The Cooked Seed (16 page)

In my memory, my mother always wore a cotton blouse she had dyed blue herself. In my sleep, I could feel her hand touching my forehead. I was a little girl once again having nightmares of her dying. Mother was oddly cheerful in my dreams. In Dr. Kelly’s words, it was her “disguise that served to hide her deepest fears.”

I remembered my mother taught me how to hand-wash the sheets. When the last bit of soap was gone and she couldn’t afford to buy more, she used alkaline cleansers. We cleaned everything with alkaline and even used it to wash our hair. Once I soaked my head in it for too long and damaged my scalp.

The day I heard the music of “Silent Night” outside the Marshall Field’s store in Chicago during Christmas, I wept. It was my mother’s song. I remembered Mother sang the tune when she felt that her tuberculosis was bringing her closer to an end. She never told me that it was a Western song, a Christmas song, and that she was a Christian.

I fell in love with “Silent Night” as a child because it was different from songs composed of Mao quotations. I hummed it with Mother even though I had no idea what it was about. In retrospect, Mother was wise not to reveal her Christian identity. I would have reported her if she had shared her faith with me. I had been conditioned to place my loyalty toward Mao before my mother.

“Silent Night” helped my mother get through hard times. We hummed the tune together during hunger, during steaming-hot summers when we lay soaked in our own sweat and were unable to sleep, and during frozen winters when we shivered under thin blankets.

It was in America, in Chicago, at Union Station, while I waited for the next train to go to work, that I heard “Silent Night” filling the air. This time I understood, for the first time, the lyrics! And they made
great sense to me. My eyes filled with tears because I was unable to share my joy with my mother. I wondered how she was doing. I wished that I could afford to call her. I wanted to tell her that I had made progress in English, so much that I understood her song.

The rent was the first thing that caught my eye. “$80 a month heat included,” the ad read. I had been paying $150. My schoolmates paid three times as much. After I finished translating the ad, I understood why the rent was so cheap. The location was undesirable; it was in a rough area on the south side of Chicago near Twenty-sixth Avenue and Wallace Street.

I phoned the number. A male voice answered. He said his name was Peng Xu. I detected his accent and asked if he was from China. He said he was from Beijing. I was glad. Peng Xu told me that he got his graduate degree in philosophy in China and was pursuing a Ph.D. in political science. I was impressed. I told him that it was too bad that we couldn’t be roommates since we were a man and a woman.

Peng Xu said there was no reason to behave as if we were still in China, a modern yet still feudalistic society. “In America a man and a woman in college share an apartment with separate rooms all the time. There are two bedrooms here. We would share only the living room, kitchen, and bathroom.”

I hesitated. I liked the price but was uncertain if it was the right thing to do—living with a male stranger. On the other hand, he sounded nice and was a few years older than me. His background wouldn’t be that different than mine. The fact that he was a Ph.D. candidate meant that he must be a highly educated man.

“By Chinese standards this is a mansion,” Peng Xu continued over the phone. “This apartment could have housed three families in China. You have complete privacy in your own bedroom.”

We set up an appointment to meet at the apartment. Peng Xu greeted me. He was in his early thirties. The apartment was half below street level, a basement unit. I was not bothered because the place was clean and the surroundings seemed safe. My room was more spacious than I had expected. I was pleased that it had a window.

Peng Xu told me that he was his parents’ youngest son and the
only one who made it to college. He was proud that he had brought honor to his family. His father had been a high-ranking Communist Party official who was tortured to death during the Cultural Revolution. Peng Xu was close to his mother, who was ill with terminal cancer.

I put down a deposit and was happy about the money I was going to save. The next day I moved in. The moment I put my things in my room, I discovered that my room didn’t have a door. The bedroom door had been removed from its hinges. Peng Xu explained that the Italian landlord who lived upstairs had removed all bedroom doors. It was to ensure that renters didn’t play the role of a “second landlord.” “The landlord only wanted to rent to a couple,” Peng Xu said. “I hope you don’t mind that I told him that we were a couple.”

“But we are not!” I said.

“It’s just formality, no big deal,” Peng Xu said.

Standing between the living room and the bedroom, I felt uncomfortable.

Peng Xu suggested that I hang a blanket as a curtain.

After hanging the blanket, I still didn’t feel right. “I can’t do this,” I said. “I can’t pretend that we are a couple.”

“I only said it to fool the landlord,” Peng Xu said. “We survived the Cultural Revolution. What else can’t we survive? Besides, I have already told the landlord that you’re my wife.”

My instincts told me not to go ahead, but my mind convinced me that I had no choice—living below my means was a necessity.

I hung an extra blanket over my door frame. I thought to myself that I would settle for now and move as soon as I could find someplace better.

Peng Xu made a person-to-person call to his mother in Beijing every Friday night. When the international operator connected the line and asked his mother, “Is this Mrs. Xu?” she would respond, as her son had instructed, “No, Mrs. Xu is not here.”

Peng Xu said this was how he avoided paying the expensive international long distance telephone fees and still find out if his mother was alive. Peng Xu was happy when he heard it more than once: “No, Mrs.
Xu is not here.” His mother repeated the phrase until the operator disconnected them.

I avoided being close to Peng Xu because his clothes were unwashed and he rarely bathed. To help pay his bills, he worked as a laborer at a railway construction site on weekends. Trying to save money, he rarely visited the coin laundry. His overgrown hair stuck out from his head. Luckily he didn’t need to shave. He was naturally beardless and smooth-skinned. He had a pair of sheep eyes, a flat nose, and a crooked mouth that pulled toward the right when he talked. He insisted that drinking beer was not a waste of time while doing laundry was.

Peng Xu ate while working on his research papers. He didn’t care that he scattered bread crumbs on the floor, attracting ants and cockroaches. He used an old–fashioned ink pen and wrote English in a Chinese calligraphic style. He labored on his research papers until he fell asleep. His socks were covered with ink stains.

There was no furniture in the apartment. Peng Xu picked up a few chairs from the trash dump in the back lane. “America, the land of treasure,” Peng Xu would sing as he collected mattresses, blankets, clothes, lamps, and cookware from Dumpsters.

Peng Xu was upset on New Year’s Eve. It would be 1987. His mother hadn’t answered the operator. “She didn’t sound right the last time I spoke to her,” Peng Xu told me. “Her illness must have worsened! She could even be dead!” He shook the phone set and punched the wall holding the receiver. “I could have comforted her. I should have had the operator connect us! To hell with phone bills!”

Peng Xu called China direct to friends and relatives and asked about his mother. “My mother is waiting to hear from me on her deathbed,” he yelled as he dialed. “Her last wish must be fulfilled even if it means that I have to rob!”

I wouldn’t have minded helping with the phone bill if I could make my own ends meet. I wanted desperately to call home myself. Besides her lung condition, my mother suffered from diabetes, stroke, and heart disease, and my father had developed a skin condition as a result of his chemotherapy.

Peng Xu kicked the TV set. He said that it was the only way to keep it working. The images were blurred and the figures distorted. Peng Xu
had found the TV set in the same trash Dumpster out back. He kept the volume high as if he needed to drown out everything else. Sometimes Peng Xu fell asleep and left the TV on all night.

The noise kept me awake. I found myself lying in bed waiting for Peng Xu to turn the TV off so that I could sleep. At three A.M., I’d decided I’d had enough. I’d walk into the living room and find Peng Xu sound asleep with the TV still on.

The phone bill came and it was $450. Peng Xu insisted that I share 50 percent of the payment.

“You called China, not me,” I protested.

Although his demand angered me, I paid. In the meantime, I announced that I would be moving out. I let him know that he still owed me twenty dollars that he’d borrowed for his share of the rent.

Peng Xu lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. “As I said, I told the landlord that you were my wife when I signed the lease. How would I explain your departure?”

“It’s not my business that you lied to the landlord,” I said.

“My mother is dead,” Peng Xu spoke, staring at the television screen. “I’ll never call China again.”

“She died? When?” I asked.

“Last night.”

Although this was expected, I was still stunned. I imagined the sadness he was going through.

“I am so sorry, Peng Xu. I feel terrible about your loss—”

He interrupted. “I wouldn’t do what you are doing to me if I knew your mother was dead.”

If I had the money, I thought.

“You are not moving out.” Peng Xu pinched the cigarette butt between the cracks of a broken floor tile. “I can’t afford this place alone.”

I was jolted from deep sleep. Peng Xu was on top of me.

Holding tight to my blanket, I asked, “What are you doing?”

He didn’t answer but wrapped his arms around me.

“I dreamed of my mother.” He was crying. “She asked for me! She kept asking for me!”

The room was as cold as an icebox. The wall was black. The more I tried to push him away, the tighter he held on to me. He sobbed like a helpless child. I let his arms stay around my shoulders.

I told myself that I was moving out in a week, that I would no longer have to put up with him. I would be nice to him for one last time. There would be no more fighting. No more arguing over phone bills, or his leaving the television on all night. I’d soon be able to sleep. He had lost his mother. He didn’t get to say good-bye to her. “This is not Mrs. Xu” were her last words to him.

His hands began to move over me. He tried to kiss me.

“No, please, Peng Xu.”

He refused and forced his way. He grabbed my breasts and said, “Shush! Nobody will know.”

I pushed him. “Please stop!”

He apologized but continued what he was doing.

I tried to reach the light, but he pinned my arms down. The weight of him was crushing me.

“I need you.” He buried his face in my chest. “I beg you.”

“Please get off me!”

“My mother sent me baby clothes she made herself,” he said in a strange voice. “She was an accomplished knitter. She quoted Confucius to me: ‘On all counts of bad piety, not to provide offspring counts as number one.’ … I’d love to give her a grandchild, but you and your type won’t even look at a man like me. No woman desires a man who is poor—not in a capitalistic society—no matter how rich I am intellectually.”

I began to scream.

He covered my mouth with his hand.

I struggled.

His hand pressed harder into my face.

“Don’t make me hurt you.” He held my ear between his teeth. “Be a nice girl.”

My tears came as I realized that I was unable to fight him.

“You can get me pregnant!” I begged, “I am not protected.”

He kept going. “Don’t wake up the landlord. Please, pretend that we are lovers. Pretend, for once.”

My mind’s eye saw glittering water under sunshine. It was the Shanghai Huangpu River, where I had once envisioned drowning myself.

He cried out on top of me. He removed himself and then exited the room. I heard him turn on the TV.

I missed my period. I made a call to the Planned Parenthood hotline and asked for the cost of an abortion.

“Five hundred dollars,” was the answer. I only had three hundred.

I ran into Stella in the school hallway. She asked how I was doing.

I tried to sound pleasant, but Stella detected something. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I have to run to work,” I said. I was afraid that I might break down and cry.

“Let me know if you need any help,” Stella said. “I bought a car. It’s a junk, but it runs great.”

I walked across State Street toward the Wallace bus stop. I was tempted by the McDonald’s ad for a ninety-nine-cent burger at the corner of Jackson Street, but passed it by. I prayed that I was not pregnant. I prayed hard.

The bus was late. The wind felt like needles on my skin and my toes were becoming numb. I covered my head with a scarf. Soon the moisture from my breath made my eyelashes stick together.

I decided that I would save the bus fare by walking back to the apartment. I walked as fast as I could. It was impossible to escape the thought that I might be pregnant. The snow-covered street became quiet once I was beyond downtown. By the time I reached Chinatown, the streetlights were on.

I saw an old lady walking ahead of me. She slowed down and appeared to be having difficulty. Before my eyes, she dropped her wallet.

I picked up the wallet and called out to her. “Madam, you dropped your wallet!” She was an elderly, gentle-looking black lady. She thanked me for the wallet.

“You don’t know what can happen to me if I lose this,” she said, opening her wallet. She showed me cash worth a few hundred dollars and identification cards. The lady pulled out a piece of paper with printed pink dots. She told me that it was her lottery ticket, and she had just won $50,000.

The old lady said that she would like to share some of her profit with me as a gesture of gratitude.

“I don’t think I deserve your money,” I told her.