Purse in hand, Katherine stands in the kitchen, rigid fury abruptly slack, struggling to comprehend what has happened.
It is a Chao family foible: misplacing things. You could call it losing things, though they never do call it this. They’ve lost too much: their family ship balancing bravely on a crest, a wave of losses. Lost money, lost home, lost country, lost languages, lost years, lost ancestors, lost stories, lost memories, lost hopes, lost lives; and there is more, it’s clear from their veiled faces, their foreboded happiness, their infrequent, wild laughter. Their extravagance. To balance the losses, poor Winnie stockpiled more sons, more dishes, more emergency supplies. Months after her departure, the kitchen cabinets are still three-deep in canisters of tea, white wood ears, brown wood ears, bottles of fermented rice, bags of dried shrimp.
Is it because of Winnie’s crowded counter space that in this moment Katherine can’t recall, can’t quite even imagine, where she put the ring? (Or is part of it, she can’t help thinking, that she’s rattled by the little dinner Ming made? The way he cooked, with more reticence and more precision than Dagou, but, unexpectedly, with that same attention?) She wants to leave him in a fury, but she literally cannot leave empty-handed. She breathes for several minutes, in and out, moving her gaze slowly, methodically around a package of dried mushrooms. The space on the counter is empty.
She looks at her naked finger. Then at her other hand, down at the floor, back at the counter. Then into the sink. She doesn’t lose things. She keeps them safe. Someone moved it; it was moved. Not by her. Did Ming get up, when they were arguing—did he leave the room?
Footsteps behind her. “What’s the matter? What’re you looking for?”
She turns, flinches at how young and tired he seems. “It’s—the ring. I can’t find it.”
He scowls at her finger, and then, without a word, they begin to search. Systematically, removing every plastic pouch, every canister, tin, container, piling them on the table. Wiping down the counter. Squinting under the counter.
“Are you sure you put it there?”
“I’m sure.” Her voice is shaking.
They move everything back to the counter and go over the table. Then the sink again, the floor, the windowsills, the cabinets. They look through Katherine’s purse, although she’s certain she didn’t put it in there. Then the other room. Two hours pass. They’re exhausted. She can tell he wants her to leave: if only she would leave!
“Maybe I’m remembering wrong,” she says. “Maybe I knocked it into the sink. Maybe we should take the drain apart.” She stares, hard, at the empty sink strainer. “No,” she says, “I’m sure I put it on the counter.”
But there’s no other possibility. Unless—would he, would Ming have done it?
“What is it?”
“Nothing.”
Could it be? Is it possible that, despite his claims, he’s jealous of Dagou because he’s the oldest? Does Ming secretly want all of the things Dagou has never questioned being entitled to? Could it actually be—her breathing sharpens—
“What is it?”
She snaps. “Did you take it?”
She expects him to explode. But he only shakes his head. “Why would I do that?”
“Because you’re so competitive!” No, she is the exploding one. There’s so much she’s been holding back: what everybody thinks she feels; what she truly feels; what she alone knows, or suspects, and cannot even allow herself to think, about Dagou. She must hold back. She regains her self-control. “You might want the one valuable thing he has that you can’t buy. You might want to be the one—the one to give the ring to the mother of the future family heirs. You might, somewhere, deep down, be as old-school patriarchal, as dynastic-thinking, as your brother, as your father!”
Her words are followed by a resounding stillness. Then Ming says, as quietly as James, “That I might want what he has.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I might. But I would never take it from you.”
She thinks: Because it means so much to me, and not to him after all. But there is something else in his tone, an uncharacteristic, almost unendurable gentleness.
They stand and stare at one another. Her eyes burn with tears. She sees, making its way through months of weariness, grief, confusion, and pain, a spark—definitely, there is a moment when a flicker of Chao desire, which she knows so well, flares into Ming’s black eyes. He will—unquestionably—take her into his arms. What does she want? But then Ming remembers who she is. He gathers himself, and says, “You should go home.”
Useless Feelings
He doesn’t get involved with Asian women. Though Katherine is only genetically Asian. She’s been raised by a white family, and her emotions, Ming reminds himself, are white emotions! Still, because of certain childhood scars fused into his psyche, the sight of her discouragement (really, any flicker of upset or disappointment) stirs up in him useless feelings, Asian feelings, that have been pushed away long ago.
Ming can’t tell if she still wants to be with Dagou. It could be pride alone that keeps her working on Dagou’s behalf. But were Ming to be honest with himself, he believes it’s less than fifty percent pride; it’s more a profound loyalty and, yes, love. What kind of love is this? he wonders. What is its source? How and why did she attach herself to his buffoon of a brother in such a way that love was woven in so deep?
Ming remembers Katherine on the first Christmas Dagou brought her home. They were in their senior year of college, and Ming was a high school junior, old enough to recognize another socially disciplined introvert. She was pretty—beautiful, really, right from the beginning—but shy. Most likely it was Dagou’s casual manners and his natural warmth that first drew her out. (Dagou’s beer-faced grin, beaming through the crowd at a college party.) He remembers her meeting Winnie. She wasn’t faking the part of the diffident, sycophantic future daughter-in-law; she was truly moved and honored.
If he (not Dagou) had been dating her, he would have recognized in that moment, with Katherine looking down at Winnie as if at a long-lost mother, and Winnie beaming back up at Katherine as if at a long-lost daughter, that he’d made a terrible mistake to bring her home. That he, the son and the lover, was now responsible. He would’ve taken better care of her. Katherine and his heedless, harebrained brother. It’s more preposterous every day. How can her love be keeping her bound to him? From what depth of love could come this fathomless loyalty? And how can Dagou fail to see it—fail to see what a priceless, peerless gift he dangled, and now squanders?
Ming’s First Visit to O-Lan