Dreams of Joy: A Novel (31 page)

“My comrade-wife has been very helpful to me in planning my Sputnik,” Tao tells Kumei, Sung-ling, and the rest of the work team assigned to us. He smiles with his big white teeth, and everyone smiles back at him. Naturally, he thinks this is his project and he takes over all planning. He sketches some new ideas, which follow the five accepted themes for murals: the natural beauty of the motherland, scientific advances, technical knowledge and production, babies to promote population growth, and happy families. Everyone likes them, except for Sung-ling.

“These are festive pictures,” she says, “but this is not what the committee approved.” She gives me a questioning look. She may not know much about art, but apparently she can tell the difference between what Tao and I have drawn. I make my face as bland as possible. I may be a comrade with a questionable background, but I’m a wife first. Sung-ling understands that. After all, although she is a cadre in her own right, her husband is the Party secretary. Mao may say that women hold up half the sky, but it is the lesser half. Still, Tao must tread carefully. In an effort to show his socialist spirit, he graciously divides the walls between the two of us. We will each get one small wall and one long wall to paint as we wish.

In the first twenty-four-hour period, we paint the first of Tao’s murals. The hours during the day are brutal. Powdery dust rises from the scorched dirt. The air is oppressively hot. It feels as though we’re laboring inside a brick oven, but at least we aren’t building the road. We work with people who have little sense of perspective, shading, or proper dimensions. That’s all right, because the Great Leap Forward has lost these sensitivities too. In Tao’s mural, fishermen row on the sea in peanut shells the size of sampans (to show how great the peanuts are in the New Society) and pull in huge nets filled with gigantic leaping fish.

“Hurry up, hurry up,” Tao shouts at us. “We can’t fall behind. We have only four hours left!”

I did not know he had such ambition.

The following week, I lead the team to paint a pond on my small wall. On the surface, at the center of the mural, is a giant lotus. No one can complain about the size, which is in keeping with the exaggerations of the Great Leap Forward. The lotus symbolizes purity, because it rises out of the mud but looks pristine. The one I paint, however, is spattered and bruised. Flying above it all is Chang E, the moon goddess, looking down with tears in her eyes. When people ask why she weeps, I explain that her tears of happiness are filling the pond and cleansing the lotus. In my heart I believe she weeps for the people of China.

I’m pregnant, living in a depressing place, trying to make the best of a bad situation, and hoping that working together will help change things between Tao and me. It’s unrealistic, I know, but so are Tao’s dreams. He’s looking at the mural as a way to leave the commune and go to Peking or Shanghai. “People will want to meet the artist,” he tells the pretty girls who gather around him when he paints. “Not everyone will come here. I will need to go to them.” He flirts with the girls, but he treats me with increasing formality—as a woman with black marks against her who happens to be the mother of his unborn son. I try to pretend I don’t care.

During the third week, Tao paints his long side of the leadership hall. The subject is one we all wish we could see: rice paddies stretching to the horizon, fat children climbing ladders to reach wheat heads, and babies sitting next to tomatoes larger than they are. Tao does a good job with the brigade leader’s portrait, placing him amid the happiness.

A week later, inspired by our project, Brigade Leader Lai decides to launch a whole new Sputnik. On the night of the full moon, while some of us paint the last mural—my painting—the rest of the commune works on the road, trying to reach the leadership hall by dawn.

People say there is poetry in painting and painting in poetry. I want my mural to stand on its own, yet be read differently by different viewers. I’ve been thinking about something Z.G. once said to me: People are shaped by the earth and water around them. I want my painting to reflect this idea. I outline the central figure in black and then ask my husband to fill it in: Chairman Mao as a god towering over the land and the people, removed from the masses, challenging nature itself. This is my secret criticism, but I’m sure the brigade leader, Party secretary, and other members of the commune will take it at face value. I assign groups of two and three to work on the sky and on the background, where figures rise up out of China’s earth—made from this land’s red mud to be molded into obedient peasants. I give Kumei the important job of leading a team as they paint humungous radishes, which again will make my painting recognizable to the members of the commune as a piece of Great Leap Forward art. Corncob spaceships filled with laughing astronaut babies—a supposed tribute to China’s agricultural and technical advances meant for the people of the Dandelion Number Eight People’s Commune, who have never seen an airplane let alone a spaceship like Sputnik—fly through the sky.

That night, a full moon illuminates the fields around us. The road comes closer and closer. My mother-in-law brings more red paint made hastily from the soil. We can never use too much red, and it feels as if it glows in the moonlight.

On the left side of the mural, I paint a tree with its branches spread to form a cross. In the twists of the bark hangs an abstract Jesus, his head low, a slash of green representing the crown of thorns. On the right side, I paint another tree, so that the whole mural is framed by branches, roots, and leaves. An owl sits on an upper branch with one eye shut.

What is my message, if anyone asks? I will say that China’s best people come from this good earth, while the owl gazes at the world, offering its wisdom. But to me there are deeper meanings about blame, tolerance, and forgiveness. Yes, I’ve used too much black in contrast to the false bright red of the rest of the mural. Yes, I’ve painted an owl, which sees everything and is fooled by nothing. And yes, I have used a cross and Jesus upon it to show the suffering of the people. As far as I know, no missionaries ever came to this area. So if anyone asks, I will say that I’ve painted a tree god.

I think the mural will magically change my life. It doesn’t. No dignitaries come to the Dandelion Number Eight People’s Commune, Brigade Leader Lai doesn’t win any prizes for being a model leader, Tao doesn’t like me any more than he did before, and the people on the work teams quickly forget that I got them off the road crew for a few days.

Pearl

A ROSE-PETAL CAKE

NATIONAL DAY—CHINA’S
Independence Day—takes place on October 1. This year—1959—is also the tenth anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, so the holiday is going to be the biggest and best yet. People labor day and night to beautify Shanghai. The city thrums with shoveling, hammering, and military music. Flags, lanterns, colored lights, and drapery festoon buildings, lamp poles, and bridges. Everything is in red, of course. An enormous arch is being built on the Bund, flanked by trees and flower beds. My work unit doubles its time on the streets, cleaning, stripping, and collecting every piece of paper we can find. I’m swept up by the enthusiasm around me and genuinely excited for and proud of my home country.

But as they say, everything always turns to the opposite. Just as I’m feeling truly good about being in China, we start to have food shortages in the city. In my household, we’re each allotted nineteen pounds of rice, a few tablespoons of cooking oil, and half a pork chop each month, which means, among other things, that the bickering in my family home is even worse than usual. I try to keep jealousies from boiling over by bringing home the occasional bag of rice or brown sugar bought at an exorbitant price on the black market or at the store for Overseas Chinese, where I can use my special certificates, for which I’m very grateful these days.

All this makes me worry about Joy. Could she be suffering from the same food shortages that we’re experiencing in Shanghai? I tell myself not to fret, because how could the members of a commune not have food? They grow it! But I’m a mother and I agonize. I write to Joy to ask how she is. “How are you feeling?” I send candies and dried fruit. “Tao’s brothers and sisters might like these.” But I don’t hear back from my daughter. In fact, I haven’t heard anything since she wrote to tell me she was pregnant, nearly five months ago. This causes me great apprehension and keeps me up late at night with anxiety. I tell myself she’s busy with Tao and preparing to have the baby. I tell myself to be calm, but I’m not calm. I have to see her. To see her, I’ll need a travel permit, but I’m still not having any luck with that.

I go to Z.G.’s house to see if he can help me, but even he can’t get a travel permit. I write to May about my concerns. She writes back two weeks later that she’s heard from Joy and that she sounds fine. I relax a bit, but I don’t lose my desire to see my child during this special time in her life. In the coming weeks, I return several times to Superintendent Wu’s office. I tell him I still haven’t heard from my daughter and I ask again for a travel permit. During one of my visits, he informs me that almost no permits are being issued for travel.

“It’s as though they don’t want anyone to go to the countryside,” he says.

“Why would that be?”

Superintendent Wu doesn’t know. But eventually he makes some inquiries—refusing to tell me where—and reports back that Joy is fine.

“Fine?” That’s what May said too, but I’m Joy’s mother, and something doesn’t feel right. “If she’s fine, why hasn’t she written to me?”

He doesn’t have an answer. I begin to mark time by how many more days until the baby’s due.

OCTOBER 1—NATIONAL DAY
—finally arrives. It’s a golden autumn day, and I try to imagine what my daughter looks like in her eighth month of pregnancy. I imagine the commune commemorating the occasion with firecrackers, a big banquet, and the speeches in Peking broadcast over the loudspeakers. And then I tuck those images into my heart and get ready for the celebration here. Months ago, Z.G. invited me to go with him to Peking to see the festivities. He said we’d have a place with Mao on the dais to watch the parade and hear the speeches outside the Forbidden City. I admit it would have been a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but I stay in Shanghai to be closer to Joy in case I’m suddenly awarded a travel permit. I’ll celebrate with Dun, the other boarders, and Auntie Hu.

Our entire household dresses in matching red shirts and blouses, and then we head into the streets. We wave little red flags as the parade passes us. We see seas of children in white shirts, blue pants or skirts, and red bandannas tied around their necks. Brigades of the People’s Red Army march in brisk formation. The entire membership of one commune after another proceeds along the route, fists raised or waving red flags. Floats highlighting the country’s economic and military achievements move with a dignified air. For everything that’s bad here, for every moment I miss my home in Los Angeles, there are times like this when I feel great pride for what China has accomplished in ten years.

Dun and I leave before the local speeches begin and meet Auntie Hu at her house, since she can’t be on crowded streets on her bound feet. We sit in her salon, and she serves us rose-petal cake.

“Auntie Hu, you always have the best pastry,” I say after taking a bite. “How do you get something like this with the shortages?”

Auntie Hu’s eyes crinkle with pleasure. “I’m always trying to find the good old days in these bad new days. Come, lean close, and I’ll tell you.” I do as I’m told, and Madame Hu whispers, “Do you remember the Russian bakery on the Avenue Joffre, where your mother always bought your birthday cakes? One of the Chinese helpers now uses those recipes to make cakes in his apartment. He sells them only to the best people, those who can keep a secret. Shall we get one for Dun’s birthday? Do you know when it is?”

She relaxes back into her chair and stares affectionately at Dun, who sits on one of the salon’s velvet sofas, reading a book and feigning indifference to the big secret. Dun started accompanying me to Auntie Hu’s a few weeks ago after I told him about her collection of books in English. Auntie Hu took an instant liking to Dun, treating him like the son she lost years ago. The way she’s embraced Dun has made me surprisingly happy, as though I’m receiving approval from my own mother.

“Do you like chocolate cake or do you prefer vanilla?” she innocently asks Dun. “Or do you prefer more exotic cakes—grapefruit, butter cream, or rum?”

“I never tasted cake until I came here, Madame Hu,” Dun answers. “Even a single bite is a treat for me.”

These days a bite of anything made with sugar, eggs, milk, and flour is something beyond a “treat.”

“I wonder if we could send one of these cakes to Joy,” Auntie Hu says. “Wouldn’t a pregnant woman love a rose-petal cake?”

“I’m sure she’d love it,” I say, but do I tell her how worried I am about Joy?

“Pearl-ah, I know you too well,” Auntie Hu observes. “Don’t keep things from me. Is something wrong with Joy?”

“Everything’s fine,” I answer brightly, trying to hide my concern. “May wrote to me just the other day to say that Joy has been writing to her and asking for the strangest things.”

“May writes to Joy?”

“Of course, all the time. And Joy answers.” And the knowledge of this is painful (why is Joy writing to May instead of to me?) and reassuring (Joy really must be all right). “Joy has asked her auntie to send Oreos, Hershey’s milk chocolate almond bars, and Bit-O-Honey. Do you know those sweets?” Auntie Hu remembers Hershey’s from the old days but not the others. “Well, this—more than anything—tells me Joy is pregnant and happy.” I’m practically quoting May’s last letter, in which she wrote, “Oh, the cravings we women have!” “May also sent a layette she bought at Bullock’s Wilshire. That’s one of the finest stores in Los Angeles,” I explain. “My grandchild will be the most stylish baby in the commune!”

Dun and Auntie Hu laugh with me. What is a peasant baby going to do with a sleeping gown, booties, cap, and receiving blanket?

“May.” Auntie Hu lets out her breath in a tolerant sigh. “She always liked to shop. What else? Tell me more.”

“May’s been taking care of my café,” I answer, happy to shift the conversation away from Joy. “She just got a beer and wine license. She says we have more customers now.”

“That’s good. You’ll go home to a successful business.”

“I’ve told you before I’m not leaving China. My life is here now, with my daughter and her baby.”

Auntie Hu frowns, and I rush on. “But May’s biggest news has to do with her own business. She’s still renting props and costumes to movie productions, but television shows are now coming to her too. You’ll never guess what happened. They want Chinese faces in their shows too! May got a job, playing a housekeeper on a doctor show. If only they knew what a bad housekeeper she is in real life!”

We all chuckle. Then Auntie Hu gets up to turn on the radio so we can listen to the speeches being broadcast from the capital. “The Chinese have changed from slaves living in a hell on earth into fearless masters of their fates,” Premier Chou En-lai tells the country. “The imperialists ridicule our Great Leap Forward as a big leap backward. But let me tell you this: The European imperialists tried to carve us up. The Japanese aggressors wanted to devour us. Now the United States is trying to isolate and exclude us from international affairs. That policy is more of a failure with every passing day. We have full diplomatic relations with thirty-three countries, economic relations with ninety-three countries, and cultural contacts and exchanges with one hundred and four countries. How is all this swift, flying progress to be explained?”

Auntie Hu doesn’t care to hear the answer and gets right back up to turn off the radio, saying, “I’d much rather have Dun read to us.”

We spend the rest of the afternoon drinking tea, chatting, and listening as Dun reads to us from
Wuthering Heights
—Auntie Hu’s favorite. It’s so peaceful here, and it makes me happy that Dun and I can share this time together without Cook or the other boarders watching and listening to us.

Later, even though Auntie Hu has servants, I take our tray of cups and saucers to the kitchen. Auntie Hu follows, swaying on her tiny feet. She shoos her servants out of the kitchen and then she turns to me, her gentle features filled with concern. “How worried are you about Joy?”

“Very worried. I don’t understand why I haven’t received a letter from her. Even one in which the censors crossed out every word would be better than nothing.”

“You went through this silence before when you were waiting for Joy to return to Shanghai with Z.G.,” she tries to reassure me.

“That was different. She didn’t know I was in China.”

When Auntie Hu nods sympathetically, I ask her the question that’s been gnawing at me lately. “Do you think Joy suddenly prefers May—who gave birth to her—over me now that she’s approaching birth herself? Is that why Joy isn’t writing to me?”

“You are such a silly girl! Of course not!”

“Well, then, what’s the reason? Why haven’t I received a letter?”

“Who knows? This is China. Things run smoothly one day and go crazy the next.”

“I just … I just have a bad feeling—”

“Then write to May and ask her advice—”

“She doesn’t know anything about what it’s like here. She doesn’t understand.”

“May is your sister. She may not know China anymore, but she knows you. And you worry too much. Your head goes to too many dark places. She’ll say, ‘Calm down, Pearl-ah!’ ”

“It’s hard for me to say what I feel in a letter.”

“Then you should see each other. Why don’t you meet her in Hong Kong?”

“May actually suggested that in her last letter,” I say.

“Well?”

“If I can’t get a travel permit to see Joy, then how am I going to get an exit permit to see May?”

“These are two different things. One is to the countryside—”

“And one is out of the country.”

“What if you meet your sister at the fair in Canton?”

“May suggested that too. She thought she might be able to get a day permit to visit the fair to buy costumes for her movie rental business and canned goods for the café. I don’t think she’d be able to get that kind of permit, but even if she did, I’d still have to get a travel permit. If Superintendent Wu ever gave me one, I’d use it to see Joy.”

“Then try for a one-day exit permit. See what happens.”

“I’d love to see May, and maybe sometime in the future I’ll try to get a one-day exit permit. But not now, not when the baby is due next month.”

We go back to the salon. Then Auntie Hu walks Dun and me to the front door, where she holds us back.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” she says to Dun. “The two of you should try to leave China. I lost my husband and my son, but if they were alive, I’d be telling them we should get out of here.”

It’s strange that she suddenly feels so adamant about this and is pushing so hard when she knows I won’t leave China permanently without Joy.

“You’re the one who should go abroad, Madame Hu,” Dun says.

“Yes, I’ve thought about it, and I’m trying,” she confides in a low voice. “I have a sister in Singapore. I haven’t seen her since she married out more than forty years ago.”

I’m startled by her revelation. “You’ve never mentioned this before. How can you leave?”

“How can I not leave? Your mother was the smart one. She got you and your sister out in time.”

I don’t add that, yes, she did, but she died horribly in the process.