A Girl Named Faithful Plum (5 page)

Zhongmei was shocked into silence by that remark. Growing up, she had always known that her parents, being poor and already having two girls and a boy, had decided before she was born that they would give her to a couple that lived nearby in the village and had no children of their own. But Zhongmei came into the world on December 27, 1966, so small and sickly that her mother had to nurse her for several months, and after she’d done that, looking every day into her new little girl’s innocent eyes, she no longer had the heart to give her away.

This story was told often in the Li household. Zhongmei had heard it since she was small. Everybody knew it. And everybody
in Baoquanling also knew that the couple that had been slated to become her parents, whose name was Wong and who lived just a few doors down the lane from the Li house, were sorely disappointed when Zhongmei’s mother decided to keep her. They had no children and the Lis now had four, and Zhongmei imagined whenever she saw them that they looked at her longingly. Worse, when her mother got angry at her, which didn’t happen often but it did happen, she would tell her that the Wongs still wanted her and she could still be given away.

“If you don’t behave, I’m going to give you to Mr. and Mrs. Wong,” Xiuying would snap.

Zhongmei knew that this wasn’t true. It was only her hardworking and hard-pressed mother’s way of expressing her annoyance. Still, the idea that the Wongs had hoped to have her embarrassed her and frightened her. It gave her mother’s annoyance a special sharpness. Whenever Zhongmei walked past the Wongs’ gate, which she did almost every day on her way to school, a kind of nervousness crawled over her skin and she would shiver until she had reached the end of the lane. And now with her hunger strike she had carried disobedience to a new level. Would her mother really give her away this time?

No, Zhongmei said to herself, lying on the
kang
, feeling her hunger like an empty space inside her. Or would she?

“Can I talk to you?”

Zhongmei, who had been facing the wall, turned and watched Lao Lao hobble to the
kang
and sit down next to
Zhongmei. She hobbled because she had bound feet. As with many Chinese women of her generation, born near the beginning of the twentieth century when China was still ruled by an emperor, Lao Lao’s feet had been wrapped tightly in cloth bands when she was a small girl so their growth would be stunted. Lao Lao had told Zhongmei how horribly painful it was, and that Zhongmei was lucky to be a girl at a time when the practice had stopped. But the custom had been carried out for centuries, because for centuries the Chinese thought tiny feet made a woman desirable. The story of Lao Lao’s bound feet fascinated Zhongmei, but it also horrified her and made her indignant. How could people inflict such terrible pain on young girls? It was almost painful just to look at Lao Lao’s feet, tiny and curved so that her toes faced backward toward her heel. She could walk, but only very slowly with steps almost as tiny as her feet. It was because of those feet that Zhongmei felt a special tenderness toward her
lao lao
, who seemed to her like a delicate porcelain cup that would shatter in a million pieces if it were rudely handled.

“You know, it’s not a good thing what you’re doing, this not eating,” Lao Lao said.

“Oh, Lao Lao,” Zhongmei said. “But nobody will listen to me. What else can I do?”

“Well, you can eat something,” Lao Lao said. She gave her granddaughter a conspiratorial look as she took a small bowl of dumplings from behind her back.

Zhongmei looked at her uncertainly.

“Go ahead,” Lao Lao said. “Eat. I won’t tell anybody.”

Zhongmei wolfed the dumplings down, feeling both greedy and guilty.

“Your ma and ba are worried about you,” Lao Lao said in her soft voice when Zhongmei was finished.

“Ma told me she’s going to give me away to the Wongs,” Zhongmei said, “so how much does she really care about me?”

“Oh, you know that’s just talk,” Lao Lao said. “She loves you very much and she’d never, ever give you away. You can be sure of that.”

“If she really cared about me, she’d figure out a way for me to go to the audition.”

“Well, let me try to explain to you why that’s not exactly right.”

Lao Lao had such a sweet way about her that nothing she did could make Zhongmei angry. When she had come from Shandong, she had brought a small statue of the Buddha and a bronze incense burner with her. Such things had been strictly banned during the Cultural Revolution, and even now they certainly weren’t encouraged by the government. China’s government wanted Chairman Mao to be the country’s only god, not the Buddha or Jesus or anybody else. Still, Buddhist shrines at home were permitted. Every morning Lao Lao lit an incense stick, held it in her hand as she bowed to the Buddha, and then placed it in its holder, where it gave an agreeable sandalwood scent to the whole house. Zhongmei had been taught at school that such practices were nothing but old people’s superstitions, and maybe they were, but she liked them anyway, and sometimes she asked if she could light an incense
stick and bow to the Buddha too. It couldn’t do any harm, she figured.

“Your parents are like any other parents,” Lao Lao said, “and they care about you a great deal. But do you know how hard they’ve had to work just so your family could survive?”

“Yes, I know they work very hard,” Zhongmei said. She had learned a little about the history of Baoquanling in school, and her mother had told her stories of what it was like in the beginning. Her father had been a soldier in China’s army when he was a young man. His whole division, many thousands of men, had been released from the army and sent to this place on the border with Siberia, where almost nobody lived, in order to build it up. When they arrived, there was nothing, hardly any people, no towns, no houses, no electricity, just a vast desolation of thick forests and parched fields.

“It used to be called the Bei Da Huang,” Zhongmei said, meaning the Great Northern Wilderness. “They had to cut down the trees and dig out the stumps to make the fields. For a long time the soldiers lived in tents, even in the winter. They had to build a brick kiln to make the bricks so they could build our houses. We learned all that in school. But what does it have to do with whether I can go to the audition in Beijing?”

“Well, this,” Lao Lao said. “It seems strange to your mother and father that, after all the work they’ve done, you’re not happy to be here. They’re a bit insulted that it doesn’t seem good enough for you, and you want them to spend money they don’t have to try for something that’s probably impossible.”

“Well, maybe it is selfish,” Zhongmei admitted, “but there
was an advertisement in the newspaper. It said anybody could go as long as they’re eleven years old. Lots of girls and boys will go. Why is it selfish if I want to go also?”

“From your point of view that’s all very understandable,” Lao Lao said.

“Baoquanling is good enough for me,” Zhongmei continued, “except I can’t be a dancer here, a real dancer.”

“Is it your true dream?” Lao Lao asked. “Is it what you want more than anything in the world?”

“Yes,” said Zhongmei. Her eyes clouded over. She felt a tear well up in her eye. She didn’t mean to think only of herself. She did understand how hard her parents worked—Zhongqin too, who cooked for the whole family and took care of Zhongmei and her younger brother. But did that mean it was wrong for her to have her own dream?

“It’s what I want to do more than anything in the world, Lao Lao,” Zhongmei said. “And this is my only chance.”

“I see,” Lao Lao said. She was silent for a minute. Zhongmei looked at the wrinkles around her kind eyes. A few strands of gray hair had fallen out of their clasp and brushed against her cheek.

“Well,” Lao Lao resumed, “I’m going to tell you a little story and you can make of it what you will. Do you know the story of how your mother got here?”

“I know she was in Shandong and she got permission from the government to come here after Ba got out of the army.”

Shandong is a large province that juts out into the Pacific Ocean far from Heilongjiang.

“Yes, that’s right,” Lao Lao said, “but do you know that she had to walk to get here?”

“She walked?” Zhongmei said, disbelieving.

“And do you know that she had to carry Zhongqin and Zhongling with her?”

Zhongmei didn’t know.

“Your mother was living with us at the time, me and Lao Ye, when she got a letter from your father asking her to come here,” Lao Lao said.
Lao ye
is the Chinese word for “grandpa.” “She wanted to come, but she had no money to buy a train ticket. She asked me and Lao Ye if we could help her with money, and we wanted to, but we didn’t have any money either, really none. You may not understand just how poor China was then. A lot of people were starving. They were boiling tree bark and grass to make soup to have something to eat. A train ticket to Heilongjiang seemed like a great luxury.

“This was a few years before you were born. Zhongqin and Zhongling were very small. Zhongling wasn’t even a year old yet. So Lao Ye and I told your mother that with two children and no money she had no choice but to stay with us for a while longer until the situation improved.

“But your mother couldn’t wait,” Lao Lao continued. “She didn’t listen to us. She just had to come right away. I remember it so well. She got a bamboo balancing pole. She put Zhongqin in one basket and Zhongling in another basket and she slung the baskets over the two ends of the balancing pole, and what do you think she did next?”

“You just told me, Lao Lao. She walked all the way to Baoquanling.”

“Yes, I already told you. She slung the balancing pole over her shoulders and walked to Baoquanling, the two girls bouncing up and down in their baskets. It’s a good thing I didn’t bind her feet, isn’t it, though at the time I wished I had because I thought she was making a terrible mistake. Do you know how far it is from Shandong to here?”

Zhongmei didn’t know.

“It’s eight hundred miles,” Lao Lao said.

“Wow!” It seemed an impossible distance to walk. “Why did you think it was a mistake?” Zhongmei asked.

“Lao Ye and I tried every argument to convince her not to make such a terribly long journey on foot. Your mother didn’t even have enough money to buy food along the way. We knew that she was going to have to beg for it. We thought it was dangerous. There were a lot of bad people on the roads in China in those days. There are bad people now too, but there were a lot more of them then. We told her that she could be robbed for the few coins she had. We said, ‘The children will starve to death. Even if they don’t starve, they’ll get sick. Don’t be foolish. Just wait a few months. Maybe the situation will change. Maybe Zhengping will be able to send you money for the train in a year or so.’

“But your mother didn’t wait. She just put that balancing pole over her shoulders and started walking. For three months we didn’t hear any news about her. We were worried sick about all three of them. Then, finally, after a long time, a letter arrived, a very short letter. It said something like, ‘I’ve arrived safely in Baoquanling. Zhengping and the two girls are fine.’ ”

“Did she really have to walk the whole way?” Zhongmei
asked. Her mother was very small, not five feet tall, less than ninety pounds. Zhongmei knew that she was tough, tough enough to work ten or twelve hours a day in Baoquanling’s fields. But to walk eight hundred miles carrying her two babies! The story excited Zhongmei, but it also made her wonder if she was doing the right thing, going on a hunger strike to get what she wanted from parents who had already sacrificed so much.

“From time to time your mother was able to get on a train, but most of the distance she walked, and somehow she made it. But when she got here, your mother was terribly sick,” Lao Lao continued. “She had hardly eaten in weeks. Everything nutritious that she was able to beg or steal she gave to the children. She had to be taken to the hospital or she would probably have died. Even now she’s not as healthy as she was before.”

“Is that why you think I’m doing the wrong thing?” Zhongmei asked Lao Lao.

“I don’t know,” Lao Lao answered. “Yes, it’s selfish of you, I suppose, but there’s more than one meaning to every story. Your mother came to Baoquanling even though Lao Ye and I couldn’t help her and told her not to do it. At the time we thought her decision was totally wrong and reckless, but in the end she made it. Who knows if she did the right thing? You can only know the result of the things you do, not the things you don’t.”

“I guess it was the right thing,” Zhongmei said, thinking hard. Her mother had defied
her
mother, and now she was defying hers. Was it wrong or was it right? Zhongmei’s name was made up of two Chinese characters. There was
Zhong
,
pronounced
joong
, which means “faithful,” or “loyal,” or “filial,” as in respectful or obedient to one’s parents. The second character,
Mei
, pronounced
may
, is the word for “plum” or “plum blossom,” the kind that comes out in the early spring and is a favorite of traditional Chinese painters. So Zhongmei means “faithful plum.” But faithful to what? That was the question. Faithful to her parents? Or faithful to her own dream?

“So what do you think I should do?” Faithful Plum asked Lao Lao.

“It’s hard to say,” Lao Lao said. “But now at least I know what you want.”

She patted Zhongmei on the head. “You rest. Let me see what I can do.”

Zhongmei lay back, her head on her pillow. She saw her
lao lao
wince as she got off the
kang
and put her small feet on the floor. It hurt her every time she walked. Zhongmei knew that she was fortunate to have nice big feet herself, not the cramped and crippled things some stupid tradition had given to her grandmother for her whole life.

That evening, as she lay on the
kang
, Zhongmei heard someone knocking on the house’s front door, and then she heard a voice she recognized talking to her parents. It was the head of their neighborhood in Baoquanling. She couldn’t make out the whole conversation, but she heard bits and snatches of it. There was talk of money. She heard her father mention a policeman. Zhongmei didn’t know what it meant. She heard her father say, “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” and
Zhongmei wondered what idea they could be talking about. Was it the idea that she go to Beijing? Her father’s voice again: “This hunger strike thing, it’s extremely disobedient. If we let her have her way now, isn’t it like giving her a reward for behaving badly?”