Dreams of Joy: A Novel (27 page)

I thought my mother and aunt were good liars, but my mother-in-law may be the best, and she knows how to take care of her family. She’s been going out to the fields with the younger children and scavenging rice, turnips, and peanuts that were ignored during the hurried harvest. She also saved enough utensils—all hidden in a hole in the floor—to make corn-flour buns, which we eat with pieces of dried peppers.

“I smelled food when I came in,” Sung-ling continues accusingly. “You must be smelling the hot water we make to drink, since we no longer have leaves to make tea.”

That night I write to my mother:

They say mothers-in-law are awful creatures put on earth to torture their daughters-in-law, but Fu-shee isn’t so bad. She’s pregnant again. I’m not. I’d like to have a baby. A son, of course. It would make Tao happy. It would please my in-laws. I hope it would make you happy too.

In Chinese, the word
womb
is made up of characters for
palace
and
children
. At night, lying next to Tao, I send propitious wishes to my womb. If marriage doesn’t cure my sadness, maybe a baby will.

AT CHINESE NEW YEAR
, food is found in a neighbor’s house during an inspection. The house is torn down. The family has nowhere to go, so they sleep in the ancestral hall. Also, as a result of our neighbors’ sloppiness, all the locks in the commune are taken away.

“If you don’t give up your locks,” Brigade Leader Lai tells us, “we’ll take away your doors.”

He doesn’t stop there. In a flurry of activity, gates and courtyards that separate property are taken down to prevent the hiding or hoarding of food—and to keep everyone and everything visible. If clear lines of sight still aren’t available, then the entire house is destroyed. “Our new policy benefits the motherland,” Brigade Leader Lai remarks, “since the last remaining metal from hinges and locks can now be smelted and we can use the wood from houses and furniture to stoke the fires in the furnaces.” The villa, where he lives, remains untouched.

Three days later, we come home from the fields and find Fu-shee squatting in the corner, a bucket filled with blood and little bits of tissue under her. I’m told to clean the bucket, which is sickening and revolting. I try to be helpful in other ways too, but whatever gains I’ve made with my mother-in-law disappear. Now she looks at me reproachfully. Soon other pregnant women in the commune walk the other way if they see me or turn their backs on me. Women who haven’t given birth are believed to bring bad luck to unborn and newborn babies.

My only friends are Yong and Kumei, who repeatedly tell me not to be concerned. “We’re between the yellow and the green,” they say, as though that will make me less hungry, pregnant women less likely to ignore me, or my mother-in-law less upset with me. “It’s worse than usual, but it happens every year.”

I have an American perspective: Should we accept something just because it’s always happened that way? I come up with ideas to help ourselves.

“Let’s buy a few chicks to raise, so we’ll have chickens to lay eggs,” I suggest to my husband’s family.

“Where would we hide them?” my father-in-law asks. “What would happen when the brigade leader comes for his inspection?”

“We could make tofu,” I say. “When I was a little girl, my grandfather made tofu in our bathtub.”

“Where will we get soy milk?” my husband asks.

“What’s a bathtub?” Fu-shee asks.

“Maybe we could start a wheelbarrow business,” I try again. “People always need things hauled to the main road.”

“Where will we get money to buy them?” my father-in-law asks.

“I have some money,” I say. “We’re a family. I want to help in any way I can.”

I buy three wheelbarrows. We earn four
yuan
—a little less than two dollars—a day carrying coal, bricks, and grain, until we’re told we have to stop. The village cadres criticize us and remind us that no private enterprise is allowed. The next time I make a suggestion to improve our situation, Fu-shee snaps, “Instead of bragging about your money, why don’t you buy us some food?”

But I can’t buy food, because there’s no food to buy. Even if there were, where would I change my American dollars? I’d have to go to Tun-hsi, maybe even Hangchow, to do that. The brigade leader would never give me permission.

I could write to my mother about all this, but I don’t. How can I? I don’t want to hear her say, “I told you so,” when even worse recriminations run through my brain.

Joy

GLASS CLOTHES

I WAKE JUST
after dawn on a Sunday morning in late March. The first thing I see is our new poster of Chairman Mao pasted to the wall. Every house in the commune has the identical poster—Mao floating above a sea of red clouds. I imagine this same poster in every house throughout the country. Nothing can hang above him (which would be insulting), and nothing can mar the surface of the poster (which would prove that the household is not showing the proper respect). I shift my weight, causing the babies and small children snuggled around me to wiggle and squirm. I put a hand on my stomach, trying to calm my nausea. Something I ate or drank has caused me to feel low. I quietly get up off my sleeping mat and go outside.

The spring air is crisp and the sky is bright blue. Standing on the terrace, I see out over several fields of rapeseed. The plants are in full yellow flower, reminding me of the wild mustard that grows in Southern California at this time of year. Plumes of smoke curl into the air from chimneys throughout Green Dragon. I chop wood and start the fire in the outdoor stove. Then I grab a couple of buckets, walk down to the stream for water, haul them back up the hill, and put some of the water on to boil.

My mother-in-law joins me outside. “You still brush your teeth with boiled water?” she asks with false incredulity. “You’ll never be one of us until you can drink the water. Here, let me make you some tea with ginger in it to help your stomach. It’s always calmed mine.”

Since it’s Sunday and we have no work to do for the commune, everyone’s slow getting dressed. I tell Tao I’m going on ahead to the canteen. He doesn’t mind. Spring is all around me—more rapeseed fields, trees in extravagant flower, pink and white petals drifting through the air like snow, and fresh new greenery on the precious few tea bushes that have been spared Brigade Leader Lai’s insistence that all land be converted to growing grain. Although we had a tough winter, I’m eagerly anticipating the harvest of the commune’s first winter wheat crop in June. We’ve been close-planting other crops—tomatoes, bok choy, corn, and onions—as we’ve been instructed by Brigade Leader Lai, putting in two or three times the usual amount of seed per
mu
. We tell ourselves Chairman Mao wouldn’t steer us in the wrong direction. Yes, the longer days and warmer weather have done a lot for my mood. Maybe this hasn’t been a mistake. Maybe I was just a girl from Los Angeles who truly was suffering from too many years of comfort and waste.

Now, looking at the bright green of the fields against the sky, I wish I could spend the day perched somewhere, painting and drawing. Instead, I eat a small breakfast, go home, and pass the rest of the morning writing letters to my mother and aunt. “Life is OK. The weather is better.” Tomorrow I’ll wait by the pond for the mailman to arrive. I’ll give him my letters and hope he brings some for me.

In late afternoon, the loudspeaker in the main room crackles to life.

“All comrades come to the canteen immediately!” It’s the brigade leader’s voice. “All comrades come to the canteen immediately!”

No political rally is scheduled, but we do as we’re told. As we near the area where the canteen, nursery, and leadership hall are located, we see this will be a communewide meeting. It’s rare that we’re all together at one time, but here we are—nearly four thousand of us. Maybe we’re going to “launch a Sputnik”—a twenty-four-hour project inspired by Old Big Brother that will require the participation of the entire commune. Earlier this year, the whole country launched a Sputnik, spending twenty-four hours making more iron than the United States does in a month—or so we were told—but not only was the result worthless but it left communes like ours without many scythes, hammers, or buckets. But no, we haven’t been called here to launch a Sputnik.

Brigade Leader Lai stands on a raised platform with his hands clasped behind his back, rocking on his heels, a fierce look on his face. My stomach tightens when I see Yong on her knees next to him, her bound feet hidden under her. A white ribbon has been pinned to her tunic, showing that she’s been denounced. Kumei and Ta-ming stand on the edge of the platform. Kumei can smile in any situation, but not now. Her face is pale and her scars have turned lavender with what I take to be fear. What could Yong and Kumei have done to so upset the man who’s been living with them in the villa these past months? Party Secretary Feng Jin and Sung-ling also have spots on the platform. They look invigorated and alive with excitement. This isn’t a small performance for just Green Dragon Village. This time thousands of faces stare back at them in anticipation.

Brigade Leader Lai raises a bullhorn to his mouth. “Chairman Mao has said there will be no parasites in the New Society,” he recites. “Everybody works so everybody eats.”

We’ve heard these things before, but what he says next sounds ominous.

“These three are black elements. Two shared a bed with the landlord. One is the landlord’s black spawn. Once this label is affixed, it is passed from generation to generation. They and their descendants will never escape their black labels.”

A shudder ripples through me.

He motions to Kumei and Ta-ming. “These two do their best.” Then he nudges Yong with his shoe. “But this one is a daily reminder of all that was bad in the old society. Years ago, Chairman Mao ordered all women to unbind their feet. Did the landowner’s fourth wife obey?”

Shouts of no come from the crowd. Yong doesn’t react. She keeps her eyes cast down.

“We all work in the fields, but what about this one?” the brigade leader asks.

Disgruntled mumbles ripple around me. Everyone seems to have forgotten that Yong came out of the villa to work in the Overtake Britain Battalion with my mother, mother-in-law, and some of the other older women in Green Dragon.

“It’s time you remove your bindings and join us. Do it now!” Brigade Leader Lai orders.

Without a word of resistance, Yong shifts to a sitting position, accepting insult and humility in a way that everyone here understands, for in the past only slaves, condemned criminals, those captured in battle, and servants sat on the ground. The crowd falls silent, and people strain their necks as the long bindings come off in loop after loop. The commune’s members may have been too poor to have bound-footed women in their families, but everyone knows that a woman’s bound feet are her most private parts. “Even more private than that place low down,” my mother once said to me when she was telling me about my grandmother’s bound feet.

“Now get up!” Brigade Leader Lai yells at Yong.

How can she when her feet have been broken and crushed, held together in their tiny shape for more than forty years? But an order is an order, and the crowd is raw with hatred. Yong wobbles to her feet. Her face remains stoic, but her body sways uncertainly. Ta-ming moves to help her, but Kumei wisely holds him back. As the brigade leader said, the boy is and will always be a black element. How he acts now will save him from harassment in the future.

“Walk!” Brigade Leader Lai shouts. When Yong doesn’t move, he yells even louder. “Walk!”

I’m horrified, terrified, and thrust to that place I never want to visit—what happened to my father and my part in his death. The nausea I’ve been feeling the last few days comes up and burns the back of my throat. I feel sure I’m going to faint.

“Walk!” Red fury infuses the brigade leader’s face. “And tomorrow you will join the other comrades in the fields. It’s planting time, and we need all hands … and feet.”

Is he joking? Yong can’t possibly work in the fields. She wouldn’t last an hour, let alone a day.

“Walk!” he bellows. “Walk all the way back to your villa!”

The crowd takes up the chant. “Walk, walk, walk.”

This is much worse than when Comrade Ping-li’s husband was struggled against because his wife killed herself by throwing herself in front of the hay cutter. I willingly joined in when the mob attacked him, but Yong, Kumei, and Ta-ming are my friends. They didn’t do anything wrong. And maybe, I’m shocked to think now, Ping-li’s husband didn’t either.

Kumei and Ta-ming are permitted to help Yong down the platform’s steps, then they move aside so she can proceed on her own. The crowd parts to let her pass. Tears roll down her cheeks, but she refuses to cry out. I look everywhere, trying to find Tao, but I’ve gotten separated from him and his family. I need him. Where is he? I try to calculate how far it is to the villa. Yong will have to walk on the footpath next to the stream, past the turnoff to the Charity Pavilion, and then continue to the villa. I can make that trip in about ten minutes, but I don’t see how Yong will be able to do it at all.

The people from the other villages that make up the commune begin to disperse to spend the rest of their Sunday in peace with their own families, but the villagers from Green Dragon stay close to Yong, taunting her, spitting on her. I see Tao and grab his arm. He shakes me off as he turns to me. His face is filled with rage and hate. How could I have married him?

I push past a few more people. Up ahead, Yong staggers. When I reach Brigade Leader Lai, Party Secretary Feng Jin, and Sung-ling, I plead with them to end this, but they continue their chants. “Walk! Walk! Walk!” Their faces are as twisted and frenzied as my husband’s. An image of my mother comes to my mind. It was on the day the FBI and INS agents accused my father of so many terrible things. My mother showed no fear. She was Dragon strong. The realization that truth, forgiveness, and goodness are more important than revenge, condemnation, and cruelty gives me courage and certainty. I’m dizzy and sick to my stomach, but I straighten my back, walk forward, and take Yong’s arm. Seeing what I’ve done, Kumei takes Yong’s other arm. Epithets are hurled our way. I recognize the voices of my husband, his mother and father, his brothers and sisters. Finally, I give in fully to what I’ve known for months now. I don’t belong here. As soon as this is over, I’ll go home, tear up the letter I wrote to my mother earlier today, and write a new one, asking her to come and get me. I want to go home to Los Angeles. If I can’t go all the way home, then at least I can be with her in Shanghai.

Kumei and I help Yong over the villa’s raised stone threshold and into the first courtyard. I fear the villagers will follow us, but they don’t. They stay outside, still chanting. We pull Yong through the courtyards and corridors to the kitchen, where she collapses on the ground. I’m going to be sick and I look around frantically, trying to find a bowl or pot, but all those have been given either to the canteen or to the blast furnace. Usually there’s a washbasin on the floor, but it isn’t here today. In desperation, I run to the low wall that divides the kitchen and the stall where this family once kept their pigs. I lean my head over it and throw up. Once my stomach is empty, I sink to the floor, turn, and look at the others. Yong is white with pain, Kumei looks terrified, and Ta-ming shivers from shock.

“Why?” I manage to ask.

“Food,” Kumei answers weakly, leaving me even more confused. “We needed food. We’re black elements, so I knew we’d receive less food when rationing began. We live in the villa with the brigade leader. He brought home extra food, but there’s been a price.”

“You’ve been …” I glance at Ta-ming, not sure how blunt I can be.

“It’s a price I’ve paid before,” Kumei says. “It’s not as bad as you think, but last night the brigade leader and I had a disagreement. I needed to take care of Ta-ming, but the brigade leader wanted me to
take care
of him.”

I close my eyes. Of course, this had to be true. The brigade leader didn’t need to live in the villa when he already had the leadership hall—the most secure and comfortable building in the commune. I lived in the villa with Brigade Leader Lai only a few days after I returned to Green Dragon and before I married Tao, but I remember my mother complaining a couple of times about how she kept getting woken up at night by the sound of someone creeping around. That must have been the brigade leader going to and from Kumei’s room, or vice versa. There are no secrets in China, not even in a house this large, but why hadn’t I understood what was going on before? Because I’m an idiot.

“Have you eaten?” Yong says, her voice barely a whisper. “Do you drink tea?”

These are the two most common questions asked when a guest enters your home. Even in her agony, Yong is a woman far above the barbarians outside the villa’s walls.

Kumei, remembering she is also a hostess, gets to her feet and puts water on for tea.

LATER, AFTER THE
peasants leave, I fetch water from the stream. The cold water will help sooth Yong’s feet, which are about the most disturbing things I’ve ever seen. Her toes and midfeet have been broken and rolled over until the toes meet the heels. They’ve been wrapped in that position for decades. Now they’ve uncoiled, but only so far. They look like camelback bridges—just the toes and backs of the heels touch the ground. The cadres made her walk barefoot, so her flesh, which looks baby soft from being hidden from the world all these years, is ripped and torn. The color? It does not belong on a living creature. I’m trying to be brave and helpful, but my stomach churns. I wish whatever it was I ate or drank would hurry up and pass through me, just as it did when I first arrived here with Z.G.