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By Root 270 0

shown as children could not have been more horrifying. In fact there was no need to show them. The memories were recent and fresh. Every family kept its own record of lives lost or damaged. It was Mao who showed China how to stand up to the invaders. It was Mao who saved us from being be headed, buried alive, bayoneted, raked with machine gun fire, doused with gasoline and burned. No one in China would argue that except my father, who whispered once in a while that the Japanese surrender in 1945 had a lot to do with their defeat in World War II. Besides Mao's effort, the Japanese were pressured to give up China by Stalin's Red Army in Russia. In other words, Mao happened to harvest other people's crops while working on his own. Unfortunately my father's view got him in big trouble. Nevertheless he didn't contradict the fact that Mao was the hero of China. It became natural for people to follow Mao. That was the point of all the education we received at school: to believe in Mao was to believe in China's future. They were the same.

For me it was understandable that Mrs. Pei disagreed with her daughter. Mrs. Pei had been mistreated for marrying a foreigner. But who could easily forget the image of the thousand-year-old imperial palace engulfed in flames? Who could escape the memories of fleeing one's home? Mrs. Pei's experience made her hate Mao. And that was exactly the opposite of where Wild Ginger stood. Wild Ginger couldn't make her mother understand how she felt.

Wild Ginger wanted to be a Maoist, a true Maoist, the one who would save China from disaster. It would be a different kind of Maoist than Hot Pepper's. In my opinion, Hot Pepper took advantage of Maoism and she had no understanding of what being a Maoist meant. Wild Ginger called Hot Pepper a "fake Maoist." I couldn't agree more. Hot Pepper was shouting slogans only to bully her way around, like a fake Buddhist who not only ate meat but also killed. Wild Ginger believed that one day Hot Pepper would be punished for what she had done to ruin Mao's name.

I sat on a little stool by the stove in Wild Ginger's dark kitchen. Wild Ginger was pouring bleach into a water jar.

"What did your father look like?" I asked.

"I'm thinking about burning his picture. You may take a look at it before I light the match."

Wild Ginger put down the bleach and went behind a cupboard. She reached inside a fuse box and searched. Out she came with a tiny mud-colored box. Dusting off the dirt she opened the lid. Inside was a handful of objects: colored soap wrappers, little glass balls, empty matchboxes, Mao buttons, and a palm-size framed photo of a young couple. The woman, although barely recognizable, was Mrs. Pei. Her slanting eyes were bright and filled with a butterfly smile. The man was handsome. A foreigner. He had curly, light-colored hair, a high nose, and deepset eyes.

"Are you shocked?" asked Wild Ginger.

I nodded and admitted that I had never seen a foreigner before.

"You don't think I look like him, do you?"

"Well, you have his nose."

"Why don't you say I have my mother's eyes? I mean they are almond shaped and slanting. They are one hundred percent Oriental."

"Well, that's true. Except the color of your pupils."

"Well, if there were eye dyes, I would dye them black."

"It doesn't bother me the way they are. I like them."

"Anyway, I consider myself lucky."

"Lucky?"

"My eyes are the only things that make me look Chinese. Imagine the other way around!"

"According to Hot Pepper everything that's non-Chinese is reactionary."

"Someday I will roast that bitch."

"Your mother is beautiful."

"She used to be."

"From the photo, she looked happy with your father."

"I suppose she was happy. It's a shame that she has never recovered from his death."

"Your mother is quite ill."

"She is dying. She wants to die. She has stopped going to the hospital. I am not important to her. She talks about disowning me."

"She was just angry at what you said about your father. I am sure she didn't mean it."

"Maple, she shouldn't have given birth to me."

"How could you say that