Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [107]
When Brigade Leader Lai leaves, the children roll out their sleeping mats on the floor. Tao’s mother and father go to the other room. They’re trying to make another baby. As Chairman Mao says and as my mother-in-law reminds me every day, “With every stomach comes another pair of hands.” As soon as my in-laws are done, Tao and I will take our turn.
Is marriage what I expected? Not at all. That first night? It wasn’t romantic, and Tao wasn’t very gentle either. I realize that who he is and how he acts are partially determined by being raised in this place, but also making out with him was very different from actually going all the way. But what bothers me isn’t limited to sex. I hadn’t entered Tao’s house until that day, so I hadn’t realized how dirt poor his family is. I didn’t have a marriage bed like I did in the villa. I didn’t have a suite of bedroom furniture brought to my home piled on the back of a bicycle like I’d seen traveling through the streets of Shanghai, Canton, and Peking. I had enjoyed roughing it in the villa, but here I didn’t have privacy to use the nightstool, not with twelve people living in two rooms. That night when I undressed, Tao told me to take off the pouch Aunt May gave me. He said I was safe and didn’t need it to protect me anymore. I obeyed because he was my husband. I told myself I didn’t require money, furniture, or a talisman to love and make love. Still, none of it was what I expected. It’s one thing to have a sort of camping adventure in a villa for a couple of weeks and quite another to realize that I’m going to have to live like this for the rest of my life.
Here’s what I’ve learned in three months of marriage: Even in the New Society, women must care for the husband, children, and older members of the family. They must look after the house, clean, make and wash clothes. All this they do and work outside too. Since the inauguration of the communes, a few adjustments have been made. Three rules now apply to working women: No women may labor in wet places during the visit from the little red sister. Expectant mothers will have light physical tasks. Mothers will toil near their homes. There are some unwritten rules too. At the end of the day, women should be ready to make another baby for the great socialist nation. In return, we are to be happy with a few words of praise or a pat on the arm. I grasp at these things and hold them to my heart as proof of Tao’s love and my worth.
The alternative isn’t so great. “Criticism and self-criticism should apply in marriage,” Tao tells me almost every day. “Unity is possible only when one side wages the essential and proper struggle against errors committed by the other.” Now that we’re married, I commit a lot of blunders in Tao’s eyes.
I was once enamored of Tao, but sex is a huge disappointment. Even if Tao touched me in the right places and wasn’t so rough and fast, how could I feel anything but nervous and uncomfortable with ten people in the other room? Sometimes I ask if we can go to the Charity Pavilion. I want to feel what I felt before we got married. I imagine all the things we could do there if we had that privacy. I’ve even whispered some of them to Tao. I can feel his response in my hand, but he says, “It’s not necessary to go there now. We’re married. You shouldn’t be so self-concerned.” In other words, I’m trying, but so what? He doesn’t care.
Sex is one thing, happiness is another. I hate this place, and I’m not even sure I like Tao now that I’ve gotten to know him.
Does this seem sudden? Not at all. I knew the morning after I married Tao and every morning since that this was a mistake, but in my own stubborn Tiger way I’ve accepted it as the punishment I believe I deserve. On the other hand, I constantly castigate myself for being so easily deceived and swayed. Yes, I’m still as mixed up as always.
I couldn’t talk about these things with my mother when she was here, because I didn’t want her to worry. I tried to act happy in front of her after that night we talked in