Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [177]
For the first time, I suspect my father’s motives. Can he be trusted?
“If you have money,” he continues, “you could take the train and bribe the guards.”
“I tried that,” Joy says. “It didn’t work.”
“I imagine things are different down here,” Baba responds. “Gangs organize escapes by train, but you need to pay—”
“Oh, Ba, don’t tell me you’re involved with a gang again.”
He pretends not to hear my comment. “You could hire a sampan or fishing boat to take you down the Pearl River to Macau or Hong Kong,” he suggests, “but that traffic is also controlled by gangs.”
“The Pearl River,” Joy echoes. “Surely that has to be a good omen.”
My daughter, so anxious to get out, isn’t thinking clearly.
“We’d have the same problems here as we would have had in Shanghai,” I remind her. “Do you know the schedules of the patrol boats?” I ask my father.
He ignores my question to offer another idea. “You could stow away on a ship, but that doesn’t sound practical with so many of you. Some people prefer to float down the river on an inner tube or a piece of driftwood—”
“You seem to know a lot about it,” Z.G. cuts in. He is forever a Rabbit—cautious and reserved.
My father juts his chin diffidently. He used to do that when he didn’t want to discuss something unsavory with my mother.
“But how are you going to float down the river with a baby and a little boy?” my father continues after a pause. “And it’s the dry season and the river is low. And you still might be caught by the patrol boats.”
My shoulders sag. We’ve come so far. What will happen when we’re caught?
“There is another way,” my father says. “Our village is part of a twenty-village commune. Our villages have ties to Hong Kong and Macau that are centuries old. Those ties have not been broken just because the Communists have taken over.” He sounds like the man at the family association in Hong Kong, which gives me renewed hope. “Goods still need to pass over the border. People from our commune cross into Hong Kong’s New Territories every day to sell our products and then buy and bring back other provisions.”
“Your products?” Joy asks, dubious since the Dandelion Number Eight People’s Commune didn’t make anything to sell.
“We process and make ingredients used for Chinese herbal medicine,” my father answers.
“Chinese herbal medicine?” Joy echoes doubtfully.
“Didn’t your mother give you traditional medicine when you were a little girl?” Baba asks. Then he turns to me. “Your mother would have been disappointed to hear you didn’t raise your daughter properly.”
My face heats with resentment and exasperation. This man abandoned us. His gambling led directly to May’s and my arranged marriages, to May, my mother, and me having to flee Shanghai, to my mother’s death and my rape, to May and me having to leave our home country …
“Of course, Mama gave me herbs and tonics,” Joy jumps in, defending me and protecting him from my anger. “I hated them.”
“So how do you think those ingredients got to Haolaiwu?” Baba asks.
He’s right. Even after China closed, people in Chinatown bought ginseng, powdered deer antler, or some other terrible-tasting ingredient to cure a cough, indigestion, or trouble in the marriage bed.
“We grow and prepare ingredients for traditional medicines,” he goes on. “We sell our goods at the wholesale market in Hong Kong. We also sell pigs, chickens, ducks … Our commune has several trucks, and we cross the border at the Lo Wu Bridge almost daily. Peking wants and needs foreign exchange with Hong Kong. We’re some of the people who provide that.”
“What are you saying? That we can just drive to Hong Kong?” Z.G. asks, sounding even more skeptical than Joy.
“More or less,” Baba answers. “The border is about eighty Western miles from here. I think we can get you over the border and into the New Territories. Once there, you ought to be able to take a bus the last twenty miles into Hong Kong proper.”
“Why didn’t you tell us that in