Feather in the Storm: A Childhood Lost in Chaos (28 page)

Meanwhile, instead of returning home, Old Crab ran to the edge of the village, where the main power switch had been placed. He looked around to make sure no one was watching. Then he flipped the switch to turn the power on, left it on for several seconds and turned it off. After that he went home and retrieved the outlet and returned to Shuizi’s father’s shed. On the way, he ran into Shuizi’s father. “What took you so long?” Shuizi’s father asked.

“I couldn’t find it,” Old Crab lied. “Are you all right?”

“What could possibly be wrong with me?” Shuizi’s father asked.

When they reentered the shed, they found Young Crab lying on the floor. Shuizi’s father turned him over. His eyes were open. He had a look of surprise on his face. His hands were black. And he wasn’t breathing. Shuizi’s father felt for a pulse and said, “He’s dead. How can this be?”

Old Crab fell to his knees beside his son and blurted out, “My son! My son! I killed you!”

“What do you mean you killed him?” Shuizi’s father asked.

Old Crab covered his face with his hands. He moaned. “Why
my
son?”

Other villagers heard the cries and came into the shed. They asked what had happened but Shuizi’s father could not explain it. “One
minute he was installing the wires, and the next minute he was dead on the floor.” People shook their heads. It was a mystery. No one could explain the blackened hands. Maybe the fox spirit had returned, some of them whispered. Maybe the fox spirit had taken revenge.

The next day the villagers buried Young Crab. Representatives from the Communist Party came from the brigade and commune headquarters and praised the young man and his father. Old Crab was inconsolable.

With the electricity routed to our home, we were finally able to listen to our radio. It was a novelty in the village. People crowded into our shed and sat with us listening to it. It was a Three Goats (San Yang) brand and had five large tubes in it. It was our treasure. None of the villagers could understand how a little box could make so much noise. They’d never heard anything like it.

At night Papa tuned it to the Voice of America to hear the news in English from outside China. He helped my older brother and me with our English by letting us listen to it with him. Though Papa was sometimes short on patience, the radio was an endlessly patient teacher.

Our English improved. But the English teacher did not stay long in my school. As soon as Party policies changed, she returned to Nanjing. One day she packed all of her belongings and walked to the road and disappeared, heading in the direction of the bus stop. We learned that she later became a factory worker. It seemed to me that everyone from outside the village, from the day they arrived, sought a way to get out and go back to the city. Learning from the peasants was like living in a prison.

My older brother and I cultivated a garden in a bare patch of land at the outskirts of the village. It was considered barren soil, and no one else wanted it. Old Crab assigned it to us. We tilled the soil and enriched it with buckets of muck from our own sewer pool. My brother became an expert at spreading water and sewage over the little plot. After school each day we tended it, and before long we had the most productive garden in the village.

An uncle, my mother’s fourth brother, was an agronomist. He mailed us seeds of very sturdy vegetables from Tianjin. Our crops were huge compared to those of others. We grew turnips that were five pounds each. Yet before long the largest turnips and bok choy began disappearing each night. Only when we cultivated crops around our home would the villagers not steal them. Those were growing on graves, and village superstitions and ghosts kept our crops secure. It was all so strange. The peasants were supposed to be the ones who understood agriculture. They had lived on this soil for hundreds of years. But within a few months we were growing larger crops because we had better seeds and we knew how to care for the crops scientifically.

They watched us and learned from us. The reverse of what was supposed to happen, happened.

I was required to work in the fields every weekend as I grew older. One day I was spreading manure in the rice field with another girl when I became very tired. I felt faint and said I needed to go home. My friend said she was tired, too. At the same time our families needed the work points. When no one was looking, we threw manure in each other’s hair, then announced we had to go home because of the accident, and wash our hair. So we got the time off and the work points and headed home. I was fifteen and growing increasingly impatient with village life. I skipped work many times, and I was getting bored with school. Papa felt it might be a good idea for me to get out of the village for a short time. His uncle lived in Nanjing, the nearest large city. He was old and lived alone. Papa had learned by mail that he was not well. “You can visit him, stay with him and see the big city,” Papa said. I was excited by the prospect.

I took a bus to Nanjing. It was merely a truck with a canvas top. I crawled in the back where nearly fifty people were crammed inside, some sitting and some standing. I stood and hung on to a rack overhead. Four hours later the bus stopped on the outskirts of Nanjing, where I transferred to a city bus. I found the old man in a dingy and dark apartment. It was a single room with a bed, a chair and a table. He was in bed.

“Grand-uncle, I’m Wu Yimao,” I said. “I am Wu Ningkun’s daughter. He learned that you were sick, and he sent me here to visit you.”

“Come in, child,” he said in a weak, wavering voice and motioned for me to approach him. I handed him a letter of introduction from my father. He read it and beamed.

“I have six children,” he said. “And no one has come to see me in a long time. I am afraid I will die soon. I feel it in my bones. And now you are here. I am happy to see you.”

He told me the wife of a friend in Nanjing came once a week to bring him food and to clean. He could no longer walk alone outside
the apartment. He gave me a little money he kept hidden under his bed. He told me where a nearby market was and said I could buy us some fresh vegetables. He had a single electric burner and some pots. I got water from an outside faucet and prepared a vegetable soup for him.

All the while I was cooking, he talked. I slept on the floor beside his bed that night. In the morning I gathered up his dirty clothing and his bedding and washed them. I helped him sit on a stool near me so he could talk while I did the laundry. Then I hung everything on a line to dry in the sun. After dinner he held my arm and I took him for a walk around the block. He had not been outside in months, he said. He loved the smell of the fresh air. I told him I could stay for only two days before returning home. He asked about my father, and I told him about our life in the countryside.

He showed concern. The next morning he wrote on an envelope a name and an address in Beijing. He folded a note and put it in the envelope. “This is a letter to my daughter,” he said. “She is married to an influential man. Li Zhisui, her husband, is the private physician of Mao Zedong.” He paused for the words to register. “Maybe she can help your family.”

I cooked another meal for him, folded his clean clothes and made his bed, and bade him goodbye. There were tears in his eyes when I left. “I will never forget you,” he said. “You are a good-hearted girl.”

Mama had been trying for years to find a way for us to get out of the countryside. She and Papa discussed petitioning Anhui University to accept him back as a teacher. Mama was employed by the county and could not appeal to another work unit, but Papa had no unit, no organization to which he officially belonged. Only Mama could travel, however, to the places where she felt she might influence someone to transfer us from the countryside to the city again. Papa wrote up a long petition making his case. It said he wished to be rehabilitated politically and get his job and salary back in Hefei. Mama went to Hefei several times, carrying his petition. The travel expenses strained our budget.
Yet my parents thought it was worth the sacrifice. “We must grab every opportunity to get out of here,” Papa told us.

When I arrived home I described my stay in Nanjing to my parents and gave Papa the letter. He read it. He was delighted. “This might be a ticket out,” he said. It was decided that Mama would go to Beijing to appeal directly to Li Zhisui for help.

She visited him in the middle of a blistering Beijing summer day. She saved her bus fare and walked four miles to Li Zhisui’s house from the residence of a cousin where she was staying. When she arrived she was exhausted and thirsty. She knocked on the door, and the wife of the physician—my father’s first cousin—answered. Mother had seen her on several occasions in Beijing and recognized her right away. Their eyes met but the woman showed no sign of recognition.

Mama smiled and said, “I am Wu Ningkun’s wife. It’s been a long time since I last saw you.”

The woman responded gruffly, “And who is this Wu Ningkun?”

“He is your cousin. We’ve met,” Mama said. “Don’t you remember him? Don’t you remember me?”

The woman stared at her coldly. “I’ve never seen you before in my life. And I have no idea who Wu Ningkun is. You’d better go away.”

“But you grew up in the same house. You played together in the same courtyard. You must remember.”

“You are wrong. I don’t know what you are talking about,” the woman said.

“But … your father is my husband’s uncle.”

The woman’s stare was icy and anxious, even frightened.

“My daughter cared for your father in Nanjing. She was there last month. He gave her your address. That’s how I found you. I have a letter from him for you.”

More silence.

Li Zhisui, Mao’s private physician, appeared in the hallway behind his wife. My mother recognized him. “Dr. Li,” mother said, looking over the shoulder of his wife. “I am here to ask for your help.”

The physician said nothing. He stared at her with a combination of curiosity and alarm. Then he disappeared.

Mama held out the letter but the woman pushed it away. “You should go,” she said, “before I summon security.”

Mama’s spirits sank as she stood at the door. She fought back tears. “May I have a drink of water?” she said. “I’ve come a long way to find you. It’s hot and I’m thirsty.”

“I think it would be better if you just left,” the woman said.

Mama gave her a last look of desperation before she turned and walked away.

Mama did not give up. She came home from Beijing empty-handed but she went back and forth to Hefei many more times, seeking help. She visited government officials and university administrators, making a case for my father’s restoration in the university. The Anhui University officials expressed displeasure at her appeals and refused to invite him back. But then, almost miraculously, with the assistance of a few sympathetic figures in the provincial government who remembered and admired Papa, she learned of a vacant teaching position in Anhui Teachers University in the city of Wuhu. At the end of 1973 Papa was informed he’d been awarded the vacant position.

My parents worked swiftly completing the required paperwork for our move. Every document had to be signed and sealed by the entire county bureaucracy. Everything was finally completed three days before the Spring Festival began in February.

We started packing. We used a small trunk Papa brought from the United States to carry some of our clothes. It was old and worn but still serviceable. A faded Beijing address was painted neatly across the top of the trunk. One of Papa’s friends at the University of Chicago, Lee Tsung-Dao, had written it on the trunk in July 1951. We stuffed the rest
of our belongings in other trunks and bamboo baskets. I had mixed emotions about leaving. I’d had a few good experiences in Gao Village, along with my many sad and tragic memories.

In my spare time during the fifteen days of Spring Festival, I visited the families of the friends I’d made. I took several pieces of candy to the shed of Little Rabbit’s family and gave them to her brother, who was over five years old. Nobody mentioned Little Rabbit. I thought about visiting Chunying in Bao Village one more time. But I decided against it. I wasn’t sure I’d be welcome. Instead I visited her parents. I asked about Chunying. Her mother smiled from ear to ear and announced, “She had a boy!”

“Please tell her I didn’t have time to visit her before I left. But say I heard about her good fortune. Tell her how happy I am for her.”

Her mother nodded. “I’ll tell her.”

On the third day of the Spring Festival, I visited Jinlan’s parents. I wished them good fortune during the New Year. Jinlan’s name was not spoken. And I didn’t ask about her.

Finally I walked to the shed of Shuizi’s father. He was alone, preparing tea for himself. I entered his shed and wished him a happy New Year.

“And the same to you,” he said. “Can you have a cup of tea with me?”

“Of course,” I said, surprised to be treated like an adult.

I seated myself on a bench and he handed me a steaming cup of tea. We said nothing at first but merely smiled and sipped tea. At last I asked, diffidently, “How are Jinlan and Shuizi?”

He gave me a look of surprise. “Why do you ask me such a question?”

“Because Jinlan is my best friend. I spoke with her before she ran away with Shuizi. I know what they did.”

He looked into his teacup, unsure how to respond. He was silent for several seconds.

“You did a brave thing,” I said. “I admire you.”

He smiled but still said nothing.

“Tell me,” I said, “did Jinlan have a boy or a girl?”

“You know a lot, don’t you?” he said.

“Yes, I do.”

“She had a boy,” he answered. “And she had a girl.”

It took a moment for me to grasp what he said. “Twins?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. He rose and went to his bed, reached into the pillowcase and pulled out an envelope. He extracted a small photograph and handed it to me. In it, Jinlan sat beside Shuizi. Each of them held a baby. All four of them were bundled up in padded winter clothing. Jinlan and Shuizi were smiling.

My eyes teared when I saw her. “This is the second time I’ve ever known of anyone having twins,” I said. “It’s wonderful. You must be very proud, Grandpa.”