Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [163]
Happiness out of horror, that’s what I felt. When I tried to explain that to my mom, she said from her bed, “I look at you and I see a double rose—two beautiful colors, one in soft yellow, the other in bright pink. You are part me and part May, and I’m so happy for that.” She regarded me again with her surprisingly open and tender eyes of love. “What else can make a woman happy?”
“A husband who loves her, will support her, and encourage her to be a whole human being—like you had with Dad,” I answered. “And will have with Dun too.”
My mother had found two men to love her, and I…
“I’m really sorry your marriage didn’t work out,” she said sympathetically. “You couldn’t have known the kind of person Tao was.”
The response to that was, But you and Z.G. did!
Before I married Tao, Z.G. said he was using me to try to escape village life, while Tao’s mother often insinuated that I wanted to steal him and take him to Shanghai. We now know who was right. Tao’s wish has been fulfilled: Shanghai. And it’s worked out very well for him. Once we recovered some of our strength, the Artists’ Association held a ceremony to give Tao a prize as a model artist. Z.G. and my mom told me I had to attend, because the Artists’ Association had also sponsored my return to the city and because I added interest to Tao’s story. What a pathetic pair Tao and I made. Our clothes drooped. Our eyes were still dark and hollow shells. But now my husband is a bit of a celebrity. He tells us, and anyone who will listen, that he came up with the idea of the mural and then painted it with “a little help” from some members of the commune. Fortunately, he’s often out of town, touring the country as a model peasant artist. In July and August, he went to the Third National Congress of Literary and Art Workers in Peking. “I was one of twenty-three hundred cultural delegates,” he boasted when he returned. “The people’s life is rich and varied. Art should reflect this. It’s going to be a new period of blooming!” This is nothing to get excited about, since the last blooming period ended with the Campaign Against Rightists. But that’s my husband: a small radish who thinks he knows something.
But long before any of these other things happened, and my mom and I were in her bedroom, she said, “Remember, Joy, you still have your whole life ahead of you. You’re only twenty-two. You’re going to find a good man. Or maybe he’ll find you. For all you know, you’re already acquainted. I’m sure Violet’s son is still waiting for you—”
“Leon?” I giggled. My mother and her friend Violet have been trying to set the two of us up since forever.
“Well, why not?” she asked, all innocence. “Happiness, Joy, that’s all I’m trying to tell you.” She paused to let that sink in. “Another thing that makes a woman happy is to find work that will make her life bigger—whether hiring your neighbors to work as extras in the movies as May does or working at her husband’s side as I did with Sam in the café. For you, I think it’s going to be your art.”
Memories of Tao, the mural, and the commune had ruined art for me. “I don’t want to paint again,” I told her, and I meant it.
“You say that now, but things will change.”
And, of course, my mother was right about that too.
It took nearly a month to hear back from May. We received a letter and a package, both of which were sent through the regular route from Grandfather Louie’s family in Wah Hong Village. The letter was May’s formal invitation for us to take to the police station. The package had some dried bread and crisp rice—most welcome—and a frilly white dress for Samantha with smocking done in pink, a matching bonnet, and bloomers to cover her diaper. Before I could stop her, my mother had ripped apart the bonnet.
“May knows to hide things for me in hats,” she explained.
All I could think was, Those two sisters! But there, lying flat against the sizing for the bonnet’s visor, was an additional letter from Auntie May:
I’ve arrived in Hong Kong. I’ve left the café in the care