Feather in the Storm: A Childhood Lost in Chaos (30 page)

“Let’s bring in our things,” Mama said. “We’re home.”

After we’d settled in, Mama cooked some rice and we had dinner together. We spoke in low tones, acutely aware that everything we said could be heard by everyone else in the building. And when no one in our quarters spoke we could pick up on several other conversations around us. It was an odd experience and it took time for us to adjust to it.

My bed was placed beside the brick wall near the rear of our quarters. When I went to bed that night, I lay quietly in the dark, listening to the voices of others in the building as they prepared to sleep. When there were no more voices, I heard something very near me, just on the other side of the wall separating us from our neighbors. It was soft, labored breathing. I listened and thought I heard sniffles. Someone was sitting or lying in the dark only inches away from me on the other side of the wall.

I whispered, “Are you there?”

The sniffling stopped. There was no sound. I sat up and put my ear against the reed mat.

A girl’s voice came back: “Yes.”

“Are you crying?” I whispered.

“No,” she choked. Then she said, “You moved in today, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I heard you.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Chen Yuanyu. What’s yours?”

“Wu Yimao.”

“How old are you?”

“I’m fifteen,” I whispered. “How old are you?”

“I’m sixteen,” she said.

Another voice from her side of the wall said, “Shut up and go to sleep!”

I lay back down and said nothing more to her that night. The following night we spoke for a few minutes. I told her I’d see her in school and we could talk more then.

On our third day in Wuhu I went to school. I carefully braided my hair, washed my face and put on clean trousers and a flowered blouse. My heart was pounding with excitement. The school, which was called Fuzhong High School, was affiliated with the university. It was about one mile from our new home. Yiding and I brought the official papers Papa had given us authorizing our transfer. The school grounds were alive with hundreds of students running around, carrying books, talking or playing. They were nicely dressed and freshly scrubbed, unlike the students in the countryside. We hurried to the administration office and handed in our papers and received our classroom assignments.

By the time I arrived at my classroom, most of the students were seated at their desks. I immediately noticed the large number of girls. Of about eighty students, at least half were girls. I was delighted and smiled brightly. In the countryside I’d had few girl classmates.

The teacher was writing on the blackboard. I stepped through the door and the students stopped talking and stared at me. The teacher,
wondering what had caused the sudden silence, ceased writing and turned to me. She was short—only about five feet tall—slender and middle-aged. She had short hair and wore round plastic-rimmed glasses that made her stern expression seem almost forbidding. I said cheerfully, “Good morning, Teacher.” I looked around for an empty seat. I wanted to hurry to sit down and join the other students.

She glared icily at me without responding. As I started to walk to a seat, she stepped in front of me. She glowered and pointed to my feet. “Where are your shoes?” she asked. “Go home and put on shoes before you come into my classroom.”

I was puzzled. In the countryside I never wore shoes unless it was snowing or cold. Shoes were for special occasions. I looked around at the other students and noticed that every one of them was wearing shoes. I was deeply shamed. I felt my face burn. I bit my lip to stop myself from breaking into tears. The students continued staring at me. Some tittered. My body tightened. I looked at the floor.

“Go,” the teacher ordered. “Now.” She extended her hand, palm down, and flicked her fingers at me as if expelling a fly.

I backed out of the room. The teacher shut the door in my face. She said something to the class, and her words were followed by an explosion of laughter from the students. I left the school grounds and wandered around almost in a daze. I didn’t know what to do or where to go. I didn’t own a pair of shoes, and I didn’t have the money to buy a pair. I couldn’t ask my parents to buy me shoes. After the expense of moving to Wuhu, we had almost no money. Mama had depleted our savings searching for a position for Papa, and they would receive no pay for several weeks.

I ended up meandering through a street market several blocks from the school. Peasants from nearby villages sold their wares without government approval on this black market. They bargained boisterously with hundreds of city people. I walked around the market, listening and watching. Before long I found myself standing in front of a dingy storefront. A handwritten sign in the window read,
BUYING OLD NEWSPAPERS, OLD BOOKS, OLD RUBBER SHOES, EMPTY TOOTHPASTE TUBES
,
AND HAIR
. I went in. It was so dark I had to blink several times before I could see clearly. The room was small, only a few feet square. It smelled like charcoal and decaying food and tobacco. My first instinct was to turn and walk away.

Yet I hesitated. Through a haze of blue tobacco smoke, I saw the shopkeeper sitting on a stool at a small round table. He stood and hobbled toward me. He was very old and hunched over. He wore an old-fashioned gray gown and a black skullcap. A long-stemmed pipe protruded from the corner of his mouth. He was a few inches shorter than me, his ancient wrinkled face at the level of my chin. He reached out slowly, as if not to frighten me, and gently touched one of my long braids.

“Are you here to sell your hair?” he asked in a wavering, shrill voice.

I stepped back, just out of his reach. I paused before whispering, “Yes.”

My heart was crying no, but my lips said yes. The word seemed to pop out on its own. The old man returned to the table and picked up something and said, “Come here.” I stepped into the shaft of sunshine that entered through a small window. I saw him holding a pair of large iron scissors. He grasped one of my braids, lifted it in the air, twisted it, examined it closely, tested the weight and thickness, and said, “Oh, goodness, this is thick and heavy. Very good.”

I didn’t say anything. I was still thinking about leaving the shop without selling my hair.

“Four yuan,” he said. “Two for each braid.”

I pulled my braid from his grasp and stuck out my chin and declared, “Five yuan for both.”

His brow wrinkled as he considered my offer. “Okay,” he said. “Five yuan.”

He grasped my left braid and pulled it taut. He held the blades of the scissors at the top of the braid and began slicing. I closed my eyes. The scissors squeaked as they opened and closed. I was hurting inside and I wanted to scream. But I stood still.

“Such good hair,” he said, as one braid came free and he threw it
toward a bamboo basket. He held the other braid, pulled it straight and cut. As it fell loose I opened my eyes and watched him toss it also. He laid the scissors on the table, opened a little tin box, withdrew a five-yuan note and handed it to me. I folded the bill into a small square and clutched it tightly in my fist. I looked over his shoulder and saw my beautiful braids draped over the edge of his basket. My heart ached. I turned and stumbled out of the shop. I felt almost naked without my braids.

I returned to the market and moved from stand to stand until I found a vendor selling shoes. I spotted a pair of black plastic shoes for four yuan and fifty fen. I thought they might last longer than cloth shoes, and they were cheaper.

“I’d like to buy shoes,” I said to the clerk.

She gave me an unfriendly look. “What size?” she snapped.

I had no idea what size. I had not purchased shoes in five years. “I don’t know,” I said.

She looked at my bare feet. “Thirty-eight!” she said. She pulled a pair from a pile and dropped them on the counter.

I held one against my foot and saw it was far too large. “Not my size,” I said. “I need smaller ones.”

“Are you buying shoes or not?” she said impatiently. “Do you even have money? You don’t look like you have money. Buy these or leave.”

I thought for a moment and concluded I could grow into them. Perhaps it was wise to buy shoes too large. I opened my fist and dropped the five-yuan note on the counter.

She gingerly picked up the wadded bill as if it were too dirty for her. She smoothed it and held it to the light to see if it was real. She slapped my change on the counter and turned her back to me. I dropped the shoes on the ground and easily slipped into them. It felt strange walking in shoes for the first time in years.

I returned to school without my braids but with new shoes. Outside the classroom, I used my fingers to comb through my hair and make myself presentable. I took a deep breath and pushed the door
open and entered the room. All eyes turned to me. The teacher moved several steps in my direction, recognized me and immediately lowered her gaze to my feet. Proudly, I put out my plastic-shod left foot. At that moment, it seemed to me, the teacher suppressed a smile. She asked for my papers. I handed them to her. Her eyes widened when she saw that one of the documents I carried was my Communist Youth League membership.

She pointed to an empty chair and said, “Sit there.” Students leaned out of their seats to look at my feet as I passed. Seeing my new shoes, they smiled and whispered to those who could not see. I sat down between two other girls. Each smiled at me. I smiled back. The recitation resumed. I’d memorized the lines long ago and joined with the others:

At lunch recess, the teacher called me aside and told me that a meeting of the CYL was to take place after class. “Since you were already a member at another school, you are in this chapter now.” So I stayed after school for the meeting.

There were seven CYL members in my class. They welcomed me to their ranks warmly. In only a few hours, thanks to my plastic shoes and my CYL membership, I’d gone from being an outsider to being an insider. Our group leader was named Zhou Yongzhong, meaning “forever loyal to Chairman Mao.” Three girls and four boys made up the group. I was asked what my CYL title had been in the countryside. I said I had no title. “We were all just comrades.” But in the city, I was told, each member had a title and a delegated function. There was a group leader, a class monitor, a political commissar, an arts and activities
commissar and so on. The group decided I should be the study commissar of my class, which was the least political position. I would keep the job until I was proved red enough. My duties, they said, were to collect student homework and take roll in the morning for the teacher.

That night when I went to bed, I again heard soft cries from the other side of the wall. “Yuanyu?” I whispered.

“Yes.”

“I didn’t see you in school today.”

“And I didn’t see you.”

“When can we meet? Can you show me the street market?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you cry at night, Yuanyu?”

Before she could answer, a voice bellowed, “Shut up!”

From other quarters near the end of the building a man’s voice rang out, “Let us sleep! Be quiet!”

Neither of us spoke for several minutes. “See you tomorrow!” I whispered as low as possible. Yuanyu scratched an acknowledgment on the reed mat that separated us.

The next day at school was quite exceptional for me. Everybody was dressed nicely. Though it was clear I was a peasant, with my frayed and ill-fitting shirt and trousers, nobody mentioned it. But they looked at me with curiosity, as though I were some strange creature. They knew I was a country bumpkin and many still shied away from me.

Yet I stood before the class that morning and each morning after that and called the list of names to take attendance. I shouted out each name. There were eighty-two students in the class, and each responded, “Here!” If anyone was absent or late, I marked down the name for my report. Students took notice. Country bumpkin or not, I wielded authority in the classroom and I was a member of the CYL. At the end of the semester I drew up a list of those who had been absent or late. The list was put on the wall for everyone to see. Because of my position the other students warmed to me quickly. Test results were posted on
the bulletin board, and when I scored at the top of my class consistently, this focused additional favorable attention on me.

At the end of the first school year the teachers handed out report cards with their comments. They customarily wrote something like “Can Hold High the Banner of Mao Zedong Thought.” Or “Studied Hard.” But my teacher added one special comment: “A Country Girl Who Learned to Wear Shoes.”

One of our duties as CYL cadres was to visit the families of students in their homes. We were supposed to communicate with the parents regarding what was happening in school. At the same time we were directed to observe the home environment for any “irregularities” and, if we found them, to report them to higher cadres in the league. At least two of us were required to go on each home visit. My first home visits were uneventful and not memorable. Parents were commonly very formal in greeting us and in listening to our reports on their child’s performance in school. Nothing seemed amiss in the homes—no suspicious books or pictures and nothing else to indicate that the parents were anything other than model citizens.

During my fourth weekend of home visits, however, I was shaken by our final call of the day. Accompanied by another girl—Xu Yuqing—I completed half a dozen routine home visits. Late in the afternoon we were supposed to visit the home of a girl named Zhou Jing. Her name meant “crystal.” She was among the top students in our class. She never volunteered to answer a question in class, yet when called upon, she inevitably had the correct answer. She was very shy and quiet and had no close friends.

We had difficulty finding where she lived, even though we had the address. We finally found her quarters in a dormitory for Wuhu Textile Factory workers. The workers were housed in large barracks-like buildings. These were long, squat, brick-walled, tile-roofed structures. There were dozens of doors along the side of the building. Each door opened to a family’s living quarters. We knocked on the door of Zhou Jing’s apartment, and she answered and invited us in. We stepped into the small, poorly lit room. There was barely space for two beds, a stack of trunks in one corner and a coal stove in the other. I noticed right away that the room was neat and clean. The beds were made, the floor was swept and a picture of Chairman Mao was hung high on the wall.