Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [159]
I’m torn. Should we stay here and build their strength or try to get them back to Shanghai as quickly as possible? What will happen when the brigade leader realizes we want to go back to Shanghai? It’s clear he’s been hoarding food while the people in the commune have been dying. What would the punishment be for that, and what would the brigade leader be willing to do to keep his activities a secret? We have to get out of here and we have to hurry.
I feel hopeless. Z.G. is just an artist, a Rabbit artist at that. He’s not good in an emergency, but then I realize with sudden clarity that I’m not either. My sister always got us out of trouble. What would May do? After I was raped and my mother died, May put me in a wheelbarrow and pushed me to safety.
“Can you push a wheelbarrow?” I ask Z.G.
We grab some quilts and tuck them into two of the wheelbarrows to provide cushioning. Then Z.G. carries Joy and the baby outside and lays them on the quilts. While he goes back to get Tao, I give Joy more of the blood tea and half a cracker that I’ve pre-chewed. Z.G. reemerges from the house, supporting Tao, who has just enough strength to walk. Joy sees him and begins to mutter and shake her head. “No, no, no.” She must be delirious.
I smooth hair from her forehead. “Everything’s going to be fine now.”
Joy turns her head and closes her eyes. Z.G. and I heft our wheelbarrows and begin to walk. The first part is easy. Joy barely weighs anything and we’re going downhill. We turn right at the villa. When we reach the front gate, I stop.
“Wait,” I call ahead to Z.G. I run inside the villa. Kumei, Yong, and Taming aren’t in the kitchen. I hurry through the courtyards to Kumei’s bedroom. She lies on the bed. Ta-ming sits cross-legged next to her. Flies feast in the corners of his mouth and eyes. He’s a bundle of protruding and crooked bones. His eyes are vacant.
“Ta-ming,” I beckon softly.
He continues to stare at his mother, unable, it seems, to expend the energy to turn his head. I slowly approach so as not to frighten him. The truth is, he may be beyond frightening. I try to rouse Kumei, calling her name and shaking her. She doesn’t open her eyes and her body remains limp. It’s too late to do anything for her, but I can’t leave Ta-ming—not after leaving all those other children and babies in the pits by the side of the road. As for Yong, there’s no way she could still be alive. I take Ta-ming’s hand, and he looks up at me.
“Can you walk?” I ask.
He moves like an ancient—brittle, deliberate, and slow. I go to the chest in the corner, grab some clothes, the boy’s violin—about all that’s left from his inheritance from his father—and some drawings that Kumei did in class with Z.G. Then we walk back through the silence of the villa’s courtyards and corridors. Once he and his worldly goods are stowed in the wheelbarrow next to Joy, I pick up the handles and we begin to walk back to the center of the commune.
I’m terrified about what will happen when we reach the car. Miraculously, the brigade leader and his guards are nowhere in sight. We don’t have time to wonder where they are or what they’re planning. Z.G. and I quickly pile the four nearly lifeless bodies in the backseat. Z.G. joins me in the front seat, I gun the motor, and we begin the long and grisly journey back through the death roads toward Shanghai.
I wish we could drive straight out of the country. Go north to the Soviet Union? That might be worse than where we are now. Go south to Canton and hope we can cross the border? That would be a brutally hard and long journey, taking weeks of travel over dirt roads and through numerous guard posts. Joy and the others wouldn’t make it. We have to go back to Shanghai for