Last Kiss in Tiananmen Square (15 page)

“What a mess! It looks like your father has been home once and left. God knows where he is now. He must be in Tiananmen Square again. He doesn’t even care about our family life anymore.” She put away some clothes spread on the bed into the trunk, and then went back to the yard again. She took the mop that leaned against the kitchen wall, rinsed it and went back to her room. Little Turnip flew a paper airplane while Zhang Ping was mopping the floor.

Finished, Zhang Ping wiped her face with a towel and poured a cup of hot water from a red metal thermos bottle on the dining table. She walked back and forth in the room, making a trail of footprints on the wet floor. She sipped the hot water carefully, and then she walked to the radio on top of the dresser and turned it on.

“Mourning activities for Hu Yaobang are officially over, and anyone who continues demonstrating will regret the consequences. Workers, please go back to your work unit. Students, please go back to school. Don’t be fooled into a conspiracy. A handful of individuals with ulterior motives have used the grief of students to create turmoil. They have set up illegal organizations, and have printed counter-revolutionary leaflets to instigate dissention, create national disorder and sabotage the stable unit in politics. This is an upheaval to negate the leadership of the Chinese Communist party and the socialist system.”

Zhang Ping turned off the radio. She grabbed the mop and rushed out of the door.

“Little Turnip!” Zhang Ping yelled. “Don’t step on Uncle Lao Liu’s flower beds!”

Little Turnip made his way through Lao Liu’s small rose garden searching for his paper airplane. Then he spotted a worm and observed it.

“Little Turnip, let’s go,” said Zhang Ping, while washing the mop in the sink. “Where?”

“Tiananmen Square. We’re going to find your father and drag him home.”

“Why?”

“Do you want your father to get killed?”

“No”

“So, let’s go then.” She went over and grabbed Little Turnip’s arm.

“My airplane, my airplane!”

“Forget about that fucking airplane. Let’s go, do you understand?”

“Hi, Auntie Zhang, where are you going?” Pumpkin’s daughter Little Pea and her boyfriend Yu Gang stepped in.

Little Pea wore a red knitted jacket and a pair of blue jeans. Her yellowish dry face was radiant and cheerful, which was so rare for her. Yu Gang was a tall, skinny polite young man with square shoulders.

“Hi, Auntie,” said Yu Gang. He grinned and his small round eyes cast down.

“Oh, hi!” Zhang Ping nodded and faked a grin on her face. Then the smile soon disappeared. “We’re going to Tiananmen Square. I’m going to find Dagong and drag him home.”

“I’m not sure you can find him. It’s very crowded there. But you’ll have a good time,” said Little Pea.

“Woo, even Little Pea talks about having fun nowadays. If I can’t find him, I’m going to ask the police to catch him.” Zhang Ping and Little Turnip left.

Little Pea and Yu Gang closed the door behind them and hugged.

“It’s so nice. Nobody is here,” said Little Pea.

Yu Gang lifted up Little Pea’s small body and kissed her. He carried her toward Little Pea’s apartment in the far side of the yard with a big colorful movie star’s portrait on the door. They unlocked the door and went in. Little Pea’s apartment had two big inter-connected rooms. Besides the dining table, a dish cabinet and several bamboo chairs were in the living room. Three single beds lined against the wall for the three grown-up children.

Yu Gang and Little Pea kissed and caressed for a while. Then Little Pea lifted a corner of the window curtain and looked out. “It’s almost 6:30pm. Still no one has come back yet.”

“They are either stuck at the Tiananmen Square or having too much fun. Why do you worry about them? Are you afraid of being alone with me?” Yu Gang was holding Little Pea on his chest.

“No,” said Little Pea. Her face blushed.

“So, do you think we should go back to the Tiananmen Square or not?” Yu Gang stared at Little Pea intensely.

“I don’t know. What do you think?” She sounded uncertain yet couldn’t resist staring back at Yu Gang.

“Don’t you think it’s such an exciting event? People are so happy and talkative. I don’t think we should miss it. But it’ll be nice to be able with you alone.”

“You’re lying. Men are always very sweet before the marriage. After they get married and have what they want, they’ll be completely different.” Little Pea sounded very practical.

“Come on. That’s nonsense. That’s old garbage and no longer true. One should remain being romantic forever.” Yu Gang kissed Little Pea passionately.

“Who said that?” Little Pea sounded a little too seriously.

“Monica in ‘Once in life’.”

“But that’s the movies. The real life is much tougher than that.” She turned and buried her face again in Yu Gang’s chest.

“So we have to try to make it better.” Yu Gang kissed her once more.

“That’s not what us common folks should worry about,” mumbled Little Pea between kisses.

“Come on. That is exactly what students in the Tiananmen Square try to achieve. We want to be in charge. Maybe we should go back to the Square again and support them. And very soon we’ll have a new government, our own business, our own home and our own car.”

“It sounds like heaven. Do you think that could come true?” Little Pea was intrigued.

“Sure. Let’s go!” Yu Gang kissed Little Pea again and helped her to stand up. Before they stepped through the door, they heard Little Pea’s mother Pumpkin’s voice.

“Ah ya! I have never worked so hard in my life before.” Pumpkin waddled in, followed by Broomstick and Potatofeet.

“Hi, Mother.” Little Pea and Yu Gang called in unison.

“Woo, you two are smart, enjoying the silence and cool air here.” She just wore a yellowish short-sleeved shirt and a pair of black pants. The shirt was soaked with sweat and looked transparent. Sweat rolled down from her forehead and her slightly sunburned fat, meaty cheeks, and more oozed off of the red tip of her flat nose, her short chin and her thick eyebrows.

“I have never made so many steam buns in my whole life,” she continued, “We made five hundred pork steam-buns and handed them out free to the students and common folks, mostly from other provinces.”

“We did that earlier. We handed out free bottled water to the students.” Little Pea wanted to assure her mother they did not just stay at home, loitering.

“Did you see students run through the police line?” asked Pumpkin.

“No, we were at a corner near a truck-load of soldiers,” said Little Pea.

“We kept feeding them soda. So they could forget about fighting,” said Yu Gang.

“It was. . .was so easy to.. .to pass through po. . .police line. They.. .they just surrendered. It’s.. .it’s like the.. .the games we play at.. .at school.” Potatofeet tried to get people’s attention.

“Come on. You did not see that. I was in a tree and told you what was going on.” Broomstick wanted to be the ultimate source of information.

“Who says the police has surrendered.” Lao Liu, the policeman, came back from work.

“Hey, the bad policeman is back. Let’s beat him!” Broomstick jumped at Lao Liu, followed by Potatofeet. They each took one of Lao Liu’s arms and twisted them to his back. Little Pea was giggling.

“Okay, okay. Beat me, kill me. I’m a bad policeman. I’m a government’s running dog.” Lao Liu bent forward, pretending to be captured.

“Don’t be too mean to Lao Liu. We know he can’t hurt anyone.” Pumpkin pulled them apart.

“Thank you, thank you all. I know my dear neighbors will trust me. It’s really no fun to be a policeman today. I took an easy job over Xianmen. Not much was going on until 3:00pm, because students didn’t come in from that direction. Then people swarmed in. We resisted a little at first. Then it became impossible, and our commander told us to give up completely. The worst of all was that people constantly cursed us, and threw stones and bottles at us. We were treated like shit. This is the worst day of my career. Look at my uniform.” He took off his white summer uniform and showed it to everyone. It was no longer white but instead full of dirt and layers of sweat, and dyed with pink and yellow soda stains. “Tomorrow I’ll probably call in sick.”

“Oh, I think you should have joined the students a long time ago,” said Pumpkin.

“No, I don’t think I can do it in my profession.”

“You, coward!”

“Hey, that’s enough, old woman!” Lao Liu walked away to his own home. In a while he came out with a bottle of beer in his hand. He sat on the steps in front of his apartment door, drinking.

Pumpkin put her radio in the yard still playing the Beijing Opera. Nothing on the radio was about the event in the Tiananmen Square, and all over the city Beijing.

Little Pea and Yu Gang left for the Square. Pumpkin began washing clothes in the yard.

“Lao Liu, what do you think of this student movement?” asked Pumpkin.

“I don’t know,” said Lao Liu. He sunk into a meditative state again, eyes closed, body frozen, elbows resting on stretched legs. It was hard to say whether he was listening to Pumpkin or not.

“I think our country needs a change,” said Pumpkin.

“That’s not easy. It’s not up to us.”

“You really sound like an old-dude. What is happening now in the Tiananmen Square has shown our people’s power.”

Lao Liu did not answer. The number of people who turned out in the square today amazed him. But he also knew they were ordered not to fight because the central government was split on the decision about how to deal with the students. They hoped to scare students by threatening them through the radio warnings. Obviously it did not work. He could not predict what would happen next. He was aware the direness of the situation. After being through so many ups and downs, he hoped he would survive once again. Pumpkin had a lovely naivety. As merely a cook, she was not sophisticated enough to know the consequences. He wished he could warn them sometimes. But right now he did not want to. He had enough of it today.

Lao Liu’s daughter Lili came back with a college student-like young man. He was a stout young man about twenty years old with a big round swarthy face and solid upper body. His short-sleeved shirt and blue jeans were stained and creased.

“Hi, Father. I’m glad you’re home. This is Xiao Dong. He’s a student from Nankai University and has been in Tiananmen Square since last night. So I invited him home to have dinner with us and wash himself.”

As Lili introduced the young man, Lao Liu noticed a red flush swept through her face. This was her first time ever to bring a young man home. She was too shy to do so before. He really cared about the students. He wished they knew the seriousness of the situation, thought Lao Liu.

“I’m tired. I’m going to take a nap. You can wait for your mother to come back and cook something for you.” Lao Liu went inside.

“Lili, why don’t you come to have dinner with us in a while?” Pumpkin said loudly so Lao Liu could hear it, too.

“Thank you, Auntie.”

“No problem. I always like to help students.”

“Are you going to cook again tonight?”

“Yes. Little Pea is busy nowadays. It’s nice to see her so happy. She’s really excited about what is going on in the Square. So it doesn’t matter if I end up doing a little more work at home.”

Pumpkin finished putting soap on the clothes. She took out the garments one by one, squeezed out the water, and threw them into another rusty tin washbasin. Then she carried the big heavy wooden basin with the soapy water in it gradually toward the sink and poured the water out. Turning on the tap, she began rinsing the clothes. She worked hard. A mist of sweat covered her forehead. The faded shirt and black pants she wore were wet.

Because of the large number of people in the nearby Square, the temperature in the whole area had risen dramatically. The usual blessing of a breeze had been held off. The summer seemed to come early this year. The air was still and humid as though in a bathhouse.

“The weather is not helping much. What a shame!” Pumpkin sighed and wiped her forehead with her soapy elbow.

“God Damn right!” The neighbor Mrs. Wang came back with her four sons. It looked like she just went out and caught them one by one, because their faces were stretched tight and they were extremely quiet. Whenever there was chaotic activity going on, she locked her family in the house so she wouldn’t have to worry about them. Today, she was obviously not happy because her husband Mr. Wang was not home yet. “All come here!” Mrs. Wang yelled at four boys, from the youngest, the seven-year old, and to the oldest, the fifteen-year old. They all wore white shirts and blue pants. Mrs. Wang poured some heated water into a basin to get ready to wash the four boys’ hair. The boys were waiting in line, nervously waiting for the treatment. After the powdered shampoo dissolved in the water, Mrs. Wang pushed the youngest boy’s head into the basin.

“Don’t move!” She jerked his body. “Lower your head!” The boy obeyed. “Why are you so stiff?”

After two minutes of rubbing and scratching, she pushed him away and pushed another boy’s head into the same soapy water, and then another until she cleaned each one of them. She changed to some fresh water and rinsed their hair several times in the same order they were washed. Before everything was done, Mr. Wang walked in slowly. His square-faced and gray-haired head was drooping as if he had done something wrong.