by Da Chen
“You’re not going anywhere, are you?” La Shan questioned sternly, not looking up from the homework he was grading.
“I was just going to give you this.” I pulled out the piece of paper. “May I come up to your desk, please?”
“You have your confession?” he asked sharply, arching his eyebrows.
“I thought long and hard, and all that I have to say is here, honorable teacher.” I put the “confession” on his desk and turned to walk away.
“Stop!” His voice was so angry and disgusted it startled me. I stopped and stood there with my head down, afraid to look at him.
“You confessed nothing?” He screamed at me. “Did your parents tell you to write this?” He crushed the paper into a ball and threw it at me.
“No, it is all from me and it is the truth. I swear upon my ancestors’ graves that I am honest and innocent.” Tears trickled uncontrollably down my face. I was so nervous that my head began to feel hot again. Desperately, I felt myself losing my logic and calm.
“You are a liar, Chen Da! I am going to refer your counterrevolutionary acts to the principal and party secretary of the school. I wished to handle your case here, but you are not cooperating, so now you force me to go to higher authorities.”
His threats were working. My knees felt weak. I wanted to kneel before him and beg him not to report this to the principal, who was also the commune’s party secretary. Today I was the outcast in my classroom, but tomorrow the whole school would know about it. I would be finished.
“Please!” I cried. “Can you please just let it go, honorable teacher Shan? I’m very scared. Please help me?”
“Help you? How can I help you if you don’t help me?” His tone softened. “Here, take this paper back and promise to write something useful on it and bring it back tomorrow.”
I saw it as a gesture of kindness. I took the crumpled paper gratefully and quickly left school. As soon as I got home, Mom asked me, “What are you still doing with the paper?”
I told her how the teacher had softened and was giving me a second chance instead of sending my case to the principal.
“He’s tricking you again, that snake!” Mom began to sob. “Do as your father said. Confess nothing! Do you want to go to prison? Do you want to see the rest of your family in prison?” she screamed at me, trying to make me understand what was at stake. But all the tricks, threats, and political subtleties were beyond my grasp. I felt lost, but I believed in my parents’ wisdom and vowed to do as they said.
I lay in bed that night staring at the ceiling, wishing desperately that my parents were a couple of poor young farmers with no political burdens to worry about, only their wrath over the mistreatment of their young son. Then they could have gone with me to school, punched out that snake of a teacher’s teeth, thrown him to the floor, and kicked the shit out of him until he begged for mercy and swore not to lay a finger on me anymore. But Dad was burdened with political troubles of his own, my tiny mom was in no shape to perform such an act, and my landlord grandpa would be thrown into prison for even thinking of such a thing.
A trick it had been. As soon as I walked into school the following day, the teacher stopped me in the hallway and personally marched me to the principal’s office.
Thoughts about running into the fields, hiding in the woods, and never returning to the damned place passed through my mind, but I didn’t have the will to do anything. They would catch me and put me in the slammer in no time. I admired the students who passed by us, so carefree, laughing and joking. They were just starting another day of fun and learning while I was being escorted to a political questioning session, just short of wearing handcuffs.
The teacher dropped me off in the principal’s office and left. The principal didn’t even bother to look at me. He was cleaning his huge wooden desk as I stood nervously in the corner.
The principal, Mr. Gao, was a frog of a man. He had bowed legs and walked with a wide side-to-side swing. Despite a mustache, his face was bland. He was about fifty and, in addition to being the school principal, had recently been promoted to the position of party secretary. Older students once told me that he loved fondling little girls’ hands and shoulders and enjoyed having young, female teachers iron his clothes in his dormitory room late at night, while he conferred his seasoned, political wisdom on them. He was the most zealous objector to romance among the young teachers because, it was said, he couldn’t bear the idea of anyone else having his way. His wife was a heavy smoker, with yellow teeth and ugly wrinkles on her face. They were a well-matched couple.
He asked me all kinds of questions and urged me again to make a confession. I declared my innocence over and over.
For the entire week that followed, Mr. Gao met with me daily, either in between classes or after school. He went on mumbling his advice and making threats to stop my schooling. I sat quietly during those sessions, much more alert and logical than in the presence of the teacher. Though Mr. Gao was the top dog, he somehow didn’t scare me. He muttered rather than talked and he was an incoherent speaker. He would start a line of argument then totally lose himself in it until he had to ask me blankly, “Where were we?”
In the beginning, I would tell him where we had left off. Then, gradually, I told him I also forgot and he would stare at me and scratch his head. He seemed quite bored with these sessions that were getting nowhere. All I confessed to him were some minor infractions, useless garbage like stealing chalk, letting classmates copy my homework, and taking fruit from the neighbor’s fruit trees. One thing seemed clear throughout the weeklong questioning. He asked a lot of questions about my family. I was very careful not to say anything stupid that could implicate them. They were going out of their way to try and get my dad.
Finally, one day he said, “If you do not confess, I am sending your case to the commune and the police.” This time, his face was deadly serious. “You have left me no other choice. In fact, the police chief asked about you the other day and recommended that you appear on the public humiliation platform with Yu Xuang during his confession in front of the whole school.”
The mention of Yu Xuang terrified me. He had confessed to making counterrevolutionary statements and was already condemned to sweeping the dirty street of Yellow Stone. Sometimes he was sent to the same labor reform camp that my dad was in.
This was the end of me. Standing next to Yu Xuang on the platform, facing hundreds of students shouting threats and throwing bricks at me, would ruin my future forever, if I survived the session. In the people’s eyes I would be branded a counterrevolutionary like Yu Xuang. I might as well be dead already.
Gloomily, I headed for home, hoping there was a god who could turn the whole world around, send me a new, bright day full of colors, but it was hopeless. Families were registered at a certain commune. You couldn’t move anywhere else unless the government reassigned you. There was no escape.
As the day of Yu Xuang’s public denunciation approached, Mom quietly said to me, “Go pack. You are leaving tomorrow.”
“Where am I going?”
“To Wen Qui’s home.” He was a distant cousin who lived in Ding Zhuan, another tiny town about twenty miles west of Yellow Stone.
“They will catch me.”
“No, they won’t come after you. They were just threatening you.”
“What about school?” It was my future.
“We will worry about that later. You can still be the best student after missing a few lessons.”
I went into her arms. “I’m scared.”
“Don’t be.” She held me tight. “Wen Qui has already been secretly informed of your coming.”
The next day, as the sky shed its first ray of light, I crept out our back door, crossed the wooden bridge that swung and squeaked in the wind, and started my half-day’s journey on foot. I carried a bag of clothes, a small bag of dried yams to contribute to Wen Qui’s household when I got there, and two pieces of sweet rice cake, which were my favorite treats, and which
Mom had stayed up late preparing for me. As soon as I crossed the Dong Jing River, I followed Mom’s instructions: ducked low, and disappeared into the lush, mile-long fields of sugarcane to avoid bumping into anyone. The morning dew still kissed the sharp leaves that innocently scratched my face and arms.
Beyond the sugarcane field lay a narrow dirt road winding into the mountains. Though I had walked this scenic path a few times before, it was scarily quiet in the early dawn, so I sang out loud and whistled as I ran along, my bag bouncing on my back. When I was halfway to my destination I sat down to rest by a large pond. I leaned against an old pine tree and unwrapped my first piece of rice cake. As I sank my teeth into the sticky sweet rice, I was reminded once more of how good life could be if one weren’t a political fugitive running for his life.
I took off my shoes and waded into the shallow edge of the pond, scooping up a handful of the fresh spring water to drink. It tasted as sweet as the mountain itself. Everything was so peaceful I couldn’t help skipping a few rocks and watching the ripples spread out gently. I remembered the time my dad and I competed at this very pond to see who could skip a rock the farthest. I had thrown a stone so hard that I had skidded and fallen into the soft young wheat, and now, again, I could hear Dad’s hearty laughter at my antics.
When I got to the Quis’ home, it was lunchtime. Wei’s sister was the wife of my uncle. The family had been forced to move to this small mountain village remote from Yellow Stone because his father had been a wealthy fabric merchant. Wen once said his father could judge the quality of a fabric by blindly feeling it behind his back. The Quis lived in the house of a former landlord, a man whose family had all been executed by the Communists.
Wen was no more than twenty-eight and was really fun to be with. He played the er hu, a two-stringed instrument that sounded like a violin, as well as a bamboo flute. He sang beautifully, and could write wonderful prose. He was a handsome, carefree, romantic artist condemned to farming in the village. He was also the first man I knew who had not found his wife through a matchmaker, but on his own. I had known them during their courtship several years ago, when he had been our neighbor in Yellow Stone. He and his future wife would play and sing in their backyard in the moonlight. His wedding was the saddest one I ever attended. The bride’s family had tied her to her bed in an attempt to prevent the ceremony, because she was from a worker’s family, a politically good family, and had been promised to a distant cousin who was a rich Hong Kong businessman. Wen was from a politically bad family. Her brothers and father had caught Wen and beaten him severely. But later that evening the bride escaped to Wen’s house and they were married beneath a kerosene lamp with a few close family members in attendance, and with a meal of fried noodles to celebrate.
Wen and his lovely wife met me at the door and invited me in.
“Da, this is your home. We want you to enjoy your stay here,” Wen said, relieving me of my sack. “Don’t be afraid here.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Do you think they will find me?”
“No,” his wife said firmly. “We will not let anything happen to you. You’re only a child. Who are these damned, heartless people?” she exclaimed, her eyes misty. “They won’t find you. If they come looking, I will hide you in a safe place. They can’t do anything to me. I’m the daughter of a worker’s family, remember?” She laughed and wiped away her tears. “Besides, Wen is the personal bookkeeper and fortune-teller of our commune’s party secretary. He wouldn’t do a thing without checking with Wen first.”
They fed me and gave me a bundle of old books to read. At night, they were the same hopeless romantics I had known from before. They read each other poems, shared old photos, and sang songs, while the candlelight danced in the mountain breeze coming through the window. Wen’s parents, who lived upstairs, called them crazy, but their love for each other warmed my heart in that lonely and remote village so far away from home.
I stayed there for a week before it was deemed safe for me to return. I did not go back to school for the rest of the semester. I heard that at the public humiliation meeting Yu Xuang was sentenced to four years of labor reform in a juvenile prison. He was beaten unconscious after being thrown off the stage. No one had come to inquire about me. Mom said later that she had spent the entire day on her knees in front of Buddha, praying for my safety.
I QUIT SCHOOL after I came back from hiding. I kept expecting the teacher, the principal, or the police chief to show up any day for my capture. I asked Jie and Buckle, who still talked to me occasionally, whether they had heard anything about a public meeting to be held soon in the school. They said no.
Every morning at eight-thirty I climbed up to our attic, which was the highest point of our house, and sat on the windowsill, looking out the large window and listening to the melody of the distant school bell ring from afar. “Ding, dong…Ding, dong.…” It was time for classes to begin. A skinny teacher nicknamed “Monkey” threw his entire weight on the rope, pulling the giant bell and grinning like a buffoon each time it tolled.
In the afternoons, I sat behind our closed front door and shelled the fresh fava beans that my brother and sisters had harvested in the fields. I was working to justify my existence. On a good day, I could pick three large baskets with only a ten-minute break for lunch and a few pee runs in between. At four, I would crack our door open just enough to peer out at my classmates as they made their way home from school. They were so happy and carefree. None of them felt like a criminal in hiding, condemned to petty labor. They all went to school and learned wonderful things about the world.
I missed school terribly, and would ask Buckle what lesson they were on, and who was sitting in my seat. But deep inside, I was sick of being such a weak person. If Dad knew I was being so nostalgic about a place that had treated me like dirt he would think me a wimp. So I looked away from the door and continued shelling my endless baskets of fava beans.
One day Dad came home on a short leave, sat me down beside him. “Maybe you should go and apprentice as a carpenter or a blacksmith,” he said. “They make a decent living. But they have to work their balls off.” I remembered seeing our town blacksmith’s balls swinging in and out of his loose shorts as he hammered away at his anvil. I smiled at my Dad’s humor, which was meant to cheer me up, but I wasn’t too keen on those options. They weren’t my choices. I had watched carpenters at construction sites, dangling dangerously from rooftops. Blacksmiths made good money, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend the rest of my life swinging heavy hammers near a blazing fire.
“How about learning to play a flute or something?” I suggested.
“Those are nice jobs,” he agreed, “but you have to go to music school and I don’t think they would take anyone from a landlord’s family.”
I nodded with understanding.
He sensed my lack of enthusiasm. He suggested we wait a while before sending me off to a carpentry shop somewhere in the mountains, where young apprentices not only did the most menial tasks, but also washed the teacher’s feet, brewed his tea, fed his babies, and paid a huge tuition. At the end of three years, the qualified student had to work for the teacher, free of charge, for one additional year.
The following month I spent my time weeding the sweet potatoes in the fields, building a dirt wall in our backyard, carrying lunches and dinners to my brother and sisters in the fields in little bamboo baskets slung over my shoulders, and spreading wet hay to dry before storing it in the evenings. Bugs crawled everywhere and the moist hay’s sharp, blade-like edges made my skin itch constantly.
As I became more and more settled into the routine of a young farmhand, part of me was dying inside. I felt old and rejected, a misfit. The people I worked with were all older farmers who could no longer work the fields. One was a toothless mute, who yelled at me like an animal, made obscene gestures behind young women’s backs, and laughed like a hyena when I repeated his gestures back to him. I was merely keeping him company.
I no longer pla
yed out in the street. I had aged and had become an outcast. By now, everyone knew the reason why I had quit school. Sometimes the kids shouted outside my house, calling me the “little counterrevolutionary,” daring me to come out and fight them. I would clutch a sharp spade and wait behind the door in case they burst through and attacked us. A few times, stones were thrown against our windows. One morning Mom found a dead bird in our backyard, headless. I suspected the teacher had urged his gang to come after me. Whenever Mom asked me to run out to buy some soy sauce, I checked the street first, then darted out and back. The last thing I wanted to do was cause any more trouble.
But every night before I went to sleep, I wrote in my diary, trying not to forget the words I had learned. I made up a lot of signs for the words I didn’t know. There was nothing good to write about. Often I found myself drawing a picture of La Shan, the chinless skunk, and adding a huge bullet hole on his forehead. Someday I wanted to avenge all the things that had been done to me. Maybe when I grew up or maybe when the world changed.
Then one day a kindhearted teacher named Mr. Lan from our neighborhood dropped by to have tea with us. He casually mentioned that he had brokered a deal with the school to allow me to enter group eight of the fourth grade. He said, smiling, “It’s better than being a farmer and genuine pearls shine even in darkness.”
I remembered that line for a long time.
With mixed feelings of joy, fear, curiosity, and suspicion, I dusted off my books and prepared for the frightening ordeal of going back to face the very same people I had tried to avoid.
On Monday morning, shock hit me as I stepped into the classroom of the fabled group eight. The kids hooted at me. It took me a second before I noticed the seating arrangement was unlike that in any other classroom. The desks were separated into two corners. One was for eight girls in the front. The other was in the far back corner for the boys. There was a large, empty space in the middle of the room where trash and paper planes were piled up.