"You'll be punished for scorning the Lord."

"To be born of such parents is to be punished. I have been serving my sentence. I have been called a little spy in every school I attended, and I have been treated with distrust from both authorities and cla.s.smates. No matter how hard I've tried, no one has accepted me. Look!" She pulled up her sleeves and revealed bruises.

Suddenly I understood her habit of scratching. It was not a skin disease but the healing of her bruises that made her itch.

"Don't make me say words that will hurt you, Mother," Wild Ginger continued. "All I want in life is to be able to be accepted and trusted, to be a Maoist like everyone else in this country. This is not too much to ask, is it? Is it, Mother? But because of you and that Frenchman, I am doomed."

"Help me, G.o.d." Mrs. Pei buried her face in the pillow.

"Sure, help me, G.o.d, the devil is taking my child," Wild Ginger said hysterically. "Mother, don't force me to make a report on you. Outcast and rejected as I am, I will denounce you and move myself out of this stinky house!"

Mrs. Pei began to shiver under the sheets. After a few deep breaths she said, weeping, "Jean-Michel, take me, please. For I can bear no more..."

What the daughter expressed here didn't make sense to the mother, but it made perfect sense to me. To become a Maoist for our generation was like attaining the state of Nirvana for a Buddhist. We might not yet understand the literature of Maoism, but since kindergarten we were taught that the process, the conversion-to enslave our body and soul, to sacrifice what was requested in order to "get there"-was itself the meaning of our lives. The sacrifice meant learning not only to separate ourselves from, but to actually denounce, those we loved most when judgment called. We were also taught to manage the pain that came with such actions. It was called the "true tests." The notion was so powerful that youths throughout the nation became caught up in it. From 1965 to 1969 millions of young people stood out despite their pain and publicly denounced their family members, teachers, and mentors in order to show devotion toward Mao. They were honored.

I understood the importance of being a Maoist. I myself tried desperately to survive the "true tests." I must say that we were not blind in believing in Chairman Mao Tse-tung. Worshiping him as the savior of China was not crazy. The truth was that without him leading the Communist party and its armies, China would be a sliced melon, swallowed up long ago by foreign powers like j.a.pan, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Russia. The information I brought back from school was confirmed by my father, who was a teacher of Chinese history. The Opium War in 1840 was a good example of how close China came to being destroyed. The incompetent emperor of the Ching dynasty was forced to sign "hundred-year leases" opening coastal provinces and ports for "free trading." This took place after the foreign soldiers burned down Yuan-ming-yuan-the emperor's magnificent palace in Beijing-and the Allied commander pleased himself with a Chinese prost.i.tute on the empress's bed.

The j.a.panese invasion in 1937 was another good example of the government's incompetence. It demonstrated what the foreigners were really up to when they talked of "free trading." China was not allowed to say no to their greed. When she did, the "rape" took place. During the j.a.panese occupation, thirty million Chinese were killed. Just in Nanking alone, the j.a.panese slaughtered as many as 350,000 people and raped eighty thousand women.

The pictures of heaps of severed heads we were shown as children could not have been more horrifying. In fact there was no need to show them. The memories were recent and fresh. Every family kept its own record of lives lost or damaged. It was Mao who showed China how to stand up to the invaders. It was Mao who saved us from being be headed, buried alive, bayoneted, raked with machine gun fire, doused with gasoline and burned. No one in China would argue that except my father, who whispered once in a while that the j.a.panese surrender in 1945 had a lot to do with their defeat in World War II. Besides Mao's effort, the j.a.panese were pressured to give up China by Stalin's Red Army in Russia. In other words, Mao happened to harvest other people's crops while working on his own. Unfortunately my father's view got him in big trouble. Nevertheless he didn't contradict the fact that Mao was the hero of China. It became natural for people to follow Mao. That was the point of all the education we received at school: to believe in Mao was to believe in China's future. They were the same.

For me it was understandable that Mrs. Pei disagreed with her daughter. Mrs. Pei had been mistreated for marrying a foreigner. But who could easily forget the image of the thousand-year-old imperial palace engulfed in flames? Who could escape the memories of fleeing one's home? Mrs. Pei's experience made her hate Mao. And that was exactly the opposite of where Wild Ginger stood. Wild Ginger couldn't make her mother understand how she felt.

Wild Ginger wanted to be a Maoist, a true Maoist, the one who would save China from disaster. It would be a different kind of Maoist than Hot Pepper's. In my opinion, Hot Pepper took advantage of Maoism and she had no understanding of what being a Maoist meant. Wild Ginger called Hot Pepper a "fake Maoist." I couldn't agree more. Hot Pepper was shouting slogans only to bully her way around, like a fake Buddhist who not only ate meat but also killed. Wild Ginger believed that one day Hot Pepper would be punished for what she had done to ruin Mao's name.

I sat on a little stool by the stove in Wild Ginger's dark kitchen. Wild Ginger was pouring bleach into a water jar.

"What did your father look like?" I asked.

"I'm thinking about burning his picture. You may take a look at it before I light the match."

Wild Ginger put down the bleach and went behind a cupboard. She reached inside a fuse box and searched. Out she came with a tiny mud-colored box. Dusting off the dirt she opened the lid. Inside was a handful of objects: colored soap wrappers, little gla.s.s b.a.l.l.s, empty matchboxes, Mao b.u.t.tons, and a palm-size framed photo of a young couple. The woman, although barely recognizable, was Mrs. Pei. Her slanting eyes were bright and filled with a b.u.t.terfly smile. The man was handsome. A foreigner. He had curly, light-colored hair, a high nose, and deepset eyes.

"Are you shocked?" asked Wild Ginger.

I nodded and admitted that I had never seen a foreigner before.

"You don't think I look like him, do you?"

"Well, you have his nose."

"Why don't you say I have my mother's eyes? I mean they are almond shaped and slanting. They are one hundred percent Oriental."

"Well, that's true. Except the color of your pupils."

"Well, if there were eye dyes, I would dye them black."

"It doesn't bother me the way they are. I like them."

"Anyway, I consider myself lucky."

"Lucky?"

"My eyes are the only things that make me look Chinese. Imagine the other way around!"

"According to Hot Pepper everything that's non-Chinese is reactionary."

"Someday I will roast that b.i.t.c.h."

"Your mother is beautiful."

"She used to be."

"From the photo, she looked happy with your father."

"I suppose she was happy. It's a shame that she has never recovered from his death."

"Your mother is quite ill."

"She is dying. She wants to die. She has stopped going to the hospital. I am not important to her. She talks about disowning me."

"She was just angry at what you said about your father. I am sure she didn't mean it."

"Maple, she shouldn't have given birth to me."

"How could you say that to your mother? You are being unreasonable, Wild Ginger."

Playing with the photo frame she sighed. "The other day the Red Guards came to rob us. They beat Friendly and broke his left leg."

"Is that why he is limping?"

"Yes. Next time when they come Friendly will be hanged, cooked, and eaten."

"No. They won't do that."

"Oh yes. I heard them talking about it."

The thought chilled me. I was silent.

Wild Ginger sat motionless for a while, and then she slowly slid the photo from the frame and lit a match.

"What are you doing? You aren't burning the picture, are you?"

"Stay where you are."

Squatting down, she put the photo over the flame. I drew in my breath but dared not move. The image of her father curled, turned brown, then black. The flame then ate up her mother. The corners of Wild Ginger's mouth tilted into an ironic smile.

The ashes snowed down on the concrete floor.

"Are you afraid, Wild Ginger?" My voice was thin.

"I can't afford to be afraid." She got up and went to the sink. Unpacking a bag of medicinal herbs, she began to wash and prepare them.

"What did your mother do before she met your father?" I asked, trying to distract my fear.

"She worked at the Shanghai People's Opera House. She was their leading singer. She was doing well until my father went to see her play. They fell in love and started their journey to misery."

"Will she perform again?"

"Of course not. She is considered an enemy. She has to be reformed through hardship. We both have to be re-formed-'The daughter of a legend gets to be a heroine and the daughter of a rat gets to dig the dirt,' as the saying goes. The interesting thing is that I am guilty and she is not. What I bear is a birth defect. It took me a long time to realize that. But Maple, I am not a fatalist. I'm trying to change the course of my life."

I wished that I could tell her that it seemed impossible.

"Watch me, Maple." As if reading my mind she continued. "Someday, I will be a revolutionary. A Maoist star. I will prove that I am just as good and trustworthy as the bravest Maoist. I have made that a promise to myself. No one will stop me from being who I want to be. Not Hot Pepper, not my mother, not the ghost of my father."

Wild Ginger's eyes stared through the kitchen window to the cement wall of her neighbor's house. The wall was painted with a huge smiling Mao head with red rays shooting out from the center. Mao was wearing an army cap with a red star on the top. The sunlight bounced off the paint and onto Wild Ginger, tinting her face red. Her eyes shone brightly. Her hands, which had been washing pots, stopped moving. The tap kept running, the sink was filled. The water began to spill. She was not aware of it. "No one," she uttered.

I felt a deep admiration rise inside me. I reached out my hand and shut off the faucet.

4.

It was the end of the cla.s.s. We were on Mao's "On Protracted War." The noises of other rooms dismissing cla.s.ses were heard around the campus. Wild Ginger signaled me with her eyes that I should be ready to run. We quietly fastened the straps of our school bags.

The bell rang. I jumped out of the bench and ran to exit the cla.s.sroom. Wild Ginger followed me. It took her a couple of turns to cut across the seats. She was caught by t.i.ti.

"The reactionaries are slipping away!" t.i.ti screamed.

"Block them!" Hot Pepper ordered. The gang chased. I ran back to a.s.sist Wild Ginger. Fists, woodsticks, and blows from an abacus rained down on my head and shoulders.

"Maple!" Wild Ginger pulled me over. Back to back, we punched. We were moving toward the gate successfully.

We were by Chia Chia Lane now. Hot Pepper and the gang had lost sight of us. I gasped hard. Wild Ginger was limping.

"What's wrong with your leg?"

"Hot Pepper got me with her abacus. The sow!"

"She almost poked my eye with her pencil. But I got her too. I broke her pencil in half."

"She threatened to send her three brothers, 'the Dragons.' They are vicious."

"I've heard of them. They work at the Number Seven Lumber Factory and it's said they beat five people to death."

"We must find help, Wild Ginger."

"How?"

"Let's go to the Red Flag Middle School."

"Do you know anyone there?"

"I wonder if he remembers me."

"Who?"

"A Mao activist. Last year's champion of the Mao Quotation-Citing Contest. He is a head of the Red Guards at the school. He is my neighbor."

"How did you meet him?"

"It was in the soy milk shop last Sunday. He was in a hurry to visit his father in the hospital, but the line was three blocks long. He came to me although we had never spoken before. He asked if I would let him cut in. I let him in but the people behind me protested. To shut them up I said that he was my brother. And he got his milk ... I wonder if he would offer us some protection."

"What's his name?"

"Evergreen."

"Evergreen? How dare he! That's the name of the protagonist in Madame Mao's opera!"

"It's true and I had asked him about it. I asked how dare he copy Madame Mao."

"And what was the reaction?"

"He said she copied him. him. He was. given the name at his birth in 1954 and Madame Mao's opera was not conceived until 1960." He was. given the name at his birth in 1954 and Madame Mao's opera was not conceived until 1960."

"Sounds like he's got character."

"Isn't that interesting!"

We found him. He was writing a big-character poster ent.i.tled "What We Talk About When We Talk About Loyalty." He was sixteen years old. Tall with a thin face and a pair of staring single-lid eyes. I didn't know how to describe him when Wild Ginger asked me except that he was handsome. I fell short of words as I considered him. I could say that he gave the impression of possessing an honest character. He was frank-knew exactly what he wanted and asked for it. The neighbors said that he was "square," which meant that he'd been brought up by strict parents. But there was something else about him that struck me. Something mysterious and unusual. He was warm and aloof at the same time. His ability to focus and shift focus without warning intrigued me. He projected a sense that he was eager to engage, yet the boundary he set was Great Wall thick. Physically, he had an athlete's frame. He was lean and his muscles were very pure in outline. He wore a blue Mao jacket and was working, bending over a Ping-Pong table. His calligraphy was masterly and in the Song dynasty style. We watched him and waited until he finished the last stroke. He noticed Wild Ginger, put down his brush pen, and smiled at her. To me the smile was strange and almost affectionate.

Wild Ginger scratched her arm.