Wild Ginger (4 page)

"What did your mother do before she met your father?" I asked, trying to distract my fear.

"She worked at the Shanghai People's Opera House. She was their leading singer. She was doing well until my father went to see her play. They fell in love and started their journey to misery."

"Will she perform again?"

"Of course not. She is considered an enemy. She has to
be reformed through hardship. We both have to be re-formed—'The daughter of a legend gets to be a heroine and the daughter of a rat gets to dig the dirt,' as the saying goes. The interesting thing is that I am guilty and she is not. What I bear is a birth defect. It took me a long time to realize that. But Maple, I am not a fatalist. I'm trying to change the course of my life."

I wished that I could tell her that it seemed impossible.

"Watch me, Maple." As if reading my mind she continued. "Someday, I will be a revolutionary. A Maoist star. I will prove that I am just as good and trustworthy as the bravest Maoist. I have made that a promise to myself. No one will stop me from being who I want to be. Not Hot Pepper, not my mother, not the ghost of my father."

Wild Ginger's eyes stared through the kitchen window to the cement wall of her neighbor's house. The wall was painted with a huge smiling Mao head with red rays shooting out from the center. Mao was wearing an army cap with a red star on the top. The sunlight bounced off the paint and onto Wild Ginger, tinting her face red. Her eyes shone brightly. Her hands, which had been washing pots, stopped moving. The tap kept running, the sink was filled. The water began to spill. She was not aware of it. "No one," she uttered.

I felt a deep admiration rise inside me. I reached out my hand and shut off the faucet.

It was the end of the class. We were on Mao's "On Protracted War." The noises of other rooms dismissing classes were heard around the campus. Wild Ginger signaled me with her eyes that I should be ready to run. We quietly fastened the straps of our school bags.

The bell rang. I jumped out of the bench and ran to exit the classroom. Wild Ginger followed me. It took her a couple of turns to cut across the seats. She was caught by Titi.

"The reactionaries are slipping away!" Titi screamed.

"Block them!" Hot Pepper ordered. The gang chased. I ran back to assist Wild Ginger. Fists, woodsticks, and blows from an abacus rained down on my head and shoulders.

"Maple!" Wild Ginger pulled me over. Back to back, we punched. We were moving toward the gate successfully.

We were by Chia Chia Lane now. Hot Pepper and the gang had lost sight of us. I gasped hard. Wild Ginger was limping.

"What's wrong with your leg?"

"Hot Pepper got me with her abacus. The sow!"

"She almost poked my eye with her pencil. But I got her too. I broke her pencil in half."

"She threatened to send her three brothers, 'the Dragons.' They are vicious."

"I've heard of them. They work at the Number Seven Lumber Factory and it's said they beat five people to death."

"We must find help, Wild Ginger."

"How?"

"Let's go to the Red Flag Middle School."

"Do you know anyone there?"

"I wonder if he remembers me."

"Who?"

"A Mao activist. Last year's champion of the Mao Quotation-Citing Contest. He is a head of the Red Guards at the school. He is my neighbor."

"How did you meet him?"

"It was in the soy milk shop last Sunday. He was in a hurry to visit his father in the hospital, but the line was three blocks long. He came to me although we had never spoken before. He asked if I would let him cut in. I let him in but the people behind me protested. To shut them up I said that he was my brother. And he got his milk ... I wonder if he would offer us some protection."

"What's his name?"

"Evergreen."

"Evergreen? How dare he! That's the name of the protagonist in Madame Mao's opera!"

"It's true and I had asked him about it. I asked how dare he copy Madame Mao."

"And what was the reaction?"

"He said she copied
him.
He was. given the name at his birth in 1954 and Madame Mao's opera was not conceived until 1960."

"Sounds like he's got character."

"Isn't that interesting!"

We found him. He was writing a big-character poster entitled "What We Talk About When We Talk About Loyalty." He was sixteen years old. Tall with a thin face and a pair of staring single-lid eyes. I didn't know how to describe him when Wild Ginger asked me except that he was handsome. I fell short of words as I considered him. I could say that he gave the impression of possessing an honest character. He was frank—knew exactly what he wanted and asked for it. The neighbors said that he was "square," which meant that he'd been brought up by strict parents. But there was something else about him that struck me. Something mysterious and unusual. He was warm and aloof at the same time. His ability to focus and shift focus without warning intrigued me. He projected a sense that he was eager to engage, yet the boundary he set was Great Wall thick. Physically, he had an athlete's frame. He was lean and his muscles were very pure in outline. He wore a blue Mao jacket and was
working, bending over a Ping-Pong table. His calligraphy was masterly and in the Song dynasty style. We watched him and waited until he finished the last stroke. He noticed Wild Ginger, put down his brush pen, and smiled at her. To me thè smile was strange and almost affectionate.

Wild Ginger scratched her arm.

Evergreen picked up his brush pen and turned back to his poster. He dipped the pen into a water jar, then looked at Wild Ginger again.

"Am I bothering you?" Wild Ginger scratched her arm again.

"In a way," he smiled.

"What's wrong with me watching you writing a poster? Isn't this supposed to be a public event?"

"Why are you nervous?"

"Why do you keep looking at me?"

"Do I?"

"Do I look like a reactionary?"

"A straight tree fears no crooked shadows.'" He threw away his pen and straightened up his back. "Forgive me. I'm Evergreen."

"Hello."

"So, are you here to view the big-character posters?"

"Well, not exactly. I'm here with Maple"—Wild Ginger pushed me toward him—"who thought you knew each other."

"Maple! Hello! Sorry I didn't recognize you. You look different."

"It's my Mao jacket. The dye is bad. Every time I wash it the color changes."

"It was blue last time."

"And now it's purple."

"Next time it'll turn brown."

"You can count on that ... How is your father?"

"He is out of the hospital."

"What did he have?"

"Tuberculosis. He worked as a miner for twenty-eight years."

"Is he getting well?"

"The doctor told him to eat whatever he likes."

"What does that mean?"

"He is not expected to live long."

"I'm sorry to hear that. If there is anything I can do to help, please ... I can always fetch you the bean milk, for example." Wild Ginger and Evergreen were staring at each other. "Oh, let me introduce you two. This is Wild Ginger, my classmate, my best friend. Evergreen, my neighbor."

"Wild Ginger? That's an unusual name."

"Not as unusual as Evergreen, the Communist party secretary in Madame Mao's famous opera."

"Are you an opera fan?"

Wild Ginger didn't seem to want to answer the question.

"Her mother is," I answered for her. "Her mother is an opera singer."

"My mother is an enemy," Wild Ginger said bluntly.

I turned to her. "What are you doing?"

"Telling facts. So Evergreen doesn't confuse me with who I really am."

"But isn't this a terrible way to introduce oneself?"

"I thought we came to ask for help. Should we tell the truth?" Wild Ginger shot back.

"No, we don't need help." For a strange reason I suddenly changed my mind. I wasn't sure what it was. Something stirred me and my pride rose. It forbade me to be pitied.

"What kind of help, Maple?" Evergreen asked.

"Nothing. Actually, I'm just showing Wild Ginger around. What's new with you, Evergreen?"

Wild Ginger was puzzled. But she followed me.

Pulling the poster to the side Evergreen answered, "I have been preparing for the coming Mao Quotation-Citing Contest. I am trying to recite three hundred pages. I want to upset my own record."

"Ambitious!"

"I suppose that's what devotion and loyalty are all about."

"Can anyone participate?" Wild Ginger asked.

"It's an open contest."

"Wild Ginger has been calling you outside the window," Mother said. It was Sunday morning. I was chopping wood and my mother was cooking. "She sounds troubled. Where are you going? Maple, take the garbage with you."

I shot downstairs. Wild Ginger came to me with a tear-stained face. "My mother..." she choked.

It was an ongoing rally. Mrs. Pei was the subject of the denunciation. A board hung on her chest reading
FRENCH SPY
. A middle-aged man wearing dark-framed glasses was reading a criticism aloud. He was clotheshanger thin. His features were donkeylike. His mouth was a child's drawing of a boat sailing above his chin. He shouted, "Down with the French spy and long live Chairman Mao!"

"It'll be over soon." Standing behind the crowd I comforted Wild Ginger.

"Friendly is being cooked in a wok," she said to me without turning her head.

"Now?" I was shocked.

"They took him this morning..."

I held out my arms to embrace her.

"Don't touch me!" She pushed me away. "People will see.

"It looks like your mother is fainting," I observed.

"That's what that man wanted. He wants to see her suffer."

"Who is he?"

"Mr. Choo. My mother's ex-admirer. He is an accountant at the fish market. He lost her to my father sixteen years ago."

"How do you know?"

"I read his love letters to Mother. I read all my mother's letters, including my father's. Of course I couldn't understand them. They were in French."

"Where are the letters?"

"Gone."

"You've burned them?"

"They were disgusting."

"Does your mother know?"

Shaking her head, Wild Ginger sat down on the ground. On the makeshift stage Mrs. Pei looked as if she had passed out. She leaned over a chair. Her body was motionless. The organizer pronounced that she was "faking death," and ordered the rally to continue.

Mr. Choo picked up his speech.

The crowd watched.

Wild Ginger closed her eyes and buried her face in her palms.

The sun was getting hotter. My head was steaming.

"Let's go," I said to Wild Ginger.

"I wish she were dead. I wish I were dead," Wild Ginger murmured.

As a form of punishment, Mrs. Pei was ordered to sweep the lanes in the neighborhood. For the first few weeks Mrs. Pei dragged her sick body about and did the work. She got up at four o'clock in the morning and swept until the sun rose. When she was too sick to get out of bed, Wild Ginger took over.

I didn't know that until early one morning when a cat's wail woke me and I opened the window and heard a
sha-sha-sha-sha
sweeping sound. It was still dark. The streetlights colored the tree trunks orange. The whistle of a steam engine came from a distance. The wind tore the old posters off the wall. Papers scratched the cement ground. The sound carried for a great distance, like nobody's shoes walking by themselves. Suddenly I saw a familiar figure moving with a broom.

I don't remember how long I stood by the window. My body hung halfway over the sill. The day was slowly dawning. I heard the steps of the soldiers of the Shanghai Garrison Group jogging. Their barracks were about a mile down
the street. The sound was crisp, like hard brushes scrubbing woks.

I didn't realize that Mother had been standing behind me until she softly asked me what got me up so early.

"Wild Ginger is sweeping the lane for her mother."

Mother came behind me and looked. She sighed deeply.

I closed the window and went to put on my clothes and shoes.

"Where are you going?" Mother asked.

"Mama, may I take the broom with me?"

"It is the work for ... enemies," Mother warned. "Don't get yourself in trouble."

She was wearing a cloth surgical mask and her mother's indigo canvas jacket with worn corners. She had two sleeve cases on each arm and was in her own army boots. I approached her quietly. She collected the garbage, swept it into a bag, and then carried it to a bin. Lifting the lid, she deposited the trash. She then laid her broom on the ground and went to an old well and looked in.

"Wild Ginger," I called.

She turned around. Her eyes asked, What are you doing here? When she saw that I was holding a broom she understood. She took her mask off. "This is none of your business, Maple."

"You won't be able to cover the lanes all by yourself before school."

"Go home, please."

"What are you doing sticking your head in the well?"

"I'm trying to fetch a dead cat."

"Dead what?"

"Cat, a cat."

"It drowned?"

"It's some activist's trick to give my mother a hard time. They want to be able to say that she loafed on the job, on the cleaning, so they can torture her more."

"What if you just leave it there?"

"It will rot and smell."

"It's not your fault."

"Like I said, my mother is in no position to defend herself."

With two brooms working like a pair of giant chopsticks, we got the dead cat out of the well. After we deposited it in the garbage bin Wild Ginger went on to finish sweeping the rest of the lane. I went to the other end. I swept quickly. All my joints participated in a race against the breaking daylight. Soon my arms were sore and blisters were forming on my palms. My shoes were wet from dew. Finally, Wild Ginger and I met in the middle. It was six-thirty. The sun was up.

"See you at school," I said.

She nodded and turned her face away.

Each dawn I came out. We met in the darkest moment of the day. Wild Ginger no longer rejected my help. In school we stuck together like one person and her shadow. In Hot
Pepper's eyes, we had become a two-member gang. She had stopped attacking me and Wild Ginger. It was hard to believe that Hot Pepper didn't call her wolfy brothers. I guessed that, after all, her brothers couldn't come to the school to fight every day. Hot Pepper had learned that Wild Ginger was a desperado who would risk her life to win a moment.