A Heart for Freedom (6 page)

Drying my tears with my hands and biting my lip, I said nothing. After a long time, Dad realized I wasn’t going to respond, and he became angry again.

“Tell us, what are we going to do? Get an application for the Communist Youth League and fill it out tomorrow. From now on, you are not to write or talk any nonsense about not joining the Party—or ask any questions about the Party. You will begin to study Party history, and until the issue has been cleared up, you are not allowed to speak any more rubbish on the topic. Can you manage these things or not?”

I said nothing.

“If you can’t do it, then you won’t be going to school anymore. You’re suspended! It would have been better not to bring you up at all than to bring up an idiot to bring grief on this family!”

“Ling Ling, don’t be stubborn,” Mom broke in. “Just nod your head to your father, say you’ll do it, and that will be the end of it. Your dad lost his temper, but it’s for your own good. You don’t understand, but you will when you grow up.”

Tears were running down my cheeks. Hearing I would not be allowed to go to school made me feel terribly wronged. I loved school. My best teachers and friends and the things I was interested in learning were there. And there was hope for a different world from the one my mom and dad were talking about. I didn’t want to give that up.

“Ling Ling, give your dad a nod—that looked like a nod,” Mom said as she caressed my head. She turned to my dad and said, “Old Chai, simmer down. Ling Ling nodded already. She’s just a kid after all, with such good grades. There’s no one in the neighborhood who doesn’t sing her praises, and she hasn’t really brought any calamity on us. This time you got through to her, and that’s enough . . .” Mom was a mother, after all.

“Enough, enough,” my father said. “You just want to protect her. Sooner or later you’re going to spoil her rotten.” Though his words were no less harsh, his temper had obviously cooled down. “From now on, you’re to stay away from that Mrs. Qian. Do your homework exercises at home. Your bike is confiscated.”

As I continued to cry, he brought a big package of books and tossed them in front of me with a thud. An assortment of Party histories, Mao’s
Selected Works
, and the writings of Engels scattered across the bed and floor.

“No more nonsense until you’ve read all these! Chairman Mao said, ‘If you haven’t investigated something, you have no right to talk about it.’”

By the time I emerged from my parents’ room, it was almost midnight. Grandma was in the room outside, craning her neck. When she saw my eyes were all puffed up and my chest was convulsing with sobs, she looked at my dad and said, “Son, why pick on my eldest granddaughter? Shouldn’t a family just get along, no matter what?”

My dad turned around and shouted at Grandma, “Don’t you start, or I’ll lock you up too!”

Grandma immediately shut her mouth and turned her eyes away, like a rabbit forced into hiding. As I prepared to go to bed, Grandma said quietly, “Eldest granddaughter, don’t go to sleep crying; the soaking will wreck your eyes.” I didn’t listen and covered my head with the quilt, letting the tears come down in torrents. My self-respect had been deeply injured. The next day I walked an hour to school on foot.

I was deeply shocked by my father’s brutal judgment of my secret, inner world. The self-respect and diligence I had developed since I was little, together with my consistent academic success, had brought me considerable honor. As the number one student in our county, year in and year out, I had found even the most fastidious teachers were respectful to me. Also, my national honor student status continued to draw attention. I was asked to give speeches on the army base about how best to educate one’s children, and my parents were asked their advice for raising good children. Those requests had brought so much joy and pride to my mom and dad, far exceeding my own feelings. In my heart, I had my doubts about being honored as a Three Merits Student. I had never sought that kind of recognition and would not have envied students who had. But all the reporters coming to interview me and the speeches I was asked to give made my parents incredibly happy. Each time they became unusually enthusiastic—interrupting my study, calling me out of my room to speak to reporters or pose for pictures—and then they would talk about it for a long time after the reporters left, seeming to savor the feeling and wanting to prolong it.

Every time I saw Mom and Dad like this, I felt a greater loneliness in my heart. It seemed they were happy they had brought up a giant panda they could show off to others, yet I didn’t know for sure they really loved me. But at least I had earned the respect of my father, who initially did not believe in me. So for him to treat me like a criminal or a third-class person was more than I could bear. What hurt even more was that he was partly right. I really hadn’t read those political books, and I really did not understand the Communist Party.

* * *

The next evening I came home as usual for my study time, but I stubbornly refused to speak to my father, and the atmosphere in the house was tense. Later that night I was suddenly awakened by the sound of moaning. Under the light, I saw that Grandma had gone into the bathroom and now could not get up. In my shock, I immediately awakened my little sister, hoping the two of us could carry Grandma back to her bed. But her frail little body was heavier than it looked, and we could not move her. When Mom and Dad heard the noise and commotion, they came running from their room and took Grandma to the hospital.

On the third day after Grandma went to the hospital, I visited her before going to class. My dad was there too, and I shut my mouth tightly, refusing to speak to him. The morning light shone through the white gauze curtains and illumined Grandma’s pallid and anemic face. I wondered whether something I had done had caused her to suddenly become ill. Terror at the thought of losing her welled up in my heart and mixed with deep gratitude for all the years she had taken care of me.

When my father saw my sadness and fear, he reassured me with patience and tenderness. “It’s not that bad, Ling Ling. It’s not life-threatening. Grandma suffered dehydration, but we can treat her with an IV. In a few days, she will be home again.”

I exhaled with great relief, and in that moment I almost felt a trace of forgiveness for my dad and deep regret for saying what I had said to get him all fired up. Wasn’t I just being selfish, thinking only of my own feelings?

Despite my father’s reassurances, I still felt somehow responsible for Grandma’s illness—as if my words and actions had brought her to this state. If I continued to grow and develop according to my own nature, how could I avoid bringing disaster to the people I loved? But if I could not be true to myself, what could I be?

Caught between two powerful feelings, I had neither the strength nor the ability to assuage my deep sense of hurt. I felt as if I had been roughly thrown to the ground by fate, my body lying immobile, without the strength to escape or fight back because the powerful sense of pride and stubbornness that had always been the anchor for my personality had been brutally shattered. After all the respect I had earned through an immaculate academic record, I couldn’t believe my father was treating me like a third-class person.

As I lay alone in my little room that night, I heard a cat meowing. It was the mate of our family cat, who had recently died after eating a poisoned rat. We had already buried her, but her suitor didn’t know that. He was still patiently, sorrowfully crying outside the window. Night after night he came and cried; it sounded like a human being helplessly sobbing. As I listened in my room, tears welled up and fell from the corners of my eyes. Before I knew it, my pillow was all wet.

I don’t know how long it was after that, but suddenly I felt as if an enormous mass were pressing down on my body, choking my throat, and suffocating me. I struggled with all my strength, but my arms and legs—my whole body—felt immobilized. All I could do was sink into the suffocating darkness. Startled awake, it seemed as if a black presence instantly disappeared out the window. When I rubbed my eyes and looked around, it was the same room I had seen before I went to sleep: table, chair, bed, and a beam of moonlight reflecting coolly on the wall opposite the window. When I tried to move my arms and legs, they felt numb. There was a clammy, cold sweat all over my face and neck.

The next night, I had a similar nightmare. After several nights of this, I began to experience severe pain in my lower belly and below my ribs on the right side. It was even worse after I ate. All I could do was take pain relievers until it gradually faded away. But later on, every time I felt sad or hurt or torn between my own feelings and my loyalty and love for my family, the pain would reappear.

Outwardly I changed as well. Once again I became a quiet, pensive child, sealing off the deepest part of my heart. A teacher who knew me well said, “Chai Ling, look what you’ve become. You used to be such an open, cheerful, and lively child!” I ground my teeth fiercely and didn’t say a word.

This was a profound lesson for me. In order not to make the same disastrous mistakes again, I made two decisions: I would leave home, and I would never touch politics again. After months of hard work, I escaped the last grade in high school and tested into Peking University. With millions of students studying hard to get into the top universities each year, this was no small task. I had to block all my emotions and confusions, focusing my mind on two goals: to make up for the courses I would miss by skipping a grade and to prepare for the university test.

That year, 1983, our high school, which had not sent many students to college in the past, had three students test into Beida, and many more into other colleges. Our principal and the teachers were thrilled. They credited my parents as role models—meaning it was their influence that led to the positive changes in our small, sleepy country school. But I knew in my heart that if not for the influence of Mrs. Qian and the fight with my father, I would not have made the decision to escape from the family by skipping a grade or have made it into Beida. But the conflict with my father did take its toll when a boy in my class took the top score from me by a few points. It was the only time in high school I lost top academic honors to another person.

* * *

We arrived in Beijing after a long day’s bus ride and a sleepless night’s journey by train. I had not been to Beijing before, and it was only the second time my father had set eyes on the capital city and Tiananmen Square, the vast, sacred space that attracted millions of visitors every year and enchanted the imaginations of many more people who had never seen it. Our bus from the train station took us alongside Tiananmen, the Great Hall of the People, and the Forbidden City. On the north side of the Square, I saw for the first time the huge portrait of Chairman Mao above the entrance to the Forbidden City and the ramparts above the Tiananmen Gate where Mao had first declared, in 1949, “On this day, the Chinese people have stood up.”

In my childhood fantasies, I had been there, in that crowd of thousands, when Mao appeared on the vermillion rampart to celebrate his victorious revolution. My mind now raced with those memories as we rattled past the Monument to the People’s Heroes and the newly built memorial that housed Chairman Mao’s body.

Six years later, I would be commander in chief of a student movement on the Square, protesting for government reform, organizing thousands of students for a hunger strike, setting up Democracy University, and erecting the statue of the Goddess of Democracy. But as the bus transported my father and me from the train station to Beida, I found it hard to believe I had actually arrived in this ancient city of glamour and mystery that had filled my imagination ever since childhood.

At Beida, I was assigned to a standard room that could accommodate three bunk beds and two desks. The walls were bare and white, and the floor was concrete, but through the single window I could look out on lush green trees, which had an immediate soothing effect on my frazzled state. Dad helped me unpack and settle in.

A few days later, when the time for his return arrived, he took out the last two apples we had brought for the trip.

“Keep them, Dad,” I told him. “You can eat them on the way home.”

“I have lots of apples at home,” he said. “You’re all alone here. You might get hungry.”

“No, Dad,” I said. “You keep them.”

I put the apples back in his bag. In our family, we never make an open display of affection. Instead, we offer each other food.

I walked with my father as far as the campus gate. We were both alone in our thoughts.

Finally my dad broke the silence. “There is an old saying—‘mountains beyond mountains, skies beyond skies.’ This is a difficult place, and you are on your own. You are far from my protection now, Ling Ling. But just remember one thing: No matter what happens, you can always come home.”

I nodded, and we waited in silence for the bus to arrive to take him on his homeward journey. I waved to him as he stepped aboard and disappeared into the crowd.

As a flock of migrating birds flew across the sky, I proudly thought to myself,
Dad, like those birds above, I’ve finally flown out of the sky you can cover
. Somehow I did not feel as joyful as I would have imagined. Instead, I felt alone again.

When the afternoon sun began to set over campus, a deep sense of homesickness settled in my heart as well—though I bravely and stubbornly refused to admit it. As I walked numbly back to my dorm and slowly climbed the stairs, I remembered a time when I was a little girl and my dad put me on his bike to go to the fishing port for fresh seafood. I could almost smell the aroma of freshly cooked fish. I thought of the time he had surprised me with a visit to my school and brought me steaming dumplings from home. I thought of how excited I had always been when the bright lights of army trucks returning to the base at night signaled the arrival of my precious parents from one of their rescue missions.