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A FEW MILES out of Tun-hsi, a nightmare landscape appears before us. People dressed in rags crawl by the side of the road. Dead bodies lie splayed in the fields and dot the road. The smell should be atrocious, but the corpses have no blood or meat left to decay. They’re like mummies—gray and emaciated. Wild dogs are plentiful, and they feast on the dead. I drive slowly, swerving from one side of the road to the other in an effort to miss the gruesome obstacles. Z.G. sits behind me. We could still be pulled over, and the master would never ride next to the driver. I keep glancing in the rearview mirror. Z.G.’s eyes are wide with shock. We’re both terrified for Joy.
I come around a corner and brake as hard as I can. A couple lie in the center of the road. I can’t drive around them. We sit in the car, the engine idling.
“What should we do?” I ask, my hands gripping the steering wheel.
“Let’s give them something to eat. Maybe we can move them that way.”
I don’t want to get out of the car, but I do. Z.G. and I look in the trunk and pull out some crackers. We walk tentatively toward the couple, both of us holding our crackers at arm’s length. The man reaches forward to grab Z.G.’s cracker and then collapses, dead. The woman takes the cracker from my hand, clutches it to her chest, and curls into a little ball to protect it.
“You should try to eat it,” I say softly. The woman stares at her dead companion, her eyes unseeing, her treasure protected. It’s as though I’ve given her the most precious Christmas gift possible, something that should be saved and cherished—never broken, let alone eaten.
Z.G., showing nerve I didn’t know he had, grabs the dead man’s heels and pulls him to the side of the road. Then I help him move the woman. As soon as we’re done, he gruffly says, “Come on. We need to keep moving.”
Several more times, we have to stop to move the dead or dying from the road. The sun shines resplendently overhead. Always I expect silence when I get out of the car—no singing, no sounds of working in the fields, no braying of animals, no birds trilling—but cicadas, immune to the concerns of humanity, drone steadily. Then, at one of our stops, cutting right through the cicadas—and piercing into my soul—children and babies yelp, sob, and whimper. Z.G. and I scan the fields, searching for the source of these sounds that seem to come at us from every direction.
Ahead of us something moves—bouncing angrily—not far from the side of the road. It’s a small girl’s head and shoulders. The parents have dug a hole deep enough to prevent escape and abandoned their daughter in it. They must have hoped someone would stop and take her home. I take a few steps forward so I can see down into the hole. The girl’s naked. Her skin hangs like wrinkled tofu skin, and her belly is swollen and purple. Then Z.G. grabs my shoulders.
“Look.” He points to different spots in the field.
Other children and babies have been abandoned in these pits too. They’re everywhere. I think I’m going to be sick.
“This is horrible, but we have to go,” Z.G. says.
“But—” I gesture to the field.
“We can’t help them. We have to get Joy and her baby.”
I’m overcome with despair. If I save even one of these children, then I might be too late for my own flesh and blood. I close my ears and my heart, get back in the car, and continue driving.
Finally, we reach the old drop-off point for Green Dragon Village. Since the director of the Artists’ Association called ahead, I expect to see a welcome party, as we had the last time we came. Instead, the road is ominously empty and quiet, while the footpath we used to take to Green Dragon has been blocked with sawhorses and other junk. A sign with an arrow to the Dandelion Number Eight People’s Commune points to a new road that cuts through the fields and veers around Green Dragon’s enveloping hills. The commune’s cadres wouldn’t have done this unless they wanted us to see Joy and the baby there—at the site of the mural.
I take the road to the center of the commune. Here’s the Happiness Garden for the aged, the nursery, and the clinic. The canteen’s cornstalk walls, however, have broken apart and the roof has collapsed. And there, just as in the photographs Joy sent, is the leadership hall with its critical but stunningly colorful mural. Next to the hall, small children jump and play on piles of what looks to be freshly cut hay. They clap their hands and cry out, “Welcome! Welcome!” They perform as though their lives depend on it, and maybe they do, because their stomachs are distended from hunger and the look in their eyes is not something anyone should see. A group of adults, clean but grotesquely thin, hold signs with words of gracious salutation and sing the usual Great Leap Forward songs, but there’s no honest enthusiasm—or energy—from them either.
Brigade Leader Lai steps forward. He looks the same as when I last saw him. He greets us and gestures for us to enter the building. I hurry inside, expecting to see Joy. After all, she wrote the letter. It could only have come with the brigade leader’s knowledge. In fact, now that I think about it, he probably took the photographs of her and the baby. A round table is set for a banquet.
“We have prepared a twenty-course banquet for our honorable guests,” Brigade Leader Lai announces.
The table is set for three.
“Where is my daughter?” I ask.
“She and the artist are at home. There is no need to see them. Enjoy! Enjoy!” He clasps his hands expectantly. “After dinner, Li Zhi-ge can present his award.” He bows his head deferentially. “I hope I’m not presuming too much—”
I run back outside. The men, women, and children, who moments before were jumping, waving, and singing, sit on their haunches, shoving small balls of rice—presumably a reward for their performance—into their mouths, while a guard keeps watch. I can reach Green Dragon on foot in about ten minutes. If I drive back to the original crossroads and then walk, it’s a few miles.
Z.G. takes my arm. “Let’s go.”
We hurry along the path that runs next to the stream. In minutes, we cross the little stone bridge and enter Green Dragon. Bodies lie everywhere. The smell wasn’t so bad on the road, but here the odor of death and decay is noxious. I look up the hill to Tao’s family home. I don’t see any signs of life, but then the whole village is deathly quiet.
Z.G. dashes up the hill. I follow close behind. The door to the house stands open. The outdoor kitchen looks like it hasn’t been used in some time. Three rusty whee
lbarrows tilt against the wall. That same broken ladder still lies at a haphazard angle. No one has righted it since the first time I came here.
Z.G. stares at me. His daughter, my daughter—she’s inside. I take a breath to steady my heart and prepare myself for the worst thing a mother can imagine.
We enter the house. The room is dark, cold, and dank. Shredded paper hangs from the windows. Sleeping mats stretch across the floor, but no one is on them. Then, in a corner, I see a slight movement. It’s Tao. He looks bad.
“Where is Joy?” I ask.
