Red Azalea Page 3

  When our parents got in, we told them the big news. We said since Big Beard started to produce eggs, there was no reason to kill her anymore. Eggs were the most expensive thing in the market. My parents agreed but said they would not eat Big Beard’s eggs. We said we would save the eggs for houseguests.

  Big Beard became the center of our attention. Each day after school we went to dig worms. Space Conqueror climbed the trees for bigger worms. Big Beard became picky in taste. She began to only take live worms. She produced one egg every two days and soon the shoe box was full.

  But Big Beard’s good life did not last. That summer the neighborhood Party committee launched a Patriotic Public Health Campaign and all the dogs, ducks, and chickens had to be killed in three days. We tried to hide Big Beard, but we could not shut her up every time after she dropped an egg. She had to pronounce her mother’s pride. The committee, a group of retired old people, came to our door to shout slogans to mobilize us. We pretended not to hear them at first. When they came nearer, waving their little paper flags in their hands, we got nervous. We held Big Beard under the window and covered her with blankets. The old people shouted their voices hoarse and their breaths broken. The slogan was “Do not raise duck and hen in the city!” It later on became “Do not raise duck …”—the old man who was leading the shout lost his breath here, he stopped, catching his breath, he went—“raise hen in the city!” The slogan shouters did not care what they shouted, they just repeated where the old man had stopped, so they went “Do not raise duck!” After the old man regained his voice, they followed: “Raise hen in the city!”

  The head of the neighborhood Party committee came to talk with me. He asked why I was not behaving as a head of the Little Red Guards should. He asked if I still wanted to be voted as a Mao’s Loyalist in the coming year. I understood what I had to do. I promised to kill Big Beard the next morning. He said that he and his committee would come and check on me by seven-thirty. He wanted to have Big Beard’s head.

  I had a bad sleep as I had expected. I got up at dawn. Big Beard was already up eating her breakfast in the dark. Hearing me come in, she made her go-go-go sound. I took a pair of scissors and picked up Big Beard by the wings. I went down to the yard. Upstairs Little Coffin had already come back from the food market. I asked her what time it was. She replied that it was five to seven. I kept telling myself, No big deal. Big Beard is only a hen, an animal, an enemy of public health. I raised up the scissors and put the scissors back down. I went back upstairs to fetch a bowl to collect Big Beard’s blood. It was seven-fifteen. I came back down to the yard and realized I had forgotten another thing. I went back upstairs to boil water. I let Big Beard free in the yard. She seemed glad. Shaking her feathers, she used her mouth to chop open my fist. She was playing with me. I went back up and the water was boiling. I took the hot-water container down and placed it next to the bowl. I grabbed Big Beard, but she struggled away as if she sensed some danger. I chased her. She kneeled down in front of me. I picked her up and folded her head under her wing. I was using my full strength. I began to pull her beard off. My hands were weak. I made myself ignore it. I kept pulling until Big Beard’s neck showed. I picked up the scissors. My arms were stiff. It was seven twenty-five. Big Beard pulled her head out from under her wing. She looked at me, her face was red. She kept struggling. I heard the neighborhood committee’s drum beating in the next lane. I folded Big Beard’s head back under her wing. I raised my scissors and aimed at her neck. She struggled violently. It was seven-thirty. The bell of the Wu-Lee Hardware Workshop rang; the women poured in. The committee people arrived at the door; the slogan shouting was like waves raising and falling. I clapped the scissors. Big Beard pulled her head out and made a go-go-go sound. She pushed an egg out of her body.

  I could not look. I brought the scissors down. When I could look again I saw Big Beard flying over everybody’s head, dripping blood on her way. My sisters and brother were looking down from the window. Big Beard was on a tree, almost as high as our window, then she dropped down on the white cement ground.

  I ran upstairs. I said I could not touch the hen again. No one in my family would. Big Beard lay dead on the cement yard, next to the bowl and a container of boiled water. The egg was stepped on. When the water got cold, Little Coffin came to me and asked what I was going to do with the hen. It’s going to spoil, she said. I begged her to take it. I said it would make a good dish to go with wine. I knew her father and grandfather were alcoholics. She took it.

  I went upstairs after dinner. Little Coffin’s family was in a Mao seminar section. Big Beard had become a handful of bones lying in a garbage can in the corner. Little Coffin told me that Big Beard tasted excellent.

  In school Mao’s books were our texts. I was the head of the class on the history of the Communist Party of China. To me, history meant how proletarians won over the reactionaries. Western history was a history of capitalist exploitation. We hung portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin next to Mao in our classrooms. Each morning we bowed to them as well as bowing to Mao, praying for a long, long life for him. My sisters copied my compositions. My compositions were collected slogans. I always began with this: “The East wind is blowing, the fighting drum is beating. Who is afraid in the world today? It is not the people who are afraid of American imperialists. It is the American imperialists who are afraid of the people.” Those phrases won me prizes. Space Conqueror looked up to me as if I were a magician. For me, compositions were nothing; it was abacus competitions that were difficult. I wrote compositions for my brother and sisters, but I felt I had not much in common with the children. I felt like an adult. I longed for challenges. I was at the school day and night promoting Communism, making revolution by painting slogans on walls and boards. I led my schoolmates in collecting pennies. We wanted to donate the pennies to the starving children in America. We were proud of what we did. We were sure that we were making red dots on the world’s map. We were fighting for the final peace of the planet. Not for a day did I not feel heroic. I was the opera.

  I was asked to attend the school’s Revolutionary Committee meeting. It was 1970 and I was thirteen years old. I discussed how to carry on the Cultural Revolution at our Long Happiness Elementary School with the committee people, the true revolutionaries. When I raised my hand and said I would like to speak, my face would no longer flush. I knew what I was talking about. Phrases from People’s Daily and Red Flag magazine poured out of my mouth. My speeches were filled with an impassioned and noble spirit. I was honored. In the early seventies my being a head of the Little Red Guards at school brought our family honor. My award certificates were my mother’s pride, although she never hung them on the wall. My name was constantly mentioned by the school authority and praised as “Study Mao Thoughts Activist,” “Mao’s Good Child” and “Student of Excellences.” Whenever I would speak through a microphone in the school’s broadcasting station, my sisters and brother would be listening in their classrooms and their classmates would look at them with admiration and envy.

  The school’s new Party secretary, a man named Chain, was a workers’ representative from the Shanghai Shipping Factory. He was about fifty years old, extremely thin, like a bamboo stick. He taught me how to hold political meetings. He liked to say, We have to let our little general play a full role in the Cultural Revolution and give full scope to the initiative of the Little Red Guards. He told me not to be afraid of things that I did not understand. You must learn to think like this, he said. If the earth stops spinning, I’ll continue to spin.

  It was the first week of November when Secretary Chain called me in. He told me excitedly that the committee had finally dug out a hidden class enemy, an American spy. He said, We are going to have a meeting against her, a rally which two thousand people will be attending. You will be the student representative to speak against her. I asked who it was. Wrinkling his eyebrows, the secretary pronounced a shocking name. It was Autumn Leaves, my teacher. I thought I heard Secretary Chain
wrong. But he nodded at me slowly, confirming that I heard him exactly right.

  I sat down. I actually dropped down on the chair. My legs all of a sudden lost their strength.

  Autumn Leaves was a thin, middle-aged lady and was seriously nearsighted. She wore a dark pair of glasses and had a hoarse voice and a short temper. She loved Chinese, mathematics and music. The first day she stepped into the classroom, she asked all the students if any of us could tell what her name Autumn Leaves meant. No one was able to figure it out. Then she explained it. She said that there was a famous poem written in the Tang Dynasty about autumn leaves. It praised the beauty and significance of the falling leaves. It said that when a leaf fell naturally, it symbolized a full life. The touch of the ground meant the transformation of a ripe leaf to fresh mud. It fertilized the seeds through the winter. Its pregnancy came to term with the next spring. She said that we were her spring.

  She was an energetic teacher who never seemed to be tired of teaching. Her methods were unique. One moment she raised her arms to shoulder level and stretched them out to the sides, making herself look like a cross when explaining infinity; the next moment she spoke with a strong Hunan accent when explaining where a poet was from. Once she completely lost her voice while trying to explain geometric progression to me. When she finally made me understand, she laughed silently like a mute with her arms dancing in the air. When I thanked her, she said that she was glad that I was serious about learning. She set me up as the example for our class and then the entire grade. When she knew that I wanted to improve my Chinese, she brought me her own books to read. She was this way with all her students. One day when it was raining hard after class, she gave students her raincoat, rain shoes and her umbrella as they went home. She herself went home wet. The next day she had a fever, but she came to class and struggled on, despite her fever. By the time she finished her lecture, she had lost her voice again. There was no way I could picture Autumn Leaves as an American spy.

  As if reading my mind, Secretary Chain smiled and asked me if I had ever heard the phrase “Raging flames refine the real gold.” I shook my head. He said, It is time for you to test yourself out to see whether you are a real revolutionary or an armchair revolutionary. He recited a Mao quotation: “To have a revolution is not like having a dinner party, not like painting a pretty picture or making embroidery. It is not that easy and relaxing. Revolution is an insurrection in which one class overthrows the other with violent force.”

  I found my words were blocked by my stiff tongue. I kept saying, Autumn Leaves is my teacher. Secretary Chain suggested that we work on my problem. He lit a cigarette and told me the fable of “A Wolf in Sheep’s Skin.” He said Autumn Leaves was the wolf. He told me that Autumn Leaves’ father was a Chinese American who was still living in America. Autumn Leaves was born and educated in America. Secretary Chain said, The capitalist sent his daughter back to China to educate our children. Don’t you see this as problematic?

  For the next two hours Secretary Chain convinced me that Autumn Leaves was a secret agent of the imperialists and was using teaching as a weapon to destroy our minds. Secretary Chain asked whether I would tolerate that. Of course not, I said. No one can pull our proletarians back to the old society. Good, said Secretary Chain, tapping my shoulders. He said he knew I would be a sharp spear for the Party. I raised my head and said, Secretary, please tell me what to do. He said, Write a speech. I asked what I should write. He said, Tell the masses how you were mentally poisoned. I said that I did not quite understand the words “mentally poisoned.” Secretary Chain said, You are not mature enough to understand that yet. He then asked me to give an opinion on what kind of person I thought Autumn Leaves was. I told him the truth.

  Secretary Chain laughed loudly at me. He said that I had already become a victim of the spy who had almost killed me with the skill of the wolf who killed the sheep, leaving no trace of blood. He punched his fist on the table and said loudly, That in itself is wonderful material to be discussed! I felt awkward. He stopped laughing and said, You shouldn’t be discouraged by your immaturity.

  He made me feel disappointed in myself. Let me help you, he suggested. He asked me the name of the books she loaned me. An Old Man of Invention, I began to recall, The Little Mermaid, and Snow White. He asked for the author’s name. I said it was something like Andersen.

  Secretary Chain suddenly raised his hand in the air and furrowed his brow. He said, Stop, this is it. Who is Andersen? An old foreign man, I guess, I replied. What were his fairy tales about? About lives of princes, princesses and little people. What does Andersen do now? he asked. I do not know, I replied.

  Look how careless you are! Secretary Chain almost yelled at me. He could be a foreign spy! Taking out a little glass vial, Secretary Chain put a few pills into his mouth. He explained that it was the medicine for his liver pain. He said his liver was hurting badly, but he could not tell his doctor about this because he would be hospitalized immediately. He said his pain was getting worse, but he could not afford to waste a second in the hospital. How can I disappoint Chairman Mao, who put his trust in people like us, the working class, the class that was once even lower than the pigs and dogs before Liberation?

  His face was turning purple. I suggested that he take a rest. He waved me to go on as he pressed his liver with his hands to endure the pain. He told me that he did not have much schooling. His parents died of hunger when he was five. His brother and little sister were thrown into the sea after they died of cholera. He was sold to a child dealer for fifteen pounds of rice. He became a child worker in a shipping factory in Shanghai and was beaten often by the owner. After the Liberation he joined the Party and was sent to a workers’ night school. He said, I owe our Party a great deal and I haven’t worked hard enough to show my appreciation.

  I looked at him and was touched. His pain seemed to be increasing. His fingers pressed against his liver harder, but he refused to rest. You know, we found Autumn Leaves’ diary and it had a paragraph about you, he said. What … what did she say about me? I became nervous. She said that you were one of the very few children who were educable. She put quotation marks around “educable.” Can you think of what that means? Without waiting for my reply, Secretary Chain concluded, It was obvious that Autumn Leaves thought that you could be educated into her type, her father’s type, the imperialists’ type. He pointed out that the purpose of writing this diary was to present it to her American boss as proof of her success as a spy.

  My world turned upside down. I felt deeply hurt and used. Secretary Chain asked me whether I was aware of the fact that I was set up as a model by Autumn Leaves to influence the others. Her goal is to make you all betray Communism! I felt the guilt and anger. I said to Secretary Chain that I would speak tomorrow. He nodded at me. He said, Our Party trusts you and Mao would be very proud of you.

  Pull out the hidden class enemy, the American spy Autumn Leaves! Expose her under the bare sun! the crowd shouted as soon as the meeting started. I was sitting on the stage on one of the risers. Two strong men escorted Autumn Leaves onto the stage facing the crowd of two thousand people, including her students and colleagues. Her arms were twisted behind her. She was almost unrecognizable. Only a few days had passed since I had seen her, but it seemed as though she had aged ten years. Her hair had suddenly turned gray. Her face was colorless. A rectangular board reading “Down with American Spy” hung from her neck. Two men forced her to bow to Mao’s portrait three times. One of the men bent her left arm very hard and said, Beg Chairman Mao for forgiveness now! Autumn Leaves refused to say the words. The two men bent her arms up backward. They bent her harder. Autumn Leaves’ face contorted in pain and then her mouth moved. She said the words and the men let her loose.

  My mouth was terribly dry. It was hard to bear what I saw. The string of the heavy board seemed to cut into Autumn Leaves’ skin. I forgot what I was supposed to do—to lead the crowd to shout the slogans—until Secretary Chain came to remind me of my duty.
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  Long live the great proletarian dictatorship! I shouted, following the slogan menu. I was getting more and more scared when I saw Autumn Leaves struggling with the two men who had been trying to press her head toward the floor while she tried to face the sky. When her eyeglasses fell off, I saw her eyes close tightly.

  Secretary Chain shouted at her. The crowd shouted, Confess! Confess! Secretary Chain took the microphone and said that the masses would not have much patience. By acting this way Autumn Leaves was digging her own grave.

  Autumn Leaves kept silent. When kicked hard, she said that she had nothing to confess. She said she was innocent. Our Party never accuses anyone who is innocent, said Secretary Chain, and yet the Party would never allow a class enemy to slip away from the net of the proletarian dictatorship. He said now it was time to demonstrate that Autumn Leaves was a criminal. He nodded at me and turned to the crowd. He said, Let’s have the victim speak out!

  I stood up and felt dizzy. The crowd began clapping their hands. The sunlight was dazzlingly bright and was hurting my eyes. My vision became blurred and I saw a million bees wheeling in front of me sounding like helicopters. As the crowd kept clapping, I moved to the front of the stage. I stopped in front of the microphone. Taking out the speech I had written last night, I suddenly felt a need to speak with my parents. I had not gone home but slept in the classroom on the table with other Little Red Guards. Five of us wrote the speech. I regretted not having my parents go over the speech with me. I took a deep breath. My fingers were shaking and would not obey in turning the pages.

  Don’t be afraid, we are all with you, Secretary Chain said in my ear as he came to adjust the height of the microphone. He placed a cup of water in front of me. I took the water and drank it down in one breath. I felt a little better. I began to read.