Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [137]
I DON’T KNOW what finally sends me to the leadership hall to ask for a divorce—that my husband has done everything possible to take credit for my mural, that he won’t touch our baby, that he ignores me completely, that he takes food from my bowl in the canteen and gives it to his brothers, or that he’s begun “sharing his time,” meaning he’s fooling around with some of the young women in the commune. When I was in school, girls had a name for boys and men like my husband: a dog. Tao is a dog—with all the worst characteristics of a Dog. If I were in a city, I’d go to the People’s District Court and plead my case before a judge, a prosecutor, a recorder, and a policeman, but I’m on a remote commune, which is one reason divorce is so uncommon in the countryside. Brigade Leader Lai, Party Secretary Feng Jin, and Sung-ling compose the tribunal, but this is not to be a private matter. I arrive at the canteen just as dinner ends. The members of the tribunal sit at one of the food-service tables, reminding those in our vast cornstalk room of all we lack. Without television, movies, books, magazines, or newspapers, the winter can be long. At the very least, my application for divorce is a break from the loudspeaker. I stand a few feet before the tribunal. Samantha sleeps in a cloth sling tied across my chest. Tao and our audience sit behind me.
“What is the nature of your complaint?” Sung-ling, the only woman on the panel, asks.
“I married Tao for the wrong reason,” I begin, gesturing to him. “To see if I was worthy of love—”
“Love has no place in the New Society,” Sung-ling states.
All right then.
“When we first married, we got along all right,” I say. “Then we began to quarrel. Now he rarely speaks to me.”
“These things happen in marriage,” Sung-ling says. “You need to try harder.”
“My husband won’t touch our daughter,” I confess, sure this will show Tao for the kind of man he is.
When people in the canteen titter, Party Secretary Feng shushes the crowd and then addresses me. “No one is glad when a girl is born.” He may be illiterate, but feelings about female children are so deep that even he can quote from Fu Hsüan’s famous poem that begins, “How sad it is to be a woman! Nothing on earth is held so cheap.” He must have learned to recite the poem from his father, who learned it from his father, as have probably all the men—and women—in the commune and perhaps the country.
“Baby girls are equal too, aren’t they?” I argue back.
But I get no sympathy on that point.
“You aren’t doing your duty as a comrade,” Sung-ling scolds me. “Anything that doesn’t have to do with the revolution is a waste of time. Arms should be put to the work of improving the country, not to carrying babies.”
And yet I’ve seen Sung-ling cuddle her daughter. We’ve often sat together to nurse our infants. We’ve walked with them in the late afternoons when they’ve cried. We’ve even plotted, as mothers do, about the two girls growing up to be best friends for life.
I don’t want to accuse Tao directly of fooling around, so I list my other reasons. “He criticizes me all the time. He suspects me when I’m late. He rarely speaks to me, even though we live in two rooms. A woman shouldn’t have to suffer in marriage.”
“You have serious complaints, but a divorce is not a trifle,” Brigade Leader Lai comments. “If we grant you a divorce, what will you do about your baby? Will you leave her with your husband? How will you support yourself? Where will you live? A woman is like a vine needing the support of a tree. What will you do?”
I remember Z.G. saying something like this when I announced I wanted to marry Tao. I don’t like it any more now than I did then.
“A woman