Last Kiss in Tiananmen Square (2 page)

“Hi, Baiyun. You’re back.” Lao Zheng came out and startled her.

“Shh, don’t wake up Father,” said Baiyun, putting her index finger on her lips. She turned around and saw her father still sound asleep. She sometimes wasn’t sure whether he was really sleeping. She thought maybe her father pretended to be asleep all the time since the reality was far too ugly to see. Baiyun ignored Lao Zheng and went back to reading the newspaper.

“Just like your mother said, our great intellectual even makes use of her meal time to enrich her mind. I would say that’s why you are ten times smarter than your mother.” Lao Zheng edged himself into a chair next to Baiyun as if afraid of wrinkling his freshly ironed white shirt and brown pants. He was a handsome man with a tall solid body and a square weathered face. His eyes, though small, were full of charm.

“Yes, it’s a big paper. I have to read fast,” said Baiyun. She ignored him and kept her eyes on the paper.

“Your mother and I wondered where you were this morning.”

“I went to a book discussion. We discussed the Shakespeare’s play called ‘Romeo and Juliet’.”

“Okay. I think your mother has told me about this play.”

“Good.”

“My mind is getting rusty. You can correct me if I’m wrong. Has they both killed themselves in the end?”

“Ya. Only true lovers will die for each other.”

“Oh, I see. I heard your mother say the same thing.” He leaned forward, lowered his voice and pretended to be mysterious.

“How about you?” Baiyun turned around and stared at him. “Are you willing to die for love or you’d rather die for money?”

“A good question. I haven’t decided yet. It depends on how much your mother loves me.” He winked at her and asked, “Can you lend me a copy to read?”

“What are you two talking about? It sounds so interesting.” Meiling strolled into the room wearing a red silk blouse and a pair of white pants. Her black perm hair was tied up behind her head with a tiger eye barrette.

“About books,” Baiyun murmured and dropped her head.

“Really? I didn’t know he could carry on such a serious conversation,” Meiling winked at Lao Zheng. She put her palms against her waist and tilted her upper body back a little.

“Hey, I only talk about intelligent things with an intelligent person.” Lao Zheng sat back and scooted away from Baiyun.

“Mother, I’m going back to school.” Baiyun jumped up and began collecting the dirty dishes on the table. She could never bear to witness Meiling, Lao Zheng and her father in the same room. She heard stirring in her father’s bed. She imagined her father standing up and finally confronting Meiling and Lao Zheng. She sensed a volcano was about to erupt here in her own family. She would be safer back at school.

“You are leaving? Really? Why so soon? Why don’t you stay? Your uncle and I are planning to take you out for dinner tonight.”

“No, Mother. Please understand. My roommate Yumei is sick. I have to go back to take care of her. Besides, there must be a lot going on around the campus.”

“Okay, I wouldn’t hold you back. But, be careful. Keep in mind that you are going to America in three months. Don’t get involved too much with those student activists, especially that Yumei. She is only interested in sleeping around. How awful?”

“Yes, Mother.” Baiyun said and pursed her lips. Still being a virgin, she was not envious of Yumei.

“Okay, you’d better get ready.” Meiling and Lao Zheng went back to Meiling’s room.

Baiyun took some clothes from the dresser drawer and a few tea eggs and apples from the refrigerator. Before she stepped out the door, she heard Meiling’s voice.

“Don’t you want to say goodbye to Uncle Zheng, and… your father?”

“Bye, Uncle Zheng,” Baiyun mumbled. After that she went to her father’s bed and said “Father, I’m leaving.” Her father opened his eyes. “Oh, you’re leaving. See you.” His lips trembled and then he closed his eyes as though nothing had happened. Baiyun felt a stir in her heart but she could do nothing but leave this mess behind her.

She walked to her bicycle, parked under the window in front of their apartment. She unlocked it and hung the bag of food on one side and the clothes on the other side of the handlebars.

It was unusual weather for April, warm and humid, quite a change from the normal dry weather of Beijing’s spring.

On the Beijing Industrial University campus, life was going on as usual. Baiyun rode her bike slowly among people who were just returning from work. Some of them rode with full loads, bags of groceries on each side of their handle-bars, wives with children on their laps, sitting together on the back fender seats.

No traffic police were at present on campus. Drivers of cars did whatever they could to go by; bicycles swerved through the crowd; pedestrians wandered on both sides of the road; and children played in the middle of the street. “Dingling!” A bicycle bell rang behind her. A young woman, with a head full of hair curlers and a wash basin full of dirty clothes tied onto her bike seat, swung by Baiyun like a gust of wind. She must have just come back from the community baths and gotten all her energy from the heat.

Ten minutes later when Baiyun arrived at the gate of the Beijing University campus, the guard hollered at her, “Your student I.D., please!”

She showed it to him and rode on. School officials enforced the gate only on special occasions and she wondered what caused it today. Although it was Sunday afternoon, the streets were crowded with students coming back early from home, and Baiyun sensed tension in the air. People walked faster. Their faces were solemn instead of happy and relaxed from a weekend’s break. Some carried colored poster board under their arms. Along the gray-brick dormitory buildings, huge computer printouts hung out of windows saying, “Yaobang is gone, we mourn,” or “Yaobang, we are never going to forget you,” or “Yaobang, rest your soul, we will carry on your duty.” They flapped in the wind and made a crackling sound. As she approached the “triangle”, a famous poster area and students’ gathering place, she saw even more people. Layer upon layer of fresh new posters plastered the poster stand. Students were jammed in front of it on tiptoes. As an experienced junior, she decided to go back to her dormitory first and join the crowd later. She knew this was likely the beginning of a new student movement.

She arrived at her dormitory, Building 27, and parked her bike. The long hallway spanning the ground floor was like a dark tunnel. Every time she walked into it, she felt like she was walking toward eternity. She climbed the cement staircases to the fourth floor. She stopped for a while to catch her breath. She reached her dormitory room and found the door closed. A pile of sunflower seed shells littered the hallway outside of the room. She knocked and quickly went back to the hallway

“Who is it?” her roommate, Yumei, asked.

The door slid open. As soon as Yumei’s face appeared, Baiyun jumped right in front of her.

“Ah,” Yumei cried, “Baiyun, you’ve scared me.” They hugged each other. “It’s nice of you to come back early.”

As usual, the room was in chaos. The dormitory room for six was just big enough for three double bunk beds on each side and a shared multi- purpose desk in the middle. The desk was also used as a communal dining table and now was covered with dirty dishes and leftover food.

“Are you expecting Longfe?” Baiyun asked.

“Not really. I’m just bored. He was here Friday night and left for home on Saturday. Then Liu Ping came over for a while. I kicked him out.”

“Why?”

“He was so boring. I’m just bored. I want to cry, cry really loud.” Yumei’s face lengthened. Her almond eyes brimmed with tears.

“Then go and cry.” Baiyun shrugged. Sometimes Yumei’s theatrics went too far.

“No, I don’t want to. People will think I’m crazy.” Yumei dove back onto her bed and buried her head in the pillow.

“So what? So many people on campus want to cry out loud. If you do it, they will all follow you.”

“Yes, and then I’ll be the toast of the campus.” She jumped up, waving her arms in the air as if she were dancing. “Let’s take a bath. I haven’t taken a bath for a week. I stink.”

“Are you up to it?” She asked

“I feel fine now. Let’s go.” Yumei pulled a suitcase out from under her bed, took out a red sweater and a pair of blue jeans, and put them on. Then she threw her pajamas into the pile of blankets, wrinkled sheets, and dirty clothes on her bed.

Baiyun also took out some clean clothes from the plastic bag she had brought from home. She wrapped them up with a towel, and put them into a washbasin along with soap, shampoo and a comb. Yumei followed suit.

“Let’s go before I become the toast of the campus,” said Yumei while rushing down the stairs, two steps at a time. She is really charged up, Baiyun said to herself. She was always surprised by how fast Yumei’s moods could change.

Although they were both about 5’4”, Baiyun and Yumei were built quite differently. Baiyun had grown up in Beijing and was a typical northerner with darker, rougher skin, a big waist and a plump body. She was actually a beautiful woman with big, dark eyes, thick eyebrows and exceptional red lips. But she often hid behind her glasses because she wanted to keep the boys away so that she could concentrate on her studies. Yumei was from a small town in southern China. She had a dancer’s body with narrow shoulders, small waist and slim body. She had surprisingly large breasts that dominated her figure. Her outgoing personality made her even more beautiful. She was always proud of the interest shown by many of the male students. Study for her was a secondary matter, though she managed to do it well.

The cherry blossoms were out and crocuses were blooming all over the campus. The baths were located near their dormitory, just across a small brick road. The streets were unusually quiet. A mourning atmosphere persisted. Even the sunset looked especially red.

“What did you do during the weekend?” Here came Yumei’s usual question.

“I went to a book discussion and had an ‘intellectual conversation’ with my mother’s boyfriend.”

“Oh, my great intellectual! You mean you spent the whole weekend studying? How boring!”

“Why not? I like it, especially when I’m reading a good book, I don’t need to sleep.”

“Amazing! How is your mother’s new boyfriend?”

“I don’t like him!”

“Why?”

“Because he is such a stupid shit.”

“Woo! Is he younger than your mother? That may explain your jealousy.”

“Ten years younger. Come on, I’m not jealous. I just don’t like the way he looks at me. It’s full of lust.”

“Ha, ha. You should like it when a man thinks you are attractive.”

“I don’t think so, especially when he is a stupid man. Besides, I don’t want to fight a man with Mother. Her life is hard enough.”

“I bet you are still a virgin, Baiyun.”

“So, what?” she replied, feeling somewhat embarrassed. “I know you are always secretly having sex with Longfe and whoever else. Everyone is talking about it. I would rather study. Youth is too precious to be wasted on anything else.”

“Yes, exactly. Youth is too precious to waste. We should have as many experiences as possible before we finally have to get married.”

“Why do you have to experience it all when you are young? My mother is forty-six-years old and she’s dating a thirty-six-year old man.”

“Your mother is incredible. I admire her. How about you?”

“Me? I don’t know. ”

They arrived at the baths, threw their pre-purchased little white tickets into a hand-made wooden box by the door, and walked right by the guard. The guard, a little old lady, sat there motionless and did not even bother to lift her thin, rice-paper-like face away from her magazine to look at them.

A gust of cold wet wind hit them because the baths were not very crowded, making the space colder than usual. Not enough steam had been generated by the showers to warm the place. The ceiling window was cracked open as usual, which was necessary when the place was crowded and hot. Nobody ever bothered to close it when it was cold.

They walked through dressing rooms filled with white painted wooden lockers stacked together against both sides of the wall to the innermost room, hoping it was warmer. They set their washbasins on the bench.

“Wow, it’s so cold here.” said Yumei, shrinking her neck into her sweater collar.

“We have to strip down and run.” Baiyun found a better-looking cabinet where the clasp of the lock was not broken and wiped the inside with her palm to see whether or not it was clean.

As they removed their clothing, they shivered and romped together toward the showers, carrying their soap, towels, and basins.

“You stink, Baiyun.” Yumei covered her nose with her towel.

“Really, how come I can’t smell it?”

“Because you are used to the smell of your stinky armpits.”

“Why am I the only one who has stinky armpits? I bet you do, too. Let me smell yours.” Baiyun pulled the towel away from Yumei and smelled it. “Mmm... Smells wonderful. It’s the perfume. No wonder you smell so good.”

“Stop.” Yumei slapped Baiyun on the arm. “It’s better than smelling like a wolf.”