“Am I?” When Hulan didn’t answer, Suchee said, “If you couldn’t run away from people physically, then you could distance yourself by being politically superior.”
“I never treated you that way.”
Suchee raised her eyebrows. A dark silence settled on them.
Finally Hulan said, “It was against the rules to have sex. That was the worst infraction.”
“I was your friend,” Suchee said. “You didn’t have to report us.”
“But everything worked out. Ling Shaoyi was able to stay here with you. The two of you had a life together.?
??
Suchee shook her head. “Do you think a day goes by when I don’t wish that you had never seen us on that day, that I had never married, that I had never given birth to a daughter? Shaoyi was sixteen and I was twelve when your train arrived. You remember how I loved him from afar? That was the love of a farm girl for a city boy. Two years later, he finally saw me, but we were not looking to spend our lives together. We both understood our differences. Like you, he was from a good family. They had always planned for him to go to university and become an engineer. But you said your words and then you ran away.”
“I didn’t run away. A family friend came to get me. Do you think I was happy about what happened next? I was made to say more terrible words and then was sent into exile in America—”
“Even after you left, Shaoyi was punished,” Suchee pressed on. “There were more struggle meetings. He was called a counterrevolutionary, a revisionist, a cow demon. They made him write self-criticisms. The brigade leaders instructed us to get married. But what kind of a ceremony was it? We both wore dunce caps. We were paraded through the compound. We didn’t have a wedding banquet, but people did throw rotten fruit at us. We didn’t enjoy a wedding night. Instead I was sent back to my family and Shaoyi was put in the cow shed. I heard later that they kept him there for three months and only brought him out after he contracted pneumonia. I thought I would never see him again, but I was wrong. When the others went home, Shaoyi had to stay behind. When he came to my parents’ house, I didn’t recognize him. He had lost much weight and his color was that of a dead man. He looked sixty, not twenty.”
“Everyone suffered in those days,” Hulan said, echoing the words that Peanut had said earlier today. “Is there anyone in our country who wasn’t affected by the Chaos?”
“Your words are true,” Suchee said. “But many people were able to retrieve their old lives. Shaoyi was not one of them, and neither was I. Like most girls, I had been betrothed almost since birth. I know this is a feudal idea, but even in those dark times customs didn’t change that much in the countryside. Naturally, the family heard of the cause of my mock marriage and called off the engagement. My parents tried to find another match for me, but who would take into their family a broken piece of jade? When Shaoyi came to our door, my father decided to accept him.”
Hulan understood the devastating implications of what Suchee was telling her. In China a daughter was never considered to be a member of her birth family. She was raised as an outsider—someone who consumed valuable rice until she went to the family of her husband. Upon marriage the bride’s family had to provide a dowry, while the groom’s family had to pay a bride price. A poor family such as Suchee’s might have anticipated a few bride cakes, a few slivers of pork, and maybe a jin or two of rice. But as a broken piece of jade—a girl who had lost her virginity—Suchee was effectively worthless. No family would pay for her, and her parents couldn’t afford a larger dowry. However, Shaoyi too had been worthless. He no longer had access to his family. He certainly had no ties to anyone in Da Shui or any of the other neighboring villages. By being taken into his wife’s home, Shaoyi lost his identity. He traded in his last name and took on Ling as his new surname.
“At first I was happy,” Suchee continued. “Then I saw the way he suffered. You city people do not understand hard work. Do you think a man who’s supposed to be an engineer is capable of chopping down trees for firewood, of plowing the fields with an ox, of using a long-handled hoe to work the land all day, every day, year after year? Even my father felt sorry for Shaoyi. Sometimes my father would say to him, ‘Go help Mama and Suchee with their work.’ And Shaoyi would have to obey, because he was no longer a true man. What could we give him to do? He couldn’t cook. He didn’t know how to patch clothes or”—and here she gestured to the work before her—” make shoes. My mother taught him how to shuck corn. Day after day he would sit outside stripping the cobs of their kernels, or separating seed, or cleaning the rice. Neighbor men saw him doing this work and ridiculed him.
“Every year Shaoyi wrote to his family in Beijing, hoping that they would be able to get him assigned to a work unit in the capital and get him a residency permit. But when the government saw he had a wife and child in the countryside, they ignored the applications and even the bribes. To our government he had become a country bumpkin like me. Each year he became thinner and quieter. He developed ulcers and arthritis. Every winter I wondered if his lungs, which had been so damaged during his confinement, would finally fail. I made him tea with ginger and onions. I held his head over steamed vinegar to clear the congestion. But every night he coughed. When his sputum turned from green to red, I knew there wasn’t much time left. The barefoot doctor prescribed a tonic, but he died anyway. For too many years he had eaten bitterness.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry is not the word I want to hear,” Suchee said.
“Then what do you want? For me to make it up to you? I’m trying…”
“I’m glad you came for Miaoshan. And yes, that will help me. But I’m thinking of something else tonight. Despite all that happened, I know we were good friends. As I look back over the years, I can remember others. Madame Tsai on the next farm has always been free-spoken with me. Tang Dan’s wife was also good and funny when we worked in the fields. She is dead many years now, but I will always remember her. But you were my closest friend.”
“I feel the same way,” Hulan admitted. “I have not had other friends since you.”
“Then why did you report us?” Suchee implored. “It would have been so easy to look the other way.”
“In those days I didn’t believe in a one-eye-open, one-eye-closed policy—”
“No! You said those things and then you ran away. It’s the same with your foreigner now.”
“It’s not,” Hulan said. “David’s trying to make me into something I’m not. He’s trying to control me.” But even to Hulan’s ears these words rang hollow.
Suchee pressed her advantage, confronting her old friend on her weaknesses. “You accuse us and then you are gone. You meet your foreigner in America and then you run away from him. You come back here and work in the Ministry of Public Security, knowing, I think, that no one will be your friend if you do that job. And then you meet your foreigner again. You are together long enough to get pregnant. He wants you to come to him. Even if we don’t admit it, every single person in China would like to leave. You have that opportunity handed to you—”
“You’re twisting what happened—”
“And you decide to stay here,” Suchee forged on. “So he comes to you. Here is what I think happens: You are seeing a future before you. You are thinking you will be happy. One minute later—not even long enough for the sun to go around the earth—you have turned things into bitterness, so that now you run away again. It is easier for you to be alone by your own actions than to be left by others—”
Suddenly a flashlight beam crossed the window opening. “Hulan! Hulan! Are you here?” David’s voice called out.
Never had Hulan been so happy to hear his voice. Across the table, Suchee kept her eyes steady on Hulan, taking in her friend’s reaction.
“You can run away from what I’ve said here,” Suchee said in a low voice, “but it won’t change the truth of it.”