Feather in the Storm: A Childhood Lost in Chaos (16 page)

She tied a long red scarf around her neck and led us outside. It was snowing. The campus was white and the air was filled with snowflakes that danced around us. Auntie Liang turned her face to the sky and stuck out her tongue to catch snowflakes. We ran the short distance to the sports grounds, which were buried beneath untouched snow.

“Look at me,” Auntie Liang called. “I’m a butterfly.” She lay on her back in the snow and spread her arms and legs wide and moved them back and forth and got to her feet and showed us her impression in the snow. It looked like a white butterfly. “Make your own butterflies,” she said, and we did. We looked like the happy children in the picture books outside the broadcast studio. At last I knew how the children in those pictures felt and why they smiled so broadly.

In the amber halo of the streetlamps I saw how truly beautiful Auntie Liang was. Her skin had a lovely sheen. Her hair was black and radiant,
and her eyes shone like silver. I stopped making my butterfly and watched her run around, throwing snow at Xiaolan and my brothers. She was a little girl. She darted between us and hugged us and twirled us around until she fell and then she hugged us again. She lifted Xiaolan into the air and kissed her and twirled her until Xiaolan screamed with joy. We all collapsed in gales of laughter.

I watched Auntie Liang and Xiaolan and felt a pang of envy. I wanted to play with my parents and hear their laughter. I longed to be held by my mother. We lost track of time. Eventually, Auntie Liang pulled each of us to our feet and brushed the snow off our clothing. We held hands and danced our way toward the center.

One supervisor and a few children had already returned. We put Yicun to bed. Yiding said good night and went to his room. Auntie Liang followed Xiaolan and me to our room, and we crawled together under our two blankets and lay down. Auntie Liang pulled the covers up to our chins. She tenderly kissed me on the cheek. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her to me and choked back my tears. She moved to the other side of the mat, held Xiaolan in her arms, kissed her and slowly pulled away. She breathed a brief ragged sigh. She stood for a moment before switching off the light and backing away. I watched her silhouette and saw her glistening eyes. Her footsteps faded in the hall. The outside door opened and closed and she was gone.

Xiaolan cried and we wrapped our arms around each other.

The following morning Comrade Pan poked me awake with her foot. In a brusque voice, she called, “Wake up, Wu Yimao! Your little brother shit his bed. You fed him last night. You had better take care of it now!”

I rubbed my eyes and sat up.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Xiaolan asked.

“No,” I replied. “Go back to sleep.”

I went to Yicun’s room. He sat on a stool beside his mat crying. His soiled underwear, trousers and sheet lay in a pile on the floor. I comforted him and led him to the washroom to clean him up. The water
pipe had frozen and a long stalactite of ice hung from the mouth of the faucet. I returned to Yicun’s room, poured a cup of hot water from a thermos and carried it back to the washroom. I wet a towel with it and washed Yicun.

Comrade Pan watched. “The water pipe is frozen,” I told her. “I can’t wash anything today.”

“Go to the pond,” she barked.

I borrowed a large bamboo basket and a wooden laundry paddle from Uncle Liu and put the soiled laundry in the basket. Outside the snow had stopped falling. I trudged down the winding path to the pond. No one else was around.

The surface of the frozen pond was covered with snow. I raised the paddle high over my head and slammed it down on the ice. With a loud crack, the ice broke, and water bubbled up. I pushed aside the shards of ice to create a hole large enough to do my washing. I pulled the soiled blanket from the basket, the new snow beneath my shoes shifted, and I slid and tumbled backward into the hole. The icy water had hundreds of tiny teeth that bit my hands and arms. I let out a loud gasp and thrust out my hands to break my fall, then turned and pushed myself back up the bank of the pond. My jacket was soaked and I was shivering. I started to work fast. My teeth chattered as I pounded the laundry with the paddle. Each time I plunged the blanket and clothing into the water, it seemed to take another bite from my flesh. I wrung out the sheet and blanket and dropped them into my basket and hurriedly washed and paddled the underwear and trousers.

When I was finished, I had difficulty standing because my clothing was sheathed in ice. Icicles hung from my hair and the sleeves of my jacket. Sharp little needles of ice in my trousers and jacket pricked my skin when I moved. I struggled unsteadily to my feet. I could not lift the loaded basket. I had to drag it behind me.

A light snow had begun to come down. Gusts of wind blew flakes in my face, and I shielded my eyes with my hand as I plodded along.

After I had struggled a short distance, an unusual flash of color
caught my eye. I peered hard through the screen of white, trying to make it out. I released the basket, moved several steps in the direction of the color and strained to see what it was. Part of it was a streak of scarlet but the shape was a blur. I went closer. When I was a few feet away it became clear. The color was one end of a scarf tied around the branch of a tree. The other end was knotted around the neck of a naked body.

I was stunned. The body twisted slowly above me. The face was swollen. The flesh was alabaster, but the head, hands and feet were the color of a bruise.

There was something eerily familiar in the features. I forced myself to look. It was Auntie Liang. A finger on her left hand where her jade ring had been was chopped off. The blood from her wound had congealed in a splatter of black ice beneath her body.

I let out a deep harrowing howl. I sobbed and scratched at my eyes, trying to make everything go away.

I backed away while keeping my eyes fixed on Auntie Liang. Then I turned and ran. I raced into the center, screaming hysterically. Two supervisors appeared and asked, “What is the screaming about? Have you seen a ghost?”

The sound that erupted from somewhere inside me was a pathetic frightening “ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh” as I pointed in the direction from which I’d just come. One supervisor took my face in her hands and demanded, “What is wrong?” When I continued screaming, she slapped me hard.

I found my voice. “Help,” I sobbed. “She’s hanging from the tree.” I broke loose and ran out the door with the supervisors following me. As we neared Auntie Liang, I slowed and pointed.

The supervisors halted and looked. They cautiously approached and circled the body, mumbling to each other. I stood at a distance and noticed dozens of footprints and several bricks piled in the snow.

“Someone else was here—look at these footprints,” one supervisor said.

“Several people have been here,” the other said.

“They stood on these to steal her clothes,” the first said, pointing to the bricks.

“I’ll get help,” the other one said and trotted away.

The supervisor asked what I’d seen. She asked if I’d noticed anyone near the body.

“No. Just Auntie Liang.”

“You know this woman?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“She is Xiaolan’s mother,” I said.

The first supervisor looked up at the body once more and walked under it, looking in the snow, examining the footprints. “I think those damned shit stealers were here before you,” she said. “They stole her clothes.”

The shit stealers were peasants from villages surrounding the city who sneaked onto the campus every night. They were an army of shadows that glided silently through the dark. They stole sewage from the university toilets to use and sell as fertilizer. They also stole anything else that might be found unguarded.

The first supervisor returned with Uncle Liu and two security men. Uncle Liu asked, “Yimao, are you all right?”

“No,” I said.

He joined the others around the body. They found dark stains where the shit stealers had put down their buckets while they tore away Auntie Liang’s clothing and cut off her finger.

Uncle Liu climbed the tree, pulled out a small knife, and sliced through the red scarf. Auntie Liang’s rigid body fell to the snow. I was embarrassed for her when the supervisors and the other men stood staring at her naked body. She lay on her back, arms and legs outstretched, as if she intended to make a butterfly. The scarf was still knotted around her neck. Uncle Liu untied it and used it to cover her private parts.

“They took everything,” one of the security men said.

“Even her underwear,” the second added and nudged the first.

“She was a fine one,” the first one said in a low voice, and both men chuckled.

I watched the fluttering snowflakes gently powder Auntie Liang’s body with a chaste veneer. I turned and began walking away, but the supervisors shouted for me to stay.

One of the security men approached and asked me how I’d discovered the body and if I’d seen anyone else lurking around.

A supervisor volunteered that Auntie Liang was a counterrevolutionary.

Another said she’d heard that Auntie Liang had several lovers. A security man mumbled something about having heard this, too. “No loss,” the other security man nodded. All of them except Uncle Liu nodded agreement. Uncle Liu gave me a concerned glance and then looked away as if ashamed.

A sudden gust sent a piece of Auntie Liang’s scarf skittering over the snow. The man questioning me snatched it up. He held it out for me to see. “This was hers?” he asked. “Are you sure?”

I looked at it. I had not noticed the subtle pattern in the scarf before. Embroidered in the silk were hundreds of little red butterflies of a slightly different hue than the rest of the scarf. Held to the light, they were clear and appeared to shimmer.

“Let the child go,” Uncle Liu said. “She’s told you all she knows.”

“Okay. You can go,” the security man said.

I hurried to the center and sat on the floor and felt sick. I realized only then that I’d left the laundry basket outside. I retrieved it.

The full consequence of everything I’d just seen slowly dawned on me. Not only was Auntie Liang dead, but she had committed a crime in taking her own life.

Later that morning her body was removed. No one said how it was disposed of. But I knew that the bodies of those who killed themselves were hauled outside the city to be devoured by wild dogs.

Xiaolan found me sitting in the hallway crying. She asked what was wrong. I told her I’d fallen through the ice. She helped me out of my wet clothing and we slipped under our blankets together. She lay next to me to keep me warm. I didn’t know how to tell her what had happened. I wondered if I should tell her before the supervisors did. I decided not to.

When I closed my eyes that night, I dreamed of Auntie Liang’s scarf. It was caught high in the branches of the tree where I’d found her, waving like a long flag in the wind. I approached the tree, looking up. As I watched, the scarf unraveled and the butterflies embroidered in the silk came free and floated up on the air. The first ones free flapped their tiny wings and circled the tree while the others worked their way out of the fabric and the scarf became smaller and smaller. As the last threads of the scarf came undone, the butterflies rose in the sky and began flying away. They grew smaller and smaller and finally disappeared in the white winter world. I was left standing alone beneath the skeletal branches of the tree. I awakened with a start, tears pouring from my eyes. Xiaolan was resting on her elbow, looking at me. I buried my face in the blanket to hide my tears. Xiaolan laid her hand on my shoulder and cried out, “Mama, I want mama.” She had been told the news.

She turned away. I held her tightly and felt her shudder. Her skin was cold. She moaned and said words I did not understand.

“Xiaolan?” I whispered. “I had a dream about your mama. If I tell it to you then you can have the same dream.”

She calmed in my arms.

“Xiaolan, I saw Auntie Liang’s scarf outside. And guess what? While I watched it turned into little butterflies that danced in the air and flew over my head. And then they flew away, all of them, together.”

“Where is my mama?” Xiaolan whimpered.

“Auntie Liang was there, Xiaolan. But it wasn’t really her anymore. Instead, she was the last beautiful red butterfly to come out of the scarf. And the butterfly fluttered around my face. It spoke to me in Auntie Liang’s voice.”

I could see the shine of Xiaolan’s eyes as she turned to me. “What did she say?” she asked.

“She told me to tell you that she was a butterfly. And she said that we should watch for her in … in the spring. And she told me to tell you that she would visit us often.”

It was quiet for a moment as Xiaolan thought about what I’d said.

“Is that all? Did she say my name?”

I don’t know where my words came from. It was as if Auntie Liang were in my heart and her words were tumbling from my mouth into Xiaolan’s ear.

“Yes,” I said. “She told me to tell you that she was watching over you. And she said you should wait and hope.”

Shortly after the holiday, my mother was summoned by the Propaganda Team leader.

“We have decided to send your husband back to the countryside near his birthplace of Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province,” he said.

Mama nodded. She concealed her trembling and stared at the frozen earth.

“But the question is, where precisely to send him? It is difficult to send criminals like him anyplace. Nobody wants them.”

Mama waited until the next morning to tell Papa the dreadful news. She found, however, that he’d been told earlier and withheld it so as not to upset her.

“There is nothing we can do,” he said. “Let’s see where they send me before we despair any more.”

Mama wondered how he could survive by himself. When he was sent to the concentration camp in 1958, he was only thirty-eight. Now he was nearly fifty. Could he bear it again, emotionally and physically?

In early May the Propaganda Team leader held a meeting with the
migrants from the university. He announced that the Propaganda Team was giving certain selected comrades “permission to volunteer to settle down in the countryside.” These volunteers were to establish permanent homes among the peasants, according to Chairman Mao’s directive. Their residency permits and food and oil quotas would be transferred. Their dependents would be moved with them but they were all to be stripped of the right to free public health care.