The Cooked Seed (30 page)

Both Qigu and I liked the idea of having a Chinese name for our newborn. We found the name of a famous Chinese beauty, Luoyan. It was said that one look at Luoyan and the Moon Goddess would feel out-shined, flowers would close themselves, the fish would sink, and birds would drop from the sky. One of the submeanings of
Luoyan
was “wild goose.” I liked this because wild geese flew south every winter. I wanted my American child to keep the Chinese traditional values. To make sure that the name did not sound too odd to Americans, we consulted a musician friend, who converted
Luoyan
into
Lauryann
.

I returned home with Lauryann. She was a fairy-faced, seven-pound, healthy baby. We placed her in a straw basket lined with soft pink cotton blankets. Her grandparents received her with absolute delight and affection. I wrote to my parents in China after we arrived home. “Qigu, Lauryann, and I have completed a happy family.”

Qigu disappeared into his basement studio while the rest of the family got busy caring for the newborn. Still recovering from the surgery that repaired my cervix, for weeks I had to crawl around the house on all fours. The baby’s chaotic sleeping schedule drove my father-in-law’s blood pressure up and aggravated my mother-in-law’s heart condition. Concerned for my in-laws’ health, I tried to manage the baby care. To my great disappointment, I had no milk. My body had been so shocked by the trauma that my milk stopped after a few drops. So ended my dream of breast-feeding Lauryann.

Lauryann was fed milk formula. The minute she woke, my in-laws began to work on getting food into her mouth. The task exhausted them. Only when Lauryann was asleep could my in-laws get a break. Soon their daily objective was just to put Lauryann back to sleep. After sleeping all day, Lauryann became wide awake at night.

I found Qigu in his basement, his hideout art studio. He refused to deal with the city and fix the violations in the building. I complained to my in-laws, but they were offended.

“It’s not that Qigu is lazy,” my mother-in-law said to me. “We have been taking care of your baby. It should count as Qigu’s contribution.”

I didn’t want to argue with my mother-in-law, but I disagreed with her. Qigu’s behaviors and habits were being tolerated by his parents. They had always felt guilty about Qigu’s childhood, about their absence and how rough he’d had it on his own. They told Qigu that they were here to make up for his loss by taking care of his child.

Art had become Qigu’s sanctuary. It was where he happily lost himself, removing himself from reality. But in my mind, to use the American expression, shit was about to hit the fan. Tenants would move out if we left their windows unfixed for another winter. If we ignored the termites, they would chew the house down. Fuses kept popping when tenants used a hair dryer and a coffeemaker at the same time. If we continued to postpone hiring an electrician to update the lines, fire could break out. The sewage line had backed up several times already, and tenants had started to withhold their rents.

Tension between Qigu and I started to build. I was most upset when he slept till lunchtime. On top of taking care of Lauryann, I had begun the second round of revisions on my manuscript. My stomach developed
ulcers. I was still recovering from my torn cervix. Qigu had stopped working because we no longer carried a mortgage.

“Why can’t you get a job too, Sleeping Beauty?” I said to Qigu. “Why can’t you leave the house in the morning like my neighbor’s husband and do what a man is supposed to do?”

Qigu started to avoid me. He said that I had become “unreasonable, irrational, and irritable.” I popped like a lit Chinese firecracker. I didn’t know how to deal with the situation with a baby in our lives. I felt helpless and powerless as I watched my marriage begin to fall apart in front of my eyes.

I hated to fight, but I found myself in constant battles with Qigu.

“You are roasting yourself in a pressure cooker,” Qigu told me. “It is a self-imposed tragedy. A soap opera at the expense and sacrifice of our family. You are insane!”

I told Qigu that his “embracing a tranquil lifestyle” was backfiring. His lack of motivation to work and provide bothered me.

“You are no longer the girl I met six years ago,” Qigu responded. “You used to be capable of simple happiness. You’ve been bitten by the material bug. It’s sad that money has become your priority.”

When Lauryann was a year and a half old, I took her to the Bridgeport neighborhood park for her first swing. It was a lovely spring day. The sun was bright and the trees were budding with new leaves. The park was nearly empty. A group of teenage boys was sitting on the fence chatting among themselves. Lauryann was laughing on the swing. She had rarely been out since birth. She was chubby and didn’t like to move. Her favorite thing to do was to sit with her father on the couch and watch TV. She refused to play outside.

Her grandma told me that Lauryann was not fat enough. “It’s a sign of ill health,” she warned me. After my in-laws applied the “Peking Duck feeding style,” Lauryann gained weight. Her belly was so big that she earned the nickname Buddha. It was impossible to zip her clothes in the front. All the buttons had popped. What concerned me
was Lauryann’s cough. She had a cold that she seemed incapable of getting rid of. Every photo I took of her, there was snot dripping from her nose.

Lauryann’s laugher made my heart sing. As I pushed the swing, I thought she would soon learn to say “I love you, Mama,” and “I love you, Papa,” instead of “I love you, Chairman Mao.” I was proud of myself for being able to provide her a safe place.

I loved the part of American culture in which children were adored and celebrated. Lauryann was fortunate. I would not let her forget where her mother had come from, and what life could have been for her. It made me smile to imagine that my daughter would get sick of me saying, “When I was in China …” I would insist that she serve America when she grew up. She had been given so much, and much ought to be expected from her.

“Are you Chinese?” I heard a tender voice calling behind me.

It was a white boy about ten years old. “Are you Chinese?” he repeated.

“Yes, I am.” I returned his smile.

“They”—the boy pointed at three white teenage boys sitting on the fence—“they asked me to ask you if they can fuck you.”

I was stunned. I looked at the boy and said, “Did I hear you say the f-word?”

“Yes, you did. Fuck, fuck you!”

I stood, speechless.

The boy ran toward the teenage boys. The group received him and patted him on his back.

I wished that I could erase that memory. There must have been a reason these children did what they did. They must have been influenced or taught hatred. They hated Chinese because they didn’t know Chinese. I remembered how I was taught to hate Americans as a child. The time when my mind was locked in a permanent sunless winter. I believed that Americans were the source of evil. It was because I didn’t know Americans.

Suddenly I was fearful of the environment Lauryann would grow up in. I would not be able to sew her into my pocket in order to protect her.

I removed Lauryann from the swing and started to walk home. It was during that walk I realized my “calling.” Instantly I knew what I would do for the rest of my life. I wanted to introduce China and its people to Americans. My soon-to-be-published books might serve as grout between bricks. I would help defrost the ice in the hearts of Americans.

Intimacy took place less and less between Qigu and me. When it did, it was difficult. My body was dead to his and his to mine. We felt frustrated, defeated, and angry. Our hearts knew that the marriage had reached a breaking point, yet we refused to acknowledge that we no longer traveled the same path. We tried to act as if everything was normal. We fooled ourselves into believing that we could sail through life if we could just hold on to the pretending.

At first we slept in separate rooms. We didn’t say that we had no desire to be near each other. We said that it was the baby. The baby had taken over our lives. Everything else deserved to be ignored. We were living the saying, “When the shoes don’t fit, only the person who walks in them knows the pain.”

Yet we could no longer fool Qigu’s parents. They had been breathing the toxic air under the same roof. More and more I threw up the word
divorce
in our fights. Qigu thought that I was crazy to think about relocating because of what had happened at the Bridgeport Park. Lauryann was born here, he said; it would be her life and her fight, and I ought not try to live her life for her.

It was hard to keep our voices down. My mother-in-law told me that her heart had been skipping beats, and once it came to a long, frightening stop. My father-in-law’s blood sugar shot up. Both said that they worried about the baby, who seemed to have grown too quiet. When the in-laws saw that they could not stop us from fighting, they said that it was time for them to return to China.

My mother-in-law’s parting words to me were, “Don’t try to change my son. Trust me, I tried. I understand what you are going through. As a woman and mother, I am on your side. But I am Qigu’s mother. I have no choice but to take his side. All I can say to you is that it is not in Qigu’s nature to change. He is who he is. Doesn’t he have the right to stay true to himself?”

My father-in-law had given himself an American name, Old Frank.
His parting words were, “The bond between you and Qigu is a commitment. You live in a foreign country, and you depend on each other to survive. For the sake of Lauryann, please think twice about mentioning the word
divorce
again. My son has not done anything wrong. He follows his passion, and he works hard as an artist. You married him knowing that he was an artist, didn’t you? He has never cheated or lied to you. He has been his honest self since day one. You shared difficult times together in the past. Why can’t you share the good times now that you have green cards and a roof over your heads?”

I admitted that it was the money that was splitting us. I felt that we needed to start saving money in order to send Lauryann to a good school, a school where nobody would say to her, “Are you Chinese? Fuck you.”

“Money corrupts the soul,” Old Frank continued. “Money leads to greed. You were the girl who didn’t care about Qigu being penniless when you met him. You were good, pure, and virtuous. What changed you?”

“Being a mother changed me!” I replied. I could bear to live in this neighborhood with Qigu, but not with Lauryann on board. I had followed Qigu’s dream long enough. I didn’t mind that during winter, Qigu scraped the frost from inside the car window while I drove; I didn’t mind taping cardboard over the car’s side windows; I put up with neighbors who smashed our car because it was a wreck that made the neighborhood look bad. Did I have good memories of living here? Yes. Did I want my daughter to grow up here? No!

The impact of the fuck-you incident affected me. I no longer took Lauryann to swing in the park. I no longer felt safe. Qigu didn’t want to hear any of my reasoning. He did not want to move. I had been thinking about moving to California. It would be closer to China. More important, the fine weather would encourage Lauryann to get off the couch and play under the sun.

I told Qigu that I had investigated the quality of the public schools in the Bridgeport area. The south side of Chicago looked bad from elementary through high school. The academic scores of our district were shockingly low. I could not imagine enrolling Lauryann there.

“Lauryann is only a baby!” Qigu said. “The boat will straighten itself when it hits a bridge.”

I realized that I could never convince Qigu to agree to move. When
he emphasized that we didn’t have the money for it, I knew the real meaning behind his words. “I came to America to pursue my dream of becoming an artist,” he insisted. “I don’t want to be what you want me to be. My time has already been robbed over and over. How can I be a great artist if I am not given time to work on my paintings?”

“Your paintings are not selling,” I replied. “And we need money to survive.”

“That’s not true!” Qigu shot back. “We have enough to survive. We are not begging on the streets. We own the house. We get by shopping at the dollar store. It’s you who wants more! You want to live in a better area, with a better neighborhood park, a better car, a better school for Lauryann. But look around us, our tenants are Americans. They are fine with living the way they do; why can’t we be? Honestly, you have been corrupted, your soul sucked in by capitalistic greed!”

The essence of a good life, according to Qigu, was to go with the flow. “The catch is that one must let life happen, at its own pace, its own rhythm, and run its own course. All you need to do is be receptive. One must not rob oneself of the opportunity to experience life’s magic.”

I might not have been knowledgeable about ancient Chinese philosophy, but I did know one thing—I wouldn’t have landed on American soil if I had practiced “doing nothing.” Life’s magic would not take place if the fuck-you boys remained uneducated. I didn’t want to miss the boat in helping Lauryann to become the kind of human being she deserved to be.

I told Qigu, “The hell with do-nothing and your nothingness.”

As our relationship deteriorated, everything became a bother. For example, I could no longer stand Qigu’s habit of putting off the dishwashing till the next day.

“It’s not that I refuse to clean the dishes,” Qigu tried to justify. “I just don’t want to do it right after dinner. I don’t want to ruin the enjoyment, the aftertaste of a good meal, a moment of relaxation. I’ll clean the dishes in the morning.”

“You invite cockroaches and rats!” I yelled. “It is disgusting!”

As time went on, Qigu lost his charm in front of me completely. I was bothered by his messy hair, his made-in-China cheap slippers, his stooped posture, his pajamas topped by a down vest. He was no longer
the handsome man I used to know. He looked pathetic wearing the sweatpants his mother hand-knitted, which didn’t have a zipper in the front, leaving his crotch open.