Dreams of Joy: A Novel (30 page)

I apply several paper fingers along what I think will be the arch of a shoe for Joy. “All I do is strip paper from walls and clean alleyways,” I admit. “So maybe I don’t have reverence for lettered paper. Even so, I think what we’re doing right now is good. Joy may never know what’s layered here, but I hope she’ll feel my love.”

We work companionably for a while, until Dun bursts out, “I have an idea! What is paper for? Advertising, of course.” His hand sweeps across the table where May’s and my eyes, mouths, noses, fingers, and earlobes lie in little piles. “But what else?”

“It can be burned, to keep us warm,” Cook offers tentatively. “You can sleep under it. Or on top of it.” He really is red through and through. “You can eat it, if you’re hungry enough—”

“You can use it to make cigarettes,” Dun jumps in, and then he turns to me expectantly.

“For books,” I say hesitantly. “To make Bibles. To print money.” I’m still unsure where he’s going with all this.

“But what’s the most important thing?” he asks. “Why even have reverence for lettered paper? It’s because the words themselves have reverence. The things my mother taught me are what made me want to read books, become a professor, and teach others to love the written word. She considered words to be magical—”

“Like prayers that were written and then burned,” I say. “My mother believed that was the most effective way to communicate with her gods. Of course, at the mission we were taught that this kind of thinking was just another form of idolatry.”

“You made your mother very sad by visiting those people,” Cook reminds me.

It’s true. My going to the Methodist mission upset my mother and father, but I did it anyway. I learned English and manners, but what I learned most of all was faith. I don’t regret that for a minute.

Dun bunches a hand into a loose fist and taps it lightly on his lips, thinking. Then, “But don’t you think that we
still
believe in the efficacy of written characters? We still write
peace, wealth
, and
happiness
on red paper to hang on doors at the New Year. Pearl, you said you hoped Joy would feel your love, but what if you wrote that to her and then glued it in her shoes?”

“For what purpose? She’ll never know it’s there.”

“But you will.” Dun gets up, opens a drawer, and pulls out paper and ballpoint pens so the words won’t smear when they get wet. “Let’s send messages to everyone for whom we’re making shoes. You said the shoes I’m making are for Joy’s oldest sister-in-law, a girl of about fourteen or fifteen.” He starts to write, reading aloud his message. “You are very pretty. I hope you get married and have a happy life.”

Since Cook is illiterate, I help him with his note. Then I write a secret message to Joy and paste it into the middle of the sole. I feel the warmth from Dun’s gaze as I quickly paper over my words with a pair of my eyes.

Joy

LAUNCHING A SPUTNIK

I’VE PREPARED EVERYTHING
as best as I can: I’ve rehearsed my request. I’ve made drawings and mixed pigment samples. I’ve washed my hair and put on clean clothes. I wish I could go to the leadership hall to speak to the village cadres about my idea now, while it’s still cool and I’m still clean, but that’s not possible. I pack my satchel and then join my husband and his family as they leave the house and walk down the hill. It’s summer again. It’s already porridge hot and with about as much visibility. I swat at the mosquitoes that buzz around my head and land on my arms, but what’s the use? There are more of them than I could ever kill.

As the others continue along the path toward our new work site, I stop at the villa to pick up Kumei. Yong, thankfully, won’t be coming with us. After Brigade Leader Lai made a fuss in front of the whole commune, he confiscated Yong’s bindings and hung them outside the villa, where they flutter like streamers in the breeze. He also took her bound-foot shoes—all tiny, all in brilliant colors, all with fine embroidery—and nailed them to the main gate, where they’re fading from the sun and rain. Now Yong is reduced to crawling on her hands and knees to get from room to room. The good life in the commune is not good for everyone, which has helped me focus more strongly on my plan.

Kumei doesn’t have much to say this morning as we walk together, and I’m too nervous about my plan to make small talk. We reach the work site and go our separate ways. A few weeks ago, when Brigade Leader Lai announced we would be building something together—as a commune—I hoped it would be a proper canteen. Instead, he ordered us to construct a road from the place where the bus lets people off several miles from here to the center of the commune. Weeding, aerating furrows, and picking away the pests that attack the crops have been abandoned so we can dig out boulders, shovel dirt, and compact earth. All this work is done by hand, and we’re still getting by on reduced rations, so the sun makes me woozy, and my shoulders, back, and legs quickly tire from the labor. I’m luckier than most. As a pregnant woman, I’m given extra food. Fortunately, I’m over the worst of my morning sickness and have been able to keep my meals in my stomach. My belly is slowly swelling, but it’s not terribly noticeable under my loose cotton blouse. Everyone knows everything in the commune, though, so I get plenty of advice.

“Don’t attend magic shows,” a woman struggling to lift a basket of dirt next to me recommends, “because if you see through any of the magician’s tricks he’ll cast a spell on you out of embarrassment.”

“Don’t climb any fruit trees,” another counsels, “because if you do, they won’t bear fruit in the coming year.”

And on it goes. I shouldn’t quarrel with anyone (but I should accept criticism), go on any journeys (which I can’t do anyway since I don’t have an internal passport), or step on any goose droppings (I tried not to do that even before I got pregnant).

A whistle announces the lunch break. While the others line up for rice and vegetables served by the side of the new road, I hurriedly grab my satchel and set out for the leadership hall. How different everything looks from when I first came here two summers ago. This year’s corn crop should be shoulder high, with the kernels filling the air with a warm and fragrant scent, but what I see is short, stubby, and patchy, as though the fields have severe cases of mange. The reasons are simple and all tied together.

First, although scientists have announced that sparrows eat more insects than seeds, Chairman Mao has insisted we continue to kill the birds. Now the only things getting fat around here are the swarms of locusts and other insects that eat contentedly at the free canteen that our fields have become. Second, close planting. When any of the farmers who grew up in this area ask Brigade Leader Lai about the wisdom of this practice, he says, “Trust in the people’s commune.” Third, when we inquire what he’s promised the government this year, he answers, “We’ll deliver ten times the normal grain yield!” That’s where our fear comes in. How can we possibly give that much grain when our yield has gone down not up? If we turn over our harvest to meet the brigade leader’s “exaggeration wind,” then this winter will be far worse than last. To protect ourselves, we deliberately left as much in and on the ground as we could when we brought in the early crops, in case we need to rely on gleaning the fields for food next winter.

I reach the center of the commune. I take a breath to calm my nerves and give me courage. Then I stride purposefully to the leadership hall in the cinder-block building. A guard stands before the door.

“May I see Brigade Leader Lai?” I ask.

“Why?” the guard, a young peasant from Moon Pond Village, asks in response.

“I’d like to present something to the brigade leader as well as to Party Secretary Feng Jin and his honorable wife.”

I haven’t answered the guard’s question, only expanded my request. His jaw muscles tighten. Give a low man one ounce of power and he’ll throw ten thousand pounds of bricks on your head. He yells at me. When he loses steam, I state my request again. He gets angrier. Brigade Leader Lai comes to the door. He wears a cloth napkin tucked into his shirt.

“What’s this noise? Don’t you know I’m eating?”

“Brigade Leader, I want to launch a Sputnik,” I announce.

“You?”

I give a sharp nod, exuding confidence.

“No,” he says.

“Please hear me,” I persist. “My idea will bring important cadres to the Dandelion Number Eight People’s Commune.”

This is a bold claim, but one I hope will elicit a good response from the brigade leader. In the New China, no one is supposed to seek personal glory, but individual recognition is something all cadres desire. He looks me up and down, calculating: she’s a backsliding imperialist, but she’s also the daughter of a famous artist, she looks professional, she has a satchel slung over her shoulder that contains … what?

“Let me finish my lunch,” he says, having made his decision. He orders the guard to fetch Party Secretary Feng Jin and Sung-ling. “Have them come here in fifteen minutes.” To me, he adds, “Wait here.” Then the brigade leader closes the door and goes back to his meal.

Fifteen minutes later, the guard escorts the three of us into the building’s private dining room. The smell of food—meat—is tantalizing and painful at the same time. I glance at Sung-ling. As Kumei suggested, Sung-ling and I have become friends. When Sung-ling says her baby likes to kick, I tell her my baby kicks even more. When I say I’m going to have a son, she tells me she’s going to have twin boys. I’ve worked hard to establish this good-natured banter, because I need Sung-ling to help me. But now, as I look at her, I wonder if she can. She was plump when we first met. Now she’s pregnant and losing weight. As village cadres, she and her husband should have the same benefits as the brigade leader. Instead, they’ve decided to continue eating with the rest of us in the canteen.

The brigade leader motions for them to sit. I’m meant to stand before them as the supplicant I am.

“All right then,” Brigade Leader Lai says in his rough voice. “What do you want?”

“We should launch a Sputnik by painting a mural to show our pride in our new road,” I begin. They stare at me, sure I have more to say. “Chairman Mao says murals can teach people. They’re visible reminders of what the masses should and shouldn’t do.”

“We don’t have money to buy supplies,” Brigade Leader Lai says.

What a strange response. Is he fishing for a bribe?

“That’s all right, because we’re going to make our own pigments.” I open my satchel and pull out little jars of color. “This yellow I made using the flowers from the scholar’s tree in Green Dragon’s main courtyard. This red comes from the red soil in the hills. The black comes from the soot left over from the blast furnaces. We can use lime for white. I made blue and purple from flowers. Green is easy. I soaked some of our tea leaves to extract the color.”

Sung-ling smiles appreciatively. “You’re using what we have around us.”

But it’s not because I’ve embraced some Communist lesson or other. Rather, I’m doing exactly what my frugal mother and practical father taught me to do in Chinatown: conserve, manipulate, and utilize what others consider worthless.

“Yes, yes, but what is the subject?” Brigade Leader Lai asks. “This comrade has many black marks against her. How can we trust her to paint something that will not be reactionary?”

“I want to show the glories of the Dandelion Number Eight People’s Commune. Here, let me show you.” I hand him my drawings. “Look, here is our magnificent harvest with the road leading right to it. And I want to do a portrait of you, Brigade Leader. Our dreams of socialism wouldn’t be coming true if not for your leadership.”

The brigade leader’s chest expands, but the Party secretary has lived in Green Dragon his entire life. He knows who’s who and what’s what.

“Tao is the artist in your family,” he notes. “Why isn’t he here?”

The short answer is because he doesn’t know what I’m doing. I’ve been working alone, sneaking up to the Charity Pavilion when I should have been washing clothes in the river or doing other chores. My announcement that I was pregnant didn’t bring the happy change in attitude toward me that I was anticipating. My husband and my in-laws have an interest in me now that I’m pregnant with what we all hope will be a son, but they’ve also been wary of me since the struggle session against Yong. They’ve been walking a fine line between possession of me and the baby and absolute distrust and distance. But I’ve thought about this and know how to respond.

“My husband asked me to come here. He’s the better artist, but he’s also the harder worker. That’s why he’s building the road and I’m here before you.”

The three nod approvingly, but how will Tao react to what I’ve just said? What I wish is that he’ll regard me as a good wife who supports him. Maybe that will happen, and maybe he’ll happily take credit for the mural, especially if he thinks word of it will reach others even higher than those in this room. Oh, but I do sound bitter.

“Where will this mural go?” Brigade Leader Lai asks.

“There’s only one place,” I answer. “On the outside of this building. You have four walls that will now sing the praises of our commune.”

“Think of the effect it could have on members of the commune,” Sung-ling says tentatively. “They’ll pass it every day when they come to eat, visit the clinic, leave their children at school—”

“More than just people in our commune!” I interrupt. “Everyone in the county will come to see it! They’ll walk on our new road and see what good jobs our cadres have done.”

The looks on their faces! I once respected and feared them. Now I see them—even Sung-ling, my supposed friend—as clowns.

“Launching a Sputnik is a very specific program,” Party Secretary Feng Jin, the most cautious of the three, observes. “Twenty-four hours is not very long to create such an extraordinary amount of work. We want to launch a Sputnik”—he glances at the others uncertainly—“not an oxcart.”

He doesn’t have to tell us this. Everyone in the room knows how pointless the launching a Sputnik projects have been—building a well in twenty-four hours only to see it collapse in the first rain or sewing pants for everyone in the commune in twenty-four hours only to see mismatched pant legs sewn together.

Reminded of the potential traps, Brigade Leader Lai adds a new concern. “This can’t be an individual project. There’s no place for individual thinking or acting in the New Society.”

I don’t smile, but I surely want to because they’ve said exactly the things I predicted they would.

“That’s why I came to you,” I say. “Launching a Sputnik means improvising with what we have around us, but it also requires many hands. I respectfully ask that you assign a work team to the project. I propose we launch four Sputniks—one for each side of the building.”

“That’s four days!” the brigade leader exclaims. “And you’re pregnant. The Party says that expectant mothers will have light work.”

What a joke! Does he think painting a mural is harder than building a road under the blistering sun? Does he think it’s worse than having my shoulders swell from carrying heavy loads of rocks and dirt in buckets strung from poles in the struggle to remake nature, with little to eat? I’ve gone from optimism to disillusion very quickly. The Tiger leaps, but this time I keep my head on straight.

“Night and day, we make revolution!” I shout. “We will work longer than four days if necessary! We want to honor our commune cadres!”

“You’re sure it won’t cost us anything?” This comes from the brigade leader, who sleeps in the villa and eats wonderful meals by himself here in this building.

“Even if I buy a few materials,” I say, “they won’t cost more than two
yuan
. Remember, ‘More, faster, better, and cheaper!’ ”

The brigade leader grins. He’ll be getting what he thinks is a paean to his accomplishments, just like Chairman Mao has all over the country with his giant posters, for under a dollar.

FOUR WALLS, FOUR
Sputniks. We’ll do one mural each Tuesday during the month of July to cover the leadership hall’s four walls.