Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [81]
I can’t grow grain, but every day before and after work I join my neighbors in creating steel. We are happy not to be paid, because we are building the nation. Each block has at least one blast furnace made from gray brick. The comrades in our old house all agreed to take our last radiator to our street’s furnace. Oh, May, you should see me. Three nights a week I work the bellows to keep the furnace going. Can you imagine me smelting iron? That’s how strong I am for the People’s Republic of China. When I’m not at the bellows, I walk the streets with my eyes down, looking for old nails, rusty cogs, and any piece of metal that has been overlooked by others. Chairman Mao says steel is the marshal of industry!
I don’t write that when it comes time to pour what we’ve melted onto pallets it doesn’t look at all like the steel I’ve seen being made in news-reels. Instead, it comes out in dull, red, sandy blobs. When it dries, it looks like cakes of nui-shi-ge-da—cow turds. I can’t imagine what anyone will use it for. Certainly not to make tractors, girders, or textile machines, because it won’t be strong enough. So, as far as I can tell, it’s all a waste of time, energy, and sweat—and all without remuneration, which, if I said that aloud, would cause me to be struggled against by the boarders and the block committee for being too capitalistic in my thinking.
The biggest news is that last month the first people’s commune opened. It has 40,000 people! Chairman Mao says, “The people’s commune is great!” I have not been to the countryside and can only rely on Chairman Mao’s mouth to tell me what his eyes have seen. He says that in the countryside bags of grain reach the sky. Yes, we are on the way to outgrowing the United States. Soon China will be exporting grain to you!
Love, Pearl
Finally a letter arrives, and it’s not in response to my news about the Great Leap Forward. It’s dated March 1, and May must have sent it upon receiving my letter saying that Joy had returned to Shanghai. A good part of it has been blacked out. What’s left are mostly questions for which not only May but apparently the censors and Superintendent Wu would like to know the answers. “Where has Joy been all this time? If Joy isn’t staying with you, then where is she living? Who bought her clothes? Was it this Tao you mentioned? I don’t like the sound of that. She is not a girl to be bought for a few yards of fabric.” This line more than any other tells me May has no understanding of what’s happening behind the Bamboo Curtain. There are no bad girls anymore. Then she asks the question I’ve been expecting for some time. “Have you found Z.G.? It will be difficult for you, but you must try to find him. We were all good friends once. He must help us.”
I read this last part several times. Pathetic jealousy burbles in me, but how can I be jealous—now, after all these years? I’m here to do whatever I can to get my daughter to remember who and what she is, but a part of me still dwells on petty things from twenty years ago. I think back on all the letters I’ve received from May since I arrived in Shanghai. Has she asked about Z.G. before? No, but his presence has been in every letter she’s written: “Do you see anyone from the past? What of the friends we knew back then?” How many times have I ignored her questions, blocking them out even more blackly than the censors? Sure, I’ve written back here and there: so-and-so died during the war, was a hero, was shot, or escaped … But never once have I written about Z.G. Why? A bitter place inside me kept that secret. Has this been my revenge for May’s part in Sam’s death? How can it be, when I now know she was not