Chao

The Externalist: A Journal of Perspectives

Bride in a Coffin by Peter Schwartz

Mail Order Bride

by Yu-Han Chao

The only thing I have from home is a jade necklace that my mother had given me. I come from a small Vietnamese village, My Lai, where we had a small rice field from which we made a living. The river gave us water and a modest harvest. Then last year, mother died giving birth to a baby brother, a silent infant who died one day later. That was when father became an alcoholic, stopped working our part of the fields, and owed more and more money. I could not keep our land alive on my own. Some of our neighbors tried to help me plant the rice sprouts, but father, drunk on cheap cooking wine, would wave the glistening harvest sickle at them, threatening to kill anyone who meddled in our business.

There used to be young men in our village that wanted to ask for my hand in marriage, but now they were all scared away by my father.

"Anyone who touches my daughter will die," he yelled, and everyone heard him. Sometimes when he was drunk, he tried to hit me, but I would run and hide from him.

I missed my mother, and still loved my father, despite everything, but I was young, only sixteen, and wanted more. It was just a matter of time before I ran away.

My childhood friend Han gave me a lift to Saigon on his new scooter, and introduced me to his friend's cousin, a big deal business lady, Mrs. Rie, who worked in the city. She was the wife of a man who owned a special agency, an agency that sold Vietnamese girls to foreigners as brides. I had no money, couldn't even pay the fees, but Mrs. Rie persuaded her husband to let me owe it to them until I was successfully married to a foreign client.

She looked me up and down.

"You're not especially beautiful, the legs too thick and hips too narrow, face all bones, but I think someone will like you."

And she was right. They showed pictures they had taken of me with a lot of make up and beautiful borrowed clothing to their clients, and in three weeks they had sealed my marriage with a Taiwanese man.

"But I don't speak Chinese."

"He will not mind, my dear," Mrs. Rie smiled, nice to me all of a sudden now that I was bringing business to them. "He's looking for a wife, not a conversation partner. Just smile and look pretty and cook and clean; you'll be fine."

She was pleased that the Taiwanese man was willing to pay nearly half as much as an American would have for a Vietnamese bride. I never saw any of that money, of course, it all goes to the agency and they even claimed I owed them high fees for the arrangement as well as rent for the time I had slept in a cockroach ridden warehouse they let me stay in.

◦

In Taipei, my new husband met me at the Chiang Kai Shek airport. He was holding a sign with my name written in English on it. Lei Lee. My last name would be changed soon; my husband was Mr. Ting. So I would become Lei Ting, Mrs. Ting.

All the buildings in Taipei are so tall and shiny, the people so happy, it is strange to me. Their faces are Chinese faces, not so different from us Vietnamese, yet their lives seem so different. The rice comes from burlap bags in supermarkets, not the fields. I don’t know where the fields are here.

My husband, a retired soldier, has a long, stubbly chin, hollow eyes, and gray hair. We communicate with very bad English and some Chinese at first, mostly gesturing. I prefer nighttime, when no language is necessary. He gives me little medicine pills to swallow, draws an X with his fingers and makes the shape of a woman's round belly on me. He does not want me to become pregnant, and these pills will protect me.

We live on the eleventh floor of a tall residential building. Our apartment is a one bedroom place, smaller than my old hut in Vietnam, but I like it here because it is clean, bright, and has large windows to let the sun shine in, just like the outdoors back home, but with air conditioning.

The strange thing is that there is no fire in his apartment, no stove, nothing to cook with. Every afternoon, around five thirty, the busiest time on the streets, he used to go into the nightmarket to buy his special dinner. An o ah jian, oyster omelette from a food stand, and rice, vegetables and fish from a cafeteria in the nightmarket. He shows me the way once or twice, and soon it is my job every night to buy his omelette and some greasy cafeteria food for both of us.

From nine in the morning to three in the afternoon every weekday he sweeps the floor in a public library nearby while I have a walk in the neighborhood, clean the house, or watch Taiwanese television at home. We have Japanese cable channels, but I prefer local soap operas. I learn a lot of Chinese from them, especially since there are Chinese subtitles on everything. I had only seen television shows a few times when I was in Vietnam, but they had never fascinated me as much as the shows here. I especially like the period shows in which all the characters wear traditional Chinese clothing, flowing robes with sashes and wide sleeves. I would have liked to wear those clothes. But I still wear my plain blue gowns that begin at my neck and end at my ankles, even in this hot weather. It is important for me to still feel like I am Vietnamese, because even if I married a Taiwanese man, it does not change me inside, I am still Lei Lee. I will not forget my ancestors, it is important to honor them.

◦

Gradually, as I get out more during the day, I make friends. Most of them are maids and nannies from Vietnam. They tell me the latest gossip. One woman, Taiyun, has a neighbor who got a mail order bride from Russia. Russia! It was such a big deal because a Russian woman is a white woman, and white women are like goddesses in Asia.

"How can you possibly buy a white woman?" I ask.

Taiyun smiles slyly and makes the motion of rustling money in her right hand.

"Money," she says. "Lots and lots of money. And do you know what, that man's family treats her as if she were a princess instead of a mail order bride--no offense, Lei Lee."

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"They are afraid that she will be bored, so they find her little students so she can teach them English, even though her English is so bad even I will laugh at her. But they don’t care, they think she is so wonderful to marry their son. Rich people, of course. They are insane. And they can't wait till she gives them little foreign looking babies, beautiful and creamy-skinned."

"Well, I certainly wouldn't want to teach English, I don't envy her that," I say.

"The point is, they try so hard to please her," Taiyun says. "From what I can tell, your husband treats you like my employer treats me. Like a servant. Because they bought us; they know it and we know it."

"Well, I don't think of it that way. I want to please my husband because if he is happy then I will be happy because he will be good to me," I reply.

"Right, right," Taiyun scoffs. "You are perfect material for a mail order bride. Exactly what he ordered."

"That's not a nice thing to say."

"Let me ask you, if you go out to buy his dinner in the nightmarket and come back, say twenty minutes later than usual, will he be mad?"

"Maybe, if he is hungry. Once I walked a little slow, and..."

"Ah ha!" Taiyun interrupted. "That's exactly what I mean. He treats you like a servant. A man will not scold his wife like a child for being late; he will only scold a servant."

I didn't say anything. Half of me saw Taiyun as being jealous of my legal status as a wife here, my freedom to stay in Taiwan as long as I like without having to work or bribe officials for a visa. Another half of me understood what Taiyun said. After all, my husband, Mr. Ting, had purchased me. That itself made him feel like I was something he owned, which he could order around. He has trained me to respect him like that--I cannot think of him in my mind as Hsia, his first name, I only know him as Mr. Ting. My friends are used to it and no longer laugh at me for calling my own husband by Mister, but I still feel a tinge of embarrassment about who he is to me. My husband? Lover? Owner? Master?

◦

I was still thinking of what Taiyun said today as I left the house to get dinner.

It takes fifteen minutes just to walk to the omelette stand, and there is a long line. The owner notices me today however and nods; he knows I come every day, and he happens to be in a good mood. He gestures to the cook to give him the next omellette, catches it in a styrofoam container as the cook tosses it to him, and sprinkles coral colored special-recipe sauce on it. I hand him four ten NT coins and he gives me the container in a little red and white striped plastic bag.

"Just one, not two?" he asks, flirting. "Buy one get one free, only for you, number one customer."

He knows I am buying Mr. Ting's omelette, he knows I am a Vietnamese mail order bride, and leers, as he often does. I shake my head and walk away as politely as possible.

I never eat any of Mr. Ting's oyster omelettes, I think they are disgusting. I ask Mr. Ting why he will not get a stove, I can cook all this food for less money than we are paying the vender and cafeteria owner.

"Can you make o ah jian just like the stand? Eh?" he asks me back.

"I could learn," I say.

"Forget it, I don't want the smell of cooking in my home," he says. "It is a small space, and I won't have it smelling of grease and oysters. Just go buy the food and stop questioning your husband."

I feel the heavy ring of keys in my pocket as I drag my feet in cheap sandals in the direction of the nightmarket. Because of moments like this that come back to me over and over again, when he ends the conversation with scolding me or sending me off to run an errand, I have built up some resentment for him. But I vent it in small ways, little by little, so that I can still like him. I spit in his omellettes and his coffee in the morning; he'll never know and it won't hurt him, anyway.

Recently, I even stopped eating the little contraceptive pills. I decided that even if Mr. Ting didn't want a child, I wanted a son, a boy whom I could love, and who would grow up to be tall and strong and who would take care of me. I don't believe that a man would really not want a child once it is here--doesn't every man want a boy, a small version of himself? It will make him feel more manly, to have produced another human being, especially in Mr. Ting's case--he is forty-five years old already. Eventually, when I become pregnant, I'm sure Mr. Ting will change his mind and love the child. It's human nature.

At the cafeteria, the la ban nian, female owner of the store, smiles and nods when I come in. She works hard and is polite to all customers, adult or children, mail order brides or not. As she hands me two paper containers for the food and a plastic bag for the rice, I open my mouth to speak, which somewhat surprises her because she has probably never heard me talk before. She must have thought I did not speak Chinese.

"Can I have su pi nong tan?" I ask.

I had seen other customers eating it here before, and could smell the fragrance. Su pi nong tan, crisp skin thick soup, kind of a creamy western style soup cooked in a small crock pot with a layer of golden puffed pastry baked on top. It would be the ultimate luxury; I could imagine the crisp skin contrasted with the smooth creamy texture of the soup on my tongue. I would eat it so eagerly my tongue and the roof of my mouth would burn but I would not be able to stop because it was so delicious.

"Why, sure!" She smiles broadly.

She is happy for more business, especially since su pi nong tan is not cheap. One hundred NT for a bowl of soup, but it's completely worth it in my mind.

"But it is too hot for you to carry home. And if it spills, you will be burned. You see, the bowl is baked in the oven."

I think about this for a while. "It's okay, I will eat it here then," I decide.

The lao ban nian smiles and calls to her chef, a short handsome man who looks half Taiwanese, half some kind of Caucasian. "One su pi soup!" Then she turns to me courteously, "Please have a seat and wait here."

"I'll get the food first," I say, and walk towards the steam trays full of green, brown, red, white, and yellow dishes shining with grease.

As I pay her in advance for the soup and the food I had put in the paper containers, she looks at me with concern. "Are you sure it is okay if you make Mr. Ting wait?"

I nod my head. It's too late now. I've paid for the soup and am all ready to eat it.

The soup seems to be taking a long time. The lao ban nian turns to me at the table and apologizes every few minutes. "Sometimes the oven is slow," she explains. I smile and say that it is no problem.

The handsome chef finally comes out with my beautiful soup with a rounded pastry top like a breast, golden and perfect. He holds it with oven mittens and an extra rag. The lao ban nian rushes to put a coaster down before me as he sets the bowl down.

"Enjoy," says the lao ban nian. "And be careful, it's very hot!" she adds as she returns to the counter to accept money from another customer.

I look at my su pi nong tan. It is absolutely perfect--I can hardly bear to break the perfect crisp skin at the top, but I do, my husband is waiting for this food beside me at home, and is probably grumbling already. I make a small hole in the pastry skin, which breaks immediately and some pieces crumble into the soup. Steam rises from the hole in the puff pastry, and I smell the fragrance of creamy mushrooms and chicken. I make a larger hole with my spoon and reach into the soup, picking up a small piece of pastry that had fallen in. I blow on it to cool it down, then put it in my mouth. Delicious. I savor every bit of my soup slowly, blowing on every spoonful but still burning my entire mouth. I'm sweating even though it is winter and twenty degrees Celsius, cold for Taiwan; the soup warms me up and satisfies me completely. This is one of the best moments of my life; I feel free, like I am defying the universe by sitting here, enjoying su pi nong tan as my husband waits hungrily at home for his dinner.

I want to linger in the store, with that cute little crock pot in front of me, enjoying my wonderful su pi nong tan, but there is no more. I did not even leave a scrap of mushroom at the bottom of the bowl. I smile at the lao ban nian and wave cheerfully as I pass her on my way out.

As I walk home, some men look at me. They see my red cheeks and red lips from the soup; they must think I am in love. I turn my head down and walk as quickly as possible. After all that waiting, the omelette must be only lukewarm. I do not want Mr. Ting to be too disappointed, or upset.

◦

When I open the door Mr. Ting is standing right behind it.

"Where were you?" he asks.

"In the nightmarket," I reply.

"Why were you so late?"

"I just...walked more slowly."

"You are forty minutes late and you say you walk more slowly? What kind of lie is that, what were you up to?" He raised his voice.

"Nothing." I say, trying to walk past him to put the food on the counter.

"Don't evade my questions like that."

He feels more and more free to scold me in Chinese since he knows I understand it well enough now. He seems more angry than is appropriate for my being late, though, even if he is hungry and worried.

"I'm not, I'm really sorry. Here, let's eat now," I say, using my most soothing voice.

"After you explain this," he says.

He holds something out in front of me. It is a blue and white foil and plastic thing with twenty one little pills in it. He had found the contraceptive pills I did not take and had hidden in my underwear drawer.

"I...I forgot all about them," I stammered, sensing his anger.

"Forgot? You lying woman, how dare you lie to me twice in so short a time, did you forget I bought you from your country, gave you a good life and home here, you ungrateful wench! How dare you disobey and deceive me!"

I back towards the door as he advances towards me. I suddenly remember that he used to be a soldier, and that my mother had warned me to stay away from soldiers. They were prone to violence, she had told me, they were not balanced people.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." I say over and over again.

"Sorry is not enough. Where have you been? Have you been sleeping with someone else? The cafeteria cook, that mixed bastard? Do you want his child, is that why you are not taking the pills?"

"No, no!"

I try to push him away as I open the door to run out, but he pushes it shut with his right arm. He is strong, and much bigger than me. He uses his left arm to twist me over to face him, then lands a punch in my abdomen with his right fist. The pain is sudden and fierce, and I fall to the floor. I did not know this was what it was like to be hit--my father had never managed to land his hands on me--it felt like having all the air knocked out of you and you lose your balance. He pulls me up again and punches my stomach again, like I am a punching bag.

Tears stream down my face as I try to catch my breath, I feel my consciousness leaving me; the pain is like a screw in my body, screwing tighter and tighter. The last thing I think of is that if I wasn't a mail order bride this would not be happening to me. If I was Taiwanese, like him, he could not feel so much more superior, or if I was a Russian mail order bride, then I would be tall, strong, and beat him right back. With the last strength I have I lunge towards him with my fists and try to punch him back in the abdomen, as he had done me, but it takes him only a slap to land me on the floor again, where I curl up into a C shape, groaning. I can feel myself bleeding, I think in my womb. He lunges and lands on me, but I kick him hard in a vital place, and it is his turn to fall to the floor.

I open the door and run out, into the street. I do not know where I can run away to this time, but I know I must run, keep running.

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