Dreams of Joy: A Novel (6 page)

“When he got older,” someone else adds, “we would give him paper and a cup of water to practice painting. He used his finger as a brush. The water would go onto the paper, and for a few seconds we would see mountains, rivers, clouds, dragons, fields—”

“And even the butcher’s face!” yet another says enthusiastically. “Then the water would evaporate and Tao would begin again.”

Z.G. stands there, staring at Tao’s painting, pinching his chin with his thumb and forefinger, seemingly not listening to the villagers’ crowing. After a long moment, he looks up. “That is enough for tonight.” As the others get up off the floor and file out, Z.G. gives Tao’s shoulder a congratulatory shake. I grew up in a household where touching was rare, so Z.G.’s gesture is startling. In reaction to this surprising praise, Tao’s mouth spreads into the same wide and gleaming smile he gave us on our arrival.

I collect everyone’s paintings. They’re terrible, with big splotches of ink and no delicacy. This makes me feel a lot better about my painting, until I remember Z.G.’s harsh evaluation. Why did he have to be so mean, and in front of everyone too?

The sun drops behind the hills, turning everything golden as we walk back to the villa with Tao and Kumei. At the main gate, Tao says good night. Though everyone in this village has the same clan name, I thought Kumei and Tao might be married, and I feel a tingle of relief to learn they aren’t. As Z.G. follows Kumei through the gate, I linger for a moment to watch Tao stride along the path, cross a stone bridge, and head up the hillside. Then I turn and enter the villa. My suitcase is still in the front courtyard. I pick it up and follow the others deeper into the compound. For the first time, the word
villa
sinks in. I’ve never been in a place like this. It must have been beautiful and modern a few hundred years ago, but it seems quite primitive to me—a girl from Los Angeles. Narrow stone pathways and corridors link a series of courtyards lined by two-story wooden buildings. It’s all very confusing, and I immediately lose my bearings.

We follow Kumei into the kitchen, but it isn’t like any kitchen I’ve ever seen. It’s open air with no roof, which is nice on this sticky night. A large brick stove stands against one wall. Another wall rises to waist height. I peek over it and see an empty trough, some dirty hay, and dried mud.

“We had to give our pigs to the collective,” Kumei explains, when she notices my interest.

Pigs in the kitchen? In a villa? My mind scrambles to make sense of what I’m seeing. This isn’t at all like China City. Are we going to eat in here? It looks pretty dirty—as in
outdoors
dirty. We’re practically outside, and I’ve never even been camping.

Z.G. and I sit on benches that look like sawhorses lined up against a rough-hewn wooden table. Kumei ladles leftover pork and vegetable soup flavored with chilies into our bowls. It tastes delicious. Then we eat some room-temperature rice scooped from a tin container.

All the while, Kumei chatters. The little boy we saw with her earlier is her son. His name is Ta-ming. An old woman named Yong also lives here. She didn’t come to the art lesson, because her feet were bound in feudal times, and she can’t walk very far.

After dinner, Kumei guides us back through the maze of outdoor pathways and courtyards. She tells us that the villa has twenty-nine bedrooms.

“Why don’t more people live here?” I ask, thinking that, if Green Dragon Village is a collective, shouldn’t more people be sharing this big house?

“No matter. No matter,” Kumei says, waving her hand dismissively. “I take care of it for the people.”

Which doesn’t answer my question.

In the third courtyard, Kumei takes us into a building. We enter a kind of sitting room with wood walls the color of maple syrup. At the far end, carved wooden screens cover a pair of window openings. Above these hangs an elaborate wood and gilt carving of squirrels playing in an arbor heavy with clusters of grapes. A table sits in the center of the room. A few chairs rest with their backs against the walls. There are two doors on the right wall and two doors on the left wall.

“This is where you will sleep,” Kumei says. “You may choose your room.”

Z.G. hurriedly checks each room before opting for the second one on the left. I select the room next to his. It’s small, but it feels even smaller because most of the space is taken up by an antique marriage bed with a full frame and a carved canopy. I can’t believe I’m going to sleep in something so luxurious. On the other hand, I haven’t seen a bathroom or any electric lights, and the kitchen was certainly backward. Is this a villa or the home of a peasant?

I set down my suitcase and turn to Kumei. “Where is the bathroom?”

“Bathroom?”

Kumei looks confused. I say the word for toilet, but even that seems to baffle her.

“She wants to know where to wash her face and do her private business,” Z.G. calls from his room. Kumei giggles. “I’ll show you.”

“When you’re done,” Z.G. adds, “could you bring a thermos of boiled water and a bowl to my room?”

I want to remind him that this is the New Society and that Kumei is not his servant, but she doesn’t seem to mind.

I grab my toiletry bag and follow Kumei back through the compound, out the front gate, and down a path to a water trough. I look at the trough, then at Kumei. She makes the motions for washing her face. Well, okay, she must know what she’s doing, so I dip my toothbrush in the trough and brush my teeth. She joins me when I splash some of the water on my face. I didn’t pack a towel when I left Los Angeles, so I follow Kumei’s example by wiping off the excess water with my forearms and letting the heat of the night dry the rest.

When we return to the compound, I grab Kumei’s elbow. “You were also going to show me the place to do my private business?”

She escorts me back to my room and points to something that looks like the butter churn one of my elementary school teachers once brought to class to teach us about pioneer days. It’s wooden, about eighteen inches high, wider at the bottom than at the top, and closed by a lid.
I’m going to have to use that thing? Are you kidding me?

Seeing the look on my face, Kumei asks, “Don’t you have these in Shanghai?” I don’t know if they have them in Shanghai or not, but I shake my head. Kumei giggles again. “This is your nightstool. You open the top, sit down, and do your business.” She pauses, then adds, “Don’t forget to close the top when you’re done or you’ll have a bad smell and lots of flies!”

This information doesn’t exactly thrill me, and it causes me to realize that when I left home I didn’t bring toilet paper, let alone supplies for what my mother and aunt have always called the visit from the little red sister. Now what am I going to do?

Kumei says good night, and I close the door to my room. I sit on the edge of the bed—hard wood covered with feather padding and a quilt—still trying to absorb everything. I want China to be perfect and my time here to be rewarding, but a lot of what I’ve seen today is either very primitive or kind of scary. I take a breath to steady myself and then look around. The single window is just an opening covered by another carved screen. Darkness is falling fast now, and the cicadas are making a real racket. A small oil lamp sits on the table, but I don’t have matches to light it. Even if I did, I didn’t bring anything to read. The walls feel close. The heat is unbelievable. I stare at the nightstool. In my mind I thought I was ready to rough it, but I’m just not ready to use that contraption. I hear Z.G. moving in the central room and go out to join him.

“So how was your day?” Z.G. asks.

His question puts me on the spot. I want to fit in, but I don’t look like I belong and I’m pretty sure I don’t act like I do either. I want Z.G to like me, but I realize I’m a surprise and an unexpected burden to him. More than anything, I want to love China, but everything is just so strange.

“It’s all I imagined but better,” I say, trying to answer in a way he’ll like. How can I explain this to him? I’m far removed from the comforts I grew up with, but this is just what Joe and I talked about with the other kids in Chicago. “My mother and aunt always said you can’t know luxury until you’re deprived of it. They lost a lot when they left China, but I’ve never understood their feelings. Who needs luxury when you have purpose, goodness, and passion?”

“You aren’t actually
living
this life,” Z.G. points out, catching me on my false enthusiasm. “You don’t know what it’s like day after day.”

“That’s true, but that doesn’t mean I’m not happy to be here,” I counter, feeling sensitive to my new father. “And I think the people are happy we’re here too.” I pause and then amend my statement. “That
you’re
here. They’re going to learn a lot from you.”

“I doubt it,” he responds, and I wonder again why he’s so pessimistic. “We’ll do our time here, but those peasants aren’t going to learn anything from me. You’ll see. And I’d have to agree with Pearl and May. People like us are better suited to Shanghai.” After a moment, he adds, “Even the way it is today.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a wad of what looks like beige crepe paper. “To use with your nightstool.”

He retreats into his room, and I return to mine. The walls of the room are made of the same thin dark wood that makes up all the buildings I’ve seen so far in the villa. I mean really thin, because I can hear Z.G. in the next room pee and fart. I take off my clothes, put on my nightgown, and, for the first time, use the nightstool. If my new father has no embarrassment, then I have to get over mine. Nevertheless, I sit on the edge, lean forward, and try to direct my stream in a way that will make the least amount of sound.

I lie down. It’s much too hot to pull the quilt over me, and not a breath of fresh air comes through the opening where a glass window would ordinarily be. I fall asleep to the sound of mice scratching and scuttling in the rafters.

Pearl

A WIDOW SHOULD …

I’M ON A
plane to Hong Kong, a place I haven’t been since my sister and I left China twenty years ago. As I sit in my cramped seat, my past churns through my mind. My sister—a self-centered woman, whom I’ve tried to protect since she was a baby and who repaid me by betraying me again and again and again—haunts me. My daughter fills my heart with worry. My husband, Sam … Oh, Sam…

I’m a widow now. My mother used to say that a widow is the unluckiest person on earth, because either she committed an unforgivable crime in a previous life or her lack of devotion to her husband caused him to die. Either way, she’s doomed to live out her life unloved by another man, for no good family will accept a widow into their home. And even if a family would take a widow, she would know better than to accept, because the world knows that a decent woman should never go with a second man. A miserable existence should be anticipated and accepted.

A widow should pray, fast, and recite sutras. (I’ll omit the sutras and confine myself to prayers.) She should dedicate herself to doing good deeds at her place of worship. (This I might only be able to do in my heart for now, since I have no idea what I’ll find for a Methodist like me in the People’s Republic of China.) She should spend the rest of her life in chastity. (Something that doesn’t break my heart, if I’m honest.) She should give up material possessions and devote herself to others like me: the socially dead. (Instead, I’m flying across the world to find my daughter.) I’ve often been told that a widow’s suffering will overcome vanity and attachment by wearing it out. (I’ve never been vain—that was something I left to my sister—but I cannot give up attachment if it means giving up on my daughter.) A proper widow should confine herself to dark colors and maybe a few pieces of jade of good quality. But why am I even thinking about these things when I’m on a frantic and unplanned search for Joy?

It’s fair to say I don’t know what I’m doing. I like to plot my life and proceed carefully, but life doesn’t always follow a plan. As a young woman I loved Z.G., but I was forced into an arranged marriage to pay my father’s debts. Now, as I think about how I raised May’s daughter as my own, never knowing that Z.G. was Joy’s father, my chest constricts in sorrow and embarrassment at the idea of May and Z.G. together. She is a Sheep, while he is a Rabbit. This is one of the most ideal matches, and yet I believed that Z.G. and I were the ones meant to be together. The knowledge is devastating and it breaks my heart, but right now I have other things to worry about.

We cross the International Date Line, which means it’s now been seventeen days since Sam committed suicide, thirteen days since his funeral, and two days since Joy ran away. There was never any question that I’d be the one to chase after Joy. A kind person would say that May wouldn’t want to leave Vern, her invalid husband who was never right in the head to begin with, but I know her. She wouldn’t want to leave her business or put herself in danger. What’s that phrase she uses? She wouldn’t want to break a fingernail. Joy may not be my birth daughter, but she is mine and I’ll do anything for her. I keep thinking of my mother, who used to tell me I should beware the trait I carry common to all those born in the Year of the Dragon: a Dragon, believing he is just, will often bound headlong into a disastrous situation. My mother was right about many things.

“You’re very brave,” the woman sitting next to me says as the plane bumps through the air. She’s white with fear and her hands grip the armrests. “You must have done this before.”

“This is my first time on a plane,” I say after a long moment. I’m so paralyzed by grief for my husband and terror for my daughter that I wasn’t afraid when the plane took off and have barely noticed the turbulence that started after we refueled in Tokyo. I turn back to the window and stare into the darkness. Later, I hear the woman throw up into a bag.

Finally, the plane begins its descent into Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Airfield. Small islands jut up out of the sea, fishing boats glide on the waves, and palm trees bend in the wind. Then we fly right into the city, between apartment buildings, so close I can see through the windows men wearing undershirts and drinking tea, laundry hanging on the backs of chairs, and women cooking. We land, and a group of bare-chested men roll a set of stairs to the plane. I gather my belongings and follow the other passengers to the exit. The scents of coal smoke, roast duck, and ginger mixed into the heavy, humid air fill my lungs. I’m only in Hong Kong, a British colony, but it smells like China to me.

An immigration official asks for my final destination. As a Dragon, I want to dash straight into China, slash my way across the country, and pry open doors with my long claws to find my daughter, but I have things to do first. To do them, I need to go into the city.

“Hong Kong,” I answer.

The airport is on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong. As darkness falls, my taxi weaves through the crowded streets toward the Star Ferry Terminal. Garish neon lights edge upturned eaves, scrawl out the names of restaurants in English and Chinese, and advertise everything from free drinks and dancing girls for American sailors to herbs and tonics to bring robust and healthy baby sons. I’m awash in memories. Twenty years ago, this city was a gateway between May’s and my escape out of China and getting on the boat to go to America. Again, it’s a British colony, but I’m overwhelmed by how Chinese it is. The border with China is about twenty miles away, with Canton about eighty miles beyond that.

I board the Star Ferry and take it across the bay to the Hong Kong side, where tall white buildings grow on the verdant hills. I make my way to the same cheap hotel where May and I stayed twenty years ago. After checking in, I go to my room and shut the door behind me. It’s as if all the grief I should have been feeling as a widow suddenly hits me, while the terror I feel for Joy is overpowering. I’ve experienced many terrible things in my life, but my daughter’s running away is the worst. I’m afraid I won’t be the strong mother I need to be. Maybe I never was a strong mother. Maybe I’ve never been good enough to be Joy’s mother. Because, of course, I’m
not
Joy’s mother.

My mind goes to one terrible place after another before spinning uncontrollably to an even worse one. The shame I feel for failing my husband and daughter burns my skin. I have no one. Not even my sister. I doubt I’ll ever forgive her for reporting Sam to the FBI. She gave me her apologies, and when we stood at the airport, she said, “When our hair is white, we’ll still have our sister love.” I listened, but I didn’t believe her. I didn’t say anything because, whether I liked it or not, we had to come together as sisters to find Joy. That said, when I allow myself to think about the things May accused me of that last night, I know she was right in many ways. She pointed out that I’d gone to college in Shanghai, but I’d never done anything with it. I’d never taken advantage of the opportunities that were given to me in Los Angeles either. May said I preferred to be a victim and wallow in my sacrifices. She taunted me for being afraid and for running from the past. But May also used to say, Everything always returns to the beginning. She would laugh to see me now, because I’ve run so hard and for so long that I’ve run full circle into the heart of my past.

And look at me! Just as May said, I am afraid. I’ve always been hopelessly and pathetically afraid, but my sister has never given up. Twenty years ago, as we were escaping Shanghai, she didn’t leave me in the shack after I was raped and beaten by Japanese soldiers nearly unto death. Instead, she piled me—unconscious—into a wheelbarrow and pushed me through the countryside to safety. She didn’t wither into nothing when she had to give me the daughter she’d carried and loved for nine months. Nor did she ever once falter in acting as Joy’s aunt for nineteen years. She kept the secret. She honored her daughter and me by keeping that secret. She would not be in a hotel room, weeping and mourning all night.

Just before dawn, I get up, take a shower, and get dressed. I look in the mirror. I’m forty-one, and, even after everything I’ve been through, I don’t have a single gray hair. I’ve never been like my sister, whose face is her fortune. Nevertheless, despite the trials of these past weeks, my cheeks are still pink. Only in my eyes do I see the depth of my struggling heart, a maelstrom of sadness and loss.

I go downstairs and order a bowl of rice porridge and a pot of jasmine tea. The meal is as plain as I can make it. I’m a widow, who’s lost everything. How could I ever eat a Hong Kong English breakfast of eggs, bacon, stewed tomatoes, and toast?

After breakfast, I stop at the front desk to ask directions to the Soo Yuen Benevolent Association, hoping to get advice about going into China and also how to deal with mail to and from my sister once I get there. The association was founded to help people of the Louie, Fong, and Kwong families. My father-in-law used its services for years. Father Louie remained connected to his home village of Wah Hong after nearly a lifetime spent in America. He sent tea money to his relatives, even if it meant we had to sacrifice. When China closed, he had to use the association to get money across the border to his family. After Father Louie died, Sam kept sending money to Wah Hong, which the FBI and INS agents considered one of his biggest crimes. I can almost hear Sam say to them, “We do what we can for our relatives who are trapped in a bad place.” That didn’t matter to the agents, obviously. So I know that, if May sends letters and money straight to me in Red China, she’ll be attacked for being a Communist sympathizer by the FBI, just as Sam was. At the same time, what waits for me on the other side of the border is a mystery. We’ve heard mail is often opened, read, and censored, or tossed in the dustbin. I know as well that people in China who dare to send letters abroad or receive them—no matter how innocent the content—can also be accused of being secret capitalists or spies.

So, out into the streets. Hong Kong bustles with life: flower and bird sellers, street markets, British businessmen in three-piece suits, beautifully dressed women holding umbrellas to shield them from the sun. I could say that Hong Kong is just a bigger, gaudier, richer, more cosmopolitan version of Chinatown, but then I’d have to admit that it isn’t like my adopted home much at all, except for the food, the streams of white tourists, and the Chinese faces. I could say Hong Kong is closer to how I remember Shanghai, with its lively waterfront, the sex and sin for sale, and the smells of perfume, coal, and delectable treats being cooked right on the street, except that it isn’t nearly as grand or wealthy as the city of my girlhood.

An hour later, I reach the Soo Yuen Benevolent Association’s office and approach a thin man of about fifty years, wearing a cheap suit, standing behind a counter, drinking tea. I extend my hand. “I’m Pearl Louie and I’m from Los Angeles,” I blurt. “My daughter was born in America. She looks Chinese on the outside, but she’s an American. My daughter …” Tears well in my eyes, and I manage to hold them back. “She’s only nineteen and she’s run away to China—Shanghai, I’m pretty sure—to find her father. She thinks she’s smart and she has a lot of enthusiasm for what’s happening there, but she doesn’t know anything about it.”

How can I say these things to a total stranger? Because I can’t expect this man to help me, if I’m not honest with him.

“Are you planning on going to the People’s Republic of China?” he asks, unimpressed.

“You say that like it’s nothing, but China is a Communist country. It’s closed.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he says in a bored tone. “The Bamboo Curtain and all that.”

I can’t believe his attitude. I just poured out my sorrows and worries and he acts like neither thing is important.

I rap my knuckles on the counter to get his attention. “Are you going to help me or not?”

“Look, lady, it’s a bamboo curtain, not an iron curtain. People go in and out of China all the time. It’s not a big deal.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask impatiently. “China is closed—”

“The People’s Republic of China is very good at propaganda, but so is your country. You Americans think the People’s Republic of China is completely closed. That’s part of your government’s campaign to isolate China—refusing diplomatic recognition, prohibiting trade, restricting family reunification visits …”

I’m fully aware that the United States is punishing China for its role in the Korean War and for supporting the Soviet Union in the Cold War. If that weren’t enough, there’s the constant irritant of Taiwan, as well as the threat of the spread of communism.

“But the British are still doing business there.” He leans forward to stress his point. “All those Eastern European countries are doing things there. Even Americans—journalists invited by Mao and the government—go in and out of China. But mainly, we Chinese have continued to do business there. Hong Kong and mainland China have had a special business relationship for hundreds of years, long before Hong Kong was a colony. How are we to live without Chinese herbal medicine, for example?”