Finally, one May evening, Uncle Tian brought us some thrilling news: Dad was cleared of the charge of listening to foreign radio.
It turned out that Uncle Zhu—not Uncle Fan—was to blame. Uncle Zhu had been detained himself, and had wanted to improve his own situation by cooperating with the investigation. He had made up the story about the foreign radio, thinking that if he confessed to something, he would be treated with leniency. When Dad steadily denied his participation, the theater people got angrier and angrier. They pressed Uncle Zhu for details. He stupidly told them that he and Dad had used a transistor radio, which they had buried in Zhu’s courtyard. The theater people went straight to Zhu’s house and tore up the courtyard looking for the evidence, but they found nothing. They were furious and gave Uncle Zhu a good beating. Finally he admitted to making up the whole story.
What a terrible man, I thought, worse than a traitor. At least a traitor betrays people by telling the truth. Uncle Zhu tried to save himself by telling lies.
We were all overjoyed that Dad would be coming home. Grandma was in tears, and she could not stop thanking Allah for his blessing. Mom seemed much better, and Ji-yun kept pestering Grandma to buy shrimp, Dad’s favorite food, for his homecoming. For the first time in my life I thought maybe there really was a God who had heard the prayers Grandma had been saying every night since Dad had been detained.
I had the window over the sink open, and warm air blew over my face as I rinsed the vegetables and put the rice on the stove.
I heard steps on the stairs, and thought it was Mom coming back from the doctor. But when I turned around I saw Dad. I shouted. Grandma and Ji-yun came running out the door. As we met on the landing, Dad lifted his arms to embrace us. Then he immediately lowered them and glanced over his shoulder at the two stern men who were right behind him. Ji-yong pounded up the stairs and pushed between the men, then stopped.
“I came… to get some clothes,” Dad said.
“Aren’t you coming back to stay?” Ji-yong asked, and we all looked at Dad. He just shook his head.
“We’re going to have shrimp,” Ji-yun announced hopefully.
Grandma started to say something, then looked at Dad’s two escorts and shut her mouth. She hurried away to open the chest, and the rest of us followed Dad slowly into the apartment. Even Ji-yun was silent now.
It had been three months since I had seen him last. He looked smaller. His old blue jacket hung loosely on his body, and his back stooped wearily. His shaggy hair hung over his collar, and the black stubble on his face made his eyes seem even more sunken.
We all looked at each other, wanting to ask so many questions but not daring to say anything in front of the guards. Grandma hurried up and laid a pile of clothes on the table. Her hands shook, and so did Dad’s as he took the bag she handed him. He slowly sorted through the clothes and put some of them in his bag.
Something wet fell on the bag.
I looked up. A tear rolled down Dad’s cheek, and another. He wiped it away, but as soon as he did, another took its place.
I had never seen Dad cry before. Soon I was crying too, and so was Ji-yun. We all wept along with him.
“Let’s go. Bring your clothes,” one of the men ordered.
Dad picked up his bag and looked at us. “I’m going. Be good. Tell your mother to take care of herself.” He turned toward Grandma but then turned his eyes away. “Good-bye, Mother.” He quickly followed the two men down the stairs.
We clung to each other as we watched him go. We all dashed up to the roof to watch him walk down the alley. He walked a little in front of his escorts. The triangle made by the three heads grew smaller and smaller.
“Dad!” Ji-yun finally shouted, but he had already vanished around the corner.
A week passed and Dad still had not come home. And no one knew why.
As I came up the stairs after school, Mom was just seeing a man and a woman out the door. I had never seen them before, and I immediately wondered if they had come with news about Dad. Leaning weakly on the doorframe, Mom politely said, “Please take care,” several times, but the visitors went straight downstairs without making any response.
I walked into the room and saw two cups of tea on the table, no longer hot but obviously untouched. Grandma had collapsed in the old rattan chair, not moving, her face pale and filled with despair. Mom sat down and leaned limply against the back of her chair. Her eyes were closed and she said nothing. I could not bring myself to ask what had happened. I fiddled with the cold teacups, more and more nervous.
After a long while Mom gestured for me to sit down beside her.
“Yesterday’s Workers’ Revolt had an article on the front page about the Jiang family.” She had to stop for breath. “It said that the Jiangs were a big landlord family in Nanjing that owned over thirty-three hundred acres of land and lots of businesses. They were so rich that people called them the ‘Half-City Jiangs.’ Would you go buy a paper? I want to look at it.”
I blinked my eyes in confusion but could not get up.
Mom nodded in the direction of the untouched teacups on the table. “The people who were just here came to investigate. Your cousins were mentioned in the article, and they wanted to know more about them… .”
I did not hear the rest of what Mom was saying. My mind was swimming. “Half-City Jiangs” and “thirty-three hundred acres of land”! Everybody read the Workers’ Revolt. Suddenly I pictured my teachers and classmates reading the sensational article, passing it around and gossiping about it. “Jiang Ji-li’s family is the Half-City Jiangs… thirty-three hundred acres of land.” Somehow I found myself standing up, a teacup in my hand, and a puddle of spilled tea on the table.
Why had my parents hidden these things from me? What else was there? Had Dad really committed a crime? Why hadn’t the theater let him come home? Anger rose in me. Didn’t they know how hard I’d been working to overcome my family background? Now all my efforts were wasted.
“I hate landlords. I hate this landlord family,” I burst out. They were the first words I had spoken since I got home.
As I turned to leave, I saw tears welling out of Mom’s closed eyes.
I had not talked to Mom for two days. If she asked me to help set the table or to call Ji-yong to dinner, I did it, but I did not say a word to her. Every time I looked at her, I saw the tears welling out of her eyes, but I could not apologize.
As usual, I walked past the police station on the way home from school. When I was past it and almost to the corner, I stopped. I hesitated for a long time, then turned back.
It was lunchtime. There was no one in the street in front of the police station. The red light beside the gate seemed to welcome me.
I timidly looked inside. The room was so dark that I could not see whether anyone was there or not. I started to turn away. I could come back another time, I told myself.
I heard Pudge’s snide voice again. “Jiang Ji-li, is your family related to Chiang Kai-shek too?” My other classmates had stood in excited knots, looking at me over their shoulders, before turning back to their gossip. I remembered the jeering chant of the neighborhood boys who had followed me down the alley: “Half-City Jiangs! Half-City Jiangs! Down with the landlord Half-City Jiangs!”
No! I did not want to have this damned name anymore! I had had enough. All my bad luck and humiliation came from the name Jiang. I had seen stories in the paper about people who had changed their names. They had started life anew. If I just dropped my family name, I could be named Ji Li and be lucky, just as it meant.
I stepped forward. “Comrade?” I called toward the dark reception room. No one answered.
I looked at the directory and headed up the stairs to the household registration office.
The sign on the door said, RESIDENCE REGISTRATION, and below that was an even larger sign that said, NO ENTRANCE WITHOUT PERMISSION. There was a barred window about two feet square and a huge slogan, which occupied one whole wall: CLASS STRUGGLE IS THE KEY.
I looked through the window. The office was empty, but the lights were on, and I could hear a radio playing behind a plywood partition.
“Comrade.”
There was no answer.
“Comrade?” I raised my voice and knocked loudly on the counter.
A chair moved inside the office, and a man came out from behind the plywood partition. It was Officer Ma, the policeman in charge of residence registration for our neighborhood.
“What do you want?” he asked impatiently before he even looked at me. “Can’t you let me have lunch in peace?” He waved his chopsticks at me.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m terribly sorry,” I said, shrinking back with my schoolbag in front of me like a shield.
“What is it?” He stared down at me through the window, picking his teeth with his finger.
“I can wait until you’ve finished lunch,” I said apologetically.
“I asked you what you want, but I don’t care if you don’t want to tell me.” He turned around.
“Wait! I… I want to change my name,” I said timidly.
“What?”
“I want to change my name.”
“Change your name? Why?” He picked his teeth again.
“I… I don’t have a good class status. So I want to change my family name.”
He took his finger out of his mouth and began to pay attention. “Good. Revolutionary action.” He opened the door. “Come in, come in. I’ll be ready in no time.”
I looked at him nervously. When he came into our alley, he held his head high and spoke in domineering tones. He seemed to swagger, and enjoyed having power. I did not trust this sudden friendliness.
He pointed me to a chair. “Making a clean break with your black family, that’s good. We absolutely support you.”
Break with my family? I did not understand him.
“Chairman Mao says you can’t choose your class status but you can choose your future. You couldn’t choose the family you were born into, but now that you’ve grown up, it’s time for you to choose your future. You can tell your parents you’ll follow Chairman Mao, not them. If they give you any trouble, just come here and tell us. We’ll go to their work units and hold struggle meetings against them… .”
He went on and on, waving his chopsticks. I was totally confused. I had only wanted to break with all those landlords in my family, not with Mom and Dad. Would changing my name mean breaking off relations with them? I thought of Aunt Xi-wen lying in the alley, and Shan-shan walking right past her.
“Well, I’ll go wash my hands and be back to register you in a minute.” He walked out of the office.
I sat in the empty room, picturing telling Mom and Dad that I had changed my name.
I jumped up and ran out.
The street was still the same. The sun was shining warmly, and there were few people in sight. I slowly loosened my fist from the strap of my schoolbag. It was dripping with sweat.
I was still sweating as I walked in our back door. On the stairs I could hear Grandma talking to someone.
“Please don’t. You shouldn’t do that. Please.”
I stopped and listened.
“Please give me the mop. When you do this, it makes us feel guilty.” Grandma’s voice was anxious now.
I knew who she was talking to then. Song Po-po must have come to mop the stairs. Ever since Dad had been detained, she had been doing things for us again. When we were not watching, she came and mopped the stairs. Every few days she bought some vegetables for us, and sometimes she even washed them and chopped them. Grandma tried to stop her, but Song Po-po would not listen.
“Mrs. Jiang, don’t worry. It’s nothing, I just do it when I don’t have anything to do. I did it for so long, I just can’t get used to not doing it. Besides, you’re having hard times right now and you need help. Don’t worry, I won’t let anybody see me.”
It sounded like Grandma went into the apartment. I was sure Song Po-po had gone back to her mopping.
Suddenly I found myself weeping. What everyone else was saying about us did not make any difference to Song Po-po. She treated us just the way she always used to. Life couldn’t be easy for her either, since she no longer had a job, but she was still concerned about others. I felt ashamed. I had been selfish and inconsiderate. Life was difficult for me, but it was even more difficult for Mom. How could I think of hurting her this way?
I heard Song Po-po go back into her room. I ran in and gave her a hug.
“Be careful, child, be careful. I’m just bringing this bowl of soup to your mother.”
“I’ll take it,” I said.