Dreams of Joy: A Novel (42 page)

“Where is the artist?” Tao demands again.

“I am the artist,” Z.G. suddenly shouts. We’re so close to the door, but we stop, horrified at what he’s done. “You can recognize my technique from years ago.”

“Dad!” This surprising word comes out of my daughter’s mouth.

“You can’t—”

But onstage, Tao doesn’t make the correction.

“My father-in-law taught me that art should serve workers, peasants, and soldiers, but you can see he is only concerned with beautiful women,” Tao prattles, relishing his role as accuser.

I see it now: Tao would much rather target Z.G. than Joy. If Tao can push Z.G. aside, then he’ll become more than just a model peasant artist. He’ll take Z.G.’s place.

“It’s not too late for you to confess your many crimes,” Tao proclaims. “You are a poisonous weed. Step forward! Show your face!”

Someone up front shouts, “Where is this rightist?”

“There he is,” Tao says, pointing to our group.

Dun turns to me. “You have to save the children. Go!”

“What are you saying?” I ask.

In the chaos around us, Chinese faces move closer.

“Where is the traitor?” another voice calls.

Suddenly, Dun shoves me into Z.G.’s arms.

“Go now!” Dun implores urgently. I look up into Z.G.’s face and watch his reaction as I hear my husband, who’s behind me, call out, “I’m right here. I’m the artist.”

As Z.G. pulls me from the room, I look back to see people close in around Dun, enveloping and trapping him. I can’t possibly leave him. I fight Z.G. as hard as I can, but he drags me out the door and into the center’s lobby. Joy, holding the baby and looking terrified, is there already. Ta-ming is at her side, white faced.

“Come on!” Z.G. says.

Again, I try to yank my arm loose. “I’m not going!”

Z.G. looks at Joy. She nods and grabs my other arm. Together they pull me through the lobby, out the door, and into a Russian-made car converted to a taxi for foreigners at the fair.

“Drive!” Z.G. demands in Mandarin.

The driver stares at us in his rearview mirror. He doesn’t seem to understand what Z.G. said, plus he has three out-of-breath adults, a baby, and a frightened little boy in his backseat.

Joy, who grew up speaking Cantonese, says, “Take us to the train station.” The car pulls away from the curb and drifts into bicycle traffic, then Joy turns to me. “Mom, we have to keep going,” she says, switching to Mandarin so the driver won’t understand. “If we don’t go now, we’ll never get out.”

“What about Dun?” I ask.

“We can’t go back,” Joy answers. “You know that. He saved us. Don’t you understand?”

“They won’t do anything to him,” Z.G. promises.

“Your promise means nothing, if we leave,” I say. “You know
that
!”

“They’ve probably already discovered he’s not me,” Z.G. counters. “That means they’re already looking for us. The authorities will want me, and Tao will want Samantha.”

“Tao doesn’t want the baby,” Joy says. “She’s a girl. Tao doesn’t even like her. He calls her Ah Fu.”

“He’s her father, of course he wants her,” Z.G. responds.

“Nothing is more precious than when you might lose it,” I add.

I bend over and bury my face in my hands. The others will do as I say, leaving me with a horrible choice. My husband, or my daughter, granddaughter, and the little boy I’ve just adopted? Dun said I have to save the children, and I do. I push my emotions down into a little ball, and then I sit back up.

“Dun has our papers,” I remind the others. “We can’t leave by train now.”

In all the excitement, apparently Joy forgot this, and now her body deflates. “What will we do?” she asks, panicked.

I put a hand on her arm to calm her as I speak to the driver. “Please take us to Wah Hong Village.”

He gives me a contemptuous look in the rearview mirror: don’t you know what you want? I give him the directions I remember from my visit three years ago. The driver nods, makes a U-turn, and continues down the crowded roadway.

“I told Tao that Wah Hong was Grandfather Louie’s home village,” Joy says nervously in Mandarin. “That’s the first place the authorities will look for us.”

“Yes, it is,” I agree. “But it will take them a while to get that information. Tao doesn’t speak Cantonese, after all. So yes, the police will go to Wah Hong, but we’ll be gone by then.”

“What are we—”

“We’re going to stop in Wah Hong for a few minutes, so we can get some provisions and leave a false trail,” I explain before she can complete her question. “After that, there’s only one place to go—Yin Bo, my natal family’s home village. Hopefully someone there will be able to help us. Superintendent Wu knows the name of my home village, because I’ve told it to him every month for years now, but it will take the authorities a while to track down that information. We’ll be out of the country by then,” I finish, trying to sound confident.

I pull Ta-ming onto my lap and hold him tight.

REMEMBERING Z.G.’S
and my drive to Green Dragon, I’m fearful of what we might see once we turn off the main highway. But we encounter no dead or dying people either on the road or in the fields as we bounce along the dirt road. We see no children abandoned in pits. Yes, it’s November and the climate is warmer this far south, but Kwangtung province is also farther from the capital. It doesn’t seem to have been as badly affected by the strategies of the Great Leap Forward. What’s the old saying? “The mountains are high and the emperor is far away,” meaning that the farther you are from the capital and the emperor’s policies, the easier it is to live your own life.

The driver drops us off just outside Wah Hong, since the village was built centuries ago and was not designed for automobiles. We hurry to the cousin’s house. He’s surprised to see us, but he welcomes us, offering tea and giving thanks.

“If not for the money your sister sends,” he says, “we would have gone hungry.”

“Soon you may not be so grateful,” I tell him. As I explain our situation, his eyes become hooded. “We need clothes for Z.G., whatever food you can spare, and water. As soon as we leave, you must take the money May has sent to the village and bury it. Don’t lie to the police when they come. Tell them you saw us and you chased us off.”

“Where shall we tell them you went?”

“Macau.”

This is not where we are going, but it will be safer for the Louie relatives if they don’t know the truth. But the main thing is they’ll send the police in the wrong direction.

We’re in Wah Hong for less than an hour. Z.G. trades his elegant Mao suit for a set of dirty peasant clothes. Remembering my escape from China many years ago and how the bandits who boarded our ship recognized a well-off girl from the rest of us by her shoes, I get Z.G. to trade his Shanghai street shoes for a pair of sandals. I give the cousin five twenty-dollar bills. He falls to his knees and puts his forehead on my feet in gratitude. Then we walk out of Wah Hong. I hold Ta-ming’s hand, Joy has the baby in her sling, and Z.G. carries several water flasks and a basket filled with rice balls. He still looks out of place—like a goat without fur.

So, on to my family’s home village, Yin Bo, a place that has lived in my memory. I left when I was three, so I don’t know how to get there. We know we shouldn’t walk together, but we’re afraid to separate. When we see someone coming toward us—a peddler or a farmer taking produce to market—some of us split off from the group, go into a field to pretend they are working, or walk ahead or lag behind, while one of us asks the way to Yin Bo. It sounds like it will be about a ten-mile walk along dirt roads or on the raised pathways that separate rice paddies. Not for one second does Dun leave my mind. I’m scared and worried for him, but I keep putting one foot in front of the other.

After two hours, we see a car approach. The desire to run is fierce. I slow down, Joy speeds up, and Z.G. and Ta-ming—who don’t speak Cantonese—step into the fields. The car stops next to Joy. After leaning down and listening to the driver, she points to her left. The car comes to me and stops.

“We’re looking for troublemakers,” the driver says. “Have you seen them?”

“There are many people on the road,” I answer. “How can I tell which ones are troublemakers?”

“The man was well dressed, like a three-pen cadre.”

“Three-pen cadre? I’ve never heard of one of those. But if you say one man looks like our great Chairman, only thinner, then yes, I saw him and the others. They went that way.” I point to my right—giving a completely different direction than Joy did—and hope that my shaking hand and my nervous sweat aren’t too noticeable.

It’s early evening when we enter Yin Bo. To me, it looks like any other small village—low houses made from gray brick, openings where glass windows should be, and pigs, ducks, and chickens wandering the alleyways. Maybe three hundred people live here, maybe fewer. A young mother with a baby on her hip comes out of her shack to stare at us. Soon others—a few children, a teenage girl, two farmers with piles of hay strapped to their backs—stop to ogle us.

“Excuse me,” I say. “Can you help us? We need some food and a place to stay. My name is Zhen Long—Pearl Dragon. I was born here. My natal family name is Chin. You are Chins too. I am part of your family. We’re all related.” But these people are too young to remember me. “Is there a grandmother or grandfather I could talk to?”

They stare at me slack-jawed. No one wants to risk doing anything wrong.

“You are Chins. I am a Chin,” I repeat. “My father was born here. I was born here. This is my daughter and my granddaughter. I may have uncles or aunts still living here. They would be my father’s brothers and their wives. I need to see them.” When no one moves, I point to the teenage girl. “Go get the headman. Do it now!”

Then we stand there, waiting, as the girl runs down an alley on her bare feet. A few minutes later, she returns with not one man but several men—all of them older, all of them crowding and pushing each other to get to the front of the pack. This is my father’s home village, so it doesn’t surprise me that the men—again, all of them Chins—resemble him. They have his slightly bowlegged gait, weak jaw, and slope to their shoulders.

As they near, one of the men hurries forward. He’s older, probably the headman. He extends his arms and calls, “Pearl?”

I shake my head, trying to dislodge memories that have no place right now.

“Pearl, Pearl.”

The man stops a couple of feet in front of me. He’s shorter than I am. Tears stream down his face. He’s countryside old—his skin wrinkled and brown from the sun—but there’s no question it’s my father.

Pearl

FATE CONTINUES, FORTUNE ABOUNDS

“BABA?” I SAY
, stunned. The man before me can’t possibly be my father. I know he can’t. But he is. “I thought you were dead.”

“Pearl.”

When I was a girl, my father never once hugged me, but now he puts his arms around me and holds me tight. Not in ten thousand years could I have imagined this reunion, not now, not ever. I have so many things I want to say and so many questions I want to ask, but I have the others with me and we’re in a desperate flight. Reluctantly, I pull away from him.

“Baba, I want you to meet some people. This is your granddaughter, Joy. The baby is your great-granddaughter. And you must remember Z.G.”

My father looks from face to face. His tears don’t stop. Now others around us weep too. Family reunification isn’t about processing forms and getting permits. It’s about this. Four generations together after too many lost years.

“Where is May?” Baba asks.

His question hurts. May was always his favorite.

“May and I made it to Los Angeles—”

“Haolaiwu,”
he says, nodding. That’s what he planned for us. Then comprehension comes over his features. “But why are you here?”

“It’s a long story and we don’t have much time. What’s important is that May is waiting for us in Hong Kong. We’re trying to get to her. Can you help us?”

“Maybe,” he says. “Come with me.”

We follow him down an alley. The gawkers trail behind us. I should be more worried about that. When the police come, I don’t want these people to tell them everything. But then this is my ancestral home. Would they rat out one of their own?

We enter my father’s house. Several villagers crowd in as well. The longer we’re here, the more show up to listen to and stare at their cousins. I’ve always hated the poverty of the countryside, but I don’t see that now. The house is small, but it has actual windows. The furniture is nice. Jars, cans, and bags of food fill the cupboards. I haven’t been here since I was three, but little memories pop into my mind. I remember the basket that hung from the ceiling. I fell on that step and skinned my knee. I liked to sit on the footstool next to the carved chair where my grandmother rested her feet.

Someone pours tea. Joy mixes a bottle of formula for the baby. My father hands Ta-ming an orange. An orange! What an incredible sight after all these months of privations. My father squats on his haunches and starts talking. He may live in a village now, but he was once a Shanghai businessman.

“They say about a hundred people cross the border illegally every day,” he begins. “But if you talk to a guard or a policeman, he’ll tell you they catch many more than that every day too. Even more die in the process of trying to leave.” He pauses to let that sink in. “How much money do you have?”

For the first time, I suspect my father’s motives. Can he be trusted?

“If you have money,” he continues, “you could take the train and bribe the guards.”

“I tried that,” Joy says. “It didn’t work.”

“I imagine things are different down here,” Baba responds. “Gangs organize escapes by train, but you need to pay—”

“Oh, Ba, don’t tell me you’re involved with a gang again.”

He pretends not to hear my comment. “You could hire a sampan or fishing boat to take you down the Pearl River to Macau or Hong Kong,” he suggests, “but that traffic is also controlled by gangs.”

“The Pearl River,” Joy echoes. “Surely that has to be a good omen.”

My daughter, so anxious to get out, isn’t thinking clearly.

“We’d have the same problems here as we would have had in Shanghai,” I remind her. “Do you know the schedules of the patrol boats?” I ask my father.

He ignores my question to offer another idea. “You could stow away on a ship, but that doesn’t sound practical with so many of you. Some people prefer to float down the river on an inner tube or a piece of driftwood—”

“You seem to know a lot about it,” Z.G. cuts in. He is forever a Rabbit—cautious and reserved.

My father juts his chin diffidently. He used to do that when he didn’t want to discuss something unsavory with my mother.

“But how are you going to float down the river with a baby and a little boy?” my father continues after a pause. “And it’s the dry season and the river is low. And you still might be caught by the patrol boats.”

My shoulders sag. We’ve come so far. What will happen when we’re caught?

“There is another way,” my father says. “Our village is part of a twenty-village commune. Our villages have ties to Hong Kong and Macau that are centuries old. Those ties have not been broken just because the Communists have taken over.” He sounds like the man at the family association in Hong Kong, which gives me renewed hope. “Goods still need to pass over the border. People from our commune cross into Hong Kong’s New Territories every day to sell our products and then buy and bring back other provisions.”

“Your products?” Joy asks, dubious since the Dandelion Number Eight People’s Commune didn’t make anything to sell.

“We process and make ingredients used for Chinese herbal medicine,” my father answers.

“Chinese herbal medicine?” Joy echoes doubtfully.

“Didn’t your mother give you traditional medicine when you were a little girl?” Baba asks. Then he turns to me. “Your mother would have been disappointed to hear you didn’t raise your daughter properly.”

My face heats with resentment and exasperation. This man abandoned us. His gambling led directly to May’s and my arranged marriages, to May, my mother, and me having to flee Shanghai, to my mother’s death and my rape, to May and me having to leave our home country …

“Of course, Mama gave me herbs and tonics,” Joy jumps in, defending me and protecting him from my anger. “I hated them.”

“So how do you think those ingredients got to
Haolaiwu
?” Baba asks.

He’s right. Even after China closed, people in Chinatown bought ginseng, powdered deer antler, or some other terrible-tasting ingredient to cure a cough, indigestion, or trouble in the marriage bed.

“We grow and prepare ingredients for traditional medicines,” he goes on. “We sell our goods at the wholesale market in Hong Kong. We also sell pigs, chickens, ducks … Our commune has several trucks, and we cross the border at the Lo Wu Bridge almost daily. Peking wants and needs foreign exchange with Hong Kong. We’re some of the people who provide that.”

“What are you saying? That we can just drive to Hong Kong?” Z.G. asks, sounding even more skeptical than Joy.

“More or less,” Baba answers. “The border is about eighty Western miles from here. I think we can get you over the border and into the New Territories. Once there, you ought to be able to take a bus the last twenty miles into Hong Kong proper.”

“Why didn’t you tell us that in the first place?” Joy demands indignantly.

My father gives me a look.
Have you not taught my granddaughter any manners?

But Z.G. agrees with Joy. “That’s right. Why didn’t you tell us? I mean, if it’s so easy, then why haven’t
you
left China?”

Baba stares at me as he answers Z.G.’s last question. “I deserted my family, leaving them to an uncertain fate. I was a no-good man.” (He won’t get an argument from me.) “I’ve stayed here because this is my ancestral home. The fallen leaves return to their roots. I have a house. I stay out of trouble. I do my work—”

“Baba, the police are after us,” I interrupt. “They’ll come here—if not tonight then in the morning.”

“Then we’d better hide you,” he says, “because it’s too late to leave today.”

He packs some food, hands us quilts, and walks us far out into a field. “You’ll stay here tonight. Try to keep the baby up as long as possible. She’ll need to be asleep for the crossing. I’ll get you in the morning.”

“Baba, can’t you stay? Don’t you want to talk?”

“Maybe stories and memories are destined to be incomplete,” he answers. “Besides, it will be safer if you remain here. If the police come, we’ll shout and make noise to alert you. If that happens, go south and hope for the best. In the meantime, our other family members and I have to get things ready.”

With that, he heads back to the village. We spread out the quilts. It’s chilly but not unbearable. Joy paces back and forth with the baby, bouncing her, trying to keep her awake. I put my arms around Ta-ming. “Try to sleep a little,” I say. “Close your eyes.”

I stare at the stars. My father is alive, but can he be trusted?

I WAKE WITH
a terrified start just before dawn. I stay still for a few minutes, waiting for my heart to stop pounding. I’m afraid of what will happen today, and of course I’m in terror for my husband. It takes all my strength to quash those emotions because I need to be strong today.

Z.G. is already up, standing a short distance from the quilts, staring south. I get up and walk over to him.

“Z.G.?”

“This is as far as I can go,” he says quietly.

This is not a moment to get riled up, but I’m outraged. “You aren’t going any farther? Are you kidding me? Dun took your place to keep the blood part of the family together and now you want to go home? Besides, you can’t go back. They’ll blame you for Joy’s painting and for helping us escape.”

“I know, but I’ve been thinking about what your father said last night. Maybe leaving China isn’t the best thing. This is my home.”

When I say, “You and I have never really talked about May,” he turns his back to me. I pull him around to face me. “You cannot stand there and tell me you don’t love her. I know you do.” He doesn’t try to deny it. “May is a few miles from here. Whichever direction you go has an uncertain future, but one of those ways has May.”

“What if she doesn’t want me? I was as bad as your father—”

“Don’t be stupid!” Again, that came out a little louder and harsher than I intended. I address his second point first. “You’re not like my father. You didn’t desert your family. You went to war, believing in a cause. And you didn’t know May was pregnant, right?” When he nods, I say, “And of course she wants you. She’s always wanted you, just as you’ve always wanted her. Finally, when we started all this, I could understand why you didn’t want to come, but I’ll say this again. You
can’t
go back. You
have
to leave.”

With that, I return to wake up the others.

As the sun rises, we see two trucks on a roadway in the distance. When they stop, we crouch low so we can’t be seen. Then I hear my father’s voice calling, “It’s us. It’s time.” He’s brought with him a man—Hop-li, a cousin. We’re given food to eat. My father hands Joy some liquid to pour into Sam’s bottle to help her sleep.

“You don’t look right,” Hop-li says to Z.G. “You look funny.”

And he does, with his too short pants, his white ankles showing above his sandals, his soft, pale hands, his wire-rimmed glasses.

“Here, let me fix you.” Hop-li picks up some dirt and rubs it into the parts of Z.G.’s skin that show—his face, neck, hands, ankles, and feet. Hop-li stands back to survey his work—an artist working on an artist. He shakes his head, steps forward again, takes off Z.G.’s glasses, and tosses them into the field. Then he rubs dirt around Z.G.’s eyes. Yesterday I thought Z.G. looked like a bald goat. Now he looks like a blind and bald goat.

“Much better!” Hop-li exclaims.

“But I can’t see,” Z.G. complains.

“But you look a lot more like my brother,” Hop-li says.

“In our commune, only men drive trucks,” my father explains. “Your two cousins go everywhere together. The younger cousin—”

“Comes with me on every run, and the border guards are used to him. They think he’s jittery because his eyesight is so terrible. Now his nervousness can be a disguise for you.”

The cousin gives Z.G. an identity card. When I see it, I understand why the cousin was so particular in getting Z.G. ready. It’s not a particularly good physical match, but then I remember Sam’s papers to get into America. He didn’t look much like the boy in that photo either. The American inspectors didn’t catch the discrepancy until many years later, when the photo was used as part of the proof of Sam’s illegal paper-son status.

“What about us?” I ask.

“You’ll ride in the back of the truck. We’ll hide you when we get close to the border.”

“Will it work?”

My father blinks. “Maybe. I hope so.”

We cross the field to the trucks. Both have open beds with wood slats on the sides. The bed of one is filled with pigs wrapped in straw matting and separate baskets of piglets. The other is piled with barrels, jars, and bulging burlap sacks. We climb into the back of the second truck. My father and Hop-li drive. I worry about Ta-ming’s stomach, but he seems all right, staring out through the slats as the countryside rolls by. Soon, we turn onto a paved road. The sun stays to our left as we head south. I wish Dun were with us, and I pray that he’s all right. Fear and sorrow have me in a merciless grip. I take Joy’s hand and we hang on to each other.

The closer we get to the border, the more traffic there is—wheelbarrows; pushcarts; donkey-, mule-, and water buffalo–pulled wagons; bicycles piled high with merchandise; trucks of every size; and people with baskets of produce strapped to their backs, slung over their shoulders on poles, or balanced on their heads. Our two trucks turn off the main road, head down an alley, and stop.