At Son's One-Month Feast Wife Barred My Parents; I Quit

1: 1

On the day of our son's one-month celebration, I'd booked the banquet ahead of time.

My parents and relatives rode the train ten hours to get here, only to be stopped at the door by my wife, Bianca Whitlock.

She pulled out ten boxes of infectious-disease test strips and threw them in my face.

"Everyone in your family gets tested for STDs right now. Not one of you comes inside until they do."

My mother knew how fussy my wife was, so she wiped her palms on her clothes first before bending down to pick them up.

I reached out and stopped her.

Bianca turned on us in an instant.

"Ulysses Matthews says your hometown has more infectious diseases and STDs than anywhere in the country."

"Today is my son's one-month party. There's no way I'm letting this many walking sources of infection touch him!"

Ulysses was the boy she'd grown up with.

"It's just a finger prick, right? I'll do the test."

My mother's face went red with embarrassment, but she still reached out and caught my arm.

"Your wife just cares about the baby. Don't fight with her."

"City folk have a lot of rules."

"And our relatives are all reasonable people. They'll understand."

I looked at the white streaks in my mother's hair, then picked up my phone and messaged my childhood friend, the one who's a lawyer.

"Draft me a divorce agreement."

1.

Bianca stood at the hotel entrance.

She counted my relatives off on her finger, one by one.

Then she set the ten boxes of test strips on the hood of the car.

"Seventeen people total. I counted. Not one short, or nobody gets in."

Just as she turned around, my friend called back.

His tone was that of a man fed up with me.

"Rod Abbott, you want a divorce?"

"I'm not trying to lecture you, but you can't even cover the filing fee."

I glanced at my balance.

Twenty-five in my wallet app. Thirty-seven cents in the bank.

The first night after Bianca and I got married.

The first thing when we walked in wasn't a hug, wasn't a kiss.

She held out her right hand, palm up, and said to me,

"Rod, where's your salary card?"

"Ulysses says men go bad once they have money."

"From now on I handle the money in this house. I'll give you five hundred a month for pocket money."

It wasn't that I begrudged spending money on her.

I just couldn't stand the taste of being controlled.

Because I didn't hand over the card, Bianca went back to her mother's that same night.

My parents rushed over to her family's place overnight to apologize, and made me write a formal promise in front of every one of her relatives.

"Once you're married, you're one family."

"If your wife wants to handle the money, let her."

Just because I'd married Bianca, my whole family kept its head down for two years.

My balance never climbed above five hundred again.

This time I didn't want to keep my head down.

My friend hung up and sent me a divorce-agreement template.

Then a voice message, a dozen-odd seconds long.

"A short pain beats a long one."

"Go ahead and bring it up with her. I'll help you protect your assets."

Right after that, I messaged Linda Fox, my college classmate who's the finance director at the company.

"Get me my salary records. For a divorce."

Just as the message went through, Ulysses came out.

He had a mask on and disposable gloves, and he looked at my family the way you'd look at a virus.

"Whose son's one-month party is this, yours or mine?"

"Do I really have to keep coming out here to hurry you along?"

He tore open a box and flung the instruction sheet onto my father's shoulder.

I charged at him to hit him, and my mother stopped me again.

"It's a happy day. Say what you have to say nicely."

She forced a smile, her back bending without her even thinking about it.

2: 2

2.

"Daughter-in-law, we know you city folks like things clean."

"We all bathed and changed into fresh clothes before coming over today."

"I promise you, these relatives are honest people. There's nothing wrong with any of them."

My mother had on an old-fashioned jujube-red dress with a small floral print.

It was the best thing in her closet.

She never wore it, just opened the closet every few days to look at it.

The last time she'd worn it was at my wedding.

Bianca just stared at me, her face full of resentment, and said nothing.

Ulysses shoved my mother aside.

"Oh, please."

"It's been all over the news. That hometown of yours is famous for being an STD village."

"So poor they'll do anything."

"Selling blood, selling their bodies, selling their kids. Even the three-year-olds are crawling with germs."

My father couldn't hold his composure anymore.

He rubbed his hands anxiously and looked at Bianca, at a loss.

"That stuff online is all nonsense. Everyone back home is decent."

"My wife and I both had to get health certificates for work in the city. We really aren't sick."

Deborah rolled her eyes, her voice sharp as a knife, cutting our family's dignity full of holes.

"You've got some nerve saying that!"

"Last time Bianca stayed at your place, just one night, and she came back with diarrhea and vomiting and a week of fever!"

"She said you don't even have running water. You still use a well. Who knows how much bacteria is in it."

Ulysses's expression turned mocking.

"That well's how many years old now."

"Who knows who's been spitting or pissing into it. The whole thing's a petri dish. Bianca really got the short end marrying you."

My mother fell silent.

Trembling, she picked up the lancet and jabbed it at her finger.

The first try didn't go through.

She was like a child who'd done something wrong.

She said to me quietly,

"I know my daughter-in-law likes things clean, so I didn't use the well at home."

"I went into town a day early to buy bottled water."

"Carried it back on a forty-minute walk."

I reached out to grab the lancet from her.

"It's not your fault."

"Bianca got the runs because she insisted on eating that raw marinated seafood Ulysses bought on the way home."

"It has nothing to do with our family."

Ulysses's face changed.

"Cut the useless talk!"

"Today is Bianca's son's one-month celebration. Everyone coming is somebody, important bosses and family. If they catch some disease from you people, can you take the blame for that?"

I looked at Bianca, all ten fingers clenched into fists.

"I'll only ask you one thing."

"You're set on humiliating my family today, aren't you."

Bianca pressed her lips together and said nothing.

Ulysses lost his temper.

"How can you talk to Bianca like that?"

"She gave you a son. She's your family's biggest hero!"

"Your whole family should be down on their knees thanking her!"

I shoved him back.

"I'm asking her, not you!"

Bianca lifted her head, her eyes full of hurt and resentment.

"Aren't I doing this for the baby too?"

"He's only a month old, when his immune system is at its weakest. I can't gamble with my son's health."

The words had barely left her mouth.

My cousin pulled two thousand out of his coat and pressed it into my hand.

"Here's the gift for the baby. We'll skip the meal."

"Your family's food is too fine. I can't afford it."

He set down the money and made to leave.

His wife and my second uncle stopped him.

Nobody said a word. They just looked at me in silence.

Everyone was holding it in.

They didn't want us to lose face.

Then Deborah blew up.

"What is this supposed to mean, from your family?"

"My daughter carries on your family line, and this is how you bully her?"

My mother's eyes went red.

She snatched the lancet back from my hand.

And drove it hard into her own hand and my father's, tearing open a gash in each.

"It's a joyous day."

"Let's not make things hard for Rod."

"It's just one little prick. It's nothing."

"We're country people. We don't fuss over things like that."

3: 3

3.

My cousin, the one who was always the loudest and pushiest, said nothing.

She just pulled out the test strips and ran them on my father and my mother.

One line.

Negative.

No infectious disease. No virus.

Ulysses gave her a look, motioning for her to set the strips down on the table.

I snatched them up and clenched them in my fist.

I stared coldly at Bianca.

"So you're never going to stop, is that it?"

My father, who had been silent the whole time, grabbed me from behind.

His voice slipped into our hometown dialect in his panic.

"You finally got yourself a wife, finally have a child."

"She's still recovering from the birth. Let it go, for her sake!"

"If you turn on them now, you're saying I'm no father of yours!"

Deborah didn't understand a word. She clicked her tongue.

She turned to Bianca and said,

"From now on you keep an eye on Rod. He's not to speak dialect in front of the child."

"It's so backwoods. The kid picks it up and gets laughed at."

My phone buzzed with a message.

Linda had sent over a full year of my salary records.

At the end she'd added one line.

"Rod, if you ever get divorced, think about me."

Four years of college, three years of work.

Seven years as good partners.

We'd never once crossed the line.

When I was hospitalized with pneumonia, Bianca wouldn't come see me, afraid she'd catch it.

Linda brought me meals for a week.

Ulysses looked pleased with himself.

From behind his back he produced a big bottle of disinfectant.

He pressed the nozzle once, and a sharp, stinging smell filled the air.

"On top of the STDs and the AIDS, we've got to kill off the bacteria you people carry too."

Deborah nodded along beside him.

"Rod, I've seen the videos online."

"Out in the countryside where you're from, people don't wash their hands before eating."

"Wash your face and your feet in the same basin."

"Some of them have foot fungus growing on their hands."

Bianca looked up at me.

She reached out and took Deborah's arm.

"That's enough."

Not a rebuttal.

Not an apology.

Just a light, careless that's enough.

Ulysses aimed the disinfectant at my father and gave it two sprays.

The liquid dripped into my father's eye, stinging so badly it broke him out in a cold sweat.

It rolled down his cheek, leaving his neck raw and red.

My father said nothing. He raised his sleeve and wiped his face.

Covering the corner of his tightly clenched mouth.

When he was young he'd spent fifteen years breaking his back on construction sites.

He'd put me through college on money he'd bled for.

Never once said a word about how hard it was.

Years under the sun had given him a skin condition, so even water hurt his skin.

He wouldn't spend on a single bottle of water for himself, yet for my wedding he'd handed over two hundred thousand in bride price.

I lunged forward and wrenched the disinfectant away from him.

Just as I drew back my fist to bring it down,

my mother caught hold of my sleeve.

"Son, we've got all these relatives here."

"How are we supposed to go on living after this?"

She couldn't bear to lose her grandson.

Couldn't bear to see me lose the life I'd finally built, rooting myself in the big city and taking a wife.

Guests around the hotel hall were already craning their necks to watch the show.

That only fired Ulysses up.

He shouted at the top of his lungs,

"Isn't Bianca doing all this for the child?"

"You bunch of dirt-poor farmers, it took your ancestors' graves smoking with luck to land a girl like her."

"Nobody's even giving you a hard time here."

"We just want to kill off the viruses and bacteria on you. Is that really so much to ask?"

Bianca stood on the step, looking at me.

Her eyes full of disappointment.

"Rod, you promised me you'd never let me suffer any hardship."

I held it all in.

A dull, crushing ache pressed on my chest.

"Have I ever made you suffer?"

"Before we married, you and your parents and your brother, four of you crammed into a rundown three-hundred-square-foot place."

"You made three thousand a month, and you had to think twice about buying a pair of socks."

"You marry me, and you're living in a new place, buying a dozen new outfits and pairs of shoes a month."

"Answer me."

"Have you suffered any hardship?"

She said nothing.