My grandmother lived with my oldest uncle and his family in a crumbling row house. The downstairs was crowded with a lot of old furniture and beds. It was easy to tell which bed belonged to Grandmother. One stood out among all the others, neatly made and surrounded by shelves filled with glass jars. Polished until they glistened and glowed, each jar contained a kind of snack, with an assortment of cookies, sweets, roasted melon seeds, or preserved fruits. It was like a fancy candy shop. I was awed by this impressive sight. Its thoughtful creator, my elder uncle, had dutifully filled his father’s position since he was lost at sea and wanted to make sure that everything was within arm’s reach for my grandmother.

  When we first entered the house, the room was obscured in darkness, even though it was sunny outside. As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I was captivated by the gleaming jars and their contents, and I realized that the darkness was intentional because all the curtains and blinds were drawn. A group of men and women crowded around a banquet-sized table under a halo of cigarette smoke. They were obviously having a good time and did not notice our intrusion. Little did I know that we had landed in the middle of a hot game of Mahjong.

  My grandmother loved Mahjong more than anything else in the whole world. She was drawn even more to it since my grandfather perished at sea. Now that Mahjong was declared illegal, it was too risky for her to round up all her old pals for a game. Many of her partners quit the game for fear of getting themselves into trouble. To satisfy my grandmother’s Mahjong cravings, my uncles, aunts, and their spouses started to learn the game. Behind drawn curtains and shut doors on a round table wrapped with thick blankets, they built my grandmother a haven where Mahjong still existed and excited the blood, even if it was family members only. The blankets on the table muffled the clicking noises caused by the ivory rectangles. My grandmother loved the sound of Mahjong more than music.

  It was very easy for me to pick my grandmother out of the crowd because she looked just like Mother, except older and smaller. Her silky white hair was pulled back into a bun, the typical hairstyle for an old woman at the time. A Manchurian blouse of black silk and matching pants made her appear even smaller and more delicate. She knew it was Mother the very minute she laid her eyes on her, even after thirty years of separation.

  “It’s you, Ai Zhu,” she said matter-of-factly.

  She addressed Mother with her birth name and little emotion. If she felt anything, she certainly hid it well. Mother pulled us closer to her, and introduced us one by one. Everyone was surprised at the sheer number of daughters Mother had and exchanged greetings with us. I met several aunts and their husbands, one uncle and his wife, and some children.

  While our visit was cordial and friendly, it was not the intimate family scene I had wished for. I wanted my grandmother to embrace me with all her love. I wanted her to squeeze me tight, like I was her lost and found treasure. I wanted her to hold my hands and touch my cheeks with the tips of her fingers. I wanted all her affection to pour over me and satisfy my many years of hunger and thirst for a real grandmother. But I didn’t get any of this. My grandmother never reached out for me. She never reached out for any of us, not even Mother. She spared us only one lingering look before she went back to her Mahjong game. She had enough of her other grandchildren around her already without us. At that point, I almost regretted having pushed Mother to come here. I certainly did not get a sense that we belonged there at all.

  My grandmother remained cool to us for the rest of our visit. She kept herself several feet away from Mother as they sat on the same edge of the bed. My mother was quietly choking with emotion, waiting for some personal outpouring, some explanation. But nothing came. They never even touched each other. My uncles and aunts used my grandmother as a barometer and gave us an equally lukewarm reception. I was very disappointed. I felt doomed not to have a grandmother to love me.

  What I got most out of the visit was the last living knowledge of a fading phenomenon, found only among the old-world, upper-class Chinese. I was fascinated by my grandmother’s feet, which were no bigger than a child’s. They were less than five inches long and oddly shaped. My grandmother was the only woman I had ever met who had bound feet. By the time I left, I had memorized every little detail about them. Only after we left my grandmother’s house did I dare to ask Mother about her feet.

  A few months later, my family and I visited Grandmother for the second, and last, time at her sixtieth birthday party. It was a bittersweet reunion. All of Mother’s real brothers and sisters, their spouses, and children were there. She even got to meet her littlest brother who was conceived after she was given away.

  I could not believe my luck: I gained four more aunts, two more uncles, and a roomful of cousins. There was plenty of food and laughter. Everything went well, and everybody seemed to be happy together until the end of the day, when I innocently asked a question I should not have asked.

  “Mommy, why did you leave in the middle of the party today? Aunty said you were embarrassed by how little you brought for grandmother’s birthday, and you went out to buy more. Is that true?”

  There was a long silence. Mother stood there like a wooden statue.

  She had left in the middle of the party and sneaked back in (not without her sisters noticing) with a large birthday cake—a last-minute attempt to enlarge her modest pile of cheap presents (a box of cookies and two hand towels) sitting humbly next to a mountain of expensive, elaborately packaged gift boxes from her brothers and sisters. She was worried that she would be looked down on as a failure by her long-lost family. Or just as bad, having been cast out some thirty years ago, she feared they would interpret her small gifts as disrespect towards her mother. In either case, it was a disaster. And all her fears came true!

  Mother choked on her tears and broke down. She had brought only a few simple presents, but even they were beyond her means, and she had cut into our food money to get them. Realizing what I had done, I was at a loss as to how to change my story to make Mother feel better. Curse presents and parties! I felt miserable.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” I mumbled. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I shouldn’t have pushed you to visit Grandmother.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Mother said as she patted me on the head. I looked up and saw her eyes were red.

  I never saw my grandmother again. Mother preferred talking about her family to actually seeing them. It was too painful for her and I stopped asking to see my relatives. Besides, the Cultural Revolution was about to pull my entire family to pieces.

  Chapter VI

  Honesty and Punishment

  One day Father did not come home. He did not come home the next day, or the day after. Instead, my father’s family came to our house. They whispered to Mother in low voices behind closed doors. From Mother’s face, I knew that she wasn’t yet ready to tell us what was going on. Her face also told me that whatever it was, it was not good.

  One morning, Mother called me to her side just as I was leaving for school.

  “I’d like you to stay home today,” she said. “I need you to go to a place with me.”

  I returned my army-green school bag to the hook on the back of the bedroom door, wondering what was on Mother’s mind.

  “What is it?” I asked. “Is it about Father?”

  She didn’t reply.

  Her silence stopped me from asking more questions.

  The house was strangely quiet. Ping and Min had gone to school. Wen was sent to a sympathetic neighbor’s apartment in the building next to us. I stood watching Mother packing up a quilt, a toothbrush, toothpaste, a comb, two towels, and some of Father’s undergarments, shirts, and pants, as if he was going to travel somewhere for a long time.

  I waited patiently as Mother darned a few socks and patched some of his undershirts. She even hid a few packs of cigarettes among his things.

  Mom always disapproved of Father’s smoking habits and now …

  She saw my confused eyes.

  “He needs the cigarettes,” she said. “What I want doesn’t matter. They have detained him … your father’s company. I was just told today and they gave us permission to take some bedding and clothes there. You have good eyesight. I want you to go along with me.”

  I did not ask Mother any more questions. I figured that she had told me all that she knew, or wanted to tell me. I followed her out of the house to wherever she was going.

  We walked in silence.

  I wanted to talk but didn’t dare for fear I would say the wrong thing. I knew Mother had a lot on her mind and just hoped that Father would be alright.

  We stopped in front of a small iron door, set deeply into a long stretch of concrete wall. I looked up and discovered a white-on-blue porcelain plate, which read, “Dong Hu Road #20.”

  Mother knocked.

  “Hello?”

  The iron door gave out a low echo but no one answered.

  Then we noticed that the door was ajar. Mother peered in as she carefully pushed it open. A small concrete path led toward an elegant Western-style villa.

  As I took a closer look at the house, I realized that it was not a friendly place, for all its second-floor windows were barred from the outside with coarsely chopped strips of wood. From the freshness of the splinters, I could tell that someone had just finished this lousy job.

  With my heart beating in my throat, I followed Mother into the house. The old wooden parquet floor moaned quietly underneath us as we walked through the halls, looking left and right for some sign of life. It was so deadly quiet I got scared. The silence didn’t last. A wave of sound approached us, an echoing, maddening roar, mixed with slapping or stamping of some sort. Mother gave me a serious look that I had never seen before, grabbed my hand in hers, and walked toward the noise. We stopped at a doorway and looked in.

  In front of us was a room, large, dark, and bare. In the middle, under a flood of yellow light, half a dozen angry men formed a circle, yelling and stamping at the same time. They waved their arms frantically in all directions, creating black shadows which flew all around the room. I had never seen hysteria before. When they finally turned toward us, I saw they all wore red Chairman Mao quotation bags across their shoulders and red bands around their left arms that read, “Shanghai Municipal Workers’ Propaganda Team.” Only then, did I find my father, crouching on the floor in the center. His red “Rebel” armband had been ripped off. His Chairman Mao quotation bag wasn’t on his shoulder anymore. He looked like a wild man with a long raggedy beard, protruding cheekbones, and hair flying in all directions. His shirt sleeves were torn, and his face was gray with fatigue. It looked as if he had not slept or eaten for days, which happened to be the truth as we learned much later, for he had been kept in a tiny, brightly-lit room around the clock for days on end with only a writing desk and a chair set up to extract “confessions” from prisoners. He had worn the same clothes for the past two weeks and washed himself from top to bottom with a thin cotton handkerchief, the only possession he happened to be carrying at the time of his arrest.

  When Father rubbed his bleary eyes and realized that we were there, he tried to produce a smile, and struggled to get to his feet. But the men pushed him back down on the floor. He fell helplessly. I wanted to dash into Father’s arms, comfort him, and pick him up. But as if in a nightmare, I could not reach him, for one of the men there stretched out his arms, and blocked me. His cold eyes and stone face made me shiver, as he towered over me. He acted like a leader.

  “Confess,” he bellowed. “And then you can go home.”

  Father closed his tired eyes and remained motionless.

  With his hands behind his back, the man paced and then circled around Mother, looking her up and down.

  “Look at your pretty wife and young child. If you don’t cooperate, you’ll never see them again. You are an enemy of the people, the enemy of our great Cultural Revolution. Admit it.”

  The words hit me hard as they echoed through the empty hall, lingering in every corner of the room before they subsided. I could not quite understand what was going on. I did not see the connection between my beloved father and an “enemy of the people.” But I knew what they would do to enemies of the people: tall paper hats, public condemnations, house searches, having your name written upside down and crossed out in black to humiliate you in front of your own house! And I would be called the offspring of an anti-revolutionary bastard.

  Why, Father?

  How could this happen?

  What will happen now?

  I kept seeing an image of the boy in my class who was not allowed to wear a red tie and be a Little Red Guard and how everybody teased him, abused him, and laughed at him. My mind raced aimlessly as another round of maddening shouting began, accompanied by forceful arm-swinging, and thunder-like stampings. One of the tormentors pushed Father to the ground again and punched him in the face.

  Father just lowered his head and waited for their anger to be exhausted. He crouched like an injured bird, helpless, wronged, and hurt. I felt the whole world was against him. These evil men’s black magic could suck Father’s strength out of him and make him crumple. I had never seen my father so weak. I was frightened, and started to cry. At that moment, I felt my body turning to liquid that poured out of my eyes, my nose, and my mouth. I felt everything was losing shape and color in front of me. And then I heard Father’s voice for the first time.

  “Don’t you worry, my daughter,” he said. “I never did anything bad against our people or our country. I have always obeyed Chairman Mao. You have to trust me.”

  Father’s voice was as calm, and so strong that his words overpowered the noise in the room.

  I trusted my father. I had always trusted him. Even at the age of eight, I could tell a good man from an evil one. Father possessed every virtue of a good man. He was a loving person. He loved Chairman Mao. He respected and helped everyone who needed help. On the contrary, these strangers here were of a nasty breed. They communicated hatred and contempt, not just toward Father and Mother, but also me, a child. What did I do wrong? I had to conclude that these men were the bad ones. Yet Chairman Mao let them represent him. They worked for Chairman Mao!

  Does Chairman Mao know that they force people to make confessions by yelling and hitting? I wondered.

  I felt very sorry for Father. These people would not listen to the truth. They only wanted Father to say what they wanted to hear. I wished I could help Father, but all I could do was sob uncontrollably. Mother finally broke her silence.

  “Why are you detaining him without the knowledge of his family?” She sounded like a teacher criticizing her students. “Why are you forcing him to make confessions that are lies? That is not Chairman Mao’s teaching. That is not part of this Cultural Revolution.”

  Mother started to recite some of Chairman Mao’s quotations on revolution and solidarity.

  These men seemed to be scared by Mother’s intellectual reasoning. They started to swarm toward us. They wanted to push us out of the room before Mother could finish her words. Mother and I put up a fight. But we lost the shoving match. Father’s helpless eyes met mine for a brief second before they slammed and barred the door in our faces.

  I held onto Mother’s right arm and plodded home with my head hung so low that I saw only the concrete pavement moving by the entire way. I felt it was the end of the world.

  That night, we rushed through a dinner of stale, watery rice and gathered around our mother trying with our childish sense of justice to think of ways to get Father out of detention. It got late, and the house became pitch black, but no one bothered to turn on the light. The darkness carried our little voices around the room with a strange clearness and Mother sat and listened. When we failed to find a way to save our father, my sisters went back to our visit that morning, asking over and over about everything we went through.

  “Did Dad get anything to eat there?” two-year-old Wen asked.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “But his cheeks were very bony.”

  “I’ll save him my b’nana.” I could hear her little nose sniffing the very ripe banana that had been given to her by a kind neighbor. She’d been holding it since she came back home hours ago.

  “Just eat it yourself or it’ll rot.”

  “Save it for Daddy. He’s hungry,” she said, inhaling its luscious smell again and again.

  We heard a gentle but clear knock on our front door. Mother told us to stay still while she got up and went outside. She opened the door but saw no one in the thickening darkness. Just as she was closing the door, she heard a voice.

  “Open the door, Madam Sun. It’s me.”

  A figure slipped into our yard.

  Mother came back into the house, closed all the curtains, turned on the light, and told the man to come in. I recognized him as one of Father’s co-workers.

  “I’m risking my own life to come here,” he said. “But I want you to know what has happened to your husband.”

  In a low whisper, we finally got Father’s story.

  The Housing and Land Management Agency my father worked for managed the most exclusive residential real estate properties in the entire city of Shanghai. The ruling politicians and social elites all took advantage of the agency to get the best accommodations in town. Lately, however, in the ever-changing political kaleidoscope, it was very difficult for the company to predict who actually was in power. First, the veteran politicians were tagged as revisionists and purged. Then, a new crowd of fresh political leaders swept in and, of course, wanted to move into the expensive, upscale apartments vacated by their unlucky predecessors.