The Woman Warrior_ Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts - Maxine Hong Kingston [56]
“Maybe you should dye your hair black, so he won’t think you’re old. Or I have a wig you can borrow. On the other hand, he should see how you’ve suffered. Yes, let him see how he’s made your hair turn white.”
These many hours, her daughter held Moon Orchid’s hand. The two of them had been separated for five years. Brave Orchid had mailed the daughter’s young photograph to a rich and angry man with citizenship papers. He was a tyrant. Mother and daughter were sorry for one another. “Let’s not talk about this anymore,” said Moon Orchid. “We can plan tomorrow. I want to hear about my grandchildren. Tell me about them. I have three grandchildren, don’t I?” she asked her daughter.
Brave Orchid thought that her niece was like her mother, the lovely, useless type. She had spent so much time trying to toughen up these two. “The children are very smart, Mother,” her niece was saying. “The teachers say they are brilliant. They can speak Chinese and English. They’ll be able to talk to you.”
“My children can talk to you too,” said Brave Orchid. “Come. Talk to your aunt,” she ordered.
Her sons and daughters mumbled and disappeared—into the bathroom, the basement, the various hiding places they had dug throughout the house. One of them locked herself in the pantry-storeroom, where she had cleared off a shelf for a desk among the food. Brave Orchid’s children were antisocial and secretive. Ever since they were babies, they had burrowed little nests for themselves in closets and underneath stairs; they made tents under tables and behind doors. “My children are also very bright,” she said. “Let me show you before you go to sleep.” She took her sister to the living room where she had a glass case, a large upside-down fish tank, and inside were her children’s athletic trophies and scholarship trophies. There was even a beauty contest trophy. She had decorated them with runners about luck.
“Oh my, isn’t that wonderful?” said the aunt. “You must be so proud of them. Your children must be so smart.” The children who were in the living room groaned and left. Brave Orchid did not understand why they were ashamed of the things they could do. It was hard to believe that they could do the things the trophies said they did. Maybe they had stolen them from the real winners. Maybe they had bought cups and medallions and pretended they’d won them. She’d have to accuse them and see how they reacted. Perhaps they fooled the Ghost Teachers and Ghost Coaches, who couldn’t tell smart Chinese from dumb Chinese. Her children certainly didn’t seem like much.
She made some of the children sleep on the floor and put Moon Orchid and her daughter in their room. “Will my mother be living at your house or my house?” her niece asked Brave Orchid.
“She’s going to live with her own husband.” Brave Orchid was firm. She would not forget about this subject in the morning.
The next day, immediately after breakfast, Brave Orchid talked about driving to Los Angeles. They would not take the coast route along mountainsides that dropped into the sea—the way her children, who liked carnival rides, would want to go. She would make them take the inland route, flat and direct.
“The first thing you’ve got to ask your husband,” she said, “is why he never came back to China when he got rich.”
“All right,” said Moon Orchid. She was poking about the house, holding cans up to her ear, trailing after the children.
“He probably has a car,” Brave Orchid persisted. “He can drive you places. Should he tell you to go away, turn around at the door and say, ‘May I come and watch your television now and then?’ Oh, wouldn’t that be pathetic? But he won’t kick you out. No, he won’t. You walk right into the bedroom, and you open the second wife’s closet. Take whatever clothes you like. That will give you an American wardrobe.”
“Oh, I can’t do that.”
“You can! You can! Take First Sister-in-Law as your example.” Their only brother