Buddha Is Hiding by Ong Aihwa;

Author:Ong, Aihwa;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2003-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Mae Gets Her Husband Locked up, then Released

In the next case, we see two male social workers, Tim Hale and Sam Ngor, sympathizing with the disempowerment of a husband who was constantly out-maneuvered by his wife, who routinely used the law to discipline her wayward husband. Since 1985, Mae, a good-looking woman with wavy, shoulder-length hair, had threatened to divorce her husband, Pang, because his alcoholism created havoc at home. Somehow, family counseling and the self-help group kept them married, despite frequent fights and separations. When I first met them, Pang was still on probation for an incident of wife abuse earlier that year. In late spring 1990, the Pangs appeared at a group meeting together, though he had been ordered out of the house days before. They gave different versions of the conflict that had led to their latest separation. Pang—a slim, middle-aged man with a rakish grin and sinuous gestures—reported that his wife had ordered him out of his apartment after he danced with a Laotian woman at a wedding party. The people who had been at the same party agreed that it was “a very dirty dance,” but they saw that Pang, who had forgotten to zip up his trousers, was obviously drunk. Pang tossed a remark in his wife’s direction: “You gave me such tight pants; I felt uncomfortable.” The next day, he reported, his wife called the police to have him removed from the apartment.

Mae:

I called Sam [the social worker] to report that my husband had sold his gold chain to buy alcohol.

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