Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [109]
But to my husband and in-laws it all sounds glamorous, and the main room is filled with their excited exclamations. Madame Sun Yat-sen! The Great Hall of the People! They’ve been less impressed by May’s letters, because they don’t understand anything about television sets, cars, or movie stars. Still, they look at the photographs she sends and ask questions like “Why is she wearing that? Isn’t she cold with her naked shoulders?” Sometimes they look at the photos in which May wears makeup and teased hair, and they don’t say a word. They may never have seen a prostitute, but they know a broken-shoe when they see one.
My mother and aunt always ask me the same questions: Are you happy? Are you painting? I’m not happy, but I don’t want to tell them that. I’m not painting either, but Tao is. Knowing of Z.G.’s success with his New Year’s poster, Tao now wants to enter the national competition. “If I win, we could move to Shanghai or maybe even Peking,” he often says. He works at the table, bundled in padded clothes, with a quilt over his shoulders and another over his legs. He’s taken a traditional subject—door gods—and transformed them into two peasants bringing in an abundant harvest. He doesn’t use me as a subject or as inspiration as Z.G. did, which hurts my feelings something awful. Whenever I say anything about it, Tao says, “Quit complaining and do your own painting. No one’s stopping you.” That’s easy for him to say. I wish I could put brush to paper with as much confidence as my father and husband do. I have something in my mind—I know I do—but I haven’t yet been able to reach it and I have no one to encourage me.
At night, Tao and I lie on mats in the main room. The clothes we’ll wear tomorrow are under our mats, so they’ll be warm when we put them on in the morning. The older children curl around us. Tao nuzzles my neck. He puts a hand under my sleeping shirt. If we’re really quiet we can make the night pass in a way that will bring warmth of its own.
“Next time you write to your mother and father,” Tao says as his fingers slip into my wetness, “ask if they can get permits for us to visit them in Shanghai.”
BEGINNING IN FEBRUARY, I wake up and go to bed hungry. I tell myself that I’m not as hungry as I think I am, that I have a bad Western attitude, and that what I’m seeing and sensing is not real. But some people say this is the worst between the yellow and the green ever. A few want to break up the commune, claiming they were better off when they were responsible for their own land, grain, and families. I keep my mouth shut, but I begin to think that the canteen is no longer there to encourage us to eat for free; it’s there to restrict what we’re given to eat.
All this leads to new inspections.
“Are you hiding grain?” Brigade Leader Lai demands, as Party Secretary Feng Jin and Sung-ling look through our cupboards.
Tao’s mother is small but tough. She looks him straight in the face. “Where could we hide anything?”
That momentarily stumps him.
“Have you turned in all your cooking utensils?” Sung-ling asks—woman to woman. “You shouldn’t have any cooking utensils. By now, they should have been either given to the canteen or melted in the blast furnace.”
“Are you asking if we’ve been cooking?” Fu-shee retorts sharply. “We couldn’t cook even if we wanted to. All we have left is our teapot.”
I thought my mother and aunt