Colors of the Mountain (7 page)

I closed my eyes to calm myself and tried to smother my fear of getting thrown out again. I had to do it. I swung my arm back and smashed my fist into his face. It felt good. He fell and rolled a few yards into a corner. I cracked my knuckles and bent down, waiting for him. As soon as he found his feet, he charged like a buffalo. I dodged to one side and he banged his head against a desk and fell again. I turned and kicked him on the backside. The crowd cheered excitedly. By then, all the fear was gone. I just wanted to keep hitting and hitting him until it was officially over.

He suddenly stood up, raised his arms, and said, “You won, all right. You can have your ball back.” Then he laughed and dusted off his clothes.

I was left hanging and felt cheated. I wanted to continue fighting.
How could he treat a fight so casually, like a cup of tea he could just pick up and put down whenever he wanted? There was no emotional attachment.

“You won. Now sit down before the teacher catches you,” the King said. “You know, you’re not bad. I should arrange more of these fights. You’ll come to like it.” He laughed and slapped my shoulder, then pressed hard and made me sit down. I threw his hand off, tossed my books into my bag, and went home early.

“You’ll get over it, virgin,” the King said and laughter rang in my ears all the way home.

One day an announcement was made through the crackling school loudspeaker. There was going to be a meeting in the playground for the entire school. A new directive was to be read. As I started to follow the rest of the class outside, Teacher Chu stopped me and said, “You are to remain here by order of the principal.”

“Why?”

“Because of the document’s contents. You’re not politically ready yet.”

“If all the others can listen to it, why can’t I?”

“You’re not like them,” he said.

I was insulted and hurt and wanted to ask, What kind of shithole is this? Again, the fear of isolation and pain gripped my heart. When was this bullshit going to end? If there had been a bomb in my hand right then, I would have brought it to the stage and blasted the fucking principal, teacher La Shan, and his little groupies into tiny pieces.

I stayed in my classroom, depressed and disillusioned. When the class returned, they questioned me with their eyes and left me alone for the rest of the day. I prayed that my new friends would not desert me as my last ones had done. But, thank Buddha, they didn’t. The whole thing was forgotten the next day. I was still King’s valued counsel on academic matters, and I like to think that I played no small role in finally pushing him through the fourth grade. Though he didn’t exactly answer the questions on his paper, his bigshot navy father should be proud of him, if not for his work, then for his ability to get his work done for him.

I considered it a tragedy when group eight was dissolved at the end
of the term. A school closer to the villagers reopened and the students happily went back to their own school. I got placed in group two, next door to the hateful faces I tried to erase from my memory forever. Each day I ran past the doors of group one as fast as possible, for fear of bumping into them and getting into trouble. In the new group, I soon became the recognized top student. I began to hear some good words from a few of the teachers. But a gang of students in my new class was organized against me. It was headed by a sneaky boy called Han, whose father had fallen out with mine after a bee-raising business they had started together failed. The others in the gang were Quei, the son of a local politician, and Wang, whose father was a carpenter and an enemy of some of my father’s good friends.

Inside the class, they made up silly songs to humiliate my family, revived the old accusations and discouraged others from being friends with me. After school, they spied on me and made up a story that I had picked up an expensive ballpoint pen and didn’t return it to the school as I should have. It got me four hours of questioning in the same principal’s office that was a living hell to me. Outside the window, they smiled and made faces. The next day, I ran after Han with a rusty iron spade when he passed our house going back home. I whacked and whacked his head and his back until a bystander stopped me. Han cried and reported me to our teacher, Mr. Lan. But I had already written and turned in my side of the story and the teacher believed my version.

What really made me mad was these kids also demanded that I share my homework with them while doing everything they could to make my life miserable. In the beginning, I complied, thinking I could convert them into my friends by sharing a little with them. Instead, they turned on me and told Teacher Lan about it. Of course, he lectured me and I had to clean the blackboard for a week as punishment. Later, in retaliation, I deliberately gave wrong answers for them to copy, then reported this to the teacher. This time they were trapped like rabbits and Han lost his chance to become the best Communist student that year.

During this time, Grandpa was slowly dying. He was seventy-seven years old. Almost every day, I found writings on the blackboard that debased and humiliated him.

On the day he died, we carried him in a wheelbarrow about twenty
miles away to the city of Putien for cremation. I wore a white shirt and spread pieces of paper money over the bridges we passed and chanted sayings like “peaceful passing” to the imaginary soldiers guarding the bridges. In the crowd that watched the procession, I saw the three ugly mugs of Han, Quei, and Wang, smiling without pity or sympathy. They even made faces at me. I bit my lips, trying to control my sadness and hatred. Tears poured forth as the strong voice of revenge cried out within me. I wiped away my tears and walked on with my family, pushing Grandpa’s body along the dirt road to Putien for two more hours.

When we got there, four young monks were hired to carry Grandpa up the mountain to the cremation site. I knelt before his body with my family like a pious grandson, sobbing farewell as an ancient monk torched the wood pile beneath Grandpa’s flimsy coffin. Flames shot up against the setting sun. My beloved Grandpa was no more.

EVEN IN WINTERTIME
Yellow Stone was laced by the greenness of the surrounding wheat and fava-bean fields. Yellow wildflowers were scattered across the green carpet like solitary souls still searching for their destiny. The water of the Dong Jing River lay calm and pensive, as if quietly dreaming about the coming spring.

Farmers flocked to the market square to trade goods for the New Year, a week away. The narrow streets of Yellow Stone became filled with mules carrying food and vegetables. Bicycles strained beneath the double weight of two riders, and noisy tractors fought their way among crowds of people carrying sacks of produce slung over their shoulders.

One morning, Teacher Lan visited our home with the results of our first countywide exam. I had scored 100 percent in all four subjects. He and Mom couldn’t stop smiling and my sisters swarmed, fighting to get a glimpse of the report card.

“Only two students made that score in the whole county of Putien,” Lan said, beaming happily, for my distinction had made him one of the teachers of the year.

I became an instant star among the neighbors. There were some warmer glances and sweeter greetings for me. It was both liberating and a little intoxicating. I felt glorified. I was no longer just another one of those hopeless descendants of the old ruling class, who ended up becoming a carpenter, a blacksmith, or a nobody, buried in the guilt and shame of their fathers. I shone, despite their efforts to snuff me out.

Grandpa’s passing only hardened my will to succeed, to beat the
odds. I wanted to honor this man, who had died poor, sad, and broken. The image of his body, reduced to eighty pounds of yellow skin and old bones, lying in that rough wooden wheelbarrow like some discarded dead animal, would never leave me. He had wanted to be burned because he knew we couldn’t afford a burial plot for his tiny body, which had been dressed in a newly tailored black robe made from coarse material. My dad’s words, as he carried Grandfather’s ashes home, still echoed in my ears: “Now you can join your drinking buddies again, and gamble forever,” he said, brushing his wet face against the jar of ashes.

It was decided that I would go with my cousin Yan to the island where she taught, spend a few days there, and carry back some fish and shrimp for the New Year. The trip was meant to keep me out of trouble and away from the neighborhood children, but I jumped for joy. I had always loved the ocean, with its blue waves and long, white beaches. Sailboats skimmed across the surface. A million possibilities lay hidden in the sea’s depths, fueled by stories told by old sailors.

When Yan asked me, “Can you walk all day without complaining?” I bobbed my head eagerly.

Ten miles off the mainland, Milon lay like a sapphire amid the blue Pacific. To get there before sunset, we started out early in the morning and walked all day along a winding path. We passed several brooks, plodded beside endless fava-bean fields, and walked under countless trees until the sun began to dip in the west. Long before we got to the coast, the land began to level and spread out. Grass thinned away and finally disappeared. There were no homes or dwellings in sight for miles around, nothing but an occasional lonely windmill, squeaking and grunting monotonously as the wind turned its sails.

As we drew closer to the coast, the breeze became stronger, pungent with the smell of salt and sea. I held tightly to the brim of my straw hat lest the wind blow it away. The stretch of land along the coast looked white and glistened under the setting sun. Yan told me these were the salt fields. The salt farmers pumped seawater into acres and acres of beachfront, then they built low walls to block the water from flowing back, and let the sun bake out all the moisture, leaving behind a field of salt in its solid form. This natural salt was exported to many foreign countries; the salt we used at home also came from here.

I knelt down and scooped a handful of the shining salt into my pocket when Yan wasn’t looking, and ran off to see the coast.

Suddenly, the ocean loomed before us. At first it was a wide belt of dark blue water with glistening stars dancing on its surface. But as I ran closer and closer in my excitement to embrace it, the sea grew wider and longer until it seemed to engulf the little piece of land I was standing on. The vastness of the sea made me feel small and flimsy like a blade of grass in the wind.

As Yan caught up with me, a fragile old man waved to us and shouted my cousin’s name.

“That’s the boatman guarding the ferry from the island,” Yan said. “His name is Old Mountain.”

“Old Mountain?” I laughed.

“Funny, huh?” Her eyes twinkled. “Wait until you meet my pupils.”

We went to a lonely, creaky dock, where only two little sailboats bobbed in the water. Our ferry was small, its sails like a patchwork quilt filled with holes, shreds flying in the wind. It wasn’t much to look at, but it rocked sturdily as we gingerly crossed the plank and descended onto the deck. We were the only passengers. Old Mountain had a skinny young man helping him. Within minutes, we were on our way.

I held fast to the mast. Occasionally, waves spilled onto the deck, but the old ferry stayed upright and skipped forward with a taut sail. In the twilight, the sea was as scary as a dark night without stars. Yan told me that island people were very superstitious and did not want bad things mentioned on the boat, so all the way there I sat quietly, occasionally casting a glance at Old Mountain, who whistled a broken tune and narrowed his eyes, looking off into the distance.

Half an hour later, Yan helped me off the ferry and we said good-bye to Old Mountain and his helper. The island of Milon was dotted with little houses. At the busy dock, we were suddenly surrounded by a dozen enthusiastic, noisy girls and boys who seemed to be around my own age. They grabbed our luggage, shook our hands, and even took my hat as if it were too great a burden for me to carry. The girls all seemed to have babies fastened to their backs; the boys wore only simple shorts on this warm winter day. They were all barefoot.

“These are all my pupils,” Yan told me proudly as she turned to the children. “Here, I want you all to meet my cousin. His name is Da.”

“Good day, Daaaa…” they said in unison, as if they were doing a class recitation. It was followed by giggling.

“Why was that funny?” I asked.

A girl with big eyes and long hair answered, smiling, while the rest peered at me shyly.

“Because we never heard such a name before. It sounds like a grown-up’s name.”

“A grown-up’s name? Why?” I asked my cousin.

“None of the local children has a real name until they get to marriageable age, about fifteen. Then they are given one. Before that, they were named after animals or objects. For example, she is Piggy, he is Little Eel, the boy carrying your hat is Oyster Shell, and the pretty one with long hair is called Clear Moon.” Each blushed as his or her name was called.

“How do they get names like that?” I wondered.

“The father picks the name of the first thing he sees after the baby is born.”