The Bridegroom (21 page)

“That’s despicable,” I snapped. “You not only burned them but also peed on them.” My stomach suddenly rumbled.

Feilan giggled. Baisha pointed at Peter’s nose and said sharply, “Peter Jiao, remember you’re a Chinese. There are people here who don’t have enough corn flour to eat while you burn chicken every night. You’ve forgotten your ancestors and who you are.”

Peter looked rattled, protesting, “I don’t feel comfortable about it either. But somebody has to do it. I’m paid to burn them, just like you’re paid to fry them.”

“Don’t give me that crap!” Jinglin cut in. “You’re a capitalist’s henchman.”

Peter retorted, “So are you. You work for this capitalist company too.”

“Hold on,” Manyou said. “We just want to reason you out of this shameful thing. Why do you waste chicken that way? Why not give the leftovers to the poor?”

“You think I enjoy burning them? If I gave them away, I’d be fired. This is the American way of doing business.”

“But you’re a Chinese running a restaurant in a socialist country,” said Jinglin.

As we were wrangling, Mr. Shapiro came out of his office with coffee stains around his lips. Peter explained to him what we quarreled about. Our boss waved his hand to dismiss us, as though this were such a trifle that it didn’t deserve his attention. He just said, “It’s company’s policy, we can’t do anything about it. If you’re really concerned about the waste, don’t fry too many pieces, and sell everything you’ve fried.” He walked to the front door to have a smoke outside.

Peter said, “That’s true. He can’t change a thing. From now on we’d better not fry more than we can sell.”

I was still angry and said, “I’m going to write to the
Herald
to expose this policy.”

“There’s no need to be so emotional, Hongwen,” Peter said with a complacent smile, raising his squarish chin a little. “There have been several articles on this subject. For example, the
Beijing Evening News
carried a long piece last week about our company. The author praised our policy on leftovers and believed it would reduce waste eventually. He said we Chinese should adopt the American way of running business. In any case, this policy cannot be exposed anymore. People already know about it.”

That silenced us all. Originally we had planned that if Mr. Shapiro continued to have the leftovers burned, we’d go on strike for a few days. Peter’s words deflated us all at once.

Still, Jinglin wouldn’t let Peter off so easily. When it turned dark, he pressed a thumbtack into the rear tire of the Honda motorcycle parked in the backyard. Peter called home, and his wife came driving a white Toyota truck to carry back the motorcycle and him. This dealt us another blow, because we hadn’t expected he owned a brand-new pickup as well. No one else in our city could afford such a vehicle. We asked ourselves, “Heavens, how much money does Peter actually have?”

We were all anxious to find that out. On payday, somehow Mr. Shapiro mixed Peter’s wages in with ours. We each received an envelope stuffed with a bundle of cash, but Peter’s was always empty. Juju said Peter got only a slip of paper in his envelope, which was called a check. He could exchange that thing for money at the bank, where he had an account as if he were a company himself. In Juju’s words, “Every month our boss just writes Peter lots of money.” That fascinated us. How much did he get from Mr. Shapiro? This question had remained an enigma ever since we worked here. Now his pay was in our hands, and at last we could find it out.

Manyou steamed the envelope over a cup of hot tea and opened it without difficulty. The figure on the check astounded us: $1,683.75. For a good moment nobody said a word, never having imagined that Peter received an American salary, being paid dollars instead of yuan. That’s to say, he made twenty times more than each of us! No wonder he worked so hard, taking care of Cowboy Chicken as if it were his home, and tried every trick to please Mr. Shapiro.

That night after work, we gathered at Baisha’s home for an emergency meeting. Her mother was a doctor, so their apartment was spacious and Baisha had her own room. She took out a packet of spiced pumpkin seeds, and we began chatting while drinking tea.

“God, just think of the money Peter’s raking in,” Jinglin said, and pulled his brushy hair, sighing continually. He looked wretched, as if ten years older than the day before. His chubby face had lost its luster.

I said, “Peter can afford to eat at the best restaurants every day. There’s no way he can spend that amount of money.”

Feilan spat the shells of a pumpkin seed into her fist, her eyes turning triangular. She said, “We must protest. This isn’t fair.”

Baisha agreed with a sigh, “Now I know what exploitation feels like.”

“Peter has done a lot for Cowboy Chicken,” Manyou said, “but there’s no justification for him to make that much.” He seemed still in a daze and kept stroking his receding chin.

“We must figure out a countermeasure,” said Jinglin.

I suggested, “Perhaps we should talk with our boss.”

“You think he’ll pay each of us a thousand dollars?” Baisha asked scornfully.

“Of course not,” I said.

“Then what’s the point of talking with him?”

Manyou put in, “I don’t know. What do you think we should do, Baisha?”

I was surprised that he should be at a loss too, because he was known as a man of strategies. Baisha answered, “I think we must unite as one and demand our boss fire Peter.”

Silence fell in the room, in which stood a double bed covered with a pink sheet. A folded floral blanket sat atop a pair of eiderdown pillows stacked together. I wondered why Baisha needed such a large bed for herself. She must have slept with her boyfriends on it quite often. She was such a slut.

“That’s a good idea. I say let’s get rid of Peter,” Manyou said, nodding at her admiringly.

Still perplexed, I asked, “Suppose Mr. Shapiro does fire him, then what?”

“One of us may take Peter’s job,” said Manyou.

Feilan picked up, “Are you sure he’ll fire Peter?”

To our surprise, Baisha said, “Of course he will. It’ll save him fifteen hundred dollars a month.”

“I don’t get it,” said Jinglin. “What’s the purpose of doing this? Even if he fires Peter, he won’t pay us more, will he?”

“Then he’ll have to depend on us and may give us each a raise,” answered Baisha.

Unconvinced, I said, “What if the new manager gets paid more and just ignores the rest of us?”

Manyou frowned, because he knew that only Baisha and he could be candidates for that position, which required the ability to use English. Feilan, Jinglin, and I couldn’t speak a complete sentence yet.

“Let’s draw up a contract,” Feilan said. “Whoever becomes the new manager must share his wages with the rest of us.”

We all supported the idea and signed a brief statement which said that if the new manager didn’t share his earnings with the rest of us, he’d be childless and we could get our revenge in any way we chose. After that, Baisha went about composing a letter addressed to Mr. Shapiro. She didn’t know enough English words for the letter, so she fetched a bulky dictionary from her parents’ study. She began to write with a felt-tip pen, now and again consulting the dictionary. She was sleepy and yawned incessantly, covering her mouth with her left palm and disclosing her hairy armpit. Meanwhile, we cracked pumpkin seeds and chatted away.

The letter was short, but it seemed to the point. Even Manyou said it was good after he looked it over. It stated:

Our Respected Mr. Kenneth Shapiro:

We are writing to demand you to fire Peter Jiao immediately. This is our united will. You must respect our will. We do not want a leader like him. That is all.

Sincerely,

Your Employees

We all signed our names and felt that at last we had stood up to that capitalist. Since I’d pass our restaurant on my way home, I took charge of delivering the letter. Before we left, Baisha brought out a bottle of apricot wine, and together we drank to our solidarity.

I dropped the letter into the slot on the front door of Cowboy Chicken. After I got home, for a while I was light-headed and kept imagining the shock on Mr. Shapiro’s pudgy face. I also thought of Peter, who, without his current job, might never be able to complete his outrageous mansion. But soon I began to worry, fearing Baisha might become the new manager. Compared with Peter, she had a volatile temper and was more selfish. Besides, she couldn’t possibly maintain the connections and clientele Peter had carefully built up, not to mention develop the business. Manyou wasn’t as capable as Peter either. Sometimes he could be very clever about trivial matters, but he had no depth. He didn’t look steady and couldn’t inspire trust in customers. To be fair, Peter seemed indispensable to Cowboy Chicken. I wouldn’t have minded if Mr. Shapiro had paid him five times more than me.

We all showed up at work at eight-thirty the next morning. To our surprise, neither Mr. Shapiro nor Peter betrayed any anxiety. They acted as if nothing had happened, and treated us the same as the day before. We were baffled, wondering what they had planned for us. Peter seemed to avoid us, but he was polite and quiet. Apparently he had read the letter.

We expected that our boss would talk with us one by one. Even if he wouldn’t fire Peter, he might make some concessions. But for a whole morning he stayed in his office as if he had forgotten us altogether. He was reading a book about the Jews who had lived in China hundreds of years ago. His calm appearance agitated us. If only we could have had an inkling of what he had up his sleeve.

When the day was at last over, we met briefly at a street corner. We were confused, but all agreed to wait and see. Feilan sighed and said, “I feel like we’re in a tug-of-war.”

“Yes, we’re in a mental war, so we must be tough-minded and patient,” Manyou told us.

I went home with a stomachache. Again my father was drunk that night, singing revolutionary songs and saying I was lucky to have my fill of American chicken every day. I couldn’t get to sleep until the wee hours.

The next day turned out the same. Peter assigned each of us some work, and Mr. Shapiro still wouldn’t say an unnecessary word to us. I couldn’t help picturing his office as a giant snail shell into which he had shut himself. What should we do? They must have devised a trap or something for us. What was it? We had to do something, not just wait like this, or they would undo us one by one.

That night we gathered at Baisha’s home again. After a lengthy discussion, we agreed to go on strike. Baisha wrote a note, which read:

Mr. Shapiro:

Because you do not consider our demand, we decide to

strike at Cowboy Chicken. Begin tomorrow.

We didn’t sign our names this time, since he knew who we were and what we were referring to. I was unsure of the phrase “strike at Cowboy Chicken,” but I didn’t say anything, guessing that probably she just meant we’d leave the place unmanned. Again I delivered the letter. None of us went to work the next morning. We wanted the restaurant to lose some business and our boss to worry a little so that he’d be willing to cooperate with his workers. But we had agreed to meet at one o’clock in front of Everyday Hardware, near Cowboy Chicken; then together we’d go to our workplace and start to negotiate with Mr. Shapiro. In other words, we planned to strike only for half a day.

After lunch we all arrived at the hardware store. To our astonishment, a squad of police was standing in front of Cowboy Chicken as if a fire or a riot had broken out. They wouldn’t allow people to enter the restaurant unless they searched them. What was going on? Why had Mr. Shapiro called in the police? We were puzzled. Together we walked over as if we had just returned from a lunch break. The front of the restaurant was cordoned off, and three police were stationed at the door. A tall policeman stretched out his arm to stop us. Baisha asked loudly, “Hey, Big Wan, you don’t remember me?” She was all smiles.

“Yes, I saw you,” Wan said with a grin.

“We all work here. Let us go in, all right? We have tons of work to do.”

“We have to search you before letting you in.”

“I’ve nothing on me. How do you search?” She spread her arms, then lifted her long skirt a little with one hand, to show she didn’t even have a pocket.

“Stand still, all of you,” said Wan. A policewoman waved a black wand over Baisha, a gadget like a miniature badminton racket without strings.

“Is this a mine detector or something?” Jinglin asked the policewoman.

“A metal detector,” she said.

“What’s going on here?” Baisha asked Wan.

“Someone threatened to blow this place up.”

We were all horrified by that, hoping it had nothing to do with us.

The police let us in. The moment we entered we saw an old couple standing behind the counter taking care of orders. Damn it, Peter had brought his parents in to work! How come he wasn’t afraid a bomb might blow them to pieces? In a corner, Susanna and two student-looking girls were wiping tables and placing silver. They were humming “We Shall Overcome,” but stopped at the sight of us. In the kitchen the two part-timers were frying chicken. Dumbfounded, we didn’t know how to respond to this scene.

Mr. Shapiro came over. He looked furious, his face almost purple. He said to us, his spit flying about, “You think you can frighten me into obeying you? Let me tell you, you are all terminated!”

I didn’t know what his last word meant, though I was sure it had a negative meaning. Manyou seemed to understand, his lips twitching as if he were about to cry. He gulped and couldn’t say a word.

Peter said to us, “We can’t use you anymore. You’re fired.”

“You can’t do this to us,” Baisha said to Mr. Shapiro and stepped forward. “We are founders of this place.”

Mr. Shapiro laughed. “What are you talking about? How much stock do you have in this company?”

What did he mean? We looked at one another, unable to fathom his meaning. He said, “Go home, don’t come anymore. You’ll receive this month’s pay by the mail.” He turned and walked off to the men’s room, shaking his head and muttering, “I don’t want any terrorists here.”