The Love Wife Read Online Free PDF Page B

Communists.
    Now she still said these things, her eyes blank.
    — Where there is will.
    — Those Communists.
    — My cousin surprised, yes. Surprised.
    Once I gave her a nightgown printed with fish for Mother’s Day; she still wore it to bed at night. It had grown diaphanous with washing, so that you could see through the trout to her nipples, which sported the forlornly useful look of spare-the-counter stick-on appliance feet. Worse, you could see her diaper, which she needed. She cried and cried while I tried to get her to drink juice.
    — You are going to become dehydrated, I told her. Do you want to dry up?
    Often, in her early years at the Overlook, she still had her English, having attended a primary school run by American missionaries. How lucky for us! Often too, she still joked.
What? You think you are white? You are Wong! Wong! Wong!
she would say, banging her hand on her mattress. Or else:
Two Wongs—two Wongs—two—don’t make a white!
Those were the days I still hung on her words when she spoke. She had never liked talking about her past; now I waited, notebook at the ready, for whatever might emerge. And things did emerge, after a fashion, over time. A nun, a train, a girl who cried and cried. A dangerous place. A book. A bottle. But what place? What book? What bottle? Phrases emerged with more insistence than meaning.
Sounded like a cat. Like a cat. A cat sound.
My notebook stayed mostly blank—growing, it seemed, month by month, blanker—until finally I put it away.
    As the years went on, more and more of her mumbling was in Chinese anyway. Sometimes Blondie could translate. Though Blondie had taken Chinese in college, and assiduously brushed up once Lizzy came to us, my mother used to insist she couldn’t even tell what language Blondie was speaking when she spoke Mandarin.
Sound like something strange
. Now Mama Wong listened carefully. Responded earnestly, sometimes. But it was like a language lab with wiring problems; all the dialogs were scrambled. And what about the days—more and more all the time—when she had forgotten her Mandarin, and knew, apparently, only Sichuanese? How well we were coming to know the sound of it. That argumentative, sibilant sound, irregular and explosive, like firecrackers. I wished she had taught me to speak it. But she never did. Could she ever have said why?
    In any case, she could no longer.
    Some days she just stared. Some days she seemed to be trying to get me to remember things for her.
The river,
she would say. But when I said,
What river? Do you mean in Sichuan?
she would look as if she had no idea why I was talking about rivers. Some days she was liable to throw things; we kept glass and heavy objects out of her room. Other days she was sweet and childlike. Once she cradled a flower I gave her, stroking its petals. She compared her shadow with mine, and watched mesmerized as one disappeared into the other.
    I put on a little shadow-puppet show for her.
    — Then the crow said
caw caw caw!
I told her. And that was the signal for all the forest creatures to sneak down into the valley.
    — Friendly crow very useful, she said. Whole forest look like empty without it.
    Another day she asked if I would tickle her.
    — I tickle you back, she suggested.
    — Okay, I said; but then was surprised when the tickling turned into a kiss on the lips.
    — Oh, Ma, I said. I’m your son. It’s me. Carnegie.
    She dropped her eyelids flirtatiously then, and pursed her mouth—for another kiss, I feared.
    — That is your tough luck, she said.
    BLONDIE /  From time to time she recognized him. After staring or twitching for hours, she would suddenly cry,
Carnegie!
and ask him something. How many days he would be home over Christmas, perhaps. Or when he was going to learn no one cared what he thought?
Just shut up
, she would say.
Shut up. Just shut up
.
    CARNEGIE /  And what was the matter with my hair, it looked like even the barber couldn’t stand to be in