A Heart for Freedom (12 page)

“Maybe we could investigate it ourselves and find out who stole the instruments,” I said in a burst of optimism. “Maybe that would help Mom recover.”

“That’s an excellent idea, Ling Ling,” Dad replied, “but I’m afraid it’s not that easy. This ordeal has been going on for months, and it has a life of its own now. Your mom held the keys to the storage room, but she would lend those keys to anyone who wanted them, and she never kept track. At one time it would have been hard to sell those things, and whoever tried would stick out in a crowd. Not anymore. Not now. We live in a free-market system. You could unload those things in any hospital, no questions asked. It’s just not that easy to find out who did it.”

* * *

That summer, in my mother’s absence, I reassumed the role I’d held when I was younger—planning the family meals, preparing the food, and caring for my siblings. I knitted a sweater for my little brother and repaired my sister’s skirts.

One Saturday we brought my mother home from the hospital so we could make dumplings together. A young nurse we knew came over to help. Sounds of laughter and joy filled our house for the first time that summer. I was taking a break from making the dumplings when Mom came out of the bedroom.

“Ling Ling,” she whispered. “I just put my finger in the light socket. How come it didn’t kill me?”

“What are you talking about?” I said.

Mom took me into the room, unscrewed the lightbulb, and before I quite understood what she was doing, she stuck her finger into the socket.

“It’s such a little shock,” she said. “It’s supposed to kill me.”

I grabbed her and held her in my arms.

“Oh, Mom,” I said. “How could you do that? How could you? If you die, what will we do? What will the children do? Father can’t take care of them.”

“I’m useless,” she said. “If I could die, I wouldn’t be a burden on the family anymore.” She said this without emotion, as if stating a simple fact.

I was weeping. She looked at me as if she didn’t know me.

“Okay,” she said flatly, “I won’t do it again.” She looked at the light socket with curiosity, as if she still couldn’t figure out why it hadn’t killed her.

I removed the lamp from the room, and when I left, Mom was still sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the wall.

When my dad returned from visiting patients, the dumplings were ready. The nurse insisted she had to leave, even though Dad wanted her to stay for dinner. She was a good family friend who always came to see if we needed help. When she was gone, I told my father what had happened.

He was horrified.

“Why didn’t you say something?” he shouted. “The nurse was right here. She could have done something. I don’t care anymore if outsiders hear about our family shame. Let the whole world know! Let everyone come and see what they have done to your poor mother!”

I watched him in silence as he fumbled for a cigarette. He had always been the source of our family’s strength and pride. Now he seemed so broken and defeated. When he finished smoking, he seemed calmer. We sat down to dumplings, with Mom and my brother and sister, and ate without talking.

* * *

Over a span of one hundred days, my life and the life of my family had turned upside down. We had been one of the most promising families in the army compound. My parents had become directors of their respective departments, and even now my father was in line for chief executive of the hospital. I was on the verge of graduating from the nation’s most elite university. Yet three small incidents had upended these stellar accomplishments—my visit to a disconsolate classmate, a dispute over a wristwatch, and the disappearance of two microscopes. That’s all it took to shatter the dreams of three generations of a Chinese family.

There was something terribly wrong with this situation. As a family, we were far too naive. We were not well equipped to survive in a system like this. It defied our family’s bedrock belief in the goodness of life and the value of love and hard work.

As I sat chewing my dumplings, I made a resolution: I would marry, and I would apply to graduate school in the United States. There I would acquire a home for myself and my family, where someday my father and mother and brother and sister could join me in a new land, no longer subject to the tyranny of fear. We would rebuild our lives and be happy. As I sat in silence, surrounded by my most precious loved ones, I promised myself I would be the rock for my family; I would rescue them and take them out of this scary society, no matter what obstacles awaited me.

10

Night at Xinhua Gate

Feng and I got married in the spring of 1988, shortly after I graduated from Beida and started graduate school. What prompted our decision was another pregnancy. Feng and I now attended separate universities, but one night we went to visit his brother and sister-in-law. When it got too late for us to return to our own places, I made the mistake of agreeing to spend the night there.

Feng casually remarked that I should keep the baby. He wanted me to quit graduate school and go to his parents’ home to hide and give birth. I think he thought of me as some sort of tragic heroine, like Tess of the d’Urbervilles, who would drop all responsibilities and family obligations and risk being marginalized in society to prove my love for him by having the baby. Then he would love me back. Feng said he felt a great sense of pride walking around campus thinking he would be a father.

I said nothing. I could only imagine what my own father would say and do, and the potential shame and devastation were unthinkable. Despite Feng’s bravado, we both knew it was legally mandatory for a woman to have an abortion if she did not have a birth permit—and in those days, birth permits were not issued to unmarried women, or even to married women under the age of twenty-five.

On the way to the hospital, Feng was regretful and tender with me, but on the way home, seeing my brief moment of relief, his face darkened. He quickened his pace, leaving me to trail slowly behind in the bitter wind. When we got back to my dorm, he said, “I’m ashamed of you for not wanting to be a mother.”

I felt deeply hurt, both emotionally and physically. On top of that, I felt I had let Feng down. Anger rose in my heart. If only I could tell him how shameful and irresponsible he had been to pressure me. But I was too ashamed myself. I never felt it was safe to tell him about my past experiences, and I didn’t tell my family about any of this.

How we moved on from there, I don’t exactly remember. One turning point came a few weeks or months later, when it occurred to us that we didn’t have to wait until we were done with school to get married. The hope of being together and having a place of our own—a place where we could prepare for a future family and for studying overseas—lifted us out of our feelings of hurt and despair.

In hindsight, this might seem like an obvious decision, but it wasn’t at the time. And we soon discovered there was a legal barrier as well. When we went to acquire a marriage certificate, we learned that a couple’s combined age must be at least forty-eight; ours was forty-four. Feng managed to charm and distract the female clerk when she examined our identification, which he had altered to make us both twenty-four. Within a week, we were legally married.

* * *

After our wedding, Feng and I were able to find off-campus housing together. I had been accepted as a graduate student at the Child Psychology Institute of Beijing Normal University, and he continued his graduate studies at Beida. After sharing a dorm room with as many as five other girls and eating at the college cafeteria for four years, I was happy to have my own space and to cook my own meals over a simple coal stove. As a graduate student, I received a stipend allowance of seventy-four renminbi a month, the equivalent of ten dollars. This small salary established my financial independence, which made me happy and proud.

On the outskirts of Beijing, just south of the Beida campus, I found an available room in a
siheyuan
, a traditional Chinese family house with walls all around it and an open courtyard in the middle. Traditionally, several generations of a family might live inside a
siheyuan
. However, over the years, as the urban population increased, many of these courtyards were shared by different families, and rooms were added to expand the living space, leaving the original structure and charm of the courtyard completely unrecognizable. The room I found was attached to the left side of the main house. A side path led to the main entrance, and a smaller yard formed an inner quarter within the large courtyard. Cooking and washing were done beneath a huge, leafy tree in the center of the inner yard. There was no hot water or sewer system. The wastewater was absorbed by the dirt.

Feng and I furnished our little room with two twin-size beds joined together, two writing desks, and some old chairs purchased at a secondhand furniture shop. I covered the worn-out surfaces with handmade tablecloths and cushions. A wobbly bookcase stood between the two desks. We had an armoire for storage and a charcoal brazier to provide us with heat in the winter. With a pink mosquito net draped over our bed and some colorful curtains, our little home was cozy, warm, and romantic. During the day, the place was quiet and peaceful. The only sound was the clacking of my typewriter. At sunset, when the neighbors returned from work, the courtyard came back to life. I loved that time of the day, with the smell of dinner cooking, the chatter of conversation, and the anticipation of Feng’s imminent return.

* * *

April 15, 1989, my twenty-third birthday, is a day that history will remember for the tragic death of Chinese leader Hu Yaobang, which ultimately triggered the student movement that shook the core of the Communist regime. I spent most of the day filling out an application for an American graduate school. Feng had already started the process for studying in America.

When I heard the familiar ring of Feng’s bicycle, I rushed to open the fence door. With his arrival, the lonely little room was instantly transformed into a warm home.

“Look what I brought you,” Feng said as he offered a fancy-looking box. “A birthday cake. You almost forgot, didn’t you? Today is your birthday.”

As I set the table for dinner, my lovely cat, Blackie, rubbed my ankle, begging for his food. Growing up with Grandma, we always had little animals in the house—cats, chickens, or rabbits, but never dogs, which were seen as playthings for the bourgeoisie.

Feng was in an unusually good mood as he began to cook noodles in a little electric pot. He added some meat sauce and vegetables left over from the day before, and the two of us sat on folding stools under the tree, while the steam gradually rose from the electric pot.

At the dinner table, Feng mentioned he had received a reply from Li Shuxian, the wife of noted professor Fang Lizhi. Feng had written seeking advice about whether studying abroad would be seen as abandoning our country. Li told him not to worry, that once he learned more skills, he could return and be of greater service to China. That explained why Feng was in such a good mood. During that quiet evening, we talked about our life together and our dreams to study overseas.

A chilly breeze sent us back into our little room, and gradually a fine rain began to fall. Feng put twenty-three candles on the cake, and I solemnly made three wishes: “Please bring my sick mother back to health, let Feng and me be together in love forever, and make our plans and dreams come true soon!” I blew the candles with all my strength, but there were three that stubbornly kept burning. I guessed that some of my wishes would not be granted that year. I sighed, cut the cake, and casually turned on the television. A funeral dirge instantly dampened our mood, and the familiar solemn face of the anchorman on the Central Television Network appeared:

The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party announces with deep sorrow the passing of the long-tested, loyal Communist fighter Hu Yaobang, a great proletarian revolutionary, politician, and outstanding political worker in our military, and an excellent leader who had long shouldered important Party leadership responsibilities. On April 8, as he participated in a meeting of the Politburo, Hu had a sudden, massive myocardial infarction. The utmost efforts were made to rescue him, but were in the end unsuccessful. At 7:53 a.m., April 15, 1989, he died at the age of seventy-three.

We froze. Feng was the first to react in the darkness, cutting through the heavy atmosphere by saying, “I feel bad. Our demonstration at the Square contributed to Hu’s downfall. We will have to do something to pay our respects.”

* * *

On April 19, Feng came home in the evening and told me that Beida students who had gone to Tiananmen Square to mourn the death of Hu Yaobang needed food and water. I agreed we should go to help our school friends.