Feather in the Storm: A Childhood Lost in Chaos (9 page)

“And do your parents know where you are?”

“No, Uncle PLA.”

He glanced around as if looking for someone.

“How old are you?”

“Eight.”

He was silent for several seconds. At last he said, “I may have something for a revolutionary little singer.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a large metal disk. “Do you like this?”

It was a badge with a raised silver profile of the Great Leader Chairman Mao Zedong. Badges like this had become popular during recent weeks. They were highly prized. I’d seen ones like it on the shirts of the students and faculty and red-family children. But this one was bigger and more ornate than any I’d seen before.

“I like it very much, Uncle PLA.”

“Would you like to keep it?” he asked and thrust it into my hand.

“Yes, I would, Uncle PLA,” I said. “But I have no—” A clap of thunder interrupted my words.

“You don’t have what?” he asked, cupping his hand to his ear and leaning closer.

“Money!” I said.

“You don’t have money?” he asked. “Well, what can be done about that?”

I didn’t know what to say, so I waited for him to answer his own question.

“Come here.” He took me by the arm and led me off the path and into the trees, where we were better protected from the rain by a thick canopy of branches. He folded his umbrella and put it down. “Now, that’s better,” he said. “You want this beautiful Chairman Mao badge but you don’t have money for it, is that right?”

“Yes.”

He leaned closer, his face nearly touching mine, and stared into my eyes. I felt uncomfortable with his closeness and with the breeze of his breath on my face. I turned my head aside and looked at the trees.

“What is wrong with your mouth?” he asked.

“I had my tooth pulled.”

“Let me see,” he said, taking my wrist and leading me a few steps farther into the trees. “Show me where the bad tooth was.” He dropped to his knees on the pine needles. I opened my mouth wide and pointed to the space where the rotten tooth had been.

He put his hand on my shoulder and peered into my mouth. “That looks all right,” he said. “But is the rest of you all right?”

“I think so,” I said.

“Well, let’s see,” he said.

“What—?” I began to ask. But quickly, deftly, before I knew what he was doing, he untied my trousers and let them drop, pulled my underwear aside and slipped his fingers between my legs. His other hand darted from my shoulder to my neck and his fingers tightened around my throat. “Don’t make a sound,” he hissed. “I need to see if you are all right.”

I tried to pull away but he held me fast. Fear exploded inside me. His grip on my throat choked me, and his fingers between my legs hurt
me. I squirmed and squeezed my legs together tightly and attempted to free myself. I couldn’t breathe. My face flushed hot. My eyes burned and my vision clouded. The more I struggled, the tighter he grasped my neck.

I managed a desperate squeal. I flailed and struck his wrist and clawed desperately at the sleeve of his tunic.

“Ouch!” he shouted and released me. He looked in disbelief at his wrist, which was streaked with blood.

I stumbled back and clutched my trousers but before I could tie them, his hand shot out and grabbed my shirt and jerked me to him. He pressed his hand over my mouth and ordered, “Don’t move!”

I whimpered and gasped for air. I was sobbing, terrified. The soldier stood, towering over me. The knees of his trousers were damp and soiled. Blood covered his hand and fingers. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped it away. He glowered at me menacingly as I tugged at my trousers and rubbed my throat. He held out his bloody hand and said, “Look what you did to Uncle PLA!”

“You hurt me,” I sobbed.

“Don’t say anything about this to anybody,” he said in an oddly gentle voice. “Because if you do …” Here his voice became steely. “I will find you. Don’t ever forget that. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” I choked.

“I’ll go get you a Popsicle,” he said. “That will make your tooth feel better. Wait here until I come back.”

“Okay,” I said.

I watched his feet back away from me and move out of the shadows and onto the dirt path. I waited and listened. Soon I heard only the hiss of the rain in the treetops. I could not stop crying. I felt between my legs, where I hurt badly. My throat was burning.

I guardedly stepped to the edge of the path, peered out and saw the soldier walking away in the distance. The rain obscured him, but I recognized the umbrella and the green uniform.

Still crying, I tightened the drawstring on my trousers and felt a
sharp pain in my palm. I turned my hand over and saw a puncture wound. I noticed a shining object in the pine needles at my feet. It was the Chairman Mao badge. I had been holding it when Uncle PLA grabbed me and undid my trousers. I’d hit his hand repeatedly while holding the disk, gashing him and cutting myself with the sharp pin before I lost my grip and dropped it. I picked it up. Chairman Mao’s semi-smiling face was smeared with blood.

I slipped the badge into my pocket and stepped out into the downpour. I tasted blood in my mouth, felt around with my tongue and realized the cotton ball was gone. I’d swallowed it. I looked around on the ground and found the cotton balls. Many were soiled, but a few were still clean. I stuck a clean one in the back of my mouth.

I looked up and down the path. There was no one in sight. I ran home as fast as I could.

Mama was surprised when I burst into our apartment wet and out of breath. “Where have you been?” she asked. She approached me and noticed right away that my face was red and swollen. “What happened?” she asked with alarm.

“I had my tooth pulled.”

“Where?”

“At the dental hospital downtown.”

“Where did you get these scratches?” she asked and leaned closer to examine marks on my neck and face.

I hesitated for a moment before I lied, “The nurse held me there when the dentist pulled my tooth. It wouldn’t come out.” I looked away from her as I spoke, lest my eyes betray me.

My words seemed to hang in the air as Mama examined the bruises. “How unusual,” she exclaimed. “The nurse did this?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve been crying, Maomao. Why?”

“It hurt.”

“Is that all?” she asked, her eyes softening as she watched my expression.

“Yes.”

She touched my neck and I was tempted to tell her what had really happened. But I was afraid if I did, the soldier would find out and he would find me and hurt me even more. I said nothing about Uncle PLA to anyone. Yet I could not forget his voice and his eyes and the feel of his hand choking me and his fingers between my legs. Never.

I took the Chairman Mao badge from my pocket. I was unsure what to do with it. I pushed it under my pillow. I awakened abruptly in the middle of the night when I dreamed I heard the voice of Uncle PLA. I was trembling. I lay awake until dawn, thinking about what he’d done. When I heard the call of the milkman, I got out of bed. As I dressed, I noticed spots of blood on the sheet and on my underwear. I put on clean underwear and hid the bloody pair, fearing Mama might ask me about it. That afternoon, when my parents were away, I washed the sheet and the underwear.

Later that week, Mama had our photo taken—me and my two brothers—in a small inexpensive studio near our home. She had us put on our finest clothing; I wore the same red-and-black-checked blouse I’d worn to the dental hospital. To demonstrate our love of Chairman Mao, each of us wore a badge. My brothers had small ones. I pinned on my large one and told Mama I’d found it on the street near the dentist.

Mama picked up the photograph two weeks later and put it in our family album. In the picture I am standing between my brothers smiling broadly, and my Chairman Mao badge is prominent. Papa and Mama said the picture was very good. I looked at it once when Mama brought it home. I wanted to see if the marks on my neck were visible. They weren’t. I didn’t look at it again for a very long time.

More PLA soldiers arrived in Hefei in the next weeks. Everyone continued to tell heroic tales about them. I listened to the stories and repeated lines we were taught about their courage and selflessness. I sang songs praising Uncle PLA. Yet when I saw the soldiers, I looked for the face of the man who hurt me.

That summer students formed Red Guard units, a militant organization that vowed absolute allegiance to Chairman Mao. The Red Guards were the violent vanguard of the Cultural Revolution. They wore green military uniforms and red armbands. Members carried a small red plastic-bound copy of the
Quotations of Chairman Mao
, which became the holy book of the whole country.

Beijing burned with revolutionary fervor. In mid-August Chairman Mao appeared before a rally of more than a million Red Guards in Tiananmen Square and accepted the title of Red Guard general. Defense Minister Lin Biao appeared at the rally and admonished the Red Guards to be resolute in destroying the Four Olds.

The public security minister proclaimed the existing laws of the People’s Republic of China no longer binding. He ordered the police not to interfere with the Red Guards. “Police should stand with the Red Guards,” he proclaimed, and supply them with information and let them know who the black families were. Following his announcement, Red Guards initiated the Red Terror. They invaded the homes of black families. They went on a rampage in a village near Beijing and
murdered hundreds of people. The Cultural Revolution had found its method, its madness and its executioners.

Word spread quickly as to what the Red Guards were doing. Mama concluded that our exile from Beijing to Hefei, which had been ordered in 1958 after Papa was sent to the concentration camp, had been a blessing in disguise. There was little doubt, she said, that had we remained in Beijing, our names would have been high on the Red Guard list of enemies and we might have been butchered.

I watched middle and elementary school students from red families assemble on street corners and in parks in their new uniforms, waving Little Red Books and chanting revolutionary slogans. Xiaolan and I applied for admission to the Little Red Guards. “Why would we allow enemies of the people in our ranks?” a group leader responded. “Keep your distance.” He tore up the applications and threw them on the ground.

When local Red Guards came back to Hefei in September, they initiated house searches, seeking evidence of the Four Olds and counterrevolutionary conspiracies. Suspicious property was destroyed on the spot or seized and carted away to be held in quarantine. Books, manuscripts and art judged to be part of the Four Olds were thrown to the street to be burned or hauled to the dump. Anything the Red Guards said they needed in order to make revolution was expropriated. Resistance brought arrest, beating, imprisonment and, in many cases, execution.

Passionate and dramatic public demonstrations were reinstituted as a requisite prelude to unmasking and destroying class enemies. The Red Guards held massive rallies morning, noon and night, exhorting and inciting and arousing loyal citizens. The call to arms was constant. Black families cowered and hoped this storm might pass or change direction before it consumed them. Yet each day it increased in fury. Orders were issued over the campus loudspeakers for the cow demons and snake spirits of the university to assemble on the university’s athletic grounds, where they had been denounced and beaten in June.

When Papa arrived, he found a battalion of Red Guards and several
thousand of their supporters already there. A huge dunce cap was put on his head and a sign was hung around his neck describing his crimes. The apartments of some of those summoned had been ransacked the previous evening and the prizes confiscated by the Red Guards were piled around the basketball courts. The booty included radios, clothing, photographs, academic certificates, books, records and magazines. Some materials—clothing and shoes or underwear of fine material—were confiscated because, Red Guards insisted, they were carryovers from a decadent bourgeois life.

After berating the academics and warning them of the consequences of resistance, the Red Guard commander announced that their pay was too high. They were “unjustly compensated” by being paid more than the cream of society—the workers and the peasants. “A pay adjustment is in order,” he said.

Papa’s salary was seventy yuan per month, much less than that of his fellow faculty members. He listened as one after another of his colleagues volunteered to have his pay sliced in half. When Papa’s turn came the Red Guard leader leaned forward until his nose nearly touched Papa’s. “Well?” he sneered.

“Thirty yuan per month,” Papa said softly.

“Yes!” the leader exclaimed. “Very good.” He moved on to his next victim.

Papa returned home dispirited and depressed. He dropped his dunce cap and sign next to his desk. He studied them with an expression of exasperation and embarrassment before seating himself at the table.

He told Mama all that had happened. “Thirty yuan a month!” He sighed. “How can we get by on that?” He’d managed to put a political problem on hold while creating a serious economic one. “There’s more,” he said, his voice breaking. “So much more. Yesterday afternoon a prominent elderly scholar from the Chinese Language Department committed suicide by jumping out a second-story window after Red Guards ransacked his home. They confiscated three thousand volumes of classical Chinese literature and burned them in front of his house.”

“When will this end?” Mama asked.

The next morning I was awakened by shouting and pounding on our door. The moment Mama opened it a mob of hysterical Red Guards burst in. A tall young man—another of Papa’s former students—demanded that Mama and Papa stand before them. “Chairman Mao teaches us ‘Revolution is violence,’ ” he proclaimed. “ ‘It is the violent action of one class overthrowing another.’ Long live Chairman Mao!”

“Long live Chairman Mao!” the others shouted and thrust their Little Red Books into the air.

“Revolutionary Comrades,” the young man said to his followers, “we are here to take action. Seize the day! Don’t let any incriminating evidence of the Four Olds escape your search.”