“Well, what is your name, then?”
"Call me anything you like. Ah-chu, Ah-ch’ou, Mei-chuan, Ch’un-hsiang, Ch’iu- hsia, Tung-mei, Hsiu-ying, Ts’ui-fang, Niu-niu, Pao-pao, Pei-pei, Lien-ying, Kuei- fen, Chü-hua. Just call me Peach, OK?”
The opening lines strongly hint at the significance that the issue of identity will play in the novel. It will turn out that the woman who first offers a litany of names by which she may be addressed before settling on a proper identity is not exactly everything that simple request of address indicates. Peach she is. But Peach she also, simultaneously, is not. This dichotomy of conflicting notions of identity in which both can be appropriate and inappropriate at the same time will recur throughout the novel in various guises that are applicable to far more than just the nature of Peach’s relationship with…Helen. See, there ya go!
Peach
21 March 1970
P.S. I enclose Mulberry’s diary in America, several letters from Chiang I-po, several letters Mulberry wrote in New York but didn’t mail, and several letters from Sang-wa in Taiwan: she has fallen in love with a middle-aged married man. His wife is expecting their fifth child.
The structural composition of the novel reflects the schizophrenic mind of the protagonist. Four letters written by Peach to the man from the US Immigration Service cover a period of time stretching from January to March, 1970. Not all end with a P.S., but each does end with a reference to Peach’s plan to forward the diary kept by Mulberry. In this, the final letter, she asserts that it is actually—finally—on its way.
MULBERRY, she is now 41. She has applied for permanent residency in the USA. Everything in her life has been destroyed: her past, her traditional values, and her ethics have been shattered. She is schizophrenic.
PEACH, Mulberry’s other personality, who plunges Mulberry into a life of promiscuity and adventure.
CHIANG 1-PO, a Chinese professor. He cannot commit himself to anything and cannot choose between Mulberry and his wife. He lives in China’s past and is nei- ther Chinese nor American.
BETTY CHIANG, (in her 50s), Chiang’s bored, crazy wife.
TAN-HUNG, (in her 40s), Teng’s older sister. Married with no children.
Each of the extracts form Mulberry’s notebook—or “diary” as Peach insists on referring to them—starts with a rundown of the cast of the character who will comprise the narrative. In the first entry, written when Mulberry was 16, there is a character called PEACH-FLOWER WOMAN who is really just a few years older, but exudes an exuberant life force to which the teenage girl is drawn. The first time “Peach” appears as a character in the list is here; the last excerpt written some twenty-five years later. It is also only the second time her character description has mentioned schizophrenia.
Does this face in the mirror belong to me? I want to cry but the face in the mirror is smiling. I’m grinning ear to ear just like a clown. I write a note to Tan-hung, I killed your A-king, I don’t know why I did such a thing Iwish I were dead. Mulberry. I tape the note to her bedroom door.
The note is gone she probably read it and tore it up. I can’t face her again, but I need her to raise my child.
I tore up the note, Mulberry. You mind your own business. I killed the dog. Tan-hung is not going to raise your child, so don’t think about it.
I really have gone crazy. I’m afraid of that other self, her only purpose is to destroy me.
The same notebook referenced above—the last attributed to Mulberry—also provides the strongest and most chilling evidence of the deterioration of her mental state in the face of splitting off half of herself to Peach’s personality. The two different personalities is made manifest through the use of italics. Mulberry’s entries are italicized; Peach’s response is not. Although plenty of evidence has already been forwarded by this time that Mulberry is truly in dire straits emotionally and mentally, it is this final notebook entry that everything collapses upon her and Peach begins to establish herself as the dominant half. While the earlier entries contain some chilling scenes, the entirety of this diary entry is extraordinarily difficult to get through because the author so eerily seems to capture and portray two distinct minds operating within a single body. While much of what is harrowing that comes before is directly related to dramatic historic events, it is when the novel boils down to the personal that it becomes most traumatic.
