Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [108]
ALL THROUGH NOVEMBER, I stay peasant busy—mending clothes, making pickles, storing dried vegetables. Pigs are killed—which is disgusting to begin with—and then soaked in salt water for a couple of weeks, and finally covered with chilies to keep the flies away. Since we’re part of a commune now, the body parts are hung outside the leadership hall instead of individual houses as they once were. We keep eating as much as we want in the canteen, but when December arrives and the temperature drops below freezing—and those cornstalks added to the canteen walls are not much of a barrier against the weather—Brigade Leader Lai introduces rationing.
Tao tells me not to worry. “This always happens between the yellow and the green. The fields are bare of crops, the harvest begins to run out, and the planting that starts at Spring Festival hasn’t happened yet.”
“But I thought we had a bumper harvest,” I say. “How can the commune run out of food?”
“Don’t concern yourself with these matters,” my husband responds, trying to act like a grown-up, but I learn from others that the brigade leader pledged a huge amount of grain to be delivered to the government based on our bumper harvest. He made good on his promise by handing over the inflated amount, told us to eat as much as we liked, and now the granary in the leadership hall is dangerously low.
As the month progresses, it gets colder and damper. Tao’s family home faces north, so we don’t get much warmth from the winter sun. Frost whitens the ground. Standing water freezes overnight. Snow falls sometimes, but it melts quickly. Frigid air blows through cracks around the door and roof. And as far as I’m concerned, the window—we’ve reglued the rice paper over the opening—does absolutely nothing to keep cold air out or warm air in. I can see my breath inside the house all day. Tao’s family has had a long time to learn how to make do. They dress in layer upon layer of padded clothes. I do too, but I never get warm.
I write to my mother every Sunday, since it’s the one day I don’t have to work for the commune. I tell her about Yong, Kumei, and Ta-ming. I tell her about the weather. I tell her that I’m learning how to be a wife. Then, on Monday, I walk down to the pond and wait for the mailman, who visits the different villages that make up the commune on his bicycle. I give him my letter, which he’ll take to be sorted, read, and processed in the leadership hall. Today he hands me a letter, which I read to the entire family:
“Z.G. and I went to a tea party at Madame Sun Yat-sen’s home. She has a beautiful garden with thirty camphor trees. Did you know that she writes all her speeches in English? If you were here, I bet your father could get you a job helping her, since you went to college in America, just like she did. Anyway, representatives from Burma, Nepal, Pakistan, and India also came to the party. You should have seen the women in their saris. They were very elegant compared with the Russian women. Your father talked me into wearing a red silk cheongsam with yellow piping from the old days. Everyone said your father and I were the most handsome guests in attendance. I believe they were right, if I say so myself.”
A week later, she sends Christmas presents—a red scarf, a tin of cookies, and cloth purchased with her cotton coupons. I give the cookies to Tao’s brothers and sisters and the cotton to my mother-in-law so she can make clothes for the children. I keep the scarf for myself. I don’t explain Christmas to them.
Two weeks later, my mother writes with news we’ve also heard over the loudspeaker. Officials in Peking have announced the construction of ten projects in the capital