Forbidden City, page 5
I’ve long wondered if the Chairman might have known his body was slipping out of control, compelling him to tighten his grip on the country. Those who saw him most often might have been blind to this decline, in the way they didn’t notice the daylight disappearing, bent over their tasks until they looked up and realized all at once that darkness had fallen.
I waited for him to push me away, to shout at me for daring to think we shared a common flesh. The lines in his plump face seemed to deepen and lengthen, and the shadows beneath his eyes darkened. As he stood above me, his complexion mottled and gray as shed snake skin, I saw his true age.
“What’s your name?” he asked. His voice sounded tinny and faraway.
I told him.
“Mei Xiang,” he repeated, stroking my cheek. I held still. “Stay as you are.”
Nodding, I swallowed, my mouth parched and bitter. He disappeared through the door, his body slipping into the narrow opening. Only then could I cry, shaking with silent sobs.
Wheezing, I curled up to shrink the pain, and ran my hands over my arms, my legs, my face. I am I am I am I am Mei. I clenched and unclenched my numb fingers until sensation returned. When I stroked my thighs, a dark smear of blood ran across my palms, the color of rust, of freshly turned clay. Tomorrow, bruises would bloom on my wrists and the inside of my thighs.
I drank another glass of the lukewarm water with its metallic tang. After plunging my hands into the pitcher, I cleaned myself with my torn underwear. Dumping the rest of the water into an empty porcelain chamber pot, I tried to urinate, but the knot between my legs became concentrated, consuming, and I stumbled back into bed.
Music flared in the dance pavilion. A whimper escaped my lips, and I darted my eyes around the windowless room, which had no other exit.
An edge pressed into my back and in the sheets, I found a heavy book bound in brown leather, solid and reassuring. Inside I discovered foreign words, the characters swimming like tadpoles, and I sniffed the musty pages. Aside from the Little Red Book, I’d never touched another volume; our village teacher had read aloud from the sole classroom textbook, a tattered one that he safeguarded like gold. Crawling to the end of the bed, I found more stacked books and flipped through a slim red volume, with more of the odd characters, written on pages shiny as ice-slicked fields, and containing pictures of round-eyed foreigners, their noses long and sharp. Peeking inside a battered black book, bound in red string, I discovered translucent pages. My hands against them felt rough and of the earth, and I couldn’t make sense of any words.
I choked back another sob. All my life, the Chairman had been the first and last face I looked upon each day, a face around which spun the seasons. His face had turned unbearably strange tonight.
Teacher Fan entered, not a wrinkle on her blouse, not a hair loose from her bun. Unable to face her, I turned away, twisted in the sheets and glittering with pain.
With a firm hand on my shoulder, and another at my waist, she eased me upright. “Slowly now.” If she’d rubbed my back, I might have crumpled again, for any softness would have confirmed I’d lost something. But her thorough, efficient air—like a nurse, I would think later—made it seem I had no cause for shame.
She straightened out my rumpled skirt, took a hair-band from her wrist, and fixed my pigtails.
After steadying me, she led me back into the dance pavilion’s moist darkness. I burned between my legs, the deepest, most tender part of me on fire. Beneath my skirt, I was exposed, no underclothes, nothing between me and the floor. When the swirl of air hit me there, my knees buckled. In the village, where the sound of a neighbor’s fart could be mistaken for your own, we had few secrets, but for as long as I could remember, Ma taught me and my sisters to cover ourselves below. To protect what was most valuable in us.
Halting, I searched for the Chairman on the dance floor. If I saw him, if he nodded at me, I would be made whole again, my sacrifice real and worthy.
My memories from that part of the night blink in and out. Teacher Fan slipped me into the arms of a cadre who held me lightly, as if I were the kind of girl who deserved such consideration. I stared at my feet. Did he know what had just happened? He must. Did he want the same from me?
Passed from cadre to cadre in the pavilion, I caught glimpses of the Chairman’s balding head. A man with sesame-seed eyes and a baby eggplant nose dragged me across the floor and cursed when our bodies slammed together. I staggered across the planks sticky with spilled fruit juice and tea, desperate to flee, but when I squirmed away, my partner’s hold tightened, with the brute force of a man who punches a hole in the wall to kill a mosquito.
My mind blanked and then I was in the arms of a man who dripped with so much sweat he appeared to be melting. As we spun around, a drop of perspiration flicked into my open mouth. I swallowed it.
By the end of the night, the air had turned humid with sweat, and the other girls looked exhausted, their pigtails lank against their cheeks. Only Midnight Chang remained bright as lightning, studying me. She couldn’t hide her envy. The others, though, might have pitied me. Standing on the edge of the dance floor, Busy Shan seemed to catch sight of me, then leaned in toward Dolly Yu to say something.
The dance must have ended, I must have thanked my partner and boarded the bus to our dormitory, but what I remember next was shivering in the top bunk in the dark.
I’d left home at dawn, which now seemed several lifetimes ago. Never before had I slept alone, and the bed seemed immense, the mushy mattress swallowing me and so noisy, the springs creaking like frogs in mating season. It was nothing like our family’s brick bed, solid and still. Darkness pressed down and I reached up to assure myself of the limits of this endless black. For a few terrible seconds, my hand grasped at nothing until I touched the cool ceiling, and then I stretched my arms, one hand against the wall, the other on the metal bed frame. If I stayed rooted, I wouldn’t disappear. I listened to the steady breathing of my roommates, but I couldn’t fall asleep without Ma’s soft snores, the heat of Second Daughter’s back pressed against my fingers and my chin. Ba’s loud farts. First Daughter, tossing and restless. Bedsprings creaked, footsteps shuffled, and someone covered me with a blanket. Settling under the folds, I dissolved into sleep.
* * *
—
The next morning, I struggled to get up. When I pulled back the blanket, I noticed a rusty stain on the sheet beneath me. Biting my lip, I tried not to heave from a pain that struck deeper than bone. Still in my clothes from the dance party, I couldn’t—wouldn’t—lift up my skirt. I had to be pulpy as a persimmon between my legs.
The Chairman—the Chairman’s hands on me. It seemed impossible last night, impossible now if not for the proof of my body. My face felt scratched up from his stubble, like I’d tangled in brambles. How did I get here? As nausea swept over me, I gritted my teeth, snatches of memory coming back to me: the wet sloppy sound of the Chairman’s breath, his pungent scent that punched deep into my nose, his fingers on my wrist, and the moment I tore open.
The rattling bed frame must have stirred Busy Shan. When a spring creaked, I peeked down to see she’d popped her head out from the bunk below to look up at me. Everyone else was still asleep.
She must have noticed my misery. “Do you need water?” she asked.
When I nodded, she got up and from a hot water bottle on a shelf, she filled an enamel mug. I took the cup warily, remembering the pouch of my mother’s tea. It might prevent a baby from taking hold, if I drank it every morning. It would keep me in the revolution. I dug the tea out from my pocket and dropped a little lump into the cup. As the tea steeped, I let the steam bathe my face. I sipped, grimacing but swallowing every bitter drop. Ma’s cures didn’t always work—so much depended on the rainfall that year, on the length of the winter, on the cycle of the moon when you harvested the roots and flowers—but it was all I had.
“You can keep the blanket. It’s an extra.” She must have laid it upon me last night. “What is that?” she asked, her nose pinched. The brew smelled like wet rotting leaves.
“It’s from my mother,” I said.
She didn’t press me. “Take off your shirt.”
I flinched.
“Your button’s about to fall off.” She pulled out a small sewing kit with spools of thread, scissors, and a needle.
I passed the blouse to her. The other girls were waking up and shuffling out of the room, yawning and stretching. Though I sensed none of her earlier scorn, I watched suspiciously, wondering if she might snip off every button. Instead, with a few flashes of her needle, she fixed it. “They’ll drop off more clothes for you today, but until then…”
I put on the stained blouse and climbed down the ladder. My feet, tender from yesterday’s heels, ached with each step.
“When there’s time, you can make what they give you yours,” she said. She flipped the neckline of her loose cotton pajamas, onto which she’d embroidered a tiny bird, no bigger than a fingernail. “Add a ribbon inside the waistband or take up the hem—that sort of thing.”
She was among the best seamstresses in the troupe, I would learn, nipping in her blouses at the waist and at the bust, and hemming up her skirts.
“Won’t Teacher Fan notice?” I asked.
“Easier to ask for forgiveness than to get permission,” she said.
At my shock, she laughed. “She knows, of course she knows. But if she gives us this…”
“We take it,” I said. “We think we’re getting away with something. Which makes us stick to the other rules.”
She nodded. From under her bed, she slid out a pair of slippers. They were too small; my heels hung off the back, and my toes poked out the front.
“I’ll go barefoot.” I wiggled my feet against the concrete. A blister throbbed on the back of my ankle.
“Not on these floors. Your toes will rot off!”
She didn’t seem to realize that I’d mucked through fields spread with what we gathered from the latrines and used to tear off leeches as easily as scabs. I kept the slippers on. She handed me a towel and led me to the bathroom, where the sound of water rushed from behind a row of curtains.
“Girls like her only bathe when they’re born, and when they die,” Midnight Chang said. She’d come up from behind us. As another girl exited a stall, she flounced past us. Busy Shan barked at her, “Wait your turn for the showers!”
She didn’t. I suspected that she and Busy Shan were used to being the most beautiful girls in the room, used to the consideration that went along with their looks. It was only natural they’d despise each other.
Busy Shan gave me a sidelong glance. “She also tried to jump the line at the dance party, but everyone new gets a turn with the Chairman. Everyone old, too. Just remember that. The girl you replaced didn’t.”
“Replaced?” I rubbed my forearms, desperate to rid my body of the stickiness.
“You’re in her bed. Though she wasn’t a problem when she was in the bed. It was when she wasn’t.”
“She was with another man,” I said.
She grinned. “You’re a quick one. You can dance with the cadre, let them chat you up, but no more than that.”
“How did she…how did she get together with her boyfriend?” I asked, still trying to catch up.
“She was clever, I’ll give her that,” she said. “To avoid the guard at the front gate, she climbed the wall behind the dormitory. Like some kind of fighting monk!” Like those from the old tales, trained to jump from roof to roof.
The girl met her lover every night until she’d been discovered missing by Secretary Sun, she said.
I leaned against the wall. “He comes by?” I asked.
“Planning to raise your hand again?” she asked slyly.
She didn’t wait for me to answer. On the nights without dances, if the Chairman wanted to see you, Secretary Sun came by the dormitory. “Usually after midnight and then brings you back early the next morning,” she said.
Busy Shan wasn’t welcoming, not exactly, but it seemed she wanted to be the first to inform me about the ways of the troupe.
Dolly Yu cried out. Coming into the bathroom, she’d slipped in a puddle on the concrete floor.
At the village school, we’d learned about the soldier Lei Feng, who washed the feet of his comrades and darned their socks, cleaned the barracks, and served tea to his officers and his comrades. When he died, crushed by a heavy pole tall as a tree, his diary revealed his selfless deeds and his love of the Chairman. There was no limit to serving the people, he’d said.
Following his example, we’d fought over who would get to sweep the floor of the classroom or fetch the teacher hot water. Now, when I tried to throw down my towel, Busy Shan snatched it back. “That’s disgusting.”
“Someone could fall,” I said.
“It’s a low spot. Water always collects there,” she said. “Everyone knows to go around it. If anyone slips, it’s their own fault.”
I twisted the towel in my hands.
“No one’s keeping track. If you’re trying to impress Teacher Fan, she’s not even here,” she said. “Besides, why use your towel?” She glanced at the one hanging over Midnight Chang’s stall.
I couldn’t help but laugh. She returned to gossiping about the girl I’d replaced. “I warned her, but she never listened. The attention went to her head. Men circle around a woman if they smell another man on her. And if they know it’s the Chairman…”
I might have guessed Busy Shan had been among the longest to serve in the troupe. She seemed rubbed raw, rubbed open. Her hips swayed when she walked, to attract attention, and though the troupe wasn’t her preferred audience, we would have to do. She was only two years older than me, it turned out, but at my age, that seemed a lifetime wiser.
More girls arrived in the bathroom, chattering about the day, their high voices echoing off the tiled walls. A pair came in with their arms linked together, whispering to each other, both slender and graceful as fawns.
A shower went off and water dripped in the stall. “Hurry up in there,” Busy Shan called out. “At least she didn’t let herself get knocked up. There was a girl who died trying to get rid of a baby.” She paused, making sure she had my full attention. “She threw herself down the stairs.”
The stairs I’d walked up last night? Maybe she didn’t have dong quai, or the cure could have failed her. I palmed the damp concrete wall. Maybe she’d never heard about it. The herb might not be available in the cities, or perhaps her mother had never told her about it. “Or she stabbed herself?” she said. She watched me closely.
“Up—there?” I asked.
“That’s what I heard,” she said, her tone solemn and yet satisfied, too, that she’d been the first to tell me.
In the days to come, the stories would keep changing. The rumors repeated and repeated like an incantation, repeated to take away their power. It was said the ghost girl would tap you on the shoulder at night, to trick you into turning around and helping her steal back into the Lake Palaces. She didn’t want to leave the only place she’d ever been significant.
Neither did I.
* * *
—
In dance class later that morning, I stayed ahead of Midnight Chang. She brushed her hand against me, enough to make me stumble—no accident. Then, during a polka, she slowed down in front of me. I staggered, twisting my ankle. She clipped my heel next, a scrape that opened yesterday’s blister. For a few seconds, I teetered on my heels before catching myself.
If I’d tried to push her away, my fingers would have grasped air. As much as I struggled, the class kept me preoccupied, made it so I didn’t have to think about the Chairman crushing me into the bed.
We galloped onward, on the verge of crashing into one another, a wild footrace going in circles. The polka would become my favorite: You didn’t have to be graceful or remember many different kinds of steps; the dance let us show off our coltish strength—how high, how far we could leap on the scuffed floorboards—and the faster others twirled, the faster I went, too.
Midnight Chang stomped on my toes, then threw an elbow at Busy Shan, whose back was turned to her. Without thinking, I jabbed mine into Midnight Chang’s side, to block her. Busy Shan spun around in time to see Midnight Chang jerking away, her face still a taunt. Busy Shan’s eyes widened. Taking my hand, she pulled me ahead. Her fingers were warm and sticky, her grip so strong and sure that I could have followed her anywhere.
Coming between them only invited trouble, but I was used to tussling with my oldest sister. After the song ended, Busy Shan glared at Midnight Chang in the mirror.
As we caught our breath, Teacher Fan told us how class struggle had begun in Germany, more than a hundred years ago. “Workers rose up, just like the workers here. They fought for their future. They rose up like your grandparents, like your parents,” she said.
Astonishing to consider how our feet answered the revolt of those workers halfway around the world. In the studio, I would move in ways I’d never even considered. It was like realizing that I could look up, instead of only straight ahead or to the side. Never before in my life, and never since, would I dwell in my body so freely, so fully as I did in those weeks just before I turned sixteen.
During a break, we milled about the studio. “When’s the next dance?” I asked Busy Shan.
She gave me an appraising look. “When he’s here, the dances are every other day.”
