Tiger's Heart (3 page)

I refocused all my attention on schoolwork. Every day, I stayed in the classroom as late as possible. When the power in the town went out and my classmates whispered to each other in pairs in the flickering candlelight, I sat in the corner alone memorizing English words. The girls giggled continuously about the new wool coats they had bought, about the movie tickets some boy had just tucked into their notebooks, and about how many looks the handsome geography teacher had given them during the last class. I covered my ears. My world was too narrow for any of these luxuries. I was sure no man would ever want me. I was short, ugly, and quiet, I thought. My own parents didn’t even like me. Whenever jealousy or sadness crept up in my heart, I pushed them down immediately and told myself that I wasn’t born lucky or pretty like those girls. I came into this world with unfairness. But I was going to prove that I was different, and some day I would shock everybody and become the brightest star in the sky.

When he wasn’t out on business trips, Honor still came to our house almost every day, despite the sneers he got from my sister and me. He always had a smile on his face and talked softly to everybody, and he started to do more and more for us. He brought food from the market every day, bought us coal and gas, did house repairs, asked me about school, gave us money for clothes, and got medicine for my mother’s various ailments, snacks for Spring, and books for me. Gradually we became friendlier to him and started to expect him every evening. After dinner, sometimes I would stay at the table and listen to my mother, Honor, and Spring chat idly. I seldom looked straight into Honor’s eyes. He was still the man who was ruining my family—while simultaneously supporting it—but I was growing more accustomed to the situation and sometimes I almost believed that this strange family, which had two men and one woman, was normal.

At the end of May 1991, two months before “Black July,” when all the high-school seniors would take the national college entrance exam but only a half percent of us would squeeze across the narrow bridge to colleges and universities, my form teacher was kind enough to pay us a visit.

She told my mother that a student like me, one from a poor family and a mediocre high school, should make a teachers college my top pick. She recommended Changshu Senior Specialized College, which she said not only would waive tuition but would also give free housing and food coupons. In her cheerful description, this school sounded like cake falling from the sky. My mother nodded her head like a chicken pecking at rice. She was overwhelmed by the unexpected favor that this flashy city woman was showing to her ugly daughter.

Finally I spoke up. “Maybe I can try another teachers college a little further away too?” Changshu College was in the city of Suzhou, only an hour and half’s bus ride away. I wanted to go much farther from home.

Displeasure flickered in my form teacher’s heavily lined eyes. She looked like a panda. My mother gave me an angry look. “What do you know? Of course Teacher Chen knows what the best school is for you.”

Just like that, my teacher and my mother decided my future. Not until years later did I learn that teachers colleges like the one they picked for me were still vocational schools. They were usually the best choice for kids from poor families because no one else was willing to be a teacher, the lowest-paid civil servant. Even worse, most teachers trained in vocational schools like mine were assigned to remote areas after graduation.

After my form teacher left, I was weighed down by anxiety. I knew that there would still be some living expenses to pay, even in a not-so-elite college, and I wasn’t in the habit of discussing such things with my mother. The next evening, though, Honor told me that he would be delighted if I went to college and that there was no need to worry about anything else. I wanted to say something to him, but I couldn’t bring myself to respond, not even to say thank you. He must be a noble person God has sent to help me, I thought, and I didn’t understand why I was too stubborn to accept him.

Honor told me he had bought a condo right in front of my school, which I could use to study for my exams. He spoke to me very softly, as if I were a doll made of glass. I took the key from him silently.

I shut myself in the condo during the one-week study period before the exams, not caring about the classmates knocking on the windows, not caring about their laughing eyes and questions about the owner of the condo. July 1991 was unusually hot. I couldn’t eat or sleep. I was restless and agitated, like a small animal before an earthquake. I stripped off all my clothes, held a book in my hand, and paced the room for the entire night, thinking of my father’s sad face, my mother’s sharp voice, Honor’s sallow fingertips, my classmates’ sly smiles, and the handsome geography teacher’s eyes. Everything I could think of, I thought over twenty times. By the time I was sitting in the exam room, I had banished all my anxiety. I felt as calm as if I had just taken a tranquilizer.

At the end of August, the mailman finally handed me a letter from Changshu Senior Specialized College. My hands were shaking a little bit as I tore it open. On a small paper strip, in Song style, the most common Chinese character style, it read:

Dear Comrade Shen Juanjuan,

You have been admitted to Changshu Senior Specialized College in the English class of 1991. Please report to the school in the city of Suzhou on August 29.

Yours truly,

School Admission Office

Enormous happiness shot through my chest. For a few seconds I could barely breathe. My mother and father would finally see my worth.

I walked into the kitchen. “I got in!” I announced.

Spring jumped up from the small stool she was sitting on and rushed toward me, pleasantly surprised. “Really, Jiejie?” she shouted, using the term for older sister. My mother turned from the stove, a big smile on her sweaty face. My father remained expressionless at the table. Over the next few days, he only pulled up one corner of his mouth to show his good mood when people came to congratulate us.

The villagers seemed to have forgotten the scorn they had heaped on us in the past. They scattered around our kitchen, sitting or squatting, all talking at once about how truly amazing it was that two illiterate parents had produced a college daughter, how lucky I was to be the only one out of almost a hundred students to go to college, how long ago they had realized that this girl was a smart kid with a grand future. My mother nodded her head to everyone, proud and elated. She seemed to have forgotten that for the past several years she had been hiding herself in the house to get away from these people.

“I was so worried before, because she couldn’t plant rice shoots,” she chirped. “Now it turns out that it wasn’t necessary, because she’ll never have to go near the paddies.” Everyone laughed and kept saying yes.

I cared about none of these things—my parents’ faces, my grand future, my reputation for intelligence. The only thing I cared about was that I could finally leave the hamlet, leave this home, after nearly seventeen years of nothing but nightmares.

PART

II

3

ON AUGUST 29,
1991, shortly before my seventeenth birthday, I became the first person ever to leave the hamlet for college. When I got up that dawn, I didn’t feel the slightest bit nostalgic. All I wanted was to get out as soon as possible.

After a fierce fight with the other passengers to get through the door, my mother and I, soaked with sweat, finally made it onto the bus. There was only one bus trip daily from Zhenze to Suzhou. It was always so crowded that some people practically hung in the air the whole trip, but my mother had thrown our luggage through a broken window to claim a spot, so now we sat on those sticky seats, awaiting departure.

At 5:59, one minute before the bus was scheduled to leave, Honor’s tall, skinny figure appeared outside the window, the chubby bus driver walking contentedly behind him, a Grand Gate cigarette dangling from his lips. Under everybody’s admiring eyes, Honor got in and took the passenger seat next to the driver. This spot was usually reserved by the driver for his acquaintances. He would throw you off the bus if you sat there without permission. Honor coughed once and then turned toward the back of the bus for a quick glance at us. I shrank back to avoid his eyes.

Panting heavily, the bus made its way slowly onto the asphalt road. Outside the window, rows of two-story houses surrounded by rice paddies and mulberry trees skimmed past my eyes. Everything looked so familiar. Everything I had always wished to forget was now disappearing behind me. I had thought I would be rapturous at this moment, but I felt a pang of sadness. I lowered my head, blinking back tears. Then a strong smell of industrial chemicals mixed with dried urine drifted under my nose. I reminded myself that I should be happy to say good-bye to this place, my so-called home, a place where people peed anywhere they wanted and made the earth smell like a giant latrine at the height of the summer. So what if my mother said there were a lot of bad people in the cities? I didn’t see how they could be worse than the Shen Hamlet. I was excited to be going to Suzhou, a sophisticated city that people called “heaven on earth” or the “Venice of the East.”

As old as China itself, Suzhou was located on the south side of the Yangtze River, a place where fish and rice were abundant. Ornately carved stone bridges spanned the many narrow rivers that crisscrossed the entire city. Low houses built on the water and surrounded by gardens were hidden at the ends of small zigzagging lanes. But what the city was really famous for was its girls, who were known for their slender figures, their large liquid eyes, and for speaking the softest dialect in the country. Even my mother, who didn’t even know who our president was, was telling the fat woman who was resting half her hip on my mother’s small shoulder, “Yeah, Suzhou is famous for its pretty girls.”

I knew she must be in a good mood, since she was striking up a conversation instead of rolling her eyes and elbowing the fat woman away.

I turned toward the dusty window and caught sight of my reflection—a chubby bucket-shaped body in a taut plain white shirt, a short neck, a rustic ponytail and bangs, and a pair of round glasses with brown frames that almost covered my entire face. I looked away, depressed.

The bus bumped over a crack in the asphalt road, and my mother’s bare arm touched mine. Even in the scorching heat, her skin was cool and slippery, like a snake hidden in green leaves. I writhed on my seat.

She turned to me and asked softly, “What’s wrong? Is the skirt too tight?”

“Nothing,” I mumbled and stared resolutely out the window. It was true that the denim skirt Honor had bought me was a little too tight, but that wasn’t why I had turned away. I still wasn’t used to how my mother had been treating me since I had gotten into college, as if I were an ancient vase that had been buried for centuries and had suddenly been dug up by accident and found to be priceless.

An hour later, we arrived in the clamorous city of Suzhou. I looked around curiously. It was my first time in a city. Ancient buildings with ornate eaves and tiled roofs stood next to tall modern buildings with shiny windows. Poplar trees lining both sides of the cobblestone street cast leafy shadows on the rows of parked bicycles on the sidewalks and on people’s faces. I followed closely behind Honor as we walked through the crowd. Dodging the endless stream of traffic, I sweated nervously.

We hopped in a rickshaw, and Honor gave the driver the college’s address. After speeding through a maze of alleys, the rickshaw finally dropped us in a stone slab lane, at the end of which lay my new school.

Through the arched stone entrance, I examined my college, my home for the next two years. There was a circular yard so small that a soccer ball kicked lightly at one end would easily reach the other. Around the yard were three cement buildings and one red brick one and three trees—two poplar and one jasmine. A person carrying a thermos in each hand was walking by the bicycle shed in front of one of the cement buildings, his head lowered. At the center of the circle was a shabby playground painted a faded yellow. This was very different from the college I had imagined. I had pictured a big green park filled with lively young students holding books in their hands, walking and chatting.

“Let’s go find the dorm. Hurry!” my mother barked.

Pull back the disappointment right now, I ordered myself, and I hastened behind my mother. After all, this was my dream come true. I shouldn’t be wallowing in self-pity.

At the end of a long corridor on the second floor of the dorm, we found my assigned room, number 207. It was quiet and empty, except for the four iron bunk beds standing on the mottled wooden floor and the big spiders hanging from webs in the corners.

My mother, who had the cotton padding for my bed folded into a square block on her shoulder, pushed me through the door. “Go,” she said. “Grab the bed next to the window in the corner. It’s the best one. Go!”

I hesitated. We were the first to arrive. Was it necessary for us to fight for a bed? It was just a bed, after all. I walked in, feeling embarrassed. I saw my name on a paper strip pasted on the iron pole of the bed my mother had pointed to. The beds were preassigned. I put my plastic bags on the bed and didn’t say anything.

While we were busy making up the bed, two of my roommates arrived one after the other. A small girl with freckles all over her tiny face took the bed above me. She extended her hand to me and spoke in a resounding voice. “Hi, I am Chen Xin. Call me Jenny. It’s my English name.”

I liked her instantly. I shook her hand a little shyly. “I am Juanjuan. I don’t have an English name yet.”

As Jenny and I were getting to know each other, a gaunt girl with a loose ponytail came in and took the bunk bed across from me. She smiled and introduced herself as Kate. From the innocent smile on her flat face, I could tell right away that she was an easygoing person, someone who didn’t always think before speaking. Blinking her long eyelashes, she asked me curiously, “Is that your father? You two don’t look alike.”

I knew she meant Honor, who was busy putting my belongings away: thermos behind the door, toothbrush on the table, slippers under the bed. Pretending that I hadn’t heard her question, I quickly looked away from her and turned my back to her, because I didn’t know how to answer. For a moment, I wished that this man in a tidy, dark gray suit, who now, with one knee on the bed, was hammering a small nail into the wall for me to hang my clothes on,
was
my father. For years, my real father hadn’t moved a finger for me. My heart twisted when I forced myself to admit it, but Honor, a man whose face I had imagined punching to bits millions of times, had been taking care of me like a father. At this thought, guilt leapt up in my chest.
No, he is
not your father!
a sharp voice inside admonished me.
Not only is he
not your father; he ruined your family. Don’t ever forget it.

Without straightening her arched back, my mother casually answered Kate while making the bed. “Oh, he’s her uncle.”

I stood there, relieved, but also feeling a little disconsolate.

After putting a string bag of apples next to my pillow and squeezing a hundred-yuan bill into my hand, Honor urged me to be a good student and then left to catch a train north for a business trip. As usual, staring at his slightly bent back moving toward the door, I bit my lips, wanting to say something nice but remaining silent. After he left, my mother finished unpacking my luggage and straightening up while I stood around curiously checking out my roommates. She wanted to take the bus home as soon as she was finished. I agreed to accompany her to the station.

I watched her standing in line at the bus terminal. She turned her head and looked at me as she shoved the tall middle-aged man who was pressed up behind her. I heard her worried voice yelling for me to be careful.

I clutched the rusty railing and cried out, “Mama!”

She turned around again. I saw that her eyes were filled with tears. She glowered at me as if she were angry that I had made her cry, and then she disappeared into the vast space behind the wooden gate where the buses waited. It felt like I would never see her again. I started to cry.

But the education we received was far worse than I had expected. We didn’t have the freedom to choose our subjects. Instead they were imposed upon us: English Reading, Listening Ability, Oral English, Chinese Literature, History of the Chinese Communist Party, Moral Principles, and Methods of Teaching. We went to the same classes every day in the same classroom, and two years later we would be assigned by the government to remote locations in all different counties as junior high school English teachers.

Still, I never felt like joining in when the other students complained about having wound up there instead of at a normal four-year college. I told myself that since I was there already, I should accept it and try to do as well as I could. In fact, grades were the only thing I cared about, the only way I had of distinguishing myself from others. Here the teachers didn’t announce the students’ grades out loud in class as they had in my old school, but you always heard about other people’s scores through the grapevine. I was only happy if I was one of the top three in the class and was secretly jealous of the students who got better grades. I was perhaps the only person in the class who was so competitive. Most students stopped studying as soon as they entered college, because they would have jobs no matter how poor their grades were, but I was used to competing with others. Life was a war to me.

The seven girls in Room 207 got along well. Coincidentally, we were all from poor peasant families in the surrounding counties. We elected the conscientious and perpetually energetic Jenny as class monitor. We joked that she was what Chairman Mao had described as the sun around eight or nine o’clock in the morning—the hope of China. Fish, a tall girl with a fleshy body and a freewheeling personality, became my closest friend. She called me Tiger, my birth animal, and soon everyone else did too. Though I wasn’t sure whether deep down I was really ferocious like a tiger, I accepted it happily.

Every night at nine o’clock, after everyone came back from the required evening solo study sessions, the lights in the dorms were shut off. In the dark, the girls in Room 207 didn’t talk much. Instead, we lay inside our mosquito nets and listened to the girls in Room 208 across the hall chatter loudly about the boys in our class. Being an English teacher was widely thought to be too feminine for men, so there were only seven boys in our class of thirty. They all shared a room downstairs. Thus these guys, whether handsome or ugly, became the pandas in the zoo, seven national treasures for the girls in the class to scramble for. The girls in Room 208 were way ahead of us in getting their attention. They came from small towns instead of peasant hamlets like us. They wore lipstick and high heels and walked like willows swaying in the breeze. Bubbling with enthusiasm, they quickly became friends with the boys and fiercely guarded them from other girls. We sneered at the vapid 208 girls and seldom talked to any of the guys.

Never thinking a man would fall for me, I came and went from the classroom like a quiet cat, sitting in my seat with a stiff back and listening to the jarring flirting and laughter of the other boys and girls.

But one day when I walked into the classroom, a boy named Chi gave me a friendly smile from his seat. I quickly avoided his eyes. Not until I had walked to my chair and sat down did I realize that my heart was beating like a drum. Why would he look at me? Standing six feet tall with two bushy brows over a pair of big eyes and a dashing long nose, he had been voted the most handsome guy in school by the 208 girls. It seemed impossible that he would deliberately pay attention to me.

I thought about Chi all through the class, not coming to my senses until Professor Fan gave me an unsatisfied look. I was usually the one who timidly gave him the correct Chinese meaning every time he threw out an English word, a skill for which my classmates hated me. During breaks, much to my embarrassment, fat Professor Fan would sit next to me and show me the
Time
magazine his broadcaster daughter had sent him from the United States. He told me I should go study in America, because it was so much nicer there that even the moon was rounder and brighter than the one in China. I would nod my head to him cordially, but deep down I would laugh to myself. Professor Fan was so naïve. America, the real heaven on earth, was impossible for a peasant girl like me to even dream about.