Dreams of Joy (14 page)

“But gossiping and complaining like weak women is not the way to make men hear us. Beating a man in the public square won’t make him be a better husband, father, or comrade either. Times are different now. You make me look bad with your backward ways. We have to address these matters properly. I will ask the county to send a propaganda team to our village. They will help us put on a play to remind everyone of the rules. I’ll need some volunteers.”

I have acting experience, so I raise my hand. When they see my hand go up, Tao and Kumei raise theirs as well.

“Good,” Sung-ling says. “Now, for the rest of tonight, I don’t want to hear another word about Comrade Ping-li. She is dead. That is all we can say.” She peers around the hall, practically begging someone to contradict her. She purses her lips and gives a little nod before continuing. “Now, let us begin our political discussion. Please move to your usual spots.”

The divided hall grudgingly comes together, and Tao ends up sitting next to me. Despite Sung-ling’s pep talk—if that’s what it was—the people remain restive. Party Secretary Feng Jin follows his wife’s instructions, refusing to mention the dead woman. Instead, he doles out praise to select model workers. Then he recounts some of the Red Army’s greatest exploits, which he does every night. I’m getting to like them better than the episodes of
Gunsmoke, Sky King
, and
Highway Patrol
my family used to watch.

The first of tonight’s stories involves the brave female communication operators during the War of Liberation. “They had to run
under constant fire
,” Party Secretary Feng Jin emphasizes, “from one shell hole to another. They sent urgent messages,
life-and-death
messages. If they lost
their connection, they turned their own bodies into electric conductors by
gritting wires
between their teeth. Those women were
sisters
in the war of resistance!”

It’s not the most subtle morality story, and in many ways it’s a strange choice, since I bet few people here have ever seen a telephone, but everyone seems calmer. But I’m not. Tao’s leg has fallen against mine. The heat of his flesh burns through two layers of clothing right into my skin. I keep my eyes forward, staring at the backs of the heads in front of me, but my heart thumps in my chest.

“What has Liberation brought us?” Party Secretary Feng Jin asks, and then he goes on to quote Chairman Mao. “ ‘Everybody works so everybody eats.’ What does this mean? Today those same brave women work in power stations. They climb pylons to change porcelain insulators to maintain ultrahigh-tension transmission lines. One day, they will bring telephones and electricity here. Other women work in cotton and flour mills or serve as machine-tool operators, geological prospectors, welders, forgers, pilots, and navigators. Women are educated—whether in a literacy class like the one we have here in our collective or at a university.”

A discussion follows, with several men raising their hands to speak. Again we’re reminded of the things Chairman Mao has promised in the New Society: Women hold up half the sky. Everyone—men, women, and children—must plunge into political struggle to brave storms and face the world. We all must adhere to the Marriage Law. Party Secretary Feng Jin ends the session with a song. The whole room reverberates with good feeling as the voices of Green Dragon Village Collective join him.

Later, during the art lesson, I’m still aware of Tao—how could I not be with his taste still in my mouth and his touch on my lips, neck, and breast?—sitting next to me. I refuse to look at him outright, but I peer at his hand and try to draw it.

“Something has opened in you, Joy.” I look up to see Z.G. Blood rushes up my neck to my face. “Your technique still needs polishing, but I believe your calligraphy lessons have given you a delicate touch.” He stands back, with his arms folded, staring at my work with true appreciation. “The hand is the hardest to draw,” he adds. “I think you could be good, if you actually wanted to learn.”

I smile. What a strange and wonderful day this has turned out to be.

When the lesson ends, Tao leaves with the other villagers. Z.G., Kumei, and I collect the art supplies and return to the villa. Kumei says
good night, and Z.G. and I walk through the courtyards to our adjoining rooms. Z.G. disappears into his room, while I put the supplies away. He returns a few minutes later with a sketchbook.

“This is for you,” he says. “You’ll need a lot of practice if you ever want to draw a hand properly. Always try to depict the inner world of the heart and mind. That is the essence of Chinese artistic striving. You could get there, I think.”

He says nothing more and returns to his room. I’m left with my first two gifts from my father—his words and the sketchbook.

AFTER THAT NIGHT
, I still wake up early and work in the fields as I did before. In the afternoons, Z.G. still works by himself by the side of the fields with his charcoal, pencil, and sketchbook or with brushes, paints, and paper. People still stop to look at his drawings, but he increasingly keeps a lot of his work private, often flipping down another sheet of paper, especially when I approach, so I can’t see what he’s working on. This hurts my feelings, but what can I do?

At the end of the day, Tao and I lag behind, gathering everyone’s tools and securing them for the night. Then Tao and I head back toward Green Dragon Village. We’re careful not to hold hands or touch, because we don’t want anyone to look out a window or door and see us. We walk to the villa’s front gate, pass it, cross the little bridge, and then hurry along the path paralleling the stream until we reach the turnoff to the Charity Pavilion. I’ve grown stronger. Now I can get to the top of the hill and still have enough breath to kiss Tao right away. Later, we go separately to the political meeting and art lesson in the ancestral hall. We don’t sit together any longer, but I sense him nearby, knowing that tomorrow we’ll have our secret time in the Charity Pavilion.

I’ve gone from losing the one man in my life who mattered to me to gaining two new and unique men. They distract me. They thrill me, but in different ways, of course. And for some minutes, and even hours, during the day I’m able to drive my father Sam from my mind. But it’s not easy. When I think of my dad, I know he’d be unhappy to see me here. He wouldn’t want me working in the fields, washing out my nightstool, letting my skin burn under the hot sun, or—and this he would have objected to most of all—spending time with Tao, alone and for hours on end. My dad never would have said it—he would have left it to my mother—but he would have been very disappointed in me. He would
have worried that I had ruined my chances for what he called a real American life.

My remorse over these things is minor. A part of me feels that the harsh sunlight is burning away my past and that the hard work is chopping away my past mistakes. Every night when I crawl into bed—my skin dirty and every muscle exhausted—I feel wiped clean, and I can sleep. In the morning, when the dark mass of guilt inside my chest—which hasn’t left me for one minute since I saw my father hanging from a rope in his closet—threatens to well up and overpower me, I throw on my clothes and join the others with a smile on my face. I can’t forget the way my mother and aunt lied to me and fought over me, even though I turned out to be so undeserving of their worry or affection. Yes, I’ve escaped the blaming eyes of my mother and the reproachful eyes of my aunt, but I can’t escape myself. The only things I can do to save myself are pull the weeds in the fields, let my emotions for Tao envelop me, and obey what Z.G. tells me to do with a paintbrush, pencil, charcoal, or pastel.

WE’VE BEEN REHEARSING
for many days and we’re ready to give our show about women, the Marriage Law, and right thinking in the New Society. Drums, cymbals, and horns beckon people from their homes. Firecrackers snap and spark, announcing that a celebration is about to take place. It’s late on a Sunday afternoon. Most people have had the day off to rest, mend their clothes, and play with their children. Now everyone in Green Dragon comes to the square just outside the villa to watch our performance. Five little girls—in matching blouses, pink ribbons in their hair, and trailing long paper streamers—run through the clusters of people. Boys dole out paper cones brimming with peanuts or watermelon seeds, which the villagers crack between their teeth.

The makeshift stage is set up in the Chinese way, with no curtain and everything open for all to see. The musicians continue their clamorous tune, while a group of men from the propaganda team’s acrobatic troupe tumble and spin across the stage. The program begins with a recounting of some of Mao and the Red Army’s triumphs during the War of Liberation. Next, the propaganda team’s actors perform a vignette to illustrate the Twelve Point Measure to increase farm production. The content is nothing new. I know the villagers in Green Dragon already do these things, because I’ve done them or seen them myself. I’ve carried water buckets hanging from a pole across my shoulders to the fields, spread manure by hand, sprinkled nightsoil on cabbage plants, and every day Tao and I pass a water buffalo that’s guided back and forth over rocks to crush them, breaking down the soil so that a new field can be made. In
my first days here, I worried about the creature. It wore blinders and had stumbled on the sharp rocks so many times that its legs were bloody and scabbed. My Western sympathies got the better of me, and I asked Tao why someone didn’t remove the water buffalo’s blinders so he could see where he was going.

“Without blinders, he’d avoid the rocks,” Tao answered. “This is his punishment for what he did in a past life.”

I still find it hard to believe that Tao can have such backward beliefs, but then this whole evening is about educating peasants.

Another acrobatic exhibition follows the farming lesson, which improves the audience’s mood considerably. When the last acrobat somersaults offstage, Kumei, Sung-ling, and I take one another’s hands and step forward. I’ll be playing two different roles tonight. I’m the only one of the three of us who’s acted professionally, so my parts are the largest. For my first character, I’m dressed as a female soldier in a green jacket, trousers, and cap with a red star. To my left, Kumei appears as a pre-Liberation maiden, with an elaborate headdress with tassels and beading, a brocade jacket, and a long silk skirt with dozens of tiny pleats. To my right, Sung-ling wears the everyday outfit of all the women I’ve met here in the countryside: a cotton blouse with a floral pattern, loose blue pants, and homemade shoes.

“We three women have found new lives in the New China,” I say, addressing the audience. “We’ve fought against the feudal systems of political authority, clan authority, religious authority, and husband authority. We’ve fought against class oppression and foreign aggression.”

“I’m a girl from feudal times,” Kumei announces nervously. When we first started rehearsals, Sung-ling insisted that Kumei play this part. It’s pretty hard to imagine Kumei—with her ruddy cheeks and loud voice—playing a demure maiden. I would have been much better at the part, having once played an emperor’s daughter as an extra in a movie. Besides, my aunt always said to take the role with the better costume.

“At age five, I was sold by my parents to the landowner,” Kumei continues. “In time he dressed me as a present and opened me every night. Oh, how I cried. I had a mouth but no right to speak. I had legs but no freedom to run.”

Kumei’s arm movements are clumsy, and she has zero stage presence. Still, I’m surprised she’s doing as well as she is. She’s illiterate, so she
couldn’t read the script. I worked with her this past week, trying to help her memorize the words, but Sung-ling kept saying that Kumei’s version was fine.

“The Kuomintang soldiers did nothing to protect the people against the Japanese soldiers or the elements. Fifteen years ago, drought dried the fields. Eleven years ago, famine took hold of our country. Millions of people went hungry.”

Kumei hesitates, stumbling over the words. Then she freezes. People in the audience titter and point. I had thought this would be fun, but I wish she’d never volunteered to help. Sung-ling hisses the next line, and Kumei repeats it.