Tiger's Heart (16 page)

Before we returned to Guangzhou, Brother Yong suggested visiting the checkpoint where General Chen Yi had fought off the Southern Vietnamese in the Vietnam War.

We strolled through the fruit stands along the path leading to the gun turret. In every fruit stand, golden mangos were spread on the square bottoms of the hand-woven wicker baskets.

“The best thing about this place is the local mango, so sweet and soft. Oh, I can never resist it.” Brother Yong sighed with contentment.

Rays of afternoon sunlight shone on his face, making it look extra bold and vigorous. I smiled leisurely and nodded my head.

“There is something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” he said to me slowly.

I heard my heart thumping heavily. It felt like it was being hit by a hammer. The moment I had been waiting for had finally arrived.

“I hope you are not going to be offended. I want to tell you because, as your superior, I think it is important for you to do Amway well,” he continued.

I held my breath, waiting, a wait of a thousand years.

“You have this smell that comes from your body. I think you should find a way to get rid of it.”

I froze where I was, mortified, and watched him continuing to stroll ahead. I wished I could find a place to bury myself right then. I gazed at his back and wanted to run and tell him: I don’t have body odor. In this rural village, I can only clean myself with a towel and a bucket of water every couple of days, and I couldn’t even find any sanitary napkins. It’s not my fault. It’s these conditions.

But all I could do was run after him, force an awkward smile, and say, “I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay!” he answered cheerfully, and then he ran ahead to his other subordinate, who had spotted us and was waving from the foot of the turret.

I walked slowly up the steps to the top of the turret. I sat down on the stone surface and crossed my legs. It was secluded and quiet, except for the trees of the woods surrounding the turret murmuring in the breeze. Through the leaves I saw the checkpoint below, where women dressed in robes holding flat bamboo baskets on the tops of their heads walked stiffly in the clouds of dust and men whipped their oxen through the gate.

I looked around myself, almost in a trance, and suddenly wondered why I was here. Brother Yong had never liked me. Everything he did for me was because of Amway. I had left Huang and my job and chased him all the way to the end of the world only to find I was just chasing my own dream.

16

WHEN WE RETURNED
to Guangzhou, I found that the halo around Brother Yong’s head had vanished, and I was no longer intoxicated by his presence. I told myself to look at him strictly as my superior. After all, except at Amway meetings and seminars when everyone shared equally in the Amway dream, Brother Yong and I lived in two different worlds. After the gatherings, he got on his Harley and roared away to his apartment in downtown Guangzhou while I walked through the alleys, stepped over the puddles and the cabbage leaves, opened the rusty iron gate to the hallway, climbed the urinestinking stairs to the seventh floor, and fell onto my bed in my slum home.

As the days went by, my mind came to have just one focus—Amway. Forget men; forget love; and forget the idea of a home, I told myself. In this turbulent world, I had to stand on my own two feet, and nobody could build a future for me except myself. Men were untrustworthy, and I didn’t need them to make me feel safe, to make me not worry, because I could do that on my own.

I threw myself into Amway and worked as if there was no tomorrow. It had completely taken over my mind and soul. I examined the carpets wherever I went and would frequently take out Amway detergent and demonstrate to everyone in the office how efficiently it removed stains and gum, ignoring the rolled eyes and mocking laughter. On the street, I would observe every person walking by me, then approach the street cleaner in her mask and ask if she wanted to do something better in life, though I knew that in the end she would probably brandish her broom and threaten to scream if I didn’t leave her alone. In the hotels where I stayed for Amway seminars, I would knock on the next room’s door; persuade the guests, who were busy playing mah-jongg, to take a look at my brochure; and eagerly tell them how the boss of a major bank had joined us. I wouldn’t give up until I was pushed out of the room and the door was banged in my face. Then I would stand in the corridor, stare at the door for a long while, and finally tell myself to gather up my strength and move my feet because there were many people out there who were unaware of Amway and many people who were successful because of Amway.

Whenever I felt like I was at the end of my rope, when I despaired so much that I couldn’t get myself out of the bed in the morning, I would go to Amway seminars to recharge. After rounds of inspiring speeches, I would be back to feeling ready to conquer the world.

In May 1997, I left the communal Amway apartment and lived a life of homelessness for weeks, following Sister Grace on a multi-city seminar tour. I usually couldn’t afford a seat on the extremely crowded trains, so I would sleep on layers of newspaper on the floor under the seats at night as I rode between cities along the east coast. Daytime always went by quickly in seminars where thousands of Amway fanatics spoke and sang. When night fell, if I wasn’t getting on a train, I would squeeze into any bed offered to me, usually with five or six Amway sisters. When I wasn’t so lucky, I would spend the night curled up in a corner at the local train station.

My belief in Amway never wavered. Even when I hadn’t eaten for the entire day, even when I was exhausted and collapsed on the street, I never questioned the philosophy of the Amway career. It was not Amway’s fault; it was mine, I told myself every time I had doubts. It was because I didn’t work hard enough or wasn’t competent enough that I didn’t succeed.

In June, I returned to hot and rainy Guangzhou. New transients occupied the apartment in the alley, but there was always space for one more. I moved back in. It was moldy and humid and felt like an oven. The bathroom reeked of mildew and looked so disgusting that I couldn’t even bring myself to set foot in it. The air in the apartment felt rotten. On the days I wasn’t out on the street doing Amway, I stayed in the only livable place—the bed. I would cover my head with the quilt and sleep like a log while the other Amway fanatics debated hotly with a Pacific Insurance salesman who had just moved into the apartment about which career was better and chalk made squeaking sounds on the tiny blackboard in the living room.

I didn’t have much money left, and my strength was gone. I wasn’t able to sell many Amway products and couldn’t develop any more subordinates. There was a time when I had regularly called my two subordinates, Wu and Fish, my former classmates, and pretended to be optimistic, shouting that they should keep trying because they would be successful soon, but now I had no energy left even to lift the phone when someone called me. Phone calls used to get me so excited, because it could be someone interested in Amway who would become my next subordinate.

Even worse, I had lice all over my body. I wondered if everybody in the apartment had them, but I didn’t even feel like investigating. I sat on the bed and madly scratched my skin with both hands until blood oozed out of the bites, but still the itch didn’t stop. I fell back down on the bed, wrapped the quilt around myself tightly, and retreated into my cocoon. But the itching didn’t stop, so I kept scratching, and seeing bloody spots constantly being added to my body, I eventually panicked: it struck me forcefully and clearly that I needed to get rid of the lice.

So one day when all the brothers and sisters were loudly singing the ‘Song of Success’ at a seminar, I let go of their hands and left. I didn’t feel much. I crossed the lobby like a walking corpse and went out of the hotel door, past the fountain in the yard, and onto the sidewalk leading away from the hotel.

My hand reached into my pocket and took out the Bank of China checkbook Brother Yong had given me the day I joined Amway. I remembered how excited I’d been that the password Brother Yong had chosen for me was the same as my regular password. I had kept mentioning this to him until one day he impatiently told me that it was just a password. I had once ardently believed that Amway would be wiring lots of money to this account, but now in the wire column, the only number I saw was RMB310, and the account balance was 0. After all my effort and pain, I’d made only 310 yuan from my Amway career. Now not only was I penniless, I also had lice crawling all over my body.

You need to stop this, I thought. You need to cure the lice. You need to go home. I recalled the house in the Shen Hamlet. I tried to picture my mother and father, but after the rollercoaster of life in the South, their faces seemed strangely hazy. I longed for a home like never before, and the Shen Hamlet suddenly appeared to be more of a home than anywhere in the South.

Brother Yong was displeased when I asked if he would lend me some money for a train ticket home. I knew borrowing money was taboo among Amway brothers and sisters. “I promise I’ll pay you back very soon,” I assured him. “I’m going to my home town to build a new Amway career there. I promise you I will have a network there soon.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said unenthusiastically.

Feeling uncomfortable and hurt by his reaction, I decided not to bother him any further. Though I was poor, I still had my dignity. So the next day I made a quick trip to Long Jiang and borrowed some money from Huang. I left town right away, before he had a chance to persuade me stay in the South.

Before I boarded the train, I called Brother Yong and told him that there was no need for him to lend me money and that he should wait for good news from me.

So, in July 1997, I returned to the Shen Hamlet all covered with lice. As I walked along the ditch between the blossoming safflower fields, I wondered if I was in a dream, if I was a ghost drifting in this world of golden yellow flowers. The familiar smell of the soil, the sweet smell of the safflowers, and the humming of the bees brought tears to my eyes. It had been barely a year since I had last left the hamlet, but it felt like much, much longer.

The door to the central room of my parents’ house was ajar. The sound of silkworms nibbling mulberry leaves came to my ears, a sound that had accompanied my entire childhood. Oh, home! I stood on the threshold observing the room. A layer of white silkworms wiggled on the dark green mulberry bush leaves that rested on top of straw beds spread on the floor. In the space between the beds, I saw my mother squatting on her heels, her back to me and her dark green scarf wrapped around her head. She was taking leaves out of the bamboo basket next to her feet.

“Mama,” I said.

She turned. I couldn’t believe what I saw. My mother, whose pretty, well-proportioned face used to make me feel secretly proud and jealous, looked like a different woman. Her face was twisted and pulled to the left; her lips were slanted; and her cheeks were swollen like two loafs of bread.

She just looked at me and turned back to her chore. I felt like I’d been stabbed with a needle. Her eyes, jammed in their swollen sockets, had been cold, as if she was looking at her worst enemy.

I stood where I was for a good while, shocked at what I had seen and hurt by my mother’s reaction to my return. Then I went into the kitchen. I poured myself a big bucket of water and grabbed a towel.

In the dark storage room to the side of the house, with the blue plastic curtains drawn as usual, I sat in the big plastic tub, soaked the towel with clean water, and slowly rubbed myself. I saw the rotten spots from the lice on my body, the dirt under my long fingernails, and my ugly feet, swollen from the days of walking. My face was wet, but I couldn’t tell whether it was water or tears.

Guilt attacked me. I had been such a bad daughter. I hadn’t been here when my mother’s face got damaged. I had been thousands of miles away, trying to forget her. I hated myself. I had only written once and had pretended to myself that my family was dead. And what had I done while I was in the South? What had I achieved?

When my father came home that night, he didn’t say anything to me, as usual. When Spring discovered my presence, she responded with neither surprise nor happiness. “Oh, you’re back,” she said as she parked her bike in the front yard, and then she went straight upstairs to her room. I felt like a piece of furniture.

Like everyone else in the house, I stayed quiet. I ate and slept and spent the rest of my time helping my mother with the housework. For the first time in my life, I tried to be a good daughter to her.

A week later, after rubbing my body with soap and water every day, the lice were finally gone, and my mother started to talk to me. The swelling was leaving her face little by little, and when she was in a good mood—still rare—she explained that she’d had a stroke of apoplexy.

“Why?”

She puckered her still-slanted lips. “You know. Just life. Nobody listens to me. Nothing is ever good.”

“Did you go and see a doctor?”

“I went there once, alone. Who cares about me in this family, anyway?”

I wished I knew how to comfort her. Until then, I’d never realized the effect of my behavior on my mother, how truly devastated she had been when I’d quit the teaching job and gone to the South. Spring wasn’t the ideal daughter either. She’d rented a store in town and was barely scraping by selling clothes. Plus, she was hanging out with some bad guys, according to my mother. My father, who was busy working in the rice fields, still wouldn’t talk much to my mother. What a poor woman she was and what a lonely life she led.

For two weeks I stayed at home, trying my best to help my ailing mother. At night I tossed and turned until daybreak, analyzing my failure with Amway. When the swellings and twists on my mother’s face were almost gone, I took out my Amway bag, got on a bike, and rode toward the surrounding villages. One of the many principles Amway had taught me was that you could do Amway anywhere, because Amway was good for everyone. After my merciless failure in Guangzhou, I decided to conquer the countryside.

It was close to the height of the summer. With the scorching sun above my head, I zigzagged over the dirt paths in the neighboring villages and visited a few of my high school classmates. I had high hopes. People in the countryside needed great opportunities like Amway more than the people living the city.

“This is what you are doing now? Selling American detergent? What happened? You were the only one in our class who went to college,” one former classmate said, throwing the brochure back at me.

I was undaunted by this negative reaction. After all, I’d experienced worse in Guangzhou. The second day, I biked for an hour to visit another classmate, who shook his head and said that he was too busy for this kind of childish thing.

I kept shuttling back and forth between villages and was turned down by everyone. One classmate smiled modestly, saying he was too stupid to undertake such a complicated career. Another one told me sincerely that this Amway thing was just not good for the countryside folk. I wouldn’t give up. I kept hopping on my bike every day, until I was thrown out by the mother of Peony, my old school friend. “You’re a college graduate!” she yelled. “Whatever you’re doing is not good for our Peony. She’s just a country girl. Why don’t you go somewhere else to put on your hoaxes?”

I stood in their courtyard, humiliated. It was the busy farming season, and everyone had just come back from the fields in straw hats, with sickles in their hands and cuts on their faces from the rice-shoot edges. I looked at Peony. She was dirty and dusty and busy soothing her wailing child, and I realized I was in the wrong place to preach Amway. I had forgotten that people in the countryside tended to stay where they were and never wanted much in life.