Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [104]
A PERFECT CIRCLE
BIRTH, GROWTH, DECLINE, death. All Chinese festivals remind us that we are a part of that cycle. It’s the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, around mid-September in the Western calendar. The bumper crop has been harvested, but, in the effort to make steel or compete in contests, whole fields have been ignored, with melons, cabbages, and turnips literally rotting on vines, on stems, and in the earth. The rice has been brought in, although even this most precious grain was left on stalks in the paddies or can be found in the dirt on the main square, where we did the threshing, sorting, and drying. We’ve been encouraged to eat, eat, eat. This is contrary to just about everyone’s way of thinking, because you never know when hard times will come, but we obey and enjoy ourselves in the process.
I’m told this is the usual time of quiet and celebration, but this year is different. Brigade Leader Lai has ordered teams to plow under what’s left in the fields so the farmers can get the winter wheat planted. The seeds are going in as densely as possible—forty to fifty jin of seed per mu instead of eighteen. Some of us are sent back into the cornfields to harvest the stalks to add heft to the existing walls and roof of the canteen before winter comes. Trees still need to be cut and brought down from the hills to keep the blast furnaces going. It seems like most metal has been fed into those furnaces, and yet the bang, bang, bang of metal utensils can still be heard from before dawn until long after dark, driving what remains of the sparrows to their insane deaths.
These may not be traditional times, yet some things are still fixed and certain. Tonight the moon is closer to earth than at any time of the year. They may call it Mid-Autumn Festival now, but it will always be the Moon Festival to me. Tao’s family has invited Kumei, Ta-ming, and me to join them to celebrate family togetherness, the harvest, and the moon. The canteen has made moon cakes filled with a sugary paste of dates, nuts, and candied apricots. The tops are embossed with images of a three-legged toad and a rabbit. I take a box of cakes to Joy’s house. Tuanyuan, the word for reunion, literally means a perfect circle, and that is what the moon, the moon cakes, and our family are on this night. Jie Jie and some of the children stretch out on the ground or sit on their haunches, staring up at the moon. I hand out the cakes. The children aren’t old enough to have bittersweet memories, but the adults are. We see the cakes and we remember the past—people now gone, happy holidays.
“This year I hope we can create new memories for the future,” Joy says.
I’ve been here six weeks. Joy still comes for her nightly bath in the villa. She’s stopped complaining about her mother-in-law and never seems upset about living in such cramped quarters with so many people, most of whom are children. I’ve watched her paint and discovered a part of my daughter I never knew existed. I’ve seen her work in the fields—with a smile on her face even as her skin burns. She’s turned a corner. Even though she’s had her tragedies, she can laugh, be content in her marriage, and work happily and with enthusiasm at something that truly is bigger than she is. So, as much as I love Joy, I’ll go with Z.G. to the Chinese Export Commodities Fair in Canton when he comes for me. My daughter is a married woman now. She’s chosen a life I wouldn’t pick, but it is her life and she’s going to have to figure things out for herself—as a woman. It kills me to let her go, but it’s the best and only thing I can do as her mother.
When it’s time to place some of the moon cakes on the ground as offerings, we sit together—mother and daughter—with a bunch of wiggling children gathered around us. There’s no need for bean-oil lamps tonight. Illumination comes from the moon. It’s bright, and moon shadows dance around us. Joy takes my hand in hers and balances it on her knee.
“This is a special night,” she tells the children. “The Moon Lady will hear your wishes and grant your requests, but only if they