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She ties a kerchief over my hair and places a big straw hat on my head. She gives me a scythe. I’ve never held one before. Joy swishes hers back and forth to show me the motion. Then she picks up a basket and we take positions with others from the Green Dragon work teams in a field of golden rice stalks. Brigade Leader Lai blows a whistle. Joy and I work side by side as fast as we can. Slash, slash, slash. There’s nothing neat about what we do, and a lot of stalks aren’t cut.
“What about the grain that falls to the ground?” I ask.
“Don’t worry about it,” Joy answers. “Just hurry.”
It doesn’t make sense, but I’m with my daughter and she’s speaking to me. Every step brings me closer to her, doesn’t it?
Moon Pond Village wins the rice-cutting contest. Next, three small cornfields need to be harvested. Moon Pond rushes through their field—claiming another win, even though Green Dragon and Black Bridge fill more baskets with corn. And on it goes. We stop for lunch. The mood in the canteen is ebullient. I see sweaty faces streaked with dirt. I hear laughter and good-natured goading. We’re all hungry, and the meal is plentiful: melon soup, stewed beef in red sauce, tofu with cured ham, sautéed water greens with garlic and chilies, and shredded fresh baby bamboo shoots.
“You did really well, Mom,” Joy whispers to me in English. I hear the pride in her voice. This time when I smile, I actually mean it.
Then it’s back to the fields for another series of contests: more corn, more rice, and then a quick change of pace to pull old and tough leaves from tea plants. The morning’s enthusiasm dissipates as the afternoon wears on. We’re tired but still determined. The Black Bridge teams fall out of contention, but Moon Pond and Green Dragon win an equal number of contests.
“For the last challenge, you will harvest sweet potatoes,” Brigade Leader Lai announces.
It hardly seems fair to put this at the end of the day. It hardly seems fair to include this type of challenge at all! Sweet potatoes? These aren’t like the sweet potatoes we had in Los Angeles—big, fat, and orange. Even there I didn’t like them all that much, making them only once with mini-marshmallows, because Joy said that’s what we were supposed to eat on Thanksgiving. Here, sweet potatoes are grown as fodder for water buffalo and other livestock. Why should I be bending and digging under the sun for them? But I want to make Joy happy, so we race from one end of the field to the other, digging, pulling, and throwing sweet potatoes in our baskets but leaving plenty behind in the soil. We learned our lesson earlier today. Speed over quantity. Our Green Dragon team finishes first, winning the Dandelion Number Eight People’s Commune award for fastest and best harvesters. Our prize? Extra coupons to use for rice, which we already receive in plenty. I don’t understand it, but my daughter’s delighted. She hugs me and I hug her back. Over her shoulder, faces register disapproval at our affectionate display. I stare back at them, a big smile on my face. What can they do to me?
“Would you like to come back to the villa for a bath?” I whisper in Joy’s ear.
She pulls away and gives me one of those looks I’m hopeless to interpret. Then she says, “Yes, I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.” She lowers her voice to add in English, “Thanks, Mom.”
My muscles ache and I’m exhausted, but I go back to the villa, haul water, set a fire in the stove, and heat the water in our last big pot. Kumei helps me pull an old washtub into the kitchen, and then she steps out of the room. We may all be women, but naked flesh is too private to share even am
ong ourselves. Joy strips and steps into the tub. I notice she no longer wears the pouch around her neck. She sits with her knees drawn up under her chin. Her enthusiasm drains into the hot water. She seems unaware she’s let down her guard, as that low spirit I saw the morning after her wedding reappears.
“Do you remember when you were young and I used to wash you in the kitchen sink?” I ask. When she shakes her head, I say, “I guess you were too little—just a baby really. Your dad would sit at the table and watch us. Your grandparents too.”
I pick up a cloth, dip it in the water, lather it with soap, and wash my daughter’s back in long, rhythmic strokes.
“The way you giggled! I loved that sound and I’ll never forget it. You used to slap the water with your hands until I was soaked and the kitchen floor was a mess!” I laugh at the memory.
“Grandpa Louie didn’t mind?”
“You know how he was—Pan-di this, Pan-di that. He made a lot of noise, but he loved you. Your yen-yen loved you. Your baba loved you. I loved you most of all.”
A tremor shivers through her body. Stop before you go too far, I tell myself.
“As long as we’re here, let me wash your hair.” I ladle the warm water into Joy’s hair. I wash and rinse it, letting the water cascade down her back.
“I’m not saying we didn’t have hard times,” I go on. “We did. But, Joy, when I took you out of the sink all pink and slippery, wrapped you in a towel, and put you in your baba’s lap, no one in the world was happier than we were in those moments.”
I wish I had clean clothes to give Joy. Instead, she puts on the same dirty, sweaty clothes she wore today and will again tomorrow. We walk together to the front gate.
“Will you come again?” I ask, almost as though she’s an acquaintance, knowing enough as Joy’s mother to keep a little distance.
She gives a slight nod.
IN MY FOURTH week at the commune, during lunch one day in the canteen, Brigade Leader Lai asks a group of farmers how much wheat they can produce per mu.
“We don’t grow wheat,” Tao’s father answers. Several of the other men nod their heads in agreement. “We’ve never grown wheat. We grow rice in the paddies, tea on the terraces, and cotton, rapeseed, and vegetable crops elsewhere.”
“Yes, but this fall how much winter wheat will you grow per mu?” Brigade Leader Lai still wants to know.
Tao’s father consults with the other farmers before answering. “Maybe three hundred jin.”
“Three hundred jin? Make that eight hundred or a thousand jin!”
“That’s impossible,” observes Party Secretary Feng Jin, who’s resistant to the city cadre’s ideas even though it’s risky to go against him.
