Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [111]
I could write to my mother about all this, but I don’t. How can I? I don’t want to hear her say, “I told you so,” when even worse recriminations run through my brain.
Joy
GLASS CLOTHES
I WAKE JUST after dawn on a Sunday morning in late March. The first thing I see is our new poster of Chairman Mao pasted to the wall. Every house in the commune has the identical poster—Mao floating above a sea of red clouds. I imagine this same poster in every house throughout the country. Nothing can hang above him (which would be insulting), and nothing can mar the surface of the poster (which would prove that the household is not showing the proper respect). I shift my weight, causing the babies and small children snuggled around me to wiggle and squirm. I put a hand on my stomach, trying to calm my nausea. Something I ate or drank has caused me to feel low. I quietly get up off my sleeping mat and go outside.
The spring air is crisp and the sky is bright blue. Standing on the terrace, I see out over several fields of rapeseed. The plants are in full yellow flower, reminding me of the wild mustard that grows in Southern California at this time of year. Plumes of smoke curl into the air from chimneys throughout Green Dragon. I chop wood and start the fire in the outdoor stove. Then I grab a couple of buckets, walk down to the stream for water, haul them back up the hill, and put some of the water on to boil.
My mother-in-law joins me outside. “You still brush your teeth with boiled water?” she asks with false incredulity. “You’ll never be one of us until you can drink the water. Here, let me make you some tea with ginger in it to help your stomach. It’s always calmed mine.”
Since it’s Sunday and we have no work to do for the commune, everyone’s slow getting dressed. I tell Tao I’m going on ahead to the canteen. He doesn’t mind. Spring is all around me—more rapeseed fields, trees in extravagant flower, pink and white petals drifting through the air like snow, and fresh new greenery on the precious few tea bushes that have been spared Brigade Leader Lai’s insistence that all land be converted to growing grain. Although we had a tough winter, I’m eagerly anticipating the harvest of the commune’s first winter wheat crop in June. We’ve been close-planting other crops—tomatoes, bok choy, corn, and onions—as we’ve been instructed by Brigade Leader Lai, putting in two or three times the usual amount of seed per mu. We tell ourselves Chairman Mao wouldn’t steer us in the wrong direction. Yes, the longer days and warmer weather have done a lot for my mood. Maybe this hasn’t been a mistake. Maybe I was just a girl from Los Angeles who truly was suffering from too many years of comfort and waste.
Now, looking at the bright green of the fields against the sky, I wish I could spend the day perched somewhere, painting and drawing. Instead, I eat a small breakfast, go home, and pass the rest of the morning writing letters to my mother and aunt. “Life is OK. The weather is better.” Tomorrow I’ll wait by the pond for the mailman to arrive. I’ll give him my letters and hope he brings some for me.
In late afternoon, the loudspeaker in the main room crackles to life.
“All comrades come to the canteen immediately!” It’s the brigade leader’s voice. “All comrades come to the canteen immediately!”
No political rally is scheduled, but we do as we’re told. As we near the area where the canteen, nursery, and leadership hall are located, we see this will be a communewide meeting. It’s rare that we’re all together at one time, but here we are—nearly four thousand of us. Maybe we’re going to “launch a Sputnik”—a twenty-four-hour project inspired by Old Big Brother that will require the participation of the entire commune. Earlier this year, the whole country launched a Sputnik, spending twenty-four hours making more iron than the United States does in a month—or so we were told—but not only was the