Read Online The Love Wife by Gish Jen - Free Book Online

here and suddenly there, she knows lots of games. Sometimes we don’t know what room she is even in. A lot of the time she is on the floor or on a stool, she likes stools. She does not need a chair to sit up straight, she sits up straight on a stool, in fact she doesn’t even need a stool. She sits up straight even when she’s squatting, and can squat a lot better than Lizzy. She rests her elbows on her knees like they are the most convenient thing, and she squats in this very light way, with her feet together, so that she looks like that kind of rice bowl that has a little built-in pedestal. Or like she could balance something on top of her head, and could stand up without knocking it over. She says she is comfortable anywhere. Americans need padding, she says, and we can see she is proud she does not. She likes to say what she does not need.
    — I do not need more clothes, she says.
    — I do not need more food.
    — I do not need more room.
    She says she can
chi ku
—eat bitter—and that makes her different than an American, she is just glad she is not staying here.
    LAN / 
Why was I brought here? Because Carnegie’s mother wanted me to come, they said. But I wondered, what was the real reason? What did they want from me?
    WENDY /  She says she is not like young people in China these days either, all they know is how to
wanr
—fool around. And how to
hui jin ru tu
—spend money like dirt.
    — What is eat bitter? we say.
    But when we say that, she looks at her feet.
    — I see you are one hundred percent American, she says.
    LAN / 
What real Chinese would ever ask that question?
    WENDY /  She says eat bitter is bad in one way but not so bad in another way. She says if you can eat bitter it will make you strong.
    LAN / 
Chinese people have a saying.
Chi de ku zhong ku, fang wei ren shang ren
—Eat the bitterest of the bitter, rise above other men. My father said that all the time.
    WENDY /  She says Americans are rich but soft.
    — You know why Chinese people survive such long time? she says. Because we are not soft.
    She says: — Chinese people today, especially in the coastal area, like to have comfortable life. But real Chinese people think live easy life is like drink poison.
    LAN / 
My father, being a scholar, used to quote Mencius on this subject. Anxiety and distress lead to life, he used to say. Ease and comfort end in death.
    Of course, these are things Americans will never understand.
    WENDY /  When she says these things it doesn’t really matter if you nod or not. Either way she looks at you then looks out the window like Lizzy, sometimes I wonder how old you have to be to look out the window like that. Her face is like the moon, there is nothing in it, she is done talking. When I look out the window I don’t see anything there, I don’t see what they see, and Lanlan looks at her feet too, that’s another thing. How old do you have to be to do that? Lanlan looks at her feet to see how the veins are popping out even through her stockings, she says she didn’t used to be able to see her veins at all. But luckily nobody knows except her. Even if they are in slippers and no one can see them, she says she always knows, and when she says that I can almost see them. I can almost see how she presses her toes together like she does with her fingers, her fingers keep to themselves.
    — You can see everything in the feet, she says sometimes. You can see what that person’s life is.
    That’s what she says, but when me and Lizzy look at our feet, we see nothing.
    — Also you can hear everything, she says, if you listen.
    But when we listen, all we hear is Tommy
naa
-ing downstairs.
    — Do you hear it? Can you hear it? Of course you have to know how to listen, she says.
    She mostly says these things to me and Lizzy. Mom only hears a little bit, but Mom loves it all, especially the part about needing nothing. It’s like Lanlan is the best newspaper article she ever