Dreams of Joy: A Novel (28 page)

I’ve had questions about Yong and Kumei for a long time. In the past, I made up romantic stories, for Kumei especially. Now that I’ve helped them in front of everyone, I suppose I’ll have a black mark against me too. Since that’s the case, I need to know what they did to earn such antipathy from everyone in the commune.

“Why do they hate you so?” I ask.

That’s about as direct and American as I can make it. I expect them to shrink from my rudeness, but instead they look at me as if I’m stupid.

“My master was the landowner,” Yong answers, fingering the white ribbon she’ll wear as a stigma for the rest of her life. “Didn’t you know that?”

“I did, but I still don’t understand what they have against you.”

“Because we’re all that’s left of his household,” Kumei says. “The people think we lived privileged lives, but he was a bad man and we had to endure a lot—”

“I know you feel that way,” Yong interrupts. “But I thought he was a good man. He cared for the people here. When the Eighth Route Army came and the soldiers asked him to redistribute his land, he did so without argument.”

“I never even heard the word
landowner
before the army came,” Kumei says.

“That’s because the word didn’t exist,” Yong explains, her voice warped by pain. “Everyone always called the master
en ren
, which means
benefactor
. But the soldiers gave him a new title—
dichu
—landowner. When the soldiers left, we thought everything would be fine. Instead, the villagers’ hidden anger and resentments surfaced.”

Kumei holds one of Yong’s feet in her hand and with her other hand dribbles cold water over the purple and green skin. Washing bound feet is something that should always be done in complete privacy. Yong should be mortally embarrassed, but she’s already been so humiliated in front of the commune that having me here for this most intimate moment is nothing.

“All wars are brutal, especially for women,” Yong continues haltingly. “But our lives were not so wonderful even before the War of Liberation and land reform. We entered this house as wives, playthings, entertainment, and servants—”

“My parents were poor,” Kumei cuts in. “Poorer than your husband’s family.” She doesn’t wait for me to comment on that. “We had a bad famine when I was little. You think this winter was difficult? It wasn’t nearly as terrible as when I was five. When my brother died, I was told I was being given to the master to help pay the death tax. They said I was ‘going to the benefactor,’ but I didn’t know what they meant or what was required. I was brought into the second courtyard and told to put my forehead on his feet and those of the bound-footed women in the household. He was fifty.”

I put a hand over my mouth to cover my surprise as I realize why Sung-ling chose Kumei to play the maiden in our propaganda play and why the cadre was so tolerant of my friend for ignoring the set script. Comrade Ping-li’s husband wasn’t the only one being struggled against that night. Kumei was also being made to tell her story. How many times has she been forced to do that in one form or another since Liberation? Other moments come to mind too: when we first arrived and I asked Kumei why more people didn’t live in the villa and she was so evasive, and the night my mother came to Z.G.’s house and he said that we’d been housed in the villa as punishment. Even when people were telling me things, I wasn’t
hearing
them.

I tune back in to Kumei’s tale as she says, “I waited on the wives and concubines and took care of their bound feet. Yong was the youngest and prettiest wife—”

“I was also the meanest,” Yong confesses. “I was from Shanghai and spoke Shanghainese. The villa was beautiful, but Green Dragon wasn’t Shanghai. Our master was never satisfied either. He had many wives and concubines. He had plenty of children. Sons, even. But he wanted to prove his strength to the village. He was the headman, see?”

I don’t see, but Kumei goes on to explain it to me. “He had control over us, but as the headman he also needed to prove his strength to everyone in Green Dragon. What better way to do that than to have me in his bed and show that he could give me a son. By then, I was eleven. After the first night, I ran to my uncle and aunt’s house in Black Bridge Village. I begged them to let me live with them, but they turned away from me, stepped back into their house, and shut the door. I walked back to Green Dragon, to the house where I’d been born. I sat outside and cried. I rubbed dirt over my face and arms, into my clothes, and into my mouth. And then I stood up and walked back to the villa.”

“Why didn’t your parents help you?” I ask.

“They starved to death the winter they gave me away,” she answers. Then, after a moment, she continues. “I didn’t understand the things that went on in the villa. I was a servant, but I was also a concubine.”

“You were a little girl!”

Yong has been saying that the landowner was a good man, but how could he have been?

“We treated Kumei worse than the lowest servant, because she was the master’s favorite in the bedchamber,” Yong admits. Then she addresses Kumei directly. “You had no proper status in the household, and you could never enjoy the luxury that the other wives and concubines did. I remember Third Wife used to poke you with the sharp end of her brooch. She insisted that the kitchen servants feed you only melon rinds and rotten vegetable leaves.”

“At least I got something to eat—”

Are they teasing each other?

“And what about that concubine from Hangchow?” Yong rolls right over Kumei, laughing. Despite her pain and humiliation, Yong is managing to find humor in what I think is a ghastly story. “She thought she was so special—one of the great beauties! If her tea was too cold, she threw it on the floor and made you mop it with your clothes.”

“If it was too hot, she threw it in my face!” Kumei giggles at the memory. This must be how she got her scars, but before I can ask this, she exclaims, “Oh, I would have gladly traded places with any of you! The things he did! The things he made me do! I don’t know how real husbands and wives do this thing, and I will never find out.”

Now Yong and I exchange glances. Was what Kumei did then any different than what she’s been doing with the brigade leader? Kumei, as far as I can tell, has had sex only out of duty or necessity. Wouldn’t that color the experience, especially if she wasn’t in love the way I once loved Tao?

“I did many chores,” she goes on. “I washed the feet of the wives and concubines. I listened to their bickering. I watched them put on face powder, silks, and jade jewelry. The more I endured, the more beautiful the master said I was. I got pregnant when I was thirteen. I didn’t understand what was happening. I was sleepy and sick.”

“We thought you were lazy,” Yong says. “But now I can say you led an animal’s existence in those days.”

“Finally, a kitchen slave told me what was wrong.” Kumei’s face pales with her memories. “Pretty soon I felt this thing growing inside me, moving, like I was invaded by a demon. I wanted to disappear into the black depths of death. I would kill myself by swallowing the gold ring the master had given me or by eating food that had turned bad, but these methods didn’t promise a sure result. Then I realized the best way to do it. I would drink lye. But my master slapped it away from my lips, which is how I ended up looking like this.” Her fingers trail over the scars that run down her neck and under her clothes.

“She has as many scars in her heart as she has on her body,” Yong says. “Her life has been dark without a glimmer of light.”

“But your life couldn’t have been easy either,” I say to Yong.

“I was supposed to have a happy life,” she concedes. “My mother told me that if I had my feet bound, my swaying walk would look like the drifting mist and I would marry into a good family with at least five other women with bound feet. She promised that, when I married, I would wear a headdress weighing more than a dozen pounds. She said I would never have to leave my home, but if I wanted to for some reason, I’d be carried in a palanquin so no one would see me. She said I would always have four maids to help me, and for a while I had even more than that. She said I would never have to work in the fields—”

“You won’t have to do that,” Kumei promises. “I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.”

We know the price Kumei is willing to pay. Yong grabs Kumei’s hand in gratitude. We wait for Yong to continue. When she doesn’t, Kumei picks up where she left off in her story.

“The master didn’t want me to die, but by then what had happened to me was insignificant. The War of Liberation had been won and things were changing.”

“Two concubines ran away with soldiers,” Yong says. “Number One wife died from an infection. Second Wife, who’d been disgraced by the birth of three daughters, took them to visit relatives in Macau and never came back. Third Wife sneaked away in the middle of the night. Those last days were very hard, very sad …”

“Once the soldiers moved on, the villagers looted the villa, looking for gold, jade, and money,” Kumei continues. “They carried away furniture and burned most of the books. Then they dug up the family’s tombs, so the master’s ancestors would have no peace in the afterworld. They let us keep our beds, the master’s musical instruments, some quilts, cooking utensils, and a few other things. But the villagers were not done. They dragged the master’s sons to the square and used a chopper to lop open their heads until their brains spilled out. The only ones left in these twenty-nine bedrooms were the master, Yong, and me.”

“What happened to your master?” I ask, once again letting my American side show.

“After they let him suffer in heartbreak for another four years, they came for him,” Kumei recounts. “It was winter. They had him strip down to a thin cotton garment. Then they tied him to the scholar’s tree and poured cold water on him. They left him outside all night. By morning he was dead, his clothes frozen into ice on his body. The villagers laughed and said he was wearing glass clothes.” She pauses for a moment before going on. “To tell the truth, in some ways he was already on his way to the afterworld, having said good-bye to all that he’d known and cherished. Some nights when we were alone in his room, he had me dress in old clothes. Remember the costume Sung-ling made me wear for the play? That was one of the things the master put on me. The clothes were soft, shiny, and in beautiful colors.”

“They were silks, satins, and brocades,” Yong translates for her.

It occurs to me that this is not unlike Z.G., my mother, and my aunt—always remembering the past, dressing up, dressing
me
up. But I have to admit that there’ve been times this winter when I’ve thought longingly of my Levi’s, the fancy clothes Auntie May bought for me, the costumes I wore on movie sets, and the cowgirl outfit I loved as a little girl.

“He would stare at me, play his instrument, and weep,” Kumei continues.

“The violin,” Yong clarifies, using the English word.

“It was not our Chinese music. I didn’t like it, but it always calmed my baby.” Kumei pauses, dwelling in the past. Finally, she resumes. “Even when I saw so much bloodshed, even when common sense told me to run away, I couldn’t leave my master.”

“I couldn’t leave him either,” Yong adds. “We two had been treated the worst by the other women in the villa, but we were the most loyal.”

Kumei sighs.

“The master wasn’t a bad man,” Yong says again, and this time Kumei nods in agreement.

Maybe the two of you didn’t know any better
, I think.

“The master could trace his family back thirty generations,” Yong says. “He had imperial scholars in his family, which is how he came to own so much land. He took care of the people in Green Dragon. He truly was a benefactor. He was also a fine musician. When I was a girl in Shanghai, my parents gave me piano lessons. Not so easy with bound feet! I met the master at a recital.” She turns to Kumei. “Did I ever tell you that?”

Kumei shakes her head, but I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know what a recital is anyway.

“The master and I used to play together,” Yong adds wistfully. “We were educated, like your mother,” she says to me.

Now I understand why Yong and my mother got along so well. Their lives have been different yet similar. Yong has bound feet; my mother was born just four years after footbinding was outlawed. Yong married a wealthy man who brought her to the countryside; my mother married a poor man from the countryside who took her away from the city she loved. Neither had children of her own, yet Yong has Kumei and my mother has me. Both had their lives shattered by political circumstances. Both, for whatever reasons, loved the men they married. But wait…

“At my wedding, you talked about how hard the day of your wedding was and how stern the master was when he lifted your veil,” I say. “But it sounds like you wanted to get married.”

“It wasn’t an arranged marriage,” Yong replies. “My parents insisted I bind my feet, but in other ways they were very modern. They wanted me to marry for love—”

“But at my wedding you said—”

“
Aiya!
Do you need to have everything explained? I was married to the master and I’m from Shanghai. I can read and play the piano. I’m not like Kumei. I’m not from here. No one will ever have sympathy for me. I say and do what is necessary to survive. If that means lying to a room full of small radishes …”

She drifts off, and I allow what she said to sink in. I’m not from here. I come from imperialist America. I can read and write. I express my opinions too freely. I haven’t been careful enough…

“After the master was killed, new soldiers arrived,” Kumei says suddenly. “They asked if I wanted anything. Why would they do that, when no one was supposed to want
things
? So I said I didn’t want anything. But the captain looked at my baby and he gave him the violin.”

“And you survived. All three of you are still alive.” After everything I’ve heard, I ask, “How can that be?”

“There came a time when all I could think about was how to save myself and Ta-ming,” Kumei admits. “I thought I could turn on Yong. I thought about joining others when they taunted her. I thought about running away from this place, but where could I go? What could I do? Beg? Sell my body? Who would buy it? And what about Ta-ming? Didn’t I have a duty to him? He was born here. His father was born here. This is Ta-ming’s ancestral village. And Yong?” Kumei juts her chin.