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Later, after she finished her letter, my mother tucked the baby and me into Auntie May’s bed. Never could I have imagined how she would look at us right then. She glowed with love and happiness. Nor could I have imagined the way she allowed Ta-ming to snuggle close to her in her own twin bed. I saw that my mother—somehow, and at last—had found solace and comfort in physical affection, whether hugging me, comforting the baby, protecting Ta-ming from the dark, or looking forward to her new life with her professor.
Happiness out of horror, that’s what I felt. When I tried to explain that to my mom, she said from her bed, “I look at you and I see a double rose—two beautiful colors, one in soft yellow, the other in bright pink. You are part me and part May, and I’m so happy for that.” She regarded me again with her surprisingly open and tender eyes of love. “What else can make a woman happy?”
“A husband who loves her, will support her, and encourage her to be a whole human being—like you had with Dad,” I answered. “And will have with Dun too.”
My mother had found two men to love her, and I…
“I’m really sorry your marriage didn’t work out,” she said sympathetically. “You couldn’t have known the kind of person Tao was.”
The response to that was, But you and Z.G. did!
Before I married Tao, Z.G. said he was using me to try to escape village life, while Tao’s mother often insinuated that I wanted to steal him and take him to Shanghai. We now know who was right. Tao’s wish has been fulfilled: Shanghai. And it’s worked out very well for him. Once we recovered some of our strength, the Artists’ Association held a ceremony to give Tao a prize as a model artist. Z.G. and my mom told me I had to attend, because the Artists’ Association had also sponsored my return to the city and because I added interest to Tao’s story. What a pathetic pair Tao and I made. Our clothes drooped. Our eyes were still dark and hollow shells. But now my husband is a bit of a celebrity. He tells us, and anyone who will listen, that he came up with the idea of the mural and then painted it with “a little help” from some members of the commune. Fortunately, he’s often out of town, touring the country as a model peasant artist. In July and August, he went to the Third National Congress of Literary and Art Workers in Peking. “I was one of twenty-three hundred cultural delegates,” he boasted when he returned. “The people’s life is rich and varied. Art should reflect this. It’s going to be a new period of blooming!” This is nothing to get excited about, since the last blooming period ended with the Campaign Against Rightists. But that’s my husband: a small radish who thinks he knows something.
But long before any of these other things happened, and my mom and I were in her bedroom, she said, “Remember, Joy, you still have your whole life ahead of you. You’re only twenty-two. You’re going to find a good man. Or maybe he’ll find you. For all you know, you’re already acquainted. I’m sure Violet’s son is still waiting for you—”
“Leon?” I giggled. My mother and her friend Violet have been trying to set the two of us up since forever.
“Well, why not?” she asked, all innocence. “Happiness, Joy, that’s all I’m trying to tell you.” She paused to let that sink in. “Another thing that makes a woman happy is to find work that will make her life bigger—whether hiring your neighbors to work as extras in the movies as May does or working at her husband’s side as I did with Sam in the café. For you, I think it’s going to be your art.”
Memories of Tao, the mural, and the commune had ruined art for me. “I don’t want to paint again,” I told her, and I meant it.
“You say that now, but things will change.”
And, of course, my mother was right about that too.
It took nearly a month to hear back from May. We received a letter and a package, both of which were sent through the regular route from Grandfather Louie’s family in Wah Hong Village. The letter was May’s formal invitation for us to take to the police station. The package had some dried bread and crisp rice—most welcome—and a frilly white dress for Samantha with smocking done in pink, a matching bonnet, and bloomers to cover her diaper. Before I could stop her, my mother had ripped apart the bonnet.
“May knows to hide things for me in hats,” she explained.
All I could think was, Those two sisters! But there, lying flat against the sizing for the bonnet’s visor, was an additional letter from Auntie May:
I’ve arrived in Hong Kong. I’ve left the café in the care of Uncle Charley. Mariko is taking care of my business. As for my acting job, I told the producers what I was going to do. They said I was nuts, but the cast all got together and gave me $1,000. Look elsewhere in this and other packages to find it.
You must hurry, but you must also be careful. The man at the family association tells me that many people are leaving China. Officials here and in the U.S. don’t believe the stories refugees are telling about the famine. At the same time, the PRC is inviting people in Hong Kong to send food and money to their relatives on the mainland. The lines at the post office are terrible. Those who are generous are rewarded with a banquet. Do they not see the irony in that?
I don’t think the Chinese government sees the irony in much of anything.
I’m so close to you now. Please tell me what else I can do.
We continued to correspond and we found all the cash, but we were careful about transmitting the details of our plan, feeling it would be safer that way.
“Just stay in our old home,” my mother wrote back, meaning the hotel. “One day soon we will arrive.”
So here I am today, months later, flying kites on a blustery afternoon with this improvised family. At a very deep level, I’m no longer afraid and no longer pinched by guilt. Is it possible to be happy in the People’s Republic of China? Absolutely, because I am happy right now.
Our escape plan has evolved into something very simple, with just two components. First: travel permits. Z.G., having gone to the Chinese Export Commodities Fair in Canton at the beginning of November the last couple of years, has asked for and received permission to attend and bring with him Tao (a model artist) to give a joint painting demonstration—showing the old and new styles of art in China. Accompanying them will be a baby, her amah (my mother), and me (the wife of the model artist). Second: exit permits and passports. My mother and Dun will get married tomorrow, and then we’ll go to the police station and the Foreign Affairs Bureau to pick up passports for those of us who need them, travel permits to Canton for Dun and Ta-ming, and exit permits for my mother, Dun, Ta-ming, Samantha, and me to go to Hong Kong for a family reunification visit. (We’ve been going to interviews for six months now, pushing and begging everyone to get things done in time for our departure date. Tomorrow we have just one more set of appointments. If we don’t get our papers, then none of this will work.) Once we reach Canton, Z.G. will keep Tao occupied at the fair, allowing the rest of us to slip away and take the train to Hong Kong. Once there, we’ll go to May’s hotel.
It sounds simple, but many obstacles still need to be overcome. What if someone suspects something—at my mother’s work unit, at the Artists’ Association, in our house or Z.G.’s house. So, we must try to stay focused, not let fear overwhelm us, and keep moving forward.
As the others help Z.G. reel in his kites, I pick leaves from the poplars and gather some grass. They will be nice additions to tomorrow’s meals.
Joy
THE HEARTBEAT OF THE ARTIST
MONDAY MORNING, MY mother’s wedding day. My mom and Dun help me prepare breakfast for the household. The boarders sit around the kitchen table, arguing and gossiping. My position in the house has changed since I first came to live here. Back then, the boarders were frightened by my presence. I didn’t have a residency permit, a work unit, or food coupons. I was half dead and brought with me two additional mouths to feed. I wasn’t shown sympathy or kindness, except by Cook, who clearly loves my mother and therefore loves her daughter and granddaughter. Fortunately, he was the only one who mattered, since he was in charge of the household and made all reports to the block committee, which then passed information on to the neighborhood committee, and on up the chain. Now he holds Samantha, giving her a bottle. Soon he’ll pass her to someone else at the table. She’ll have her first birthday in a couple of weeks, but she’s still frightfully small—a constant reminder that something isn’t right in the country.
The majority of city dwellers don’t fully understand what’s happening in the countryside. They’ve heard rumors, but they can’t reconcile them with being told crops grow to the sky on communes, hearing government officials report on the so-called years of bad weather that have destroyed fields of plenty, and what they see on the streets of Shanghai, where there’s no avoiding or covering up how people look as they wait in long lines to buy food with their coupons. They’re just moving past the first sign of starvation—losing weight—to the second stage—edema. They’ve begun to swell around their necks and in their faces. When people greet, they press thumbs into each other’s forehe
