Chu Ju's House (5 page)

All my problems came about from a good deed. It was the fourth moon, and I had been with the worms for nearly a year. Though it was not the time of the rains, one afternoon a great storm came. There was lightning and thunder. Yong paced up and down the aisles peering into the trays, crooning to the worms, “Don't worry, my little ones. It is only a small storm, and it will pass away.”

The door opened and I saw Jing hurry in. I thought she had come with leaves for the worms, but her baskets were nearly empty. She crouched in one corner of the room, a frightened look on her face. Before Yong could say anything, the door opened and Biting Dog burst into the room, grabbed Jing, and pulled her outside into the storm.

At dinnertime Jing sat by herself with her head down. She would not look at us. In the evening I heard her crying softly in the cot next to mine. When I asked what was wrong, she only shook her
head and cried harder. I sat beside her and waited. Finally the crying stopped and Jing sat up. On her cheek was an evil-looking black-and-blue mark.

“When the lightning and thunder came,” she said, “I was afraid to be under so many trees, but Biting Dog said the worms must eat and the leaves must be collected. I ran away, and he came after me and beat me with a stick.”

“Jing, do you think the orphanage knows that Biting Dog beats the girls?”

She shook her head. “No. When the people from the orphanage come to inspect the worm farm, everyone here is very nice to us. That is all the orphanage sees.”

“The next time they come, you should tell the orphanage people the truth.”

“We are never allowed to talk with anyone from the orphanage. We are watched every minute.”

“Then you must write a letter to the orphan
age,” I said.

“How am I to do that?” Jing looked sadder than ever. “We were never taught to write at the orphanage. They said we would be workers and would have no need.”

“I'll write the letter for you,” I promised. “Yong and Biting Dog will never know who sent it.” But when I said that, I stupidly forgot that it would be no secret to them that no one from the orphanage could write.

The writing of the letter was a great thing. Only the four of us knew of it, and together we made our plans. After dinner we hurried along the Path of the Squawking Crows to the nearby village. The village was a small affair of dirt streets and stalls. There was a teahouse where old men sat playing checkers. Many of the men had brought their birdcages, and the birds fluttered about beating their wings against the wire caging. A melon peddler cried his wares, and there was a noodle
shop and a stall where bicycles were repaired. We headed for the small store where Ling Li got her makeup. After much consultation we bought paper, an envelope, and a stamp.

That night we huddled together in a corner of the dormitory. The girls watched as I brought out my pencil and notebook. I waited to hear what I should say.

“Tell them about the poor food,” Ling Li said.

“Tell them about the heat of the dormitory,” Song Su said.

“And the beatings,” from Jing.

When the letter was written, it was passed from hand to hand and held for a few minutes as if each of the girls wished to have some part in the writing of the letter. They made me read it to them again and again.

The letter was sealed carefully in an envelope, each one of us licking a bit of the flap. The next evening we returned to the town, and after looking all about to be sure no one from the silk farm was watching, we mailed the letter.

All week we waited, hardly daring to look at one another. With each angry look from Yong we were sure she had discovered what we had done. At the end of the week an orphanage worker came. She was as big as a man, so she towered over Yong and even Biting Dog, but her voice was kind. When she looked at us, she did not smile with her mouth but
she smiled with her eyes, and none of us were afraid of her. Though Yong and Biting Dog complained loudly and said the girls were sure to be untruthful, one by one the woman called all the girls from the orphanage to talk with her. Yong and Biting Dog were not allowed to hear what was said. After the orphanage worker left, Ling Li whispered, “I told her of the bugs in the cabbage.”

“She saw for herself how hot the dormitory was,” Song Su said.

“I showed her my black-and-blue marks,” Ying said, “and she was very angry.”

After that the food was better, a fan was put in the dormitory, and Biting Dog only growled and no longer struck the girls. Yong was furious that such a letter had been sent, but she could not find out from the orphanage who sent it and she did not dare to punish all of us for fear there would be another visit from the orphanage worker. If the
orphange sent their girls somewhere else, the silk farm would be in trouble, for where could they get such cheap labor?

Still, Yong knew the orphans could not write and she watched me closely. One day she came to me and, with a crafty look, said, “I don't have enough time to keep track of the number of worms we get. Here is a notebook. You can put down the day the worms come and the numbers of worms. If you are careful with the records, I might pay you a larger wage.”

I shook my head. “I cannot write, Yong,” I said. “I am only a stupid country girl.”

She gave me a suspicious look but said nothing more. That night I found my pencil box had been stolen from my chest. I truly hated Yong and longed to go to her and demand that she return it, but I had told her I could not write.

The next day as soon as I entered the worm
room, Yong said to me, “We have more girls than we need. You must leave at once. You can go back to the country. Doubtless you can find a job cleaning out pigpens. It is all you are suitable for.”

Song Su and Ling Li were watching. I longed to bid them
zai-jian
, but Yong forbade me to speak to anyone. As I reached the door, Song Su and Ling Li ran to me and put their arms around me until Yong hissed to them to return to the worms.

When I went to the dormitory to get my bundle of clothes, I was amazed to find the pencil box. Yong had returned it. I thought I had seen into Yong as far as a person could go, but I had not. There was yet a bit of heart in her, so when I left, I was not quite so afraid for my friends.

I don't know how long I would have stayed among the worms. Though I had boasted that I might go where I wished, I knew of no place to go. I longed to return to the river and to Ma Ma and Ba Ba and Hua, but I made myself turn away from the direction of the river and my home.

Except to buy a bit of food, I kept away from villages, for the stories Jing had told about young girls being kidnaped frightened me. At night I slept curled up in a bamboo grove. As one day followed another, the whole countryside changed before my eyes. The rows of mulberry trees were gone. All around me were small and large rice paddies, the
flooded paddies marked off by mud dams no more than a foot high. The paddies were dotted with the wide circles of bamboo hats as the farmers bent over to plant the new rice shoots.

The paths that wound through the paddies were muddy, sucking at my feet. I had no bamboo hat, so as the day grew hotter, the sun became scorching. The mosquitoes buzzed around my head. I longed to be back with the worms, where there was a roof over my head, food at the end of the day, and friends to talk with.

I stopped at each paddy to ask if a worker was needed. The farmer would look at me, and seeing I was only a young girl, he would shake his head. I had left the large paddies where there were many workers and had come to small rice fields separated by dams that held the few inches of water needed to grow the rice. Beyond the paddies was higher ground where fields of sugarcane and jute grew.

At one of the smallest paddies a woman and a man worked at tucking the young rice seedlings into the mud that lay beneath the water. The woman moved slowly, and from time to time she stood up to rest her back. She was dark from the sun, thin as one of the rice shoots, and though she looked to be no more than fifty, she was stooped from years of planting. I saw that she was watching the young man, a worried look on her face. The man went about his work as if he were furious with the rice seedlings, plunging them into the water as if he were drowning them instead of planting them.

Though it was only a small paddy and unlikely to need another worker, the woman looked so tired, I gathered my courage once more and asked of her, “Is it possible that you could use a worker here?”

The man took no notice of me, but the woman looked up from her planting, a puzzled expression
on her face, as if she were searching for this worker I was talking of.

“I'm not afraid of work. I tended crops in a large plot.”

The woman smiled. “We could use the help, for even this small place is too much for me and my son, but we have no money for another worker, even for one so young as you.”

No grown person had smiled at me in a long time, and while the short, angry refusals of the other farmers had not hurt me, by now I was tired and miserable and the little kindness was too much for me. I burst into tears and began to run away.

“Wait!” the woman called after me. I stopped and looked back. The man and woman were arguing with each other. The woman waved me back.

“Chi fan meiyou?”
she asked.

“Have you eaten yet?” is a common greeting, but I saw that she meant for me to tell the truth. I
shook my head, for the food I had bought with the few yuan I had saved had long since been eaten.

“We have no money, but we have rice,” she said. “Rest a bit while we finish, and you can share our dinner.” The young man had gone back to his planting, punishing the rice shoots more fiercely than ever.

For an answer I took up a basket of shoots and asked how they were planted. The woman smiled again, and taking my hand, she guided it to the mud beneath the water and made a hole in the mud. “Like this,” she said, and placed two shoots in the hole, firming the mud about the tender roots. “You must be sure to see that the mud hugs the roots, or a wind will come along and the shoot will float loose.”

After the woman was satisfied with my work, she attended to her planting, but I caught the man looking at me from time to time as if he were considering me in a way I did not understand.

When the last of the shoots were planted, the woman and the young man stood in the path examining their arms and legs, pulling at something that clung to them. With horror I saw they were pulling off fat, black leeches. I looked at my own arms and legs, and discovering three of the ugly worms clinging to my skin, I began to scream. The woman hurried over and showed me how to sprinkle onto the leeches a bit of salt, which she carried in a bag around her neck. Salted, the leeches curled up and dropped away.

“After you have done it a thousand times,” she said, “you will think nothing of it.”

I had believed I was finished with worms. At least, I thought, the silkworms were satisfied with mulberry leaves and did not cling to you as if they wished to suck away your very lifeblood. Together we walked toward a wooden house. In the back of the house was a square of garden. The house was
much like my own home had been, with two small rooms and a tiny courtyard. Everything was tidy. The bamboo mats on the floor had been swept. The two windows sparkled. Neatly braided strings of garlic and onions hung on the wall. On a small shelf was a picture of an old man.

Han Na, for I had learned that was the woman's name, set a fire and put the rice on to boil while her son, Quan, brought water from a nearby well so that we could all rid ourselves of the mud from the paddy. While we stood in the courtyard, splashing ourselves, Han Na asked my name and where I had come from.

“Chu Ju,” I said. “I come from an orphanage.” It was a small lie, but when I had told my true story to Yi Yi on the fishing boat, she had wanted to take me back to my home. I would not make the same mistake. I could see that Quan resented every grain of rice I ate, and I was sure I would be sent on my way in the morning, but for now this good woman
and her small nest were so pleasant to me, I didn't wish to risk having to leave at once.

Han Na asked no more questions, but as we sat at our rice in the courtyard, she said, “It is a sad thing that so many of our country's children should be scattered about like leaves.” She looked at her son, who threw down his chopsticks.

“Of course they are scattered,” he said in a cross voice. “How are farmers to make a living when their land measures no more than five
mu
? After we pay our lease fees and taxes, there is hardly enough for the next year's seed. How can a man live unless he leaves the land and finds work in the city? There you can make three times as much as you make on the land.”

Han Na said, “In the city you are one among millions, everything is unknown, and nothing is yours. Here every inch of the land is familiar. I could close my eyes and find my way anywhere on
our land. Can you say the same for a city like Shanghai?”

Quan seemed taken aback by her words, but he answered, “Why should you not learn to know a city as well as the mud of a paddy?”

When the bowls were washed, though my back ached and my feet were sore, with no word I went out into the little garden beside the house and began to weed among the yam vines and the cabbage, pulling out the thistles and grasses that choked the vegetables and shooing the chickens that clucked around me. When I came in, I picked up my things, ready to leave.

“Wait,” Quan said. “If you wish, you can stay a few days. We can use help with the planting of the rice. There will be food and a bed.”

At the time I was surprised that the invitation came from Quan and that Han Na added no words of welcome. It was only at the end of the week that
I understood why Quan wanted me to remain and why Han Na, kind as she was, worried at my staying, for Quan announced that he was leaving for Shanghai.

“You have no government permit to go to the city,” Han Na said. “What will you do when there is a
cha hukou
, a checking of residence permits? You will be arrested.”

“How can the police check everyone in a city of many millions?” Quan looked at me. “You have the girl now. She can plant and weed as well as I do. I will send you money each month, and one day you can leave this backbreaking labor and live an easier life.” His voice grew soft and pleading. “Ma Ma, it isn't just that I have no wish to spend the rest of my days in the mud of the paddy, it is that I cannot bear to see you bent over from morning to night. If you go on like this, you will die working in the paddy as Ba Ba died.”

I had listened to only a part of what Quan said.
I had not gotten beyond the words, “You have the girl now.” Were there to be days in Han Na's house beyond this one? I put my hands in my lap so their trembling would not be seen.

“We have seen your pencil box,” Quan said. “Is it possible you read and write?”

“I am not greatly skilled.”

Quan asked, “You could read any letters I send?”

I nodded. “If they were simple.”

“I could write only simple letters.”

Han Na said, “It may be that your coming is a fortunate thing, seeing as how Quan is determined to go.” She sighed. “Or your coming may have brought closer the misfortune of Quan's going. I cannot tell. I have very little, but what I have I will share with you for as long as you wish to stay.”

I hid my face in my hands. “As long as you will have me,” I mumbled.

There is a cuckoo that hides in the daytime but
at night you sometimes hear his call. That night I heard the cuckoo calling and I took it for a good omen. I slept soundly. When I awoke in the morning to the crowing of the rooster, I was still in the house of Han Na but Quan had left.