Chu Ju's House (4 page)

At first the boys kept their distance, watching as I ate and slept, curious as to how I would do those things. When they saw I ate and slept as they did, they became bolder. Bo taught me the difference between red carp and grass carp. He had many
questions about school and what was taught there, for neither Bo nor Zhong had been long enough in a village to go to a school. I brought out my pencil box and drew characters for Bo. I taught him simple ones, such as the character for “earth,” which looks like a man standing on the ground, and the character for “claw,” which looks just like the claw of a frog. He asked to see the character for “fish.” “There is the net,” I said, “and there on top is the fish going into it.” For that was what the character for “fish” looked like.

Zhong had no questions about school. When Yi Yi was not looking, he put an eel down the back of my shirt and showed me how a frog would still jump with its head cut off.

The worst of the heat and the rain was over, and along the shore the rice plants with their golden kernels had long since been harvested and a winter crop planted. Each day was like the day before, so
the months glided on as silently as the boat drifted along the river. The fishing boat was my house, the river was my world. The current rocked me to sleep, and each day there was something new to see—large clumsy barges with their loads of coal, and the many
qing-ting
, the flies with their see-through wings and bright red or green bodies that were narrow as a thread. There were clear days when the sun danced on the water and days when curtains of mist closed over the river and everything disappeared.

The boat became as familiar to me as the home I had left. I knew every inch of it. I could tie a proper knot and coil the ropes neatly. I could mend the nets, leaving no holes for small fish to slip through. I could heartlessly slap a fish against the deck, never minding its staring eye, and the insides of the fish were nothing to me.

Wu said little to me, but he was not unkind.
The boys treated me as they treated each other and teased me, but they were never rough with me. Once Bo and Zhong found a trout tangled in the net. It was a small, slim fish with pink and green and gold coloring on its side. “Like a rainbow,” Bo said, and looking to be sure their father did not see, the boys gently put the trout over the side of the boat and watched it swim away. Bo and Zhong treated me as gently as they had treated the trout.

It was Yi Yi who kept me on the boat. Once I heard her call to some woman on a nearby boat, “My husband and the boys are fishing. Only my daughter is with me.” How it pleased me to hear the word “daughter.” It was because Yi Yi was so kind to me that I made the mistake. Wu and the boys had left for the day, and Yi Yi and I were mending the nets. The winter crop had been harvested, and Yi Yi and I watched a farmer on the
shore readying his fields for the planting of the spring rice.

It was the fifth day of the fourth moon, Tomb Sweeping Day. Hua would be celebrating a birthday. Only a year before, Ma Ma and Ba Ba, along with Nai Nai and me, had climbed the path to the tombs of our ancestors. This year they would have Hua with them as they made the journey.

I was sorry that I had deceived Yi Yi, and did not want a lie between us. Without thinking, I confessed that my ma ma and ba ba still lived. I told Yi Yi all about Hua and why I had run away. I was sure she would understand. Instead she was horrified.

“Chu Ju! How could you do such a thing? Think of your poor ma ma. Every minute in her heart she must be worrying about you, wondering where you are. I cannot believe your ma ma would give away her baby. I would never do such a thing.”

Quickly I said, “It is different for you. You are
strong. My ma ma is weak. She is afraid of my nai nai. The evil woman had already been to our house. I could not let them take Hua.”

But Yi Yi would not listen. “Next week we will be near your village again. You must go home to your parents. I will speak to Wu this evening.”

Because of Yi Yi's kind heart and her longing for a daughter, I had thought it was safe to tell my story, but it was that kindness and that longing that made her feel sorry for Ma Ma and made her doubt my story about Hua, for she would never have sent a child of hers away.

In the evening, as the boat floated down the river, Yi Yi whispered my story to an angry Wu. “I will take her myself to her village,” he said, and I knew I must escape that night.

I looked about to see what countryside I would find myself in. We had drifted beyond the rice paddies and were in green countryside with many trees. The
trees stood in rows, so I knew someone had planted them. Perhaps they were fruit trees of some kind and I could work at picking the fruit. Though Yi Yi might wish to send him, I was sure Wu would not lose a day's fishing by coming after me. He would not know which direction I took, nor would he wish the authorities to ask why a man with two sons was looking for a third child.

It was spring, and the darkness came slowly, yet not too slowly for me, for I did not want to leave the boat that had been my home and where Yi Yi had been like a ma ma and the boys like brothers. Only the night before, when I had exclaimed over fireflies, which I had never seen before, Zhong had waded up a muddy bank to capture some in a glass jar for me. Now I did not know where I could go or what would happen to me.

At last the night came. Overhead there was a new moon shaped like a fingernail paring. In the
light of the kerosene lantern that swung from the roof of the boat, I could see everyone was asleep. I had my bundle of clothes, a few dried fish, and the jar of fireflies. I had begun to climb over the edge of the boat when I saw Zhong sit up and stare at me. Had it been Bo, I would have trusted him to be silent, but Zhong always did the first thing that came into his head. To my amazement, what he did now was to keep very quiet. We looked at each other, and then I dropped over the edge and made my way to shore. I was glad I had taken the jar of fireflies. I imagined Zhong following their flickering as I hurried away into the darkness.

One place was as dark as another. After many stumbles my feet discovered the smoothness of a path. Following the path until I believed I was far enough from the river, I huddled down to wait for the morning. All about me was the rustle of leaves twitching in the warm breeze. Comforted by the small lights of my fireflies, I fell asleep.

I was shaken awake by a girl no older than myself. Her face was very round and her eyes very large. Her hair stood up in two large tufts tied with string.

“You must be new,” she said. “If Ji Rong finds you asleep, he will beat you. Where is your shoulder pole?”

“I have no shoulder pole. Who is Ji Rong?” I saw that the baskets on her shoulder pole were heaped with small green leaves. I looked around at the long rows of trees. “Why are you plucking leaves? Do these trees have no fruit?”

The girl stared at me. “How stupid you are. These are mulberry trees. They are not wanted for their fruit.”

At last I understood. Somewhere close by must be the silkworms that fed on the leaves. I gave up my hope of gathering fruit and said, “I need to find work. Will this Ji Rong hire me to gather leaves?”

“You would be a fool to work for him if you did not have to.” She rolled up her sleeve to show me ugly black-and-blue marks.

“Why do you stay?”

“I was sent to work here by an orphanage. If I tried to leave, he would come after me and punish me. Anyhow, where would I go? Here I have a bed
and food, and at the end of each month a few yuan.”

My thoughts flew to Hua. Had I not left, one day she might have been sent from an orphanage to work for someone like this Ji Rong. “I must have work,” I said. “Is there no place else?”

The girl gathered up her shoulder pole. She pointed away from the rising sun. “Over there is the place of the silkworms. There is work there, but I would rather have Ji Rong's beatings than the tongue-lashings of the woman.” Before I could ask a further question, she hurried away.

I had borne Nai Nai's scoldings, and did not see why I could not bear the scoldings of this woman. I hurried off in the direction the girl had pointed, passing several girls my age and even younger going from tree to tree to gather leaves. If it had not been for their shoulder poles, they could have been playing some game of hide-and-seek
among the trees.

I thought the trees would never end, but I came at last to a long, low building. A doorway stood open. From inside the building came a noise such as I had never heard before. I peered inside. Covering long tables were trays of green leaves, and chewing the leaves were thousands of fat white worms. It was their chewing that I had heard. Moving among the tables were women dressed in white smocks, white masks tied around their faces.

A hand reached out and pushed me outside so hard that I fell to the ground. A woman was standing over me. I could not believe so small a woman could give so great a push. Like the girls, she wore a white smock and also a mask, which was tied about the lower half of her wrinkled face. She was old and shriveled, as if all the air had been squeezed out of her. Her gray hair was pulled into a knot on the top of her head, and her narrowed eyes looked
at me as Nai Nai had looked upon a cockroach that had crept by night into our rice flour. A moment later the cockroach was dead.

In a whisper she hissed, “You are polluting my worms! How do you dare try to come into this building?”

“Please, I need a job. Could I tend the worms?”

“Never! You would poison my worms with your fishy smell.”

“That is only because I lived on a fishing boat. I could clean myself.”

Her eyes narrowed even further. “I could not pay you. A bed in the dormitory with the other girls and food. That is all.”

A bed and food and safety for a bit. I nodded my head.

“Sit outside, well away from the building,” she ordered. “When the girls stop for lunch, I will send
one to show you where to go. Scrub yourself and get back here at once. No garlic. My worms don't like it.” She caught sight of my jar of fireflies. She snatched it out of my hand and flung it away. With horror I watched it land on a rock and break into pieces.

“What! You would bring dirty bugs near my beauties! There had better be no more stupidities or I will turn you over to the police. Doubtless you have run away after some mischief.”

When she left me, I settled down in a bit of shade made by a small stand of bamboo. I did not think the woman would call the police as long as I would work for her without a wage. The sound of the thousands of chewing worms was very loud. All those little mouths at work frightened me. However much I was in want of food and a bed, I did not think I could live each day with such chewing noises. Small as the worms were, they sounded
as if they would eat anything in their way.

The sun was overhead when the girls came out of the building, pulling off their masks and smocks and reaching for pickles and bowls of rice passed to them by a woman who had come loaded with baskets. The day had been hot, and the faces of the girls ran with sweat. One girl hurried over to me, a pigtail bouncing on her back as she ran. In age she was nearly a woman. Her smile was friendly, but she urged me to run alongside her.

“I am Song Su. Quickly. I must get back or Yong will scold me. The worms should be in their fourth hatch today, but they are slow. That always makes Yong cross.”

“What do you mean, fourth hatch, and why does that make her cross?”

Song Su opened a door into a long hut built of wood and roofed with metal. It was so hot inside, I could scarcely breathe.

“You'll soon learn,” she said. “The worms eat until they are too fat for their skin. They break out of the skin and start eating again. We starve, while the worms get so fat their skin can't hold them. Four times the worms molt, and then they spin the cocoon that makes the silk. This is the dormitory. The shower is in that room. Take any bed that does not have some belongings on the chest that sits next to it. No makeup. The worms don't like the smell.” She ran off.

I was happy for the shower's cold water. I scrubbed myself well for the worms and ran back to the building as fast as I could.

“The fish smell is gone,” Yong said, “but you could not scrub away the stupid look of a country girl.”

She thrust a mask and smock at me. I struggled into the smock and clumsily tied the mask about my face. Yong pulled me over to a table and handed
me a feather.

In a whisper she said, “These sweethearts are yours. They are a little slow in hatching. You must tickle them with the feather like so.” She brushed the feather over one of the worms and then another. Seeing her gentleness with the worms, I found it hard to believe she was the same woman who had given me such a push. “Mind you don't miss a single worm or you will not hear the end of it, and no talking. Noise distracts the worms.”

I looked quickly around me. There were five other girls with feathers. All afternoon I tickled the fat white worms as they lay on a bed of chopped mulberry leaves chewing away. Baskets of the leaves were brought in to replace the ones that were eaten. Once I thought I saw the girl who had awakened me come with leaves. I tried to catch her eye, but she hurried off.

It was late in the afternoon when one of the girls
raised her hand to signal Yong, who ran quickly over to the girl's tray. Another hand was raised.

I saw one of my worms break out of its skin and raised my hand as well. Yong examined the worm and nodded her head. One by one the worms wriggled out of their skins. Once freed, the worms began to wave their heads from side to side, spinning a thin thread and wrapping it about their bodies. I had hated the ugly worms, but now I was fascinated. Here was the silk! By the end of the day all but a few of the worms were spinning their cocoons. The feathers were put away, and we busied ourselves with cleaning the trays, for what went into the worms also came out of them.

It had rained all afternoon, so returning to the dormitory was like swimming through warm water. Little puffs of steam rose from the ground. We hurried through our supper of rice, bean paste, and cabbage, for the dormitory building was so hot no
one could bear to stay inside. Outdoors we sat fanning ourselves with leaves from a dying banana tree. Beyond the dormitory and the worm farm, the rows of mulberry trees were silent in the still air. I sat with Song Su and with Jing, the girl who had awakened me. Also with us was Ling Li. As soon as we had come back to the dormitory, Ling Li had put on lipstick and eye shadow. Her jeans were low on her slim hips and allowed her navel to show. What would my ba ba say to that!

The women in the spinning room were older than we were and kept to themselves. I whispered to Jing, who sat beside me, “Look how red those women's hands are.”

“They put the cocoons into hot water to loosen the thread, and then they pull the thread,” Jing said. “The water is so hot, I don't see how the women stand it, but they say they are used to it.”

“Now that the worms are spinning their
cocoons, will Yong be less cross?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” Song Su said. “This is the worst time of all, for in three days the cocoons will be spun and all but a few of the worms must die. Yong will be very upset. We hate the spinning of the cocoons.”

“Why must the worms die?”

“If they live, they will crawl out of their cocoon, making a hole in it. After that no long thread can be drawn.”

Ling Li said, “The killing of the miserable worms is my favorite time. I must live with the worms all day long, and at night I dream of them. They cannot die quickly enough for me. Last week I had to carry baskets of the worms into the town to sell. The owner of the restaurant said, ‘Oh, here comes the worm girl.' That is all we are, worm girls.”

“But why would you take the worms to a restaurant?” I asked.

“They are a delicacy, fried crisp on the outside
and soft as custard on the inside. Yong hates it that we sell her worms. The manager of the silk farm makes her do it because they bring good money.”

“Did you come from the same orphanage Jing came from?” I asked Ling Li.

“Yes, most of us did. The orphanage is not far from here, and the manager of the silk farm and the manager of the orphanage have an agreement. As soon as we are sixteen, we are sent to some job. I was sent at fifteen, for the orphanage is so crowded they are anxious to get rid of us.”

“Is there no place else for you?” I asked.

“A few of the girls, when they are very young, are taken away by
waiguoren
who come across the ocean to adopt them,” Song Su said, “but those are few.”

I told them my story of Hua and why I had run away.

Jing sighed. “I only wish someone had run
away for me so I could have stayed with my family, but what difference does it make whether it was Hua or you who ended up here?”

“The orphanage manager put you here,” I said. “An orphanage would have put Hua in such a place as well. No one put me here. I came by myself and I can go.”

“Where can you go?” Song Su asked. “It's dangerous for a girl traveling alone. Only last month we heard how a girl who ran away was kidnaped. Girls are sold to men who are in need of wives. So many girl babies have been lost, there are more men than women.”

I could not say where I would go, for I had no idea. I only knew that I would not be a worm girl all my life.

What Song Su had said was true. The next morning Yong was in a terrible temper. Once the worms had spun their cocoons, the cocoons were
carried away to a room where they were heated so the worms inside them died. Only a few worms were allowed to hatch and lay eggs so there would be more worms. Yong watched as the trays of cocoons were carried off.

“Ah, my beauties,” she moaned.

She ordered us to scrub the floors and the tables so that they would be ready for the next shipment of worms. No matter how hard we scrubbed, we could not please her.

There were no worms now, so Yong had no need to hiss and whisper her words. “Song Su,” she shrieked. “You have left your dirty footprints on the freshly scrubbed floor. Do it over. Chu Ju, none of your filthy country ways. The undersides of the tables must be as clean as the tops.”

The windows and walls were scrubbed as well, for there was always the chance that some worm disease would infect the new worms and they
would perish.

Ling Li whispered, “I wish I knew of such a disease. I would spread it everywhere.”

When at last the new worms arrived, Yong seemed almost cheerful. “Ah, look at the poor babies. They need fattening. Come, move quickly,” she ordered us, “see that the leaves are thickly spread.” Once more we heard the chewing.

My days were chewed away as well in the long hours of caring for the worms. Ling Li, Song Su, Jing, and I became friends. After our workday was over, we would sit outside for the breezes. Chewing on sunflower seeds or sucking on pieces of sugarcane for the sweetness, we would tell one another our worries and hopes.

When Yong shouted and scolded one of us, we could be sure the others would sympathize, making faces behind Yong's back. We called Yong Mouth of a Thousand Serpents. We also had a name for Ji
Rong: Biting Dog. Ling Li let us try her makeup and Song Su let me try on her jeans. There was no talk of families, for the orphanage girls had no memories of a ma ma or ba ba. I never mentioned my own family, for I did not want to speak of what they did not have, but often I thought of my own ma ma and ba ba and of Hua. She would be taking her first steps. I wondered if I would still recognize her. The dormitory sheltered me, but it was not the home I dreamed of.

Though Yong still scolded me each day, after a few months she saw that I was given a few yuan when the other girls received theirs. “You are as worthless as they are, so why should you not have what they have,” she said. After that I did not mind her scoldings as much.

In February we celebrated the New Year, the year of the Golden Dragon. Night after night fireworks were set off, the sky exploding into fiery
flowers of color. Day after day we heard the sound of the drums that accompanied the lion dances. People in their red clothes crowded into the shops to buy mandarin cakes and dumplings with little coins hidden inside. Yong, reminding us that in preparation for the New Year it is traditional to sweep and scrub, set us to cleaning the dormitory, then scolded us for making a poor job of it. Yet on the night when families gathered for the custom of eating a whole fish together, Yong remembered we were orphans, and instead of our usual cabbage and rice, she provided us with a huge carp in a fragrant sauce. We spent money on lanterns, which we hung in the dormitory. As we tied on red ribbons and scarves and sat down to our feast as a family, I couldn't help thinking of Ma Ma and Ba Ba and wondering if they were celebrating the New Year. I wondered if they thought of me and if I had a brother.