Three Sisters (28 page)

She received nothing for finishing; no one was there to give her an arm to lean on, and she did not get a glass of sugar water. Burning with shame, she cowered on the sidelines. That's when the cramps started, reminding her that she was more than just spirit, since spirit would not have to put up with cramps. It was a sharp, intense pain. She bent over and saw something that looked like a worm on the inside of her thigh—a red worm, warm and soft, crawling down slowly, and the farther it went, the longer and thicker it grew. Shocked by the sight, she stood there in a daze before bolting toward the dormitory building.

Yuyang was alone in her room, curled up in bed like a shrimp. The pain was more emotional than physical because the 3,000-meter race was over before she'd had a chance to use all of her strength. She was convinced that if it had been a 10,000-meter race, she might have come in first or at least have been among the top finishers. It wasn't until that moment that she realized that the track and field meet actually held meaning for her. She realized that she was too ordinary; she had nothing to attract attention, nothing she did better than anyone else. If she'd done well in the race, things might have been different, and the teacher would have seen her in a better light.

Come to think of it, Yuyang had accomplished only one thing in her entire life: being admitted into the teacher-training school, which had brought her many days of glory. The news had caused a sensation in Wang Family Village, where it made the rounds several times shortly after the old principal opened the admission letter. "Wang Yuyang? Who's that?" Commune members had to ask around before finally making the connection between Wang Yuyang and the seven daughters of Wang Lianfang. All but the oldest, Yumi, and the third daughter, Yuxiu—who had left the village more than a decade earlier—were simply too ordinary. Older villagers recalled how different the Wang family had been back then. The girls would step outside and cut a dashing figure, and Wang Lianfang had served as secretary of the local Party branch instead of being the sorry drunk he was now. He had impressed everyone as an authority figure when he made announcements over the PA system, blaring constant references to "our Communist Party" and "the Wang Family Village branch office of the Chinese Communist Party," so full of himself that he might as well be treated to a cow's cunt at every meal. To hear him speak, no one would have believed that he was a local villager; instead, they'd have thought he had trekked thousands of miles through hailstorms of bullets and forests of rifles while overcoming tremendous difficulties, traversing snowy mountains and grassy plains, and crossing the Yangtze River and the Yellow River before arriving at Wang Family Village.

Yuyang was the seventh and youngest girl, which normally would have made her the baby of the family, but no such luck. Her father had refused to give up and mustered a bit more strength before returning to bed to give it another go, which had led to the birth of a son, Little Eight. That had rendered the youngest daughter inconsequential. At best she'd been a necessary preparation for her parents' project of producing a baby boy, a rehearsal, a trial run. In a word, she was an extra, born to be disliked and shunned by her parents. In fact, she wasn't even brought up by them. At first Yumi took care of her and after Yumi was married, Yuyang had no choice but to move in with her grandparents.

She was clumsy—verbally and physically—and antisocial. That actually saved the parents and grandparents trouble and worry. She did, however, possess one unique quality, which the teacher discovered as soon as she entered school—she loved to study. Stubbornly burying her head in books, she was willing to put in all the necessary effort and expend the required energy. She might not have been at the top of her class, but she was solid and pragmatic, and could commit page after page of her textbooks to memory. Her admission into a school in town gave the old principal a lot of face. He insisted that she share some of her learning experience so, standing with her back to the wall in the teachers' office, Yuyang rubbed the sole of her shoe against the wall nervously until she managed to force out a sort of golden rule: memorize. How simple the plain truth can be. The old principal grabbed her hand and said excitedly, "Practice is the way to verify truth. We must spread Yuyang's wisdom around. Starting next semester, we'll rally the students to learn from Yuyang—memorize." His excitement prompted him to retroactively award her a Three-Good Student certificate, while counseling her to keep all three things foremost in her mind when she went to town. He raised his middle and ring fingers, as well as his pinkie, to indicate good health, good grades, and good work.

Yuyang spent that summer fully vindicated in Wang Family Village. She was lonely every day, but it was a special kind of loneliness, different from what she'd felt before. In the past, loneliness had been the result of being neglected by others, being forgotten and ignored. In the summer of 1982, she was still alone, but it was the solitude of someone who stood out like a crane among chickens. She was standing on one foot as she silently tucked her head under a wing on which snowy white light glinted off of every feather. It was a cheerless solitude that drew together a unique beauty and pride, the restful moment before she spread her wings and soared into the sky. At any moment she could turn into a cloud and glide toward the horizon. What made her proudest was that it even prompted her big sister to make a trip home from Broken Bridge. Yumi told people that she had come home to see "our little Yang." Though they were sisters, the two of them had nothing much to do with each other. In Yumi's eyes, Yuyang had always been just a child. On her infrequent visits home, Yumi would send her sister off with some hard candy telling her to go out and play.

But this time Yumi came home as the wife of an official, her hair wound into a bun at the back of her head. She had put on weight and had a new tooth that gave off a golden glint even though it was copper veneer. Highlighted by this golden sparkle, her smile signaled affection and magnanimity. And it exuded happiness. In order to show off her gold tooth as much as possible, Yumi smiled a lot, the broader the better. Although she was now the wife of a commune cadre and could play the exalted role of an official's wife, Yumi spent her own money on a two-table banquet to which the village leaders and Yuyang's teachers all came. Yuyang was allowed to sit at the table, which marked her status at the first formal banquet she had ever attended. Feeling shy and proud at the same time, she smiled with her lips pressed tightly together. In reality, of course, Yuyang's presence at the table was symbolic because Yumi was busily in charge, taking over and tossing down one cup of liquor after another. Having developed a remarkable capacity for alcohol, she appeared brash and aggressive, even drinking a cup "on behalf of Yuyang." She drank so much that everyone assumed she was drunk. But no, she kept up the pace, one cup after another, and by the time the banquet was over, the people in Wang Family Village knew that Yumi could hold her own around a table. She managed to put away more than twenty ounces of strong liquor and still played two hours of poker with the village cadres. She threw down her cards one at a time with a loud snap, always on the attack and showing no mercy.

After three rounds of poker, Yumi crawled under Yuyang's mosquito net, where the younger girl was fast asleep. Nudging her awake, Yumi began counting out money under the oil lamp so Yuyang could see—five-yuan bills with consecutive numbers, so new they could slice cakes of tofu or slap someone in the face. It was not money she'd won at poker, but bills she'd brought back especially for Yuyang. She counted out ten of them, plus coupons for twenty-five
jin
of grain, which could be used anywhere in the country. It was a large sum of money, possibly enough to kill for. Thrusting the fifty yuan and grain coupons at her sister, Yumi ordered Yuyang in a gruff, but somehow tender manner, "Take this, little girl."

"Just put it there," Yuyang said sleepily.

"Open your eyes, sleepyhead, and tell me what you see."

Still half asleep, Yuyang did not seem impressed.

"Let me sleep."

She shut her eyes, and Yumi stared at the back of her sister's head. She was surprised by the girl's reaction. Not only had her foolish baby sister dismissed Yumi's generosity, but she had already begun to talk like a city girl who knows the value of understatement in important matters. Without another word, Yumi stuffed the money and grain coupons under her sister's pillow, blew out the light, and lay down next to Yuyang, whose back was to her. But she'd had too much to drink to fall asleep right away. Her thoughts were on her sister's accomplishments. Relying only on the pen in her hand, Yuyang had made all the strokes necessary to get into town. That was no small feat; it was actually quite remarkable, something no one would have dared predict a few years earlier.
A foolish girl can enjoy foolish good fortune,
Yumi thought to herself. The timing was perfect for a little girl who was destined to make a name for herself.

The day after the track meet was a Sunday, when most girls stayed in bed late, even if they were fully awake. They wanted to lie there and think their own thoughts. Better to be lazy than to get up, even for breakfast. They lay in bed for the sake of lying in bed; not to do so would be wasting an opportunity. Imagine their shock that Sunday when they learned that a thief had taken things out of Pang Fenghua's case. No one knew when it had happened, but sixteen yuan in cash and four yuan's worth of meal coupons had turned up missing.

Fenghua had the commendable habit of counting her money and meal coupons when she took a tube of toothpaste out of her patent leather case each morning. On this morning, she discovered that the cash and coupons were gone. It was a considerable sum to lose, which made it a serious incident.

At 10:15 Beijing time that Sunday morning, every student in Section Three of the class of '82 was called together before many of them had eaten breakfast. Yuyang did not even have time to brush her teeth and wash her face. The homeroom teacher was there, and so was Director Qian of student affairs, but not Pang Fenghua. She stayed behind in her room to give a statement to the police. Students who saw her on their way out of the dorm said she was sitting on the edge of her bed, hair hanging down, eyes puffy. She looked sad and drained of energy. The policeman poured her a glass of water. She didn't touch it. This time her grief was genuine, unlike the day before out on the track. It was not a look she could easily fake.

When everyone was present in the classroom, the young homeroom teacher stood straight as a javelin at the blackboard looking unhappy. He was waiting for Director Qian to speak. But Qian just pursed his lips, which deepened the lines around his mouth. He hadn't said a word from the moment he walked into the classroom, but finally he lit a cigarette, inhaled, and slowly blew the smoke out. Then he spoke.

"My name is Qian, you know, 'money,'" he said. "Anyone who has the guts can step up and steal me."

His comment elicited laughter that quickly died out—he did not look like he was joking. Then he went quiet for a long time, during which two rays of light shot out of his eyes like the searchlights in black-and-white movies. The lights sliced across the face of every student with an inaudible swish, and if one of them shied away from the searching look and lowered her head, he warned her, "Raise your head and look me in the eye. Don't look away."

Director Qian's devotion to all aspects of student affairs—life, work, and thought—was famous among teacher-training schools, even at the provincial level. For two straight years he had been awarded the title of "Advanced Worker at the City and Provincial Levels." The certificates hung proudly on his office wall. During the reign of the Gang of Four, he'd been imprisoned, and after his rehabilitation, his superiors had planned to "bring him up" to work in the bureau. But to their surprise, he had turned down the offer, insisting that he'd rather work "down below."

He said he was passionate about school and passionate about education, so he stayed put and began his second spring at the school. He spared no effort on behalf of his students, working diligently to make up for lost time. In his own words, he was in charge of matters as important as someone's death and as trivial as the disappearance of a needle. No one could "trick the mosquitoes into taking a nap" because he was a master at managing student affairs, all of which could be summarized by one word: "seize." Seize the work, and seize the individual. He wrapped one hand around his wrist as he explained to all the homeroom teachers how to seize a person. You take the matter and, more important, the person, in hand and squeeze, forcing submission. That does it. Thanks to his graphic, vivid description, the homeroom teachers caught on immediately.

Frankly, every student at the school was afraid of Director Qian and tried to avoid him at all costs. But when they did encounter him, they realized that he wasn't so scary after all. He'd call students over and ask nicely, "Would you say I'm a tiger?"

No, he was not a tiger; he was a hawk, a predator that could spot prey even when it didn't see him. Once a problem arose somewhere, a special odor attracted him, and he cast his shadow on the ground, soundlessly circling above. At this particular moment, the hawk was perched on the Section Three classroom podium, eyes fixed on the students below. He was talking again, but not about the theft, not directly, and the confused students were properly intimidated, even shaken, by the righteousness in his voice.

"What kind of school did the principal and I decide to set up?"

He began with a serious and fundamental question.

"I want you to know that I was in complete agreement with our principal," he continued, answering his own question, "when he said, 'we must have steely discipline and steely character.'" He poked the podium with his index finger to remind the students of the meaning of "steely." What is steel? Of course, "you've all seen it" so there was no need for Director Qian to repeat himself. Focusing on the common metal, he slowly worked his way up to the matter at hand.