Dreams of Joy (Shanghai Girls 2)

meet.

“The real reason they’ll let me go,” she continues, “is that they’ve already sucked everything from me except this house. If I ever leave, they’ll take it.” Auntie Hu touches Dun’s arm. “You’ll come back next Sunday, won’t you?” (This, after all her talk about leaving.)

He puts his hands together and bows. It’s old-fashioned, completely out of style these days, but it makes Auntie Hu happy. Even with all the changes, we have to remember our humanity, and it pleases me that Dun is so kind, but I’m subdued on the way home. The city would feel very empty without Auntie Hu, but I tell myself I shouldn’t worry. No matter what she says, she’ll never get an exit permit.

The other boarders still haven’t returned, so Dun opens some plum wine and we take our glasses outside to wait for the fireworks to begin. He sits on the steps, while I putter in the garden. I cut the last roses of the season and I bring them back to the steps, where I sit down next to Dun. In the distance, we hear the celebration. When Dun reaches over and puts a hand on top of mine, I’m not startled or scared. I smile, and my heart thumps in my chest.

“Pearl Chin,” he says, addressing me by my maiden name, “I have known you a long time. When I first moved into your house, I don’t think you saw me, but I saw you. I hope it will not upset you if I tell you I loved you from afar even then. I knew there was no hope for me, but perhaps now you will consider me.”

“I’m a widow,” I remind him.

I don’t have to explain anything else. He’s a Chinese man of a certain age. He knows all the old restrictions on widows. But as the first volley of fireworks explodes above us, he squeezes my hand.

“I don’t believe in arranged marriages,” he says, “but I don’t believe in the kind of marriage we have in the New China either. You know my background. You know I’ve read many English books. What I want is a courtship—a Western courtship.”

I am forty-three years old, and I’ve never been courted before.

Joy

LIVING AN ABUNDANT YEAR

EVERYONE WORRIED THAT this winter would be worse than last year’s, but we didn’t realize just how much more dire it would be. It’s only November—the worst of the between the yellow and the green hasn’t come yet—and Fu-shee and I are already gleaning. The close planting didn’t work. Most of the seedlings died. What survived produced very weak and small crops. Then we launched Sputniks, racing to harvest an entire crop of turnips, corn, or cabbage in a single day. We worked without food or much water until we were dazed and disoriented. Those women who had their periods were not allowed to take care of themselves, and their pants soaked through with blood. And still there remained the problem of harvesting an entire crop in just twenty-four hours. The only way to do that was to lop the top parts of the turnip plants and leave the bulbs in the ground, ignore ears of corn, or carelessly drop cabbage leaves on the soil. All that was scavenged months ago, so my mother-in-law and I have moved on to one of the failed wheat fields, looking for a piece of grain here, a piece of grain there. We’ve been told to value quantity over quality, but we have neither. Our rice rations have been reduced to half a jin per person—enough for a single bowl of rice porridge a day. I pick up a piece of grain, put it in my pocket, and walk over to Fu-shee.

“I think the baby will be coming soon,” I say. “My contractions started early this morning. They’re strong now. I think we should go home.”

Fu-shee’s given birth to all her children on the floor in the corner of the main room in the family house. If she can do it, then I can too, especially if she’s there to help me. But she shakes her head.

“You’re better off going to the maternity courtyard,” she says. “You’ll get extra food if you have your baby there.”

In the New China, new mothers are entitled to eight weeks’ maternity leave, fifteen yards of cotton cloth, twenty jin of white flour, and three jin of sugar. Those things are important, but to get them I’ll have to deliver my baby in the maternity courtyard.

“I’m afraid to go there,” I admit.

With the hunger, too many babies are stillborn. The feeling throughout the commune is that the maternity courtyard is inhabited by demons, looking to steal a baby’s first breath.

“Don’t be swayed by feudal beliefs about fox spirits and things like that,” Fu-shee cautions, not realizing my reasons are practical. “Sung-ling had her baby girl in the maternity courtyard last week. The two of them are still alive. Now the four of you can be together.”

She leans over, scratches at the dirt, and picks up a few more kernels. She puts them in her palm, blows on them to clean them, and then holds them out for me to see as a reminder that these little bits of grain are what are keeping our household of twelve alive. The promise of flour and sugar cannot be rejected lightly.

Fu-shee walks me to the maternity courtyard, which is located in Moon Pond Village. The contractions are closer now and so fierce that sometimes we have to stop so I can brace myself against the pain. I wish my mother were here, and I don’t understand why she isn’t. I wish the letters she sends me were in response to the ones I send her. I don’t understand what that means either. I’ve been careful not to write overtly about the famine, sure that would never get past the censors. Instead, I’ve written about how much I miss my dad’s cooking. I’ve even mentioned particular dishes from our family’s restaurant and the way the rice always smelled, hoping that she’ll send ingredients or a bag of rice. Maybe even those hints are too much and the censors are blacking out those lines. Maybe my letters aren’t getting through at all. Another contraction. I want my mother, and all I have is Fu-shee.

We reach the maternity courtyard—a large house that was confiscated and converted to its new use when the commune was formed. My mother-in-law explains to the midwife that I’m from a city and that I’ve never seen a baby come out. The midwife gives me a pitying look, guides me to a room, tells me to take off my pants, and directs me to a corner where she’s spread a piece of cloth. I squat in the proper position and support myself against the walls. The contractions come faster and harder. I want to scream, but that’s considered inappropriate. But even with my jaw clenched, moans come from somewhere deep inside me. My mother-in-law and the midwife stare at me disapprovingly. I look down and see a bulge between my legs. Just when I feel like things are going to rip apart down there, the midwife reaches under me and snips the skin.

When she finally orders me to push, I gladly obey. This is the easiest part, at least for me. I haven’t had much to eat these past months and the baby is small, slipping out like an oily fish. It’s a girl, which means I receive no tears of happiness or words of congratulations. The midwife hands me the baby. She makes little jerky motions with her arms. She has tufts of black hair on top of her head. Her nose is perfect. Her lips are pretty. She’s tiny, thin really, but I can tell she’s strong by the way she grips my pinkie. She’s been born in the Year of the Boar, just like my uncle Vern. I remember something my mother said about him: “Like all Boars, he was born with a remarkably strong body. He can withstand a great deal of pain and suffering without complaint.” I hang on to those words now. I hope my baby will be like my uncle—courageous in the face of great odds. Blessing and worry, happiness and fear—this is a mother’s love.

Once the baby and I are cleaned up, we’re moved to the dormitory. I get a bed next to Sung-ling, who regards me sympathetically. She also had a daughter, so she too has felt disappointment from those around her. My mother-in-law goes home and comes back the next morning with special mother’s soup fortified with peanuts, ginger, and liquor to bring in my milk, shrink my womb, and help me regain my strength. I don’t know where she got the ingredients, but the soup works and the baby greedily sucks from my breast. For the first time, I have real compassion for what my aunt May went through when she gave me away right after my birth. Her breasts, her womb, her whole body must have ached for me.

It’s good I have Sung-ling next to me, because otherwise I’d be miserab

le. How many movies and television shows have I seen where a wife gives birth and the husband arrives with flowers and kisses? Too many to count. But Tao doesn’t come to see me. Now I know there’s nothing I can do to please him, and it’s heartbreaking. This is not my only failure or source of sadness. Sung-ling, the other new mothers, and I are supposed to be fed extra rations, but the commune’s food stores are small. We receive no brown sugar and ginseng to restore blood, and no chicken and fruit to help rebuild our constitutions. I anticipate that no red eggs will be made to celebrate my baby’s one-month birthday either. Still, three neighbor women give me eggs: one egg is rotten, the second is so old the yolk can’t be distinguished from the white, and the third has a dead chick inside. I think about the risk they took to hide the eggs. If someone is caught hoarding or hiding food, Brigade Leader Lai will have him or her beaten.

When I’m sent home, I’m not given any of the food or cotton I was promised. My father-in-law refuses to look at me. My mother-in-law ignores me. I ask Tao if he’d like to hold our daughter, but he won’t touch her because she’s a girl. Any chance that Tao and I might get along better has been ruined by her birth. I say we should give her a name.

“Stupid,” suggests my husband.

“Pig,” my mother-in-law spits out.

“Dog,” one of Tao’s brothers says with a smirk.