Dreams of Joy (39 page)

NATIONAL DAY—CHINA’S
Independence Day—takes place on October 1. This year—1959—is also the tenth anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, so the holiday is going to be the biggest and best yet. People labor day and night to beautify Shanghai. The city thrums with shoveling, hammering, and military music. Flags, lanterns, colored lights, and drapery festoon buildings, lamp poles, and bridges. Everything is in red, of course. An enormous arch is being built on the Bund, flanked by trees and flower beds. My work unit doubles its time on the streets, cleaning, stripping, and collecting every piece of paper we can find. I’m swept up by the enthusiasm around me and genuinely excited for and proud of my home country.

But as they say, everything always turns to the opposite. Just as I’m feeling truly good about being in China, we start to have food shortages in the city. In my household, we’re each allotted nineteen pounds of rice, a few tablespoons of cooking oil, and half a pork chop each month, which means, among other things, that the bickering in my family home is even worse than usual. I try to keep jealousies from boiling over by bringing home the occasional bag of rice or brown sugar bought at an exorbitant price on the black market or at the store for Overseas Chinese, where I can use my special certificates, for which I’m very grateful these days.

All this makes me worry about Joy. Could she be suffering from the same food shortages that we’re experiencing in Shanghai? I tell myself not to fret, because how could the members of a commune not have
food? They grow it! But I’m a mother and I agonize. I write to Joy to ask how she is. “How are you feeling?” I send candies and dried fruit. “Tao’s brothers and sisters might like these.” But I don’t hear back from my daughter. In fact, I haven’t heard anything since she wrote to tell me she was pregnant, nearly five months ago. This causes me great apprehension and keeps me up late at night with anxiety. I tell myself she’s busy with Tao and preparing to have the baby. I tell myself to be calm, but I’m not calm. I have to see her. To see her, I’ll need a travel permit, but I’m still not having any luck with that.

I go to Z.G.’s house to see if he can help me, but even he can’t get a travel permit. I write to May about my concerns. She writes back two weeks later that she’s heard from Joy and that she sounds fine. I relax a bit, but I don’t lose my desire to see my child during this special time in her life. In the coming weeks, I return several times to Superintendent Wu’s office. I tell him I still haven’t heard from my daughter and I ask again for a travel permit. During one of my visits, he informs me that almost no permits are being issued for travel.

“It’s as though they don’t want anyone to go to the countryside,” he says.

“Why would that be?”

Superintendent Wu doesn’t know. But eventually he makes some inquiries—refusing to tell me where—and reports back that Joy is fine.

“Fine?” That’s what May said too, but I’m Joy’s mother, and something doesn’t feel right. “If she’s fine, why hasn’t she written to me?”

He doesn’t have an answer. I begin to mark time by how many more days until the baby’s due.

OCTOBER 1—NATIONAL DAY
—finally arrives. It’s a golden autumn day, and I try to imagine what my daughter looks like in her eighth month of pregnancy. I imagine the commune commemorating the occasion with firecrackers, a big banquet, and the speeches in Peking broadcast over the loudspeakers. And then I tuck those images into my heart and get ready for the celebration here. Months ago, Z.G. invited me to go with him to Peking to see the festivities. He said we’d have a place with Mao on the dais to watch the parade and hear the speeches outside the Forbidden City. I admit it would have been a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but I stay in Shanghai to be closer to Joy in case I’m suddenly
awarded a travel permit. I’ll celebrate with Dun, the other boarders, and Auntie Hu.

Our entire household dresses in matching red shirts and blouses, and then we head into the streets. We wave little red flags as the parade passes us. We see seas of children in white shirts, blue pants or skirts, and red bandannas tied around their necks. Brigades of the People’s Red Army march in brisk formation. The entire membership of one commune after another proceeds along the route, fists raised or waving red flags. Floats highlighting the country’s economic and military achievements move with a dignified air. For everything that’s bad here, for every moment I miss my home in Los Angeles, there are times like this when I feel great pride for what China has accomplished in ten years.

Dun and I leave before the local speeches begin and meet Auntie Hu at her house, since she can’t be on crowded streets on her bound feet. We sit in her salon, and she serves us rose-petal cake.

“Auntie Hu, you always have the best pastry,” I say after taking a bite. “How do you get something like this with the shortages?”

Auntie Hu’s eyes crinkle with pleasure. “I’m always trying to find the good old days in these bad new days. Come, lean close, and I’ll tell you.” I do as I’m told, and Madame Hu whispers, “Do you remember the Russian bakery on the Avenue Joffre, where your mother always bought your birthday cakes? One of the Chinese helpers now uses those recipes to make cakes in his apartment. He sells them only to the best people, those who can keep a secret. Shall we get one for Dun’s birthday? Do you know when it is?”

She relaxes back into her chair and stares affectionately at Dun, who sits on one of the salon’s velvet sofas, reading a book and feigning indifference to the big secret. Dun started accompanying me to Auntie Hu’s a few weeks ago after I told him about her collection of books in English. Auntie Hu took an instant liking to Dun, treating him like the son she lost years ago. The way she’s embraced Dun has made me surprisingly happy, as though I’m receiving approval from my own mother.

“Do you like chocolate cake or do you prefer vanilla?” she innocently asks Dun. “Or do you prefer more exotic cakes—grapefruit, butter cream, or rum?”

“I never tasted cake until I came here, Madame Hu,” Dun answers. “Even a single bite is a treat for me.”

These days a bite of anything made with sugar, eggs, milk, and flour is something beyond a “treat.”

“I wonder if we could send one of these cakes to Joy,” Auntie Hu says. “Wouldn’t a pregnant woman love a rose-petal cake?”

“I’m sure she’d love it,” I say, but do I tell her how worried I am about Joy?

“Pearl-ah, I know you too well,” Auntie Hu observes. “Don’t keep things from me. Is something wrong with Joy?”

“Everything’s fine,” I answer brightly, trying to hide my concern. “May wrote to me just the other day to say that Joy has been writing to her and asking for the strangest things.”

“May writes to Joy?”

“Of course, all the time. And Joy answers.” And the knowledge of this is painful (why is Joy writing to May instead of to me?) and reassuring (Joy really must be all right). “Joy has asked her auntie to send Oreos, Hershey’s milk chocolate almond bars, and Bit-O-Honey. Do you know those sweets?” Auntie Hu remembers Hershey’s from the old days but not the others. “Well, this—more than anything—tells me Joy is pregnant and happy.” I’m practically quoting May’s last letter, in which she wrote, “Oh, the cravings we women have!” “May also sent a layette she bought at Bullock’s Wilshire. That’s one of the finest stores in Los Angeles,” I explain. “My grandchild will be the most stylish baby in the commune!”

Dun and Auntie Hu laugh with me. What is a peasant baby going to do with a sleeping gown, booties, cap, and receiving blanket?

“May.” Auntie Hu lets out her breath in a tolerant sigh. “She always liked to shop. What else? Tell me more.”

“May’s been taking care of my café,” I answer, happy to shift the conversation away from Joy. “She just got a beer and wine license. She says we have more customers now.”

“That’s good. You’ll go home to a successful business.”

“I’ve told you before I’m not leaving China. My life is here now, with my daughter and her baby.”

Auntie Hu frowns, and I rush on. “But May’s biggest news has to do with her own business. She’s still renting props and costumes to movie productions, but television shows are now coming to her too. You’ll never guess what happened. They want Chinese faces in their shows too!
May got a job, playing a housekeeper on a doctor show. If only they knew what a bad housekeeper she is in real life!”

We all chuckle. Then Auntie Hu gets up to turn on the radio so we can listen to the speeches being broadcast from the capital. “The Chinese have changed from slaves living in a hell on earth into fearless masters of their fates,” Premier Chou En-lai tells the country. “The imperialists ridicule our Great Leap Forward as a big leap backward. But let me tell you this: The European imperialists tried to carve us up. The Japanese aggressors wanted to devour us. Now the United States is trying to isolate and exclude us from international affairs. That policy is more of a failure with every passing day. We have full diplomatic relations with thirty-three countries, economic relations with ninety-three countries, and cultural contacts and exchanges with one hundred and four countries. How is all this swift, flying progress to be explained?”

Auntie Hu doesn’t care to hear the answer and gets right back up to turn off the radio, saying, “I’d much rather have Dun read to us.”

We spend the rest of the afternoon drinking tea, chatting, and listening as Dun reads to us from
Wuthering Heights
—Auntie Hu’s favorite. It’s so peaceful here, and it makes me happy that Dun and I can share this time together without Cook or the other boarders watching and listening to us.

Later, even though Auntie Hu has servants, I take our tray of cups and saucers to the kitchen. Auntie Hu follows, swaying on her tiny feet. She shoos her servants out of the kitchen and then she turns to me, her gentle features filled with concern. “How worried are you about Joy?”

“Very worried. I don’t understand why I haven’t received a letter from her. Even one in which the censors crossed out every word would be better than nothing.”

“You went through this silence before when you were waiting for Joy to return to Shanghai with Z.G.,” she tries to reassure me.

“That was different. She didn’t know I was in China.”

When Auntie Hu nods sympathetically, I ask her the question that’s been gnawing at me lately. “Do you think Joy suddenly prefers May—who gave birth to her—over me now that she’s approaching birth herself? Is that why Joy isn’t writing to me?”

“You are such a silly girl! Of course not!”

“Well, then, what’s the reason? Why haven’t I received a letter?”

“Who knows? This is China. Things run smoothly one day and go crazy the next.”

“I just … I just have a bad feeling—”

“Then write to May and ask her advice—”

“She doesn’t know anything about what it’s like here. She doesn’t understand.”

“May is your sister. She may not know China anymore, but she knows you. And you worry too much. Your head goes to too many dark places. She’ll say, ‘Calm down, Pearl-ah!’ ”

“It’s hard for me to say what I feel in a letter.”

“Then you should see each other. Why don’t you meet her in Hong Kong?”

“May actually suggested that in her last letter,” I say.

“Well?”

“If I can’t get a travel permit to see Joy, then how am I going to get an exit permit to see May?”

“These are two different things. One is to the countryside—”

“And one is out of the country.”

“What if you meet your sister at the fair in Canton?”

“May suggested that too. She thought she might be able to get a day permit to visit the fair to buy costumes for her movie rental business and canned goods for the café. I don’t think she’d be able to get that kind of permit, but even if she did, I’d still have to get a travel permit. If Superintendent Wu ever gave me one, I’d use it to see Joy.”

“Then try for a one-day exit permit. See what happens.”

“I’d love to see May, and maybe sometime in the future I’ll try to get a one-day exit permit. But not now, not when the baby is due next month.”

We go back to the salon. Then Auntie Hu walks Dun and me to the front door, where she holds us back.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” she says to Dun. “The two of you should try to leave China. I lost my husband and my son, but if they were alive, I’d be telling them we should get out of here.”

It’s strange that she suddenly feels so adamant about this and is pushing so hard when she knows I won’t leave China permanently without Joy.

“You’re the one who should go abroad, Madame Hu,” Dun says.

“Yes, I’ve thought about it, and I’m trying,” she confides in a low
voice. “I have a sister in Singapore. I haven’t seen her since she married out more than forty years ago.”

I’m startled by her revelation. “You’ve never mentioned this before. How can you leave?”

“How can I not leave? Your mother was the smart one. She got you and your sister out in time.”

I don’t add that, yes, she did, but she died horribly in the process.

“I started going to the police station and the Foreign Affairs Bureau to apply for an exit permit more than a year ago,” Auntie Hu goes on.

I’m surprised by how much this hurts me. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t have anything to tell in the beginning. I didn’t think I had a chance. Some people wait forever to get an exit permit. Others can get a permit to go to Hong Kong for a day very quickly. I thought I’d be in the forever category. Now they say they may give me an exit permit because they’re sure I’ll return. They think I can’t live without servants!” She lets out a wicked cackle. “They don’t know me very well.”

I think they know her better than she knows herself. Auntie Hu has never lived without servants. She has bound feet and is in many ways as isolated as Yong is in Green Dragon Village. She doesn’t know about housecleaning, laying out her own clothes (let alone washing, ironing, or putting them on by herself), cooking (let alone grocery shopping, doing anything beyond boiling water, or scrubbing pots and pans), or working to make ends meet.