1949: PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

Long shrieks. The fields writhe and the farmers squirm as the bulging sun snatches away their thin blanket of darkness. Go away, If whimper to the new day. Through the window, the sunlight screams into my eyes.

1995: MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

Born from shame, a scream tunneled through her throat and erupted into her mouth––only to die on impact as it struck her clenched teeth, pursed lips. She would not scream. She didn’t have the privilege to scream.

The student had been sitting at her desk with her soda can for almost half an hour after class had ended. And Christie had waited. But she could wait no longer; she had to meet up with him soon, and she still needed a few more cans. When she tried to pick up the can, the other student glared at her and shouted, “Hey, that’s mine!” As Christie hastily put the can back down, the other student gushed, “Oh hey, you’re that girl who was talking so much today. I mean, you were practically running the discussion yourself, and I think you even had the professor swooning!” She cackled. “Like your ideas were so good and everything, with what you were saying about, about––hey, what was it that you were talking about again?” 

Christie wished she would shut up. She just wanted to take the can and leave.

“Hey, but I do remember,” she giggled, “the way you said ‘bombing.’ You said it with two hard ‘b’s!” She giggled again. “It’s supposed to be like ‘bomming,’ but the way you said it was just so cute! I wish I would say stuff like that more, you know,” she grinned. 

The air driven into her teeth, clenched together, to make the sh. The tip of her tongue flicked against the roof of her mouth for the t. The throaty u stifled by the smack of the lips to make the p. Christie was pretty sure that was the way you were supposed to say shut up. But she said nothing.

“Hey, so why’d you try to take my can? You a collector or something?” She didn’t wait for a response. “Well, you can take it, you know; it’s not a problem with me.” The girl gulped down the rest of her Coke and placed the empty can down. 

Hey, yes, I’ll take that away for you, and hey, your sous vide filet mignon with carrot purée and creamy mashed potatoes will come shortly, Christie thought. But she didn’t say anything. 

The girl pushed the can towards Christie. “Hey, please, take it.” So she took the can and placed it in the plastic bag of tin cans concealed in her backpack, and she bowed slightly to the girl. She didn’t turn back when the girl called out, “Hey, what’s your name?”

As she stepped out into the Michigan cold, the weight of her backpack sunk her feet further into the snow. Yet, she smiled. A heavier backpack meant more cans. And more cans meant more to sell later. 10 cents per can. Shame felt like a small price to pay to quell the rumbling in her stomach.

Where was he? He should have been here by now, so where was he? The snow was frustratingly silent.

1950

Long clucks meekly in my arms. The farmers prowl in a circle around me, their words lashing out like claws. 

“Little landowner, who are you now? What do you have now? Not an acre to your name, nothing but a crippled rooster and rags!” I instinctively pull Long closer to my chest. “‘He who tills the land shall own it!’” they chant over and over again as they tighten their circle. One of them shouts, “What kind of tiller are you, little landowner? Nothing but an exploiter, an exploiter, an exploiter!” I bury my face in Long’s back, and I scream in my head, I didn’t ask for this, I didn’t want to be a landowner. Make me a tiller, I’ll be a tiller, I’ll be the best tiller there was, and then I’ll own the land again––

The circle breaks apart as a loud voice thunders through the air, “Who dares harass my grandson?” Yeye marches into the midst of the predators; he’s my savior, he always has been. He’s the one who took me in when Baba died, and the one who shielded me from the steely gazes of the farmers when they found out we had been landowners before the Chinese Civil War. 

And then my savior crumples to the ground, and I scream. I drop to the ground and cradle his head in my arms. The man who punched him in the gut sneers at us, “A decrepit landowner, his runt, and his one-legged rooster. The People’s Republic has no place for you.” He flung a glob of spit at Yeye and left with the others, still jeering and sneering.

I lift up Yeye’s mud-slathered face and ask, “Are you okay?” He splutters and spits before grunting, “Yes, don’t worry about me, sun zi. Back to work, okay?” 

I want to ask him, If this is what it means to be a landowner in China now, why do we still cling to the title? We own no land, only the hate of all around us. “He who tills the land shall own it.” Why can’t I be a tiller too? And I almost do ask him, but Yeye wipes the tears from my eyes and clasps my head with his hands. “To work, okay, sun zi? Don’t mind them. Be proud of your lineage. Of the legacy you uphold. And do not stop surviving. That is what we must do now.”

Legacy? Long is all that we own now. What legacy? I think. But I keep silent, wipe away my tears, and nod. For in his red-veined eyes, I see a faint flicker of resistance, fighting against his 54 years of age and the hopelessness we share. So I snuff the shame kindling in my heart, and I stand up with my grandfather as we brush the dirt off our clothes. In my arms, Long clucks proudly.

1995

They had been twins. Nameless. Boy and boy, girl and girl, boy and girl, girl and boy. The statistical combinations of potential lives hoped for and then shredded were torturously infinite. At no other point in his mathematical studies or engineering career had infinity felt so theoretical. So undefinable. So unattainable.

And then a year. That’s how long it had taken him to ask his wife how she felt after the miscarriage––the miscarriages. During that year, he had thrown himself into his studies, started working towards a PhD in chemical engineering, and spent hours of research in the library each day only to go back to their apartment for sleep and to return to the library once more the next day. So why had he been surprised when she, gazing at the wall, had replied with silence? Then she asked him how much money they had. A jarring question then, but one all too commonplace now. Cents and tin cans––that was all they talked about now.

He remembered when they were planning their immigration to the U.S. He had asked her what she wanted her new, English name to be. First, she asked him what he wanted his to be, and he had said, “I think I’ll just stick with my Chinese name.” Then she had thought for a while, her mouth slightly parted, her eyes tracing the room like they always did when she was deep in thought. “I think I want my English name to be Christie,” she said. Like Agatha Christie, her favorite author, since her dream was to be a detective. He missed when he knew things like that about her.

In the past couple of months, he had tried to simplify their relationship to these terms: Marriage = their life before the miscarriage; Miscarriage = their life afterward.

Marriage ≠ Miscarriage

The unsolvable inequality of his life. At this point, two years into his PhD and three years since they had first arrived in Michigan from China, their old marriage felt almost like an imaginary number. Like the number i in the complex field of mathematics. But even when he considered that possibility, he rediscovered the core of the issue. Me. I.

Now, he was walking from the engineering building to the economics building where his wife had class and collected cans. A frosty infinity extended in front of him. But he was willing to walk it for her, even if he might never reach her. Even if he wasn’t quite sure who exactly he was walking towards anymore. 

One quality of imaginary numbers you learn in math class is that, sometimes, in order to solve problems with real numbers, you must use the number i.

1953

Long peers back at me, his head cocked, pearly, black eyes unmoving. 

“‘He who tills the land shall own it,’” I repeat. “Long, what do you think that means?”

In vain, I try to excise those words from my brain. The only characters the other farmers know how to read and write, this phrase seems to follow every rice seed planted in the ground, every shovel-load of dirt to cover those seeds, every drop of water to nurture those seeds. Food and water do not matter to the farmers; they feed off the hope of this phrase alone during their endless days in the fields. 

He who tills the land shall own it.

I drop the pamphlet on the ground. I walk over to the side of the door to the shed my grandfather and I are staying in. Pulling away the rotted floorboard there, I pick up my copies of David Copperfield and Analects. I gently flick the dirt off them and sit back down next to Long. As part of our daily ritual, I read a few pages from both books aloud to Long. I’m still struggling with the “th” sound––the way I say it still sounds like too much of a “d”––but I’m slowly getting there. Long cocks his head and attempts the “th” with me, although he sort of gags it out, and I pat his head in reassurance. He always flutters his wings when I do that. I’ve read through both books dozens of items already since we arrived at the fields, but they’re the only ones I have. Our quarters are regularly searched for any “foreign propaganda,” as they call it, but I know they mean anything that doesn’t adhere to their new, Communist ideas. 

A loud thump echoes from the door. I ignore it. Another thump. Sighing, I stand up, unlatch the door, and swing it open. Yeye drops to the ground at my feet. I check his pulse to make sure he’s still breathing and then I close the door and sit back down next to Long. I continue reading, and he continues to lay there. After a few minutes, he stirs and crawls over to the straw rugs we called “beds.” 

Shivering, he rasps in Mandarin, “Where were you, sun zi? They had me surrounded, and they wouldn’t stop beating me, kicking me, spitting on me, flinging dirt at me.” 

I swallow back my pity and mutter, “I was reading.”

“Reading?” The consternation in his gravely reply shocks me, and I turn around to face him. For the first time, I see the cuts and scuff marks pockmarking his face and body. One cut above his left eyebrow is bleeding particularly badly, and every few seconds he wipes away the blood there before it drips into his eyes. He had been coming home like this more often as of late. “You were reading. Well, tell me sun zi, what have you learned today from your reading?” 

You wouldn’t understand what I’ve learned, I want to tell him. “I don’t know,” I mutter as I turn my head away.

I can feel his eyes burrowing into my flesh. Then he slams the ground with his fist, although with his current strength it sounds more like a gentle pat. “You are 18 now, sun zi. You have responsibilities to me, to family, to legacy that you must fulfill!” 

“I know not that legacy of which you speak.” My English words parade out into the open air, flaunting their foreign power.

Yeye’s brows furrow. “What? Speak in zhong wen when you talk to me!” Now he stands up. “Sun zi, I am your Yeye, yes, but I am getting old, xiao hai zi, much too old to fend for myself anymore.” Nonsense. You’re like 35 years old. You can still fight back. “Sun zi, I am 55 now.” Whatever. “And I will work in the fields every day, I will take the insults and the beatings, I will protect you from all that those ruffians can do to you, but you must study harder!” He clasps my face with his hands, and when I try to jerk my head away, he pulls me back so that our gazes interlock. “You must try harder!” he bellows. My lips, my eyes, my tongue, all frozen in fear. Fear not of the harshness of his voice, not of the judgment in his pointed finger, not of the crazed look in his eyes. It’s the desperation behind all those things. I never saw it before, not in the steadfast, bold Yeye who stood up to those tiller bullies and got up determined as ever even after he was knocked down. This Yeye––who simply surrenders to the bullies and comes crawling back home like a beggar––I don’t recognize him. And I see no legacy of his for me to uphold.

“Listen to me, sun zi,” he whispers. “I have no chance. My past is long gone, and my end will either be in those fields out there or in this shed. But you have a chance. Studying is your way out of here, sun zi. You must fortify your mind and escape this prison. You are all that survives of our family’s legacy. Your father––” he pauses, tears dripping from his chin, “Your father would want you to live the lives we never could.”

My father––he was your legacy. I am not him. I am no legacy of yours, I think to myself. But I say nothing.

He stares into my eyes. And then he retreats. His bluster gone, he shrinks back into his bed in the corner of the shed, and he lies down, facing away from me. I can hear his muffled whispers, “It was all for nothing. Fei le. Zhen de fei le.” I quickly flip open David Copperfield and drown his sick whispers in the elegance of Dickens. Yet, trapped in this whirlwind of thoughts, my brain suffocates itself. So I drop the book and cradle my head with my knees. 

Next to me, Long sits up from his perch where he had watched us. He moves towards Yeye, and since he had long ago shattered the bones in his left leg, he flutters awkwardly to Yeye’s prone body. Flapping his wings for an extra boost, he hops onto Yeye’s shoulder and begins to peck at Yeye’s tears. It takes me a few seconds to realize that Long is drinking his tears. And then I can’t help but think, At least he was good for something.

1995

There he was. Trudging slowly down the empty, snow-dusted street. She didn’t wait for him to catch up to her. She turned around and kept walking down the street towards the can vendor. On her way, she picked up a couple of stray cans on the street and dug a few out of the trash cans. Soon, he caught up to her. “Hey,” he said. Hey. She said nothing.

He offered to carry her backpack for her, but she shook her head. He reached for her hand, but she pulled back. “Your hands are cold, and your pockets are full. Here, put your hand in my pocket.” She looked straight ahead and kept walking. He didn’t know anything about her. He was here because two heads were better than one. He was here because four hands were better than two. But he was here for nothing more. 

“Pick up more cans,” she said. They kept walking in silence. It was as if the snow was mocking them, the way it stayed silent too, the way it let the quiet bite into her skin more than the cold ever could. He hadn’t been there for her when she had needed him, and that was it. That’s what she silently told the snow. 

Finally, they reached the store. She reached out one arm to push the door open, but he held her back. “Give me the cans,” he said. She ignored him and tried to push past his arm, but he held her firmly back. “Give me the cans,” he repeated. She said nothing. Then she let him slip the backpack off her shoulders. She waited for him to enter the store before she relaxed her shoulders. Rolling them to ease the soreness in her back, she huddled close to the storefront. As she waited for him, she mentally reviewed the material on her next economics exam. Ten minutes later, he still hadn’t come out of the store. Worry kindled in the base of her throat, and she began to try to peer through the frosted windows. She couldn’t tell if she was worried about him or the money, but one wasn’t coming out of the store without the other, so did it really matter?

Just as she was about to push the door open, he pushed out of the store, and she fell back. But he caught her. And as he pulled her back onto her feet, his eyes locked with hers. She didn’t think she could look away even if she wanted to. He asked, “Were you coming to look for me?” She regained her breath and muttered, “No, I was just wondering what took you so long. The clerk can be weird.” 

“Yeah, I know he can be weird. Especially around you. But you didn’t need to come looking for me.” He glanced at her behind the cover of his hood.

“Forget about it. Let’s move,” she said, avoiding his glance. But he had already walked on, and as she was catching up to him, she thought, Why exactly was I going to go into the store?

The thought lingered in her mind even when they arrived in front of the grocery store.

“Adding in the money from the cans, we have $13.20,” he said.

$13.20. Just barely enough for tonight.

1955

The day Yeye died, I burned myself alive. The last thing he said to me was “Bao bei sun zi, live.” Tears flowed down my face and into his hair because I knew that I could not heed his words. To ensure a future for our family, I could not simply leave for school to study the world, as I had always wanted. I would have to disobey him, no matter how much I didn’t want to. I had to refuse this one time. No, Yeye, I cannot. I will not. No. And yet I couldn’t say it to him. Did he die thinking I obeyed him or not? I would never know.

Soon after, I carried his body to a remote ridge of the fields. I gathered a pile of kindling and with some flint and steel I stole from one of the other farmers, I lit the kindling. I gathered some larger pieces of wood and positioned them in the shape of a mini-bonfire. I laid my father’s body on top of the wood, and on his chest I placed my copies of David Copperfield and Analects. When the kindling burned brightly enough, I flung them onto the wood and let the fire roar. 

Within my grandfather and my books, you can find all there is to know about me. I am all that they made me. I am only that which they made me. Watch me burn. I remember from a physics book from my childhood that energy cannot be destroyed nor created. So, to my descendants, I hope you breathe in the ashes of me, of us, who have tilled the fields so that you may till your lives. 

He who tills their life owns their life. 

1995

“I think I want this one.”
Christie points at the stuffed animal rooster in front of her. He immediately looks at the price tag. $5.20. If they buy it, they won’t even have enough food to eat for the night. But he doesn’t tell her what she already knows. This time, he promises himself, he’ll just listen to her. Be there for her.

After a moment, she picks up the rooster and cradles it in her arms. Nestling her neck against its neck, she murmurs, “It’s like a little baby. Don’t you think it’s like a little baby? A little baby rooster. Our little baby rooster.” Baby. She was born in the Year of the Rooster. An animal, in Chinese culture, whose crowing signifies the auspicious dawning of a new day. 

He hears something chirp, and he flinches. What was that? As he peers closer at the rooster, he almost sees its neck cock slightly, its eyes twitch, its wings slightly flutter beneath his wife’s hands. Is that life, finally, right there in her arms?

“What do you think?” She looks at him and smiles. He had forgotten her smile, forgotten how much it meant to him. For the first time since her miscarriage, he sees a flicker of the same flame of aspiration in her eyes that would blaze when she used to gush to him about the latest Agatha Christie novel she had read. “Let’s buy it,” he says suddenly. Then he chuckles and murmurs, “Our little baby rooster.”  

Her smile widens. “What do you want to call it? Him? Her?” she asks him.

He takes a moment to think and then grins back at her, almost like a child. “My dad used to tell me about this rooster he had when he was a teenager. His grandfather had given it to him. Apparently, they called it Long. What do you think?”

“Long. Dragon.” She grins with him. “I love it.” He steps up to her and embraces her, Long nestling between their necks. They were buying life. Gongji. Long. Life.