Becoming Madame Mao (2 page)

The temple has no monk
So the floor will be swept by the wind
The temple has no candles
So the light will be lit by the moon

You need to have the lotus feet, my mother cries. You are not made to labor.

Afterwards my mother quits. I wonder if she already knows that she will need me to run with her one day.

The girl's memory of her father is that he lives on liquor and is violent. Both her mother and she fear him. He hits them. There is no way to predict when his temper will rise. Each time it shocks the soul out of the girl.

He is not a poor man. Madame Mao doesn't tell the truth later when she wants to impress her fellow countrymen. She describes him as a proletarian. In fact he is a well-to-do businessman, the town carpenter and owner of a wood shop. He has four full-time workers. Two of them are blind. He uses them to sand wood. The family has food on the table and the girl goes to school.

I never understand why my father beats my mother. There never really is a reason. Nobody in the house interferes. All the wives hear the beating. All my stepbrothers and -sisters witness the act. Yet no one utters a word. If my father is not pleased with my mother, he comes to her room, takes off his shoe and starts hitting her. Concubines are bought slaves and bedmaids, but I wonder if my father's true anger is because my mother didn't produce a son for him.

This is how her father plants the seed of worthlessness in her. It is something she lives with. The moment she begins remembering how she was brought up, she experiences a rage that bursts at its own time and pace. Like the flood of the Yellow River, it comes and crashes in big waves. Its violence changes the landscape of her being. The rage gets worse as she ages. It becomes a kept beast. It breathes and grows underground while consuming her. Its constant presence makes her feel worthless. Her desire to fight it, to prove that it does not exist, lies behind her every action.

It is my nature to rebel against oppressors. When my mother tells me to learn to "eat a meatball made of your own tongue," and "hide your broken arm inside your sleeve," I fight without ever considering the consequences.

In frustration Mother hits me. She hits me with a broom. She is scared of my nature. She thinks that I will be killed like the young revolutionaries whose heads are hung on flagpoles on top of the town gate. They were slaughtered by the authorities.

Mother scolds me, calls me a
mu-yu
—a monk's chanting tool—made to be hit all the time. But I can't be set right. It is always afterwards, after she has exhausted herself from hitting me, that she breaks down and sobs. She calls herself an unfit mother and is sure that she will end up being punished in her next life. She will be made into a most unfortunate animal, a cow who when alive bears heavy burdens and when dies is eaten, its skin made into jackets and its horns into medicine.

Every time I see Mother's tear-stained face I age. I feel white hair sprouting out of my head. I am sick of seeing Mother tortured. I often wish that she were dead so she would be released from having to take care of me.

But the mother goes on living, for her, the daughter she wishes were a son. This is how misery permeates the girl's soul. Most of her life she can't be satisfied with who she is. The irony is that she truly wishes to satisfy her mother's wish. This is how she begins her acting career. Very young. In her own house. She slips into roles. When she thinks that she is not who she is, she becomes relaxed and fear free. She is in a safe place where her father's terror can no longer reach and her mother's tears can no longer wash her away.

Later on it becomes clear that Madame Mao doesn't forgive. She believes that one must collect the debts owed to one. She has little desire to understand forgiveness. Revenge, on the other hand, she understands. She understands it in the most savage way. In her life, she never hesitates to order her enemies' complete elimination. She does it naturally. It is a practice she started as a young girl.

I see my father hit Mother with a shovel. It happened suddenly. Without warning. I can hardly believe my eyes. He is mad. He calls Mother a slut. Mother's body curls up. My chest swells. He hits her back, front, shouting that he will break her bones. Mother is in shock, unable to move. Father drags her, kicks and steps on her as if to flatten her into a piece of paper.

I feel horror turning my stomach upside down. I jump. I get in between them. You are no longer my father, I announce, my body trembling all over. I will never forgive you! One of these days you will find yourself dead because I put mice poison in your liquor!

The man turns and raises the shovel over his head.

My lips burn. My front tooth is in my mouth.

***

During the production of her operas and ballets in the 1970s, Madame Mao describes the wound to the actresses, actors, artists and the nation. Madame Mao says, Our heroines must be covered with wounds. Blood-dripping wounds. Wounds that have been torn, punctured or broken by weapons like shovels, whips, glass, wooden sticks, bullets or explosions. Study the wounds, pay attention to the degree of the burn, the layers of the infected tissue. The color transitions in the flesh. And the shapes that remind you of a worm-infested body.

***

Eight years old and she is already determined. It is not clear whether her father kicked her mother out of his house or her mother ran away herself. At any rate the girl no longer has a home. The mother takes the daughter with her. They walk from street to street and town to town. The mother works as a maid. A washmaid, lower in rank than a kitchenmaid. The mother works where she and the girl will be given a corner to sleep at night. At night the mother often leaves mysteriously. When she returns it is usually dawn. The mother never tells the girl where she goes. One day when the girl insists, she says that she visits different houses. She either peels potatoes or serves as a foot warmer for the master's children. She never tells the girl that she is a foot warmer for the master himself. The mother withers quickly. Her skin wrinkles up like ripples in a lake and her hair dries like a winter stalk.

Some nights the girl gets bored waiting for her mother. She can't sleep yet she is afraid to go out. She lies in bed quietly. After midnight she hears bullets being fired. She counts the shots so she will know how many people have been killed.

My number always matches the number of heads that hang on the gate of the town the next day. My schoolmates talk to each other like this: I'll slaughter you and hang your head on a hook and then I'll stick an opium pipe between your teeth.

I hate school. I am an object of attack because I have no father and have a mother who works at jobs that arouse suspicion. I beg my mother to transfer me to a different school. But the situation doesn't change. It gets so bad that one day a classmate unleashes a dog.

Madame Mao later uses the incident in both a ballet and opera of the same title,
The Women of the Red Detachment.
The villains come with vicious-looking dogs to chase the slave girl. A close-up of the dog teeth and a closeup of the wound. The bleeding body parts.

My mother's face becomes unrecognizable. Her pretty cheekbones start to protrude and her eyes have deep pockets. She is so sick that she can't walk far. Yet we are still on the run. She has been fired from her job. She can't talk, she whispers in between breaths. She writes a letter and begs her parents for shelter and food. I wonder why she hasn't done that earlier. She won't explain. I sense that she wasn't her parents' favorite. There are probably bad memories of the past. But now she has no choice.

***

My grandparents live in Jinan. It is the capital of Shan-dong Province. Compared to the town of Zhu, it is a fancy city. It is on the south side of the Yellow River, about nine miles away. The city is a center of business and politics. It is very old. The names of the streets reflect its past glory: Court Street, Financial Street, Military Street. There are magnificent temples and dazzling opera houses. I don't know until later that many of the opera houses are in fact whorehouses.

***

My grandparents and I have never met and our meeting changes my life. My dependence on my mother begins to shift dramatically as my grandfather takes charge in caring for me. He is a kind fellow, a meek man actually, knowledgeable but powerless in handling reality. He teaches me opera. He asks me to recite after him. Phrase by phrase and tone by tone we get through the most famous arias. I don't like it, but I want to please him.

Every morning, sitting on a rattan chair with a cup of tea, my grandfather begins. He tells me what the story is about first, the situation and the character, and then out his voice comes. He is a terrible singer, which makes him quite funny. I follow him, not remembering exactly what I am singing. I purposely imitate his poor tone. He tries to correct me. After a few efforts, he discovers that I have been naughty and threatens to be upset and then I behave. I hit the notes in a perfect voice. He claps and laughs. With his mouth wide open I see a hollow with all the teeth gone.

We move on. Soon I am able to do passages from
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms,
especially
The Empty City.
My grandfather is pleased. He lets me know that I count. A boy or a girl, to him it makes no difference. There is only one condition: as long as I follow him and learn. He lets me do whatever I want around the house. My grandmother is a quiet little lady and a Buddhist. She echoes her husband and never seems to have an opinion of her own. She always covers up for me. For example, when I accidentally break Grandfather's favorite ink bottle, she uses her own savings and hurries to the town on her lotus feet and buys a new bottle to replace the broken one. She does it quietly and I adore her.

My grandfather continues his cultivation. His head swings in circles. I do the same. When he is in a good mood, he takes me to operas. Not the good ones—he can't afford the tickets—but the imitations presented in the whorehouses. During the performances fights often break out among the drunkards.

It is my grandfather's wish that I complete elementary school. You are a peacock living among hens, he says. He is fixing the arm of his rattan chair when he says this to me. His head is on the floor and his rear end points toward the ceiling. The phrase has an enormous effect on me.

My grandfather enrolls me in a local school a block away. He gives me a formal name, Yunhe—Crane in the Clouds. The image is picked from his favorite opera,
The Golden Pavilion.
The crane is the symbol of hope.

The new school is a terrible place. The rich kids beat the poor whenever they like. Yunhe endures as much as she can until one day she is hit by a boy and a group of girls applaud. It enrages her. For days afterwards she is chewed by an incredible pain. I would have endured as usual if it were just the boys taking advantage of the girls, Madame Mao says later. I wouldn't have felt so alone and betrayed. I wouldn't have taken it so personally because mistreating women was considered a tradition. But it was the girls, the women, the grass, the worthless creatures themselves, laughing at their own kind that hurt, that opened and dipped my wounds in salt water.

S
LOWLY MY MOTHER FADES
from my life. It is said that she is married. To whom? She never introduces us to the new husband. She just disappears. Gone. The door is shut. I don't hear from her. She is done with parenting. I don't know what to do, only that I don't want to end up like her.

I watch operas and copy the arias.
The Legend of Huoxiao Yu
and
Story of the West Chamber.
I dream about the characters in the ancient tales, the rebellious heroines, women who fight fiercely for their happiness and get it. I decide that I shall be an opera actress so I will get to live a heroine's life on stage. But my grandfather opposes the idea. To him, actresses and prostitutes are the same. I don't give in. My grandfather regrets that he ever introduced me to opera. He threatens to disown me. But it is too late.

The girl is not sold to the opera troupe as she later claims. She runs away from home and delivers herself to a local troupe. She begs to be accepted. She is pretty, already a full-size young woman, already attractive. She claims to be an orphan. She runs away before her grandparents get a chance to disown her. This becomes a pattern in her life. With her husbands and lovers, she takes the initiative. She abandons before being abandoned.

The girl becomes an apprentice. While learning her craft she washes the floors, cleans makeup drawers, fills water jars and takes care of the leading actress's wardrobe. She gets to sit by the curtain during performances. Like a spring field in the season's first rain, she absorbs. During the New Year's Eve performance she gets to play her first one-line role. The line is:
Tea, Madame.

For the role she dresses up in full costume. Her hair is up, pinned with pearls and glittering ornaments. In the mirror, in the painted face, in the red lips, the girl sees herself in the world she has been imagining.

Yet the place shows its ugly face. At night, after the performances, the girl hears sobbing. After her mistress takes off the makeup and costume, the girl sees a withered face. A young woman of twenty but who looks forty. A face of wood, carved heavily with wrinkles. There must be a ghost's hand working on this face, the girl thinks to herself.

When the girl goes out to fetch duck-blood soup on her mistress's order, she sees men waiting. Each night, a different man. They are the troupe owner's friends. Most of them are old, and a couple of them have a mouthful of gold teeth. The mistress is told to entertain them, to help them realize their fantasies. It doesn't matter that she is exhausted, doesn't matter that she wants to spend time with the young man of her heart.

The girl is waiting. She waits for a bigger role. For that she works hard, does everything she is told, endures an occasional beating. She tells herself to be patient, to perfect her skills. She is aware of the changes in her body. Aware that it is blooming. In the mirror she sees her eyes become brighter, her features ripening. Her waist grows smaller while her chest blossoms. She believes that her chance is coming her way. At night she dreams of the spotlight tracing her, only her.