Beautiful as Yesterday Read online

  “I damn them all to hell!” he roared. “My grandpa and my father lost their lives for the revolution, for Mao, but nowadays our leaders are barely old enough to grow beards. If it hadn’t been for their connections, how could they have taken such prominent positions? I’d rather die than beg these milk-drinking brats for a raise. I can’t afford to lose face.”

  His colleagues, even those who started their jobs much later, had received titles and been assigned apartments in a new ten-story building with an elevator and a garden. But Mary’s father and his family remained in the ramshackle, five-story apartment building, whose stairways were narrow, uneven, and always dark because there were no windows and no ceiling lights. The two buildings stood not so far from each other, one red, the other gray; seen from the side, the new building was twice as wide as the old one. Mary and her sister used to call the new building “sausage,” and their own “dough stick.”

  Mary had her own room, but it was tiny, barely big enough for a single bed, a bookshelf, and a two-drawer desk. There was no space for a chair, and Mary had to sit on the edge of the bed to do her homework. The ceiling was low, with a fluorescent light often covered by cobwebs. The bookshelf contained all her textbooks and reference books starting from primary school, along with a complete collection of the Chinese Communism Party’s history, which she had won in a school contest and had never read. A framed family photo, yellowed with age and sunlight, hung on the wall facing the closet, taken a week after the Gang of Four was arrested, at a shop called Serving the People. In the picture she wore a red cotton jacket that was too big for her, with her hair combed into two braids on her chest. Her father stood behind her, his hands rigid at his sides. Her mother was the only one sitting, with Mary’s sister, Ingrid, leaning against her. Except for her sister, everyone looked serious, even anxious, as if they were afraid that the decade-long nightmare had not ended.

  She knew her family’s history more or less, though her knowledge came not from her parents but from a distant relative. Her parents rarely talked about their pasts, not even her grandparents’ pasts. All they told Mary was that her paternal grandparents were born of a poor peasant family and had participated in Mao’s revolution, while her maternal grandfather was an intellectual and her maternal grandmother’s family were businesspeople. They also said that both her maternal grandparents died of illness in the 1950s. If she asked questions, they would say that they knew no more. As for their own pasts, they simply said, “There’s nothing interesting for you to know.” It was not until Mary went to high school that she learned from that distant relative that her father was a member of a Rebellious Faction when the Cultural Revolution began and had beaten wronged rightists and antirevolutionists and destroyed their homes. She also learned that her mother had married her father, eleven years her senior, not out of love but to protect herself from being persecuted because of her family background—her father was condemned.

  How Mary despised her parents after she had learned all this! Though that relative also said that her father didn’t stay with the Rebellious Faction for long and was later condemned himself, his history was there, shameful, unerasable. If she had respected her father for not bribing his managers for a promotion, she now felt that his pride might have resulted more from his guilt regarding his past than from his righteousness. Moreover, if he had asked for a promotion, his dossier would have been reviewed. What if the stigma was recorded there? Whenever she thought about it, Mary shivered with disgust and sadness.

  She had never liked her father. He always returned home from work with a gloomy face, as if his family owed him a debt. After dinner he would go out for a long walk, still wearing his uniform. A few times, she followed him to see where he went and realized that he liked to visit a bad neighborhood, where drunkards peed in dark alleys and hooligans stopped female factory workers going to their night shifts. He wandered about, clearing his throat loudly every few minutes as if to announce his presence. Though he was quiet and self-effacing as a jailer, now he strode vigorously, hands behind his back, head high, like a high-ranking official on an inspection tour, his uniform making him look important. At the sight of him, the drunkards who were peeing would run away with their pants still unzipped. Hooligans saluted him and even bowed with reverence and flattery. “Uncle Policeman, good evening,” they said. Street vendors selling fake medicines and certificates were afraid of him, mistaking him for a genuine security policeman. If they saw him, they shoveled their merchandise into plastic bags and ran away, not daring to slow down until the distance between them and her father was at least two blocks. These vendors were mostly unemployed city residents or farmers from nearby villages, and they shared a fear of policemen, regardless of function or rank: traffic policemen, wardens, or soldiers. They nicknamed them Big Caps, referring to their caps’ wide visors.

  The unhappier Mary’s father was at work, the longer he walked after dinner. Some nights, he did not return home until after midnight. It seemed to Mary that these long walks were outlets for her father to get over his frustration and disappointment with being a total failure in his career.

  While Mary despised her father, she felt pity and sympathy for her mother. If her mother hadn’t gone through one political movement after another, with her family background she could have received a decent education and married someone she liked. And even if her looks faded with age, she would have maintained her elegance and good taste, instead of having turned into what she was now: unkempt, frugal, boorish, and narrow-minded.

  Many of Mary’s memories of her mother were of going grocery shopping with her when she was in her teens. Her mother didn’t have enough strength to carry the groceries home, so Mary had to help. The market they usually went to was a farmers’ market, where rotten vegetables, animal excrement, and buzzing flies were everywhere. Her mother would typically buy vegetables at the stands outside the market, because those peasants charged a little less than their competitors inside, who had to pay a management fee.

  “How can you ask so much for such shabby baichai?” her mother would say, her hands rummaging inside the vendor’s bamboo basket. After tedious bargaining, usually ending in a savings of one or two cents per jin, the deal was made. Mary’s mother took her time picking the best vegetables, peeling off the less fresh-looking outer leaves and swinging each baichai back and forth several times to get rid of the water before having them weighed. “Nowadays, you can’t find a single businessman who’s honest,” she would lecture Mary. “They all soak their vegetables before selling them, to add extra weight.” When the vendor weighed her purchase on his scale, Mary’s mother never failed to examine the number carefully to make sure it was correct.

  As the garlic vendor counted the coins her mother had given him, her mother would quickly take an extra head and throw it into her basket. By the time the vendor realized what had happened and cursed in his country dialect, her mother had arrived at the meat section.

  “So expensive! Do you think I own a bank?” Holding a pork rib, her mother exclaimed with a genuine surprise on her face, as if it were years ago that she had last bought ribs. She lingered for at least ten minutes, examining every rib on the counter, and at last picked two. Before handing them to the meat vendor, she asked him to give her a piece of finger-length lean meat for free. Not wanting to lose her business, the vendor always agreed.

  This was how Mary remembered her mother, a crude woman who always wore a deep blue factory uniform stained with oil and grease. Before reaching forty, she already had white hair and was overweight. She had been a factory worker most of her life: at the beginning, in a steel factory, then in a papermaking factory, and finally, in the seventies, in a car-parts factory, where she was an assembly-line worker. Not until a few years before her retirement was she moved to the office.

  Mary once saw an old picture of her mother, wearing a dark jacket like everyone else in the Mao era, both sides of her short hair combed tidily behind her ears, her right hand holding Mao’s L
ittle Red Book against her chest. Her eyes glittered with joy and hope, her eyelashes were thick and curly, and her bangs touched her forehead gracefully. There was no resemblance between the person in the picture and the obese woman who haggled shamelessly with the vendors at the farmers’ market.

  In Mary’s teenage years, she often felt deep disappointment and shame. Why wasn’t she born to parents who were intellectuals? While other families discussed books, movies, or world politics and economics at home, her family talked only about daily trivialities. Her father was intimidating with his sullen face. Her mother liked to stay in the kitchen, where she could stand or sit undisturbed for hours. More than once, Mary caught her sitting on a paint-chipped stool in the middle of the kitchen, mouth agape, staring blankly into into midair like a retarded beggar often seen in their part of town. But as soon as she sensed her daughter’s presence, she leapt to her feet with unexpected agility and her face assumed a broad smile.

  Mary rarely invited friends to her home. Yes, the decoration in the apartment was tasteless, with secondhand-looking furniture and appliances, and the vulgar wall posters her mother had cut out from an out-of-date calendar. But a lot of her friends’ parents’ apartments were like this as well. In fact, what she feared was that her friends would catch her mother in a trance in the kitchen and think that she had some kind of mental disease.

  She did not go home for the new year during her first winter break in college, telling her parents that she would be visiting a roommate’s family in the countryside in Sichuan Province. The truth was that she stayed in her dorm room on New Year’s Eve, alone, listening to the countdown on the radio, imagining fireworks bursting all over the night sky. She knew that at that very moment her parents and her sister were watching the Spring Festival Evening Show, in which singers, dancers, acrobats, and comedians tried their best to entertain the audience. Everyone was celebrating except her, who lay on her cold bed. For the first time in her life she felt desperately lonely; an unspeakable sadness seemed to have filled her, a sadness that, unlike that from a relationship breakup or job failure, had taken root in her heart, to breathe with her, to be part of her life, something she could not escape.

  She did not cry at her father’s funeral, and because of that, Ingrid called her “stone-hearted.” Ingrid said those words in their mother’s presence, but in English, so that their mother wouldn’t understand.

  Mary did not defend herself. What could she say? Ingrid would never know what was in her mind. When the Cultural Revolution broke out, Ingrid had not been born; when it ended, she had just started primary school. She had never lived in a remote village with strangers who called her “illegitimate.” She had never experienced hunger. The six-year difference in their age was like a gap between generations.

  Mary hears a car turning in to the driveway and then Alex’s cheerful talking. “Dad, let’s go to the aquarium in Monterey tomorrow. Jenson said there’s a baby white shark there.” She opens the front door for Bob and Alex, putting on a gentle smile, telling herself that it’s time to leave the past behind, to embrace her life in the United States.

  FIVE

  September

  THERE’S A KNOCK AT the door. Fenglan opens it, thinking it’s the milk deliveryman.

  “A letter from the United States!” Old Yu, the security guard for her complex, holds a white envelope high, his eyebrows shiny with sweat. “The mailman is new and he couldn’t find your mailbox, so I told him I’d give it to you.”

  “Old Yu, sorry to trouble you. You have to climb so many steps to deliver the letter! Next time you can just yell from downstairs and I will fetch the letter myself.” She takes the letter. It is from her second daughter.

  “No trouble at all. This stamp…hmm, you know my grandson collects stamps.”

  “I’ll give it to you later, just as I always do, of course.”

  “Huh, my grandson is waiting in the security room right now. You know, kids nowadays are stubborn and spoiled.”

  She goes to the kitchen, uses scissors to cut off the stamp, and hands it to Old Yu.

  “I’m sorry to rush you, but my grandson…Next time you need to have your shoes repaired, just give them to me. I won’t charge you.” Old Yu has a small shoe-repair machine in the security room, a way to earn his cigarette money. “Also, the other day you said you didn’t want to disconnect the phone while you’re away; I can help you pay the phone bills.”

  “That’s so kind of you. I’ll leave some money for you before I go.”

  After Old Yu leaves, she closes the door and opens the envelope. In the letter her daughter asks her to bring some old family photos with her in November. “If they don’t have negatives, have them reprinted. Make sure to find a good photo store so the photos won’t get damaged.” Also enclosed is a check for five hundred dollars. “Buy yourself a new television or a massage chair,” she says.

  What does her daughter need all these old family photos for? Fenglan wonders, remembering that her daughter asked her for her and her husband’s wedding photo several months ago.

  It has been a long time since Fenglan looked at those family photos.

  There’s another knock at the door. This time, it’s two Workers’ Union representatives from the state-run factory she worked for before retiring. Their visit is expected: they called last week and said they would stop by to drop off some gift from the factory for the upcoming Mid-autumn Festival. Newspapers sometimes would report on this kind of gift delivery, calling it “sending warmth to retirees’ homes.”

  The gift this year is a box of moon cakes made by a local bakery and a one-liter bottle of Dragon and Phoenix peanut oil—every retiree from the factory gets the same gift. Fenglan invites them to sit on the sofa and pours tea for them. She also takes out a plate of South Fortune honey oranges and some roasted sunflower seeds.

  As the visitors sip tea, they ask her if she is healthy, if she sleeps and eats well, if there are any inconveniences in her life, and if she has any feedback for the factory leaders and the Party committee. Every year, the same questions are asked.

  She says everything is fine. She thanks them, thanks the factory leaders for their concern and generosity, thanks the Party committee for thinking of retirees. Every year, her answers are the same.

  “After you go to America, no working units and no Party committee will care if you’re well, no one will send you moon cakes and peanut oil,” they tease her. Everyone in her factory knows that she’s going to visit her daughters—she had to get a retirement verification letter from the Personnel Department for her passport application.

  “That’s very true. People don’t have time to care for others in capitalistic societies,” she echoes hurriedly.

  The two women stay for another few minutes, sipping more tea and sharing an orange, then leave for the next retiree’s apartment.

  After they’ve gone, Fenglan feels tired, so she lies down on the sofa. But she dares not fall asleep or she won’t be able to sleep in the evening. Lately, she has had many fragmented dreams, and though she forgets most of them as soon as she awakens, she recaptures those about her husband. Like the dream she had two days ago, in which she saw him walking out of his coffin, telling her that he was craving steamed codfish. The next day, she steamed a two-jin codfish and presented it along with some fresh fruit in front of his black-framed picture on the top of the dresser.

  Her husband did not like to have his photo taken, and this picture is from their fifth marriage anniversary. The part below the top jacket button was cut off because there was a Chairman Mao badge next to it. She has planned to use her own half of the photo as her portrait on her gravestone, so she and her husband will be united again—space has been saved in her husband’s grave for her and there is also space for her picture on the gravestone. When it’s time for her to be buried, all that will need to be done is to add one more ash urn, one more picture, and one more name to the gravestone.

  The phone begins to ring. She has to get up fro
m the sofa to answer it. The call is from an ex-colleague, asking her to buy a digital camera for him in the United States—he has heard that it’s cheaper to buy electronic products there. Then another call comes: this time it is a classmate at the paper-cutting class at the senior center asking her to bring back some English picture books for her granddaughter. In the past few days, Fenglan has received many calls with different requests; as long as she feels she can manage, she does not say no. She knows that any rejection would provoke gossip, saying that she is arrogant because her daughters live overseas. Moreover, these friends, ex-colleagues, and neighbors have helped her here and there, doing favors like carrying a big bag of rice for her, fixing the clogged sink and toilet, or sending her TV to a repair shop. When her husband was alive he did all this, but now he is gone. Unless it’s absolutely necessary, she does not call a handyman to her apartment; she doesn’t want a stranger to know that she lives by herself. Who knows if people are trustworthy?

  Then her older daughter calls.

  “Ma, travel light. Don’t bring any gifts for us,” her daughter says.

  “Most of my luggage is clothes. It’s not heavy,” Fenglan says.

  “The quality of the clothes here is much better. I’ve already bought some for you.”

  “Don’t waste your money. I have a lot of clothes already. It’s much cheaper to buy in China.”

  “It’s not expensive here, either. I just don’t want you to exhaust yourself. It’s your first air trip.”

  “I should be fine. I just went to see a doctor. She said I am very healthy,” Fenglan lies.

  “That’s good.”