At the banquet my mother admitted within the hearing of just about anyone, she would be happier to be marrying me off. “Well, maybe when you are 80,” I would say to her, which she would then translate to her friends as, “She wants me to wait. She wants me to live longer.”
Well, although it was just her son’s wedding, she was on a high. Everyone was happy that evening. They loved her dress (so deluxe!) and her hair (so tall!). They loved the restaurant (so red, so retro, so festive!), the cooking (so ample!) and the live singing (so fun!). They were happier than they had ever been at other people’s banquets, surely. Her one and only regret was that when Fei got smashed at the end of that evening and kissed her between 22 and 852 times – we lost count – she was too shocked to kiss him back.
She was over the moon for two days; on day three she crashed back down to earth. I had spied in the fridge a carton of the soya milk we always bought for Fei’s breakfast and said matter-of-factly, “We needn’t buy this any more.” In an instant she was teary. The meaning of the wedding on a daily basis was suddenly clear; the innumerable small things she did for her son, which were equal to a chunk of her everyday existence, someone else would do henceforth; when he came back from his honeymoon he would go home to his apartment and not ours.
Before that week was over she had bumped both her knees accidentally, one time on the hill around the corner and another time right against the fridge. Her legs were swollen and swathed in bandages. She would bump into somebody in the neighbourhood some mornings, start to speak about the honeymooners and cry. She was having a breakdown of sorts, although she didn’t and couldn’t quite collapse. We needed her. We had to live on leftovers (from the buffet and the gorgeous, gorgeous roast pig). We needed her to do some delicious things with the scraps.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
AFTERWARDS | One
So it is done. Sometime one Sunday, a cloudless day which was a dozen Chinese New Years condensed into a day, within the couple of auspicious hours when the groom whisked the bride off to his house to serve tea to his elders, Fei married P.
What with all the last-minute things to attend to – here’s the red bucket to fill with rice for the coming-of-age combing ceremony; there’s the roast pig, somebody pay the man please; now, where’s the buffet and will you rinse the teacups and refill the teapot, you, yes, you – the day, to me, came and went in a haze of exhaustion, heat, excitement and something. A slow, slinking something which might have been…
One thing I felt, if I felt anything, was the goodwill: how much people love my parents and, by extension, my brothers and me. My father is not one to ask too much of anybody else (my mother excepted); happily, his old friends are the sort to show up unbidden, to invite themselves to the important occasions of his life. On the big day two of them, Auntie and Uncle J, were here at eight to help the first-time father-in-law and mother-in-law with everything – in particular, the arcane Chinese-wedding protocol – as if it were their own son marrying.
Auntie J, who married into a traditional Teochew family, was the most senior daughter-in-law and the longest-suffering before her mother-in-law passed away. She is a veteran of a very Chinese household who, in any domestic affair, knows when to stand by, when to step in and when to softly suggest something to someone. As she stood by me during the tea ceremony and helped me with the teacups, all five of which had to be rinsed and refilled over and over again, round after round, she felt like family - more so than a couple of blood relations who didn’t lift a finger. When she told me to do whatever I just did it, regardless of my misgivings. Whatever I might have felt about a symbolic assertion of authority, when she told me to hold my head high as I stood and sipped the tea served by P – “you have to be higher than her” – I just held my head high as I stood and sipped the tea served by P. (I would not understand until later it was a pre-emptive strike, until I received a ritual gift from P’s mother, a woven basket laden with beauty products and meaning. It said – please, allow my mother to translate – go get dolled up, go get hitched, don’t mess with my daughter. After all, the Chinese wedding customs are a relic from the age before the nuclear family, when to marry into a large family was, nine times out of 10, to march into a theatre of war. You faced not only your husband but also his mother, his aunts, his sisters, his sister-in-laws and other discontented women. Whomever your family could neutralise or get on your side they would.)
The other thing I felt…I might have imagined. Something, though unspoken, was understood as Fei got sloshed towards the end of the banquet. He was in high spirits, absolutely, and so were we. I was somehow certain though that on the one hand his would be a solid marriage and that on the other hand the solidness of the marriage would be weighty. Possibilities that had ceased to be possible. Doors that had been closed. I imagined them. I lamented them. Then we lugged our brother to the bridal suite, I helped his bride out of her dress and we left them with each other.
What with all the last-minute things to attend to – here’s the red bucket to fill with rice for the coming-of-age combing ceremony; there’s the roast pig, somebody pay the man please; now, where’s the buffet and will you rinse the teacups and refill the teapot, you, yes, you – the day, to me, came and went in a haze of exhaustion, heat, excitement and something. A slow, slinking something which might have been…
One thing I felt, if I felt anything, was the goodwill: how much people love my parents and, by extension, my brothers and me. My father is not one to ask too much of anybody else (my mother excepted); happily, his old friends are the sort to show up unbidden, to invite themselves to the important occasions of his life. On the big day two of them, Auntie and Uncle J, were here at eight to help the first-time father-in-law and mother-in-law with everything – in particular, the arcane Chinese-wedding protocol – as if it were their own son marrying.
Auntie J, who married into a traditional Teochew family, was the most senior daughter-in-law and the longest-suffering before her mother-in-law passed away. She is a veteran of a very Chinese household who, in any domestic affair, knows when to stand by, when to step in and when to softly suggest something to someone. As she stood by me during the tea ceremony and helped me with the teacups, all five of which had to be rinsed and refilled over and over again, round after round, she felt like family - more so than a couple of blood relations who didn’t lift a finger. When she told me to do whatever I just did it, regardless of my misgivings. Whatever I might have felt about a symbolic assertion of authority, when she told me to hold my head high as I stood and sipped the tea served by P – “you have to be higher than her” – I just held my head high as I stood and sipped the tea served by P. (I would not understand until later it was a pre-emptive strike, until I received a ritual gift from P’s mother, a woven basket laden with beauty products and meaning. It said – please, allow my mother to translate – go get dolled up, go get hitched, don’t mess with my daughter. After all, the Chinese wedding customs are a relic from the age before the nuclear family, when to marry into a large family was, nine times out of 10, to march into a theatre of war. You faced not only your husband but also his mother, his aunts, his sisters, his sister-in-laws and other discontented women. Whomever your family could neutralise or get on your side they would.)
The other thing I felt…I might have imagined. Something, though unspoken, was understood as Fei got sloshed towards the end of the banquet. He was in high spirits, absolutely, and so were we. I was somehow certain though that on the one hand his would be a solid marriage and that on the other hand the solidness of the marriage would be weighty. Possibilities that had ceased to be possible. Doors that had been closed. I imagined them. I lamented them. Then we lugged our brother to the bridal suite, I helped his bride out of her dress and we left them with each other.
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