“And you're thinking of college?” He looked at me, surprised.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, when was the last time you did your homework?”
“There's always time.”
“No time can make up for that. We're two years behind everything. And this is a lousy school to begin with. The teachers are suckers. Good thing I don't have to depend on them.”
“Right, you can always go and become a driver.”
“I'll make you a driver too. I really could try my dad on that one,” he said, smiling. “Here, smoke.”
I pushed his hand away.
The bell rang. The first class was English.
“Let's go in, I-Fei.”
“You go ahead; let me finish smoking,” he said coolly, a little grumpy at my new attitude.
I threw myself inside through our usual route, the window, and landed right in my seat. The teacher was leaning against the desk, trying to catch his breath. His glasses slipped to the tip of his nose and his beady eyes were looking around but not seeing anything. Boys and girls were still talking noisily. The teacher commanded no respect. He didn't care. He weighed two pieces of chalk in his hands.
One he held like a cigarette, the other was to throw at the most badly behaved student in class. You could count on being hit right on the tip of your nose.
“To what do I owe this honor, Mr. Da?” the teacher asked.
I ducked down. I hadn't been to his class for a long time.
“No rehearsal today?” The teacher threw the chalk at me. It landed on my head.
The class laughed.
I stayed down, quiet.
“If you had let me know earlier, I could have prepared something special for you, like an ABC lesson.” He laughed along with the class and, as usual, ended up coughing until his face turned blue. He leaned on the desk until the spasm passed.
I felt embarrassed and ashamed, but I was angry, too.
Cough some more, you fool, I thought.
Outside the window, I-Fei was making a face at me, gesturing for me to join him.
“Yeah, why don't you just let yourself out and have a smoke with your pal down there?” The teacher caught his breath, then threw another piece of chalk at I-Fei, which hit his forehead.
Laughter again.
I could feel my face turn red, then white. I decided to leave the room and never return. As I crossed the threshold, I heard him say, “Now we can start our lesson.”
I-Fei had already lit a cigarette for me. Quietly I took a long drag as soon as I was out of the teacher's sight.
“What did I tell you?” I-Fei said. “There's no place for us there. We might as well be the kind of students that we have always been.”
“I wasn't always like this,” I said, puffing.
“I know,” I-Fei said. “You should have learned then what you know now.”
“You know everything.”
“You're my best friend. People told me things after we beat up that Han guy.”
“I used to be a very good student.”
“But you were a miserable wimp,” he said.
“That wasn't my fault,” I said harshly.
I-Fei changed the subject. “Suppose you were a good student. Do you think a college would take you?”
“Do you mean with my family background?” He nodded.
“But my aunt said it was regardless of one's family background.”
“And you believe that?”
“Why shouldn't I?”
“Because my dad said it was just a pretense. There will be different standards for admission. This society isn't going to change that fast. No offense to you people.” He shook his head and threw a stone at a passing bird as we left school for the day.
From then on, miserably, I carried my schoolbag, heavy with untouched books, heading for classes I didn't understand. I would ask this student and that student, humbly trying to catch up on my own. But the more I learned, the more I realized how much I had missed and the more depressed I got. I was too ashamed to talk about it to my parents or to any teachers, most of whom had given up on me by now.
But my parents had noticed that I had been spending more time in my room, using a kerosene lamp at night, looking at my textbooks, and occasionally gingerly trying out some English pronunciations. I often heard Sen and Mo Gong whistling outside my window to get my attention, but I tried to control myself.
One night, the whistling lasted longer and I knew they couldn't wait anymore.
“You've become a bookworm nowadays,” Mo Gong said.
“You can't simply close the window and not answer us.”
“What's going on, brother?” I asked.
“Well, Yi is leaving.”
“Where's he going?”
“His grandpa is retiring from the factory and Yi is taking over his job as an office worker.”
We walked to Yi's workshop, where there was a table of food waiting for us. Sen, Siang, and Yi rushed over, picked me up, and threw me onto the sawdust.
“The place is clean!” I exclaimed to Yi, dusting my coat. “You're really getting out of here?”
“Yeah. I was hoping you would get into the county performing troupe so that we could be working in Putien together.”
“You have to go alone for now,” I said.
“Let's celebrate our first breakthrough among the brothers,” Sen said. “Yi, don't you ever forget us. I'm still the eldest.”
“He's going to marry a fair-skinned Putien City girl and she's going to say she'll leave if you keep those dirty friends,” Siang joked.
“Talk about marrying,” Sen said, “Da, you should write a letter for Yi to his old master's daughter, Ping. Remember her? And tell her the news.”
“Maybe in English,” Mo Gong said. “I heard you making those funny sounds.”
“Shut up, you,” I said good-naturedly.
“Don't be shy. We want you to do good. I would want you, if anyone, to make us proud by being a college student,” Sen said. “The rest of us are history. You're our only hope.”
The party ended with us wrestling each other on the soft sawdust. I promised to go with Yi to his factory the next day and help him carry the luggage. We chatted about the future until midnight. I told them I wanted to go to college. They laughed and said if I could master the art of that four-stringed thing the name of which they still didn't quite know how to say, then I should have no problem. They were my true friends. There was a generous spirit among them, not jealousy. As I walked home alone in the darkness, whistling, I saw a star shine brilliantly over the top of our ancient pine tree to the east of Yellow Stone. I was like that, only a twinkle in the dark.
THIRTEEN
The western tip of Yellow Stone was all river and ancient lychee trees that dipped low in the water. In summer, strawhatted boatmen poled along slowly between the green branches that were in their way. The lychees, ripe and juicy, burned red like the cheeks of a gaudily painted woman and made the branches droop even lower. Only cicadas disturbed the tranquillity.
In the crook of the river, where the houses thinned and the trees thickened, nestled a three-story white house with a red-tiled roof. A tall wall fenced it off. It was a small world within itself. The entrance stayed closed at all times. Only the tops of papaya trees could be seen from the outside. The little white house belonged to twin sisters, the Weis, who were Baptists and had never married. In the town where Buddha called the shots, the little white house by the river was a symbol of something alien yet sacred.
People said the twins read the Bible in the sun and prayed under the moonlight. They lived a quiet life and paid for a maid to do the shopping and cleaning for them. Occasionally, they had visitors on weekends. Townspeople whispered that they were secretly involved in some sort of ceremony. Their father was one of the first Chinese Baptist ministers in Putien, and the twins had grown up in a Baptist church run by American missionaries. The Americans taught them English, and th
ey went on to become English professors at a teachers' college in Fuzhou. When the college closed down, they retired into the country, where their father had held the first Sunday service in the history of Yellow Stone.
The white-haired twin sisters enjoyed a special status among the townspeople. They were the closest thing to real Westerners. Those few who had been inside the home had had a glimpse of a mysterious life behind those closed doors.
The old vegetable man claimed to have heard the twin sisters talking in “the language of the red hair,” probably English, one day when he was making a delivery. It was gentle, like singing, he said. The old cleaning lady insisted that the twins only used forks and knives. It puzzled the local people. It was such a terribly unlucky thing to do, using a knife at the dining table. Maybe it was the different god they believed in who helped them ward off the consequences of all the wrong things they did.
One day, after dark, we heard a gentle knocking at our door.
Dad opened it. Outside stood the white-haired Professor Wei, one of the twin sisters. Upon recognizing her, Dad took a step back.
“May I come in, please?” Her voice was so gentle and sincere.
“Of course, of course.” Dad opened the door wide and let her in.
She bowed and smiled sweetly at us. We put down our chopsticks and bowed back to her. She was a petite lady in her late sixties. Upright and dignified, she seemed taller than her mere five feet. Her white hair was braided and twisted into a bun in back, neat and elegant.
“How may I help you, Professor?” Dad asked politely. He gestured for us kids to leave the room. We hurried out, then stuck our ears against the closed door.
“Please forgive me for intruding at such a late hour.” She took out a handkerchief and continued. “My poor dear sister has had a minor stroke, and now her mouth is twisted to one side. I have heard of your reputation. Can you please help her?”
“I am flattered.” Dad rubbed his hands like a joyful kid. “I'll be more than happy to see what I can do.” Dad was in his best mood when he was called upon to help others.
“Mother,” he called out to my mom, as if he knew that we were behind the closed door listening to every single word, “get me the blue jacket and a flashlight. I need to go out.” Mom hurried in with his jacket, the one with all his acupuncture needles. I passed him the flashlight he kept under his pillow.
“God bless you. You are a kind man, as they said. I don't know how to thank you, Dr. Chen.”
“Please don't call me Doctor, just Ar Gang.” Dad was beaming. He didn't know what to do with the “God bless you” part.
“We can wait until tomorrow morning. I just needed to let my poor sister know. If you agree to treat her, then she will sleep peacefully tonight.”
“She needs to be seen as soon as possible,” Dad said.
“Oh, how can I thank you all!” She turned and bowed to each of us again.
We all bowed back.
After Dad left, I told the others that he had made a mistake.
“What mistake?” Mom asked.
“Well, when Professor Wei said ‘God bless you,' Dad should have said something polite back. I'm sure she was expecting it.”
“And what should he have said?” Mom asked.
“Buddha bless you!” They all laughed.
We were all proud of Dad. This case would put him at another level.
I was sure he had chills crawling up his spine at being called a doctor by her. This was a landmark, a milestone in Dad's career. It would be whispered about for a long time to come.
The other twin had had a light stroke. Dad soon began to see some progress. He reported that she was able to utter her first clear sound after two weeks of intensive and painful treatment. She was resilient and cooperative.
To thank Dad, the twins insisted on paying him for his work, but Dad wouldn't hear of it. They asked him whether there was anything they could do for us in return. Dad said that the twins begged him to think of a way, otherwise they would feel bad.
One night I said to Dad, “Maybe they could teach me English in their spare time.”
He looked up from his medical book and stared thoughtfully at me for a second. “That's a wonderful idea. But your level might be a little too low for them. They taught in college, remember?”
“Maybe they won't mind,” I begged. “I could try. Son, how did you come up with such an idea?”
“Well, they have been trying to find a way to thank you.”
“Yeah, but tell me why you thought of it.” He put aside his book.
“They talk about college in school. I have no future. I'm not doing well, and I'm a couple of years behind. Other subjects are easier to make up, and I'm working on it, but no one can help me with English.”
“What about the English teachers?”
“They made fun of me when I went back to their classes. Besides, their pronunciation is terrible. Each time my teacher reads English, he sounds like he's choking on a fishbone. He spits and gets red-faced. I don't think Englishmen talk like that.”
Dad laughed. “Now, son, if you do get to study with Professor Wei, I want you to make at least as much effort as you did with the flute,” he said seriously.
I nodded.
That night, before falling asleep, I blew out the light, knelt down on the pillow, and kowtowed to Buddha to beg for help. For the first time, I didn't know what to ask for. I buried my face in the soft pillow until I began to stifle myself. I murmured in my head the word college, but I could feel my face blush with shame for even thinking about it. College was for the superior few who not only had extreme intelligence but diligence, too. What was I? That night I dreamed about being sent to a remote farm where I was forced to dig a rocky hill until I collapsed. I woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.
FOURTEEN
As the summer vacation drew near, Dad came back one day with the good news that Professor Wei would be willing to help tutor me in English. However, she would be away in Fuzhou for a couple of months, accompanying her sister, who would be in rehabilitation under the care of some famous doctors. She would see me when she returned.
I was happy and nervous at the same time. It gave me the whole summer to prepare, so maybe I wouldn't look too stupid. I drew up a study plan, leaving very little time for music or anything else.
A few days later, I-Fei rode his bike to my home and stopped briefly to tell me that he was leaving Yellow Stone for good and was transferring to another high school. Or maybe he would become a driver soon. He was extremely mysterious and his eyes kept looking beyond me. I asked him to stay for a while and chat about the old days, but he said it was a long way to travel to his mom's. So off he went, without regret. I was deeply hurt. He had been a loyal friend and great to be with. School would not be the same without him.
One day, when the remote Ching Mountain was wrapped in layers of lingering clouds that looked like a woman's hair flying loose in the wind, the commune sent an announcement over the loudspeaker system to warn the farmers of an impending typhoon. Suddenly all was chaos. The brigade leader banged on every member's door, urging the villagers to head for the fields and harvest the rice. All of it, even that which was still green, was to be cut rather than be ruined in the flood.
My eldest sister was away in Han Jian, working at her temporary job in the canned food factory—a violation of the commune's no-working-out-of-town-in-harvesttime rule. Dad asked me if I could step in and do her work, so the next day, while it was still dark, Mom awakened me at dawn. My brother, Jin, and my two sisters, Huang and Ke, were already at the dining table stuffing themselves with fried rice by the bowlful and washing it down with the soup Mom had been preparing since midnight. My brother, now a veteran farmer at the age of twenty-two, could eat as many as three large bowlfuls before going to work. Everyone worked fourteen-hour days, and Jin couldn't stand being hungry in the fields. After burping a few times, he lit a cigarette and put on his straw hat, ready to go.
> I had stuffed as much food into my mouth at four in the morning as I could. Mom had warned me that I wouldn't eat again until one in the afternoon. With my eyes half-closed, I smelled the freshly simmered rice as though it were still a sweet dream.
“Follow me, little brother.” After I, too, had burped with satisfaction, Jin gave me a sickle and out I went, barefoot, into the dark fields.
The edge of the sky was whitish, as if someone had barely lifted the lid off the earth. We walked in silence among the weeds and grasses still wet with dew. I dragged my feet, fighting the fatigue of being woken at such an ungodly hour, a time when I should have been having the sweetest dreams. I stumbled blindly after my brother, the leader of the group, who whistled, hummed, and smoked as casually as if it were just another day.
“Here we are. We have about five mus [about one acre] of rice to cut before the sun sets.” He pointed at the endless stretch of rice fields looming in the whitish dark. “The four of us will go in rows. I'll take the widest, then Ke and Huang will take the rows beside me. You, little brother, go slow and rest when you need to. Try to see if you can do that slice.” He indicated the edge of a huge plot and smiled at me.
“No problem. Give me more,” I said.
Jin showed me how to cut the tall rice stalks at their base and stack them behind me. He warned me not to cut my fingers in the dark. I stepped into the muddy, wet field, making a squishing noise. Some frogs and wild rats ran at the sound. Mosquitoes and insects hummed constantly around my nose, eyes, and ears, and I had to keep batting them away. I could feel the little worms and eels slithering away from under my toes. I closed my eyes and tried to think of something pleasant. The violin.
I grabbed big handfuls of stalks and cut them fiercely. My sisters stopped to check on me once in a while and were pleased with what I was doing. Soon the sun rose above the horizon and the endless fields gave off steam as the morning light embraced them. The rest of the land was still asleep.
The knee-high rice plants with needle-sharp leaves got in the way of my face and neck as I bent down. The fuzzy blades needed only to brush my skin to leave behind a red kiss. Soon the summer sun turned from gentle to glaring. Sweat beaded my forehead and trickled down into my eyebrows. My skin began to itch as though it were being attacked by thousands of slimy, crawling creatures angry that I had invaded their world with my sickle. I unbuttoned my drenched shirt and peeled it off, wiping my cut, sweaty face with it before tossing it behind me. I clenched my jaw to keep from yelling out loud at the pain of my burning skin. I didn't want my sisters and brother to think that their little brother wasn't farmer material. As I stretched my sore back, feeling like the old hunched merchant next door who didn't know what the sky looked like anymore, I saw that they were already thirty yards ahead of me, tirelessly bending over the rice that only seemed to end where the sky launched a rainbow.