Hawaii - James Michener [288]
With tears in her eyes, she started to storm at Mun Ki, and he patiently listened for some minutes, then got mad. Flashing his pigtail about the kitchen he shouted that any fool could learn to make yeast in one week. He had been courteous and had studied for two weeks and now he wanted her out of the kitchen. Not understanding a word he was saying, she continued to mourn for the lost yeast, so he firmly grabbed her shoulders and ejected her onto the lawn. On Monday the new batch of yeast was as good as ever and she consoled herself philosophically: "It's the same strain, sent forward by different hands." Suddenly, she felt the elderly white-haired woman she was.
Mun Ki also had difficulty understanding why Americans ate so much, and he would consistently omit dishes to which the robust appetites of the white men had become accustomed. A typical Whipple dinner, served at high noon in the heat of the day, consisted of fish chowder, roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, creamed cabbage cooked in ham fat, delicious chewy biscuits made of taro and drenched in butter, mashed potatoes, candied yams, pickled mango, alligator pear salad with heavy dressing, French bread with guava jelly, banana pie marvelously thick and rich, followed by coffee with cream, and cigars. If guests were present, two extra vegetables were served and French brandy.
Later, the Chinese would eat steamed cabbage with no fat, a little fish cooked with soybean sauce, a bowl of rice and some unsweetened tea, and it was often remarked that Hawaii must agree with the Orientals, because even though they worked harder than the white men, they lived longer.
When she finished supervising the preparation of food, little Amanda Whipple, in her sixties, turned her attention to Nyuk Tsin and taught the hard-working Chinese girl how to care for a large house. Dusting was particularly stressed and caused some difficulty, because in China, Nyuk Tsin's mother had waited for a likely omen before bothering to dust, whereas energetic Mrs. Whipple demanded that it be done regularly every day. The floors had to be dusted, the flowered china lamps, the chandelier, the rosewood love seat with its multiple curlicues, the endless embroidered decorations, the peacock chair from Canton and the bamboo furniture that never looked clean. Nyuk Tsin's special nightmare was the great fish net on the parlor wall from which shells, leis and other keepsakes were hung. In fact, there was scarcely an inch of the Whipple house that did not contain some gimcrack whose main purpose was gathering dust.
In comparison, the Kee household contained one table bearing the genealogy book, a flint lighter, a candle and a wine bottle. There was also a rope bed above which hung the impressive sign: "May This Bed Yield a Hundred Sons."
According to the agreement reached by Whipple and his Chinese, Mun Ki received two dollars a month and his wife was to have received fifty cents, but when Mrs. Whipple saw how excellent Nyuk Tsin's work was, from five in the morning till nine at night, seven days a week, her generosity was touched, so she paid the girl a full dollar each month, and from this salary of $36 a year the two Chinese were required to clothe themselves, pay for the birth and education of their children, provide for entertainment and luxuries, and send money home to the official wife in China. They did all these things, but their problems were eased a bit by the unnecessary generosity of the Whipples. Unexpected gifts here and there added to the