the day and longer stretches of sleep in the confined quarters of his bassinet at night.

  During Jake’s fourth and fifth months, when he should have learned to soothe himself to sleep and use his crib during the day, Mama and Baba played cards or watched Chinese soap operas as they rocked Jake to sleep in his car seat. When Jake outgrew the car seat as a bed, Mama or Baba cradled him in their arms until he dozed off. Because of this, at around five months, he started having difficulty falling asleep.

  One rare evening when Cai didn’t go out, I brought Jake upstairs a little before 8:00 p.m., the time he usually started to wind down. Jake thrashed about and couldn’t seem to settle himself to sleep. I brought him back downstairs where Cai and his parents sat mesmerized before a Chinese nighttime soap opera, thinking that he must not be tired yet.

  The loud voices from the television didn’t help Jake calm down. He cried and arched his back when I held him in my arms. Mama stood before me and clapped her hands twice. She then held them out in front of her, waiting for me to hand Jake over.

  I shook my head. “It’s okay. I’ll just bring him upstairs again. He needs to learn to sleep in his crib.” But when I put him in his crib, his screams filled the house, sending Cai sprinting up to our bedroom.

  “What’s wrong with Jake?” Cai yelped.

  “Nothing’s wrong. I’m just trying to get him to sleep in his crib.”

  Cai cradled Jake in his long arms, swaying like a hammock in the wind. He bent his head over Jake, his lips pursed and eyes closed like a meditating monk.

  “I think we need to let him fall asleep on his own,” I said. “This isn’t a good habit.”

  Continuing to rock Jake in rhythmic motions, Cai ignored me. If he wasn’t going to speak to me, I wasn’t going to argue with him. Fighting about this wouldn’t help Jake sleep any faster. So I left Cai to calm Jake, joining Mama and Baba back downstairs. I knew that I’d have to get Jake to sleep on his own, especially because Cai often wasn’t home when Jake went to bed. I would start sleep training when Cai was at one of his meetings.

  Ten minutes later, Cai vaulted downstairs like a victorious hero, finding Mama and Baba engrossed in another mainland soap opera. All three of them watched the show as I strained my eyes to read by the light of the only floor lamp.

  Just then I heard a shrill cry from above.

  Cai and his parents, eyes glued to the TV, didn’t look up as I climbed the stairs.

  I spent the rest of the night lying in bed, trying to nurse Jake to sleep. Every time it seemed like I could creep away to join the family downstairs, Jake stirred and began crying again. I ended up falling asleep next to him and didn’t wake up until my alarm clock sounded the next morning.

  The next evening, I came home to find that Mama had dressed Jake in four layers. Before I had walked two steps toward the kitchen, she started in on Jake’s failure to eat. I knew I couldn’t convince her that Jake was perfectly healthy, so I simply smiled and made my way to the kitchen where Cai was feeding Jake in the high chair. During dinner later, I told Cai and his parents that I thought we should let Jake cry when we put him to bed at night so he could learn to fall asleep on his own.

  “It’s not going to hurt him,” I said. “He’ll be fine.”

  “Jake will get sick!” Mama interjected. “He can’t cry.”

  “That’s not true.” Stay calm, I told myself. Me getting upset wouldn’t lessen Mama’s hysteria. “All babies cry. You had four and I’m sure they cried.”

  Mama’s eyes bulged and her lips pursed like Cai’s did when he got upset. She glared at me as if I’d just sentenced Jake to a life of hard labor, not to a comfortable crib in a quiet part of the house, away from the blasting television spewing overdramatized dialogue from Chinese soap operas. Sometimes I wondered how Mama had raised four kids, many of them without Baba’s help since he was stationed to teach in another village during the last half of the 1960s.

  “She’s right,” Cai jumped in. “Jake shouldn’t cry.”

  Are you kidding me? First I couldn’t put my own baby to sleep the way I thought best and now Cai was defending his mother. What had happened to the supportive husband back in Hidden River who told his mother to stop badgering me about my eating habits and about raising our baby while we lived elsewhere?

  Never one to be overly patriotic, I suddenly felt like screaming that we were in America, not central China. I knew that Mama and Baba, and even Cai, worked hard to take care of Jake and that their ideas of how to raise a baby were voiced with Jake’s best interests in mind. But for a moment I wanted to remind them that none of us would be able to live in this house if it weren’t for me. I exhaled slowly, trying to stay rational.

  “He’s my baby,” I said slowly and softly. “I want him to be able to sleep on his own.”

  “Jake is my baby, too,” Cai spat. “Grandmothers, mothers, they’re all the same. If my mother doesn’t want Jake to cry, he won’t cry.”

  If your mother is the same as me, you should have married her. Mama and Baba stood in silence, staring at the linoleum floor. I wished they would stand up for me just once.

  Interactions like these began to make me feel more like a lowly daughter-in-law in a Chinese backwater town where I had no rights and no say. I desperately needed to redirect my role at home, but trouble continued to greet me every time I walked in the front door after work, even after Mama and Baba had lived with us for a few months. Mama never stopped lamenting Jake’s poor eating habits, which seemed to contradict his 80th and 90th percentiles for height and weight.

  After Jake turned six months old, he started to eat rice cereal and jarred pureed baby food. He still nursed throughout the night and woke with a diaper so saturated that most mornings, I found glistening crystals in the fat folds in his groin.

  The only thing that saved me from going out of my mind was my parents’ upcoming visit during their spring vacation in mid-March. Only a little while longer, and there would be people in the house who would stand up for me unconditionally and be on my side.

  Chapter 35

  A Letter from Yoshimoto

  Soon after the Chinese New Year, which we celebrated with a large dinner at home, Cai greeted me with “Great news!” as I walked through the door after work.

  Had he found a job? Although he continued working with his friends to produce the grand concert for later that spring, he had also been talking about looking for a full-time job. Mama had started pestering me to find one for him so I sent out a few inquiries to community colleges for teaching jobs, even though they were positions for which Cai had shown little interest. Now I felt hopeful. Maybe one of these had come through.

  Cai’s eyes glowed for the first time in months. I could barely stand the wait.

  “Japanese Father is coming to visit!”

  “When?” My voice simultaneously squealed and cracked. Coming to visit meant staying with us. Yet as unappealing as it sounded to me, what could I do? Yoshimoto had given Cai all that money. I was fairly sure Cai had told Mama and Baba a
bout the money, but for them that amount seemed no different from the $13,000 my grandmother had given us to buy a car. Both Yoshimoto’s money and my grandmother’s gift were more than anyone in Cai’s family would see in a lifetime. For once, I was happy to have a full-time job so my interaction with Yoshimoto would be minimal.

  “Next month. I just got his letter.”

  “When next month?”

  “Let me see.” Smiling, he took two sheets of tissue-thin writing paper from the dining room table and skimmed black ink-brushed Chinese characters until he found the dates. “It’s the fourteenth through the twenty-first.”

  My stomach turned over. Leave it to Yoshimoto to plan his trip the very week my parents were scheduled to visit. I never imagined that Cai would tell Yoshimoto when my family planned to visit—so Japanese Father could schedule his trips to see Cai at the same time—but later I did wonder about that. Had it been a simple coincidence, or had Cai requested Yoshimoto’s presence to avoid spending time with my family?

  Cai’s smile quickly turned to a frown. “What’s wrong with you? You have that face again.”

  I have that face? “My parents are coming that week. I told you a month ago.” They only had one week of spring vacation.

  “That’s okay. We have enough room.”

  “We do? Mama and Baba are in one room, and my parents will be in another. Where will Japanese Father sleep?”

  “Can American parents sleep on the living room sofa bed?”

  My parents would be willing to do that and would be polite to the professor, just as they had been in China and in Hong Kong. Yoshimoto’s radar strikes again, I imagined my mom saying when I told her the news. They wouldn’t complain, but I wasn’t sure I could remain so composed.

  • • •

  On the day of Japanese Father’s arrival, around the same time I was looking forward to my parents’ impending visit, I returned home after work to find Mama, Baba, Yoshimoto, and Cai at the kitchen table, their chopsticks lazily strewn across their bowls. Jake sat in his high chair, an empty jar of baby food on his tray. Uncharacteristically Mama didn’t bombard me with Jake’s failure to eat or drink milk during the day.