The Secrets of a Fire King (5 page)

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was guilty of it. Jade Moon did not possess his facility with language, and he did not possess the patience of a language teacher.

To his shame he had heard himself repeating words again and again, with increasing volume and exasperation, as if, through the sheer force of repetition, he could make her understand.

Thus, he was pleased to see that more English textbooks appeared, and to find, one day, that most things in the house had been labeled with their English names in Ellie’s neat, blockish handwriting. The windows were open to the late spring breeze, and the paper labels fluttered softly. cupboard, said one. stove, refrigerator, table, cup, sofa, radio, shelf. Jade Moon read them off proudly. Although Ellie was loud and aggressive, someone Jade Moon would have disdained in her own country, in America Miss Ellie was her only friend. It bothered Rob, sometimes, the way Ellie’s advice became law in their house.
Use milk to remove ink stains,
Jade Moon would declare, scrubbing at the shirt pockets where his pens had leaked.
Vinegar and newspapers make
the glass windows sparkle.
It worried him that Ellie treated Jade Moon in a somewhat patronizing manner, as if what they shared was not a friendship at all, but a great gift Ellie was bestowing on her diligent and fortunate student. That was why Ellie made him think of missionaries he had seen, but because Jade Moon seemed happy, and because her English was improving, he said nothing.

One day he came home from work to find Jade Moon pacing their small rooms with excitement. She had been invited to a mother-and-daughter dinner at the church. It was to be a potluck dinner, and Ellie had asked her to bring the dish they had learned that week: a tuna noodle casserole with a potato chip crust. Jade Moon had agreed to go, but she had a secret idea about what to fi x.

She would not tell him exactly what it was, but, laughing, said she wanted to drive into the city to fi nd some fabric for a new dress, and then she wanted him to go to the lake and catch her a fresh rainbow trout.

On the evening of the dinner Jade Moon came into the living room wearing a fitted dress of dark rose. It had a narrow waist and a skirt that flared from the hips like an upended tulip. She carried the baby, whose frilly dress was the color of cream and
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The Secrets of a Fire King

decorated with lace and ribbons that matched her own. In the kitchen the mysterious dish was covered with tinfoil. Rob had spent most of the previous weekend floating on the still-cold lake, seeking the fish, and on their trip into the city Jade Moon had disappeared into several different grocery stores and one tiny Asian market, coming out with her arms full of packages and a private smile on her face. She had worked all week on the new dresses, copying hers from a magazine she had bought. Now she turned shyly in the room, waiting for his approval. Rob was moved to stillness by the sight of her white arms and dark hair against the deep red material. He thought he had never seen anyone so beautiful, and he told her so.

Before Ellie came, while Jade Moon was making a last-minute adjustment to her hem, Rob walked quietly into the kitchen and lifted the foil from the potluck dish. He saw at once that it was both splendid and completely wrong. Jade Moon had prepared a special fish. Turned on its side, the steamed trout was surrounded by vegetables cut into graceful shapes. Its one visible eye stared, and its tail was arched slightly, as if at any moment the fish might propel itself off the platter and into the green sea of the tablecloth. Rob stared back at the fish and wondered what he should do. Ellie was already knocking at the door. Perhaps, after all, the women would understand the importance of this gesture and be kind. So he nodded at Ellie, who was exclaiming over April’s dress, and said nothing when Jade Moon carried the platter proudly out the door.

It was rare for Rob to be alone in the house, and he found himself restless, moving from one project to another, glancing constantly at his watch. He repaired a cupboard door, then put up new shelves in the bathroom. The familiar work calmed him, and he imagined the church ladies tasting the fish out of politeness, finding it good. He imagined them asking for the recipe, and Jade Moon giving it to them shyly, in slow but perfect English. The dinner lasted for over three hours, and the more time passed, the more convinced he became that things were going well.

At last, just as he was putting his tools away, he heard a car door slam. He met Jade Moon on the porch. Ellie’s taillights were
Spring, Mountain, Sea

27

already disappearing over the hill. Jade Moon carried the platter balanced along one arm, and held the baby, who was sound asleep, in the other. She had stopped on the top step and turned to stare at the moon, which had risen as round and cold as a fi sh eye in the clear summer sky.

“Where’s Ellie?” Rob asked, taking the baby. “Why didn’t she help you?” Jade Moon did not answer, but turned in her red dress and walked into the house. By the time he had followed her to the kitchen, the fish, completely intact, was displayed for him in the center of the table. Jade Moon’s face was expressionless, but nearly gray with embarrassment. He put the baby in the little reclining chair on the table. She was awake now, and wiggling happily, oblivious to her mother’s disappointment, even when Jade Moon dropped her face into her hands and began to weep.

Little by little, he coaxed the story from her. He could imagine the women, of course, their small gasps, their looks of shock and then dismay as Jade Moon unveiled her fish. One woman had held her hand to her mouth and left the room. Even Ellie had been non-plussed. After a moment, the beautiful fish had been moved to the far end of the table. The rest of the evening had been equally humiliating. Whenever Jade Moon spoke in English, the others had laughed, or looked confused and walked away. Even when she repeated things twice, three times, they had not understood, and she had spent most of the evening listening to unintelligible chatter, while the women finished every dish and left her fi sh untouched.

“They are just ignorant,” Rob said. He stood up and got a plate. The fish was soft, white, succulent, and he took a large por-tion. “Ignorant and foolish. If they had tasted it, they’d know what they were missing.” He ate one mouthful, slowly, then another. “It is delicious.”

When she did not answer him, he put his fork down and took her hand.

“Jade Moon,” he said. “Remember the time I tried to compliment your mother’s house, and instead I told her she had a lovely toilet?” He waited for her to smile at this old joke between them, but she did not. “Don’t you remember? Everyone was shocked,
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The Secrets of a Fire King

and I was terribly embarrassed, but I didn’t give up. You must make mistakes in order to learn.”

Jade Moon’s face was set. “English is an ugly language,” she said, speaking to her hands. “It sounds like dogs barking. I don’t want to know this language.”

He looked at her profile, her narrow face and generous lips, and remembered how much she hated to do things unless she ex-celled at them. Once she had ripped out an entire piece of embroidery because of a tiny flaw she had discovered in the first stitch. He put his silverware down and spoke to her sternly.

“Jade Moon,” he said. “You must learn. This is your country now. What if there is an emergency and you need to use the telephone? What if something happened to me?”

“I don’t know,” she said, glancing up, and he saw the worry move like clouds across her face. Then she composed herself and grew stubborn. “I will learn emergency phrases,” she said. “But that is all.”

He felt his patience ebb. If she would not learn, then she would be dependent on him all her life.

“You are nothing but a lazy woman,” he said. “Lazy, lazy, lazy.” He spoke the last word emphatically, aware of the great insult it would be to her, amazed, even as he spoke, at the depth of his own cruelty.

Her face changed and grew still, closed to him. On the table the baby kicked and cooed. Jade Moon picked her up, wiped her tears away with the back of her wrist, and turned away, leaving the ruined fish in the middle of the table.

That night Rob did not sleep well, and in the morning Jade Moon avoided him until he left for work. On his way out the door he paused, disturbed by both the silence and by some other, subtle change he couldn’t name. Then it came to him. He looked around again, from cupboard to stove to table to chair.

All the small white cards had disappeared.

Spring was two years old when her brother was born, and by then the argument about language, about names, had become a tender, misshapen knot in the living flesh of their marriage.

Spring, Mountain, Sea

29

When Jade Moon held the new baby on her shoulder and said she would call him Mountain, the air was tense with years of accumulated arguments. Jade Moon, stubborn, talked on. She herself had traveled too much in her life, as her name foretold. She wanted her son to stay in one place, as solid and steady as a rock cliff against the sea. She would give him the name to ensure him strength. She said all this defiantly. Rob sighed, eyeing their small son. When the nurse took him off to fill in the paperwork he tapped his pencil against the wooden desk, looking out the offi ce window over the parking lot. He wrote down his father’s name, Michael James.

Three weeks before their last child was born, just a year later, Jade Moon announced that if it was a girl, she would name the child Sea.

“Why Sea?” Rob asked, looking up from his newspaper. The two older children were asleep, and Jade Moon sat at the desk, slight even in this last month of her pregnancy, writing a letter to her parents. The translucent paper rustled softly beneath her pen. Though he spoke fluently, Rob had never read her language well, and the characters seemed both ominous and full of mystery. Was that how it felt to Jade Moon, he wondered, walking in the town or buying groceries? He tried sometimes to imagine how his language, divorced from meaning, might sound. Was it melodious, like French or Spanish? Was it the harsh singing of Chinese? Did it really resemble the sound of barking dogs?

Sometimes he tried to listen to only the sounds of English, but for him sound was meaning, impossible to separate.

“Sea,” she said, “for two reasons. First, because it is a sea that both separates and connects my family and myself. And second, because I am Jade Moon, and the moon controls the movement of the sea. I do not want my daughter to travel as far as I have in this life. Besides,” she added, “it is a beautiful name, both in your language and in mine.”

“When they go to school,” he argued, “they’ll need American names. Why not call her Maria? It’s from Latin. It’s an ordinary name, but it means sea.”

“Maria,” she spoke the words, blurring the
r
in a way that
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The Secrets of a Fire King

reminded him of a day, long ago, when he had tried to teach her the sound—
raspberry
,
rhubarb
—in the field behind the house.

Now, as then, it sounded awkward in her mouth, and some of the old anger flared up within him. It was a diffi cult sound, true enough, but she had been in America now for nearly four years.

“That’s right,” he said. “Maria. Ma-
ree
-ah. That’s her name.”

“You call her Maria, then,” she said, turning back to her letter.

Her long hair was tied in elastic and made a black line down her back. “But I will call her Sea.”

“Why are you so stubborn about this?” he asked, throwing down his newspaper. But she did not answer him. She kept her eyes fixed on the letter, her fingers shaping the complex, mysterious characters of a language he could not fully understand.

Once the children were born the years passed quickly, one following another in smooth succession, although Rob never lost the sense that he was leading a double life. Like the branches of a young tree, it seemed the parts of his life grew less and less connected with the passing of time. His days forked off into the community where he told jokes, swapped stories, argued, and worked in his own language. Pulling into his driveway in the evenings, he had to make a conscious effort to switch from one world, one language, to another. It was like stepping into the past, he sometimes thought, or walking with a single step from one country to another. He put his toolbox in the shed and stepped through the door with his pockets full of sawdust. There he found his family gathered around the table, folding animals out of paper, or singing songs while Jade Moon sliced narrow rings of spring onion, or working diligently at the complicated characters of her alphabet. The children were hers from birth until they went to school, and if their world was an isolated one, Jade Moon saw to it that it was full of learning, full of joy.

“They should learn to speak English,” he said one night when the children were in bed. “Even if you won’t, the children must.” She put down her embroidery and looked up at him.

“Let me tell you a story,” she said. “When I was a young girl
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31

my parents had a friend who went to Hong Kong for business.

While they were there they had a baby girl, and since they were rich, they hired a local girl to care for this baby during the days.

Two years passed, then three, and though the baby was happy and healthy, still it did not speak. They grew worried, and even consulted a doctor. Then one day they were taking a walk, and they stopped in a shop for some food. The baby was babbling. They thought it was just baby talk until suddenly the store owner, an old Chinese woman who also spoke a little of their language, looked up smiling. ‘How nice,’ she said. ‘Baby speaks Chinese!’ ” Rob started to laugh, but saw at once that it was the wrong reaction.

“No,” Jade Moon said. “How do you think that mother felt, missing her own baby’s first words? How do you think she felt, not being able to speak with her own child? These are my children too,” she said. “Not just yours and not just America’s. I want to be able to tell them about my life.” They were her children until they went to school, but in the end Jade Moon lost each one to America. Rob grew to dread the early days of school, the way his children came home, one after another, at first in tears and later drawn into themselves, isolated and bewildered by the unfamiliar language. Yet it amazed Rob, too, how quickly they learned, with an aptitude that surpassed even his own. Within weeks they were chattering, imperfectly but fl uently, to the other children. He tried to help by speaking English with them in the car, or while Jade Moon was outside hanging the wash or gardening. When they got older, he looked over their homework for mistakes. They were all bright, and their intelligence helped them overcome the thoughtless cruelty of other children. In the end they caught up and even surpassed their friends. April was editor of the newspaper in her senior year. Michael played the clarinet and drew intricate pictures that won awards. Maria ran for class treasurer, and won. They survived the hard years; they grew up. Like him, they had their secret lives outside the house, their lives of the telephone, of prom parties and clubs. He saw them roll their eyes behind Jade Moon’s
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