Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [100]
“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 among 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