The Little Red Guard: A Family Memoir (10 page)

11.

D
IVISION

B
efore the cold winter set in, Father decided it was still warm enough to add another layer of black paint to the coffin. After the paint dried, the coffin became a storage bin for the black-market bags of wheat and corn flour my parents bought as insurance against hunger. Layers of newspaper and two large tablecloths turned the coffin into just another bulky piece of furniture, and eventually we barely noticed it at all. Even though nobody made an issue of Grandma’s coffin at work, Father never stopped worrying. He felt that Grandma’s improved health only gave him additional time to save for the burial. On the fifteenth of every month, when Father received his monthly pay, he would add it to the pile of banknotes slowly accumulating in the locked top drawer of his old orange-colored desk.

Father’s fixation aggravated the tension with Mother.

Growing up, every boy was subject to a ritual question from older women in the neighborhood. The question was supposed to test a boy’s attitude toward his mother and future wife. “If your mother and your wife both fall into the water and are drowning, whom do you save first?” When my turn came, I said to a group of Mother’s friends surrounding me at the home of a classmate, “I will certainly save my mother first. Who cares about the wife!” All the women burst out laughing. Then, when I added, “I want to be like my dad,” there was an awkward silence.

Hypothetically, if Mother and Grandma were both drowning in water, there was no doubt in my mind that Father would get to Grandma first. All of Mother’s friends knew it too. According to contemporary Chinese standards, Father was by no means a considerate husband. Never once did Father do anything that might be construed even remotely as romantic. My parents never just strolled together or took in a movie or went out for a nice meal, just the two of them. He had never bought Mother clothes or gifts during New Year’s.

Even though divorce was almost unheard of in those days, it seemed for a while that Grandma’s coffin was going to break up my parents’ marriage. Matters came to a head when Mother was offered a work trip to Shanghai, which I knew was a place with many tall buildings and where they made White Rabbit candy. It was an honor to be selected and she would have the opportunity to meet city leaders during the trip. Mother wanted a new winter coat so she wouldn’t look shabby in front of the leadership. Father gave her the standard response: “We can’t afford it now. We have to pay off the coffin loan and then save money for Grandma’s funeral.”

Mother exploded. We had heard them argue, but we’d never seen them truly fight until that evening. My siblings and I retreated to a corner as they had at each other. “I give you all my pay each month, but everything you do is for your mother and her coffin! You treat her like a goddess! Nobody else matters,” she yelled. Father went to close the door for fear that our neighbors might hear, but Mother continued, her anger unabated. “It’s sickening. All you care about is your mother’s death. Why can’t your mother be like everyone else and be cremated? If I had my way, I’d burn the coffin so you can focus on your children and wife!”

With that threat, she stormed out of the house. Father sat down, moping over tea. Grandma pursed her lips in outrage, grunted through her teeth, and repeated a line that we children had heard for years: “What a terrible woman. If she burns the coffin and has me cremated, my ghost will haunt her for the rest of her life!” Father’s fury was rekindled and he turned on Grandma and, with raised voice, told her to stop such talk.

Having been brainwashed by Grandma, my elder sister and I stood firmly on Father’s side. I considered Mother’s outburst inconsiderate and her request for a new coat vain and bourgeois. At school, our teacher encouraged students to live a simple life. Wearing old clothes, especially jackets or pants with patches on the elbows or knees, was seen as a badge of proletarian honor. Mother supported the school policy. She had willingly mended my shirt collar and patched holes on the back of my pants. Why would she make such a big fuss over her winter coat? Moreover, I resented her for threatening to burn Grandma’s coffin.

When fights broke out in other households in the neighborhood, the wives would leave to stay with their own parents until the husbands relented. However, Mother had no family members in the city. She sought refuge in our neighbor’s house.

Later that night, Mother did not come home. Father, too proud to go searching for Mother himself, sent me and my younger sister to check Mrs. Yang house, Mother’s usual hangout. “Your mother just left,” explained Mrs. Yang husband, an accountant at Father’s company. When we returned home, I saw Mother and two of her friends, Mrs. Yang and Mrs. Fan, sitting with Father in another room, lecturing him about how to treat his wife nicely. “Funerals are for the living, not the dead,” said Mrs. Fan, who had recently been widowed. “No matter how much you spend on your mother’s funeral, she won’t be able to see it. Don’t be blindsided.”

Throughout the evening, Mother’s face remained expressionless. Father, an intensely private person, looked humiliated. My sister and I pulled Grandma outside so she wouldn’t say anything that would stir up more animosity. “That’s great. Now the whole neighborhood knows that your parents are having a fight.” She shook her head and pouted. I held Grandma’s hand to console her.

Mother and Father said nothing to each other for several days. Her face was clouded with displeasure. The house was quiet and very cold. My initial support for Father gradually diminished. I desperately wanted them to talk to each other. When, on the night before her departure, Mother came home with a new winter coat, all smiles and chatter, it was as if a dark storm had passed. Father probably realized he had gone too far. My siblings and I were relieved.

My parents used to share a bedroom. When my younger brother grew bigger, Father and Mother began sleeping in separate rooms—Father ended up sharing a bed with my brother while Mother slept with my sister. The arrangement, for practical reasons, was common in our neighborhood because sleeping space was tight for most families. I wondered if it was also Mother’s way to punish Father.

Even after the coat incident, Father’s devotion to Grandma’s funeral arrangements remained unchanged. His penny-squeezing ways affected all of us. We all began shifting our positions, allying more and more with Mother against Father’s frugality, which made us feel more deprived than other children in the neighborhood.

Before Grandma’s coffin, my parents planned their spending with great care. Their combined salary meant we managed to get by comfortably. To the envy of many neighborhood children, my siblings and I would receive a tiny allowance occasionally to buy candies and books on International Children’s Day on June 1 or buy a red-bean popsicle when the popsicle lady wheeled her cart to our residential complex in the hot summer afternoons.

Mother also had some money to indulge in her habit of hoarding. She was attuned to the cycle of shortages in Chairman Mao’s planned economy, which ensured state-run stores got everything we might need, but never when it was actually needed. Nothing could be had, from sugar and vegetable oil to soap and cotton, without the appropriate government-issued coupon. Mother was acquainted with a woman who worked at a nearby grocery store and she would look the other way if Mother wanted to buy extra soap and a bolt of blue cloth with the right coupon. She would buy as much as she could carry and used her connection to trade for favors. When my favorite elementary school teacher ran out of vegetable oil, Mother sent her a bottle. Thanks to Mother, I was quite popular with several of my teachers.

Father could not fathom Mother’s reasoning: enough soap for years, bolts of cloth bought in August to make school uniforms in January, enough cooking oil to drown the whole family. He never managed to control Mother’s spending, despite having her hand over her salary on payday and locking it with his own wages in the desk drawer. When her friend at the store was transferred, Mother lost her connection, and Father couldn’t resist: “Don’t feel too sad. It’s time you ran down your inventory.”

In the post-coffin days, we all became victims of Father’s belt-tightening measures. When my elementary school organized students to see a movie, I had to ask my teacher to write a note to Father, stating how important the movie was to my studies before he agreed to pay for my ticket. Before Coke and Sprite invaded China, we had
qi-shui—
a type of orange-flavored carbonated water in glass bottles, sold in state-run stores for ten fen
a bottle. It was the most coveted summer drink among children. When we watched our neighbor’s children take slow sips and burp loudly to show off their ability to enjoy the choice drink, we begged Father but he never gave in. Instead, he asked Grandma to pour cooled boiled water into a big white teapot every day, claiming it was a much better thirst quencher than what he called the “horrible-tasting”
qi-shui
, which he himself probably had never tried.

My elder sister was invited on a class outing at her high school, but Father only gave her a tiny allowance, half of what the other girls received. “This is for the future of our family,” he said. “We need to save money for Grandma’s funeral.” My sister sobbed, repeating what our neighbors had been telling Father: “If you buy Grandma a piece of candy when she is alive, at least she can taste the sweetness now, not imagine what it might be like when she is gone.” We were shocked by her outspokenness. Grandma intervened and Father grudgingly agreed to a small increase in my sister’s allowance.

When I began taking violin lessons, my teacher said I had talent in music and urged me to undertake some professional training. I yearned for a violin of my own and found one in a store for only fifteen yuan. I pestered Father for months about it, but he would always say, “We need to save money for Grandma’s funeral,” and told me to borrow one from school. “I will buy you an expensive one when you become a famous violinist.” He begrudged spending anything unless it was absolutely necessary or when, after one of my broken sport shoes flew off while I was doing a front flip during gymnastics practice and made everybody laugh, it was necessary to save face.

One day, threatened by bullies who demanded I buy them cigarettes and in desperate need of cash, I managed by pulling on Father’s padlocked drawer to open it a crack and, using tweezers, teased free a ten-yuan note. A week later, Father took out the leather strap and bent me over the bed.

Father looked for other ways to save money. Since meat and eggs were strictly rationed, he jumped at the idea of raising chickens in our courtyard. In early spring, Mother procured a dozen newly hatched chicks and Grandma fed them corn millet and kept them close to the stove until they were big enough, and the weather warm enough, for them to survive on their own. Father fenced off part of the courtyard, built a small corner coop, and let them loose. After that, eggs became a staple for different occasions. A boiled egg was my only birthday treat for years. Mother poached eggs in salty or sugared water when my oldest sister was in the hospital and needed protein; and Grandma beat a shredded egg in hot water mixed with honey and a dash of sesame oil when I suffered a sore throat.

Of course, all good things must come to an end. One of our neighbors who also raised chickens was caught selling eggs at a local black market. The authorities decided to ban animals in the residential complex to stem the capitalistic practices. One night, four security guards, trailed by a large crowd, headed for our courtyard. They chased after the chickens. Grandma, armed with her walking stick, hurled herself on one of the guards, screaming, “Leave those chickens alone. Kill me instead.” She then snatched up a chicken and, holding it to her breast, sat on the ground, howling. It was all terribly pathetic. The security guards did not know what to do. Spectators began to cry. One guard mumbled, “Let’s go. If this old woman dies on us, we have to take responsibility.” And everyone left. I helped Grandma up and saw Father emerge from the house, shaking his head. “How do you expect me to face my coworkers?”

Relations between my parents remained tense for several years, but they reconciled in the winter of 1977 when, at the age of thirty-nine, Mother suddenly suffered severe internal bleeding. Due to massive loss of blood, her life was in danger and she required surgery. When a doctor explained to Father the risks of the procedure and had him sign a consent form, he said his hands were shaking. He realized for the first time that he could lose his wife. Mother’s illness seemed to be a wake-up call for Father. When the company granted him a month off to take care of her, Father would leave home every morning on his bicycle, stop by a restaurant near the hospital to get Mother’s favorite wonton soup, and then spend a whole day by Mother’s bedside. I visited the hospital one day, and her roommate, a woman from a nearby suburb, raved about how attentive Father was.

Grandma was too weak to cook and my elder sister was away at work. With Father’s lack of skill with chores, the house seemed paralyzed. I was eager to take on the responsibilities and show off my cooking. The lessons from Grandma paid off. I made noodles and steamed buns for Grandma and my younger siblings.

“I’m glad you can cook now,” said Grandma, who didn’t miss a single chance to criticize Mother, even though she was hospitalized. “In this way, you can eat anything you want without having to endure abuse from your future wife, like your father does.”

Mother was still in the hospital during the Chinese New Year. In my memory, that was the first holiday that we didn’t have new clothes. Our kitchen became eerily quiet and there were no steamed buns or deep-fried wontons. On New Year’s Day morning, when the well-wishers streamed in to see Grandma, we had no snacks or candies to offer to our guests. Father said to us: “Now you all know what it is like to spend the holiday without your mother.” We all knew that he also intended those words for himself.

The day she moved back home, Mother went directly into the kitchen and prepared Father a big bowl of noodles, just as Grandma would have done. I heard her talking to Mrs. Zhang, who popped in for a visit. “That old man in the house,” she said, referring to Father. “He took care of me every day in the hospital. I now know that nobody is more reliable than your old man.” My parents began to share a bedroom again.