"Ling Suchee!" Hulan called out. "I am here! It is Liu Hulan!"
From inside the house Hulan heard a squeal, then her own name called out. A moment later an old woman stood in the doorway. "I didn't think you would come," the old woman said. "But you have."
"Suchee?"
Seeing Hulan's uncertainty, the woman came forward and took her arm. "It is I, Suchee, your friend. Come in. I will make tea. Have you eaten?"
Hulan stepped over the high threshold, which was designed to keep flood waters out. Except for the single bare lightbulb that hung from a rafter in the center of the room, she could have been stepping back in time a hundred, even a thousand years. The room held two kangs, beds made from wooden platforms. Once again memories rushed back. Hulan remembered her shock as a twelve-year-old on learning that people slept on these platforms instead of in soft beds. How the bones of Hulan and her young comrades had ached until the peasants had shown them how to make mattresses out of straw. Later that year, when freezing winds had come down from the north, the peasants had taught them to make quilts from raw cotton and to set braziers filled with hot coal under the platforms for warmth.
"Sit, Hulan. You must be tired."
Hulan did as she was told, perching on a stool made from a crate turned on end. She glanced around. There was so little here. The table, the upturned crates, the two beds. A shelf held two cups, four bowls- two large for noodles, two small for rice-three serving dishes, and an old soy sauce container filled with cooking utensils and chopsticks. To the right of the door was a small cabinet where Hulan supposed Suchee kept clothes and linens. On top Suchee had put together a simple altar with some sticks of incense, three oranges, a crudely carved Buddha, and two photographs. These would be of Suchee's husband and daughter.
Once the water was on, Suchee joined Hulan at the table. Too many things had happened in the last twenty-five years for these women to go straight to the reason Hulan had come. They needed to reconnect, to reestablish a rapport, to build again the trust that had once bound them almost as blood relatives. Yes, there would be time to talk about Miao-shan, but for now the two women spoke of Hulan's trip, of the changes she'd seen in Taiyuan, of life in Beijing, of Hulan's coming baby; of Suchee's crops of millet, corn, and beans, of the water shortage, of the oppressive heat.
Years ago they had been girls together, but since then they'd traveled very different roads. Except for those two years on the Red Soil Farm, Hulan had lived the sheltered and privileged life of a Red Princess. She had never wanted for clothes or food. Her position had allowed her considerable freedom to travel not only across China but also to the United States. She was not afraid of the government or of nature. All this showed in Hulan's clothes, in her smooth, pale skin, in the way she held herself as she sat on the upended crate, whereas, if she had seen Suchee on the street in Beijing, she would have taken her for someone sixty or seventy years old.
As twilight faded into darkness, Hulan began to see her girlhood friend hiding behind the old woman's face. Under the flickering light of a kerosene lantern-electricity was too expensive to use on a daily basis- Hulan saw how a lifetime of backbreaking work under an unforgiving sun had taken its toll. As a twelve-year-old Suchee had been stronger and far more robust than Hulan. But Hulan had spent the rest of her teenage years in America, eating meat at almost every meal, so now she was perhaps four inches taller than Suchee. Beyond this, Suchee's back was already curving into a dowager's hump due to years of carrying water and produce on a pole slung across her shoulders. Suchee's face pained Hulan most of all. As a girl Suchee had been beautiful. Her face had been round and full of life. Her cheeks had glowed pink. Now her skin was wrinkled and stained dark brown from the sun.
Of course, she had lived a much fuller life than Hulan. She had married and borne a child. She had also lost both her husband and her child. When Hulan looked straight into Suchee's eyes, she had to turn away. Behind the polite words Suchee was suffering from a loss that Hulan could not begin to imagine. Hardening her heart against the details that she knew would come, Hulan reached across the table and took Suchee's hand. "I think it's time you tell me about your daughter."
Suchee talked late into the night, recalling in painful detail Miao-shan's last day. Suchee had just finished locking the ox into its shed when she met her daughter, who was coming home for the weekend, having been away for several weeks at the Knight factory. Seeing Miao-shan on the dusty pathway that led to the house, Suchee instantly knew that her only child was pregnant. Miaoshan denied this accusation. "I told her, 'I am a peasant. I have grown up on the land. Do you think I don't know when an animal comes into season? Do you think I don't know when a creature is with child?'" Faced with these basic truths, Miaoshan had broken down completely. With tears streaming down her face-the Western display of emotion doing little to settle Suchee's fears-Miaoshan had confessed everything.
There were so many sayings that covered chastity and what happened when one didn't protect it: Guard your body like a piece of jade, or, One blunder can lead to remorse. But Suchee didn't believe in these kinds of reproaches. She had been young once herself. She knew what could happen in a moment of passion. "I told her that there was nothing wrong that couldn't be fixed." Then Suchee went on as if her daughter were in the room with her at this moment. "You can be married to Tsai Bing next month," she said. "You know he has waited a long time. Tomorrow I will go to the Neighborhood Committee director. That old grandma will understand. You will have your marriage permission certificate by the end of the week. The child permission certificate may be a little more difficult. I You and Tsai Bing are still young, and this will be your only child. But I am not concerned. I have known that busybody director for so long. If she wants to make trouble for you, I will tell stories of when she was young, eh? So don't worry. I will take care of everything."
But her comforting words had done little to calm Suchee's own emotions, and during the night she'd been jarred awake many times, feeling a sense of foreboding that went beyond the news of the pregnancy. "The next morning Miaoshan was dead, and the police wouldn't listen when I said that the men in our village were getting rich by sending girls and women to that factory," Suchee continued. "They don't care what happens so long as they make their profit." Before Hulan could question her about this, Suchee said in a voice filled with remorse, "But I let her go there! And when I saw she was happy, I let her stay! She liked the work and brought home most of her salary." With that money Suchee had been able to buy extra seed and some new tools. But her worries blossomed again with each visit home, which became increasingly rare as Miaoshan began spending her weekends at the factory too. One minute Miaoshan talked sweetly, the next her words were filled with turpentine.
One day she combed her hair into pigtails, and the next week she came home from the factory in new clothes and with makeup all over her face. She talked about marriage, then almost in the next sentence switched to the subject of her desire to leave Da Shui and go to a big city-somewhere much larger than either Taiyuan or Datong.
As Suchee talked, Hulan wondered if these were just the naive dreams of a simple country girl. In her job at the MPS, Hulan had firsthand experience with members of this class who were illegally leaving their villages and flooding cities like Beijing and Shanghai, looking in vain for a better life, only to find bitterness. In their innocence they were often the victims of criminals and crime syndicates. Without residency permits or work units in the cities, they were also subject to harassment and arrest by the police. Was Miaoshan just another one of these dreamers?