Pearl of China (21 page)

My prison sentence was increased to ten more years and then reduced to five more because I was Dick’s wife. I was sent to a labor prison in a remote province near Tibet. I spent my days working in the fields planting wheat and cotton and my nights scavenging for food and fighting cold, heat, and vermin. Our family was spread out over hundreds of miles. Dick was in the north, Rouge in the south, and I in the southwest. Dick and Rouge took turns visiting me once every three months and during New Year’s. Rouge never complained about the hardship, but the pain was written on her face. She had become a quiet woman, more mature than her peers. After graduating from Beijing University with a degree in medicine, she was not allowed to practice. She worked at a textile factory as a laborer. Dick wouldn’t tell me his punishment, but I learned what it was anyway. He was demoted and sent to an obscure post in the provinces. After a year, Mao called him back. Dick worked hard to regain Mao’s trust.

Rouge and I tried to keep our perspective. We saw that ours was not the only family that suffered. Millions of others shared the same fate. By the end of 1969, the Cultural Revolution was showing itself to be one of the most destructive episodes in China’s long history.

After serving five years in the labor prison I was ordered to go back to where I came from, Chin-kiang. It was considered a continuing punishment. I was ordered to reform through physical labor as long as I lived. I was nearly eighty years old.

Rouge was given the option to stay where she was or come with me. She chose the latter and quit her job. She said that she had barely been earning enough to eat anyway.

We went home on a slow train. My skin was sun-beaten and my back was in constant pain. I couldn’t walk straight. I had injuries to my joints, spinal cord, and legs. But my spirit had not been crushed. I was proud of myself for paying the price for decency—I could honestly say that I had never betrayed God, and that God had never abandoned me.

Dick was given no option but to remain at Mao’s side in Beijing. For fifteen years Dick had been China’s chief propaganda director. He was the ghostwriter for both Mao’s and Madame Mao’s speeches and articles. When he begged for my release so I could join him, Madame Mao answered, quoting her husband’s poem, “
Enjoy the beauty of snow
while feeling no pity for the flies that freeze
.”

I thought Dick had suffered from my absence and had been waiting for me. But I was wrong. One year after I was sent to the labor prison, the party provided him with a young woman one third his age to be his secretary and nurse. In the beginning, Dick was unaware of the trap that had been set for him. By the time he figured it out, he had fallen in love.

C
HAPTER
28

Summer in Chin-kiang was hot and humid, like living in a steam bath. Papa came to pick us up at the Chin-kiang station. We hadn’t seen each other for many years. It was amazing that Papa was still alive. He had shrunk in size and was bald and stooped. Our tears fell when we embraced. Rouge was excited to see her grandfather, although she barely knew him.

“I have lost track of your age, Grandpa,” Rouge said. “How old are you exactly?”

“Twenty-nine!” Papa said.

“You must mean ninety-two,” Rouge said.

“You got the joke! Yes, but actually I’m even older,” Papa said, straightening his back to look taller.

“But you do look like twenty-nine!” Rouge said.

“I do?” Papa was pleased. “I feel like twenty-nine, too.”

“I don’t remember your being this short,” I said. “Four feet?”

“I used to be double the height,” replied Papa.

“What made you shrink?” Rouge asked.

“My body knew how to conserve when times were hard.”

Rouge laughed. “I can’t imagine myself shrinking like you.”

“What does that mean?” Rouge asked.

“In the concept of feng shui, it means that there are equal opportunities in the circle of life.”

“What is the secret of your longevity, Grandpa?” Rouge asked.

Papa smiled and whispered, “Having faith.”

“In Buddha?” Rouge teased.

“How dare you forget who I am?” Papa pretended to be upset, but not very convincingly.

“What will our living arrangements be, Papa?” I changed the subject. “Where are we to stay?”

“In the church,” Papa said.

“The Chin-kiang church?”

“Yes, Absalom’s Chin-kiang church.”

“But the Chin-kiang church was not built for people to live in . . .” I immediately realized the silliness of my statement. Living conditions in China had deteriorated so much that people had turned animal barns into living quarters.

“To many people, it is no longer a church,” Papa explained. “It was the headquarters of the Nationalist troops during the war against Japan. When the Japanese took over, it became a barracks. After the 1949 Liberation, the Communists repossessed it. It has been put into different uses ever since. First it was a military headquarters, and then a utility storage for the new government. During Mao’s People’s Commune movement, it was a public cafeteria. After the communes failed, it was turned into a shelter for the homeless. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards from outside the province took over. They broke my stained-glass windows and painted Mao’s picture over every image of Jesus on every wall. They climbed the roof and knocked down the cross.”

“Are there families living inside now?” I asked.

Papa nodded.

“How many?”

Papa stuck up two of his fingers.

“Two?” Rouge guessed.

“Twenty.”

“Twenty families?”

“Yes, twenty families, one hundred and nine people.”

“How can anybody manage?”

“Oh, we manage, like caged pigeons.”

Memories of Absalom and Carie rushed up at the sight of the Chin-kiang church. I had to stop for a moment to collect myself. The gray structure had faded, but the building looked sound. The stone steps at the entrance were so worn they looked polished.

Although Papa had warned me about the crowded space, I was still shocked when I stepped into the church. I was prepared to see a pigeon cage, but what was in front of me looked like a beehive. There were no windows except those high up near the ceiling where the stained glass had been. These were the only light source for the entire interior. From floor to ceiling, the walls of the church had been divided into wooden, man-sized boxes, like giant wall-to-wall bookshelves, for people to sleep in. One could only lie down inside. To get into the boxes, people used a tangle of rope ladders. Young people and children occupied the top levels, while the old lived on the lower levels. Every inch of space was put to good use. The washing area was dominated by a large sink made from a water pipe about twenty feet long and split open at the top. Ten faucets poured weak streams of water. Below the sink was a slanted open gutter covered by a metal grate. Plumbing pipes and a dragonlike aluminum chimney were suspended in the air by wires. A loft had been built right under the ceiling as a shared storage space. Where the rows of church benches used to be was now a communal dining area. A large wooden table was surrounded by crooked benches. The raised stage where the altar had been was now a kitchen. There was split firewood piled high against the back wall. Baskets of coal spilled their contents. Wooden frames held buckets, pans, and woks. The podium where Absalom had preached now housed a stove. Behind the stage there was a room in which chamber pots were divided by curtains.

“What do you think?” Papa asked.

“Well, what ingenuity!” Rouge remarked.

Trying to ignore the terrible odor from the chamber pot area, I told Papa that I was impressed.

“No windows and it is so hot!” Rouge wiped sweat off her face. Her shirt was drenched.

“Welcome home,” Papa said.

Rouge and I were given one of the larger sleeping boxes. Rouge tried to slide into the narrow space and bumped her head.

Before we had a chance to unpack, the sound of knocking erupted. Papa went to open the door. A group of people rushed in. The men were bare-chested and the women wore thin shirts. They all had wooden slippers on their feet. They called my name excitedly.

“Don’t tell me that you don’t remember me!” said a wrinkled, hunchbacked old lady who grabbed me by the shoulders.

“Lilac?”

“Yes, I am. Are you Willow?” she cried. “How you have aged! Your hair is gray and white! Is this really you? Where have you been? Where is Pearl?”

At the mention of Pearl, I broke down.

“I can’t believe that I have lasted to see you return!” Lilac said. “Here, come meet your aunt Willow!” She turned to her sons. I didn’t recognize the men in front of me, although I knew they must have been Double Luck David and John and their younger brother, Triple Luck Solomon.

“Where is Carpenter Chan?” I asked.

“Oh, he is long dead,” said a toothless man.

“Dead?” I asked, then instantly recognized Carpenter Chan himself.

“Don’t expect an elephant’s ivory teeth to grow in a dog’s mouth.” Lilac slapped her husband’s back. “Since Absalom’s death, Chan is good for nothing.”

“When did Absalom leave?” I asked. “And how were his last days?”

“Old Teacher had a good ending,” Carpenter Chan said.

“Absalom didn’t suffer?”

“No, he didn’t. I was with him until the end. Old Teacher delivered his last sermon and went to lie down. Shortly after, I found him sleeping on his bed, and he was with God.”

A white-haired woman squeezed through the crowd and jumped on me. She scrunched her eyelids together and then stretched them as if trying to open her eyes, but couldn’t. “Guess who I am?” She drew her face so close that I could smell her rotten breath.

I shook my head and said that I couldn’t recognize her.

“I am Soo-ching, the beggar lady!”

“The beggar lady, yes! How are you? What’s wrong with your eyes?”

“I can only see a shadow of you, Willow. I am blind. But I remember your face before you left us.”

“How have you been?”

“I am a believer in Jesus Christ,” Soo-ching said. “How is Pearl? Is she here with you? I am upset that you two no longer visit.”

“Where is Confucius, your son?” I asked.

“You remember him? Good!”

“How could I not? He has such a unique name!”

“He is no longer Confucius,” Soo-ching said. “He changed his name to Vanguard.”

“Vanguard? Why?”

“Confucius is no longer a beggar lady’s boy,” Lilac whispered in my ear. “He has become somebody important.”

“That’s right,” Papa confirmed. “Vanguard was the first person in Chin-kiang to join the Communist Party. He is the town’s boss today.”

“Donkey shit!” Soo-ching coughed up phlegm and shot it at the ground. “I regret naming him Confucius. He doesn’t deserve it. Willow, you’ll see him soon enough.”

“How is your husband, Dick?” everyone asked me.

I hesitated, because I didn’t know how to answer.

“Oh, my father is well,” Rouge answered for me. “He is busy working in Beijing.”

Papa sat down and told me how the town of Chin-kiang had changed over the years. “It is a place of exile,” he began. “The government dumps people back in their hometowns once they can no longer be of benefit.”

Carpenter Chan explained further. “The government seems to think that undesirables should fall back on their native regions and relatives to survive.”

“It saves prison costs,” Papa said. “We had to build all this ourselves.” He waved an arm indicating the inside of the church.

Carpenter Chan smiled. “I am still building it.”

“We are truly under God’s roof now,” Papa said.

“Chan never learned his lesson,” Lilac said. “We could have stayed in Nanking if he had denounced Absalom. I told him that Absalom wouldn’t mind because he was dead. My stubborn husband wouldn’t do it. So we were sent back to Chin-kiang. What can I complain about? The old rule for a woman has always been:
Marry a dog, follow the dog;
marry a rooster, follow the rooster
. But our children’s future was ruined. In Nanking they would have had opportunities, better schools and better jobs. Here in Chin-kiang, my twins work as coolies, and my youngest son is a field hand . . . They see no brightness in their future.” Lilac began to weep.

“Who is making that racket?” a man’s voice came from above.

I raised my eyes and saw three figures crawling out of the sleeping boxes.

A dark, bearded old man came down a rope. He was followed by two other men. “Damn lousy bones, they won’t stop protesting! This rotten body is falling apart.”

The voice was familiar, but I couldn’t place the speaker.

The bearded man approached me. He smiled, mocking. “I bet you’d never guess who we are.”

The other two men echoed, “But we know you and your friend well.”

I searched the corners of memory but could find nothing that would match the images in front of me.

The bearded man sighed. “Twenty years in the national prison must have changed my appearance . . . Willow, look hard at me. I am Bumpkin Emperor.” He turned around and pointed at the men behind him. “They are my sworn brothers.”

“Bumpkin Emperor? General Lobster and General Crab?”

“Yes, that’s us!” the men cried in unison.

Papa came and put his arm around the men’s shoulders. “They are with us now.”

“What do you mean by ‘with us’?” I asked. “Bumpkin Emperor almost killed Absalom, Pearl, Grace, and their children! Absalom would have sent him to hell!”

“On the contrary, my child, on the contrary.” Papa shook his head. “In fact, it was Absalom’s wish. He made sure that everyone in his church forgave Bumpkin Emperor and his sworn brothers. After all, Christ died for our sins and his Father forgives us.”

“I don’t believe it, Papa.”

“Ask Carpenter Chan.”

“Is it true?” I asked.

“Yes.” Carpenter Chan nodded. “It was indeed Absalom’s wish.”

“To forgive Bumpkin Emperor for what he did?”

“Yes.”

“God is good, God is fair, and God is kind,” Bumpkin Emperor murmured with tears in his eyes.

“Absalom is happy with me in heaven!” Papa sang his words. “I converted the three of them.”

The sound of Sunday service woke me. It took a moment to realize that I was not dreaming. I was inside my sleeping box. I rolled over onto my stomach and stuck my head out to see what was going on. I saw Papa performing a sermon in front of the kitchen stove, which was covered with a white cloth. Papa was dressed in his old minister’s robe, so washed and worn that it looked like a rag, the color no longer black. Papa’s expression was solemn and calm. As he continued speaking, I could hear Absalom in his voice.

I glanced at the door in fear, and I noticed that it was closed and secured with a thick wooden bar.

The hundred and nine residents of the old church listened to Papa quietly. They were either sitting on the benches or on the floor or inside their sleeping boxes.

When Papa finished, people began to sing “Amazing Grace.” Memories of sitting with Carie at her piano rushed back to me. I had never understood the lyrics until now