Mao's Last Dancer - Li Cunxin [15]
One day when I was still about eight, I wanted to impress my niang by cooking lunch for the family when she was late coming back from working in the fields. So I placed some of the leftover food on a bamboo steamer. To see if the food was properly cooked, I lifted the big, heavy wok cover. I was so short that I had to stand on a little stool. As I lifted the cover, the stool fell from under my feet. Steam from the wok gushed into my face. I crashed forward and my niang’s six precious newly purchased plates were knocked to the floor, smashed.
I was terrified! I knew it had taken my parents all year to save enough money to buy those plates. And now, there they were, in a thousand pieces on the floor. Was I ever in trouble! I ran to Na-na’s house next door. If we were ever in trouble, we’d go to Na-na’s.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I’ve broken Niang’s new plates!” I sobbed.
“How many did you break?”
“Six.”
“Oh! Wo de tian na! My god!” she exclaimed. “How did you manage to break all six?”
I quickly told her what had happened.
“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.” Na-na looked at me reassuringly. “You broke those plates trying to help your niang. You’re a good boy. You shouldn’t be punished for this.” Then she murmured to herself: “What a world we’re living in now. A mother of seven has to work in the fields! I’ve never heard of such a thing!”
I went out to play, and when I returned home that afternoon my niang was very upset. I heard her sigh to my dia, “Our niang was trying to help cook our lunch. She accidentally slipped off the stool and broke all our new plates!”
“Is she all right?” Dia asked, concerned.
“Miraculously, she didn’t hurt herself at all.”
I was eternally thankful to my na-na for saving my skin. I quietly slipped into her house that evening and whispered in her ear, “Thank you, Na-na!”
“What?” she shouted.
I was so afraid others might find out the truth if I said it any louder, so I just gave her a big kiss on her bony cheek and went back home.
My na-na’s health became progressively worse for the next half year. She couldn’t walk, she became unable to eat, and she gradually slipped away from us. She died about a year after I broke the plates.
As was the local custom, her body was laid in a coffin in her living room, for three days. The smell of incense filled our houses.
“Why does Na-na’s body have to stay here for three days?” I asked my third brother, Cunmao.
“In case she comes alive again.”
“How can a dead person come back to life?”
He told me a story then, which he’d heard from a friend: “An old couple were looked after in their old age by their only son and daughter-in-law,” he began. “They were not well cared for. Most of the time they were given leftovers to eat. Not all people are as kind to their elderly family members as we are. One day, a distant relative of the old couple took pity on them and quietly slipped two hard-boiled eggs into their hands. They were so excited that they quickly peeled the shells off and just as they were going to eat them they heard their daughter-in-law coming toward their room. The wife told her husband to hurry up and eat his egg. Fearing their daughter-in-law would accuse them of stealing the eggs, the old man quickly put his in his mouth and swallowed it whole.”
“Why didn’t he chew it?” I asked Cunmao.
“He didn’t have any teeth left. The old man choked on the egg and instantly stopped breathing.”
“Was he dead?” I gasped.
“Of course he was dead!” Cunmao replied. “So they bought him a cheap coffin and had a cheap burial.”
I could tell the best part of the story was still to come.
“The old lady’s only treasure was a pearl necklace her husband had given her and she wrapped it around his neck. The old man’s son didn’t wait for the three-day period. He buried his father the first night after his death. The word spread wide about the buried treasure around the old man’s neck. At midnight, a robber dug up the grave and opened the coffin. He could see the pearls reflected in the moonlight. Before he took the necklace the