Part 4 (1/2)
”Cat, a cat.”
”It drowned?”
”It's some activist's trick to give my mother a hard time. They want to be able to say that she loafed on the job, on the cleaning, so they can torture her more.”
”What if you just leave it there?”
”It will rot and smell.”
”It's not your fault.”
”Like I said, my mother is in no position to defend herself.”
With two brooms working like a pair of giant chopsticks, we got the dead cat out of the well. After we deposited it in the garbage bin Wild Ginger went on to finish sweeping the rest of the lane. I went to the other end. I swept quickly. All my joints partic.i.p.ated in a race against the breaking daylight. Soon my arms were sore and blisters were forming on my palms. My shoes were wet from dew. Finally, Wild Ginger and I met in the middle. It was six-thirty. The sun was up.
”See you at school,” I said.
She nodded and turned her face away.
Each dawn I came out. We met in the darkest moment of the day. Wild Ginger no longer rejected my help. In school we stuck together like one person and her shadow. In Hot Pepper's eyes, we had become a two-member gang. She had stopped attacking me and Wild Ginger. It was hard to believe that Hot Pepper didn't call her wolfy brothers. I guessed that, after all, her brothers couldn't come to the school to fight every day. Hot Pepper had learned that Wild Ginger was a desperado who would risk her life to win a moment.
6.
The news of the Americans' invasion of Vietnam was on everyone's lips. Taking it as a threat to China, Mao called for ”an entire nation in arms; every citizen a soldier!” Within a week our school was turned into a war camp. Every cla.s.s became a military training program with soldiers from the People's Liberation Army as instructors. We learned wrestling and bayonet stabbing. To build up our strength, the school set out on a month-long hiking trip called ”the New Long March.” It was an eight-hour-a-day, weight-carrying trip around Shanghai's suburbs. We would pa.s.s places like Xinzhuang, Pingzhuang, Lihu, Minghang, then take the ferry across the Huangpu River and travel into the Fengxian agricultural area.
Our bags were thirty-pound bundles stuffed with blankets and necessities for the month. By the time we reached Xinzhuang, many of us had blisters on our feet and shoulders, and severe back and neck aches. The army instructor taught us how to fix our blisters. At every break, I sat down and took out my needles. Raising my foot, I poked through the blisters with a needle. After that I pulled out one of my hairs and routed it through the broken blister, then made a knot on each blister to keep the fluid draining until it dried up by itself. Soon my feet were full of mosquito-like hair knots.
After the city scene faded, the countryside took over, but we were too exhausted to appreciate the landscape. We walked through the rice paddies, farmhouses, and animal barns longing desperately for the next break.
The bundles on our shoulders were getting heavier. Hot Pepper tried to strike up a song to lift our spirits, but no one responded except Wild Ginger.
Wild Ginger was walking behind me. It was the first time we were allowed to partic.i.p.ate in a group activity. We were benefiting from Mao's new teaching, ”To expand our force, we must unite with people of gray backgrounds, which include the children of the denounced.” Wild Ginger was excited. She was singing loudly, ”The sky is big but not as big as the power of the Communist party...”
By evening a break was ordered. The school stopped in a village called Yichun. The peasants were ordered by their local party boss to provide us with rooms to spend the night. Our cla.s.s got a coffin room. The empty coffin was for the family's great-grandfather. It was considered a blessing for a man to see his coffin made before he died. Hot Pepper was afraid of the coffin. She took the spot at the far thest end of the room away from the coffin. Wild Ginger laid her stuff right by the coffin, and I took the s.p.a.ce next to her. As we finished unpacking we heard a whistle. We were ordered to fetch yecai-leaflike gra.s.s-for dinner. Yecai was what the Red Army ate during Mao's Long March in 1934. The point was for us to taste the bitterness in order to deepen our admiration for Mao.
Wild Ginger and I were a.s.signed as a group to look for yecai. We set out toward the west end of a cornfield. Halfway across the field we were struck by a strange fragrance. As we followed the smell, we entered a leafy enclosure where yecai was growing everywhere. It was a thick-leaved plant with tiny yellow flowers on its top. The sun was setting. There was no one around. We started picking. Quickly we filled up our bags.
The farmhouses with straw tops were dyed orange by the golden sunbeams. The large oil-bearing plants bent down heavily. The smell of yecai thickened. Wild Ginger and I decided to take a break. We put our bags to the side and sat down to enjoy the fragrance. Within a few minutes the sky turned dark and the stars began to glow.
”Look at the moon.” Wild Ginger pointed at the sky. ”Like a guilty face it keeps burying itself behind the drifting clouds.”
”A face? Whose face?”
”My father's,” she giggled.
”I don't think the face looks guilty,” I said. ”It looks rather sad to me.”
”Sad? Well, if only the moon could argue.”
”The air is sweet.”
”It's so quiet here.”
”Don't you feel like breaking the silence?”
”Wanna sing?”
”I don't have a good voice.”
”Who cares!”
”I do. I would like to have a nice voice like Wild Ginger.”
”You know what my mother said? 'That French-head had a good voice.'”
”You mean your father?”
”My mother told me that he liked to put out the lights and sing in the dark.”
”Did you ever hear your father sing?”
”I don't remember. My mother says I did. My mother sang me his songs. She wants me to remember him. But who wants to remember a reactionary?”
”What about your voice?”
”I sing all right ... Well, I love to sing, in fact.”
”Would you sing me something?”
”Of course not.”
”You have shown me how your father looked, now if you sing I might get an idea of how he sounded.”
”I have to go, Maple. I have to go to the restroom badly. But there is no such place.”
”Just squat down. Do what the peasants do.”