by Weihua Zhang
Second brother and me (1959)
Growing up, I was always afraid of Father and carefully stayed out of his way. Truth be told, none of us children were close to Father. Second Brother and I were especially nervous around him, tiptoeing in the house whenever Father was home. Years later, Mama shed light on our fear of Father. During the Great Famine, Father often lamented over meals that there were two children too many in our household. One day, Mama decided that she had heard it enough. She raised a meat cleaver and calmly asked Father, “Just tell me which two you don’t want.” Father shut up right then and there. That was Mama: like a fiercely protective hen, she had us safely tucked under her warm, comforting wings.
But Mama’s wings could be heavy, even suffocating, at times. Many a time, I wanted to break loose from her wings. Yet Mama saw no wrong in her control of me, her youngest and meekest child, and dictated her terms. I started high school in 1972. By then, after more than two decades of isolation from the western world, China slowly opened herself up. Some girls in my school started having perms and wearing fancy-looking clothes sent to them by their overseas relatives. I wanted to be just like them. Mama dismissed it as a fad. She considered this attention to one’s appearance—hairdos, trendy clothes, makeup, and high heels—a distraction. “You are not going to get your teachers’ attention and respect just because you wear fashionable clothes or have fancy hairdos every day. They like you when you can correctly answer all the questions. They like you even more when your clothes are plain but neat, when your eyes are buried in the textbooks, and when your hairdo does not overshadow your character.” Mama even picked out a new hairstyle for me: a short, athletic cut, just like this movie character had in Woman Basketball Player No.5. No bangs. “You don’t want bangs blocking your vision. You need to see clearly every word your teachers have written on the blackboard,” she added adamantly.
I had never watched the popular Chinese movie Woman Basketball Player No.5 and I wondered why. A quick Internet search yielded a possible explanation for Mama’s insistence on my having short hair. That movie was released in 1957; in that same year Mama released me into the world. I fancied that Mama, amid her fight against the “Pro-Rightist inclination” accusation, was still full of hopes for her new born, her baby girl. She wished that I would grow up just like the basketball player No.5 in the popular movie. Xiao Jie, at eighteen, is the youngest player on the team; she is also the best. I happened to be the youngest on Mama’s team, the youngest of her four children. But was I the best? I had spent my entire life searching for the answer.
Over the years, while the political battles were no longer being waged in the nation, the many “silent wars” waged between my parents inevitably ripped them apart. Though they remained married till Mama’s death in 1996, in the later years of Mama’s life, my parents hardly had anything to offer one another except a few terse exchanges. Mama turned increasingly to her children for emotional support. Her ever-growing need to demand and secure her children’s unconditional love was like a minefield: one hesitant step, one wrong turn, one careless move, and you could become a casualty and not even know it, until it was too late. Being the youngest and last one to leave home, I bore the brunt of her demand. Simple things like a salutation in letters home could trip you. I quickly learned my lesson while attending graduate school in Nankai University during the early 1980s. “Dear Mother and Father” was rewarded with a quick, warm return letter from Mama; “Dear Father and Mother,” however, was met with her deafening silence.
Years later the location had changed—I had moved to the U.S. in 1989 to pursue my passion for American Literature—but this tug-of-war prolonged, and went up a notch in intensity, more like a thousand-fold in intensity. For well over a year from mid-1989 to the end of 1990, I got no letters from Mama. Two months into this cold war, I knew damn well I hadn’t learned my lesson after all. What was I thinking, acting like I-Know-Your-Problem-and-I-Have-the-Solution-for-You, telling Mama to either divorce Father or reconcile with him, just because I saw some middle-aged American couples holding hands, taking a stroll? Now more than twenty years later, I still hold onto her twenty-page tirade—the mockery of my newfound independence—that had begun our yearlong war of silence. She wrote, “Think your wings have grown stronger? Who are you to tell me what to do?” over and over on those 20 pages. Then she simply stopped writing altogether. She ignored my subsequent letters of beseeching and reasoning to call out my betrayal. Yes, betrayal. You either love Mama always, or you do not love her at all.
The news of Mama’s death funneled its way to me in a self-revealing dream, some 12,000 miles away on this side of the world, three months too late. In that dream, I was having a conversation with Father. Mama was conspicuously absent. Upon waking up, I called Second Brother. My mind went blank when his mumbled words came via the deep-sea cable, “Short pain . . . better than long pain . . . you will find out eventually . . . Mama passed away on January 6 . . . Massive heart attack.” “But I just spoke with her on the phone on New Year’s Day! How could that be possible?” I screamed into the receiver.
Mama and her four children (1965)
Father made the decision to withhold the news of Mama’s death from me in the name of love. I did not appreciate his kind gesture. I did, however, understand his reasons: my husband, daughter, and I had just visited them in China six months prior to Mama’s sudden death; the trip had wiped out our savings; I had been desperately trying to complete my dissertation; I had been dispiritedly looking for a job. Still, his decision left me helpless, angry, anguished, guilty, empty, and numb. Like a broken kite, I was aimless, freefalling onto no man’s land. Not having been able to say a final goodbye to Mama tops the list of my regrets.
Ironically or fittingly, Father was the only one at Mama’s side when she wrestled with death. I often wonder what was going through each of their minds when death came to claim Mama. Father had thus recounted to me the last moment of Mama’s life: “Your mother grasped my hand tightly and wanted to say something. But by then, she was not able to speak. I put my ear close to her mouth, but could not make out what she was trying to say. Then, she let go.” Could it be possible that Mama wanted to tell Father that she had forgiven him? That she still loved him in spite of all their “silent wars,” sufferings, and betrayals? That she wanted to see her little daughter one last time?
It took me more than two years finally to mourn Mama in a very private yet equally public way. Knowing that many Chinese scholars and students in the U.S. had experienced the same kind of pain and loss as I did, I decided to make my loss public. Hopefully, another daughter or son would be allowed to pay their final respect. In April 1998, my article “Unsent Letter to Mother,” along with my letter to the editor, was published in the People’s Daily, Overseas Edition, the leading Chinese newspaper.
“Dearest Mama:
You have left me for more than two years. Not a single day passed by without my thoughts turning to you. I tried desperately to recall what I was doing in the U.S. when you were fighting for life on a hospital bed in China. My mind went blank. I could recall nothing . . .
Today, your little daughter is a college professor, giving lectures on American literature and culture to a roomful of students from all over the world. It was you who stood firmly behind my pursuit of study in the U.S. You had been with me every step of the way on my life’s journey. Rest in peace, Mama! Your little lamb has grown into a fierce sheep.”
Your little daughter,
Xiao Hua
I know she has received my letter. I feel her presence. I hear her calling my name. To paraphrase my favorite author Amy Tan’s words, my Mama is in my bones.
My Family in Changchun (1965)
So how do you know if your mother is in your bones? Do you look like her? Act like her? Are you happy when she is happy and sad when she is sad? I believe the connections and resemblance are beyond the merely physical and tangible. It is to eternalize her happiness and sadness, love and loss,
her fighting spirit, and her amazing grace. It is to continue her life’s journey, living life to the fullest extent. It is to embrace life with humility and hope.
Like a guardian angel, Mama’s spirit was with me during my marathon job search. Having her with me made each rejection letter a little easier to bear. Showered with her love, I went to the post office, head held high and determined. Were it to take twenty years, I would have Mama’s resolve and patience to see it through. I wanted to be worthy of Mama’s love. I wanted her to be proud of me.
My family gathering at Chinese New Year (1984)
A quite amazing woman, strong-willed, resourceful, loving, caring, multi-talented, born in the Year of Sheep, my mother was made of flesh and blood, steel and resolve. She endured the unendurable, yet she did not die of self-pity; she still had room in her heart to love others. Her sufferings had made her stronger, which, in turn, have made me strong. Her motherly love filled me and nurtured me, so I could grow up strong and loving.
“You know what?” I gazed at Feifei’s large, innocent eyes, and gently ran my fingers through her thick black hair. “When you were born, the doctor handed you over to Grandma. She held you up in her arms, marveling at your hair. For a newborn, you sure had a head of almost an-inch-long black hair. ‘She has my hair,’ Grandma proudly announced. She was right."
With Feifei and Mama (1986)
I hugged Feifei again, more tightly this time, feeling her thick hair caressing my face. In that moment, I felt Mama’s presence in Feifei’s steady heartbeats, and in that unmistakable hair of hers, which so resembled Mama’s.
(Two early piece, “The Year of Sheep, Mother, and Me,” written in May 2007 and “Mama’s Hair,” completed in April 2011, are the bases of this piece; completed in April 2012)
Mao’s Little Red Guard
In the summer of 1966, China’s Great Leader Chairman Mao launched the Cultural Revolution. The ten-year upheaval has marked a period of silliness, anarchy, and utter devastation in modern Chinese history. As a nine-year old, shy, timid girl, I was caught in its whirlwind.
Overnight, Da Zi Bao—the posters written in big Chinese characters—mushroomed all over the country. Building 11, a four-story apartment complex in which my family lived, was no exception. One morning, I stepped out of the building to face layers of Da Zi Bao glued to the entrance door and spilled over both sides of the building, reaching as high as the second-story. Beneath a headline “Petty Bourgeois Sentiments,” I saw our second floor neighbor Aunt Wang’s name. Her daughter Qin and I were classmates and we had played in each other’s homes numerous times. Now a caricature showed Aunt Wang with her signature perm and high heels. A short, stylish woman in her mid-30s, Aunt Wang loved to wear those high heels. Forever on the go, she would walk up and down the stairs in her high heels; the click, click sound echoed behind her. Until then, it had never occurred to me that Aunt Wang was a pompous woman; that she cared too much about her looks; that she indulged in petty bourgeois sentiments.
Another Da Zi Bao condemned the Yu family, who lived on the third floor. How dared they name their firstborn Chang Sheng, “long life”? A familiar scene zipped through my head: a sea of arms waving Mao’s little red book, shouting in unison, “Long live Chairman Mao! Long live the Communist Party! Long live the people!” But young as I was, I knew why the Yu family chose Chang Sheng for their long-awaited child: Mrs. Yu had suffered several miscarriages before she finally had Chang Sheng. How could anyone fault them for wishing their son to live, or survive?
As my eyes continued scanning the Da Zi Bao, I saw it, there, my mother’s name written in big black characters and crossed over with red ink. Mama had been our building’s manager shortly after we moved from Shengyang, where my father used to work, to Changchun in 1965. Really, it was an unpaid position, a volunteer job; its chief goal was to serve the families living in the building. Mama was more a facilitator, reconciling neighbor problems and spousal disputes. She was also in charge of collecting monthly sanitary fees and distributing ration coupons. Some of them were issued monthly, such as coupons for cooking oil, matches, meats, and eggs; others were issued quarterly, such as coupons for sugar, liquor, and salt; a few were issued annually, such as coupons for cloth and cotton. I did not have the heart to read what had been written about my mother. I turned away abruptly. On my way to school, I racked my brain to recall if Mama had ever offended someone.
Soon afterward, my entire school shifted into full revolutionary gears. Classes were suspended. Our daily routine consisted of learning Chairman Mao’s teachings. We studied his famous articles, memorized his speeches, and recited his poems—yes, our Great Leader was a gifted revolutionary poet. Since many of his poems had been set to music, we learned to sing them as well. We also read his teachings in English translation—my earliest exposure to English. At the countless political debates, we outdid one another by pledging allegiance to Chairman Mao and the Communist Party.
One day, someone suggested that we hold a denunciation session against Teacher Xu, a Fourth Grade Math Teacher. She was in her early-50s, of heavy build; her tiny feet struggled to support her weight. It was rumored that Teacher Xu was her husband’s third concubine, his favorite. He had been a capitalist banker in the old China. By all accounts, they had lived a rather decadent life. We had often smelled the exotic perfume Teacher Xu had on, said to be imported from Paris. The couple certainly belonged to the enemy camp, we chattered among ourselves. Hastily, a desk was pulled over. Some older kids dragged Teacher Xu onto the desk, pushed her down on her knees, and ordered her to denounce her husband and their rotten life style. I looked up at Teacher Xu and could hardly recognize her. Her shoulder-length hair dangled in front of her face, blocking her vision. Very soon, her speech became blurred; she gasped for air. That evening, I told Mama what had happened to Teacher Xu at school and expected her approval of my active involvement in the movement. She looked at me for a prolonged minute, but did not say a word. I saw only sadness in her eyes.
By early 1967, I became one of Mao’s million-strong Little Red Guards. We took our oaths seriously: to spread Chairman Mao’s teachings; to safeguard Mao’s Great Leader image; to serve as his eyes and ears against any of his perceived or potential enemies. Soon Little Red Guards Propaganda Troupes were organized all over China, and I joined one in our neighborhood. We rehearsed with fervor, singing at the top of our lungs, reciting Mao’s poems, perfecting our dance moves, and practicing our Peter Pan jumps. We got on trams and buses, visited neighborhood parks and markets, bringing Chairman Mao’s teachings to the masses. I even surprised myself by my increased boldness. At first, I tagged along when we went on the buses, always standing in the back of the pack. Someone else would have to ask, “Auntie/Uncle Conductor: is there already a Little Red Guards Propaganda Troupe on the bus?” Then once we were on the bus, I was almost always the last one to sing a revolutionary song or recite one of Mao’s poems. I was simply too shy to perform in front of a crowd. But within weeks, I gained confidence, seeing that I had a great memory and never messed up my delivery, whether I was singing or reciting. Soon, I began going solo on those bus propaganda rituals. My confidence soared.
The Little Red Guard outfit I put together
for a reading of the piece (May 2012)
Indeed, the entire country seemed to have been caught up in some kind of rituals. At six in the morning, millions of Chinese throughout the country would line up in front of their city halls, town and neighborhood centers, and bow three times to enlarged-Mao-photos, seeking his guidance for the day. At seven in the evening, people would gather again to report back to the Great Leader their day’s activities. No one dared to miss those daily rituals. In our Building 11, Aunt Li was a natural leader during the daily hoopla. She was very tall, slender, and had a dancer’s figure. She could sing very well too. So at our daily bowing-to-Mao rituals, Aunt Li would lead us to sing and dance in praise of Great Leader Mao. How I wished I were one of her two lucky children.
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sp; With aunt and second brother (1960)
But our next-door neighbor Uncle Zhu was too sick to perform the rituals. He was battling pancreatic cancer at the time. Accused of being a traitor to the Communist Party, Uncle Zhu was denied any medical treatment. Auntie Liu, his wife of more than 30 years, happened to be a nurse and did her best to care for him. Yet Uncle Zhu could not escape the frequent denunciation sessions railed against him, held either in front of or inside their apartment. At these sessions, Auntie Liu was forced to join the crowd, shouting, “Down with Traitor Zhu Bao Lin!” Oddly enough, the few times I happened to stand near her, I could not catch a sound coming out of her mouth. However, an image I caught of her one day had etched on my mind. After school one afternoon, I walked up to our apartment as usual when I saw Auntie Liu dash out of our door and disappear inside her own, closing the door quickly behind her. “What is going on?” I wondered as I walked in. Seeing my confused look, Mama told me in a soft voice, “Your Auntie Liu just came over to borrow some money. Uncle Zhu developed a fever overnight.”