Tomatoes cont...

When we first saw Suyen and realized that she had come over as Petersen’s concubine, or rather, his wife, we were appalled. She has to be thirty years younger than he, and it doesn’t help that Oriental women always seem to look younger than their age. But it took no time before Suyen and Judy became friends and we stopped thinking of her in derogatory terms.

At the beginning Suyen’s English was very limited and Judy was a big help to her. I can still hear them laughing out loud from the garden where they each worked on their own side of the low fence.

“Not lododendlun,” Judy would say. “Rhododendron, rho-do-den-dron,” and Suyen repeated “lododendlun”.

“Rho-do-den-dron,” said Judy one more time. “Lo-do-den-dlun,” said Suyen. And when I looked out the window, I saw the two of them bent in two, laughing hysterically. They reminded me of fragile stems shaking their petals off in a rambunctious wind.

Judy loves to cultivate flowers but at the end of Suyen’s first gardening season, she had to admit that the elegance of our new neighbour’s garden far surpassed ours. Suyen also grows vegetables. Petersen loves to boast that since he married her they eat almost only home-grown vegetables. But I haven’t seen him breaking his back in the garden. She even grows beautiful, large beefsteak tomatoes for him although she herself can’t eat them because she is allergic to tomatoes.

Meanwhile, the jerk treats her as his slave but she is so incredibly docile, sometimes I wish I could take her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her head.

Whenever I say anything like that to Judy, she says, “Leave her alone, Martin, she comes from a different culture. He is not physically abusive, he just has a twisted sense of humour, and I’ll bet she doesn’t understand half of what he says. Don’t worry; she’s smart; she’ll dump him when she’s ready.”

When Petersen calls her name from the house, her little footsteps carry her so quickly over the back steps, you would think she was his servant. In reality, I suppose she is. It makes me sick to think about it. I agree with Judy that Suyen is very intelligent and probably won’t be with him all her life but she shouldn’t have to live as a slave just because some man can afford to take advantage of an unfortunate woman. I don’t know what Suyen left behind on the other side of the world but it must have been pretty horrendous because I have never seen her give him a sidelong glance. I have never heard a single word of complaint from her, not even a sigh, no matter what. It’s as though nothing in the world could disturb the serene smile on her face. How anyone can tolerate such a nasty man is beyond me. And the poor woman has no family at all on this side of the world. Maybe she doesn’t have any family anywhere; maybe he is all she has. She never talks about herself.

Anyway, the day before my bosses came for dinner, Petersen did something that infuriated me. It was one of those beautiful sunny days with squirrels chasing one another other up and down the large oak tree at the front of the house. Suyen had been labouring in her garden since early morning, stopping only to make His Lordship his mid-morning brew and to prepare lunch while he sat on the back porch reading the Globe and Mail. She served him his favourite: a toasted bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich. She prepared the same for herself, without the tomato, of course.