Feather in the Storm: A Childhood Lost in Chaos (11 page)

At home I washed my soiled clothing and sewed up the tear in my shirt before Mama saw it. I examined my scalp in the mirror and found a bald spot where the hair had been pulled out. I gathered my hair around the spot and used a rubber band to make a ponytail. I told Xiaolan what had happened. She laughed about my fighting back but warned, “Maomao, now you’re really going to get it.”

Together we conspired to postpone their retribution. We circled the campus searching for a way to get out without going through the main gate. We found a weak spot in the campus wall, concealed partially
by shrubbery. The mortar had disintegrated and bricks had come loose. We pulled out several bricks near the base of the wall and made a hole large enough for each of us to squeeze through. We crawled out the hole and took a new route to school.

Nobody followed us that day. The next morning we met outside Xiaolan’s apartment building and hurried to our secret exit. After we’d slipped through it we looked down the street toward the main gate and saw several of the students who’d chased me lingering in the street. I pointed them out to Xiaolan, and we had to cover our mouths to stifle our laughter. We ran through alleys and down side streets we’d never taken before to get to school. This became our regular route. We eventually gave the crescent-shaped hole in the wall a name—Moon Gate.

We evaded our tormentors for the next few weeks. We hoped they’d tire of looking for us.

But before long we got into trouble with another group.

One of our most malicious classmates was a tall, temperamental girl named Sun Maomao. Her father had been provost of the university. He was a powerful man who freely used his position for personal advantage. His family lived a life of luxury. Even in hard times, they ate well.

My parents were high on his hate list. At a political meeting of the university faculty and staff a few years earlier, the provost gave a long speech—a directive as well as a criticism—about birth control. My parents had two children at the time and my mother was expecting a third. Looking straight at her, he said that the best policy for black families was a one-child policy. “Having more than one child,” said the father of six, “is irresponsible and unpatriotic for a black family. Such people who produce more than one child will suffer dire consequences.”

One morning Xiaolan and I were playing quietly in a corner of the school yard before class started. We found that when we pulled up a clump of crabgrass and cleaned off the roots, we could chew them and extract a sweet-tasting juice. While we chewed the roots, we wove the blades of grass into a bird’s nest. Perched on our knees on the ground, we talked about the birds that would come and lay eggs in our nest. We imagined how they would look, their wonderful colors, the size and
color of the eggs and the number of baby birds we could watch. There were almost no birds in the city. Eight years earlier, a fanatical campaign had succeeded in exterminating wild birds in the cities and the countryside because Chairman Mao believed they were pests that ate crops that might otherwise be consumed by people.

Xiaolan was wearing a new white blouse with tiny blue flowers printed on it. Her mother had made it and Xiaolan was quite pleased with it. The bell rang. We ran to class. Xiaolan held the nest in her hands. She didn’t want to drop it, and she would get into trouble if she brought it inside the classroom. She shouted, “Maomao! Look!”

I turned to see her fling it high into the air, as though it were a bird, rather than a nest, and would take flight. As it left her hands it came apart into wet roots and blades of grass. Behind us came Sun Maomao. The disintegrating nest rained down on her. She was furious. She sprang at Xiaolan, grabbed her by the collar, slapped her twice across the face and shrieked, “How dare you, you rotten little historic anti-revolutionary!”

As Xiaolan tried to pull away, Sun Maomao jerked her forward. They struggled, and Sun Maomao tore off Xiaolan’s blouse. I stepped between them and pushed Sun Maomao away. She tripped over her own feet. “You rightist bitch,” she screamed. She was about to charge me when Xiaolan jumped in front of me. She was half naked; Sun Maomao still clutched the remnants of her new blouse. In a flash Xiaolan was clawing furiously at Sun Maomao’s face like a ferocious cat. Sun Maomao screamed, dropped the blouse and covered her face. “My eyes!” she cried. “You hurt my eyes!” Xiaolan broke off her attack, snatched up her torn blouse and ran home. Sun Maomao cowered nearby.

All five of Sun Maomao’s siblings attended our school and the nearby middle school. They planned their vengeance methodically, just as the adults did.

The next afternoon Xiaolan and I participated in a rehearsal for our school’s Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Team. The best singers and dancers in the school were selected to be part of the team and perform
on the streets and for other classes and schools. After an hour of singing and dancing, the students and teachers left. Xiaolan and I stayed to sweep the floor and clean the blackboard. We had not yet been forbidden from participating in rehearsals but we were required to perform extra labor. When we were finished, we gathered up our books and walked to the door and spotted Sun Maomao and her brothers and sisters—the entire Sun brood—waiting for us outside.

“There they are!” Sun Maomao shouted when she saw us. They rushed the door. We scampered back into the classroom, slammed the door shut and blocked it with a desk. We braced our backs against the desk and held the door closed. The Suns pounded and kicked the door, cursing and making threats. Each time they succeeded in pushing the door open an inch we pushed back with all of our might. Slowly the opening became smaller until, to the sound of expletives and threats from the other side, it clicked shut.

“Are there just two of them? Are you absolutely sure?” we heard one of the Suns ask. Our desperation gave us the strength of many.

“We have all the time in the world, you little black bitches,” one of the Sun boys shouted. “The longer we wait out here, the worse it is going to be for you. Come out and face your punishment.”

We had no intention of facing them. Eventually Sun Maomao’s big brother announced, “We’ll sit here as long as you are in there, and we’ll save our strength for beating the shit out of you.” After a long silence, Sun Maomao screamed, “You filthy black bitches had better come out of there, or … or I’ll have my brothers … set fire to the building. I’ll see you bitches burn.”

We didn’t know what they might do if we went out, but our imaginations were vivid. So we waited quietly while the Suns brayed outside.

Hours passed. We heard them whispering and creeping up to the door to test it. The light faded. We soon found ourselves enveloped in darkness, whispering to each other, wondering if our parents might come looking for us.

Finally there was no sound outside. We pulled the door open a crack and peeked out. We could see no one. We opened it farther, to see if that might lure the Suns out of hiding. There was no movement. We decided to make a run for it. We stepped outside and stood very still, watching and listening. The Suns had lost their patience that day. But we knew they would return. They had only postponed our punishment.

Xiaolan and I raced to our apartment buildings. We heard chilling chants from a gathering far away. Big character posters, pasted on walls and hanging from ropes and wires, blew lazily in the breeze like flags or shrouds. The gaunt caricatures on the posters looked down on us like a gallery of ghosts as we hurriedly passed.

As I was on my way home from the market one Sunday morning, Sun Maomao and her siblings stepped from an alley and surrounded me. Sun Maomao grabbed my hair, and her brothers and sisters kicked and punched me. The food I was carrying spilled to the ground and the eggs broke. The oldest boy proclaimed loudly, “You are Xiaolan’s friend. For every hair Xiaolan pulled from my sister, you will pay with ten.”

They pulled out my hair and kicked me until I stopped resisting and they tired of beating me. They picked up the vegetables scattered around me and ran away, laughing and shouting, “Long live the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution!”

Xiaolan and I continued to watch out for the Suns. On several afternoons we were ambushed and chased. Caught alone on the street once, Xiaolan was beaten badly.

My only consolation was that Xiaolan and I remained loyal and kind to each other. When I saw Xiaolan each morning, her face was freshly scrubbed, and her clothes had been washed and sewn or patched if they’d been torn. She was always happy to see me. We slipped through our very own Moon Gate and out into the hostile world together, sister victims in the world of the big revolution.

As we ran to school, sheets and shredded fragments of paper blew
around us—loosened scraps from old weather-worn political posters. Sometimes a breeze tore off a corner or an entire poster came loose and flipped and flew down the street. We found ourselves racing it as it twirled and twisted along in the drafts, or several tattered shreds skittered across our path. At times the characters were decipherable—
ENEMY
.
RIGHTIST
.
TRAITOR
.
DEATH
.
KILL
. Or a partial accusation, interrupted by a rip in midsentence. Fragments of posters caught on our legs, and we giggled and jumped or halted and kicked our feet in a little dance, trying to free ourselves of the ribbons of soiled and crinkled paper.

Then we ran on to school, clutching our book bags while the condemnations swirled past us, shredding, balling up, tearing apart, snagging in the branches of trees or the spokes of bicycles. Adults avoided these remnants of posters as if they were a poison or carried a curse. But Xiaolan and I dashed fearlessly through them.

When it rained the ink on the posters blotted and ran, and the characters were transformed into flowers and clouds and bleeding spots and collages of color, beautiful to see. Sometimes we saw in the blotches human or animal faces that we tried to identify. Sometimes we saw monsters forming in the running ink, and we screamed and ran from them in mock fright as we played our game pursued by colorful paper.

We spent much of our time that autumn and winter playing and planning ways to remain out of harm’s way, and to find some bit of security, some companionship, beyond the reach of the Sun siblings.

One morning after the winter chill began, I waited for Xiaolan outside her apartment for our walk to school. When she appeared, she looked sad.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Papa told me I could no longer walk to school with you. He said I cannot talk to you or play with you,” she answered.

“Why?” I asked, shocked.

“Because, Maomao. Just because.” She fidgeted with her book bag.
“Papa said that if people see us talking or playing together, they will say we are exchanging information from our parents.”

“But we don’t,” I said.

“Sun Maomao’s father warned Papa. So … we have to stop being friends.”

It was useless to argue. “Okay, Xiaolan,” I said, my voice breaking. “I’ll stay away. But I’ll always be your friend. You know that, don’t you?”

“Goodbye, Maomao.” She sighed and hurried away. I watched her slip through the Moon Gate. She didn’t look back.

From that day on we faced the Suns alone.

In November the political ground shifted. Sun Maomao’s father came under intense criticism by Red Guards. He was labeled a “capitalist roader in power.” He was stripped of his title and position and lost his authority, privileges and status. Overnight he and his family went from red to black. The hunters became the hunted. Sun Maomao and her siblings became fair game for children of red families. I stopped worrying about them. I almost felt sorry for them.

As I was coming home from school one day, I saw her father standing on a platform in the street. He was wearing a dunce cap and his head was bowed. He was being denounced and punched by former students and colleagues who, in time, would be stars on the same stage. The next day I saw boys chasing Sun Maomao’s brothers down a street, flinging rocks at them. Another time I watched with amusement as Sun Maomao furtively squeezed through our Moon Gate and ran home.

Yet something about the Sun family made them different from my family and Xiaolan’s. They could not bear suffering. They could only inflict it.

One afternoon while Sun Maomao’s father was being pulled around the campus like a dog on a leash, he collapsed. The Red Guards thought he was faking an ailment. They kicked him, pulled him to his feet, slapped his face and doused him with buckets of water but were unable to bring him to his senses. In frustration, they dragged him by
the feet to his apartment building and left him. It took his wife over an hour to summon help and get him to a hospital. The doctors concluded it was not exhaustion that had caused his collapse but a stroke.

When he regained consciousness he was unable to move or speak. He was taken home to be cared for by his family. Within a few weeks he became pale and thin. His eyes clouded and his hair turned white and fell out. Each day he sat strapped in a chair staring vacantly at the floor.

Sun Maomao’s eldest brother got out of bed one night and walked to the nearby pond. He stepped into the water, disappeared beneath the surface and drowned. The next morning Red Guards discovered his body, denounced him and fed his remains to wild dogs outside the city wall.

With the fall of the Suns, it was safe for Xiaolan and me to see each other. We resumed playing together and walking to school hand in hand. One morning we passed Sun Maomao seated on a little stool in front of her apartment building. She was singing nonsense rhymes in a loud, shrill voice. When she spotted us, she stopped singing and stared as if she had never seen us before. We moved past her and she followed us with her eyes. She erupted in ear-piercing shrieks of hysteria and started pulling at her own hair. Xiaolan and I broke into a run and Sun Maomao’s cries faded behind us.

Sun Maomao was never reunited with her sanity.

One afternoon I heard another mob approaching our apartment. I listened to the familiar chorus of hate as it drew closer and increased in volume.