Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [94]
Joy’s new home—which with her arrival will house twelve people—is a crude two-room shack made from mud and straw. It faces north. Everyone—except my daughter apparently—understands that only the poorest of the poor build their houses in places where they can’t be heated by the sun in winter. Piles of bedding lie stacked to the left of the door. Tao’s parents and all those brothers and sisters must be planning on sleeping either outside or in the main room tonight.
People celebrate around me, making toasts with rice wine, but I can barely breathe because in entering the room I’ve been tossed back in time to a shack outside Shanghai on the way to the Grand Canal. My sister is hiding in the other room, and my mother and I are being repeatedly raped and beaten by Japanese soldiers. I tremble, and my breath comes out in shallow pants. The smell of the firecrackers and all those scraggly, dirty little brothers and sisters is making me physically ill.
I step outside to get some fresh air. My chest feels heavy, and my heart feels like it’s breaking apart. Even when I was a little girl, long before the rape and my mother’s death, I hated the countryside. When my father sent May and me to summer camp in Kuling, I saw evil in the way paths and dirt roads wove through the land like slithering snakes. I’ve never seen the charm of squalor, filth, or poverty either. Now the countryside is dealing me another cruel blow.
Joy steps outside to find me. Her cheeks are flushed with triumph and elation. Her words come out like frothy bubbles. “Mom, don’t you want to be inside with everyone?”
My daughter and I truly are like yin and yang—one dark, sad, and closed, the other bright, happy, and open to her new life. But no matter how dejected I am at what’s happened, I still love her very much.
“Of course I want to be a part of the celebration,” I say. “I just wanted to take a minute to look at the beautiful night. Look at it, Joy. The sky, the moon, the fireflies. Remember it always.”
Joy hugs me. I hold her tight, trying to memorize the warmth of her body, the beat of her heart, the crush of her young breasts against mine. “I know I haven’t always been the mother you wanted—”
“Don’t say that—”
“And I know I’ve handled this badly, but I hope you know that all I’ve ever wanted is for you to be happy.”
“Oh, Mom.” She gives me another hug.
I should tell Joy what to expect on the wedding night, but all I have time to do is whisper, “Always show the greatest kindness to the ones you like the least. If you show kindness to your mother-in-law, who like all women has been bred to hate her daughter-in-law, then you will create an obligation she will never be able to repay.”
Joy pulls away and looks at me in surprise. I draw her close again. “Remember what you learned in church too. No matter what you’re feeling or how desperate you become, always take a moral position. If you do that, God will watch over you.”
People file out of the house, coming to get the bride, sweeping her away. I follow right behind, determined to be a proper mother of the bride, no matter what I feel inside or what memories the shack stirs up in me. Jie Jie, Tao’s fourteen-year-old sister, hangs red couplets outside the door to what for this night has been designated the wedding chamber. One side reads: SONGS FLY THROUGH THE AIR. The other side reads: HAPPINESS FILLS THE ROOM. People step forward with gifts. Some have brought red azaleas picked in the surrounding hills. Others give packets of tea grown on Green Dragon’s slopes, a jar of pickles, a piece of embroidery. Brigade Leader Lai presents a gift from the Dandelion Number Eight People’s Commune: a hundred feet of cotton cloth for Joy to make wedding quilts.
“When your children are born, you’ll get another fifteen feet,” he proclaims.
Yong offers the bride and groom a Golden Cock alarm clock. Tao and Joy won’t need an alarm clock, not with the loudspeaker and all the small children in this house, but the gift is