LILI CAME FROM CHINA on a prospective bride’s visa that was good for three months, at the end of which she had to marry Tong or return to her country. She was a pretty, healthy woman who looked about twenty, though she was almost thirty, and she was very little contaminated by occidental culture, just as her future husband wished. She didn’t speak a single word of English; so much the better, for that would make it easier to keep her submissive, was the opinion of her future mother-in-law, who from the first applied ancient traditions in making her daughter-in-law’s life impossible. We found her moon face and sparkling eyes irresistible; even my grandchildren fell in love with her. “Poor girl, it’s going to be difficult for her to adapt,” Willie commented when he learned that Lili got up at dawn to do the housework and prepare the complicated dishes demanded by the old woman, who in spite of her minuscule size pushed Lili around. “Why don’t you tell the old bitch to go to hell?” I asked Lili with signs, but she didn’t understand. “Keep your nose out of it,” Willie recited once again, and added that I knew nothing about Chinese culture . . . but I knew more than he did, I had at least read Amy Tan. The mail-order bride was not as fainthearted as Willie had reported when he met her, of that I was sure. She had a peasant stolidity, broad shoulders, determination in her look and actions; with a flick of her wrist she could break Tong’s mother’s neck, and his too, if she chose. No sweet little dove there.
After three months, when Lili’s visa was about to expire, Tong told us that they were getting married. Willie, as a lawyer and friend, reminded him that the girl’s only reason for marrying was to stay in the United States. She would need a husband only two years; after that she could divorce and get her residence permit. Tong had thought about it; he wasn’t so naive as to believe that a girl off the Internet had fallen in love with him when she saw his photograph, however much Lori had retouched it; he believed, however, that both of them had something to gain from the arrangement: he, the possibility of a son, and she, a visa. They would see which of the two came first, it was worth the risk. Willie advised him to have a prenuptial contract drawn up, otherwise she would be entitled to part of the savings he had accumulated with such sacrifice, but Lili said she would not sign a document she couldn’t read. They went to a lawyer in Chinatown, who translated it. When she realized what Tong was asking of her, Lili turned the color of a beet and for the first time raised her voice. How could they accuse her of marrying for a visa! She had come to make a home with Tong! she protested, immersing the groom and the lawyer in a flood of repentance. They were married without the agreement. When Willie told me about it, sparks were shooting out of his ears; he couldn’t believe that his bookkeeper was so dumb; what was making him do such a stupid thing? he was fucked for good now; couldn’t Tong remember how he, Willie, had been fleeced by every woman who passed by? and on and on with a litany of gloomy prognoses. For once, I had the pleasure of getting back at him: “Keep your nose out of it.”
Lili enrolled in an intensive English class and wore headphones all day, listening to the lesson until she fell asleep, but her apprenticeship was slower and more difficult than she’d expected. She went out to look for a job, but in spite of her hard-earned education and her experience as a nurse she couldn’t find anything because she didn’t speak English. We asked her to clean our house and pick up the children at school because by then Ligia wasn’t working for us anymore. One by one she had brought her children from Nicaragua and put them through school, and now they were all professionals. At last she could rest. If Lili was working for us, she could earn a decent salary until she found something appropriate for her skills. She gratefully accepted, as if we had done her a favor, when she was the one who was helping us.
At first, communication with Lili was amusing: I left drawings fastened to the refrigerator, but Willie’s method was to shout at her in English, to which she answered “No!” with an adorable smile. Once Roberta came to visit; she is a transsexual friend who before she was a woman had been an officer in the Marines named Robert. He fought in Vietnam, was decorated for courage, was horrified at the death of innocents, and left the military service. For thirty years he lived with his wife, whom he loved and who was his companion during the process of his becoming a woman, and they stayed together until she died of breast cancer. To judge by the photographs, Roberta had been a hefty, hairy man with a broken nose and the chin of a corsair. He had gone through hormone treatments, plastic surgery, electrolysis to remove his facial hair, and finally an operation on his genitals, but I suppose the result still was not convincing, because Lili stood staring at Roberta openmouthed, and then took Willie behind a door to ask him something in Chinese. My husband deduced that it was about our friend’s gender, and began to explain to Lili in a whisper that kept getting louder and louder until he ended up yelling at the top of his lungs that Roberta was a man with the soul of a woman, or something like that. I nearly died of embarrassment, but Roberta kept drinking tea and eating little pastries with her beautiful manners, ignoring the shouting behind the door.
My grandchildren and Olivia, the dog, adopted Lili. Our house had never been so clean; she disinfected it as if planning open heart surgery in the dining room. Gradually she was incorporated into our tribe. When she married, her shyness vanished; she took a deep breath, stuck out her chest, got a driver’s license, and bought a car. She brightened Tong’s life. He is even better looking because Lili dresses him with style and cuts his hair, though that doesn’t mean there aren’t sparring matches; he is a despotic husband. I tried to mime to her that the next time he raised his voice to her, she should crack him over the head with a skillet, but I don’t think she understood. All that’s missing is children, which don’t come along because she has fertility problems and he isn’t young anymore. I suggested they adopt in China, but they don’t give away boys there, and “Who wants a girl?” The same words I heard in India.