All Yuxiu could do was smile, no matter how much effort it took and how much it pained her. Then she said good-bye to Little Tang and stood in front of the leek-seller’s stand in a daze. And as she stood there with all of the confusion of the marketplace around her, she heard the steam generator. It sounded far, far away and sort of unreal. A hard-to-describe sadness and feeling of regret washed over her. As she forced back the tears, she wondered what had come over her the day before. What got into me? What was I thinking? I must have been out of my mind! I ruined the best chance I’ll ever have. And I didn’t even learn how to use an abacus.
Forgetting about leeks, she absentmindedly followed a small street to the town’s vast, mist-covered lake at the far southern end. Just as well, Yuxiu thought. A clean break. He wasn’t mine to begin with, so no harm done. Even if I’d become Gao Wei’s wife, there’d be trouble if they ever found out what had happened to me. She told herself it was a lost cause and vowed to forget about it. But she couldn’t figure out why her acceptance of that fact made her feel even worse. Was there anything in this world that could restore Yuxiu’s maidenhood? She’d gladly trade her right arm for it—even one of her eyes.
Now was not the time for Yumi to tell Guo Jiaxing that she was pregnant because an atmosphere of hostility existed in the house. Guo Qiaoqiao and her father had heated arguments every day, and neither one would give in. Guo wanted to send his daughter to work in the countryside after her sophomore year in high school. That would not only make him look good, but it would also solidify his status in the commune hierarchy. A year or two of fieldwork would lay a good foundation and establish Qiaoqiao’s credentials for whatever she did in the future.
It is important for the young to have wide-ranging goals. Guo tried to pound this concept into his daughter’s head with fatherly concern, citing his son’s experience as a case in point. Guo Zuo had gone down to the countryside to work alongside the peasants as one of Mao’s “educated youths”[7] and had gained entrance into the Party. When the call went out for factory workers, he was hired at a government-run factory in a big city.
But Qiaoqiao would have none of it. A few days earlier she’d fallen under the spell of an attractive, well-dressed woman in a movie about textile workers and was dead set on getting a job as a spinning machine operator at the Anfeng Commune textile mill. But how could Guo let his daughter take a job in a small textile mill run by the collective? She could wind up with a case of arthritis if she wasn’t careful. But he had another objection, one better left unspoken, and that was the fact that Anfeng Commune was located outside the town of Broken Bridge and thus beyond his influence, which could make things difficult in the future. Yumi guessed that this was his real concern, but she kept that to herself. Where Qiaoqiao was concerned, the less she was involved the better.
Guo Jiaxing sat in his rattan chair in the living room; Qiaoqiao stood in the doorway of her bedroom. Neither spoke. The silence lay heavily in the room for a long time before Guo Jiaxing lit a Flying Horse cigarette and said, “You need to join a rural production brigade. Can’t you get that through your thick skull?”
“No!” she said as she leaned against the door frame, pouting. “Let’s say I do what you want. What if you lose your grip on power? Who’ll take care of me then? I don’t want to spend the rest of my life on a farm.”
Yumi’s heart skipped a beat. The girl might seem dull-witted, but she was smart enough to worry about her long-term prospects. That was the last thing Guo expected to hear from his daughter.
What kind of talk was that! Guo pounded the table in anger, startling Yumi. Qiaoqiao is a foolish girl after all, Yumi thought. One doesn’t use words like “what if” and “lose power” when talking to an official. How could she not have known that? Yumi heard her husband push his chair away and tap his finger on the tabletop.
Once he got his anger under control, he said in a loud voice, “The red flag will never be taken down.” With the mention of the red flag, the situation turned so grim that Yumi grew fearful. She’d never heard her husband use that tone of voice before; he wasn’t merely angry, he was furious.
Silence returned to the living room for a long moment. Then Qiaoqiao slammed the double door of her bedroom— bang, bang. That was followed by her shouting from inside: “Now I see. After Mama died you got yourself a concubine and joined the ranks of the feudalists, capitalists, and revisionists. Now you want to send me to the countryside so you can please your concubine!”
Yumi heard every word and all she could think was This girl is outrageous. Now she’s dragged me into the middle of this.
Guo’s face was dark with anger. With his hands on his hips, he stormed outside, where he spotted Yuxiu, who was quietly observing him from the kitchen. He pointed at her through the window.
“I forbid you from backing her up anymore!” he ordered. “Who does she think she is, the mistress of a feudal household involved in class exploitation?”
Yuxiu tucked her head into her shoulders at the warning just as the skipper of the commune speedboat opened the front gate. When he saw the anger on Director Guo’s face, he stood there and waited.
Suddenly Qiaoqiao burst out of her room and ran toward the skipper. “Come. Take me to my grandmother’s house.”
He stayed put.
Guo Jiaxing turned to his daughter. “You haven’t taken your final exams,” he shouted, as if this had just dawned on him. His tone softened a bit. Qiaoqiao ignored him. She walked out the gate, dragging the skipper by the arm; he kept looking back nervously until Guo Jiaxing dismissed him with a weak wave of his hand.
With Qiaoqiao and the skipper gone, an air of calm settled over the yard, abrupt and unexpected. Guo stood there, smoking furiously. Yumi slipped quietly out the door and stood beside him. Obviously heavy-hearted, he sighed deeply. “I’ve always stressed the importance of ideology,” he said to her. “And now, you see, we’ve got a problem.”
Yumi answered his sigh with one of her own. “She’s just a child,” she said to comfort him.
“A child?” He was nearly shouting, still in the grip of anger. “At her age I’d already joined the new democratic revolution.”
As Yuxiu watched the scene through her window, she could tell that Yumi was ecstatic regardless of how she tried to pretend otherwise. She did a good job of covering it up. My sister is like water, always finding a way to flow downward. She manages to fit in perfectly without leaving the slightest gap, Yuxiu said to herself, admiring her sister for a talent that she herself did not possess.
Yumi looked at Guo and kept her eyes on him as they filled with glistening tears. Then she took his hand and laid it on her belly. “I hope we never make you angry like that,” she said.
Orientation is important at all times and allows for no mistakes—ever.
Take flattery, for instance. Ever since coming to Broken Bridge, Yuxiu had taken pains to wholeheartedly “serve the people” in the person of Guo Qiaoqiao. Now it looked as if she’d bet on the wrong number and had lost more than she’d gained—this was something that she felt with great intensity. Since Yumi was pregnant, her status in the family was assured, probably even enhanced. From now on, she’d be the one for Yuxiu to look to, it seemed. Even if Qiaoqiao grew increasingly imperious, she would not stay home forever, and Yuxiu berated herself for not thinking far enough ahead. Fawning on someone is hard work; just being shameless isn’t enough. Strategy and tactics are the essence of fawning. And tactics are tied up with orientation. Yuxiu had lost her way, but that wouldn’t last. Qiaoqiao’s departure left only one path open. Yuxiu had set herself adrift, and now she had to find her way back to the shore. It was time to get on Yumi’s good side.
7
Urban high school students and graduates were sent by Mao into the countryside during the Cultural Revolution to learn from the peasants. Their numbers were in the tens of millions.