THE ONLY THING I have from home is a jade necklace that my mother gave me. I come from a small Vietnamese village, My Lai, where we had a small rice field on which we relied for a living. The river gave us water and a modest harvest. Two harvest seasons ago, Mother died giving birth to a baby brother, a silent infant who never lived to see the sun rise. Father took to the bottle, stopped working the fields, and our growing debt was like a balloon filling with air, ready to burst. Every store I went to, I had to owe money or give them something in return. Some of our neighbors tried to help me plant the rice sprouts I’d gotten on credit, but Father, drunk on cheap rice wine, waved a rusty sickle at them, threatening to kill anyone who meddled in our business.
When young men in our village asked for my hand in marriage, he scared them all away. “Anyone who touches my daughter will die.”
I was only sixteen and wanted more. I ran away.
My childhood friend Han gave me a lift to Saigon on his new scooter and introduced me to his friend’s cousin, a big-deal business lady, Mrs. Rie, who worked in the city. She was the wife of a man who owned a special agency, a company that introduced Vietnamese girls to foreigners as brides. I had no money, couldn’t even pay the matchmaking fee, but Mrs. Rie persuaded her husband to let me owe it to them until I was successfully married to a foreign client.
She looked me up and down. “You’re not especially beautiful, legs too thick and hips too narrow, face all bones, but I think someone will like you.”
They showed pictures they had taken of me, dolled up with make-up and swathed in elegant clothing, to their clients, and in three weeks, they had sealed my marriage with a Taiwanese man.
“But I don’t speak Taiwanese.”
“Everybody speaks Chinese there, my dear. Plus he will not mind, I guarantee you.” Mrs. Rie smiled, nice to me all of a sudden now that I was bringing them business. “He’s looking for a wife, not a conversation partner. Just smile and look pretty and cook and clean.”
She was pleased that the Taiwanese man was willing to pay nearly half as much as an American would have for a Vietnamese bride. I never saw any of that money, of course. It all went to the agency and they even claimed I owed them many fees for the arrangement as well as rent for the time I slept in the cockroach-ridden warehouse they kept me in, so in the end I got little more than a coin purse of pocket money. My new husband met me at the Chiang Kai-shek International Airport. He was holding a sign with my name written in English: Lei Lee. My last name would be changed soon. My husband was Mr. Ting, and I was to become Lei Ting.
All the buildings in Taipei are so tall and shiny, the people so happy, that it is strange to me. Their faces are Chinese faces, not terribly different from us Vietnamese, maybe a little coarser, broader, yet their lives the exact opposite. Here, rice comes from burlap bags in supermarkets, not the fields. I don’t know where the fields are here.
My husband, a retired soldier, has a bearded chin that scrapes my skin when we kiss, hollow eyes I am afraid of meeting, and thinning, gray hair. We communicate with a few words of Chinese at first, mostly gesturing. I prefer nighttime, when no language is necessary. He gives me little medicine pills to swallow, draws an X with his fingers, and makes the shape of a woman’s round belly on me. He does not want me to become pregnant, and these pills will protect me.
We live on the eleventh floor of a residential building. Our apartment has just one bedroom and is smaller than our old hut in Vietnam, but I like it here because it is clean and has large windows to let the sun shine in, just like the outdoors back home, except with air conditioning.
The strange thing is that there is no source of fire in his apartment, no stove, nothing to cook with. His dinner comes from the night market: an oyster omelet from a food stand, along with rice, vegetables, and fish from a cafeteria. He shows me the way twice, and soon it is my job every night to buy his omelet and some cafeteria food for both of us.
From nine-to-three every weekday he sweeps and mops the floor in a public library nearby while I go to the morning market, take a walk in the neighborhood, clean the house, or watch Taiwanese television at home. We have Japanese cable channels, but I prefer local soap operas. I learn a lot of Chinese from them. I especially like the period shows where all the characters wear traditional Chinese clothing, flowing robes embellished with sashes, wide sleeves that flutter. I would have liked to wear those clothes. But, I still wear my plain blue gowns that begin at the jade necklace around my neck and end at my ankles, even in the hot Taiwanese summer. It is important for me to still feel like I am Vietnamese, because even if I married a Taiwanese man, it does not change me inside; I am still Lei Lee. I will not forget my ancestors, and it is important to honor them.
As I venture out more during the day, I make friends. Most of them are maids and nannies from Vietnam. If given a choice, one always picks their own. My companions tell me the latest gossip. One woman, Taiyun, has a neighbor who got a mail-order bride from Russia. Russia! She has skin the color of milk and porcelain. White women are idolized goddesses in Asia.
“How can you possibly buy a white woman?” I ask.
Taiyun smiles slyly and makes the motion of rustling money in her right hand.
“Lots and lots of money. And do you know what, that man’s family treats her as if she were a princess instead of a mail-order bride—no offense, Lei Lee.”
“What do you mean?”
“They are afraid that she will be bored, so they find little kids to be her English students, even though her English is so bad that I would laugh at it. But they don’t care, they think she is so wonderful to marry their son. Rich people, of course. They’re just nutty. And they can’t wait till she gives them little mixed, foreign-looking babies, beautiful and creamy-skinned.”
“Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to teach English, I don’t envy her that,” I say.
“The point is, they try so hard to please her,” Taiyun says. “From what I can tell, your husband treats you like my employer treats me. Like a servant. Because they bought us— they know it and we know it.”
“Well, I don’t think of it that way. I want to please my husband because if he is happy then I will be happy because he will be good to me.”
“Right, right,” Taiyun scoffs. “You are perfect material for a mail-order bride. Exactly what he ordered.”
“That’s not a very nice thing to say.”
“Let me ask you, if you go out to buy his dinner in the night market and come back, say, twenty minutes later than usual, will he be mad?”
“Maybe, if he is hungry. Once I walked a little slow, and—”
“Ah ha! That’s exactly what I mean. He treats you like a servant. A man will not scold his wife like a child for being late. He would only scold a servant.”
I don’t say anything. Half of me sees Taiyun as being jealous of my legal status as a wife here, my freedom to stay in Taiwan as long as I like without having to work on a temporary contract or bribe officials for a visa. The other half of me understands Taiyun perfectly. Mr. Ting feels that I’m something he owns, someone he can order around. Indeed, I cannot even think of him in my mind as Hsia, which is his name—to me he’s always Mr. Ting. My friends are used to it and no longer laugh at me for calling my own husband by the title Mr., but I still feel embarrassed and confused about who he is to me. My companion? Lover? Master?
I am still thinking of what Taiyun said today as I leave the house to get dinner.
It’s a fifteen-minute walk to the omelet stand, where a long queue winds to the left, pushed back by the passing crowd. The owner notices me and nods. I come daily, and today he’s in a good mood. He gestures to the cook to give him the next omelet, catches it in a styrofoam container as the cook tosses it to him, and with a swift flick with his ladle, drizzles coral-colored, tangy sauce all over it. I hand him five ten-NT coins and he gives me the container in a little red-and-white striped plastic bag.
“Just one, not two?” He winks first one, then his other eye. “Buy one get one free, only for you, number one customer.”
He knows I am buying Mr. Ting’s omelet. He also knows I am a Vietnamese mail-order bride, and leers. I wave my hand no and walk away as politely as possible.
I think oyster omelets are disgusting, and overpriced. I ask Mr. Ting why he will not get a stove, so I can cook all this food for less money than we are paying the vendor and cafeteria owner.
“Can you make o ah jian just like the stand? Eh? What about the flavor of the special sauce?”
“I could learn.”
“Forget it. I don’t want the smell of cooking in my home,” he says. “It is a small space, and I won’t have it smelling of grease and oysters. Just go buy the food and stop questioning your husband.”
I feel the heavy ring of keys in my pocket as I drag my feet in plastic sandals through the night market. Because of moments like this, that come back to me over and over again, when he ends the conversation with scolding me, the resentment wells up. But I vent it in small ways, little by little, so that I can still like him. Sometimes I spit in his coffee in the morning, or into the special sauce on the omelet.
Recently, I stopped taking the little pills. Even if Mr. Ting doesn’t want a child, I want a son, a boy whom I could love, one who would grow up to be tall and strong and who would take care of me. I don’t believe that a man would really not want a child once it is here—doesn’t every man want a boy, a small version of himself? It will make him feel manly, to have produced another human being, especially in Mr. Ting’s case—he is forty-five years old already—what does he have to look forward to besides family? When I am pregnant, I’m sure Mr. Ting will change his mind and love the child. It’s only human nature.
At the cafeteria, the lao ban nian, female owner of the store, smiles and nods when I come in. She works hard and is polite to all customers, adult or children, mail-order brides or not. As she hands me two paper containers for the food and a plastic bag for steamed rice, I open my mouth to speak, which surprises her because she has probably never heard me talk before. She must have thought I did not speak Chinese.
“Can I have su pi nong tan?” Su pi nong tan, crisp skin thick soup, is a creamy Western-style soup cooked in a soup tureen with a layer of golden puffed pastry baked on top. It would be the ultimate luxury to taste; I could imagine the buttery flakes of pastry contrasting with the rich texture of the soup. I would eat it so eagerly my tongue and the roof of my mouth would burn, but it would be worth it. Several days ago, I watched an episode of a food channel show about gourmet restaurant dishes that featured the soup, and could not stop thinking about it since.
“Why, sure, of course you can have some soup!” She smiles broadly. She is happy for more business, especially since su pi nong tan is not cheap, one hundred NT per bowl.
“But it is too hot for you to carry home. You see, the soup bowl is baked in the oven.”
I think about this. “It’s okay, I will eat it here.”
The lao ban nian smiles and calls to her chef, a short, handsome man who looks half Taiwanese, half some kind of Caucasian. “One su pi soup!” Then she turns to me courteously. “Please have a seat and wait here.”
“I’ll get the food first,” I say and walk toward the steaming trays of green, brown, and yellow dishes shiny with grease.
I pay her in advance, handing over two crumpled bills.
“Are you sure it is okay if you make Mr. Ting wait?” She looks at me with concern. Why is a stranger worried about me being scolded by my own husband? Is it so obvious?
I nod. I want the soup.
Besides, it’s too late to back out. I’ve paid for the soup and am all ready to eat it.
The chef seems to be taking his time. The lao ban nian turns to me at the table and apologizes every few minutes. “Sometimes the oven is slow to heat up,” she explains. I smile and say that it is no problem.
The handsome chef finally comes out with my beautiful soup, the rounded pastry top domed like a breast, golden and perfect, a few black sesame seeds sprinkled over the top. He holds it with oven mittens and an extra rag. The lao ban nian rushes to put a coaster down before me as he sets the bowl down.
“Enjoy,” she says. “And be careful, it’s very hot!”
I look at my su pi nong tan. I can hardly bear to break the beautiful, crisp skin at the top, but I do. My husband is waiting for food at home, and probably grumbling already. I make a small hole in the pastry skin, which breaks immediately and some buttery pieces crumble into the soup. Steam rises from the hole in the puff pastry, and I smell the fragrance of creamy mushrooms and chicken. I make a larger hole with my spoon and reach into the soup, picking up a small piece of pastry, moistened with creamy soup, that had fallen in. I blow on it to cool it down, then put it in my mouth. Delicious. I savor every bit of my soup, blowing on each spoonful but still burning my mouth. I’m sweating though it is winter and unseasonably cold; the soup warms and satisfies me. It may sound ridiculous, but this is one of the best moments of my life. I feel free, like I am defying the universe by sitting here, enjoying su pi nong tan as my husband waits hungrily at home for his dinner.
I want to linger in the store longer, enjoying my su pi nong tan, but there is no more. Not one scrap of mushroom remains at the bottom of the bowl. I smile at the owner on my way out.
During my walk home, some men look at me. They see my red cheeks and red lips from the soup; they must think I am in love. I turn my gaze to the ground and walk as quickly as possible. After all that waiting, the omelet must be only lukewarm.
When I open the door, Mr. Ting is standing right behind it.
“Where were you?” he asks.
“In the night market,” I reply.
“Why were you so late?”
“I just . . . walked more slowly.”
“You are forty minutes late and you say you walked more slowly? What kind of lie is that, what were you up to?” He raises his voice.
“Nothing.” I walk past him to put the food on the counter.
“Don’t evade my questions like that.”
He feels more and more free to scold me in Chinese since he knows I understand it well enough now. He seems angrier than is appropriate for my being late, though, even if he is hungry and worried.
“I’m sorry. Here, let’s eat now.” I use my most soothing voice.
“After you explain this.” He holds something out in front of me. It is a blue-and-white foil and plastic container with twenty-one little pills in it. He found the contraceptive pills I did not take in my underwear drawer.
“I . . . I forgot all about them,” I stammer, sensing his anger.
“Forgot? You lying woman, how dare you lie to me twice in so short a time, did you forget I bought you from your country, gave you a good life and home here, you ungrateful wench! How dare you disobey and deceive me?”
I move back toward the door as he advances. I suddenly remember that he used to be a soldier and that my mother had warned me to stay away from soldiers. So many of them were damaged, she said, and they were not balanced people, often prone to violence.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry—” I say over and over again.
“Sorry is not enough. Where have you been? Have you been sleeping with someone else? The cafeteria cook, that mixed bastard? Do you want his child, is that why you are not taking the pills?”
“No, no!”
I reach for the door, but he slams it shut. He is strong, and much bigger than me. He uses his left arm to twist me around, yanks me closer by my jade necklace, and lands a punch in my abdomen with his right fist. The pain is sudden and fierce. I feel a snap and the little jade beads fall to the floor, scattering in different directions. I scramble around on the floor, trying to gather them up, but they roll away from my trembling fingers. He grabs my upper arm, pulls me up and punches my stomach again.
Tears stream down my face as I struggle to breathe. I feel my consciousness leaving me but I hold on tight to the few beads in my hands. The pain is like a screw in my body, screwing tighter and tighter. The last thing I think of is that if I wasn’t a mail-order bride this would not be happening to me. If I was Taiwanese, like him, he could not feel so much more superior, or if I were a Russian mail-order bride, then I would be tall, strong, and beat him right back. With the last strength I have, I lunge toward him with the beads closed in my fists and try to punch him in the abdomen, as he had done me, but it takes him only a slap to land me on the floor again. The last beads escape from me and I curl up into a C shape, groaning. I can feel warmth and wetness down there, the blood coming from inside. He lunges and lands on me, but I kick him in a vital place, and it is his turn to land on the floor.
I open the door and run out, into the street. I do not know where I can go, but I know I must run, and keep running.