Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party

by Ying Chang Compestine

  All the Westerners were gone now. When I thought about San Francisco, I wondered what kind of murals they had of their leader. Did he also wear a funny hat like Chairman Mao?

  As I walked around the city with my parents, one moment we’d be among large Western-style buildings, and the next in one of many narrow stone-paved alleys. These older alleys were lined with single-story houses with low roofs. In warm weather, their doors were open. Families crowded inside. They had no bathrooms. When I used our large, clean bathroom, I often felt sorry for those people who had to walk blocks to use dirty public bathrooms like the one at the end of Flower Alley.

  I went in once and found there were no toilets, only holes in the ground. One girl squatted over a hole, reading a picture book, as if the smell didn’t bother her at all. The stink forced me to run right out.

  Pinching my nose with my flowered handkerchief until I was well past the public bathroom, I turned right at the end of the alley. There stood the school’s iron gates, painted bright blue. In front of the open gates, noisy boys and girls crowded around an old lady with white hair and a wrinkled face. A rope that looped behind her neck held up a small wooden tray in front of her. She was selling five-spiced watermelon seeds, rice candy, and two-inch-long purple sugar canes. Mother would never allow me to buy anything from street vendors. She said the treats were covered with germs.

  Squeezing through the crowd, I ran inside the school courtyard. Three boys from my old third-grade class were dribbling white liquid from teakettles onto the ground, drawing lines for a basketball game. They stopped when they saw me. I smiled at them. They grinned and looked away.

  A big cloth picture of Chairman Mao with a group of Young Pioneers hung from the three-story building. In it, the Young Pioneers huddled around Chairman Mao as he extended his arms over them. I thought of baby ducklings and an old duck. I looked forward to joining the Young Pioneers and wearing a red scarf around my neck, just like the older kids in the courtyard. I had used Father’s red silk tie to practice making the knot.

  I found my name on the list beside the second classroom on the first floor. Someone tapped my shoulder. It was Hong, my friend from third grade. Her smile dimpled her round cheeks.

  “So are you really skipping a grade?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “I’ll miss you,” she said.

  “We can still play together.” I patted her arm. “I have to go now.”

  I couldn’t wait to meet my new classmates. Taking a deep breath, I walked in. Rows of wooden desks and long benches filled the room. A group of boys and girls stood near the door beside the blackboard. Although I was skipping only one grade, the fifth-graders were much taller and bigger than I was. Half were dressed in Mao’s army uniforms and wore red scarves. I forgot the greetings I had practiced.

  A girl with dark skin standing in the center of the crowd called out, “Look, look, here comes the bloodsucking landlord!” The crowd turned toward me and laughed loudly. I froze. The girl’s short hair barely showed under her blue cap. Her blue shirt and pants had different-colored patches at the elbows and knees. She wore an old pair of army shoes with her big toes sticking out. She looked like a peasant.

  “I bet she can crow like a rooster,” said a rabbit-faced fat boy. The brass buttons on his new Mao’s uniform shone in the sunlight. My face burned. Another wave of laughter filled the room.

  They were comparing me to the landlord in the movie Midnight Rooster. I had seen it last summer when it was playing in all the theaters. In the movie, the cruel landlord always wore an outfit with large flowers. She and her husband ordered the workers to get up when the rooster crowed. At midnight, she crowed like a rooster, tricking the peasants into starting work hours before dawn.

  I bit my lip to stop my tears. My outfit had large flowers, but I wasn’t an evil landlord! I couldn’t crow like a rooster—I didn’t even like roosters. Tears rolled down my cheeks. The crowd didn’t quiet down until the bell rang.

  Through the morning, we studied four different subjects: Chinese writing, Chinese history, math, and drawing. During recess no one talked to me. Sitting by myself, I stared at the whitewashed wall where a huge portrait of Mao hung above the blackboard. I wondered what I had done wrong.

  Laughter and the noise of dribbling basketballs came through the windows. Why were they so happy? How stupid I was to look forward to this all summer. How was I going to survive the rest of the school year?

  I couldn’t wait to tell Mother when I went home for lunch. Last year, a boy stepped on my new shoes. Mother talked to his parents, and the boy said he was sorry and stopped bothering me.

  After morning classes, I raced home and told Mother about the mean kids. “Could you talk to their parents?”

  Mother frowned and said impatiently, “Don’t wear that dress to school again.”

  That afternoon, before going back to school, I changed into a white blouse and blue pants, hoping no one would pick on me. But as soon as I walked into the classroom, the short-haired girl, Yu, shrieked, “The little landlord is pretending to be working class.” She shook her dirty finger at me. “We revolutionaries can smell a wolf under her human skin.”

  “Wolf, wolf, wolf!” her friends chanted.

  I glared at her clothes, dirty and covered with patches. “I would rather be a wolf than look like you,” I whispered, and walked toward my seat.

  The rabbit-faced boy sniffed at me as I passed. Others laughed and made sniffing sounds. My back was instantly soaked with sweat. My knees trembled under my desk until class started. Why were they picking on me for no reason?

  The teasing did not stop until the math teacher entered the classroom. He was a stern old man with thick glasses. For the first time, I wished that math class would never end. During breaks, I stayed in my seat and pretended to read Mao’s little red book. Fortunately, Yu led everyone outside to bully someone else.

  Later, I learned the rabbit-faced boy’s name was Gao. His father was an important person sent by the army to oversee the Cultural Revolution in our district.

  Yu and Gao continued to bully me by calling me bloodsucking landlord. In less than a week, everyone in the class had stopped using my real name during recess. I did my best to ignore them. If I had only known, I would never have skipped a grade.

  One morning in mid-September, I didn’t see Father at breakfast.

  “Where’s Daddy?” I asked Mother.

  She set out a glass of homemade soy milk and a plate with two steamed buns and slices of vegetarian sausage. “He went to check on one of his patients.”

  I was about to ask whether I’d see him before I left for school when weeping noises came down the chimney pipe from upstairs. I stopped eating. “Listen. Someone is crying.” It was Mrs. Wong! I jumped out of my chair.

  “You stay and finish your breakfast. I’ll go.” Mother ran toward the door. I hardly ever saw her run. “Ladies should walk with grace,” she always told me.

  I left my breakfast and pressed my ear to the fireplace pipe. The words were hard to understand. I wished I could turn into a little bug and crawl up the pipe to see what was happening there! Finally, Mother returned with tears in her eyes.

  “Dr. Wong disappeared last night after Comrade Li called him to his office.”

  I was too shocked to cry. What happened to Dr. Wong? I hoped my friend Comrade Li would help us find him. He knew so many people, even the policemen.

  “Please, Momma, let me go see Mrs. Wong!”

  “No, she’s too upset right now. Go! You’re late for school.” Mother hung my schoolbag over my shoulder and pushed me toward the front door.

  I didn’t hear a thing Teacher Hui said that day. My thoughts were as busy as the traffic on Victory Road. I wished I could ask Teacher Hui my questions. What happened to Dr. Wong? Did it have to do with his brother in Hong Kong? Was it because he was Dr. Smith’s student? If so, what might happen to Father?

  That night Father and I met Comrade Li in the hallway com
ing out of the bathroom.

  “Good evening, Comrade Li,” said Father. “Could you please tell me what happened to Dr. Wong?”

  Comrade Li rudely pushed his way between us. “Dr. Wong is an enemy of the state. He dared to write a letter that criticized Chairman Mao,” he said loudly. “That is all you need to know.” He slammed his door behind him.

  I was shocked that he called Dr. Wong an enemy. Why would he criticize Chairman Mao? Was Comrade Li angry with Father because he was Dr. Wong’s best friend?

  Father and Mother stayed up late that night, whispering in their bedroom. In my bed, I held Bao-bao tight. My fear for Dr. Wong and Father tore at me like rats tearing at a rice sack.

  Will Butterflies Land on Me?

  In the following weeks, I spent as much time as I could near the fireplace, listening. Mrs. Wong cried a lot. I didn’t hear any sound from Niu. I pictured him hiding in his room like he did when his fish died.

  I wanted to be with them, but Mother didn’t allow me to go anymore. I knew she visited them late at night when Comrade Li was not home. I saw Mother pack our bamboo basket with food, medicine, and clean clothes. The next day, the basket was empty. One night, when Mother was packing the basket, I slipped out of bed. While Mother was in the kitchen, I hid Bao-bao under a package of herbal medicine. I hoped Bao-bao would help Mrs. Wong sleep at night and comfort her during the day.

  Coming home from school a few days later, I saw Comrade Li standing in front of our apartment building with a loudspeaker in his hand. With a wide blue belt over his Mao uniform, he looked taller and skinnier. I ducked behind the trunk of a milk tree and stared.

  Young people in Mao uniforms ran in and out of our building. On their right arms they wore red armbands that said RED GUARD in yellow characters. Two carried Mrs. Wong’s sewing machine. Four others had her refrigerator. Her airplane heater was smashed into pieces near the stairs. Neighbors peeked out from behind their curtains.

  Comrade Li’s voice boomed around the courtyard through the loudspeaker. “We confiscate these bourgeois items in the name of the Cultural Revolution.”

  How could this be the same funny man who did magic tricks for me and sang in the bathroom? I took a deep breath and ran upstairs. To my surprise, Mother sat by the dining room table staring at an empty wall. Why wasn’t she helping Mrs. Wong? Why didn’t she call Father home to protect us? Would the Red Guards take our things next? I was afraid to ask Mother these questions.

  That night, I had a horrible dream. Father was taken away by a mob without faces. I woke up and ran toward my parents’ bedroom. I found Father sitting in the living room with a heavy cotton blanket tented over himself and the radio that sat on the round end table. The yellow light from the small lamp cast his shadow on the wall. All I could hear was a humming like tiny mosquitoes.

  Father had told me the government jammed foreign stations, because Chairman Mao wanted us to listen only to the Central China People’s Broadcast from Beijing. It played Jiang Qing’s propaganda songs and repeated Mao’s speeches over and over.

  “Daddy! What are you listening to?” I whispered.

  Father turned off the radio and lifted up a corner of the blanket. His shadow on the wall turned into a sitting Buddha.

  “The Voice of America,” he whispered.

  These days, we had to whisper a lot, especially when we talked about the Golden Gate Bridge, listened to the Voice of America, or held English lessons. I crawled onto his lap and snuggled with him under the blanket. It was warm and smelled of antiseptics.

  “Daddy, why do people want to go to America?” I lifted off the blanket.

  “Shh!” Father put a finger to his lips.

  We glanced toward Comrade Li’s apartment. Since Father had asked about Dr. Wong, Comrade Li no longer knocked on the little door. He ignored me when we met in the hallway. It was as if a bad magic trick had changed him from a funny monkey into a poisonous snake.

  “They want to enjoy freedom,” Father whispered.

  “What’s freedom?” I whispered back.

  Father led me to my bedroom. “Freedom is being able to read what you want and say what you think.”

  I saw sadness in his eyes. I wanted to ask him if people disappeared in America, but I didn’t. Talking about Dr. Wong made Father unhappy.

  “For tomorrow’s lesson, can we talk about what they eat in America?” I slid under my soft silk blanket.

  “All right. Go to sleep now.” Father kissed my forehead.

  Mother brought home less and less food. On Communist National Day, October 1, she returned with an empty basket. With her tired voice, she said to Father, “Everyone is too busy taking part in the Cultural Revolution.” Father put a finger to his lips and looked in the direction of Comrade Li’s home. Mother lowered her voice to a whisper. “From now on, everything is rationed.” She pulled out small tickets in different colors from her pocket and explained, “Red is for one jin of meat, blue is for five eggs, and yellow is for two bars of soap.”

  I looked at those colorful tickets and wished they would turn into meat and eggs right then.

  That Sunday, Mother and I went to the store to buy meat with a red ticket.

  “We’re out of meat,” said the saleswoman. “Come back in three days.”

  Although the store shelves were empty, people still waited outside in long lines. That day we ate only rice, shriveled vegetables, and some dried meat.

  When the weather grew cooler and leaves fell off the trees, mealtime had become a passing game. It started when Mother said she was not hungry. She would pass her portion of meat or egg to me and Father. Father would pass them back to her. In the end, it all wound up in my bowl. I didn’t understand how Mother could not be hungry. I was hungry all the time.

  The week before my tenth birthday, I asked Mother, “When are we going to buy cloth for my outfit?”

  In the past, I always got new clothes for my birthday. Mother said it was important so evil spirits would not recognize me in the coming year. For dinner, she would serve me ten dumplings for good luck. I dreamed of eating her plump pork-cabbage dumplings with ginger-sesame sauce. I could almost taste their delicious juice in my mouth.

  Since we could rarely buy meat, I could only hope to have a new outfit. I hadn’t worn clothes with bright flowers to school, but I still loved to wear them at home. They reminded me of the happy days.

  Mother stopped eating and glanced at Father. She put down her chopsticks and said slowly, “Ling, fabric is rationed now. We must save all our ration tickets for winter clothes.”

  Tears rolled down my cheeks. I couldn’t squeeze into last year’s clothes. Without a new outfit, butterflies were not going to land on me. Mother closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

  Father put down his rice bowl. He gently stroked my hair and said to Mother, “I don’t need new clothes this winter. Use my ration ticket to buy fabric for Ling.”

  Mother shook her head. “You always spoil her.” With her ivory chopsticks, Mother reached over to the pan-fried fish in front of me, picked up a large piece, and pressed it firmly in my rice bowl. I was happy she gave me another piece of fish, but wished she would stop treating me like a baby. If I was old enough to braid my hair, I was surely old enough to feed myself.

  I didn’t feel good about using Father’s ration ticket, but I hadn’t had a new outfit in so long.

  Last year, the fabric store had at least thirty flower prints on the shelves. After two hours, I still hadn’t decided whether to get the small white lotus flowers with green leaves or the big bunches of yellow chrysanthemums in gold and blue vases. Father had suggested I get both fabrics, the lotus for a blouse and the chrysanthemums for a skirt.

  Mother and I took the fabric to Mrs. Wong’s home. She made me the skirt and blouse on her beautiful sewing machine.

  With the leftover fabric, Mrs. Wong made me a sun hat. When Father saw me in my new outfit, he told me that I would mix right in with the chrysanthemums in our courtyard. They
were the last to bloom before winter came. A few times, the big black and golden butterflies had even landed on me.

  Whenever I wore the outfit to Father’s office, the young nurses surrounded me. “What a beautiful little flower.” They stuffed my pocket with candy and sweet dried plums. I enjoyed the attention and treats, but I didn’t like it when they pinched my cheeks.

  Now that outfit was too small.

  Mother met me after school. As we walked to the Number One Fabric Store, I felt happier than I had in a long time. I told Mother, “The butterflies only landed on me five times last year. I think the flowers were too small. I’ll try to find bigger ones this year.” Even though I couldn’t wear my new outfit to school, I could put it on at home or when I went out with Father.

  When we entered the fabric store, most of the shelves were empty. The only fabric color for sale was dark blue.

  “Do you want to buy fabric for a Mao uniform?” asked a tall woman behind the counter. Her face looked like a dried-up eggplant. She yanked out some blue fabric wrapped around a long board and spread it open on the wooden counter, the same fabric her jacket was made of.

  “No. I want flowered fabric,” I whispered. Mother squeezed my arm but it was too late.

  The woman raised her voice to a high pitch. “Flowered fabric?” Other people in the store stared at us. She waved around her bony hands. “That is bourgeois! We are a revolutionary store. We don’t sell idiotic flowered fabrics!”

  Mother grabbed my hand and dragged me out of the store. Clerks laughed loudly behind us.

  On the way home, Mother was quiet. Crowds of people all dressed in dark clothes pushed past us on the sidewalk, bumping into my shoulders. I gathered my courage and asked her in a small voice, “Momma, what’s bourgeois? Why are flower fabrics bourgeois?”

  She grabbed my hand and stopped under a big Chairman Mao poster, a terrified look on her face. “Please stop your questions!”