by Zoë S. Roy
Yezi trudged behind Yao. She asked, “How much longer does Mama have to live in the camp?”
“Not too long. Seven more years,” Yao said.
Seven years is very long time. Yezi counted. I’ll be fourteen years old. In the past seven years, neither Sang nor Yao had helped Yezi understand why her mother had become an anti-revolutionary. “Popo Yao, how old are you going to be in seven years?”
“I’m fifty-six now,” Yao said, her breathing heavy. She coughed. Asthma had been bothering her for a long time, but she had no money or the time to treat it. “I don’t know if I will live that long,” she sputtered, and coughed again.
“Yes, you can,” Yezi said, grabbing Yao’s hand. “I bet you will live one hundred years.”
Yao cleared her throat. “I’ll try.”
“Yes, you will,” Yezi said firmly. She moved closer to Yao, like a vine leaning on a tree. She kicked at a tiny stone on the road. Her eyes fixed on her brother ahead of them.
After they had walked for ten more minutes, Yezi’s stomach started growling. “Can we eat something, Popo Yao? I’m hungry,” she whined.
Yao raised her head to locate the sun. It must be noon. “Sang,” she called out, “let’s have some lunch.”
Removing the bag from her shoulder, Yao placed it on a flat stone at the edge of the road. Then from her bag, she drew out a package bound in cloth and unwrapped it, revealing several plate-sized pancakes. She picked one up and gave it to Yezi. “Eat,” Yao said. She raised her hand to beckon to Sang.
Joining them, Sang took a pancake and sat down on a patch of weeds next to Yezi. Yao passed a canteen to Yezi to drink from and then handed it to Sang. After that, she, too, ate a pancake and had some of the water from the canteen.
Lunch finished, they continued along the dusty path, an endless snake winding through the woods up to a hill. At what would be the head of the snake, they could see a courtyard walled with electric barbed wire. Beyond the yard was a wide field that resembled a dark green lake.
Yezi asked, “What is that?”
“Tea bushes,” answered Yao, reaching for Yezi’s hand again. “Let’s make our way down the slope. The camp’s there.”
They reached a shelter-like post at the gate with a rectangular placard on the door. The words on it read: “Wildcat Valley Labour Camp.” At the window, Yao drew out from her pocket a requisition letter stamped with the round, red seal of the Residents’ Committee that oversaw civilians who did not have a job assigned by the government. Passing it to the guard, she said, “Comrade, please read the letter and let us in. We are here to see Meihua Wei.”
A hand stretched out from beyond the window, took the letter, and then placed a form on the sill. “Fill this out first.”
Yao pushed Sang forward. “You do it.”
Sang carefully completed the form and returned it through the opening. Then he was given a slip of paper, with a large red stamp on it: “The pass must be returned before 3:00 p.m.”
The gate opened. Knowing where to go, Sang strode toward a two-storey concrete building in the compound. Yezi quickened her steps when she watched her brother enter the building. Her mother was waiting inside. Yao could not help but grumble, “Why are you walking so fast? Hurrying up for your next life?”
By the time Yao and Yezi had stepped through the entrance, Sang had already asked the guard to get his mother. He was sitting on a bench in the lobby and flipping through a back issue of Medicine for the Masses. Yezi and Yao slid next to him on the bench.
“Sang, how long do we have to wait?” asked Yao.
“They said about twenty minutes,” answered the boy as he glanced at the clock on the wall. “It’s 1:15 now.”
Quietly the three waited for their turn. Thirty minutes later, a uniformed guard finally escorted them to the visiting room. Yezi saw their mother first, sitting on a bench in a far corner of the room.
Meihua looked pallid and thin, but her eyes lit up as she saw her family come toward her. Another long year had passed. She hugged them one by one. Then she draped her arm gently around her daughter’s shoulder, and asked, “How is everybody? Where is your father?”
“We’re okay. Everything’s fine,” answered Sang.
Yao told Meihua that Lon had come home the week before, but a heavy rain that had lasted all day long prevented them from taking the trip to Meihua’s gulag. Yao added that Lon might come to see her if he could get some time off in the next weeks.
Uncertain of what to say, Yezi was quiet, although she had so much she wanted to tell her mother.
“I’ll tell you something,” Sang said, his tone conspiratorial. Scanning the room to be sure that nobody was listening to them, he lowered his voice and added, “I saw a documentary about President Nixon’s visit to China in February 1972.”
“Oh, really? That was eight months ago.” Meihua’s eyes beamed. “Any other news?”
“A classmate of mine, Liang, said her uncle from the States would come to visit,” said Sang. Excitement filled his voice. “Now people don’t say ‘American imperialists’ any more. Now they say ‘American friends.’”
“Son,” Meihua was whispering. “Be careful of saying ‘American friends.’ You need to read more of Chairman Mao’s Red Book.” Meihua was fearful of his enthusiasm, worried that he might let those words out at the wrong time, to the wrong people. The Cultural Revolution was not over and her heart froze at the thought of harm coming to any of her children.
She turned to Yezi and stroked her hair “You’re taller than last year,” Meihua said, smiling at the little girl. “Do you enjoy going to school?”
“Sometimes I do,” said Yezi, who liked being petted by her mother’s tender fingers. She remembered how in thunderstorms she always curled up in bed, wrapped in a blanket, where she felt safe and warm even though the roaring thunder had silenced the world, and the wind and rain threatened to come through the roof and walls. In her bed, snuggled under her blankets, she felt safe from the storm raging outside. Now her mother’s hands made her feel the same way, and she finally relaxed against her mother, seeking refuge in her arms. “Popo Yao made this for my birthday,” Yezi said, fingering her dark green blouse.
“I made it out of old curtains,” Yao said with broad smile. “I don’t have any windows to cover.”
“My children depend on you. What would they do without you? I am so grateful to you, Yao,” Meihua sighed, and looked up at Yao with a weary smile. “Have you had any news about Dahai? I am always so worried about him.”
Yao hesitated. Then she said, “Maybe he’s been too busy on the farm to write. I hope we’ll hear from him soon.”
“I know these children are a huge burden on you. I feel so bad that I haven’t been able to pay you a single fen all these years.” Meihua lowered her head to hide the tears that were welling up in her eyes.
“You gave me a home when I needed one,” Yao said. “I will always be grateful for that. Things will get better when you get out of here. Now you need only to take care of yourself,” Yao spoke as she handed a package to Meihua. “This is for you: some biscuits and a sweater I knitted for you with some used yarn.”
“It’s too much work for you.” Meihua sighed, her eyes filled with anguish.
“Your life is harder than ours. We get money from Lon every month. We manage fine.”
Meihua placed her thin hands on Yao’s arms. “Please take care of your own health.” Having spotted the guard striding over to them, Meihua wrapped her arms around her children once more. “Both of you do whatever Yao asks you to. Sang, help Yao more with family chores.”
The guard barked, “Time is up. Time is up!”
“Okay, we’re leaving.” Yao dried her eyes and drew Yezi close to her. “Reform your thoughts well. You’ll be able to come home sooner if you get pardoned,” she said, usi
ng the words she had heard were the right ones to speak.
As the three left the Wildcat Valley Labour Camp, gray clouds rolled in, veiling the sky. They returned on the same path across the field and trudged back to the station under the gloomy overcast sky.
After they had disembarked from the train and were on their way home, a torrential rain caught up with them. Carrying Yezi on her back, Yao wobbled through the downpour with Sang. By the time they had reached their apartment, they were drenched. Yao put Yezi down, and dropped her bag to the floor. Sang pulled his bag off his shoulder and carefully hung it on the wall.
“Sang, change your clothes,” Yao urged as she dragged a box from the corner and picked out some clothing. “Yezi, let me help you change into something dry.”
Outside, the rain poured, streaming down the windowpane. Wrapped in a warm blanket, Yezi quickly fell asleep.
She dreamed that she was on the back of a giant swallow soaring over a high wall where her mother in ragged clothes stood alone behind the barbed wire, waving. Yezi longed to hug her, but the swallow did not slow down. Yezi pulled back its wings, but they continued to flap, causing a swirl of air. As the wind whistled and pushed open a path, the swallow shot through the air like an arrow leaving its bow. Eyes squinting, Yezi saw her mother’s shoulder-length hair falling over her face. Yezi longed to touch her mother’s hair, but the swallow swooped over the wall and above the human figure. Yezi was close enough to notice the flash of hope in her mother’s deep-set eyes. Yezi wanted to sing: I’m a flying swallow. Her mother’s silhouetted face against the lit sky stayed with her through that rough, stormy night.
9.
ANTI-REVOLUTIONARY SLOGAN
IT WAS 1974, AND YEZI was almost at the end of Grade Two. One June morning, as the students were preparing for their math class, the head teacher, Huang, stepped into the room. “Girls and boys: please get a sheet of paper and pencil ready.” She looked solemn. In a firm voice she said, “Eyes on the board. Please copy my words. Write each sentence over and over until you fill all the lines.”
One of the students raised his hand, but Huang scowled. “No questions. Just finish your work and hand it in. Make no corrections, please.”
Turning to the board, Huang said, “Let’s start.” Slowly, she wrote: “Long live Chairman Mao!” and “Down with capitalism!”
Yezi completed the entire sheet with carefully copied characters. She was proud of her neatness.
After submitting the page to her teacher, she joined the other students in the hallway outside the classroom. A girl whispered, “Will they find out who did it? You know, the person who wrote the anti-revolutionary slogan?”
“Sure,” a boy said with a mysterious tone. “My brother said the City Public Security already sent people here.”
“Do you think they can still identify the handwriting even if the person fakes it by using a different style from his own?”
“Sure they can. They must have a special way to figure it out.”
Yezi finally understood why the teacher had asked them to copy the sentences. What did the anti-revolutionary slogan say? Who wrote it?
After school she met her classmate, Jian. Jian’s father was a medical doctor. The family lived in one of the buildings that were in a walled yard across the road from Arts Paradise. Numerous branches with palm-sized leaves, trimmed from a huge plane tree, were piled against the wall. The two girls decided to build a lean-to that they could use as a hideout with the twigs. They pulled one of the larger tree limbs out of the stack, set its end on the ground two steps apart from the yard wall and let it go. When it fell, its top reached over the wall. One by one, they placed about ten twigs side by side. Long branches full of leaves closed off one end of the lean-to. They chose two short but large branches with more leaves and tied one over the other to cover the entrance at the other end. They could lift the branch door and place it aside easily when they wanted to go in or come out of the hideout. Running back to her home, Jian later returned with two small stools. “Let’s hide in our hut,” she said. “Now open the door for me, so I can bring these inside.”
Yezi carefully held the tied-together branches and moved them aside as Jian hunched over to creep in. As Yezi followed her in and stooped into a corner, Jian lifted the branch door and pulled it over the entrance from the inside. “We can hang around here after school,” she said, giggling and admiring their new paradise.
“We can almost see through these,” Yezi said, touching the light green leaves between the twigs. “Look at this.” She pointed to a delicate butterfly on a leaf, glistening in the sunshine that reached through the gaps between twigs. “So pretty,” she murmured.
“If I can catch it, let’s make it a specimen,” Jian said, squeezing her two fingers together, inching her hand toward the butterfly.
“How?”
“You sandwich it in a book ’til it’s dried out.” Jian’s eyes glowed like a cat in the dark as she raved about the specimen. “Wait here. I have to get something to show you.”
“Get what?” asked Yezi.
Jian did not answer but scrambled out of the lean-to. A few moments later, she reappeared with a thick, brown dictionary. She flipped open a page. A dragonfly lay there flat, its twisted head and two eyeballs drooping to the sides. Its screen-like wings gleamed a blue-green. Jian said, “Take a look.”
Yezi examined the dragonfly. As she flipped to another page, she saw another insect with an oval-shaped body and small beige wings. “What’s this?” she asked.
“A moth. It changed from a silkworm after spinning its silk.”
“Really? Have you ever raised any silkworms?”
“Not yet. But I’d like to. Maybe I can get some eggs.”
Yezi said, “Oooh! I want to feed silkworms.” She felt exhilarated when she imagined the soft, glossy silken threads spun by corpulent worms. Her light brown eyes glinted. “But I am afraid of worms,” she added with a shrug.
“Hey! Do you know these words?” asked Jian, her finger pointing to words on the page.
Yezi shook her head, as she examined the book in Jian’s hand. “No. They’re foreign.”
“I thought you would know.”
“Why?”
“Your mama’s American,” Jian said, not noticing Yezi’s embarrassment. “This was my father’s English dictionary, but he said books in foreign languages are no longer of any use. When he sold his English and Russian books to a recycling guy, I begged him to keep this big one for my specimens.”
“But I can say a couple of English words,” Yezi said, her hands up with excitement.
“What are they?”
Yezi stumbled over the words a little bit. “God bless you.”
“What does that mean?” asked Jian, a puzzled look on her face.
“It means, shang-di bao-you ni. Do you get it?”
“Yeah. It sounds superstitious, but I like it anyway. Say it in English again.”
The two girls repeated “God … bless … you” over and over, giggling in their hut.
“Where are you, Yezi?” Yao’s voice was close, her tone stern. “You little rascal … don’t make me look for you!”
“Time for supper,” Yezi told her friend as she pushed open the twig door.
“Remember to keep our secret from others,” said Jian.
Yezi nodded. “See you soon,” she said and hurried away.
After supper, Yezi and her brother did their homework at the table. As she unfolded her exercise book, she remembered what she had copied from the blackboard that morning.
She picked up her pencil and wrote down the characters, “Chairman Mao,” on the page. Yezi’s eyes focused on the script. Then she scribbled “down with” next to “Chairman Mao” without thinking. As she scanned the sentence silently, she was shocked: that’s an anti-revolutio
nary slogan! She erased all the words immediately, but the strokes of the characters were still recognizable. Frightened, she furiously drew a group of stars over the faint traces. Carefully, with an eraser, she then rubbed out the stars. She felt as though she were a thief hiding something she had not stolen.
“What are you doing?” Sang asked her. “You haven’t written a single word.”
Heart pounding against her chest, she answered, “I will.” She opened the Chinese textbook, but her mind lingered on the invisible words she had erased.
The following morning, Yezi was called to the principal’s office during recess.
What have I done wrong? she wondered, as she made her way to the office, her feet dragging. She thought anxiously about the words she had written last night. Did they find out? Trembling with fear, she knocked on the door.
The middle-aged principal, Xiuming Wu, behind the desk raised her head. “Come on in,” she said, gesturing for Yezi to move closer. Her short hair was almost gray; her eyes showed concern. “Tell me where you went last Friday after school,” she said.
“Last Friday?” Yezi stood in front of the desk. Her eyes looked down to her shoes. She was puzzled and tried hard to remember what she had done that Friday. Then, she remembered. “I hung around the playground,” she answered, her eyes still fixed on the tops of her shoes.
“What did you do there?”
“I watched other students play ping-pong.”
“What else did you do after that?”
“I waited for my friend, but she didn’t show up.”
“Did you see anyone else around?” asked the principal, who was looking at Yezi intently.
“Some boys were there.”
“What did they do?”
Yezi searched her memory. “They seemed to be running after one another.”
“When did you leave there?”
“After I read a story.”
“What story?”
“A Poor Boy Saved.”
“Do you love Chairman Mao?”