It was two o'clock in the morning. My mind had been racing. Finally I got up and sneaked out of the house. I wandered around the streets and then found myself at Wild Ginger's door. Her light was on. I stood, trying to figure out whether or not to knock. Suddenly the door opened. Wild Ginger in her uniform stood in front of me.
"I don't intend to spit on you but I might not be able to help myself," she said. "Go away, Maple."
"Wild Ginger," I uttered weakly. "I need a chance."
"Go away before I pick up a gun and shoot you in the head."
"Please, Wild Ginger, I'll do what you ask, anything."
She laughed. "Anything? Who are you fooling? Don't say it if you don't mean it!"
"I mean it."
"What about giving up Evergreen? Now tell me that you mean it!"
I lowered my head.
"How blind I was to trust you… How I hate myself!"
"Please, Wild Ginger, I am…" It was as if my mouth were not mine. I tried to drag more words out of it but my thoughts scattered. I watched Wild Ginger talk but I couldn't hear her. I saw her mouthing "I hate myself." Suddenly my mind was stirred by the image of years ago in which she stabbed her hand with a sharpened pencil.
I began to feel that I could never truly love Evergreen, that the relationship between Evergreen and me would never work because it would always be haunted. It was doomed right from the beginning-I loved Wild Ginger so much that her suffering over Evergreen was my curse.
She pushed me out and slammed the door.
I stood there, unable to think.
I can't remember how long I stood. Dawn broke. The locusts had begun their chorus. The noise was piercing and getting louder by the moment. The sound filled my head.
For the next three months Wild Ginger and I didn't talk. The pain not only didn't go away but deepened. We were almost eighteen. Bored with Mao study I retreated into my own world where missing-cover Western novels and hand-copied ancient manuscripts became my obsession. Evergreen resigned his post as the district Red Guard head. He was in a military training program preparing to go to Vietnam. We couldn't make ourselves stay away from each other.
Wild Ginger turned into an unrecognizable character. She set laws for all the youth-anyone who was caught engaging in a sexual act would be considered a criminal. She personally took charge of several raids where the Red Guards broke into people's houses.
I sensed that Wild Ginger was looking to catch us.
It was as if I weren't walking on my own legs that morning. I ate no breakfast. After I came back from the market I headed for school. As I approached the classroom, I saw Hot Pepper chatting intimately with Wild Ginger. Hot Pepper was dressed in a blouse printed in a pattern of pine trees and falling snow. Wild Ginger was in a navy blue Mao jacket with a bright red collar. She was examining an application of some sort, which I was sure Hot Pepper had completed. As I got closer and saw the red letterhead I was able to tell that it was Hot Pepper's application for Communist party membership.
Seeing me, Wild Ginger put her arm around Hot Pepper's shoulders and the two turned and walked away. Within two weeks Hot Pepper was pronounced a party member. She followed Wild Ginger like a dog. She carried a heavy paste bucket all day long to help Wild Ginger put up news columns. I saw her pour Wild Ginger water during her speeches. The two flattered each other at the Mao activists' conventions. Hot Pepper must have felt an inch taller when she ran into me in the neighborhood. She gave me a warning for being late for last Thursday's Mao quotation reciting.
As a radical Maoist, Wild Ginger not only pushed herself, but also pushed the entire district to be the model of Mao studies. In the name of Mao she enslaved us. We worked on reciting the quotations like monks chanting Buddhist scriptures. There was no longer time even for me to go to the market. Every morning Wild Ginger's shrill whistle would come from the loudspeakers mounted on the electric poles throughout the neighborhood. I often rushed to the school without washing my face or brushing my teeth. Within minutes the entire school would gather in an open square.
Wild Ginger would stand on a four-foot-high concrete stage. The microphone in her hand looked like a grenade. Her skin was sunburned. Her eyes blinked nervously and her hands made fists. She often started out with a controlled voice but then, in an instant, she would shout. The sound would blast and the microphone would buzz. After a brief Mao quotation reciting, she would order us to march and run. She would keep us going so long we sometimes wondered if she had forgotten about us. Anyone who dropped out would be publicly humiliated and punished.
When we ran into each other she treated me like a wall. One time she laughed hysterically when our shoulders brushed. I saw her showing more affection toward Hot Pepper. If Hot Pepper had a tail she would have wagged it harder. I knew she had been coveting a chair at the Red Guard's headquarters.
19
When my mother asked me about Wild Ginger I lied. I figured that she had some idea about our breaking up. She seemed just as awkward around the subject as I was.
At the end of summer, Evergreen returned from military training. At the train station where I went to pick him up we discussed our future. "I have changed my mind about wanting to go to Vietnam," he began. "I'd like to open a husband-and-wife elementary school for poor children in a remote village in the countryside." After a pause he asked, "Would you like to be the wife?"
Without thinking, I answered yes. I wanted to escape as much as he did since I had failed to make peace with Wild Ginger. "You would have to wait until I graduate from the middle school," I added. He was thrilled. The idea of being with Evergreen, away from Wild Ginger, and teaching children was both appealing and exciting. The options for graduates were not encouraging in 1973. Shanghai's population had exploded and the city was terribly overcrowded. There was little demand for workers. One's best option, if one qualified, was to become a city sanitation worker. The rest would be sent to labor collectives in the remote countryside. A person's fate depended on family background, the level of his or her loyalty toward Mao, and the government's quota the family owed.
When I broke the news to my parents, they were quiet. They weren't sure if it was a good idea for me to become engaged at eighteen. I explained that our love was strong. Finally my parents granted me silent permission. When Evergreen started to receive "congratulation" candies from the neighbors he cautioned me to "be careful of Wild Ginger." I couldn't think of Wild Ginger as dangerous, so didn't take his words too seriously.
"She might not mean to harm you," Evergreen warned, "but she is insane."
"Well, she needs time to heal, and after all we are the cause of her pain."
"I don't think that we should blame ourselves for her misery," Evergreen disagreed. "She had made it clear at the very beginning, to both of us, that being a Maoist was more important to her than being human. I was not what she wanted. To make a bad joke-you picked up her leftovers."
I didn't want to argue with Evergreen. I believed that Wild Ginger loved Evergreen. It was a part of herself that she couldn't understand, didn't know what to do with. I had taken advantage of her confusion. I was the thief. I was prepared to face Wild Ginger's rage one day. I needed that combat; I needed her to slap me in the face. It would be a kindness, forgiveness, and blessing.
20
"We're organizing a Mao quotation-singing rally!" Wild Ginger's voice came through a loudspeaker. "The Cultural Revolution is in its seventh year, and the struggle between the proletarian class and the bourgeois class has intensified ever more significantly. Defending Maoism and demonstrating the proletarian class's strength is not only important but absolutely necessary. We must sing loud, louder, and louder the Mao quotation songs. We must promote hard, harder, and hardest the ideas of Maoism! The rally will be held in the Shanghai Acrobatics Stadium!"