Dreams of Joy (31 page)

Tao’s father consults with the other farmers before answering. “Maybe three hundred
jin.
”

“Three hundred
jin
? Make that eight hundred or a thousand
jin
!”

“That’s impossible,” observes Party Secretary Feng Jin, who’s resistant to the city cadre’s ideas even though it’s risky to go against him.

“Nothing’s impossible in the Great Leap Forward!” Sensing the farmers aren’t with him, the brigade leader asks, “How much grain do you need to eat?”

“We’ve always had at least one and a half
jin
of starch a day.”

That’s not a lot. A single
jin
of grain makes one steamed bun, a bowl of rice porridge, plus rice for lunch and dinner.

“You’re eating far more than that now,” Brigade Leader Lai points out.

And it’s true. Every meal has more than enough rice. In fact, I’m sure I’ve gained weight since coming to the commune.

“Here’s what we’re going to do with our first winter wheat crop,” the
brigade leader continues. “It’s called close planting. You plant six times the normal grain in a single field.”

The men groan.

“It won’t work,” one of them says. “If you sow seeds too close, then the plants will die from a lack of sun and not enough nutrients.”

“You’re wrong there,” the brigade leader replies. “Chairman Mao says that close planting will be like getting the masses to form a solid flank in the war against the advances of imperialism. Think how much wheat we will grow! More than seven hundred
jin
per
mu
.” (At least he’s dropped his estimate.) “We’ll have so much wheat we’ll have to give it away. We’ll be a model commune!”

“Where are we going to plant this wheat?”

“You’ll tear out some of the tea plants and change over the vegetable fields,” Brigade Leader Lai snaps. “Our great Chairman says he wants wheat. Wheat we will give him.”

The radio announcer broadcasts the time. The farmers slowly rise, shaking their heads. How can you reason with someone who’s lived in a city his entire life about the crops and soil that you and your ancestors have worked for generations? Even I know, from my little garden in Los Angeles, that what the brigade leader suggested won’t work, but everyone is afraid to voice too much criticism or skepticism. No one wants to get in trouble. No one wants to be singled out. Those who have little to lose don’t want to lose what little they have. We all put on smiling faces as we go back into the sun to rejoin our work teams.

This afternoon, the women on the gray-power team share stories of giving birth. I hear one harrowing story after another. I tell them about losing my son during his delivery. To lose a daughter is sad, they tell me. To lose a son is tragic. They weep with me, and I feel part of a community in a way I’ve never experienced before.

As the end of the day approaches, people straggle into the village from the jobs they’ve been assigned. Joy and Kumei enter the village square together. Joy’s shoulders are hunched, and she has a hunted look.

“I have a letter from Father Louie’s village,” Joy says, holding out an unopened envelope and pointing to the return address. “Why would anyone there write to me?”

“It probably contains a letter from May,” I say. “I wrote to her and told her we were here.”

Joy thinks about that.

“Why don’t you open it?” I suggest.

Joy rips open the envelope. A photograph flutters to the ground. I pick it up, and there’s May, standing in our backyard. Cecile Brunner roses cascade around her in an abundant display of Southern California fertility. She holds a small, fluffy dog, what I would call a yappity-yap dog.

“Let me see,” Joy says.

I give her the photograph, and the others crowd around to look too. The gray-power women gaze incredulously at the image. They point at May’s clothes—a skirt made extra full with a big petticoat, tiny belt cinched at her waist, and silk stilettos dyed to match her blouse. They comment on her makeup and touch her hairstyle with their fingers.

“Why is she holding a dog?” Fu-shee inquires.

“Why would she have a dog?” Kumei asks.

“It’s a pet,” Yong, the onetime Shanghai girl, answers.

“A pet? What’s that?”

“An animal you keep for fun,” Yong explains, sounding worldly. “You play with it.” Seeing the looks of disbelief on the other women’s faces, she adds, “For fun?”

Snorts of disapproval greet that response.

“What did Auntie May write?” I ask.

Joy releases the photograph to the women, who continue to comment and stare in a combination of disgust, wonder, and excitement. It’s as though they’re looking at a movie star from olden times, except that these people (apart from perhaps Yong) have never seen a movie, let alone a movie star. Joy holds the letter close to her chest, and it’s not because she doesn’t want the village women to see what’s written there. May was never good at Chinese characters, so I’m sure the letter is in English. Joy doesn’t want
me
to see what’s written.

“Dear Joy,” my daughter reads, slowly translating, “I understand congratulations are in order. I hope you are deeply in love. That is the only reason for marriage.” Joy’s brow draws into tight little lines. These are hardly wholehearted good wishes. “I’ve enclosed a photograph. The dog’s name is Martin. My friend Violet gave him to me. She says the dog will help me with my loneliness. She doesn’t know that I named the dog after one of my special friends.”

Oh, May. I shake my head. She mentions
her
friend Violet. Violet is
my
friend! She’s been my
only
friend apart from my sister. And then
there’s the bit about the dog. I tell myself that Violet was just being kind to my sister, and that I can bear. But who is this Martin—the special friend, not the damn dog? Doesn’t May realize she’s a widow?

I know the real reason for these words. They’re to get back at me. I’ve been writing May regularly and she’s been deliberately silent. I don’t blame her. I’m here with Z.G. and she isn’t.

“You must write to me of your new life,” Joy continues reading. “Tell me about your father. I long to hear of your time together.” Joy doesn’t have to read this part aloud, but she does. It seems this letter has brought back some of her anger at May and me, and she’s always known how to drive a wedge between us. “Please write to me …” Joy looks up from the letter, glances at the faces around her, and says, “It ends with congratulations on our bumper harvest.”

I have no idea what May wrote, but I’m positive it wasn’t that. Joy’s eyes remain hooded as we walk to the canteen, and she’s quiet throughout dinner. After the meal, Joy comes back to the villa for her bath. These evenings have become a ritual I look forward to. Some nights Kumei and Yong—having gotten over their initial reticence—sit on stools in the kitchen near us, and we all chat, drink tea, and let the hard work of the day ease out of our bones. Ta-ming sits on the floor plucking the strings of a violin. From what I’ve learned, his father was educated. The violin—one of only a few of the landlord’s personal possessions not destroyed or confiscated during Liberation—belongs to Ta-ming now. Sometimes he picks at the violin strings, as he is now, or he’ll hold it like an
erhu—
upright in his lap—and run the bow across the strings. It sounds terrible but not as bad as some of the military marches we hear over the loudspeakers.

Usually when we’re together Joy lets down the walls that surround her. That blue part is still at her core, but some nights she laughs, tells jokes, even gossips. It’s times like those that I feel closer than I ever have to my daughter—as though we’ve made the transition from mother and daughter to friends—but tonight she’s unsettled. I shoo Yong, Kumei, and Ta-ming out the door. I sit on a stool a short distance from the tub and watch as Joy scrubs her skin as though somehow that will cleanse her soul. If I can talk about my mistakes and failures, maybe she’ll start to understand she has to forgive herself. My biggest failures have to do with May, and Joy has always been right in the middle of that.

“I haven’t always been the best sister,” I say, trying to sound as conversational
as possible. “I’ve often been impatient with May. I wasn’t as understanding as I could have been. Z.G. has also been between us for twenty years. I look back and see how blind I was. I loved him, but he loved May.”

“You’re here now,” Joy says in benign resignation. “He’s coming back for you. The two of you can still be together.”

Waa!
I’ve thought this myself. Z.G. will come for me, we’ll go to Canton, we’ll stay in a hotel, we’ll … But for Joy to say that?

“I haven’t been a good sister,” I repeat. “Since returning to China, I’ve had a lot of time to think about how hard it must have been for May all those years—”

Joy shakes her head, not wanting to hear this.

“You don’t have to like it, but it’s the truth. I love you and you’ll always be my daughter. That must have been very hard for May. You can see that, can’t you?”

“I can, but why would either of you want me? Why would anyone want me?”

She really is still such a child, needing proof of my love and her value. “Because you’re smart. You’re beautiful. You have many talents—”

“Like what?”

“You were able to act from a very young age. You were good at Chinese language and calligraphy. Now I see you were born with a talent I didn’t recognize until recently—your skill with a paintbrush. It’s like I see you in the strokes.”

“You’re just saying those things because you have to. Nothing can change the fact that my birth parents didn’t want me. They knew even before I was born that I wasn’t worthy of love. That’s why they gave me away.”

“How can you possibly think that?” I ask. This is worse than her guilt over Sam’s suicide, because it goes to the core of who she is and her value in our family and in the world. “Z.G. didn’t know May was pregnant. May loved you so much that she gave you to me so that she’d always be with you. And, if we’re honest, who did you spend more time with when you were a little girl—your aunt or me?”

“Auntie May.”

“That’s because she loved you. And I love you too.”

“But don’t you see? That’s one of the reasons I ran away. You’ve always
fought over me. If I’d stayed, I would have finally had to choose between you.”

“Choose between us? Oh, sweet one, your saying that just proves how much we loved you.”

“But I didn’t deserve it.”

“Of course you did! Your grandparents loved you. The courtesy uncles loved you. May and Vern loved you. Your dad loved you. You were a pearl in his palm. And I …”

Can she really not tell how much I love her? My daughter and I stare at each other. What I see is a cracking of Joy’s hard shell and beneath that the softness of understanding. She was and is loved. Tears run down her cheeks.

“I’ve failed in so many ways,” she says. “I failed Dad. I failed you and Auntie May. And I’m not a very good wife.”

“You can’t blame yourself for everything,” I say, but inside I berate myself. How can she have lost such confidence? Is this what May’s and my secret did to her? She has to realize none of us is perfect. “I wasn’t the best wife, sister, or daughter either.”

“You looked perfect to me.”

“You
know
I failed at many things. I lied to you. May and I both did. I didn’t do enough to help your dad.” I hesitate. This subject is still painful for both of us, but I’m not going to lie to her, not even if it would make her feel better right this moment. She deserves more than that. “We’re all partly responsible for what happened to your father. None of us is innocent, but we aren’t evil or bad or beyond redemption either.”

I pull my stool over to the tub, dip a cup into the water, and pour it over my daughter’s hair. I lather soap into her scalp. I let all the love I have radiate out of my fingers and into the aching body of flesh and bones that is my daughter, hoping she’ll release her sorrows, wash away the past, and finally forgive herself. And after this night, Joy’s spirit is lighter, which makes me thankful.

BIRTH, GROWTH, DECLINE
, death. All Chinese festivals remind us that we are a part of that cycle. It’s the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, around mid-September in the Western calendar. The bumper crop has been harvested, but, in the effort to make steel or compete in contests, whole fields have been ignored, with melons, cabbages, and turnips literally rotting on vines, on stems, and in the earth. The rice has been brought in, although even this most precious grain was left on stalks in the paddies or can be found in the dirt on the main square, where we did the threshing, sorting, and drying. We’ve been encouraged to eat, eat, eat. This is contrary to just about everyone’s way of thinking, because you never know when hard times will come, but we obey and enjoy ourselves in the process.

I’m told this is the usual time of quiet and celebration, but this year is different. Brigade Leader Lai has ordered teams to plow under what’s left in the fields so the farmers can get the winter wheat planted. The seeds are going in as densely as possible—forty to fifty
jin
of seed per
mu
instead of eighteen. Some of us are sent back into the cornfields to harvest the stalks to add heft to the existing walls and roof of the canteen before winter comes. Trees still need to be cut and brought down from the hills to keep the blast furnaces going. It seems like most metal has been fed into those furnaces, and yet the
bang, bang, bang
of metal utensils can still be heard from before dawn until long after dark, driving what remains of the sparrows to their insane deaths.