China's Son

  My sisters and brother had grown up farming. I had seen them carry on their shoulders more than a hundred pounds of animal manure, to be used for fertilizer in the fields. Their skinny legs had trembled beneath the weight, but they dared not slow down for fear of criticism by the commune leaders, who were especially harsh to them. They had all endured, their teeth gritted. Brother Jin had once had a rusty nail go through his right foot. It took two months to heal. Huang had once become so dehydrated under the baking sun that she had passed out. And they all complained of constant back pain, but they had to push themselves on, for the commune would not allow any leaves of absence. Their food ration would have been withheld until those absences were made up. They had all grown tall, thin, and tanned like coconuts.

  As I stood there watching them, I felt respect and fear. A future as a farmer stretched out before me like the brutal fields. There would be endless toiling under a cruel sun, all for a meager existence that consisted of rice porridge and pickled vegetables. There would be hunger for at least three months a year, during which even the moldy yams became treasures on the dining table.

  “Have a rest, brother,” I heard Jin shout at me. His voice sounded tiny in that enormous field. “You don't have to hurry.”

  “Put your shirt back on or the sun will kill you,” Ke said, standing up to take a look at me.

  “I'm fine, you guys.” But my mind was saying, Let me go home. I was sick of it already. I dropped my sickle and drummed my back with my fists, imitating my dad when he had had a hard day. I sighed at the narrow stretch of rice still before me, standing proud and nodding lazily in the occasional breeze. Slowly I bent my cracking back to pick up the sickle again, this time resting my elbows on my knees like a pregnant woman and hacking the plants stem by stem. I wished the sun would go down faster so that we could all go home and rest, but it stayed eternally motionless, a taunting fireball in the cloudless sky. Then I wished the rice would all fall on its back by itself.

  The sun hung high above my head, and my back felt hot. Even the wet mud in the field was lukewarm, and the proud rice stems began to droop beneath the blaze, tired and sleepy. The day was only half done, but I was totally exhausted. My back hurt, my legs trembled, my face was covered with cuts, and my hands were a mass of raw blisters. I was so miserable I even didn't feel the walls of my stomach rub against each other. There was a burning in my throat that would take a whole fire brigade to snuff out. I felt angry, belittled, and pathetic. I could not beg to get out of my duty. It was just not done in the Chen family. We all worked hard together and played together. Mom and Dad would never approve of my giving up in the middle of my task. I hung on a few more yards; then the blisters burst. The raw flesh looked red and stung like needles. I heard my sister call my name.

  “Little brother, come eat.” I saw my mom stumbling along the edge of the field, carrying our lunch on a long bamboo pole. Her face was red beneath her straw hat.

  I was so grateful to see her.

  “Come wash your hands and eat, young farmer.” Mom smiled at me as I dragged my feet toward her. The beautiful smile on her face was the highest praise she could give us. My sisters and brother gathered around Mom, who was pouring water from a bucket and passing out wet towels.

  “You're not doing too bad at all. With your help, we will finish before dark.” My brother beamed, slapping my back.

  I screamed before I could stop myself.

  “What's the matter? Did you burn your back?” Huang asked.

  I was silent.

  “I told you to leave your shirt on,” she said.

  “It was wet.” They looked at me.

  “Let me see your hands,” Jin said. I held them out. The blisters continued to ooze. “Pack up and go home after lunch, okay? I'm sorry, it must hurt like hell.” Mom and my sisters were upset. My mother hurriedly cleaned my bloody hands with a wet towel.

  “I'm sorry, guys. But I can finish my share.”

  “No, go home and take care of your hands.”

  I was ashamed, feeling like a defector.

  “It happened to me, too, when I started out.” Jin extended his hands. “Now look at them. They feel like iron. Go home and try to be a good student. Maybe someday you'll go to college and won't have to do hard work like this anymore. You can still shoot for it. The rest of us are too old for that.” He looked at my sisters.

  On our way home, I trailed behind Mom in silence, holding both my hands gingerly stretched out.

  “Do you still want to be a farmer?” Mom asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Then study hard. You can choose your future; your sisters and brother can't. You're lucky. If they had blisters like yours, they would still have to be there till the last stem was harvested. It's their life.”

  Mom's words stayed with me for a long time.

  The smell of soil and a vague other scent permeated the endless, brutal fields. I wouldn't miss it if I were never to return. The beauty of nature and the muddy fragrance at harvest used to fill me with emotion. Now the fields looked like a graveyard, filled with hungry ghosts that grabbed at my arms and legs. I didn't want to have my youth and future buried here.

  As I followed Mom home, I felt a strong desire to start lessons with Professor Wei, to go back to school. There was a future somewhere for me other than hoes and sickles. There should be no hardship at school that I couldn't overcome. I was never more determined than at that moment. I felt fortunate. As Mom and Jin had said, I still had a chance.

  The pain in my back and hands throbbed, but all I felt was gratitude for my family and a desire to succeed at school.

  FIFTEEN

  In late August, the lotus leaves floated lazily on the calm surface of the Dong Jing River. The clouds seemed distant, and in the fields, drab after the harvest, buffalo ducked their horns and pulled the heavy plows, bearing the weight on their callused shoulders, tossing up the flattened soil in readiness for the new plantings. They mooed—a sound the farmers interpreted as a prediction of rain for the following day.

  Their brethren, a few acres away, joined in, and soon the whole buffalo community was mooing, like foxes howling in the high western mountains on a night lit by a full moon. Autumn filled me with emptiness, as if my heart knew the bleak winter was near. The sound of the buffalo always seemed to me the lonesome song of Yellow Stone's autumn. I used to sit by the river and stare at the buffalo in the distance, letting their song take me back to the distant memory of the summer now behind me, leaving me forlorn and melancholy.

  One morning, Mom woke me and told me to put on a clean shirt because Professor Wei would like to start her lessons with me. I jumped out of bed like a young fish frolicking in shallow waters under the sun. I washed my face with soap, brushed my teeth three times, with a double load of toothpaste, and combed my hair into neat furrows, parted on the right. I even looked into details such as nose hair and earwax for five minutes in front of the broken half-mirror in my room.

  I carried my English book in my schoolbag and walked along the deserted alley instead of the broad street for fear of getting teased by my friends, who usually took up their positions at the bridge and laughed at every soul who passed. If they had seen me, they would have roughed up my hair and tried to make me smoke until I smelled like a smokestack.

  As I neared the western end of town, I became more selfconscious. My voice would sound too loud or too provincial. Even my toes seemed funny, sticking out of the sandals. The breeze had blown my way and no doubt my hair looked like a bird's nest by now. I touched it lightly with my fingers. It felt all wrong. I squatted by the river and checked my wavering image in the water. A few strands of hair were sticking up. I pasted them down with water and opened my mouth wide to make sure no food was stuck in my teeth. Then I ran along until I stood in front of the forbidding door to the Weis' estate. Only after I had caught my breath did I knock, cautiously.

  I heard the low rumble of a dog. It was sniffing away behind the door, becoming excited
as it caught my scent. It seemed to say, “Welcome to the Wei estate, and could I have your ass for lunch?” I took a step backward and almost peed in my pants.

  “Shhh … be polite.” A gentle female voice came from behind the door. The dog growled some more and barked grumpily. I took another step back. Politeness was not quite the issue here; he wanted to eat me.

  “You are a naughty dog today, go sit in your house.” The voice became firmer this time. Gee, how about locking him up? He was only a flesh-eating animal. He dragged his feet away, shuffling along the ground, reluctantly leaving. No doubt his eyes still lingered on the door, no doubt he was still full of evil thoughts about having me for lunch. After all, it was a man-eat-dog or dog-eat-man world out there.

  The door opened and a white-haired Professor Wei smiled like a white lily in full bloom.

  “Come in, please,” she said in English.

  My mind rapidly searched for an answer. I knew “Sit down, please.” Our teacher used to say that sarcastically whenever I stood scratching my head, unable to answer any of his questions. Professor Wei wanted me to do something, but I did not know what. I didn't know whether to step forward or backward, to nod or to shake my head, until she gestured with her hand for me to come in.

  “Thank you, thank you.” I used up the only other two English words I knew in one single sentence, then cut my eyes left and right, looking for the fabled animal, who was probably whetting his teeth on stone and ratcheting his appetite up for my skinny behind.

  “It should not be ‘Tank you.' It should be ‘Thank you,' with the tip of your tongue between your teeth,” she said as I followed her into the garden.

  It was the first time I had opened my big mouth and I had already tanked her instead of thanking her. This was going to be great. She might as well return me to the other side of the wall, where I belonged.

  But she smiled, showing a shallow dimple in her lined face, like a sweet little girl trapped inside wrinkled makeup. “I like your hair. Nowadays, kids just don't comb their hair like they used to.” I blushed. I understood her this time; she had switched to Chinese.

  Had it not been for the river outside, my hair would have been sticking out like a sprouting onion garden. I was thankful. First impressions were important. I wondered what she would have said had my hair been less than perfect. Then there would surely have been nothing positive left about me in her eyes. She was doing this because she felt she and her sister owed my dad. That was it. I wouldn't be surprised if she told me after the first lesson that I was as impossible to educate as that dog out there. He probably understood more English than I did after all the eavesdropping he did from his own little house.

  “Come on in, don't worry about the floor, and sit down here.” She pointed to a cozy couch.

  Good thing she spoke in Chinese or I would have mistaken it as an order to take off my sandals and crawl on my knees to avoid touching her floors with my dirty feet. I tiptoed across the living room, making my footprints as faint as possible. As I sank into the sofa, I was surprised how deep down I went. It wrapped my bottom snugly like no other chair I had ever sat in. I felt cradled by the touch of something soft and velvety. A sense of undeserved comfort swept over me.

  Professor Wei pulled a chair over next to me. I straightened up from my own like a puppet pulled by its strings. She put her hand on mine to keep me from jumping out of my seat.

  “I was very glad to hear from your lovely dad that you wanted to study English with me. What a refreshing idea!” She tossed her silver head and her eyes filled with a soft glow. Then her voice changed ever so slightly. “Nowadays, kids out there only do bad things like smoking, gambling, fighting, and worse, talking about girls at such young ages.” I shifted uncomfortably in my seat and felt the pack of Flying Horse in my back pocket; I was going to light a cigarette just as soon as I was out of there. The urge to smoke was alive and kicking.

  “Now, why don't you show me how much English you know and I'll design a program for you.” She crossed her legs and placed her hands one on top of the other on her knees, comfortable in her role as audience.

  I knew the time of embarrassment had come. I fumbled in my schoolbag and fished out the untouched English book. I regretted not tearing out the second page, all scribbled over with caricatures of my English teacher.

  “Read me the alphabet.” That wasn't a bad place to start.

  I cranked along with my rusty pronunciation, more and more unsure the further I went. I was red-faced at G, sweating at H, trembling at I, and lightheaded at J. The English sounds seemed to block my air passage, and my lips went dry. I almost choked on those strange, vocal-cord-twisting letters. She stopped me just in time.

  “It's hard, isn't it?” I nodded, red-faced and mortified.

  “I don't want you to pronounce those letters from your imagination. You made up some of the sounds as you went along, didn't you? Now, follow me.” She half closed her eyes and read each letter slowly.

  “A, B, C, D, E.” She stopped and looked at me. “You made E sound like A. Now try again.” Her voice was like music to my ears. I wondered how different my life would have been had my goldfish-eyed teacher in school had one tenth of her elegance.

  I imitated the movements of her mouth. She stopped at E, tilted her head, and listened quietly as I went over the letter until I beat it to death. Then she nodded reluctantly. We moved on.

  The last letter, Z, took us a good three minutes. No matter how hard I stretched my neck, I could not get it. She looked at me patiently, with a slight frown, like a doctor trying to decide which remedy to use. I felt totally useless and stupid.

  “So much for today.” She was declaring me a failure. I wasn't wanted back—because of my dirty feet and ignorance, I was sure. She was going to give a weak excuse to spare me, but when I was gone, she would say to herself in English, What a terrible kid! Not only ignorant, but also impossible to cultivate. Perfect farmer material. My head went wild.

  “You are very, very smart, I can tell from our first lesson.” She cupped her tiny hands, which were still beautiful, under her elegant chin. “I am full of hope for you,” she said. “If only you would come every day.” Her eyes were glowing with light as she looked at me. She was asking me to come back; I couldn't believe it. Hope filled me up again as if I were a sagging balloon. I was ready to fly.

  I collected my bag and backpedaled toward the door, where my dear old friend the dog was staring at me. He breathed angrily through his dark wet snout. You were lucky to stay that long and still be breathing, he seemed to say. He looked disdainful now. He had heard my terrible pronunciation, so bad that it had ruined his appetite. He, the defender of the elegant, wanted to kill me for mangling such a beautiful language.

  You loser, don't ever come back again. His ears popped up, his eyes narrowed.

  “Be a good boy, back to your house,” Professor Wei said gently. The monster dragged his bushy tail and shot a hateful look at me over his shoulder before heading for his house. What a character—did I have to deal with this grump every single day? When would it end? The day I lost my ass to him? I picked my way gingerly behind the monster, darted through the door, and let out a huge sigh as I fished out a Flying Horse. My eyes darted around, making sure Professor Wei wasn't witnessing another deadly sin from her lofty window upstairs. I would have waited if I could, but my vocal cords were screaming with desire to be smoked red and blue, and my heart throbbed with the excitement of surviving this landmark day. I needed to calm down or I would find myself jumping into the cool river. I was overcome with mixed feelings of joy and sadness. This was a new start to my boring and hopeless life, but it would be a long, uphill ride from the very bottom. The hill was Everest and I was starting out somewhere under the Pacific Ocean.

  SIXTEEN

  The school was without I-Fei now, and I had stopped going to the rehearsals. My classmates stared at me as though I were a dinosaur. Most of them hated me because I was arrogant, pompous, and too much of an
artistic star. In elementary school, they would have gotten together and beat me up, but times had changed. I was the big guy, sitting in the backseat, angry, ignorant, a fallen star of yesterday, a hostile sight to avoid. They cold-shouldered me. The rest of the school carried on as if I weren't there. I watched them disdainfully and quietly. A few smaller guys in class still speculated that I had dated the most beautiful girl in the school's performing troupe. They winked at me when they saw her pass our classroom window. I said nothing and kept them guessing in order to maintain the last ounce of respect I commanded among the students.

  Dia was one of the guys who warmed up to me after he saw the vacancy left behind by I-Fei. He was a thin fellow who seemed to jump rather than walk. He had monkey ears and his hair was always a messy lawn that seemed as if it hadn't been mown for ages. He lived in a poor village ten miles west of Yellow Stone and walked to school every morning at sunrise, returning home at about eight each night. He was one of those kids known around the school as walkers to distinguish them from the students who bunked at the school dorm. He was the only person I knew who made thicker and longer tobacco rolls than Yi. And he used old newspaper to roll them. Sometimes when he ran out of old newspaper he would run around school looking for any scrap paper he could find.