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“You’re wrong,” she insists.
“I’m not wrong. Kumei, Yong, and Ta-ming were the landowner’s concubine, one of his bound-footed wives, and his only surviving son.”
“Kumei couldn’t have been a concubine—”
“You thought the villagers were treating us as special guests, but I’m telling you they put us in the villa as punishment.”
“But we were serving the people,” Joy argues. “We were helping with collectivization.”
“In volunteering to go to the village, I was trying to control my punishment,” Z.G. says. “I expected to be in Green Dragon for at least six months, but that would have been better than the years I might have spent in a labor camp … if I ever even got out. Your arrival on my doorstep complicated things. How could I have a daughter from America—our most ultraimperialist enemy? If anyone asked about your mother, what was I going to say? That she was a beautiful girl? Everyone would have concluded she had Nationalist ties, otherwise she wouldn’t have left China. That would have been another black mark against me.”
“But Chairman Mao likes you,” Joy practically whines. “He told me all those things you did together in the caves in Yen’an.”
“We were comrades then,” Z.G. acknowledges, circling back to the past. “I met up with him and became a member of the Lu Shun Academy of Art in the winter of 1937. I trained those who joined our cause to do cultural propaganda. Who better to do this than someone who’d been making advertising posters for so many years? It’s not hard to switch from painting beautiful girls in imaginary landscapes to painting people like Mao, Chou, and other Party leaders posing in imaginary situations with smiling workers, soldiers, and peasants.”
“Those things aren’t imaginary—”
“Really? Have you seen the Great Helmsman actually walk through the fields with peasants?” Z.G. asks. He waits for an answer, and when he doesn’t get one, he goes on. “As he told you, when we marched into Peking, he offered me an important post, but by then I was disenchanted. In feudal times, people said, ‘Serving the emperor is like a wife or concubine serving her husband or master. The greatest virtue is to be loyal and submissive.’ This is what Mao wants from us, but I’m afraid I’m good at being loyal and submissive only if the alternatives are labor camp or death. Fortunately, my rehabilitation came after only a couple of months. It began when Mao sent me to Canton.”
I hear the word rehabilitation and I think of Sam. He too was persecuted by the government, but there was no rehabilitation for him. Joy doesn’t seem to pick up on this.
“But Chairman Mao likes you,” she repeats weakly.
“He likes you,” Z.G. responds. “It pleased him to see such a pretty girl leave America to come here. Thank you for helping with my rehabilitation.”
“Rehabilitation?” Joy echoes, finally hearing the word.
“Don’t you remember his conversation with us at the exhibition?” Z.G. asks.
I don’t know what they’re talking about, but Joy nods in understanding.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asks.
“I tried, but you wouldn’t listen. When we were in Canton, I wanted you to leave the country.”
“That’s right,” Joy acknowledges. “You did.”
“Well, obviously you didn’t try hard enough,” I cut in. They both turn to me, remembering I’m here.
“The truth is,” Z.G. admits, “I didn’t want her to leave.”
“She’s your daughter! You should have been protecting her!”
“She is my daughter,” Z.G. says. “I hadn’t known she existed. I was selfish. I wanted to know her.” He now addresses Joy. “But that doesn’t mean you should stay here.”
“I don’t want to stay here. I want to go back to the Green Dragon Collective.”
Concern passes over Z.G.’s face. I don’t know what this place is, but I know my daughter doesn’t belong in a collective.
“People are shaped by the earth and water around them,” he says. “You’re an American. You don’t know hardship or how to survive. If you go back to Green Dragon, you’ll be giving up city life. You won’t be able to return to Shanghai. And you certainly won’t be able to leave China.”
“I don’t want to leave China,” Joy says stubbornly. “This is my home now.”
“How do I explain things to her so she’ll understand?” Z.G. asks me. Joy stiffens at that, and I keep my mouth shut. He turns back to Joy. “I begged Mao and Chou for forgiveness with my paintings, but who knows what could happen tomorrow? Mao won’t admit when he’s wrong. He purges anyone who disagrees with him. Since the recent class struggle, everyone with a brain or a backbone has been sent to labor camp or been killed. Those who remain, like Chou En-lai, are afraid to go against Mao, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s stopped listening to others anyway. Who will protect China from bad ideas?”
Looking at my daughter’s lovely face, I can tell she doesn’t care about any of what Z.G. is saying. He has tried reason—self-centered though it may be—but my daughter is suffering from something that can’t be touched by logic. The dead can claim the living, and guilt and sorrow have claimed my girl.
“Joy,” I say softly, “will you come home with me? You’ve never seen the house where May and I grew up.”
