âThis woman is very interesting. I give her two rings, and she throws them away like garbage. Now she wants another one.â I couldnât rid myself of this irritating craving for something people considered sacred to marriage, even though whenever I owned one, it proved nothing but a nuisance. My neighbor Flippy had lost the ring Dave gave her fifty years ago. She had been hanging out laundry, and it disappeared in the long grass. She said she didnât miss it one bit. âThey say diamonds are a girlâs best friend, but theyâre not mine. I have no use for âem.â
What exactly makes a thing sacred? At our house, it seemedthat all the things I thought I held sacred meant nothing to my husband. When he took over the kitchen, my favorite cup disappeared; I found it in the shed behind the house with some coffee cans full of hinges and screws. Before he came, I had spent days preparing the house, intending to make a clean, airy sacred space, and the first item my husband added to this space had been the vitamin rack shoe tree. This metal high-rise quickly overflowed with gagging garage sale shoes with their tongues hanging at all angles. Next came a black metal shield with two gold British knights, an eagle on the center medallion, and two lethal-looking daggers crossed behind. A loud neon wall clock, twelve crystal punch cups, and glass end tables resting on gold chrome bullhorns took their places when I wasnât home and gave me a shock, as Iâve always had a visceral aversion to shiny, bright, or ticking things. I kept looking away and then back to see if maybe they were not as ugly as I thought.
Zhong-huaâs favorite color was an unearthly blue, the blue of plastic cemetery flowers. Mine was brown. He replaced the handmade crazy quilt on our bed that my sister had labored over for three years with a green plaid comforter from Wal-Mart. He found a gigantic framed painting of the Swiss Alps in someoneâs curbside garbage and put that up in the bedroom. He would take it outside sometimes, lean it on a tree, and sit on a milk crate, leisurely observing it through a cloud of cigarette smoke.
Da Jieâs aesthetic also migrated into our home. Every time she cleaned house, she loaded her car with things she no longer wanted: an eight-by-eleven white rug stained with dog poop, an old kitchen table with loose legs, a large blue and white porcelain urn, four mattresses, and all the old food in the freezer. It was taboo to refuse these offerings and, with the exception of the expired food, taboo to dispose of them; however, with them came a smaller rug, all wool with only a tiny spot of dog poop; two sturdy kitchen chairs; one good mattress; and eleven boxes of chocolates, each one opened with only a few pieces missing.
By our second winter together, my sculpture studio had become Zhong-huaâs late-night study grotto, where he would torture himself with
Speak English As You Wish
. My chisels, planes, and files I found angling out helter-skelter between the slats of an apple crate. I protested that I needed to have a workspace. âNo problem. You need do something, just do. I move.â I pictured him moving the study grotto into our tiny kitchen, where the headlight of the car was being reassembled, or the cramped living room, where he was growing tomatoes and peppers from seed sent from China. Nothing was sacred anymore. No, that wasnât it: nothing was more sacred than anything else. As Zhong-hua passed through space, he changed it to a chartless no-manâs-land where anything could happen.
My old surroundings winked and shifted as Zhong-hua made himself comfortable. I did a double take at the unexpected sight of a big garish purple poster on the wall called âIris Joy.â I did another when the ceramic mask of Obatala, an African god of creativity and wisdom, on our living room wall began wearing a woven Chinese hat. I removed it several times and placed it
What exactly makes a thing sacred? At our house, it seemedthat all the things I thought I held sacred meant nothing to my husband. When he took over the kitchen, my favorite cup disappeared; I found it in the shed behind the house with some coffee cans full of hinges and screws. Before he came, I had spent days preparing the house, intending to make a clean, airy sacred space, and the first item my husband added to this space had been the vitamin rack shoe tree. This metal high-rise quickly overflowed with gagging garage sale shoes with their tongues hanging at all angles. Next came a black metal shield with two gold British knights, an eagle on the center medallion, and two lethal-looking daggers crossed behind. A loud neon wall clock, twelve crystal punch cups, and glass end tables resting on gold chrome bullhorns took their places when I wasnât home and gave me a shock, as Iâve always had a visceral aversion to shiny, bright, or ticking things. I kept looking away and then back to see if maybe they were not as ugly as I thought.
Zhong-huaâs favorite color was an unearthly blue, the blue of plastic cemetery flowers. Mine was brown. He replaced the handmade crazy quilt on our bed that my sister had labored over for three years with a green plaid comforter from Wal-Mart. He found a gigantic framed painting of the Swiss Alps in someoneâs curbside garbage and put that up in the bedroom. He would take it outside sometimes, lean it on a tree, and sit on a milk crate, leisurely observing it through a cloud of cigarette smoke.
Da Jieâs aesthetic also migrated into our home. Every time she cleaned house, she loaded her car with things she no longer wanted: an eight-by-eleven white rug stained with dog poop, an old kitchen table with loose legs, a large blue and white porcelain urn, four mattresses, and all the old food in the freezer. It was taboo to refuse these offerings and, with the exception of the expired food, taboo to dispose of them; however, with them came a smaller rug, all wool with only a tiny spot of dog poop; two sturdy kitchen chairs; one good mattress; and eleven boxes of chocolates, each one opened with only a few pieces missing.
By our second winter together, my sculpture studio had become Zhong-huaâs late-night study grotto, where he would torture himself with
Speak English As You Wish
. My chisels, planes, and files I found angling out helter-skelter between the slats of an apple crate. I protested that I needed to have a workspace. âNo problem. You need do something, just do. I move.â I pictured him moving the study grotto into our tiny kitchen, where the headlight of the car was being reassembled, or the cramped living room, where he was growing tomatoes and peppers from seed sent from China. Nothing was sacred anymore. No, that wasnât it: nothing was more sacred than anything else. As Zhong-hua passed through space, he changed it to a chartless no-manâs-land where anything could happen.
My old surroundings winked and shifted as Zhong-hua made himself comfortable. I did a double take at the unexpected sight of a big garish purple poster on the wall called âIris Joy.â I did another when the ceramic mask of Obatala, an African god of creativity and wisdom, on our living room wall began wearing a woven Chinese hat. I removed it several times and placed it
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