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“Honey, you aren’t from Shanghai, but you don’t belong in Green Dragon Village either. You’re from Los Angeles,” I remind her. “That’s your home.”
That’s greeted by sighs from Z.G. and Joy. Apparently, mothers of the bride know absolutely nothing.
AS A GIRL, I dreamed of my wedding—the dress, the veil, the banquet, the gifts—and none of it turned out the way I imagined. As a mother, I’ve dreamed of my daughter’s wedding—a ceremony in the Methodist church in Chinatown attended by all our friends, Joy’s dress, my dress, the flowers, the reception at Soochow Restaurant—but this is nothing like that either. Joy was right that there isn’t supposed to be any kind of ceremony or celebration, but as a stranger and as someone who has some money to spend, I can bend the rules. Brigade Leader Lai is more than happy to take a bribe—some of my special Overseas Chinese certificates, worth less than twenty dollars—so I can give my daughter a wedding that pays homage to the past and is still true to the New China.
The ceremony takes place two days later at dusk on a hillside overlooking Green Dragon’s verdant fields. Scent from tea bushes planted on terraces wafts on the breeze. The bride is in wedding red—an outfit Yong found in a dowry chest in the villa. She wears the pouch May gave her, and I wear mine—symbols of the ways that Joy is linked to my sister and me and the three of us to my mother. Joy’s hair, which has grown a good six inches this ye
ar, hangs in two braids just past her shoulders. Strips of red wool have been woven through the plaits and are tied in heavy bows. Her cheeks shine with happiness and the heat. Her nails have been stained a reddish color with balsam juice. The groom is as dressed up as I’ve ever seen him—a blue tunic, loose blue pants, and sandals. His hair has been combed and he looks clean.
Brigade Leader Lai says a few words: “Communism is paradise. The people’s communes will take us to it. Tao and Joy—comrades first and always—will help the country climb to the highest heights. If Tao sails the seas, then Joy will row in the same boat. If Joy climbs a mountain, then Tao will be at her heels.”
Z.G. takes my hand. His touch—his kindness—at this moment makes me want to weep. Until now, I had thought that my daughter had made the greatest mistake possible in coming to China, but that was nothing compared with this marriage. Mothers suffer; children do what they want. I look over at Tao’s family. They don’t look particularly happy either. The mother must be about my age, although she looks closer to sixty or even older. That happens when you have nine living children, who knows how many dead children, and are as poor as can be. The father is just an older version of his son—thin, wiry, but as dried out and wrinkled as my father-in-law was just before the cancer took him.
Brigade Leader Lai comes to the end of the ceremony. Tao turns to everyone and announces, “Comrades, I am happy.”
“I too am happy,” Joy echoes.
“In hard times, we will share the same piece of pickled turnip,” Tao promises.
“We will drink from the same cup,” Joy adds. “I will work by my husband’s side in the commune. I will work with all of you.”
I take a few snapshots of the wedding couple while Tao’s young male friends set off strings of firecrackers. Then we walk to the canteen. Big wedding banquets aren’t allowed in the New China—even the ceremony was more than what is considered acceptable—but if I look hard I can find ingredients with fortuitous meanings in our meal. We’re served chicken, which symbolizes a good marriage and family unity, but we receive no chicken feet or lobster, which are typically served together to represent the dragon and phoenix. Instead of the many-tiered, Western-style wedding cake I’d always wanted for Joy, one of the servers brings out a plate of sliced pomelo for abundance, prosperity, and having many children. After dinner—and we can’t linger or dance because other members of the commune still need to eat—we head to Joy’s new home. More firecrackers pop and crack. In olden days, firecrackers scared off fox spirits, ghosts, and demons. In the New China, where we aren’t supposed to have superstitious beliefs, the firecrackers symbolize good luck.
Joy’s new home—which with her arrival will house twelve people—is a crude two-room shack made from mud and straw. It faces north. Everyone—except my daughter apparently—understands that only the poorest of the poor build their houses in places where they can’t be heated by the sun in winter. Piles of bedding lie stacked to the left of the door. Tao’s parents and all those brothers and sisters must be planning on sleeping either outside or in the main room tonight.
People celebrate around me, making toasts with rice wine, but I can barely breathe because in entering the room I’ve been tossed back in time to a shack outside Shanghai on the way to the Grand Canal. My sister is hiding in the other room, and my mother and I are being repeatedly raped and beaten by Japanese soldiers. I tremble, and my breath comes out in shallow pants. The smell of the firecrackers and all those scraggly, dirty little brothers and sisters is making me physically ill.
I step outside to get some fresh air. My chest feels heavy, and my heart feels like it’s breaking apart. Even when I was a little girl, long before the rape and my mother’s death, I hated the countryside. When my father sent May and me to summer camp in Kuling, I saw evil in the way paths and dirt roads wove through the land like slithering snakes. I’ve never seen the charm of squalor, filth, or poverty either. Now the countryside is dealing me another cruel blow.
Joy steps outside to find me. Her cheeks are flushed with triumph and elation. Her words come out like frothy bubbles. “Mom, don’t you want to be inside with everyone?”
My daughter and I truly are like yin and yang—one dark, sad, and closed, the other bright, happy, and open to her new life. But no matter how dejected I am at what’s happened, I still love her very much.
“Of course I want to be a part of the celebration,” I say. “I just wanted to take a minute to look at the beautiful night. Look at it, Joy. The sky, the moon, the fireflies. Remember it always.”
Joy hugs me. I hold her tight, trying to memorize the warmth of her body, the beat of her heart, the crush of her young breasts against mine. “I know I haven’t always been the mother you wanted—”
“Don’t say that—”
“And I know I’ve handled this badly, but I hope you know that all I’ve ever wanted is for you to be happy.”
“Oh, Mom.” She gives me another hug.
I should tell Joy what to expect on the wedding night, but all I have time to do is whisper, “Always show the greatest kindness to the ones you like the least. If you show kindness to your mother-in-law, who like all women has been bred to hate her daughter-in-law, then you will create an obligation she will never be able to repay.”
Joy pulls away and looks at me in surprise. I draw her close again. “Remember what you learned in church too. No matter what you’re feeling or how desperate you become, always take a moral position. If you do that, God will watch over you.”
People file out of the house, coming to get the bride, sweeping her away. I follow right behind, determined to be a proper mother of the bride, no matter what I feel inside or what memories the shack stirs up in me. Jie Jie, Tao’s fourteen-year-old sister, hangs red couplets outside the door to what for this night has been designated the wedding chamber. One side reads: SONGS FLY THROUGH THE AIR. The other side reads: HAPPINESS FILLS THE ROOM. People step forward with gifts. Some have brought red azaleas picked in the surrounding hills. Others give packets of tea grown on Green Dragon’s slopes, a jar of pickles, a piece of embroidery. Brigade Leader Lai presents a gift from the Dandelion Number Eight People’s Commune: a hundred feet of cotton cloth for Joy to make wedding quilts.
“When your children are born, you’ll get another fifteen feet,” he proclaims.
Yong offers the bride and groom a Golden Cock alarm clock. Tao and Joy won’t need an alarm clock, not with the loudspeaker and all the small children in this house, but the gift is both generous and mysterious. How did Yong acquire it? Was it preserved from happier days with her husband?
The time arrives for us to enter the bridal chamber. The room has been decorated with red paper cutouts: carp for harmony and connubial bliss, orchids for numerous progeny and the superior man, and peaches for marriage and immortality. In contrast, a couplet has been pasted over the single lattice window, which reads WITH MEN AND WOMEN EQUAL, WORK GOES WELL. FREE MARRIAGES ARE HAPPY MARRIAGES. Another large sheet of red paper has been pasted over the platform that serves as the bed for this family. In the old days, the paper would have been painted with the character for double happiness. Instead, Z.G. has written in his elegant calligraphy something to match the times: THE MANDARIN DUCK AND HIS MATE SWIM IN THE REVOLUTIONARY OCEAN. MARRIED COUPLES ARE COMRADES.
Two red candles flicker, sending shadows dancing on the walls. A couple of young men give speeches, making the usual suggestive comments about Tao’s prowess in the bedroom and the bride’s blushing ways. No one asks me or Z.G. to speak, but Kumei addresses the crowd with her customary cheerfulness.
“Why did we love weddings? We went to weddings to rejoice in the happiness of others and to swell our own joy.”
