Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [128]
I think the mural will magically change my life. It doesn’t. No dignitaries come to the Dandelion Number Eight People’s Commune, Brigade Leader Lai doesn’t win any prizes for being a model leader, Tao doesn’t like me any more than he did before, and the people on the work teams quickly forget that I got them off the road crew for a few days.
Pearl
A ROSE-PETAL CAKE
NATIONAL DAY—CHINA’S Independence Day—takes place on October 1. This year—1959—is also the tenth anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, so the holiday is going to be the biggest and best yet. People labor day and night to beautify Shanghai. The city thrums with shoveling, hammering, and military music. Flags, lanterns, colored lights, and drapery festoon buildings, lamp poles, and bridges. Everything is in red, of course. An enormous arch is being built on the Bund, flanked by trees and flower beds. My work unit doubles its time on the streets, cleaning, stripping, and collecting every piece of paper we can find. I’m swept up by the enthusiasm around me and genuinely excited for and proud of my home country.
But as they say, everything always turns to the opposite. Just as I’m feeling truly good about being in China, we start to have food shortages in the city. In my household, we’re each allotted nineteen pounds of rice, a few tablespoons of cooking oil, and half a pork chop each month, which means, among other things, that the bickering in my family home is even worse than usual. I try to keep jealousies from boiling over by bringing home the occasional bag of rice or brown sugar bought at an exorbitant price on the black market or at the store for Overseas Chinese, where I can use my special certificates, for which I’m very grateful these days.
All this makes me worry about Joy. Could she be suffering from the same food shortages that we’re experiencing in Shanghai? I tell myself not to fret, because how could the members of a commune not have food? They grow it! But I’m a mother and I agonize. I write to Joy to ask how she is. “How are you feeling?” I send candies and dried fruit. “Tao’s brothers and sisters might like these.” But I don’t hear back from my daughter. In fact, I haven’t heard anything since she wrote to tell me she was pregnant, nearly five months ago. This causes me great apprehension and keeps me up late at night with anxiety. I tell myself she’s busy with Tao and preparing to have the baby. I tell myself to be calm, but I’m not calm. I have to see her. To see her, I’ll need a travel permit, but I’m still not having any luck with that.
I go to Z.G.’s house to see if he can help me, but even he can’t get a travel permit. I write to May about my concerns. She writes back two weeks later that she’s heard from Joy and that she sounds fine. I relax a bit, but I don’t lose my desire to see my child during this special time in her life. In the coming weeks, I return several times to Superintendent Wu’s office. I tell him I still haven’t heard from my daughter and I ask again for a travel permit. During one of my visits, he informs me that almost no permits are being issued for travel.
“It’s as though they don’t want anyone to go to the countryside,” he says.
“Why would that be?”
Superintendent Wu doesn’t know. But eventually he makes some inquiries—refusing to tell me where—and reports back that Joy is fine.
“Fine?” That’s what May said too, but I’m Joy’s mother, and something doesn’t feel right. “If she’s fine, why hasn’t she written to me?”
He doesn’t have an answer. I begin to mark time by how many more days until the baby’s due.
OCTOBER 1—NATIONAL DAY—finally arrives.