Feather in the Storm: A Childhood Lost in Chaos (29 page)

He laughed. “I am.”

As I stood to leave he reminded me, “This is a secret, Yimao. No one in this village must know.”

“I can keep a secret,” I told him.

————

Old Crab called on us during our last day in Gao Village. He’d been drinking heavily.

“So, you are going to be city people,” he said. “You think you’re flying out of my hand and going straight to heaven.”

“We’re going to miss you,” Mama managed.

“Shit!” he said and spat on our floor. “You’re glad to be leaving.” When no one corrected his assertion, he added, “Well, you have to give me a going-away dinner tonight. And we have to have one last drink.”

Knowing he was still capable of causing problems for us, Mama agreed and asked him to return later.

Early that evening he was back, wearing a clean shirt for the occasion. “I’m thirsty” was the first thing he said upon entering our shed.

Papa opened his last bottle of liquor and filled a cup for Old Crab, who emptied it in one swallow and thrust it out again.

As he poured a second cup for the team leader, Papa asked, “May we bring one of the doors with us?”

“What for?” Old Crab grumbled.

“Lumber is precious in the city,” Papa said. “And we can use it as a bed in our apartment. If you remember, you borrowed our other bed after we arrived here.”

“I need all the doors,” Old Crab said. And that settled it.

After dinner Mama and my brothers and I continued packing, but Father was required to sit at the table drinking with Old Crab and listening to him complain about work points and lazy peasants. Around midnight Old Crab was too drunk to talk. The cigarettes and liquor were gone. He stood, staggered back a few steps, steadied himself and said, “I’ve got to be going now. Lots of work tomorrow.” But before he departed he circled the room looking at what we were packing. He pulled back the cover on a basket and spotted my copy of
David Copperfield
. “I need this for toilet paper,” he snarled.

He tucked the book under his arm and stumbled through the door. Seconds later I heard voices outside. The voices of two men. Angry voices. There was an exchange, a shout, and then it was quiet. One of the voices was Old Crab’s. And I thought the other was Shuizi’s father.

“Did you hear that?” I asked Mama.

“What?” she said.

We listened but there was no sound. “You’re tired, Maomao,” she said. “We have a long day ahead of us. Go to bed.”

The next morning—moving day—I rose early and went to our latrine. The flies were making an unusually loud hum. As I drew near the brick steps, I saw something white at the edge of the muck. I made out what appeared to be two bare feet protruding from the dark pool. I rushed back to our shed and told my parents what I’d seen. Mama ran to summon some of our neighbors. The word spread quickly of my ghastly discovery. Villagers came running. Some gasped and backed
away. One of the women let out a long scream and dropped to her knees. Jigui came hobbling on his crutches.

Two men grabbed the ankles and pulled the body out. It was horribly discolored, but by the clothing and the shape of the head, we could tell it was Old Crab. His body was stiff and black. Thousands of flies descended on the corpse as it lay beside the sewage pool. Old Crab’s wife fell to her knees beside his body and howled. Jigui dropped his crutches and got down beside the body and slowly waved his Little Red Book above his head, crying, “Here! Here! My papa will help you! My papa is the people’s savior! My papa will make you well!”

The villagers stared at Jigui silently, almost as if they believed what he said—that the Little Red Book could restore life. Mama helped Jigui stand and led him aside and whispered something to him. Because of her kindness toward him he always listened to her. He nodded as she spoke and then went home chanting, “Old Crab will be well. Chairman Mao is his savior.”

I noted my copy of
David Copperfield
—still clean—not far from Old Crab’s body. I picked it up and concealed it from the others. As I pushed away from the crowd, I saw Shuizi’s father approaching. While everyone else was in shock, he was composed and unbothered.

“Old Crab drowned in our shit hole!” I blurted out.

I cannot be certain of what I saw next, because a ray of morning sunlight flashed over his shoulder and momentarily blinded me. But I am almost sure he winked. Two men came to our hut a short time later and removed the doors to make a casket for Old Crab. Several hours later a truck arrived to take us to Wuhu. Some of the villagers helped carry our belongings to the main road and assisted us in loading them. I climbed into the back of the truck with my brothers and looked at the village that had been my home for five years. I wanted to burn it into my memory for all time. The same strange sense of wonder went through me as when I’d arrived here from the outside world. Was it all real? Or had it been just a long nightmare? Could I be awakening at last? I saw several men crawling over the roof of our shed, throwing
down bundles of straw and lumber for their own use. “Look what they’re doing,” I said to Mama and pointed.

“Everything will be gone in an hour,” she answered.

As the truck pulled away, the villagers stood beside the road and watched us. Some waved. We waved back as they disappeared in the dust.

An hour later we arrived at the ferry dock. Our truck was the last one onto the ferry late that afternoon. As we crossed the Yangtze River, my brothers and I stood at the boat railing and looked at the other shore. The sun was setting behind us. The water shone like gold. None of us said a word. None of us looked back.

On the other side of the river, my brothers and I climbed up into the back of the truck and sat among the bundled family possessions while our parents rode in the cab with the driver. It was only a few minutes’ drive to the university campus. I was astonished by the traffic on the wide streets and the clamorous confusion of sounds: the rumble of passing trucks and cars along with the constant ringing of thousands of bicycle bells. Cyclists streamed around us when we slowed, like a river rushing around a rock, and moments later we roared past them on straight stretches of the street.

Crowds swirled along the sidewalks and scooted back and forth in the street behind us. Amber lamps illuminated the night, and pinpricks of light glowed in the windows of the squat apartment buildings along the streets. There was noise and activity but nothing ominous, nothing at all like the mass night marches of the Red Guards that I remembered from Hefei. Here no one appeared to pay any attention to us as we passed. People went about their business, seemingly fearlessly, not organized, not marching, not chanting or carrying signs. Children clung to their parents or ran beside them. I’d forgotten how luminous
and harmless and alive the night might be. I was thrilled by the promise of our new life.

Our driver found his way to the campus and pulled up beside a dozen other trucks at the motor pool. He jumped out, stretched, rubbed his eyes and told us, “It’s been a long day. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Where are we supposed to sleep tonight?” Mama asked.

“I’d recommend somewhere close to the truck,” he said over his shoulder as he walked away. “If you don’t, your stuff won’t be here in the morning.”

Papa looked at Mama, shrugged, and asked, “What now?”

“First,” she said, “these children are hungry. We need to get something to eat.” It was decided that Papa would stay with the truck and Mama would take us to find a street vendor.

My brothers and I walked along the sidewalk with Mama. We passed through the university gate and followed the noise and the lights to a nearby bustling street. I was barefoot. It felt strange to be walking on the smooth concrete and tar rather than on dirt paths. I noticed that everyone else on the street, even the children, wore shoes.

Pedestrians stared as we passed, some even stepping aside as if they feared we carried some contagion. A girl about my age stood at a bus stop with her mother and gawked at me. When we were beside them, she looked up at her mother and said, “Look at the country bumpkins, Mama!” Her mother glanced over at me, looked at my bare feet and frowned.

We soon found a street vendor selling steamed buns. I stood close to his stand and breathed in the yeasty scent as Mama bought several. She gave us each one and saved the others for later. We returned to our truck. When we were finished eating we unrolled some of our blankets, and Mama had us squeeze together in the cab to sleep. She and Papa made a bed for themselves on the ground next to the truck.

We awakened at daylight to the buzz of traffic beyond the nearby university gate. Mama stayed with the truck, and Papa took my brothers
and me in search of a student dormitory with a latrine and running water. We found one nearby. After we returned to the truck to safeguard our goods, Mama took her turn.

Shortly after eight, I accompanied Papa to the university housing office. He identified himself to an official-looking little man behind the reception desk, showed his transfer papers and requested living quarters. The man examined the papers a moment and looked at Papa and me with undisguised displeasure. He asked Papa a couple of questions and then took the documents to a woman at a desk in the back of the office. In a low voice he told the woman what Papa wanted and went over the papers line by line with her.

Even though they were on the other side of the room and spoke softly, I could decipher some of their words. “Rightist,” I heard the man say. “And American spy,” the woman added. I looked up at Papa and he smiled down at me as if he’d heard nothing unusual. The woman called someone on the telephone and described Papa’s papers. After about ten minutes the man returned to the reception desk, unsmiling and unfriendly, and dropped Papa’s papers on the counter without saying a word. He returned to his desk. The woman wrote down an address on a small piece of paper and brought it to us. Papa read it and thanked her. Even as he spoke she turned up her nose and went back to her desk.

Nonetheless, I was excited by the prospect of moving into our own quarters on campus. Papa and I wandered around looking for the address written on the paper. He was confused by street names and numbers. But I was so enthusiastic and giddy that I sidled up to strangers on the sidewalk and asked them for assistance in locating our new home. Most of them seemed puzzled. They wanted to help but knew of no such address.

When we finally arrived at the designated address, we discovered a temporary shed that had been put up for construction workers on the campus. The walls were reed mats supported by long pieces of bamboo. The low roof was a pile of straw. The whole flimsy edifice rested against
a section of the university wall. The door consisted of a dozen lengths of bamboo lashed together with a straw rope.

We stared at it in shock. “I think they wrote down the wrong address,” Papa muttered. Yet tacked to the door was a sign someone had scribbled on a large sheet of paper: “
FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT
,
WU NINGKUN
.”

“There is no mistake, Papa,” I said angrily. “But we are not going to live here. This is even worse than Gao Village!” I snatched the note from the door, tore it up and threw the pieces into the air. Papa tried to stop me because it was an official notice and he was afraid I might be causing trouble.

But it was too late. The pieces of paper blew away. I was near tears and could not speak. Papa saw frustration and determination in my eyes and said, “Okay, Maomao, you are right. We can’t live here.” On the way back to the housing office, he said to me, “That couple is not going to change our assignment. I have to find someone higher up.”

We went to the administration building and located the office of the university provost. A man about Papa’s age sat behind a desk going through papers. When he saw us, he stood. Papa introduced himself and produced his papers. Without even looking at the papers, the provost smiled and extended his hand.

“I am afraid there has been a mistake,” Papa said. “Someone assigned my family to a reed lean-to. I have three children. We can’t live there.”

The provost looked at the slip of paper, balled it up and threw it in his wastebasket. His lips tightened and he slapped the top of his desk in exasperation. “You’re absolutely right,” he said. “A mistake was made. I’m sorry. This is ridiculous. I only wonder if the man who assigned you to this place could live there.”

“It was a woman,” Papa said.

The provost flashed a knowing smile. “I see,” he said. He sat down and made several phone calls. His voice was stern and critical as he issued orders and requests. When he was finished he smiled at us and
said, “I’ve found you a place that’s livable, Teacher Wu. Welcome to our university.”

We hurried back to the truck. The driver had arrived, and Papa gave him our new address. As we pulled up to the address, Mama muttered, “Can this be possible? This is a church!”

It was indeed a church that had been converted into residential living quarters. We had never seen anything like it. My brothers and I climbed down from the truck and walked around the building, staring in disbelief. It was about eighty by twenty feet. It had a steep cathedral ceiling. At the front and back were eight tall and narrow stained-glass windows. Along one side of the structure, the lower portion of windows had been knocked out and replaced by eight doors. Each door led to the living quarters for a family.

We were assigned number 2. Papa pushed open the door and we followed him inside. Rough brick walls about four feet high had been constructed between each of the living units inside. Reed mats were strung up over the walls and suspended from the broad ceiling beams fifteen feet overhead to give privacy to each unit.

“This is unbelievable,” Mama murmured as she walked the length of the single room. Her voice echoed throughout the building. “God must be watching over us.”

As he stared at the high ceiling and the reed mats, Papa answered, “And He can hear every sound we make.”

The light spearing through the mosaics at the peaks of the stained-glass windows was breathtaking. Splashes of blue and red and green covered part of our wall. I held my arm in a ray of light, and my filthy white shirt turned a deep emerald. I touched it and said, “I like it here. I like it a lot.”