A Girl Named Faithful Plum

by Richard Bernstein

  “Don’t be discouraged,” Teacher Peng said. “Nobody gets it on the first try. We’ll do it again tomorrow.”

  That night, during the practice hour before lights-out, Zhongmei went into a corner of studio two and practiced it over and over. She felt it was like a figure skater’s spin, except a figure skater has a metal blade and ice to turn on. A dancer has only the ball of her foot, which had to be planted firmly in the ground like a spike and to be able to turn effortlessly at the same time. Zhongmei took up the position, her arm over her head like an overhanging branch, her leg curved backward, her body tilted, and then turned. And again. And again. By the end of the hour, she was able to do one turn well enough so she didn’t look like a clown pretending to be a dancer. The next day, she tried again and the day after that, until one turn looked pretty good to her as she examined herself in the mirror, but the second and third turns were wobbly and uneven. Would she ever get it?

  Zhongmei also went to rehearsal every afternoon, and she kept on practicing at night. After two weeks, Teacher Peng had each of the students in her class do a small performance, just that movement, in front of the others.

  “Those of you who have mastered it will go on to the next movement; those of you who haven’t will prepare something a bit easier for the final performance,” she said.

  Zhongmei, as the youngest in the class, was the last to go. She watched as the other girls did the movement, and all of them were pretty good. They could all do at least one excellent turn, some of them two and even three. After each mini-performance, all the girls applauded politely, wanting, no doubt, to be applauded in turn.

  It was Zhongmei’s turn. She could see from the expressions on the other girls’ faces that not much was expected of her. She was, after all, only a first-year student, and she had started the rehearsal late, so surely she would be behind the others. If she managed one shaky turn, she would be doing pretty well. As long as she made it all the way around, stopped with her front toward the audience, and didn’t end up sprawled on the studio floor.

  She took her place in the middle of the studio. She saw herself in the mirror on the opposite wall as she raised her arms and went into her spin. When she finished, the girls, sitting on the floor in front of the mirror, were silent and expressionless. There was no applause at all. Zhongmei was crestfallen. She felt she had done pretty well. Why this disapproving silence from her fellow students? Did they hate her because she was a farm girl, or because she was just a first-year student who had gotten special treatment from Vice Director Jia?

  Then, after a long minute, one of the girls started to clap her hands. And then the others joined in, not perfunctorily like before, but loud and long. Zhongmei saw that Teacher Peng, who was standing on the side, was also applauding and smiling as she did so.

  “Three perfect rotations!” she exclaimed when the applause had finally died away. “And two weeks ago, you could hardly do one! I think at the very least, Zhongmei deserves the prize for most progress.”

  It wasn’t lost on Zhongmei that Teacher Peng wanted her to succeed, in contrast to Teacher Zhu, who wanted her to fail, and that Teacher Peng would view a success by Zhongmei as a success for herself. This realization brought tears to Zhongmei’s eyes.

  “The next step is the long sleeves,” Teacher Peng said as she handed Zhongmei a ribbon of blue-gray silk. The two of them were alone in the rehearsal studio, because Teacher Peng had been so pleased with Zhongmei’s progress that she was giving her extra classes to prepare for the final-day performance. The ribbon was divided in the middle by a heavy twist of fabric that rested on the dancer’s shoulders, so that the lengths on each side were thirty-five feet long.

  “They’re awfully long,” Zhongmei said. “How can anybody possibly control them?”

  “They’re long because they symbolize streaks of heavenly light, and I’m going to teach you how to control them.”

  Teacher Peng placed the twist of fabric over Zhongmei’s shoulders and put one ribbon end in each of Zhongmei’s hands.

  “The idea is to think the ribbons into the air, to think them into swirling around you like the breeze, and when you have your thoughts right, your arms and hands will take care of the rest.”

  “OK, I’m thinking, but the ribbons aren’t flying,” Zhongmei said, and the two of them laughed.

  “Think the ribbon into the air, and as you think, raise your arms and begin to turn to give them some lift.”

  Zhongmei followed directions.

  “That’s right,” Teacher Peng said. “They’re both airborne. Now keep thinking them up in the air. Keep turning. And then, whirl your right arm over your head so the right ribbon arches up; then just as it begins to settle down, do the same thing with the left one.”

  Zhongmei whirled the right ribbon, but it caught on the left-hand ribbon, and the whole thing ended up in a tangled heap on the floor.

  “That’s OK,” Teacher Peng called. “It would have been a miracle if you’d done it the first time. Try again. Think the ribbon up. Think it swirling around your head. Think it describing circles in front of you. And then your hands and arms will do what’s necessary.”

  “I have two weeks to get ready,” Zhongmei said. “Do you really think I can do it?”

  “My dear,” said Teacher Peng, “I think you can do anything you set your mind to.”

  And for the first time in the nine months that Zhongmei had been at the Beijing Dance Academy, she felt something like happiness.

  27

  Triumph

  “May I speak with you?”

  Zhongmei, lying on her upper bunk just before lights-out, was so absorbed in the book she was reading that at first she didn’t even hear Jinhua’s voice. The book contained a collection of reproductions of the Dunhuang cave paintings that she studied every night, pictures that teemed with life, with amazing, sinuous images, a lustrous blending of pastels, and costumes of intricate elegance. Being extremely old, many of the paintings were faded and cracked, but that only increased their appeal for Zhongmei. There was a burnished quality about them, a radiance that came from within that something brand-new and shiny could never have. Here, for example, was a celestial musician floating in a space of streaming colors exactly like the long silk ribbons kept aloft by the apsara Zhongmei incarnated in the dance she was learning, her body curved gracefully, her long, slender fingers cradling a flute. It was as though the image were speaking across the centuries to Zhongmei, telling her, “Be beautiful and ethereal like me; bring me to life.”

  “May I speak with you, please?”

  The voice was shy, a bit hesitant, and Zhongmei looked up to see Jinhua standing in front of her upper bunk, looking uncharacteristically nervous.

  “I’m sorry about the kitten,” she blurted out.

  In the weeks after Zhongmei’s return from the hospital, she and Jinhua had never spoken, but Zhongmei noticed a change in her, and ever since Zhongmei had been chosen for the Dunhuang solo rehearsal, Jinhua seemed to look at her with respectfulness in her eyes. The mockery of before was gone.

  “I’m afraid of cats,” she told Zhongmei. “And I told Old Maid Tsang that you had one. But I never thought she’d do that,” and she made a movement with her arm. “I’m really sorry.”

  “It’s OK,” Zhongmei said. “It was Comrade Tsang who threw the cat out the window, not you.”

  “Also,” Jinhua said, her eyes moist, “I’m sorry for making fun of you.”

  Zhongmei shrugged. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want to forgive Jinhua exactly, but she was glad that the girl was trying to make amends.

  “It’s nothing,” she finally said.

  “Everybody can’t wait to see you perform the Dunhuang solo,” Jinhua said, and she shyly turned away. “I know you’re going to be great.”

  “I hope so,” Zhongmei said. “The final’s only a week away, and I’m kind of nervous.”

  “Don’t be nervous,” Jinhua said. “Everybody was wrong about you. I w
as wrong about you. Everybody thought a girl from the country couldn’t be a great dancer. But you are going to be a great dancer. You’re going to be the best one.”

  The final came in June on the last day of classes, and, as it happened, on Zhongmei’s twelfth birthday, June 27. Every year all the students performed the dances they had been studying in rehearsal for all the other students and the teachers, plus an assortment of government officials and family members, who sat in the small Dance Academy Theater next to the cafeteria. The seats were curved and upholstered, like in a real theater. There was a real stage, framed in red velvet curtains.

  All seven of the girls in Teacher Peng’s Dunhuang solo class were going to perform, one after the other, and Teacher Peng told Zhongmei that she would go last.

  The day before, she’d taken Zhongmei to her office and fitted her with shimmering silk pantaloons, a light turquoise blouse, and pale blue slippers whose toes pointed up. It was the first time ever that Zhongmei had worn a costume, and it felt miraculously cool and sleek on her skin.

  On the day of the final, Teacher Peng again brought Zhongmei to her office and applied makeup—another first for Zhongmei. She highlighted her eyebrows, powdered her cheeks, painted her lips a luscious red, applied mascara to her lower eyelashes and more heavily on the upper ones. She wound a portion of Zhongmei’s hair, which had grown long during her year at the Beijing Dance Academy, in a kind of turban around her head while leaving a thick, luxuriant strand to cascade down the middle of her back. She used long gold-colored pins to attach a glittering, bejeweled hair ornament, and then she told Zhongmei to look at herself in the mirror.

  “You think you’re the ugly farm girl,” she said. “Look at yourself.”

  Zhongmei looked. She saw her oval face, her high cheekbones, her full red lips. She saw her crescent eyebrows, her peach-colored translucent skin no longer blotched and ruddy from the Baoquanling climate, her long, slender neck, and her dark fiery eyes. She remembered the frightened, uncertain country girl who had appeared at the audition a year earlier, and she realized that she was still that girl, but she was somebody else at the same time, somebody different. There was still the eagerness in her eyes, though a touch of sadness had been added, and maybe also a bit of wisdom. But the radiant creature looking back at her in Teacher Peng’s wood-framed mirror was somebody she scarcely knew existed. Most of all, she noted that she could be elegant and … what was the word that Teacher Zhu had used to describe what she lacked? Refined. She had been told she lacked refinement. Now here was the proof that that judgment was wrong. The girl in the mirror was refinement itself.

  Zhongmei put down the mirror.

  “Do you think, if I do well today, that I’ll be allowed back at school next year?” she asked.

  “Allowed back? Oh, of course,” Teacher Peng exclaimed. “We’re never going to let you get away.”

  Standing in the wings waiting for her entrance with the other girls who had learned the Dunhuang solo, Zhongmei could hear the murmur of the audience. Teacher Peng had gone in ahead of her, having given the order of appearance to each of the performers. Zhongmei watched as each of the girls crossed from the shadows of the wings into the bright light of the stage and did her performance. Each of them was costumed similarly to Zhongmei, but not exactly the same. Each of them seemed to Zhongmei radiant, lovely, and accomplished, and she prayed that the audience would accept her as one of them. There was polite applause for each of the six girls who preceded her. Each girl, as she returned to the wings, gave the long ribbon to the girl who was to follow her onto the stage.

  She heard a voice over the loudspeaker: “Our next and last performer, Li Zhongmei.” The last of the second-year girls to perform placed the ribbon over Zhongmei’s shoulders, and Zhongmei walked onto the stage with the delicate steps that she’d practiced, the steps that made her seem to be gliding above the floor, floating in the ether. She made a half circle, the long ribbon trailing behind her, her tiara pulling at her hair, her heart pounding, beads of nervous sweat forming on her upper lip, tempting her to lick them off, though she knew better than to do that.

  Zhongmei stopped at stage center. The music started. She began her first series of movements, slow and supple like an adagio, dignified and delicate, but also acrobatic, and she knew that she would be all right. She shut out the theater, and the audience, and even Jia Zuoguang, whom she had seen when she first came into the theater, sitting in the middle of the front row. She forgot about her terror of being the clumsy, clunky girl from the countryside without the refinement required for ballet. She entered into a state of something like serenity. She smiled a gentle smile. She dwelled in a closed world where there was only the sky, the wisps of cloud, and the movements of the goddess who incarnated both wisdom and loveliness. Her long ribbons at first described simple circles in front of her and over her head, but as they whirled faster and faster, Zhongmei thinking them into place, they became ovals within ovals and circles within circles, as though Zhongmei commanded the elegant and powerful forces of nature around her. She glided across the floor as if propelled by some magical force. She leaped high, one foot arching back and almost touching the nape of her neck, the other flung up and forward to the level of her face. She came to a stop, raised her arms behind her, and lifted her leg in front of her and across her body, looking exactly like one of the paintings she had studied before going to bed at night, and then, her foot gripping the floor, keeping her body in absolute wobble-free balance, she straightened her leg and extended it upward, holding that tableau for a gravity-defying span, and then she swept low with her upper body, her arms raised like wings, the ribbons like fountains of colors draping her on either side, her leg curved behind and turned in the deliberate continuous motion she had rehearsed for hours and hours, days and weeks until she had gotten it right.

  The dance was the most intense three minutes of Zhongmei’s life, and when it was over, it took her a few moments to realize that her performance was being greeted by loud applause and whistles. She curtsied, her arms crossed in front of her. The boys in the back rows were banging their feet on the floor, clapping with hands held over their heads. Zhongmei looked at Teacher Peng, who smiled back at her and nodded her head up and down. Xiaolan was smiling at her and giving her the thumbs-up. Zhongmei saw Jinhua and noticed that tears were streaking her face, whether tears of happiness, tears of remorse, or tears of envy, Zhongmei couldn’t tell. She noticed that Teacher Zhu wasn’t smiling, but she applauded dutifully and correctly. She saw Old Maid Tsang, who clapped and smiled as if she had been Zhongmei’s biggest supporter all along. Seeing her, an image of Yunqi flashed across the screen of her mind and a dollop of sadness mingled with her joy. Zhongmei’s eyes met those of Vice Director Jia, who could have punished her after he caught her in the studio that day a couple of months before but decided to understand her instead. He had given her a chance, and by the look on his face, she had met his expectations. Zhongmei bowed her head to him and smiled.

  Then it was over. There were the sounds of the audience as they got up from their seats. A couple of men in well-tailored Mao suits came backstage and shook Zhongmei’s hand. They told her they represented the Ministry of Culture. “You are like a swan,” one of them said, and Zhongmei murmured a polite thank-you. Through the wings, she could see that Jia Zuoguang had taken a place at the front of the theater and was wishing everybody a good summer vacation, telling everybody to keep in shape and be ready for more hard work the next year. Teacher Peng hugged Zhongmei and told her that she was proud of how well she had done.

  It was all happening so quickly that Zhongmei was only barely able to focus on the enormous meaning of this short performance for her. She had made it! The farm girl who had been asked to instruct the others in the sound of a rooster, who had had to sit in a corner of a room denied the chance to do the very thing she had come all the way to Beijing to do, the frightened bumpkin who had been expelled from class when she didn’t know what it meant to go on te
levision, had proved Teacher Zhu wrong. She could put her worries aside. She would come back next year. She would be a dancer. She thought about her grandmother and her parents, her brothers and sisters. She must write to her da-jie right away and tell her the good news.

  “Didn’t I tell you a long time ago that you were the best of us all?” came a familiar voice behind her.

  Zhongmei turned around and threw her arms around the tall, beautiful girl who alone had wanted to be her friend in the midst of her loneliness.

  “Oh, Little Orchid,” Faithful Plum said. “I’m not the best. You’re much better than me.”

  “The year began pretty badly, but it ended well, didn’t it?” Xiaolan said. “That’s because you never gave up. I admire you for that. I think you’re great.”

  “I almost gave up,” Zhongmei said. “If it hadn’t been for you, I would have crumbled into dust. I would have died, and they would have carried me out of here on a donkey cart.”

  “Well, now they’re going to carry you out of here in a limousine,” Xiaolan said.

  The two girls, twelve years old now, hugged and wept.

  “You’re going to be a star,” Xiaolan said, sniffling.

  “We’ll both be stars,” Zhongmei replied, her cheeks wet, her eyes glistening, her mascara running, her makeup streaked.

  “We’ll travel to America,” Xiaolan said. “Maybe, someday.”

  “We’ll jump on televisions together!” Zhongmei exclaimed. “Right on top!”

  And both girls laughed through their tears.

  Epilogue

  Zhongmei did go to America, and so did Xiaolan. The two of them performed at the Joyce Theater in New York City and many other places in the United States from Boston to Los Angeles, and her signature number, the solo that never failed to win the acclaim of audiences and critics alike, was the very one she did in her final-day performance at the end of her first year at the Beijing Dance Academy, Flying Apsaras. But America was later. First, Zhongmei, at the age of eighteen, graduated from the Beijing Dance Academy. She spent two more years doing advanced study at the Dance Academy and then seven years as a principal dancer for the leading Chinese dance troupe, traveling to almost every country in Asia to perform. Along the way, she won the most prestigious and hotly contested dance competitions in China.