God's Double Agent (8 page)

One day, however, a school official with a very sober face came into my dorm with a cable.

“Xiqiu,” he said. “May I come in?”

I slowly opened the door. I could tell by his softer voice that this was not about school business. “Your mother has been admitted to the hospital and has lost consciousness. She’s in critical condition,” he said.

I didn’t move. Did I hear him correctly? Was the death of my mother, the event I had feared all of my life, actually imminent? Fear and grief seized me, but I managed to stand up, grab my backpack, and run out the door. First I took a bus, then a train, and then I walked. I had to travel fourteen hours to get home and every minute I was desperately hoping I could see my mother before she died.

“You made it,” my father told me when I got there. Immediately, I felt relief. I could tell by my father’s slumped shoulders and heavy countenance that I didn’t have long. “We told her you were coming, and I think she was just holding on to see you.”

When I walked into her hospital room, she was unconscious.

“Mom!” I called out. “I’m here. Mom!” Her eyes didn’t open, but then her hand squeezed mine ever so slightly.

“Mom?” I said, taking her hands in mine. “It’s me, Xiqiu. I’m back. I’m here.”

I could tell she was listening. “I’ve been studying well,” I said. “And I can’t wait to take you to Tiananmen Square.”

She didn’t respond.

“Mom?”

It was too late for any real conversation, and I felt helpless. Her life was slipping away too quickly for any last sentiments.

Then, to my surprise, she opened her mouth, just barely, and mustered up the last remaining energy she’d expend on earth to spell out a word.

“P-i-a-n-y-i.”

My childhood nickname. No one had called me that in so long. My mother used to call me in for dinner from the persimmon trees by shouting “Pianyi!” She used it when talking to me soothingly before we all went to bed. She used it when reprimanding me for mischief. She used the word, “cheap,” as a talisman against the poverty that had so defined our lives.

But that was the last time I’d hear it come from her mouth. After she spelled out my name, she breathed her last.

“Mom?” I said one last time, but she never answered. She had lived fifty-seven years.

My sister and I spent a little more time with her body before we called out to the others that she’d died. Afterward, we all left the hospital and went home. It was the same little house I remembered from my childhood, but it felt oddly vacant without my mother’s presence. There was the courtyard, the sitting room, the stove on which many aromatic meals had been made. And yes, there was the kang, the place she’d spent so much of her life. My little shovel was propped up beside her bed.

When I saw that shovel, I wept. Next to the kang was a hole in the floor. I’d dug it so gradually—cough by cough—over her many years of infirmity, I was surprised when I really looked at the hole.

It was three feet deep.

5

“Read this letter,” Heidi said to me, handing me a piece of paper covered with Chinese lettering. She looked as though she had been crying.

“For me?” I said, a little confused. Heidi had become a good friend and an excellent writer for the newspaper, but we’d never had conversations of a personal nature. She was smart, and could hold her own against any male student.

“Sadly, it’s for me,” she said, looking away so I couldn’t see her eyes fill with tears. I felt slightly panicked when I saw that emotion. I immediately wanted to fix it, to do anything to stop the tears. “Remember the student I liked? Well, I broke down and told him of my affection.”

“And this is his response?” I asked.

She nodded, almost imperceptibly. “Just read it.”

It was an act of trust. As I read the letter, which basically explained that a relationship between the two of them wasn’t possible, my heart softened toward Heidi. Suddenly, instead of looking at the girls sitting near the front of class, I began to see only one girl.

Over the course of the next few weeks, we started talking more.

“I think you’re very gentle,” she told me. “Very down to earth.”

It was against university rules for students to date and against Chinese law for students to marry. But suddenly, I thought of nothing else.

In China, people don’t date one person after another until they find that almost magical “soul mate.” Usually, we would have only a few serious dating relationships before getting married, so dating was a very sober undertaking for us. I began to feel Heidi was my destiny, so I tucked the adoration I felt for her into my heart. There, in privacy, it grew.

“I’m going for a walk,” I’d tell my roommates on the way to meet her downstairs.

For weeks, we’d arrange clandestine meetings across campus, hoping no one would notice we were always together. Having a forbidden romance was pretty invigorating. There was nothing quite like meeting Heidi’s eyes across class and knowing we shared such an intimate secret. I did tell one person, however. In one of my regular letters to my father, I mentioned I was very interested in a girl named Heidi. A few weeks later, I received a note back from him.

“Dear Xiqiu,” he wrote. “Thank you for your letter updating me on all that you’re doing at college. I encourage you, of course, to pay attention to your studies and not to get distracted by extracurricular activities.”

“Extracurricular activities” was apparently my dad’s euphemism for dating, and he seemed willing to tolerate it if I kept it within the right balance.

I figured we weren’t the only ones with a secret romance. Occasionally, I’d notice a couple walking around the school’s racetrack together. If they walked slowly, I knew they weren’t there for the exercise. Sometimes I’d see people holding hands in the quad. At night, under the cover of darkness, couples nuzzled on the steps of the library. In fact, one day, we were all called to a meeting by the party secretary of the English department.

“Apparently, some of you are ignoring the very reasonable
rule that dating is not allowed on this campus,” he sternly announced. “In fact, recently campus security discovered several lights knocked over. These lights—which are very expensive, by the way—were put there to make sure our campus is safe. Yet, for the sake of
kissing
in the quad . . .” He said the word
kissing
with such distaste that one might have thought he said
defecating
. “Someone took it upon himself to break our campus lights.”

He paused and looked around the room to intimidate the kissing criminals.

“And so, I’d like to take this opportunity to remind everyone of a simple fact,” he said, straightening his back in indignation. “Dating is not the purpose of college.”

The university made sure the lights were back up within the week, and the campus police began walking around with flashlights, hoping to stem the raging hormones on the library steps and in other dark corners of the campus. Eventually, the students realized we had the upper hand. After all, there were so many covert relationships the university couldn’t punish everybody. Gradually, people began holding hands in public. Then, a few weeks later, people came out and simply announced their relationships.

“Really?” I said, when my roommate told me he was dating a beautiful girl in the Chinese lit department. “You hid it very well!” I didn’t admit my surprise was mainly due to the fact that I assumed she’d find a more attractive mate.

When Heidi and I told our friends that we were dating, their mouths dropped open too. “You?” Joseph said. “And you?”

Apparently, we had hid our affection very well, because people were shocked. The person who was the most shocked was Heidi’s dad, who used to be a teacher too but had been imprisoned for five years during the Cultural Revolution for a crime he didn’t commit. While in jail, he lost his job teaching at a government school. Even though all criminal charges were dropped after the revolution, it was too late. His reputation
was forever marred and he was damaged beyond repair. In China, children bear the responsibility for their parents’ care, so his hope for the future of his family was placed squarely on Heidi’s shoulders. He hoped Heidi would marry someone who could make some money.

“Dear Bochun,” he wrote, after she revealed our relationship in a letter home. “I urge you to find someone else. Someone who can work in the capital city of our province, bring home a nice paycheck, and be respected in our community.” We were walking to class together as she read it aloud to me. “That way our family can have a better future.”

“He doesn’t have much confidence in me,” I said, though I understood why her father placed such an emphasis on having a good reputation. “But I promise I’ll go to grad school, focus on international relations, and make a good living for us.”

I smiled as I assured her that I could pull it all off. However, the number of people who were already depending on my future salary was growing. My dad, my sister, Heidi, Heidi’s parents, and possibly her siblings. And that was not including any children Heidi and I might have.

And so, I continued to focus on my international studies during the evening, after doing all of my other English homework. I developed a friendship with a Chinese literature student named Bruce, who was the son of a political leader. Because of his dad’s position, he was more interested in government and could speak more intelligently about it than most people. I enjoyed his company, so I told him of my future plans for grad school, and we spent many hours discussing world affairs.

In 1988, we got to see some political affairs being acted out right there in China. A nationwide outcry against the poor treatment of teachers erupted all over the country, and students began protesting the widespread government corruption.

“Why won’t the government help the teachers?” I asked Bruce one day while we ate lunch in the cafeteria. “Aren’t the teachers the guides of the souls of children?”

“I don’t know,” he responded, thinking while he chewed. “But they don’t have the resources to teach. The whole nation—even the party secretary—admits teachers are paid too little. Want to orchestrate our own protest?”

“You organize the protest route,” I suggested. “I’ll try to come up with some catchy slogans.” We stayed up late, organizing friends from the dorm to help, and thinking of ways to get our message into the community. The next morning, I went to the university’s propaganda department to get the permit.

“We’d like to submit our plan for a protest,” I said at the counter.

“You want to do what?” he said, looking at the signs we’d made, which were leaning up against the wall. “You can’t walk around with those. We’ll solve the problem within the system.”

“The system,” of course, was communism. Though I hadn’t joined the Communist Party yet, I assumed I would one day. We used to say, “Join the party in order to change the party.”

“This
is
‘within the system,’” I argued. “Everyone agrees with us,” I said. “We are a teacher’s college. Don’t you think we should stand up for teachers? My professors agree with us, as does the president!”

“If you keep at this,” he said, lowering his voice in a menacing admonition, “you’ll face some real repercussions.”

With slumped shoulders and dashed hopes, Bruce and I walked slowly back to our dorm.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “We had it all planned out. It’s not like we were advocating for the overthrow of the government.”

“Maybe we should,” Bruce said, with an impish grin on his face. “Want to try to fight this?”

That was the last conversation I ever had with my friend.
Within days, Bruce was “persuaded” to switch to another school. The school had told his dad, the political leader, that his son was out of control. He feared that his son was jeopardizing his political future, and so—just like that—he was gone. I was left confused and alone.
Shouldn’t we fight for what’s right? We’re all future teachers, so why can’t we unite?

I tried to understand the propaganda department’s concern, and figured that the party official was simply confused on how to deal with the unrest. The protests went on for a while, which I followed in the news. Then, on April 15, 1989, the editor of the official school newspaper ran up to me on campus.