Feather in the Storm: A Childhood Lost in Chaos (5 page)

Mama cried.

At the hospital, Second Uncle said, Grandma asked for me and made him promise that Mama would bring me to see her.

“It was so sudden,” my second aunt added. “She was sitting talking with us, feeling fine. She was telling funny stories about Maomao. And just an hour later she was in such pain!”

A telegram had been sent to Mama’s sister in faraway Changsha, Second Uncle said, summoning her to Tianjin. But a return telegram said she was unable to travel because she was about to have a baby.

————

I learned what had happened that day when my mother recounted it for me years later. Grandma had aged much in two years. She was thin and pale, her hair had turned white and she was so feeble she could
barely move. She was so heavily sedated, she had difficulty keeping her eyes open.

“You’re here,” she whispered weakly when she recognized my mother. “Where is Maomao?”

Mama held her hand and told her I was at home, exhausted after the long train ride. “She’s asleep in your bed, Mother,” Mama said, her voice breaking.

“I want to see her,” Grandma said.

“I’ll bring her tomorrow,” Mama promised.

“And how is she? Does she miss Grandma?”

“She cries for you every night.”

“Does she have enough to eat?”

“Yes, Mother, she does. She has grown. She is healthy.”

Mama shared the news of Papa’s restoration as a teacher. Grandma was relieved. Mama said that her sister could not come from Changsha because she had given birth to a big healthy baby boy. Grandma smiled.

The day was hot and humid. The hospital had no air-conditioning or electric fans. A nurse suggested that Mama buy ice for her mother in a nearby market.

Mama left for a short time and brought back a big bowl of chipped ice. She held each piece of ice to Grandma’s lips and touched it to her forehead and her arms. Mama stayed with Grandma all afternoon and evening, returning to the street two more times for ice.

At about four in the morning, Second Uncle arrived and took Mama’s place at Grandma’s side. I was up before anyone else that morning. I dressed and brushed my hair and washed my face and waited for Mama to get up.

Second Uncle came in the door. His eyes were swollen and red. He noticed me sitting with my doll in the early-morning light. He passed us without saying a word and hurried to the room where Mama was sleeping. There was a brief exchange and suddenly Mama screamed, “No! No! No!”

Others in the house awakened, and before long, there was crying from every room. I found Mama slumped on the edge of the bed, holding her head in her hands, sobbing.

“Can we see Grandma now?” I asked.

“No,” Mama said. “We can’t. Grandma passed away this morning.”

I did not understand what “passed away” meant. Mama pulled me to her and held me tightly and sobbed.

I did not know what death meant. I was unaware of its finality. I’d heard Papa say to Mama that he’d “returned from the dead” when he came back from the concentration camp. I believed, therefore, that death was a temporary condition of separation. I cried with everyone else. But I hoped that soon there would be no more tears and I’d see Grandma, that she’d return from the hospital and hold me and play games with me. I waited for that day. Only slowly did I realize that I would never see her again.

A memorial service was held. We learned that my auntie in Changsha had given birth to a girl. My uncles and aunts thought this might have disappointed Grandma, which is why Mama had told her it was a boy. But I knew she would have loved another granddaughter. I knew it in my heart.

We returned to Hefei in late August. I resumed my chores in the household and was enrolled again in the child care center. Mama went back to work and Grandmother cared for my younger brother. Papa taught his classes in the university. Yiding went to school. I soon came to believe I lived in a secure world and that day followed day and season followed season without unusual disruption or disappointment. I thought if I did what was asked of me and did it well, if I was a good and obedient daughter, that the world could be a good place, even without Grandma in it.

In the summer of 1965, a few weeks after my seventh birthday, I began to suffer from frequent severe headaches. My joints ached and I lost my appetite. For over a week, I endured these discomforts and afflictions without complaint.

One warm afternoon, while I played with Xiaolan in the sandpit near our apartment, I was struck by a throbbing headache so severe that it made me dizzy. I pressed my hands to my head to make the pain stop. I was terrified and began to cry. Xiaolan took my hand and led me to our apartment. She ran to summon my mother from work. I crawled into my bed, pulled the mosquito net closed and waited for the pain to stop.

By the time Mama came home, the headache was accompanied by a high fever. Mama felt my forehead and asked me several questions. She bathed me with a damp cloth to bring down my temperature. I felt too sick to eat. During the night the pain decreased but the fever lingered. Early the next morning Mama dressed me and took me to the university clinic.

After a long wait a doctor examined me and told Mama, “It’s just a
minor viral infection. You have nothing to worry about.” He prescribed an herbal medicine and sent us home. The medicine didn’t work. The headaches and pain persisted and my temperature fluctuated. I told Mama I didn’t feel well enough to get the milk in the morning. My brother went in my place.

When she touched my face to see if I still had a fever, I murmured, “I feel bad.”

“Let’s go to the clinic,” she said with growing concern.

I had difficulty walking. When I got to the bottom of the stairs I began to cry. I sat on the bottom step and rested my head in my hands. “I can’t go on, Mama,” I said.

She retrieved a small stool from our apartment. I walked beside her for a few steps, and we stopped and Mama put the stool down and I sat on it. I walked another few steps and sat again. In this plodding fashion, we made our way to the clinic.

The doctor was unhappy to see us again and, after a cursory examination, prescribed more herbal medicine. I took the medicine to no effect, and we returned to the clinic the next day and every day after that for a week. The doctor insisted it was nothing serious. He was more annoyed with my repeated appearances than with my illness. My physical condition declined and I lost weight until I was little more than skin and bones.

One afternoon we went to the clinic and I rested on my stool in the lobby while Mama registered me. We waited until a nurse called us into an examination room where the same doctor was waiting. He frowned. “Not you again!”

Mama told him I still had difficulty eating and that my bowel movements had become white. She added that she’d heard at work that a teacher’s child had contracted hepatitis B. She said she suspected I’d contracted it, too.

The doctor glared at her. “What do you know?” he huffed, his voice edged with cold indignation. “Are you a physician?”

Mama reddened.

“I’m the only one who can tell you what this little girl has,” he said. “
I
am the doctor!”

Mama was quiet. I was frightened by his outburst. I wanted to leave.

The doctor dropped to his stool and proceeded to examine my body, my eyes, my ears and the inside of my mouth and my throat, and listened to my heart and my breathing.

“Look at me,” he said, and I raised my face to him. “Her skin and the whites of her eyes are turning yellow. She has hepatitis B. I’m referring her to the Dashushan Contagious Disease Hospital. Take her there immediately.”

“Yes,” Mama said.

The doctor filled out a referral document, handed it to Mama and left.

The journey home was slow and painful. People passed us and gawked and asked, “Did you see how thin she is?” But they continued on without another word. Several times I felt I might faint and had to hold on tight to Mama’s hand.

I waited at the bottom of the stairs as Mama ran to our apartment and packed clean clothes and my doll in a bag. She was required to report to work, so Papa took me to the hospital.

“Let’s leave the stool here,” he said. He helped me stand.

“Papa,” I whispered, “I can’t walk anymore.”

“It’s all right,” he said. “I will carry you.”

He knelt and told me to wrap my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist. He slung my bag over his shoulder and locked his hands together behind him to support me. He rose and leaned over so I lay at a comfortable angle on his back and I did not need to hang on tightly.

“Are you all right, Maomao?” he asked.

“I think so, Papa,” I told him. “But go slowly. I hurt all over.”

He set out hunched over like a man with a cumbersome bundle on his back rather than a sickly child. He carried me to the bus stop an
hour’s walk from our home. All the seats on the bus were taken and no one offered us one. Papa held me in his arms during the forty-minute ride. I clung to him as tightly as I could and closed my eyes. The weather was warm and I felt as if I were on fire.

The bus deposited us a short distance from Dashushan Contagious Disease Hospital, several miles outside the city, where patients were isolated from the general population.

Papa carried me into the lobby. He put me on a bench, showed the referral document to a clerk and waited.

Half an hour later a doctor appeared. He looked at me carefully, turned my face to his, looked into my eyes and mouth, and felt my neck and arms and legs. He turned and glowered at Papa. “What kind of parent are you?” he snapped.

“What do you mean?” Papa asked timidly. Others in the lobby stopped what they were doing and stared.

“I mean,” he said, slowing his speech and giving emphasis to each word, “this little girl is very sick. Why didn’t you bring her here earlier? How could you let your own child deteriorate to this pathetic state?”

“We took her to the university clinic every day,” Papa said. “They looked at her and gave her herbal medicines and sent us home.”

“Oh, don’t blame someone else,” the doctor grumbled: “She’s your daughter. You’re responsible.”

“We can’t do anything without a transfer permit from the clinic,” Papa said, his voice rising.

The doctor paused for a moment, thought about Papa’s remark and shook his head. “Okay,” he said, sighing. “But I tell you … somebody should have known better. This is … not good!”

I slumped over, weak, listening to the doctor’s bitter words echo up and down the hall. I was shocked and ashamed. The doctor was wrong. He didn’t realize Papa had carried me on his back all the way to the hospital. My sickness wasn’t Papa’s fault. I had not come to the hospital earlier because of the rudeness of another doctor. It was
his
fault. If this doctor only knew the truth, if there were some way for me to tell him, I was sure he would never talk to Papa that way.

“I’ll do what I can for her. But I can’t promise much,” the doctor said with something that sounded like sympathy. “At best, her stay here will be a long one. You can go.”

Papa reached out and touched my hand. He started to say something but hesitated and bit his lip. I wanted to tell him I was sorry for getting sick. I wanted to tell him I tried to be a good daughter and not a burden. I wanted to tell him I was sorry I could not walk to the bus. But I had no energy and I could not speak. And even if I could, I really didn’t know how to give voice to my pity and guilt. So I simply looked into his eyes and forced a hint of a smile.

Before Papa left, he reached into the bag and pulled out my doll and handed her to me. “Mama and I will come back soon to visit you, Maomao,” he said, his voice wavering. “Be a good girl and do what they tell you.”

I nodded. I listened to Papa’s footsteps as he walked away, and I heard the door open and close. The doctor summoned a nurse and told her to carry me to a room.

The nurse took me to a small second-floor room crowded with four beds. She put me on the bed and covered me with a sheet. Three other girls in the room stared at me and whispered to one another.

The doctor told the nurse I was in the fourth stage of the disease. “I hope we can save her,” he said.

I could hardly speak or swallow food when I was admitted to the hospital. For two weeks I was fed through an IV. I was given daily shots and powders and pills and tests. I took my medicine as directed and slowly regained my strength, my appetite and my voice.

Soon I found I could painlessly pull a needle from my arm when an IV bottle was empty. The other girls in the room, squeamish and averse to needles, loved to watch me remove a needle without grimacing. Sometimes, when I did, I watched their faces and smiled as they stared incredulously or shut their eyes. They came to believe I was either unusually courageous or absolutely unfeeling. I enjoyed the attention and their astonishment when they huddled around my bed and watched me deftly do the job of the doctors and nurses.

Two weeks later I was eating solid food. Not long after that I could
stand and make my way to the bathroom. The nurses called me “Little Cat” because, they pointed out, I was the smallest child in the hospital; I never made a noise when I padded around, and my name sounded like the Mandarin word for “cat.”

I liked the name. The doctors and nurses used it affectionately. Whenever one of them entered the room I responded to their greeting of “How’s Little Cat today?” with a soft “meow.”

Visitations were allowed only on Sundays. Mama and Papa took turns visiting me. They tried to bring a special treat when they came. One time Mama brought me a box of Hefei Hong cookies, which were prized for their rich taste and texture. I tasted one and found it irresistible. I might have eaten them all at that moment, but Mama asked me to save them and to eat them over the next several days. I said I would. Yet no sooner had she left than I succumbed to the temptation to eat another.

As I was about to remove one from the box, a nurse came to take my temperature and stuck the thermometer in my mouth. When she left, I pulled out a cookie and tried to bite it with the thermometer in my mouth. When I did, the thermometer shattered. I hurriedly tried to pick the slivers of glass from my mouth and spit cookie and glass and mercury onto the floor. The other girls shouted for help. When the nurse realized what I’d done, she was more alarmed than I was.