The Scavenger's Daughters (Tales of the Scavenger's Daughters, Book One) (18 page)

“But what about your parents, Ye Ye? Were they tortured?” Peony asked.

The room around him was quiet at that. All the girls knew that his parents were teachers.

Calli cleared her throat from the kitchen. “Benfu dear, please don’t fill the girls’ heads up with scary thoughts. Today is a day of celebration, and the reign of Mao is over, remember?”

Benfu nodded. He wouldn’t tell his girls about those the Red Guards murdered by having boiling water poured over them, or being forced to
swallow nails. Some were killed just because of the width of their shirt cuffs or length of their hair! His parents had been lucky and escaped the physical punishments heaped on their colleagues. “Okay, Calla Lily, I’ll tone it down. Girls, my parents were not treated well but they weren’t beaten or tortured. They survived, which is more than many did. But who wants to hear the best part of the Cultural Revolution?”

Jasmine sat up and clapped her hands. She knew what was coming. Around the room all the girls stopped what they were doing to pay close attention. Benfu saw a confused look on Jet’s face, for he had realized he was the only one not already aware of the next part of the story.

“So, after my parents brought me to Wuxi to try to hide from the Red Guards, I lived on a farm outside of town and worked in a collective.”

Benfu saw Maggi scrunch her nose up in the expression that meant she was confused, and he explained further.

“During Mao’s Great Leap Forward, he decided the people would no longer be able to own their own land and farm as individuals. Instead acreage was parceled out and those who weren’t sent to the factories to help make steel farmed the land collectively and lived together in communes. They weren’t even allowed to cook for their own families! Many of the collectives, like the one I was at, continued the tradition even after the Great Leap Forward ended. We’d all meet together each night in a giant kitchen and those on cooking duty prepared enough for everyone.” He paused and lost himself for a moment in the memory of the days the kitchens could no longer produce enough food to feed the people. Those feelings of true hunger were something he was adamant his girls would never know, and the reason he continued to work hard day after day. He looked back down at them.

“Everything grown had to be turned in and divided up by the government. When the Cultural Revolution started, there were still many of these collectives operating, even though by then it was getting harder to produce enough to feed the people. Most of what was grown was shipped out; some said it was even going to Russia! The people were afraid to say anything, but
everyone was becoming very suspicious of the so-called better way of living.”

Benfu paused to catch his breath, allowing Lily the opportunity to add some detail to his story.

“And no one could hear birds sing any longer because Mao made the people kill them to keep them from eating the rice,” Lily said, running her finger across a raised page in her new book as Maggi whispered to her that it was a turtle, then returned her attention to his story.

Benfu chuckled. “Well, that was back a few years before, but yes, that happened. The birds fell out of the sky because the people made so much noise with pots and pans they couldn’t land and finally dropped to their deaths from exhaustion.”

Leave it to Lily to think first of the birds and the beautiful music they could no longer make. He’d told them before of Mao’s oversight that killing all the birds would result in an epidemic of insects. It was one of the stories they were most enthralled with. Even years after the war on the sparrows, the locusts and other insects were still wreaking havoc on the farms. For Benfu, the daily quota of how many flies they were required to catch was not a fond memory.

“And you got points when you worked, so you could eat,” Peony said, nodding emphatically.

“And you’re right, Peony—I got points for working the fields. The adults worked a full day and got about ten points. Children could make up to six points. But even though I was a teenager and worked as hard as the adults, I only got eight points. But it was enough to buy my rice, so for a long time I didn’t go hungry.”

“Tell us what the children did to earn points, Ye Ye?” Maggi asked.

“Well, Maggi Mei, sometimes the bigger ones carried water from the river to the fields and the little ones ladled it out on each plant. Some of them picked vegetables and others cleaned them. There were many jobs that the children took care of so the adults could do the hardest work.”

“Just like you girls,” Calli said. “You all pitch in so that together as a family we’re able to move forward toward a better future.”

Benfu felt a burst of unsettling in his gut. He really didn’t want the girls thinking the revolution was a good thing in any way. He never wanted his daughters to think that allowing a dictator to control their destinies should be allowed.

“But as I worked and participated each night in reeducation classes, I began to realize that the cadres in charge were trying to brainwash us all. They told us how to work, how to learn, what we were allowed to sing and even asked us to declare our private thoughts each day!” He shook his head. “Can you imagine, we weren’t even allowed to think on our own anymore? After many months of this I was unable to keep my mounting discontent a secret.”

He looked across the room at Calli. She lowered her head.

“They found out other secrets, too. It was discovered that I wasn’t really the son of a migrant worker far away, but rather the son of two intellectuals, what they considered a bad background.”

Benfu swallowed hard. This was more than he had ever told the girls.

Peony looked confused. “Ye Ye, your parents were teachers. How is that a bad background?”

“I don’t know, Peony. It just was. From then on I was considered to be from a
black
family.” He remembered the classifications and how everyone strived to be marked as red families. Those were the closest to Mao because they were laborers, farmers, and uneducated people. Mao used to say the more books a person had read in his past, the more stupid he was. His entire life Benfu had been taught that education was the key to succeeding, but then everything changed and all of a sudden it was inconceivable to be smart.

“What did they do when they found out about your parents?” Linnea asked.

He shook his head and looked down at his hands—hands that had once been bound for a crime of nothing more than the claiming to be someone
different than he really was. Oh, the atrocities done to him he hoped his girls never knew. “They made me regret my lies—let’s just say that. But at least I was able to think freely and that is what really matters. They hated it that they couldn’t control my thoughts or make me conform. After days of living in a squalid shed with barely any food, I escaped. I made my way to town and it is here that I found my heaven.”

Across the room he spotted a shy smile spreading across Calli’s face. He then looked over at Linnea and Jet. The boy looked humbled, as if he’d done something wrong. Benfu felt a moment of shame for using his stories to test him. This boy had done nothing but try to help Linnea and her family—all without a shred of evidence pointing to any kind of superiority.

Darker memories came forward in Benfu’s mind, but he wouldn’t tell the girls the details of the night the boy had set him free. He wouldn’t tell them how he’d run for his life, stumbling terrified through the dark fields to find his way to town, his feet cracked and bleeding. He hadn’t known what awaited him there but he did know that if Pei hadn’t freed him, he would have been dead in a few days, maybe even less.

“Tell us more, Ye Ye!” Peony begged.

“Well, if it hadn’t been for your Nai Nai and her family, I would have starved to death. They took me in and allowed me to stay here, right in this very house! I worked to earn the roof over my head and the food in my belly, but most importantly, I worked to earn the heart of the sweetest girl I’ve ever known.”

Across the room Calli blushed deeper and shook her head, tsking at Benfu. He winked at her. At that the girls erupted into applauding and giggling. Benfu had once again found a way to end his sad story on a lighter note. And most of it was the truth, after all. It was just missing many details that were still better left unspoken.

F
inally the festivities were over. Jet had left for home, Calli had finally relented to Benfu’s demands and was sitting with her feet up, and Benfu sat rocking Poppy to sleep as he watched the girls preparing their hair for bed. The routine was a nightly ritual that usually calmed them all before sleep—all except Jasmine who wiggled and squirmed because she’d rather wear her hair loose.

The girls all got to choose whether they wore their hair long or short, but most of them chose to wear it long because of their Nai Nai’s stories. Calli had told them how when she was but a teenage girl, the party had mandated that all girls keep their hair chopped off to the level of their earlobes. Calli had specifically hated the style but in fear of retribution had complied. She’d had enough against her being distantly related to a landowner in the family; she didn’t want to tempt even more attention to herself. But despite the shorn hair and the shapeless green jacket and trousers she was forced to wear, the night Benfu had met her, he had seen through it all to her true beauty. It wasn’t in her clothes or hair—it was shining through her eyes and all the way down to her compassionate heart after she found him hiding in their courtyard and brought him food. Years later she decided her hair would never be cut again and now she could weave a rope with it if she pleased.

As the girls took turns braiding for one another, Benfu felt unusually unsettled. In the kitchen Linnea used her cloth to wipe down the last of the
messes left behind from the meal. Sure the day had gone well, the food tasted delicious, and the gifts Jet brought had put the celebratory atmosphere back in the air. Yet Benfu couldn’t shake the cloud of melancholy that talking of the old times had settled over him. Maybe it had to do with Jet and the mystery surrounding him, but it hadn’t been the time to ask more questions on a day meant for celebrating.

He looked over at Lily braiding Ivy’s hair and sighed. That was another subject that had made him overly contemplative this evening. There were only a few tasks that Lily felt useful doing. More and more these days the poor girl was being left behind as her twin struggled to grow into the independence that being a teenager usually brought. It was a sad situation. Ivy and Lily were identical in almost every way. They carried such a deep connection, yet Benfu could see that Ivy had given up much of her freedom to care for her sister. How could he help the two begin learning to live their lives as two separate people rather than one?

“Benfu, are you okay, dear?” Calli asked. Benfu looked up from his deep stare and met her eyes. He stood and went to her, then whispered in her ear.

She turned, her eyes searching his.

“Are you sure? You must be ready to face the memories if you do this, my love.”

He nodded. “I’m sure. And I want to do something for Lily. I’ve thought about this for a while now and I think it’s time.”

“Okay, then. I stand behind your decision.” She spoke softly but firmly, and with that his mind was made up.

He returned to the rocking chair.

“Girls, listen. I want to tell you another story. One that is for the ears of only our family. One your Nai Nai and I have held close to our hearts for years.”

The girls’ attention was immediately on him. They loved hearing his stories. But this was one they had not heard before. This was one he had kept quiet for too many years.

“Girls, I’ve already told you that I grew up as the child of intellectuals. My parents were educators and because my father was one of the top-tiered professors, we lived in a comfortable home in the French concession of Shanghai.”

“Was your house beautiful, Ye Ye?” Peony asked, always the one to want to push the stories ahead to hear the endings more quickly.

“It was a fine home, Peony. But that isn’t the story I’m going to tell tonight.” Compared to the small concrete house they lived in now, tales of his childhood home of six rooms with a beautiful courtyard might be more than he should share. He didn’t ever want them to feel they’d been shortchanged, and it would be hard for them to understand that they were more blessed now than he was with all his many possessions but a lack of affection and warmth when he was growing up.