Dreams of Joy (25 page)

I don’t write that when it comes time to pour what we’ve melted onto pallets it doesn’t look at all like the steel I’ve seen being made in news-reels. Instead, it comes out in dull, red, sandy blobs. When it dries, it looks like cakes of
nui-shi-ge-da
—cow turds. I can’t imagine what anyone will use it for. Certainly not to make tractors, girders, or textile machines, because it won’t be strong enough. So, as far as I can tell, it’s all a waste of time, energy, and sweat—and all without remuneration, which, if I said that aloud, would cause me to be struggled against by the boarders and the block committee for being too capitalistic in my thinking.

Finally a letter arrives, and it’s not in response to my news about the Great Leap Forward. It’s dated March 1, and May must have sent it upon receiving my letter saying that Joy had returned to Shanghai. A good part of it has been blacked out. What’s left are mostly questions for which not only May but apparently the censors and Superintendent Wu would like to know the answers. “Where has Joy been all this time? If Joy isn’t staying with you, then where is she living? Who bought her clothes? Was it this Tao you mentioned? I don’t like the sound of that. She is not a girl to be bought for a few yards of fabric.” This line more than any other tells me May has no understanding of what’s happening behind the Bamboo Curtain. There are no bad girls anymore. Then she asks the question I’ve been expecting for some time. “Have you found Z.G.? It will be difficult for you, but you must try to find him. We were all good friends once. He must help us.”

I read this last part several times. Pathetic jealousy burbles in me, but how can I be jealous—now, after all these years? I’m here to do whatever I can to get my daughter to remember who and what she is, but a part of me still dwells on petty things from twenty years ago. I think back on all the letters I’ve received from May since I arrived in Shanghai. Has she asked about Z.G. before? No, but his presence has been in every letter she’s written: “Do you see anyone from the past? What of the friends we knew back then?” How many times have I ignored her questions, blocking them out even more blackly than the censors? Sure, I’ve written back here and there: so-and-so died during the war, was a hero, was shot, or escaped … But never once have I written about Z.G. Why? A bitter place inside me kept that secret. Has this been my revenge for May’s part in Sam’s death? How can it be, when I now know she was not at fault?

None of us is perfect. I’m not the good woman I always believed myself to be. I’m ashamed to say that I don’t write back, because I could say things that would really hurt her. Ever since Joy came to visit me by herself,
she and Z.G. have been taking me out to dinner once a week. I could tell May that just last night Z.G., Joy, and I had a meal of stewed crab with clear soup, duck triplet, and Mandarin fish—all Shanghai delicacies—at a restaurant on the Bund. I could write about how beautiful Joy looked and how the tension between us seems to be lifting, but that Z.G. stared at me in my red dress that May herself loved so long ago. I could write that sometimes the three of us go for walks in the Yu Yuan Garden. Or that we’ve worked together at the backyard furnaces either in my neighborhood or in Z.G.’s. We’ve been having a nice time, and I don’t want to break the spell by sharing it with my sister. But while I may not be perfect, I can’t
not
write to my sister. That would be brutal and unnecessary, and she would worry too much. Again, though, I stick to politics.

I’m sure May will understand my not-so-hidden messages about the craziness of these communes, the ridiculousness of the Great Leap Forward targets, and the fear I feel for Joy.

On July 28, I receive a package from Wah Hong. Inside I find a skirt and a blouse. I cut through the stitching on the collar and find twenty dollars and a short note from May.

If I’ve been sending her coded messages—and leaving out things that surely she would notice—then she has sent a note she must have known would upset me. I must “work harder to convince Joy” to leave China, as though I haven’t given up my life to be here, as though I’m not struggling every single day to keep myself strong for the moment I can break through to her? And, of course, there’s the part about Z.G.

I hide the letter with the others I’ve received and write back what I consider to be a chatty missive.

I don’t write any of the things that would mean nothing to the censors but would wound my sister. She, however, has become impatient with me. Her next note is her shortest:

I stare at the words. I have a feeling my sister wrote this late at night, because otherwise she wouldn’t have been so blunt. This makes me wonder if she’s moved inside, off the screened porch. Is she sleeping in Vern’s bed? In Father Louie’s bed? In my bed? Our house was not large, but it must seem enormous to her now that she’s alone.

Three days later, Z.G. and Joy come to my house with news. The Great Leap Forward is not just about steel and grain, they tell me. All 600 million Chinese must “go all out, aim high, and achieve greater, faster, better, and more economical results in building socialism.” As part of that mandate, Z.G. is being sent back to the countryside to visit several villages. Alarmed, I ask the obvious question.

“Is Joy going with you?”

“Yes, we’re going to the countryside,” Joy answers for him.

I don’t want her going back to the countryside. She can’t go if Z.G. doesn’t go. I turn to him. “You’re famous. You don’t have to do this, do you?”

Z.G. gives me a hard look. “I have a choice,” he says. “All art students and artists must spend three to six months in the countryside, getting the masses to produce art, or spend three to six months working in a factory.”

He goes on to explain that factories have given themselves challenges to manufacture more flashlights, radios, or thermoses in a week than in the usual month. Cotton mills have upped the amount of cloth they will make for the year. Z.G. would rather create art—something that’s at the very core of his being—than lose himself in a factory, where he might never get out.

“I’m trying to look at this as an honor and a privilege, really. The government wants to see a lot of art produced,” Z.G. explains. “To do that, we’ll need extra hands. Those hands are where they’ve always been. In the countryside.”

“But peasants aren’t artists.”

I’m trying to use logic as a way for him not to go to the countryside—and take my daughter with him—but Joy thinks this is a political argument.

“You haven’t seen Z.G. teach,” she says. Her eyes have that same glittering look they get whenever she talks about revolution. She more or less quotes Mao, saying, “As long as we have enthusiasm and determination, we can achieve anything!”

Z.G., as he has since we were young, takes a more pragmatic view.
“Taiwan and the United States are allies. They’re trying to create an alliance with Japan and South Korea. Chairman Mao doesn’t like that, and he’s trying to show our power to the world.”

“But how does making a bunch of bad paintings—let alone thousands of cheap flashlights—prove anything to the outside world?”

“Redness, as it has for years now, takes precedence over expertise,” Z.G. answers. “We must think quantity, not quality, if we are to meet this new challenge. As for Joy and me, we’ll start in Green Dragon, where we went last summer. It’s now part of a commune. When we’re done there, we’ll head south to other communes. Then, at the beginning of November, the Artists’ Association wants me to visit this year’s commodities fair in Canton. After that, we’ll come home.” He pauses before adding, “I hope.”

That’s a long time, and I don’t want to be separated from my daughter again.

“Are you sure you want to be away so long?” I ask Joy carefully.

“Oh, Mom, don’t you get it? We’re here to ask you to come with us. Z.G. has received permission for all of us to go.”

Mom. She called me Mom.

“I want to show you everything,” Joy continues. “You should bring your camera so you can take pictures. Please say yes.”

This is the first time Joy has asked me to do something since I’ve been here. (Those dinners for the three of us have all been Z.G.’s idea.) I can tell she really wants me to come. And that, even though I’m nervous about going to the countryside, convinces me to join them.

AFTER A LENGTHY
interview, Superintendent Wu gives me a travel permit. I break down and change some of my dollars into special certificates at the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission. Before I leave Shanghai, I write a last short note to my sister. I know it will hurt her. I was going to tell her the truth sometime, but I didn’t think it would come out like this.

Z.G. and I are taking Joy to the countryside.

I imagine May in our home as she reads that line. She’ll think the worst of me. I know she will, because that’s what I would do. (And, if I’m honest, she’ll be right. This is the chance I’ve never had to be with him.
Yes, Joy will be there, but who knows what could happen … I shouldn’t get ahead of myself.) May has always been easy with tears. This time I imagine them coming from a deeply scarred and tragic place. Her older sister has gotten revenge. No thrust into the heart is greater or more harmful than that from one who says she loves you the most. I know, because my sister drove that knife into my heart many times.