Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [32]
“We’re allowed to stay here because we’ve always been here,” the widow says.
My eyes well up. May and I thought we were alone in the world, but here are people who knew us, and they survived. It’s a miracle, really.
They suddenly part to let someone through. I have a momentary hope it will be my father. I honestly don’t know how I’ll feel if it is. Baba’s gambling debts ruined our lives, and he was such a coward. But it’s not Baba. It’s Cook. As hard as I fight them, tears roll down my face. He was an old man when I was a girl. He’s probably in his eighties now. He looks frail, and the others treat him with reverence. That’s how it should be. The old have always been honored in China.
“May I stay here?” I ask.
“Do you have a residency permit?” The widow turns to Cook and says submissively, “None of us want to get in trouble, Director Cook.”
“No one will get in trouble,” Cook says. “This was her family home, and we’ve kept her room.” He turns and addresses me directly. “You may stay, but you must follow the rules of the house and the street, or I will report you to the higher-ups.”
It’s then I realize that the boarders don’t respect Cook for his age. They’re afraid of him. We kept him on after my father lost everything because he had nowhere else to go. Now, in the New Society, he’s respected and feared because he’s part of the red class. Director Cook. They don’t call him Director Wang, Lu, or Eng, because he never had a name. We called him Cook because that was his title. Now he’s running my family home.
The professor gently takes my elbow and leads me up the stairs.
“You must not think that because you’ve returned home things will be the same,” Cook calls after me. “Those days are over, Little Miss.”
But maybe not as much as he thinks or else he wouldn’t call me by that old endearment and he wouldn’t still be answering to Cook. He would have adopted a new name—like Always Red or Red Forever—to go with the New Society.
“You will clean your nightstool and make your own meals,” he continues. “You will wash your clothes and do chores. You will …”
I’ve had a lot of surprises today, but none is greater than when Dun-ao opens the door to my room. It’s just as May and I left it—two twin beds with white linen canopies embroidered in a wisteria pattern and our favorite beautiful-girl posters on the walls.
“I don’t understand,” I say. “How can everything be the same?”
“We knew your parents weren’t coming back. Director Cook sleeps in their room now. But we all suspected that you and your sister would return one day, and here you are. But no May …”
I suppose he expects me to say something about my sister, but I can’t. I look away from his kind face and see into the bathroom. The tile, the tub, the mirror … all exactly the same.
“Many houses in the city have rooms that look just like this,” Dun-ao says. “The Chinese government isn’t always good, but Chinese culture is always here, and it respects family. We all wait for those who left to return. Everyone comes back to Shanghai.”
I suppose he’s right. Z.G.’s landlady kept his things and he returned to claim them. This idea is even what the man at the family association told me was happening in the “ghost” villages just over the border from Hong Kong. But for my house and room to remain untouched all these years? I wish May could see it.
“You look like you need some rest,” he says. “I’m sure you have luggage somewhere. When you’re ready, I’ll go with you to get it. And don’t worry too much about Cook. He’s a petty tyrant, but we have many of those now. You’ll see that in his heart he’s still just Cook, the man who loved you as a little girl.” He smiles. “I know, because he’s told me this many times.”
After the professor leaves, I sit on the edge of the bed. Dust billows up around me. I smooth the bedcover and rake up dust with my hand. This room probably hasn’t been cleaned since May and I left. I get up and go to the closet. I remember the day my father-in-law ransacked