Throwaway Daughter (23 page)

I went to the fields every day. Afterwards, as the light faded, I chopped weeds in our vegetable plot and watered the melons, beans, and cabbages. The only break came with the Lunar New Year’s celebrations, when the wheat in the fields and turnips in the gardens needed less attention. Gradually, as the years blended into one another, I was accepted again by the villagers, though never completely. I watched my brothers’ kids grow as my mother declined. Before I knew it I was well into my middle age.

Then came the day when the village bristled with talk about a young foreign woman who had showed up in Liuhe Village, causing an uproar. More startling were the rumours about who she was, and her intention to come to Poplar Tree Village.

I dismissed the gossip. I had long since stopped being surprised at the nonsense some people would believe. Nor did I want to open old wounds with speculation. But in spite of myself I mulled over the words the woman at the orphanage had said to me. She had pretended Dong-mei
had never been there. Was it possible my daughter was sold to a foreigner?

It made no sense, but the questions dogged me on the way to the paddies and all through the day and then on the walk home to my brother’s house. So just like my silly neighbours, I, too, waited for the foreign woman to show up.

Nearly twenty years dissolved in one second. She arrived, standing in front of me, tall, healthy, and beautiful. Our eyes met and the empty place inside me filled with joy and happiness. My daughter. My lovely Dong-mei.

Before she left that first day to go back to the place she was staying, I showed her a water-colour that my father had given to me as a wedding present. The painting shows a black branch heavy with blossoms.

“But where are the leaves?” she asked in her strange accent. “There are flowers but no leaves.”

“That is what makes winter blossoms unique,” I told her. “They bloom while surrounded by ice and snow.”

I
n a way I felt cheated—finding my mother, finally, then realizing I had only four days before I had to leave China. So I spent the rest of my stay in Poplar Tree Village. You would have thought Chun-mei and I would use up the whole time talking our heads off, trying to compensate for nineteen years of lost time. But her three brothers, my uncles, didn’t give us the chance. Each of them held a banquet at his house, with the same cousins and friends and neighbours at each feast, eating and drinking and singing songs, and insisting that I eat more, eat more! When I got home, I knew, I’d have to diet for six months to make up for the watermelon, baked duck, winter-melon soup,
stir-fried vegetables, chicken, steamed fish, and the local delicacy, pig’s feet stewed in soy sauce, with thick layers of fat and skin that the others chewed with noisy enjoyment. Not to mention pop and wine and cakes.

So Chun-mei and I talked in the evenings and mornings. She would sit across the table from me and hold my hands in hers, as I told her about my life in Canada. Chun-mei asked a thousand questions about school and my friends, my sister and parents. I could tell that some of my answers bewildered her.

Her mother, my
Wai-po
, sat on the couch as we talked. It was clear she couldn’t understand what was happening around her, although her wrinkled eyes would occasionally shift between Chun-mei and me as if trying to make some kind of connection. Chun-mei told me the stroke
Wai-po
had suffered a few years earlier ripped away her voice and put her mind to sleep. “Two women in the same household whose minds can’t be trusted,” Chun-mei had said with an ironic smile.

Uncle Gen-fa had told me a bit about Chun-mei’s breakdown after I made a quiet inquiry about her condition. “She’s been steady, or normal, for a few years,” he had said. “But my
sister has changed greatly. She used to be a quiet woman, but determined. My father often said that when Chun-mei made up her mind, even nine water buffaloes yoked together weren’t strong enough to change her decision. Now she is more passive. Maybe that’s better. She’s middle-aged now. There are no battles for her to fight. And yesterday, Dong-mei, I saw her smile. That is your doing. It was the first time since she came home from Liuhe Village.”

I thought briefly about staying longer, but I would have to extend my visa, and to do that I’d have to go back to Shanghai, and there wasn’t enough time. On the morning of my last day there, I said goodbye to
Wai-po
at the house. Chun-mei and all my uncles and their families, and almost everyone in the village, it seemed, walked me out to the paved road where I could catch the bus. My youngest uncle, Gen-shen, insisted on carrying my pack, which was loaded down with gifts they had given me for Megan, my parents, and my grandparents. Chun-mei asked me again and again if I would come back, and each time I promised I would. I told her I might even come to China to study for a year or two. She was concerned about whether my Canadian parents would allow me. When we
saw the bus down the road, floating in the shimmering heat waves that rose from the pavement, despite my decision not to do so, I put my arms around Chun-mei. She didn’t push me away. She held me tight and said softly into my ear, “Goodbye, my beautiful daughter. I’m in peace now at last.”

I wasn’t on the bus for long. I had promised Ah-miao I would return to say goodbye to him and his mother before I left for Canada. Although I had mixed feelings about it, I wanted to keep my word. I didn’t, though, expect to see a full house waiting for me. Everyone was there, Ah-miao, Qiu-xiang, Loyal, and his father. I still couldn’t bring myself to call Loyal my father or his father Grandfather. I had nothing but contempt for both of them.

Qiu-xiang was the one I felt sorry for, stuck with a husband she obviously didn’t like and a father-in-law she ignored when she wasn’t yelling at him. The only thing they all seemed to agree on was doting on Ah-miao, their precious boy.

I sat down to have tea with them one last time. Everyone was gloomy and quiet, a contrast to the conflict and abuse I had witnessed the first time I was there. When I stood up to leave, Old
Chen went through the curtain into his room and came back with something in his hand.

He followed me out of the door. “Dong-mei, I want you to have this.”

I looked up into his watery eyes, then down at the passport-sized book in his hand. The red plastic cover was dusty and split at the corners, the gold-coloured characters on the front scuffed and almost illegible. But I managed to read the three most well known characters in the language: Chairman Mao. It was a copy of the famous “Little Red Book.”

“Thank you,” I murmured, confused by such a strange gift.

“I hope you will find a few minutes to read part of it,” he said. “I marked the place where the story of Old Man Yu Moves the Mountain begins. Read it, then you can throw the book away. I have no use for it any more.”

“All right,” I said. “I will.”

He held my gaze, and for a second I could see the man who used to be called Old Revolutionary Chen.

“Dong-mei,” he said again, looking me up and down as if he was memorizing my appearance. “I have been a fool.” Then he turned and walked back into the house.

I put the little book in my backpack. Ahmiao walked me down the path to the threshing ground, where he had parked his motorcycle. He insisted on giving me a ride into the city.

“I’m sorry my parents and grandfather weren’t more friendly,” he said. “It has nothing to do with you. Last night I gave them some bad news. They didn’t take it very well.”

I waited for him to go on. Around us, the cicadas kept up their loud, monotonous buzz. The odour of growing rice rose from the paddies, and the sun beat down like a hammer. Thinking of my encounter with Ms. Song in Shanghai, I half expected Ah-miao to ask for my help in going to Canada. Maybe his parents and grandfather didn’t like the idea.

“You see,” he began, “I plan to get married in a few months, during the Spring Festival.”

“Aren’t you a little young?” I asked tactlessly, remembering the rules set by the government. “You’re only eighteen!”

Ah-miao let out a laugh, revealing the gap where he had lost a tooth. “You foreigners read too much, Dong-mei. No one cares any more so long as you don’t ask the government for anything, like a piece of land to put up a house.”

“Oh. Then I guess your fiancée and you will move in with your parents and grandfather.”

“No. There is no room for us, not while my grandfather is still alive. But even if there was, Lian-hua and I have decided to set up our new household with
her
parents.”

“That
would
be bad news,” I said.

“You see, Lian-hua is their only child and …”

“And so are you. I thought the son always brings his wife to
his
family.” What I didn’t say was: Isn’t that what all the madness is about, wanting to have a son?

“Not any more, Half-sister. China is progressing. Forget about the old customs and traditions. Nowadays, it’s money that sets the rules, does the talking, and makes the decisions. Lian-hua’s family is richer than mine, way richer, and has potential to grow richer still. Her old man holds a high position in the commune, but that’s not where his money really comes from. Months ago, he bought two used turtle carts and began a local taxi service. The government encourages private enterprise, you know.”

“But you said he’s a Party official.”

“That works even better. Less red tape, more green lights to get things going. You get my point? Her father promised me that after we
are married—in his house, of course, not mine—he is going to purchase a third cart and hire me as the driver, and eventually make me a partner. It means that I won’t have to work in the fields any more, but most of all, some day I will be making tons of money. My old man tried to start his own business many years ago, raising rabbits or something. He lost everything. He has no fire in his belly. In many ways, he seems older and weaker than Grandfather. I should have taken you to Lian-hua’s house in the Bao Family Village. It’s much bigger and fancier than mine, with balconies, wood floors, ceiling lights, and wall units, all first class. Even you would be impressed.”

I let him talk. I couldn’t help but feel awkward hearing him brag about someone else’s wealth and the advantage that marriage to Lian-hua would bring. It was so practical, not to mention in bad taste. Back home, where marriage was concerned, everything was love and passion. But here, it was power and opportunity.

That explained the sombre mood after I had arrived at Ah-miao’s house. It wasn’t bad news for the Chen family; it was a catastrophe. Ah-miao’s plan wasn’t just reversing centuries of tradition. I tried to keep a smile off my face,
conscious of the irony. The boy child the Chens had done so much to get was going to leave them and join his in-laws in another village. I recalled an old Chinese expression I had learned in Frank’s class, something about fetching water in a bamboo basket.

“They wanted me to find another girl,” Ahmiao went on, not noticing my smile. “But they forget, it’s hard to find a wife, a suitable one especially. Young men outnumber women by a big margin. On the cross-talk show, a radio comedy, they make jokes about China having the world’s biggest crop of frustrated bachelors. In the old days, men who were rich and powerful had more than one wife. I guess in order to solve the problem in the future a woman will have to take in a few husbands! The whole thing is crazy, isn’t it?”

No wonder, I thought, in a place where some fetuses are aborted as soon as the mother finds out by ultrasound that they’re female. Or baby girls are taken care of in one way or another after they’re born.

On the plane, over the Pacific Ocean, I opened the “Little Red Book” to the page Old Chen had marked for me. “Old Man Yu Moves the Mountain” was part of a speech made by Mao Ze-dong
at the Seventh Central Committee Meeting of the Party, whatever that was, on June 11, 1945. Mao referred to a fable that told of an old farmer who lived in north China. Two high mountains stood in front of his house, between him and his fields. One was called Mount Tai, the other Mount Wang-wo, and the old man decided to move them with a shovel and a wheelbarrow. The fable’s moral was that determination and faith and time would enable a person to conquer obstacles that appeared to be insurmountable.

Mao was still a hero to some people in China. I had seen his portrait hanging in a couple of houses in Poplar Tree Village. Now, Ahmiao had told me, Deng Xiao-ping was the hero. But on the plane, with the red book in my hands, I remembered a TV show I had seen, some history documentary that my dad insisted I watch with him. It was about the war in Vietnam. There was a lot of footage on the last hours in Saigon, when the Americans were withdrawing and evacuating their embassy. Helicopters swept in one after another while the Viet Cong assaulted the walls. It was much more terrifying than any war movie, because it was real.

In one shot, a Vietnamese woman ran towards an already heavily laden helicopter that
hovered several feet off the ground, ready to rise out of the machine-gun fire into the smoke-filled sky. In her arms was a baby. Just as the plane began to lift off, she reached the open doorway and thrust the baby into the arms of an American man inside. The helicopter shot up like an elevator car and the woman fell to the ground in a sea of smoke and fire. The terror in her eyes couldn’t be described as she stood up in the swirling dust, arms at her sides, face turned to the sky as her baby disappeared from view. There was no word on what had happened to either of them.