Rose Hsu Jordan
As proof of her faith, my mother used to carry a small leatherette Bible when she went to the First ese Baptist Church every Sunday. But later, after my mother lost her faith in God, that leatherette Bible wound up wedged under a too-short table leg, a way for her to correct the imbalances of life. Its been there for over twenty years.
My mother pretends that Bible isnt there. Whenever anyone asks her what its doing there, she says, a little too loudly, "Oh, this? I fot." But I know she sees it. My mother is not the best housekeeper in the world, and after all these years that Bible is still white.
Tonight Im watg my mother sweep uhe same kit table, something she does every night after dinner. She gently pokes her broom around the table leg propped up by the Bible. I watch her, sweep after sweep, waiting for the right moment to tell her about Ted ahat were getting divorced. When I tell her, I know shes going to say, "This ot be."
And when I say that it is certainly true, that our marriage is over, I know what else she will say: "Then you must save it."
And even though I know its hopeless—theres absolutely nothio save—Im afraid if I tell her that, shell still persuade me to try.
I think its ironic that my mother wants me to fight the divorce. Seventeen years ago she was chagrined when I started dating Ted. My older sisters had dated only ese boys from church befetting married.
Ted and I met in a politics of ecology class when he leaned over and offered to pay me two dollars for the last weeks notes. I refused the money and accepted a cup of coffee instead. This was during my sed semester at UC Berkeley, where I had enrolled as a liberal arts major and later ged to fis. Ted was in his third year in pre-med, his choice, he told me, ever since he dissected a fetal pig in the sixth grade.
I have to admit that what I initially found attractive in Ted were precisely the things that made him different from my brothers and the ese boys I had dated: his brashness; the assuredness in which he asked for things and expected to get them; his opinionated manner; his angular fad lanky body; the thiess of his arms; the fact that his parents immigrated from Tarrytown, New York, not Tientsin, a.
My mother must have noticed these same differences after Ted picked me up one evening at my parents house. When I returned home, my mother was still up, watg television.
"He is Ameri," warned my mother, as if I had been too blind to notice. A waigoren."
"Im Ameri too," I said. "And its not as if Im going to marry him or something."
Mrs. Jordan also had a few words to say. Ted had casually invited me to a family piic, the annual reunion held by the polo fields in Golden Gate Park. Although we had dated only a few times in the last month—aainly had never slept together, sih of us lived at home—Ted introduced me to all his relatives as his girlfriend, which, until then, I didnt know I was.
Later, when Ted and his father went off to play volleyball with the others, his mother took my hand, aarted walking along the grass, away from the crowd. She squeezed my palm warmly but never seemed to look at me.
"Im so glad to meet you finally," Mrs. Jordan said. I wao tell her I wasnt really Teds girlfriend, but she went on. "I think its hat you and Ted are having such a lot of fun together. So I hope you wont misuand what I have to say."
And then she spoke quietly abo