Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [132]
“I’m a widow,” I remind him.
I don’t have to explain anything else. He’s a Chinese man of a certain age. He knows all the old restrictions on widows. But as the first volley of fireworks explodes above us, he squeezes my hand.
“I don’t believe in arranged marriages,” he says, “but I don’t believe in the kind of marriage we have in the New China either. You know my background. You know I’ve read many English books. What I want is a courtship—a Western courtship.”
I am forty-three years old, and I’ve never been courted before.
Joy
LIVING AN ABUNDANT YEAR
EVERYONE WORRIED THAT this winter would be worse than last year’s, but we didn’t realize just how much more dire it would be. It’s only November—the worst of the between the yellow and the green hasn’t come yet—and Fu-shee and I are already gleaning. The close planting didn’t work. Most of the seedlings died. What survived produced very weak and small crops. Then we launched Sputniks, racing to harvest an entire crop of turnips, corn, or cabbage in a single day. We worked without food or much water until we were dazed and disoriented. Those women who had their periods were not allowed to take care of themselves, and their pants soaked through with blood. And still there remained the problem of harvesting an entire crop in just twenty-four hours. The only way to do that was to lop the top parts of the turnip plants and leave the bulbs in the ground, ignore ears of corn, or carelessly drop cabbage leaves on the soil. All that was scavenged months ago, so my mother-in-law and I have moved on to one of the failed wheat fields, looking for a piece of grain here, a piece of grain there. We’ve been told to value quantity over quality, but we have neither. Our rice rations have been reduced to half a jin per person—enough for a single bowl of rice porridge a day. I pick up a piece of grain, put it in my pocket, and walk over to Fu-shee.
“I think the baby will be coming soon,” I say. “My contractions started early this morning. They’re strong now. I think we should go home.”
Fu-shee’s given birth to all her children on the floor in the corner of the main room in the family house. If she can do it, then I can too, especially if she’s there to help me. But she shakes her head.
“You’re better off going to the maternity courtyard,” she says. “You’ll get extra food if you have your baby there.”
In the New China, new mothers are entitled to eight weeks’ maternity leave, fifteen yards of cotton cloth, twenty jin of white flour, and three jin of sugar. Those things are important, but to get them I’ll have to deliver my baby in the maternity courtyard.
“I’m afraid to go there,” I admit.
With the hunger, too many babies are stillborn. The feeling throughout the commune is that the maternity courtyard is inhabited by demons, looking to steal a baby’s first breath.
“Don’t be swayed by feudal beliefs about fox spirits and things like that,” Fu-shee cautions, not realizing my reasons are practical. “Sung-ling had her baby girl in the maternity courtyard last week. The two of them are still alive. Now the four of you can be together.”
She leans over, scratches at the dirt, and picks up a few more kernels. She puts them in her palm, blows on them to clean them, and then holds them out for me to see as a reminder that these little bits of grain are what are keeping our household of twelve alive. The promise of flour and sugar cannot be rejected lightly.
Fu-shee walks me to the maternity courtyard, which is located in Moon Pond Village. The contractions are closer now and so fierce that sometimes we have to stop so I can brace myself against the pain. I wish my mother were here, and I don’t understand why she isn’t. I wish the letters she sends me were in response to the ones I send her. I don’t understand what that means either. I’ve been careful not to write overtly about the famine, sure that would never get past the censors. Instead,