Bend, Not Break

by Ping Fu

  “Hong-Hong, this looks amazing,” I said, assuming that she had discovered the items near a trash bin, as I had done with most of our furniture. “Where did you find these beautiful decorations?”

  Hong smiled smugly, clasping her hands behind her back as though hiding something. “I didn’t find them. I made them.”

  I approached the stool and took the tablecloth between my fingers, admiring the knitting more closely. It looked perfectly made. “You made this?” I said, eyes wide.

  Hong nodded, swaying from side to side with excitement.

  “But how?” I asked.

  “Ms. Yang showed me how to sew, knit, and crochet!” Hong burst out, her voice high and her speech rapid. She pulled a ball of yarn and two knitting sticks out from behind her back, displaying them to me with an immense grin.

  Hong’s outgoing personality amazed me. I kept to myself, rarely speaking to neighbors, and I had few friends. Hong, on the other hand, talked to everyone, serving as the eyes and ears of Room 202. She knew the names of all our neighbors as well as what they did on any given day, who their nearest relatives were, and what sorts of treats they might have to offer her. I didn’t even know who Ms. Yang was, and here Hong had convinced the stranger to give her sewing lessons.

  I asked Hong how long it had taken her to learn. She shrugged. “I don’t know, a few days maybe. I just watched Ms. Yang and copied her. It’s easy!”

  “You are so talented, Hong-Hong,” I told her, my voice cracking with pride.

  Later, Hong knit hats, gloves, and scarves for us. Displaying an avant-garde sense of fashion that would make her famous in this day and age, she also mined the streets and garbage bins collecting the filthiest, most worn-out bits of clothing with the most outrageous colors and patterns. She would wash these, cut out the usable pieces of fabric, and stitch them together like quilts. Most Chinese at the time had few clothing items and were forced to sew discreet patches over holes in their shirts and pants. But our clothes, designed by Hong, proudly exhibited their patchwork. Sometimes, strangers on the street would point at us and laugh: “Look at those children, so poor their clothes are stitched together from rags!” But I loved our unique clothing and wore it proudly, feeling more like an artist than a street urchin.

  In spite of her ability to learn quickly, Hong did not have the patience to stick with any one subject or task for long. I had more persistence and usually kept at whatever I was doing until I achieved perfection, so I gained the reputation of being the more intelligent child. But in my opinion, Hong was the smarter one. She was fearless in trying new things. She painted our walls in bright colors, using paint left on the street by Red Guards, who updated Communist propaganda daily. She made up dishes with limited ingredients, like a soup with chicken’s blood that she called “red tofu.” She built a playhouse with bamboo sticks. She thrived by cultivating her creative projects, which gave her a stable and enduring sense of identity and self-confidence.

  —

  A terrible typhoon hit Nanjing in the early spring of 1970, when I was eleven and Hong was seven. The skies emptied oceans of rain upon us, causing the streets to flood. The wind screeching past our windows sounded like goblins howling in the night. Massive, elegant sycamore trees, which dotted the city landscape, toppled like children’s toys. We did not dare go outside to play.

  I thought my little sister might lose her mind being cooped up in our tiny dormitory for days on end. But she and Su, a girl Hong’s age who lived at the other end of the building, entertained themselves by running up and down our long hallways, giggling like crazy.

  Su’s father was a Russian engineer who had come to China in 1956 to help construct the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, a double-decker source of pride for our city and our country. He had fallen in love with and married Su’s mother, a ballerina and classic Chinese beauty with fair skin and fine features. Su looked like a doll, with curly brown hair and big round eyes.

  A “foreign devil,” Su’s father had committed suicide when the Cultural Revolution started, jumping out of a window. Su’s grief-stricken mother adored her only daughter. But like all other black elements in those days, she would disappear for days on end with no explanation—summoned to the countryside or to military service or simply for interrogation. She was likely away on one of these assignments when the typhoon hit.

  To this day, Hong has a piercing, infectious laugh that everyone who knows her can easily recognize. That evening, as the typhoon wailed, Hong and Su made their usual ruckus in the dorm hallway, playing their chasing games. I worried that a neighbor would complain.

  Suddenly, cries of a different nature echoed down the hall—howls of agony from both Hong and Su. I sprinted out of Room 202, searching for my little sister. She and Su were flailing about at the far end of the hall, writhing in pain, their faces twisted like demon masks. They had knocked over a large pot of boiling water from one of the hallway stoves, where a neighbor had been preparing a late dinner or perhaps a bath. In typical Hong form, the spill had caused the maximum damage possible: all the water from the pot had poured directly onto the two girls, covering most of their bodies with burns.

  I looked up and down the hall, but no neighbors came rushing to our rescue; people were still too frightened of being punished for overtly helping black elements. I had no choice but to manage the situation myself. I had to get the girls to the health clinic as quickly as possible. Trying not to touch their blisters, which only made them scream louder, I scooped up Su, who was smaller and lighter than Hong, and held her in front of me. Then I commanded my little sister to climb onto my back.

  I stumbled down the stairs and out into the night. The rain had stopped, but knee-deep water ran through the streets and toppled trees were scattered everywhere. I had only about half a mile to travel, yet I feared that I would not make it. I moved slowly. When I reached the first downed tree, I left Hong on a patch of higher ground and climbed over carrying just Su. Then I placed her down and came back for Hong. I had to do this several times, making separate trips with each girl.

  One tree I encountered was too high for me to scale. I would have to duck under it, I decided, swimming through the floodwater. Blessedly, the girls weighed less in the water. I thought they would moan even more, but instead, their cries lessened. “Get down in the water, please,” they begged me. Apparently, the cool liquid soothed their burns.

  As we came within sight of the health clinic at last, I found my legs giving out. We had reached a slight hill, so the road was no longer flooded. Dropping to my hands and knees, I piled both girls onto my back and crawled the last hundred meters, scraping my knees to a bloody pulp.

  The moment I pushed the clinic doorway open and deposited Su and Hong onto the floor, I passed out. I came to a few moments later. The girls still howled with agony as a nurse peered into my face, attempting to revive me. “No, no. Not me,” I murmured. “I am fine. Help them.” The nurse left me lying on the floor, where I waited for the next hour while Hong and Su received medical care.

  Fortunately, the doctors said, the girls had spilled water and not oil on themselves. Their wounds, though extensive, were not deep. If treated properly and with careful attention for the next several days, the skin would heal. Also, the trip to the clinic through the storm water, while risky in terms of infection, had actually helped to treat the burns and lessen their severity. As for me, I ought to get some rest. The nurses offered to help me carry the girls back home to our dorm room though the flooded streets.

  For the next three days, with Su’s mother still absent, I tended to my sister and her friend. Every few hours, I cleansed their burns with rubbing alcohol as the doctors had instructed, constantly soaking their bandages to keep them wet. Luckily, these supplies were cheap and readily available.

  Hong and Su proved to be surprisingly gracious patients. Usually, Hong whined whenever I treated her injuries. But the girls said thank y
ou when I applied fresh, cooling alcohol to their wounds. Though they both moaned in pain from time to time, I could tell each was trying to put on a braver face than the other. Whenever I asked how they were doing, they would quote a famous Russian movie, Lenin in 1918, which we had watched time and again during our study sessions: “We will have bread. Everything will be okay.”

  When Hong felt better, she said, “I don’t know how you carried me and Su all that way—we weigh more than you. You scared us so much when you fell down. I thought you had died. I thought we killed you.”

  I flexed my arm, showing off my bicep, and smiled. “It’s okay, Hong-Hong. I was so worried about you two, I somehow found the strength.”

  “We could have walked ourselves, but we were bad. We wanted you to carry us,” Hong apologized.

  I was touched by her gesture, but I shook my head. “No, you couldn’t have walked, Hong-Hong. You were too badly hurt. Don’t feel bad about that.”

  When Su’s mother returned and found out what had happened, she raced over to Room 202. Falling to her knees before me, she clasped my hands in hers and thanked me for taking such good care of her daughter. Then she swept Su into her loving arms and carried her back to their room.

  Su and her mother moved out of our dormitory a few months later. I never found out where to or why, but I had grown accustomed to living with such unsolved mysteries. They happened all the time.

  —

  I saw Shanghai Mama and Papa a few times during the Cultural Revolution. The first time was after receiving the letter from Shanghai Mama in 1967, about nine months after I had been sent to Nanjing. Homesickness had overwhelmed me. Trains and buses were free for anyone to ride, and some days there were no struggle or study sessions. I was too young to understand the danger, so I sneaked off to Shanghai one day.

  Upon arrival, I hopped aboard Streetcar Number 24 and appeared without warning at my old house. I didn’t know the villa had been confiscated by the government and divided up. But I found Shanghai Mama in the one room that had been left to her and Papa, on the second floor. We clung to each other for a few precious hours, crying and bemoaning the circumstances that had forced our separation. These were stolen moments. I had to return the next day to avoid being found out and severely punished.

  The visit proved emotionally painful for me. As time went by, I also came to understand that I could bring trouble with these visits—not just to me, but also to my family. By the time I was ten, I had let go of the hope of ever visiting my Shanghai Mama again. I even stopped writing letters to her. I had to be strong and accept my situation: Hong and I were on our own now. I couldn’t rely on anyone other than myself.

  Then, in 1971, when I was thirteen, my birth mother came back to live with us. I never had dreamed about being reunited with Nanjing Mother and Father, since I had spent so little time with them as a child and never accepted them as my real parents. So when Nanjing Mother walked back into Hong’s life and my own on a chilly autumn day, ours was not a typical reunion. When she appeared at the broken door to Room 202, she looked haggard and emaciated in her worn-out coveralls and shoes. She showed no love or excitement at seeing us—not even with Hong, whom she had raised. We circled each other warily.

  “Would you like something to eat?” I asked. She nodded, so I walked over to my bag of rice and scooped some out into the cooking pot.

  “What is this?” my mother’s voice cried, rising suddenly. She was glancing over my shoulder. “This rice is moldy.”

  I remained silent as I added water and walked into the hallway to start the cooking fire. We were lucky to have rice at all, moldy or not. At times we had been on the verge of starving to death, surviving only thanks to the kindness of our neighbors. Surely my mother must know this? Anyway, after so many bitter meals, I didn’t even notice how awful this old rice tasted. It seemed normal to me.

  Nanjing Mother trailed me out into the hall, where her voice escalated. “You’re feeding Hong-Hong moldy rice? Wash it! Wash it until it is clean!” She took the rice pot from me and started to rub the rice in her palm under the freezing cold running water. She rubbed and rubbed until her fingers turned red and I saw tears in her eyes.

  My skin flushed purple with embarrassment as my neighbors peered their heads out of their doorways. I felt my resentment toward my mother harden into a stone in the pit of my stomach. But, faithful to being a good Chinese daughter who would never disrespect a parent, I retreated, bowing my head and silently starting the fire in the coal-burning stove. Nanjing Mother quit her scrubbing with a sigh of frustration, passed me the rice pot, and marched off down the hall.

  “Welcome home,” I muttered under my breath.

  —

  Over the following weeks, the stone of resentment in my stomach only grew. Nanjing Mother moved in with Hong and me. Cramped as our dorm room was, there was nowhere else for her to go. I wanted so much to be able to tell her about the bitter meals, the incident on the soccer field, and the suffering I had endured, as I would have if Shanghai Mama had arrived to live with us. But I couldn’t share any of this with Nanjing Mother, because when I looked into her eyes, I didn’t see love—only neutral consideration or anger. I didn’t feel that I could cuddle up or open my heart to her, so instead I ignored her. Whenever she asked me a question or criticized me, I shot her a dirty look. I could tell how much my silent treatment bothered her, and it enhanced my sense of self.

  I did break my silence to ask Nanjing Mother why she had given me away to Shanghai Mama to raise. Her answer made me sad. “I never wanted to have children,” she said, gazing off into the distance, her voice soft as a whisper. She went on to explain that Hong and I were unwanted pregnancies, our existence due to China’s “Hero Mother” policy, which was modeled after a similar agenda in Stalin’s Soviet Union. At the time we were born, Mao was encouraging women to have more children. Birth control was unavailable and abortions illegal.

  “I had no choice other than to give birth to you. But I needed to work—I had no time to care for you,” Nanjing Mother explained. “I asked Shanghai Mama to come to Nanjing and help during labor, then take you to live with her when you were eleven days old.”

  I felt lucky to have grown up in the comforting embrace of my Shanghai family, but Nanjing Mother’s story closed my heart to her even further.

  One day, Hong and I went to pick mushrooms from the forest not far from the NUAA campus. Not knowing the edible from the poisonous ones, we picked and ate many beautiful-looking specimens. The next day, we both fell ill. Hong lay in bed helplessly crying and begging for water in a sweet voice, while I stubbornly and silently stayed out of bed, cleaning up our room whenever she or I made a mess throwing up.

  Nanjing Mother could not stop Hong from whining or me from moving about rather than lying down to rest. Frustrated, she said, “Why can’t you add yourselves together and divide by two? That way you both would be more balanced people. You are driving me crazy!”

  My mother quickly learned to stay away from my affairs. She had been home for a few weeks, earning a small salary from working at a factory, when she came back one afternoon with presents for Hong and me. We opened them enthusiastically; it had been years since either one of us had expected to receive a gift from our parents. She had bought both of us skirts with her first month’s wages, she told us proudly.

  “Mother,” I chastised her, “you don’t know anything! Hong and I would get in trouble for wearing these skirts. We must wear clothes or uniforms like the other children. Anyway, how much money did you spend on these? We need the money you earn to pay for food. How could you waste it on frivolous clothing?”

  After that, Nanjing Mother turned over her paycheck each month and all the household management—including budgeting, cleaning, clothing purchases, and meal preparation—to me. I had been taking care of it successfully prior to her return, after all. At least my skills in this arena earned me some
praise from her. “I don’t know how you do it. You are never stingy with money, but you know how to spend it wisely. You are very sensible, Ping,” Nanjing Mother said.

  —

  Even though Nanjing Mother and I did not show each other much affection, she was my birth mother and I longed for her approval. The first Chinese New Year after she returned, she invited a few of her colleagues from the factory over for a New Year’s Eve dinner, announcing that I would be the chef since she didn’t know how to cook. The pressure was on. The most important holiday in China traditionally is celebrated with a banquet, a never-ending parade of elegant dishes. In addition, one of our guests would be the lead Communist Party member for the factory, the person Nanjing Mother certainly would be most eager to impress. Preparing this meal would prove extra challenging because food was scarce and we received rations for everything.

  I had saved enough money to buy extra fresh vegetables, which were relatively cheap. I also had been raising a hen and a rooster for the past year, so I had extra eggs. Chickens were the only pets residents of NUAA were permitted to have, and almost every family had received at least one by 1970. I had been raising mine since they were chicks in a cardboard box in my dorm room, feeding them scraps of rice along with mealworms that I dug up from the earth. The chickens’ beaks would tickle me as I held the food for them in my cupped hands. I named my hen Lemon, after her bright yellow feathers. I called my rooster Prince because he loved to flourish his white tail when we walked.

  Once Lemon and Prince were fully grown, I had to keep them outside. Learning from my neighbors, I constructed a cage from bamboo in the courtyard against the brick wall next to our apartment building. Others told me that hens were picky about laying eggs—their nests had to be just so. I added an extra-thick layer of hay at the bottom of my cage to keep my chickens soft and warm.