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Which makes me feel like I’m learning … finally.
When the class ends, Tao helps Z.G. and me carry the art supplies back to the villa. I know that Tao and I are not allowed to be by ourselves anymore, but I want to have some private time with him before I leave Green Dragon. I’m trying to figure out how to ask Z.G. for permission when he says, “Just be back in an hour.”
Tao and I hurry out the gate, turn left, and then follow the stream until we reach the path that leads up to the Charity Pavilion. We’re barely inside the pavilion when Tao pulls me into his arms. I’m kissing him, he’s kissing me, and it’s all very frantic, hurried, and desperate. For too long we’ve been allowed only to look at each other across a table, separated by my father, during our private lessons. We’ve had to sit on opposite sides of the ancestral hall while Z.G. conducted his art classes. We’ve purposely walked to the fields at different times and chosen different jobs to do: picking or shucking corn, harvesting or separating rice, packing or carrying baskets of tomatoes.
Tao’s lips are on my neck and he’s fumbling with the frogs on my blouse when I pull away. I take a breath and then another. Tao struggles to regain control of himself too. I take another deep breath, let it out slowly, and turn to face the view. When I first came here, the fields spread out before us like green satin. Now it looks like Los Angeles at this time of year, when weeds, grass, and gardens turn biscuit brown. I’m going to miss this place. I’m going to miss the smell of the earth, the sunsets, and the quiet paths that snake through the hillsides and into the valleys. But most of all I’m going to miss Tao. He stands behind me, his hands on my shoulders, his mouth by my ear, his body up against my back.
“May I call you Ai-jen—Beloved?” he asks. His voice holds neither fear nor brashness. He is merely frank and honest. I’ve heard many of the younger married couples refer to each other by this endearment. Can I really be Tao’s beloved?
“Are you sure?” I ask.
“I knew the night you arrived. Chairman Mao says women hold up half the sky. Can’t we hold up the sky together? My house is small, and we’d have to live with my family—”
“Wait!” I shake my head, certain that I’m hearing him wrong. “What are you saying?”
“You’re the right age. I’m the right age. We aren’t blood relatives up to the third degree of relationship. Neither of us has any diseases. Let’s go to the Party secretary and his wife to ask permission to marry.”
Marry? His proposal, such as it is, causes something wonderful to happen. My mind empties of all worries and memories.
“We barely know each other,” I say.
“We know each other a lot more than people did in feudal days. Back then, boys and girls didn’t meet until their wedding day.”
But marriage isn’t something I’ve been thinking about. Still, to stay here in what seems like a million miles and a million lifetimes from Los Angeles Chinatown, where no one knows me or my past, would be a cure for the guilt and shame I carry with me everywhere I go.
“We both want the same things—to paint, to grow crops, and to help build the New Society,” Tao continues.
“I agree, but do you love me?” I have a crush on Tao, no question about it. I can’t stop thinking about him. And the fact that he’s been forbidden to me these past weeks makes him all the more desirable.
“I wouldn’t ask you to marry me if I didn’t love you.” He grins. “And you love me too. I saw that the first time we met.”
I want to say yes. I want to make love to Tao. I want us to be together. But as sure as I am about how I feel for him, I’m not ready. I’ve just met my birth
father and I hardly know him yet. Then there’s China. I’m nineteen, and I have an opportunity to do something few other girls get to do. I’d like to see Canton, Peking, Shanghai, and the rest of China while I can.
“Yes, I love you,” I say, and I believe I do. I’m sure I do. “But do you want people in the collective to think we were sneaking off together? And what about your mother and my father? I don’t think your mother is ready to have me in her house.” (This is an understatement. His mother clearly doesn’t like me.) “And I doubt my father’s ready to say good-bye to me just yet.”
“We don’t need their permission.”
“I know, but their blessing would be wonderful.”
He puts forth a few more reasons why we should act immediately, but after a while he gives in.
“All right,” he says. “I’ll wait.”
Then he’s kissing me again, and I’m happy—truly happy.
“I wish you could come with me,” I whisper in his ear. “We could see China together.”
“I want to leave this place more than anything,” he responds, sounding hopeful and eager. “But I’d need an internal passport and I don’t have one of those. Maybe your father can get me one.”
Chairman Mao introduced the internal passport just last year. The government wants to keep peasants from flooding the cities, but the new passport has barred peddlers, doctors, and entertainers—apart from those sanctioned by the government—from traveling as well. This keeps villages pure, but it also keeps them isolated. It’s one of the things I’ve liked best about being here.
“Maybe,” I say. “Maybe.”
Later, when we walk back to the village, Tao says, “I promise I won’t forget you, but you must promise to come back to me.”
—
