My heat rash was no longer red and itchy as the milk tree leaves began to turn shades of yellow and orange. Since I had the highest test scores at the end of third grade, Teacher Hui, who taught Chinese literature, had recommended to the school board that I skip fourth grade. I looked forward to starting fifth grade. Even though I would be the youngest in the class, I was sure I’d still be the first one to raise a hand to answer her questions.
Teacher Hui was slender and shorter than Mother and Mrs. Wong. She had a perm in her shoulder-length hair. She could wear a blue scarf many different ways. She often read my writing to the class as she slowly walked between the rows of desks. Once in a while, her beautiful double-lidded eyes would
smile at me. I liked the way she bent her fingers and pushed her curly hair behind her ears.
On the first day of the new school year, singing birds outside my window woke me early. I slipped into an outfit with the big red and white flowers that matched the one my doll Bao-bao wore. This was one of three matching outfits Mrs. Wong had made for us. Bao-bao was my only doll. Dr. Smith sent her to me one Christmas. Her big eyes closed when I laid her down for a nap. When I patted her tummy, she made happy, gurgling sounds.
I gave Bao-bao a good-bye kiss and slipped my purple schoolbag strap over my shoulder. Following Mother out the door, I ran my fingers over the big yellow butterfly on the front of my bag.
Unlike other mornings, I didn’t hear Comrade Li singing. He loved to sing Jiang Qing’s revolutionary operas. We always knew when he was in the bathroom. He sang from when he went in until he flushed the toilet. Father joked that his singing sounded like a strangled ghost. I hated to hear Comrade Li start, because it meant I had to rush to get ready for school.
Mother and I passed by Comrade Li’s door. It was open wide, but he wasn’t inside. In the middle of the courtyard, he led a group of neighbors in a Zhong, a loyalty dancing class to show their love for Chairman Mao. In front of them hung a giant portrait of Mao in a big wooden frame, neon lights stretched outward from him, as though he were a burning sun.
Comrade Li sang through a loudspeaker while the group chitchatted.
Great teacher, great leader,
You are the sun in all our hearts,
Dear Chairman Mao.
Long live Chairman Mao.
Long live, long live, long live, long live Chairman Mao!
Neighbors waved their hands above their heads and kicked their feet from side to side. Old ladies in the back gossiped as they danced. Old men puffed on hand-rolled cigarettes, and little boys waved canes and sticks like swords.
I wondered if the family of the undercover enemy was among them. It had been weeks since the arrest, but no one ever talked about it. When I questioned
my parents, Mother gave me her disapproving look. Father said, “It is grown-up business.”
Comrade Li’s voice broke on the high notes. Young nurses giggled. He continued:
Long live Chairman Mao!
Long live, long live Chairman Mao!
One young doctor sent his slipper flying right past me. Red-faced, he ran over to get it back. I wished I could stay to join the class. Then I could show off my ballet turns. But I didn’t want to be late for school.
When we walked by the milk trees lining the courtyard, I plucked a leaf and licked the sap. Mother glared at me, but I was too happy to care. The milk even tasted a bit sweet today. I was going to be in a class with older kids. None of them would have runny noses.
Mother said I was old enough to go to school by myself. She and I had made a few practice walks. The compound gate opened onto busy Victory Road. Across that road was the hospital. Between home and school, only Victory Road was wide enough for cars.
The rest of my way was through a short, narrow alley. Mother stopped at the left turn to Flower Alley.
“Come home as soon as morning classes are over,” she said. “And don’t talk to strangers.”
Nodding cheerfully, I skipped down the alley. In my mind, I practiced introducing myself to my new classmates. “Hello, I’m Ling. I’m glad to meet you. What’s your name?” Or, “Hello, what’s your name? Mine is Ling.”
I felt grown up now that I could walk to school by myself. During outings with Father to the park or the pastry shop, he had told me about the history of the city. Before Chairman Mao’s Communists took over, many foreigners lived here. They built the wide-paved streets lined with schools, churches, modern hospitals, tall office buildings, and fancy apartment buildings with kitchens and bathrooms. It was as if someone had picked up buildings from Western countries and scattered them all around the city. To celebrate the victory of the Communist Revolution, many of the streets had been renamed, such as Big Liberation Road, Victory Road, Workers and Parents Road, and Red Five Stars Road.
Along these streets, walls were covered with huge murals. Chairman Mao’s portraits, red flags, and posters of his teachings were in every corner of the city.
All the Westerners were gone now. When I thought about San Francisco, I wondered what kind of murals they had of their leader. Did he also wear a funny hat like Chairman Mao?
As I walked around the city with my parents, one moment we’d be among large Western-style buildings, and the next in one of many narrow stone-paved alleys. These older alleys were lined with single-story houses with low roofs. In warm weather, their doors were open. Families crowded inside. They had no bathrooms. When I used our large, clean bathroom, I often felt sorry for those people who had to walk blocks to use dirty public bathrooms like the one at the end of Flower Alley.
I went in once and found there were no toilets, only holes in the ground. One girl squatted over a hole, reading a picture book, as if the smell didn’t bother her at all. The stink forced me to run right out.
Pinching my nose with my flowered handkerchief until I was well past the public bathroom, I turned
right at the end of the alley. There stood the school’s iron gates, painted bright blue. In front of the open gates, noisy boys and girls crowded around an old lady with white hair and a wrinkled face. A rope that looped behind her neck held up a small wooden tray in front of her. She was selling five-spiced watermelon seeds, rice candy, and two-inch-long purple sugar canes. Mother would never allow me to buy anything from street vendors. She said the treats were covered with germs.
Squeezing through the crowd, I ran inside the school courtyard. Three boys from my old third-grade class were dribbling white liquid from teakettles onto the ground, drawing lines for a basketball game. They stopped when they saw me. I smiled at them. They grinned and looked away.
A big cloth picture of Chairman Mao with a group of Young Pioneers hung from the three-story building. In it, the Young Pioneers huddled around Chairman Mao as he extended his arms over them. I thought of baby ducklings and an old duck. I looked forward to joining the Young Pioneers and wearing a red scarf around my neck, just like the older kids in the courtyard.
I had used Father’s red silk tie to practice making the knot.
I found my name on the list beside the second classroom on the first floor. Someone tapped my shoulder. It was Hong, my friend from third grade. Her smile dimpled her round cheeks.
“So are you really skipping a grade?” she asked.
I nodded.
“I’ll miss you,” she said.
“We can still play together.” I patted her arm. “I have to go now.”
I couldn’t wait to meet my new classmates. Taking a deep breath, I walked in. Rows of wooden desks and long benches filled the room. A group of boys and girls stood near the door beside the blackboard. Although I was skipping only one grade, the fifth-graders were much taller and bigger than I was. Half were dressed in Mao’s army uniforms and wore red scarves. I forgot the greetings I had practiced.
A girl with dark skin standing in the center of the crowd called out, “Look, look, here comes the bloodsucking landlord!” The crowd turned toward me and laughed loudly. I froze. The girl’s short hair barely
showed under her blue cap. Her blue shirt and pants had different-colored patches at the elbows and knees. She wore an old pair of army shoes with her big toes sticking out. She looked like a peasant.
“I bet she can crow like a rooster,” said a rabbit-faced fat boy. The brass buttons on his new Mao’s uniform shone in the sunlight. My face burned. Another wave of laughter filled the room.
They were comparing me to the landlord in the movie Midnight Rooster. I had seen it last summer when it was playing in all the theaters. In the movie, the cruel landlord always wore an outfit with large flowers. She and her husband ordered the workers to get up when the rooster crowed. At midnight, she crowed like a rooster, tricking the peasants into starting work hours before dawn.
I bit my lip to stop my tears. My outfit had large flowers, but I wasn’t an evil landlord! I couldn’t crow like a rooster—I didn’t even like roosters. Tears rolled down my cheeks. The crowd didn’t quiet down until the bell rang.
Through the morning, we studied four different subjects: Chinese writing, Chinese history, math,
and drawing. During recess no one talked to me. Sitting by myself, I stared at the whitewashed wall where a huge portrait of Mao hung above the blackboard. I wondered what I had done wrong.
Laughter and the noise of dribbling basketballs came through the windows. Why were they so happy? How stupid I was to look forward to this all summer. How was I going to survive the rest of the school year?
I couldn’t wait to tell Mother when I went home for lunch. Last year, a boy stepped on my new shoes. Mother talked to his parents, and the boy said he was sorry and stopped bothering me.
After morning classes, I raced home and told Mother about the mean kids. “Could you talk to their parents?”
Mother frowned and said impatiently, “Don’t wear that dress to school again.”
That afternoon, before going back to school, I changed into a white blouse and blue pants, hoping no one would pick on me. But as soon as I walked into the classroom, the short-haired girl, Yu, shrieked, “The little landlord is pretending to be working class.”
She shook her dirty finger at me. “We revolutionaries can smell a wolf under her human skin.”
“Wolf, wolf, wolf!” her friends chanted.
I glared at her clothes, dirty and covered with patches. “I would rather be a wolf than look like you,” I whispered, and walked toward my seat.
The rabbit-faced boy sniffed at me as I passed. Others laughed and made sniffing sounds. My back was instantly soaked with sweat. My knees trembled under my desk until class started. Why were they picking on me for no reason?
The teasing did not stop until the math teacher entered the classroom. He was a stern old man with thick glasses. For the first time, I wished that math class would never end. During breaks, I stayed in my seat and pretended to read Mao’s little red book. Fortunately, Yu led everyone outside to bully someone else.
Later, I learned the rabbit-faced boy’s name was Gao. His father was an important person sent by the army to oversee the Cultural Revolution in our district.
Yu and Gao continued to bully me by calling me bloodsucking landlord. In less than a week, everyone
in the class had stopped using my real name during recess. I did my best to ignore them. If I had only known, I would never have skipped a grade.
One morning in mid-September, I didn’t see Father at breakfast.
“Where’s Daddy?” I asked Mother.
She set out a glass of homemade soy milk and a plate with two steamed buns and slices of vegetarian sausage. “He went to check on one of his patients.”
I was about to ask whether I’d see him before I left for school when weeping noises came down the chimney pipe from upstairs. I stopped eating. “Listen. Someone is crying.” It was Mrs. Wong! I jumped out of my chair.
“You stay and finish your breakfast. I’ll go.” Mother ran toward the door. I hardly ever saw her run. “Ladies should walk with grace,” she always told me.
I left my breakfast and pressed my ear to the fireplace pipe. The words were hard to understand. I wished I could turn into a little bug and crawl up the pipe to see what was happening there! Finally, Mother returned with tears in her eyes.
“Dr. Wong disappeared last night after Comrade Li called him to his office.”
I was too shocked to cry. What happened to Dr. Wong? I hoped my friend Comrade Li would help us find him. He knew so many people, even the policemen.
“Please, Momma, let me go see Mrs. Wong!”
“No, she’s too upset right now. Go! You’re late for school.” Mother hung my schoolbag over my shoulder and pushed me toward the front door.
I didn’t hear a thing Teacher Hui said that day. My thoughts were as busy as the traffic on Victory Road. I wished I could ask Teacher Hui my questions. What happened to Dr. Wong? Did it have to do with his brother in Hong Kong? Was it because he was Dr. Smith’s student? If so, what might happen to Father?
That night Father and I met Comrade Li in the hallway coming out of the bathroom.
“Good evening, Comrade Li,” said Father. “Could you please tell me what happened to Dr. Wong?”
Comrade Li rudely pushed his way between us. “Dr. Wong is an enemy of the state. He dared to
write a letter that criticized Chairman Mao,” he said loudly. “That is all you need to know.” He slammed his door behind him.
I was shocked that he called Dr. Wong an enemy. Why would he criticize Chairman Mao? Was Comrade Li angry with Father because he was Dr. Wong’s best friend?
Father and Mother stayed up late that night, whispering in their bedroom. In my bed, I held Bao-bao tight. My fear for Dr. Wong and Father tore at me like rats tearing at a rice sack.