Leaving Mother Lake

by Yang Erche Namu

  She was tidying up the pantry.

  “What kind of wind blows you back here?” she asked. “Don’t the teachers want their breakfast this morning?”

  “They have diarrhea!” I answered, looking at the wall. “They don’t want to eat.”

  “Oh!” She closed the pantry door and pointed to the enamel basin on the floor near the lower hearth. “Why don’t you help me grind these soybeans?”

  I followed her into the courtyard and helped her turn the millstone. Every time the dog barked, I imagined that the teachers were already at the gates, that they had arrived to complain about me. I had done a terrible thing. I had broken the whole kitchen. I had smashed the cooking pots that had come by horse caravan all the way from Lijiang. It must have taken at least seven days to bring them back to Zuosuo.

  “Have you lost your soul?” my mother asked. “Why are you so quiet?”

  And then I said, “I want to go to Beijing.” Just like that. I just blurted it, without thinking, without pretending. I just said it, because that was what I wanted and because I wanted it so badly that there was nothing left for me to want, because

  I wanted it so badly that I might as well die. And while I was at it, I might as well say it all. “I want to leave Zuosuo. I can’t stand this place anymore. It’s too quiet for me here. The village has become so boring to me. Everything bores me now.” And I looked straight into her eyes, the rudest way to look at somebody.

  My mother opened her mouth, but nothing came out of it. She just stood there, mouth opened, paralyzed, rooted to the ground — until, without any warning, she grabbed hold of the bowl where the soybeans were soaking and threw the lot at me. Then the words came. A lot of words. “Are you mad?” she screamed. “How dare you talk to me like this? Who do you think you are? You think your wings are strong enough that you can fly on your own? You think you don’t need me anymore? You want to become friends with the Han? Is that it? Who will know you in the outside world? Do you think you are so extraordinary? Go! Go live with the Han! Go on! Leave! Go! The farther away from me the better!”

  I began to sob. My mother’s anger was terrifying me. If she screamed now, what would she do when she found out what I had done at the school? She surely would do more than shout angry words! She would lock me up. She would beat me. What else could she do? She would have to punish me somehow.

  I ran upstairs to my flower room and quickly stuffed the beautiful white skirt and the pink vest I had worn at my ceremony into a canvas bag I had brought back from Beijing. Then I ran back downstairs and into the kitchen. I was hoping to take some cookies and some ham for the road but my mother was standing in my path. Her eyes were black and her mouth set so hard, it looked as though her face would break. But she was not angry anymore. She was afraid. Because a long time ago, she had left her own mother’s house, and when she had come home, it had been too late, forever.

  “Don’t go,” my Ama said, her voice breaking. Jiama and Homi started screaming.

  But I had to go. I had broken the school kitchen and the teachers would be here at any moment now. “I’m going,” I said. “I am going.” And I took off, through the gates and into the village streets, with my mother running after me, calling for me to stop, to come back.

  I ran and ran, holding my little bag against my heart. Past the last house and onto the mountain trail. My mother’s voice grew more distant, but just as I slowed my pace a little, out of nowhere something bit at my back.

  I turned around. My Ama was still chasing after me, throwing stones at me. She could not run fast enough to catch me, so she was hunting me down. In her youth my mother had used the bow and arrow as well as any man, and she still knew how to throw. She never hit where she could really have caused damage. The next stone hit my elbow. Another hit me between the shoulder blades and then another hit at the same place. That one broke the skin. More stones. I ran faster and harder up the hill, toward the mountaintop.

  At last I reached the edge of the forest. My Ama had given up a long time ago now. When I stopped and turned back, I saw her standing on the trail, very small, looking in my direction, silently pleading for me to come back. I knew that she was crying. I was crying too, without tears in my eyes, but I was crying. And I could not go back. I could never go back. Not after what I had done to the school kitchen. I looked toward the school. There was no smoke coming out of the roof and I wondered if the teachers were still lying in their beds, waiting for me to bring their hot water and to call them for breakfast. “Full bellies will explode!” I wanted to shout, but I was out of breath.

  I turned around and ran.

  I ran, and when I had no more breath I walked, and then I ran again — for the rest of the day, through the night, and the next day and the next night. I ate nothing and I did not sleep. I was neither hungry nor tired. I was scared. I was so scared that I could not even swallow my saliva. At some point I had thought of singing, but the sound of my own voice alone in the mountains had terrified me. On the third night it began pouring with rain, and I stopped running. The ground was too slippery and I could not see where I was going because it was too dark. I tied my little bag on my back and got down on my knees and began crawling along the path, feeling the slippery ground with my hands — until, after what seemed hours and hours, the mud receded and at long last I could stand up again. By this time, however, I was completely lost.

  That night I sought refuge in a Yi village. I was a sorry sight — soaked and muddy and bleeding at the knees where my nylon trousers had torn. But my hosts were very kind. The woman of the house heated some water so I could wash my knees. She gave me some roasted potatoes, and when I had eaten, she spread a blanket on the floor, where I dropped and instantly fell asleep. The next morning I had breakfast and washed my knees again, and gave up on trying to dislodge the little stones encrusted in my flesh. I thanked the Yi family, and I took off.

  My hosts had explained that to get back on the road to the cement factory, I needed to backtrack a couple of kilometers. Now, I hated the idea of crawling in the mud on my hands and knees again, but I had to get on the right trail. As instructed, I retraced my steps and then took a turn at the crossroad and walked ahead, until the track began running along the hillside, where it narrowed rather suddenly to only a foot or so in width. Since I had been walking for a long time and still had seen no sign of the muddy grounds, I began to worry that I had lost my way again. I stopped and looked back, and then I looked up the hill and down — and I saw the mud, quite a way below where I was standing on the trail. And I understood that I wasn’t lost. The night before, in the darkness and the rain, I had somehow gone off the main path and ended much too low on the hillside, where there was no trail at all but slippery mud and then a vertical drop, and a long way down at the bottom, the river roaring and churning brown torrential water — and there I had crawled, for a good length of the gorge, on the very edge of the precipice.

  Looking down the hill in broad daylight, I could not believe that I had gone for so long without slipping. And if I had slipped, no one would ever have found me or even known where I had disappeared. I began to shake uncontrollably.

  I was shaking so hard that I feared falling over, and I had to sit down on my heels for some time before I could regain the courage to scramble on along the path, my knees still giving way underneath me, my heart pounding in my chest. And now I thought of my Yi sister, Añumo, who had run for two days and two nights on her own in the mountains, and how I had worried about her. But Añumo had run to earn the respect of her people. I was running because I had disgraced my family and I could never, ever return to my village. I was running because I had shamed myself beyond forgiveness. But also, I was running because I wanted my dream.

  On the fifth day I reached the cement factory, where only a few months before I had stood with Latsoma and Zhatsonamu waiting to see the world. This time there would be no green Jeep. I walked on the asphalt road, resigned to the fact that I would have to make my way to the city
on foot, but I had not gone very far before a log truck drove by and pulled up on the side of the road. When I came up to the cabin, the door opened, and I saw with some relief that the driver was Tibetan and no one we knew.

  As I was covered in mud, he told me to sit on top of the logs. It was terrible, very painful and very cold, and I began to sing to cheer myself up. I was singing very loudly, as loudly as I possibly could — screaming really — but it paid off. The driver stopped the truck and told me to come down into the cabin and sing for him. It was a perfect arrangement. He loved the singing, and I loved the ride. This time I did not even throw up.

  In the evening we stopped in Yanyuan at the Horsemen’s Hotel. The truck driver bought me dinner and I ate like a hungry and terrified dog, constantly looking over my shoulder to make sure that no one in the room was likely to recognize me. After dinner the driver paid for my room, a two-person room where I was the only one sleeping. But now that I was contemplating which bed to lie in, I remembered Nankadroma’s stories about Tibetan men, and I began to worry that the driver might be hoping to keep me company later in the night. Of course, the room did not lock — because in China in those days, the needs of hotel patrons always came second to the wishes of hotel personnel. Only service people could lock and unlock bedroom doors, and only from the outside. So I piled the two beds and every other piece of furniture against the door and crawled in between the sheets, muddy clothes and all. I was so tired I could not have cared less.

  The service woman woke me early the next morning, beating on the door and yelling something about regulations and doing her job, and when she came into the room, she added something about dirty girls and something else about my mother that I was glad I could not understand. Leaving her to curse and tidy up, I picked up my bag and hurried out of the room, where I found the truck driver waiting for me in the corridor.

  “You were scared I come in your room last night?” he asked, laughing, showing off the traditional gold tooth at the front of his mouth.

  “Why?” I said, trying to fight back the heat rising in my cheeks.

  He patted me on the back. “I saw all the furniture! Ah, you’re good! You can take care of yourself.” And he led me to the dining room, where he ordered steamed buns and tea for our breakfast.

  A little while later, we were on our way to Xichang. Passing through a village, he took his hand off the wheel and put his fingers to his mouth. “You hungry? You want water-melon?”

  “What’s watermelon?”

  We stopped and went for a walk through the market to buy a watermelon. When we got back to the truck, he chose a nice flat stone, where he carefully balanced the melon. Then he drew his knife from his belt and halved it in one clean blow. It was red and sweet and it tasted as good as pink ice cream. And the truck driver was so kind, and very handsome. For the first time in almost a week, I was no longer afraid. I felt very happy now; I felt as though I had gone traveling with my uncle.

  We arrived in Xichang in the late afternoon, where the driver dropped me off on the main street. “Here,” he said, handing me a couple of notes. “If you don’t find your people, come look for me at the Number Two Hotel. I’ll take you back to your mama. Number Two Hotel. You understand?”

  But I had no trouble finding my people at the Cultural Bureau.

  Xichang Again

  Luo Juzhang was engrossed in a pile of paperwork. On hearing me enter his office, he lifted his head, and a look of utter surprise came over his face. “Oh, little Namu, what have you done? You’re so dirty!” he exclaimed.

  “I rode in a truck from Yanyuan this morning,” I answered.

  “Well, it’s nice to see you,” he continued slowly, at a loss to comprehend what I was doing there. “Did you come here by yourself ?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does your family know?”

  “No.”

  Luo Juzhang gazed at me for a moment and the expression on his face changed from surprise to worry. He shifted in his seat and pursed his lips, and at last he said, “Wait for me outside. I’ll be about half an hour, then I’ll take you home for some dinner.”

  A weight had just lifted from my chest. If Mr. Luo was not turning me out, if he was taking me home to his family, then maybe he could give me a job. I went out to wait for him in the yard. The afternoon sun was still high in the sky and it was very hot. I found the faucet and turned on the water to wash my face, my hair, and my arms and watched with calm satisfaction as red mud poured down through my hands and into the drain. I felt much better, cleaner and in no hurry. I sat on a bench to dry myself in the sun.

  We went to Mr. Luo’s apartment in the chauffeur-driven car the Cultural Bureau assigned its most important cadres. Mr. Luo’s apartment went with the car. It was a typical cadre residence, fit for a typical government official: a green-and-white-walled apartment with bare concrete floors, a small kitchen, a flushing, seatless toilet, and a living room and three bedrooms crammed with books, trophies, and photographs glued behind glass. The furniture was neatly arranged against the wall, including, in the living room, a TV and a green refrigerator. There was nothing extraordinary about Mr. Luo’s apartment. In China all modern apartments looked like this, with minor variations in floor size and the number of rooms.

  Likewise, there was nothing extraordinary about Mr. Luo. He was graying and balding. He had a paunch, acquired from too many banquets and too little exercise. He wore a gray Mao suit, and except in the hottest weather, he always carried a sweater on his shoulder in imitation of our great helmsman. He even paused for photographs holding his cigarette between two fingers at about shoulder level as Mao Zedong had done. Mr. Luo always called people comrade, teacher, or little So-and-So, and I felt very comfortable in his company. Luo Juzhang was the type of person who found it almost impossible to say no. And you could always tell when that was about to happen because his face went bright red before he even began to speak.

  Luo’s three daughters were practicing dance steps in the living room. In their black trousers and white shirts, they made a sharp contrast with their mother, who was dressed in the traditional Yi multicolored skirt. Mr. and Mrs. Luo were both of the Yi nationality, but Mrs. Luo had been born into the slave caste, and she spoke only Yi, while Mr. Luo always spoke Chinese with his daughters. I had a lot of respect for Mr. Luo. He was a dedicated Communist and an idealist, and he had managed to make a good life for himself and his family, working in the local Cultural Bureau. Mr. Luo asked his younger daughter, Xiao Mei, to lend me some clothes and to take me to the public showers to get washed. There was no bathroom in Mr. Luo’s house, although he was a county official.

  In the shower I closed my eyes; I did not want to see the look on the other women’s faces when they saw how dirty the water was. After the shower I ate a bowl of noodles, and almost immediately I went to sleep in Xiao Mei’s room. I woke up the next morning, with the other three girls, to a Chinese-style breakfast.

  “Aunt Luo,” I asked Mrs. Luo, pointing to the rice porridge, “you eat rice porridge?”

  “Aya! Of course not! But the children love it.”

  And she explained that this was the modern way of things. The younger generation spoke Chinese, they wore Chinese clothes, and they ate Chinese breakfast.

  I helped Aunt Luo wash the dishes. Then I swept and cleaned the floors, and I cut up vegetables for lunch — doing my very best to ingratiate myself, so that by the time Mr. Luo came home, Aunt Luo was ready to sing my praises.

  Over lunch I told my story the best I could, in bits of three languages — how I had run away from home because I did not want to have a boyfriend and I only wanted to sing. Mr. Luo listened and ladled more rice into my bowl.

  “How old are you, little Namu?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, vaguely ashamed of my ignorance. Two New Year festivals had passed since my Skirt Ceremony. “Maybe fifteen. . . .”

  Mr. Luo cleared his throat. “What’s your zodiacal sign?” “Horse.”

  Mr. L
uo got up to fetch his almanac. “So, you were born in 1966. And since we are now in 1982, that makes you about sixteen. We’ll have to age you two years if you want to get a job with us. You can’t read Chinese, can you?”

  “No.” I could not read Chinese, and I could not read Moso either, since our language has no written form and I had never been to school. But there was a word for this in the city: I was illiterate, and Mr. Luo thought he could do something about it.

  The next day I was admitted into the troupe as a singer. It had so happened that a singer had recently left, and since there was no representative of the Moso people, I was a perfect candidate. I was to receive thirty yuan a month and three meals a day, and sleep on a makeshift bed in the meeting room at the Cultural Bureau. Mr. Luo provided me an identity card and a work permit with an official circular red stamp, Aunt Luo gave me a blanket, and the director of the troupe offered some gym clothes. I was overjoyed. I ran directly to the Horsemen’s Hotel to pass word that my mother should not worry, that I had a job in Xichang, and that it paid twice as much as the job at the school.

  Life with the performing troupe was very exciting. We were forty performers from the different nationalities of Sichuan: Yi, Tibetans, Lisu, Miao, Hui, and a few Han who could impersonate various ethnic peoples. In actual fact, since we were not a very large troupe, we had to learn something of everything. We all trained in singing and dancing and playing musical instruments, and we all trained in the different nationality styles, and this time, unlike what had happened in Chengdu, and to Mr. Luo’s surprise, I had no trouble learning new songs. All I had to do was listen a few times and I could do it.