The Cooked Seed (28 page)

I rarely had the time to stay in touch with my girlfriends. All they knew was that I had been living with Qigu. My pride kept me from admitting that I was in a mess, even that I was unhappy about not being proposed to. The way I dealt with it was to be an ostrich and bury my head in the sand, all the while praying for things to go right.

I feared that Qigu might leave me if I pressed him too hard on marriage. I was convinced that no man would want me. My beauty had
faded and I was at a loss about what else I could do. I felt my only option was to squeeze my dream and make do with what I had.

Being pregnant was the first thing I ever did for myself. It was my act of rebellion against the world, and I found it exhilarating. Falling deeply in love with the baby growing inside of me, I couldn’t say that I was not worried or frightened. I was, but I also had never felt so empowered, so charged with energy and strength. If I wasn’t experiencing romance with Qigu, I was with my baby. Each day became a song, each day a blessing.

Although Qigu and I no longer had the mortgage to worry about, we had vacancies. Our neighbors protested when we rented one of the units to two black students from the Illinois Institute of Technology. We ignored the threats. We saw no reason not to rent to the black students.

As a result, our car windows were smashed. More threats were posted on our door.

We didn’t report the incidents to the police because we felt that the entire neighborhood was against us. We feared, however, the police might not come to our aid if something should happen.

Qigu and I discussed the hostility with our black tenants. We told them that we didn’t feel comfortable as Chinese living in the area either. Once, Qigu was pelted with stones on the street, not just by whites but by blacks as well. Another time, a group of teenage gang members from the projects on the other side of Thirty-fifth Street attacked us. We let the tenants know that we feared for their safety. They were welcome to stay, but we couldn’t guarantee their safety.

The black students finally decided to cancel their lease and move out.

We felt terrible, but what could we do?

After I mailed the manuscript off to my editor in New York, I joined Qigu on the job. I was aware of the risk of a miscarriage. My thinking was: Chinese peasant women continued to work in the rice paddies, carry manure, and feed the animals while pregnant. I saw myself doing
the same. I was careful climbing ladders. I wore a mask when applying drywall joint compound. I continued to paint the walls and clean up debris. I made sure not to overload the buckets of cement when I carried them to the third floor.

Morning sickness was dramatic for me. I didn’t mind. I considered it a sign of the fetus’s vitality. I kept eating and kept throwing up. I grew used to my face hanging over the toilet bowl. For weeks, I couldn’t get my stomach to take food. My energy dropped and I wanted to rest, but I continued working. It was important to help Qigu as much as I could before my belly got too big.

In the meantime, I had a secret. I had prayed that my child would be a boy. I was not discriminating against females. As a Chinese female, I simply understood that I belonged to a discriminated-against class. My whole life had been proof of this. I had hit hurdles that men never had to face. Those hurdles were both physical and mental. Chinese culture was deeply prejudiced against females, even under Communism when women were supposed to hold up half the sky. I did not want my child to be born with any disadvantage if I could help it. Being male meant respect and opportunity. Though to a lesser degree, I saw that this was true in America as well.

I visited dusty Chinese herb stores and purchased ingredients to help boost my body’s chemistry. The fragrant contents of the little bottles promised to create an “environment” that would “welcome” a male. I followed the herbalist’s instructions on washing my behind each night with a special formula of herb water. If there had been a Buddhist temple in the area, I would have gone to pray.

When Qigu voiced his resentment and sang his I-am-a-starving-artist song, I told him that the baby would be my responsibility alone.

“We are not married anyway,” I said. “I will register the child as being born to a single mother.”

Qigu said, “Let’s get married. I don’t want the baby to follow your bad example.”

I found myself trying to survive the moment. We were putting away the tools after the day’s work. Realizing that I was hurt, Qigu explained that he had meant humor.

What I felt was that Qigu saw no reason to hide his true feelings. It was nevertheless a marriage proposal. An official one. The one that I had been waiting for for six years. I tried not to break down in front of Qigu. I never imagined that the marriage proposal I would receive would be like this. I wished Qigu had not proposed. I wished that he might have made an effort to fake a proposal.

For the first time I couldn’t bear to look at him—the father of my child, the father who felt cheated and trapped. Qigu had the right to a lifestyle he desired, which did not include a child. I was too afraid to leave. I was disgusted with myself for driving both of us into this.

I don’t want the baby to follow your bad example.
The words kept stabbing me in the gut.

I loaded construction debris into garbage bags and struggled to hold back my tears. I had lost my dream—to feel like a princess for once. Something precious in me died. Ever since I had read
Jane Eyre
and learned the meaning of love, I had wanted love. I dreamed of love as a Chinese peasant might. I had fancied myself as a peasant-wife planting rice with an infant tied to my back. I had imagined myself walking the edge of a field carrying lunch to my husband. Buckets of cool water, at both ends of a bamboo pole that sat across my shoulders, would sway and slosh as I drew near. My husband would greet me with a sweet smile. He would take a break from his plowing. I would hand him a towel to wipe the sweat from his face. I would sit down on the edge of our land and breast-feed my baby.

“Really, I meant humor,” Qigu said again. “You are overreacting as usual.”

I had nothing to say.

Qigu shrugged, “Well, I can’t stop you if you want to take me the wrong way. Let me know when you are ready. We can go to the city hall and register for a marriage license.”

I would have refused. His words felt like insult. But the pregnancy changed my perspective. All I cared about was the baby inside me. I owed this child a set of parents.

“I am ready,” I said to Qigu.

We made an appointment with the city to be married in front of a judge on February 6, 1991.

We couldn’t afford a wedding, but I still longed to celebrate. Wasn’t it, after all, the biggest moment in my life? Shouldn’t I share the news, or call someone and announce, “Hi, I am getting married tomorrow!” I wanted a blessing. I thought about calling my family in China, Joan Chen, and Margaret.

I dropped the idea because truth hit—I would be sharing false happiness. Qigu wasn’t marrying me because he was in love with me, although he tried to convince me and himself otherwise. Qigu’s “bad example” had been seared into my mind: It contained all of his reluctance, resentment, and regret. I felt sad. Qigu didn’t look forward to marrying me. He was only doing me a favor. He was defeated.

Instead of preparing a celebration party, or giving my wedding dress a final inspection, Qigu and I worked on the apartments. We drove to the hardware store and purchased plumbing supplies. We ate Polish hot dogs. After returning home, Qigu went down to the basement to work on his paintings. “Good night,” he said.

I reheated leftover food and ate dinner alone. I washed the dishes. Afterward, I sat in the kitchen. I was overwhelmed by sadness.

Qigu hadn’t revealed anything to his parents about my pregnancy, although they knew that I had been living with him. Qigu told me that his parents were “stiff-minded” folks, former Communists. “All they did with their lives was blindly follow the Party,” he said. “My mother was never offered Party membership in the end, which crushed her. My father was a veteran Party member, but he lived a crappy life. He was distrusted,
punished, and sent to a reform camp. His bourgeois family background was a stain he could never escape from.” Qigu and his younger brother grew up on the streets of Shanghai while their parents were denounced. His mother was tormented by jealous coworkers and suffered a mental breakdown, from which she never completely recovered.

The last time Qigu had heard from his mother was on a cassette tape. She mailed it across the ocean, which must have cost half a month’s salary. The tape was ninety minutes long and advised Qigu on what to do and what not to do, with an emphasis on safety and food poisoning.

Qigu asked me to press the fast-forward button. I felt sorry for his mother. I wished that I could write her to tell her that her son was safe.

I imagined that my future in-laws would be excited to learn that they were going to have a grandchild. When I visited China two years before, Qigu’s father sat me down and shared the history of his family. After Mao died and the Cultural Revolution ended, his “stain” had miraculously been transformed into proof of his prestige. “My ancestors, the Jiangs, were first silkworm farmers and then silk merchants from Zhejiang province in southern China. By the turn of the century, they became the founding fathers of China’s textile and banking industry.” The old man recalled his youth as a romantic idealist who joined the Communist Party to change the world for the poor. Although he was dedicated to his work, he never rose far in rank. “Qigu didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in his mouth. We lived in one small room located in Shanghai’s Xuhui district. It was too crowded for five people from three different generations.”

As we spoke, Qigu’s mother cooked rice by the staircase. The scene filled my heart with warmth because I identified with their poverty. I took comfort in the thought that Qigu came from a humble home. I assumed that he would understand suffering—a quality I’d look for in the man I would marry.

Qigu did not have fond memories of his childhood. Fear had been his constant companion. He was beaten by street gangs while his parents were away serving at a series of reform camps. Qigu resented that his father’s family had “donated” its fortune to the government in order to prove its loyalty to the Communist Party. “I could have been a rich man today,” Qigu once said to his father.

“It was a forced donation,” the father argued. “You wouldn’t have escaped punishment and gone on to live the life you now enjoy if I had failed to comply with orders! You definitely would not have been given a passport to America!”

Qigu and I arrived at the Chicago city hall. It was crowded with people. A lady received us and gave us forms to fill out. She then directed us to a window that read RECORDING, where we filed our forms.

Qigu grinned at the signs above and said, “At this window you file a marriage application, and at the next window you file a divorce application.”

“Please don’t rain on my parade,” I said.

“Sorry,” Qigu responded. “I just think humans are foolish creatures.”

We were led to an empty waiting room and told that a court judge would call us. After a long wait, Qigu and I wondered if we should knock on the door where there was a sign that read COURTROOM. As we were about to knock, the door opened. A large, dark-skinned man appeared. He seemed to be in the middle of changing his costume.

“Stay outside, please!” he said loudly. “I’m not ready yet.” He then closed the door in our faces.

We went back and sat down on a bench in the corner. Other couples slowly filled the room. They walked through the doorway holding hands or smiling at each other. The men were in pressed suits and the women in pretty and ceremonial dresses.

All of a sudden I felt awkward. I wished that I had dressed up like the other brides in the room. Qigu and I wore clothes bought from thrift stores. He was in a casual navy-blue jacket, while I was in a mixed-color blouse matched with India-style pants and matching-colored shoes.

Qigu detected my discomfort and leaned over. “It’s all a circus show anyway,” he whispered in my ear. “Fifty percent of these marriages will end in divorce.”

I looked at him. “Will we be the fifty percent divorced, or the fifty percent who stay married?”

Qigu gave a sage’s smile and said, “Of course the latter.”

The door to the courtroom finally opened. To our surprise, a happy couple came out followed by the smiling judge in his black gown. The bride wore a white dress and had white gardenias in her hair.

The happy couple kissed passionately. Their arms were wrapped around each other as they exited the room. I was moved by their affection and my uneasiness deepened.

“How come we haven’t been called?” Qigu said. “The rules say, ‘First come first serve.’ ”

I looked around. “Maybe we should check with the clerk again.”

A female clerk came into the room and yelled, “Q Young and Amen!”

Nobody responded.

“Q Young and Amen!” the clerk repeated.

The couples in the room all looked at each other.

“Last call, Mr. Q Young and Miss Amen!”

“That must be us!” I cried to Qigu. “Americans can’t pronounce
Qigu
. They can’t sound
Qi
as ‘chi.’ They pronounce it as ‘Q.’ They pronounce
Jiang
as ‘young.’ ” But this was the first time anyone had turned
Anchee Min
into “Amen.”

Qigu and I stood in front of the judge. The man looked straight at us with his big, penetrating eyes. I grew nervous, because he remained silent, as if he was taking his time to examine us. I noticed that he was looking at our clothing. I regretted that I had been following Qigu’s sense of fashion. I believed that Qigu knew how to dress
cool
.

Finally the judge spoke. “Have you a ring?” His voice was like a church bell.

I wasn’t sure if I had heard him right. I was relieved when the judge turned to Qigu. He stared at him, waiting.

“Ex- … excuse me?” Qigu leaned forward.