Dreams of Joy: A Novel (24 page)

It hardly seems fair to put this at the end of the day. It hardly seems fair to include this type of challenge at all! Sweet potatoes? These aren’t like the sweet potatoes we had in Los Angeles—big, fat, and orange. Even there I didn’t like them all that much, making them only once with mini-marshmallows, because Joy said that’s what we were supposed to eat on Thanksgiving. Here, sweet potatoes are grown as fodder for water buffalo and other livestock. Why should I be bending and digging under the sun for them? But I want to make Joy happy, so we race from one end of the field to the other, digging, pulling, and throwing sweet potatoes in our baskets but leaving plenty behind in the soil. We learned our lesson earlier today. Speed over quantity. Our Green Dragon team finishes first, winning the Dandelion Number Eight People’s Commune award for fastest and best harvesters. Our prize? Extra coupons to use for rice, which we already receive in plenty. I don’t understand it, but my daughter’s delighted. She hugs me and I hug her back. Over her shoulder, faces register disapproval at our affectionate display. I stare back at them, a big smile on my face. What can they do to me?

“Would you like to come back to the villa for a bath?” I whisper in Joy’s ear.

She pulls away and gives me one of those looks I’m hopeless to interpret. Then she says, “Yes, I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.” She lowers her voice to add in English, “Thanks, Mom.”

My muscles ache and I’m exhausted, but I go back to the villa, haul water, set a fire in the stove, and heat the water in our last big pot. Kumei helps me pull an old washtub into the kitchen, and then she steps out of the room. We may all be women, but naked flesh is too private to share even among ourselves. Joy strips and steps into the tub. I notice she no longer wears the pouch around her neck. She sits with her knees drawn up under her chin. Her enthusiasm drains into the hot water. She seems unaware she’s let down her guard, as that low spirit I saw the morning after her wedding reappears.

“Do you remember when you were young and I used to wash you in the kitchen sink?” I ask. When she shakes her head, I say, “I guess you were
too
little—just a baby really. Your dad would sit at the table and watch us. Your grandparents too.”

I pick up a cloth, dip it in the water, lather it with soap, and wash my daughter’s back in long, rhythmic strokes.

“The way you giggled! I loved that sound and I’ll never forget it. You used to slap the water with your hands until I was soaked and the kitchen floor was a mess!” I laugh at the memory.

“Grandpa Louie didn’t mind?”

“You know how he was—Pan-di this, Pan-di that. He made a lot of noise, but he loved you. Your yen-yen loved you. Your baba loved you. I loved you most of all.”

A tremor shivers through her body.
Stop before you go too far
, I tell myself.

“As long as we’re here, let me wash your hair.” I ladle the warm water into Joy’s hair. I wash and rinse it, letting the water cascade down her back.

“I’m not saying we didn’t have hard times,” I go on. “We did. But, Joy, when I took you out of the sink all pink and slippery, wrapped you in a towel, and put you in your baba’s lap, no one in the world was happier than we were in those moments.”

I wish I had clean clothes to give Joy. Instead, she puts on the same dirty, sweaty clothes she wore today and will again tomorrow. We walk together to the front gate.

“Will you come again?” I ask, almost as though she’s an acquaintance, knowing enough as Joy’s mother to keep a little distance.

She gives a slight nod.

IN MY FOURTH
week at the commune, during lunch one day in the canteen, Brigade Leader Lai asks a group of farmers how much wheat they can produce per
mu
.

“We don’t grow wheat,” Tao’s father answers. Several of the other men nod their heads in agreement. “We’ve never grown wheat. We grow rice in the paddies, tea on the terraces, and cotton, rapeseed, and vegetable crops elsewhere.”

“Yes, but this fall how much winter wheat will you grow per
mu
?” Brigade Leader Lai still wants to know.

Tao’s father consults with the other farmers before answering. “Maybe three hundred
jin.
”

“Three hundred
jin
? Make that eight hundred or a thousand
jin
!”

“That’s impossible,” observes Party Secretary Feng Jin, who’s resistant to the city cadre’s ideas even though it’s risky to go against him.

“Nothing’s impossible in the Great Leap Forward!” Sensing the farmers aren’t with him, the brigade leader asks, “How much grain do you need to eat?”

“We’ve always had at least one and a half
jin
of starch a day.”

That’s not a lot. A single
jin
of grain makes one steamed bun, a bowl of rice porridge, plus rice for lunch and dinner.

“You’re eating far more than that now,” Brigade Leader Lai points out.

And it’s true. Every meal has more than enough rice. In fact, I’m sure I’ve gained weight since coming to the commune.

“Here’s what we’re going to do with our first winter wheat crop,” the brigade leader continues. “It’s called close planting. You plant six times the normal grain in a single field.”

The men groan.

“It won’t work,” one of them says. “If you sow seeds too close, then the plants will die from a lack of sun and not enough nutrients.”

“You’re wrong there,” the brigade leader replies. “Chairman Mao says that close planting will be like getting the masses to form a solid flank in the war against the advances of imperialism. Think how much wheat we will grow! More than seven hundred
jin
per
mu
.” (At least he’s dropped his estimate.) “We’ll have so much wheat we’ll have to give it away. We’ll be a model commune!”

“Where are we going to plant this wheat?”

“You’ll tear out some of the tea plants and change over the vegetable fields,” Brigade Leader Lai snaps. “Our great Chairman says he wants wheat. Wheat we will give him.”

The radio announcer broadcasts the time. The farmers slowly rise, shaking their heads. How can you reason with someone who’s lived in a city his entire life about the crops and soil that you and your ancestors have worked for generations? Even I know, from my little garden in Los Angeles, that what the brigade leader suggested won’t work, but everyone is afraid to voice too much criticism or skepticism. No one wants to get in trouble. No one wants to be singled out. Those who have little to lose don’t want to lose what little they have. We all put on smiling faces as we go back into the sun to rejoin our work teams.

This afternoon, the women on the gray-power team share stories of giving birth. I hear one harrowing story after another. I tell them about losing my son during his delivery. To lose a daughter is sad, they tell me. To lose a son is tragic. They weep with me, and I feel part of a community in a way I’ve never experienced before.

As the end of the day approaches, people straggle into the village from the jobs they’ve been assigned. Joy and Kumei enter the village square together. Joy’s shoulders are hunched, and she has a hunted look.

“I have a letter from Father Louie’s village,” Joy says, holding out an unopened envelope and pointing to the return address. “Why would anyone there write to me?”

“It probably contains a letter from May,” I say. “I wrote to her and told her we were here.”

Joy thinks about that.

“Why don’t you open it?” I suggest.

Joy rips open the envelope. A photograph flutters to the ground. I pick it up, and there’s May, standing in our backyard. Cecile Brunner roses cascade around her in an abundant display of Southern California fertility. She holds a small, fluffy dog, what I would call a yappity-yap dog.

“Let me see,” Joy says.

I give her the photograph, and the others crowd around to look too. The gray-power women gaze incredulously at the image. They point at May’s clothes—a skirt made extra full with a big petticoat, tiny belt cinched at her waist, and silk stilettos dyed to match her blouse. They comment on her makeup and touch her hairstyle with their fingers.

“Why is she holding a dog?” Fu-shee inquires.

“Why would she have a dog?” Kumei asks.

“It’s a pet,” Yong, the onetime Shanghai girl, answers.

“A pet? What’s that?”

“An animal you keep for fun,” Yong explains, sounding worldly. “You play with it.” Seeing the looks of disbelief on the other women’s faces, she adds, “For fun?”

Snorts of disapproval greet that response.

“What did Auntie May write?” I ask.

Joy releases the photograph to the women, who continue to comment and stare in a combination of disgust, wonder, and excitement. It’s as though they’re looking at a movie star from olden times, except that these people (apart from perhaps Yong) have never seen a movie, let alone a movie star. Joy holds the letter close to her chest, and it’s not because she doesn’t want the village women to see what’s written there. May was never good at Chinese characters, so I’m sure the letter is in English. Joy doesn’t want
me
to see what’s written.

“Dear Joy,” my daughter reads, slowly translating, “I understand congratulations are in order. I hope you are deeply in love. That is the only reason for marriage.” Joy’s brow draws into tight little lines. These are hardly wholehearted good wishes. “I’ve enclosed a photograph. The dog’s name is Martin. My friend Violet gave him to me. She says the dog will help me with my loneliness. She doesn’t know that I named the dog after one of my special friends.”

Oh, May. I shake my head. She mentions
her
friend Violet. Violet is
my
friend! She’s been my
only
friend apart from my sister. And then there’s the bit about the dog. I tell myself that Violet was just being kind to my sister, and that I can bear. But who is this Martin—the special friend, not the damn dog? Doesn’t May realize she’s a widow?

I know the real reason for these words. They’re to get back at me. I’ve been writing May regularly and she’s been deliberately silent. I don’t blame her. I’m here with Z.G. and she isn’t.

“You must write to me of your new life,” Joy continues reading. “Tell me about your father. I long to hear of your time together.” Joy doesn’t have to read this part aloud, but she does. It seems this letter has brought back some of her anger at May and me, and she’s always known how to drive a wedge between us. “Please write to me …” Joy looks up from the letter, glances at the faces around her, and says, “It ends with congratulations on our bumper harvest.”

I have no idea what May wrote, but I’m positive it wasn’t that. Joy’s eyes remain hooded as we walk to the canteen, and she’s quiet throughout dinner. After the meal, Joy comes back to the villa for her bath. These evenings have become a ritual I look forward to. Some nights Kumei and Yong—having gotten over their initial reticence—sit on stools in the kitchen near us, and we all chat, drink tea, and let the hard work of the day ease out of our bones. Ta-ming sits on the floor plucking the strings of a violin. From what I’ve learned, his father was educated. The violin—one of only a few of the landlord’s personal possessions not destroyed or confiscated during Liberation—belongs to Ta-ming now. Sometimes he picks at the violin strings, as he is now, or he’ll hold it like an
erhu—
upright in his lap—and run the bow across the strings. It sounds terrible but not as bad as some of the military marches we hear over the loudspeakers.

Usually when we’re together Joy lets down the walls that surround her. That blue part is still at her core, but some nights she laughs, tells jokes, even gossips. It’s times like those that I feel closer than I ever have to my daughter—as though we’ve made the transition from mother and daughter to friends—but tonight she’s unsettled. I shoo Yong, Kumei, and Ta-ming out the door. I sit on a stool a short distance from the tub and watch as Joy scrubs her skin as though somehow that will cleanse her soul. If I can talk about my mistakes and failures, maybe she’ll start to understand she has to forgive herself. My biggest failures have to do with May, and Joy has always been right in the middle of that.

“I haven’t always been the best sister,” I say, trying to sound as conversational as possible. “I’ve often been impatient with May. I wasn’t as understanding as I could have been. Z.G. has also been between us for twenty years. I look back and see how blind I was. I loved him, but he loved May.”

“You’re here now,” Joy says in benign resignation. “He’s coming back for you. The two of you can still be together.”

Waa!
I’ve thought this myself. Z.G. will come for me, we’ll go to Canton, we’ll stay in a hotel, we’ll … But for Joy to say that?

“I haven’t been a good sister,” I repeat. “Since returning to China, I’ve had a lot of time to think about how hard it must have been for May all those years—”

Joy shakes her head, not wanting to hear this.

“You don’t have to like it, but it’s the truth. I love you and you’ll always be my daughter. That must have been very hard for May. You can see that, can’t you?”

“I can, but why would either of you want me? Why would anyone want me?”

She really is still such a child, needing proof of my love and her value. “Because you’re smart. You’re beautiful. You have many talents—”

“Like what?”

“You were able to act from a very young age. You were good at Chinese language and calligraphy. Now I see you were born with a talent I didn’t recognize until recently—your skill with a paintbrush. It’s like I see you in the strokes.”

“You’re just saying those things because you have to. Nothing can change the fact that my birth parents didn’t want me. They knew even before I was born that I wasn’t worthy of love. That’s why they gave me away.”

“How can you possibly think that?” I ask. This is worse than her guilt over Sam’s suicide, because it goes to the core of who she is and her value in our family and in the world. “Z.G. didn’t know May was pregnant. May loved you so much that she gave you to me so that she’d always be with you. And, if we’re honest, who did you spend more time with when you were a little girl—your aunt or me?”