Die without Offspring (Part II)
Yannie Q. Fan
( Continued)
Together with a dozen other families, we were first unloaded in the yard of Hongxiang People's Commune, which, through the senior production team, had jurisdiction over the junior Production Team of Mound Liu. Mound Liu was a production team founded on the base of a natural village. According to the policy then, I was a school youth and assigned to accept re-education from the peasants, while my two sisters could attend classes until they graduated from high school. My father and his colleagues who were assigned to Hongxiang People's Commune for re-education remained on the payroll list of their former organization.
Mound Liu was two li north of the commune. I could see it through drizzling rain from the yard. Folks from Mound Liu came to pick us up. We were introduced to them. The leader of the production team never even glimpsed at us girls, but instead shook hands with my dad. I was glad to see that, even though he ignored girls as second-class citizens, he nevertheless was showing his respect for my father. We, here, were not "trampled in the mud" because of our political status. All the folks who came were men, and they carried our simple furniture with their shoulder poles. There was only a narrow ridge between paddy fields leading to the village and barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side. It was a rainy day and the ridge was so slippery and muddy. Our rubber rain boots kept getting stuck in the mud. We were left far behind and had to kick off the boots and walk all the way to Mound Liu, like the other folks, with our bear foot.
When we arrived there, what my eyes could see were houses made of earth-walls and straw-roofs scatted here and there. The village was located on a mound surrounded by dikes of earth preventing domestic animals from getting into the paddy fields to ruin crops. There was only one big house in the middle of the village built with brick walls and a tile roof. Our new home, which used to be the public house of MoundLiu, was next to it.
All the heads of the twenty-six households in the village were from the same patriarchal clan and, of course, they and their children were all surnamed one name: Liu. My family was the only family outside the Liu Clan and was accepted by the village folks as having been assigned by the "upper government" for the re-education.
Young girls and women were standing in front of our home, and that made the ground even more slippery like someone had spilled oil on it. My rubber rain boots flew away when I flipped out my hands to keep my balance. A girl went over to pick up the boots and handed them to me. "You've got to clutch at the mud with your toes, so you won't fall down." She was blushing for having told me such a babyish thing. From that very day, while learning how to walk on ridges, farm in paddy fields and live like a peasant without any urban life means, I started building up a friendship with the girl who helped me with the first lesson. The girl's beautiful eyes and big mouth with two corners rising up distinguished her from the others. Her name was Button Two, she was sixteen years old, one year younger than I.
Button Two had two younger sisters, all had the same interesting names: Button Three and Button Six.
Button, in Chinese homophony, means "to detain". When we became more familiar with each other, Button Two told me that their dad, by giving them Buttons as names, was praying to the Goddess of Children that girls should be detained while more boys should be sent to him.
The Buttons sisters' family, together with their three uncles and their families, lived in that big brick house. Their dad and mom were in their fifties and forties respectively. Their father was the second elder in the big family, and together with his three other brothers, he ranked high with seniority in the Liu Clan. My sisters and I, following the children and all the folks in the village, called the Buttons' dad and mom Grandpa Second and Grandma Second.
It was quite natural for us girls to be friends, as we were all from the families without any boys. It was the slack winter season when we first came to Mound Liu. I did not have to do farm work and my sisters and I went to the big house every day. The three Button sisters and their parents shared a large central room with their uncles, aunts and cousins, while sleeping and eating in their own quarter, Northeast Corner. Their dad had inherited this portion of the big house from his dad, Great Grandfather as everyone in the village called him. Great Grandfather assigned the other three quarters to the Buttons' three uncles and their families. He had his sons partition a tiny room on the north side of the central room, across from the heavy double wooden entrance doors. The bedroom was barely big enough for a bed and a cupboard. The temporary wall, which separated his bedroom from the central room, was made of bamboo wrapped by rice straw and then smeared with lime clay. A long carved ancestral monument and soul table was placed against the wall so that his great grandchildren would not knock down the wall while playing in the central room.
Now one more door, actually a door frame, had been added to the other four doors of four wing rooms and faced the central room. Great Grandfather took turns walking into the doors for meals. Buttons' family, their uncles, aunts and cousins walked out of their doors to the central room for daily life activities. The big house used to look square- shaped and now it had no shape-the Buttons' dad and her uncles had to expand their corners as more and more children came into the big family, sixteen of them under one roof-six boys and ten girls. Buttons' first uncle had one son and five daughters; the third uncle had four sons and one daughter; the fourth uncle married a woman with a son from another county. The Buttons' branch did not have any boys in their quarter.
Button Two also told me that she had a big sister "But we don't have the same mothers, her mom died when she was four. She was not named Button One, but was given a pretty girl name. She was given away to her mother-in-law's household after the Moon Festival last year."
When a girl was married to her husband, peasants would say the girl was "given away to her mother-in-law's household". Button Two had a secret: when she was old enough to get married, she would be given away to a good mother-in-law's household like her big sister's. "My sister's mother-in-law is very nice to my sister." She said so while looking into the direction where her big sister had been married away.
For a girl growing up in Mound Liu, a happy marriage was the sweetest dream, and rearing a flock of children, as long as plenty of them were boys, was an ultimate life goal. There were never any scandals about boys and girls. If some sexual gossip fell on a girl, then she could not be married away to a mother-in-law's household. If gossip fell on a young man, then no family would marry their daughter to him. In Mound Liu every one was every one's clan relative: if something happened between a man and a woman that would be an unpardonable and wicked deed.
Button Two had a boy cousin who was the only son of her first uncle. He was sheltered by his parents and didn't make many decisions on his own, or speak out when decisions made for him were not to his liking. Nevertheless he had a desire to be superior to others. He was the only young man in the village to attend the township high school ten li away from Mound Liu, and he came home every weekend and spent vacations at home. His name was "Chamber Pot" but we called him Peepee Pot. With that kind of term as a human being's name, his parents believed that he would not be called back by yanwang, or Yama, who was a Chinese Grim Reaper. His parents prohibited him from working in paddy fields. Peepee Pot wore shoes all the time while we walked bare foot half a year long from April to October. He was hankering for some urban lifestyle and felt competitive with me; I laughed at his narcissism.
I had had enough of guys like Peepee Pot in Hefei and was hard on him. One day he asked me "What's a devil shed...?" I realized he had opened my letter to my mother when he promised me he'd mail it in the town, since the letter would reach my mother a couple of days sooner. In the letter, I asked my mother if she had been released from the devil shed. When I heard such a brusque question, I felt all the blood spurting right to the top of my head. As I tumbled backwards into my past, I cut off his question in mid-sentence and hectored back, "It is the place my mother is living. Now you feel perfectly contented, right?"
I had not told anyone the story about my mother but Button Two, she knew one or two of the terms created by those revolutionary common people. Button Two happened to be there when this incident occurred, and yelled at Peepee Pot to shut up.
I had never heard Button Two making an uproar to anyone, but this time she did. She warned Peepee Pot and spoke in my defense, even though she was younger than I. "You better shut your mouth. The money her mom makes in one month is more than the whole village makes in one year!"
Button Two was exaggerating a little, but what she was making up was essentially true.
All the women in Mound Liu who took part in field labors made six working points a day, while the men made ten. We were paid once a year before the Lunar New Year. Folks was never able to wait till that time. At the end of the harvest season, every household withdrew some cash from the production team's income, which was earned from selling rice to the government. It was really a happy time: right after we shouldered home the empty baskets from rice collection stops that were set up by the government, we got paid with cash! Folks had been expecting the money for a whole year to buy their living supplies. They withdrew money with cautiousness, never overused the money than what they made. "Wait before the Lunar New Year" as they told themselves, bonus distribution would be handed to every household head, based on how many working points he and his family members had made.
We spent days and nights having meetings to calculate the money each household could be distributed to, the money which was left over by the end-of-harvest-season withdrawal and buying of a year's rice supply for the whole family. How much one point was worth would be based on the year-end-settlement of the Mound Liu Production Team.
Mound Liu was always in debt: borrowing money from different resources to buy the basic farming materials during times of extraordinary need. The next year the team cleared up the debt at the end of the harvest season, only to borrow again. After the debts were paid off, what was left would be the real net income distributed to each household. There was usually nothing left to the team. The folks in Mound Liu were always joking with each other: "Eat up every single piece of rice and use up every single penny of the collective reserve." For the peasants, why should they care about benefiting the collective when their own individual portions were so limited? And what was more, they were always worried someday the collective reserve would be gone out off their control.
It was exciting and frustrating at the moment the bonus list, written on a piece of red paper, was posted out. There were always big gaps between families: families with several "big men" always made a lot of more working points than those families with fewer or no "big men" did. My name was always listed at the end of the red poster since I earned least working points of all the households in Mound Liu. The red poster was hanged on the wall of our central room which was still used as the team's public house. We shared with the folks about many things since we lived in the house without paying any rent. The formal accountant asked me about my official name for the bonus distribution list and was stunned when he learned I had my mother's family name: "Why your name is different from your dad's?" Grandpa Third, the team leader said, " We do things in our 'calendar'," meaning in their way. On the bonus distribution list, the only official document of Mound Liu, my surname was changed back to my father's family name and after that was "Big Sister", as everyone in the village called me by following my two sisters. I was the only female among the big men on the list, but with a name -- neither my first name nor my last name was mine.
I felt ridiculous and upset about it. Button Two comforted me, "If you used your real name, then no one would recognize you." "I don't care, I just want my real name." Since there was nobody I could fight for with , I became indifferent. My name remained the same on the list every year until I left Mound Liu.
The first year we were settled in Mound Liu, I made not a single penny, because a flood occurred. Everything was submerged for months by heavy rain, and mature rice rotted in the paddies. We lost every single plant after months of hard work in paddy fields. In spite of this natural disaster, the villagers still felt lucky enough that the embankments were not wrecked and the houses in Mound Liu were not washed away by the flood. Only then did I understand why, with the exception of Buttons' big house, every house in Mound Liu was built of earth-walls and straw-roofs: it was because of the cycle of flooding--every seven to eight years, no more than ten years, a flood, whether severe or mild would occur. Mound Liu would become an island besieged by water, and what could be seen were only some ridged roofs of tall houses and branches of big trees. There was no long-term planning for building houses, setting up irrigation systems, and putting up bridges. For once the flood came, everything would be gone.
I learned how to paddle a boat that first year when I was accepting re-education in Mound Liu. The wooden boat became my bicycle, but in reality I had no where to go.
The area where Mound Liu was located was very famous for producing rice. The season between mid-July and mid-August was called rush-harvesting and rush-transplanting season, the time of cutting down early-seasonal rice and transplanting late-seasonal rice seedlings. The paddy fields witnessed the early-seasonal rice being cut down, carried out to the threshing ground, followed by plowing and harrowing of the earth, and finally the late rice seedlings transplanted in, all done by hand, without a single piece of farming machinery or equipment. The late-seasonal rice seedlings had to be transplanted by the day of the solar term called the Beginning of Autumn. If not, the yield of that segment of the rice paddy would be reduced by half, according to the peasants' experience.
The season lasted for four to five weeks during the hottest season of the year. Button Two always recruited me in her production group, in spite of my slowness and clumsiness.
Middle-aged women, teen boys and girls like Button Two and me worked in paddy fields all day long, sometimes more than sixteen hours a day: pulling rice seedlings before dawn, transplanting them in the newly plowed and harrowed fields afterwards. I had to bend over all the time to transplant the seedlings while moving backwards in knee-deep muddy water along a lane. I could not stop to stretch my back until I moved all the way down to the other end of the lane, or somebody else next to me would catch up to me and trap me within the newly planted seedlings. Every time I was almost trapped, Button Two would come to rescue me by finishing the left part of my lane and letting me climb up on the ridge to catch my breath. I had to lie on the ridge curled up like a shrimp, for my back was too tired and sore to be stretched.
Button Two and the other girls sighed loudly: "Big men always tell us that our waists and hips are soft and easy to bend down and our fingers are clever and nimble, so how come they don't give us more working points for our soft waists and nimble fingers? Do they know our waists ad and mom gave a banquet in honor of Big Water's mother-in-law and brother-in-law and closed relatives in the Liu Clan: a boy was announced to come to the family.
Button Two and the other girls never forgot their birthdays, even though there were no formal observances for birthdays in the countryside. They talked about their birth dates and counted their ages which were so important to their marriages in the future. Sometimes they had heated arguments about whether they were one year older or younger than someone else. If a girl was not engaged by a certain age, usually by 18 or 19, that would be a dangerous signal for the girl and her family.
We had been living in the Land of Peach Blossoms, the Garden of Eden since we came to Mound Liu. After the political turmoil in the urban areas, I had the feeling that Mound Liu was my home. The peasants said, "We don't know what the Cultural Revolution is. We know we produce rice to feed our tummies." Several young men never lost opportunities to make comments about "you people in the city." They boasted: "We eat best rice of all, and sell just so-so rice to you 'people living in city.''' Young girls and boys were flirting with each other during their breaks from work, which made them feel so happy and attractive to each other, as there was not any kind of entertainment except for some local operas which played during Lunar New Year days.
Even with all that simple and honest help from the people in Mound Liu, and the deepening friendship with Button Two, the loneliness continued to plague me, especially in the winter.
In the winter I was extremely lonely, even though my father and two sisters were there. There was no where to find books, the letters from my schoolmates in different counties or provinces were getting fewer and fewer, and I constantly felt that something was missing. Sometimes when the weather was warm, the girls and I went to sit against a huge rice straw pile. Button Two and the other girls were sewing, knitting and talking about who found a nice mother-in-law's household and got married away. I would daydream while looking into the sky, wondering where I could find a place that I would belong to. At night, a semiconductor radio was my companion, and I listened to the few repeated programs all night long. I could recite every single line of every role in five revolutionary model operas, which were established by Mao Zedong's wife to educate common people in order to march along under the guidance of Chairman Mao's line during the Cultural Revolution.
Even bearing all these hardship, both summer and winter, girls like Button Two and me still could not support ourselves.
The second year, after the first year's food when we were assigned to Mound Liu, there was a harvest. I made one hundred and seventy yuan (Chinese dollars), which was just enough to buy a years supply of rice for myself. My parents had to support me with their hard-earned income for my other basic expenses.
The folks in Mound Liu tried hard to throw off the cloak of poverty. In general, every household lived a life in which they were dressed warmly and ate their fill. The daily life spending was for clothes, salt, and kerosene for light. The largest expenses of year's saving of a household were centered around a son's marriages: first the betrothal price, then the building of a home for the couple, and finally the wedding itself.
I was elected as Mound Liu's accountant the year after the flood and felt hesitant to take the position. Button Two encouraged me, "No problem, even I can do it." She was right. It was astonishingly simple to handle the job. What the former accountant handed me was two yuan and seventy-nine fen (about $1.50 in American currency then) folded in a roll, which was left over from selling water chestnuts.
The first withdrawal I made from the account was for kerosene. Once in a while we needed light for meetings to discuss public affairs at night.
Afterwards, there was twenty-something fen left. The second and also the last withdrawal was not from me but from my father-he lent the Production Team some money for chemical fertilizer. The account book of Mound Liu had a negative balance that remained there forever.
Water chestnuts were the only side-product that Mound Liu produced. Every season between February and March, the men would carry water chestnuts with shoulder poles to market town ten li away for selling. Only big men were allowed the privilege of this business trip.
It was my intention to try everything that was prohibited for girls. I asked the Team Leader, Grandpa Third, to let me go to the market town to sell water chestnuts. Button Two followed me to watch her uncle's every mood as I made my request. I won over the privilege by my perseverance, saying, "You big men earn ten points by carrying one hundred jin, a fifty kilogram load. Why not let us carry sixty jin since six points corresponds to our working points." Grandpa Third agreed, despite his frowns! He allowed me to go under the title of team accountant. Button Two said that Grandpa Third, her third uncle, was elected as team leader because he had four sons and always told folks, "I mean what I say!"
By telling everyone that we had gotten permission from the Team Leader, together with big men, Button Two, a couple of other girls and I set off to the market town early the next day. Shouldering the baskets with a shoulder pole, Button Two took the lead in our girl's team, one hand holding the rope of the front basket, and one arm swaying back and forth. She walked with a graceful rolling gait. The shoulder poles were bending and squeezing to the rhythm of our steps--earning working points in this way, we felt proud and elated.
Button Three and Button Six started earning some working points for their family by pasturing water buffaloes for the Production Team at their young ages of eleven and four. Of all the big farming equipment owned by the Production Team, such as plows, harrows, waterwheels (which were used to pump water from lower paddies to higher ones), water buffaloes were still the most important mechanical farming tools. The big dark buffalo that Button Three and Button Six were pasturing was called "Big Horn." They pulled "Big Horn" out from the buffalo pen early every morning, and led him along the ridge to chew grass dotted with crystal clear dew. In the evening after the Buttons' dad was finished with plowing and harrowing paddy fields, Button Three and Button Six led big Horn to a pond and bathed him with a brush made with rice straw. Big Horn looked handsome because of the good care from Buttons. My sisters and I learned how to ride on Big Horn's back from Button Three and Button Six, even though they did not ride on him very often. Button Three said Big Horn needed energy to work for her dad. Big Horn was tame and docile and would follow the two girls' commands, letting us climb on his back by bending down his head with his kindhearted eyes half closed and his big mouth chewing.
Grandpa Second had eyes with the same expression as Big Horn's, that honest and sad expression. Except for greeting me with "Chi guo la?" "Had a meal?" he never talked to me. I was always wondering why. Because of his stuttering? Or was he thinking that girls including me should be "detained" somewhere, as his daughters' names implied? To me, Grandpa Second was a mystery wrapped in a dark cloak. He always remained so quiet like a shadow. He smiled, but only with his eyes, and the deep wrinkles next to his eyes were swaying like fish tails. The folks in the village said that after Button Two was born, he no longer amused himself openly at others expense.
Grandpa Second never spanked his daughters nor even hollered at the girls. But his soft smiles and gentle touches were only for Button six and Big Horn, even Big Horn was not his property. Button Six looked like Grandpa Second a lot, especially her eyes, which were like a pair of shining black diamonds covered with long and curved eyelashes. I always had questions concerning the order of the Button sisters. I knew Button Two was named after her big sister, but how come Button Six came right after Button Three? I dared not ask Grandpa Second, but I did ask Grandma Second one day.
( To be continued )