Ran Chen - A Private Life

Although only twenty-eight or twenty-nine at the time, and nearly ten years my mother's junior, Ti was terribly abrupt and impolite with her.

I remember my mother standing humbly in front of him, holding my hand. Outside the office, under the green shade of a huge black date tree, the three of us made a tense little group. I remember that there was a crude concrete Ping-Pong table behind us, its surface pitted from constant use by the children, who had very few recreational facilities at the time. The pockmarks must have made it impossible for players to react quickly enough to return the ball, like the distraction of having someone continually shouting at you.

The three of us standing there facing one another formed anything but a friendly, easy group. He was a heavy-set man. I could see angry, invisible flames licking up in the space between us. I remember clearly that his elbow was on a level with my eyes. I am absolutely certain of this detail, because I was comparing our heights at the time and my eyes never left his muscular arms. Although I didn't actually fly at him and bite him, because I kept restraining myself, that thick arm must have borne the imprint of my tiny teeth, because I willed it so.

It was at that time that I realized that even when I grew up, I would not be as tall or strong as he was, nor would I ever be able to get the best of him. It was through my mother's behavior that I discovered a cruel, incontrovertible fact – he was a male.

My mother's patient reserve almost had me feeling that I should apologize to him. She told him I was still an innocent child, just a bit oversensitive and stubborn, and inordinately shy.

Mr. Ti said that I was a "problem child," that I spoke when I shouldn't and was silent when I should speak.

I thought he was a shameless liar. I wasn't like that at all.

Our school's Office of Instruction had been conducting weekly classroom assessments of the teachers. The first time they checked our class, I was the only student who had nothing to say. The others all said what Mr. Ti had instructed them to say the day before. It was nothing more than an orchestrated eulogy to Mr. Ti. The only one who didn't speak up, I stared down at my desk or looked at the wall. When the class monitor spoke of how Mr. Ti exhausted himself marking our assignments, she actually burst into tears.

My heart was pounding, and I was so upset and ashamed that I couldn't utter a single word.

As soon as the man from the Office of Instruction had left, Teacher Ti jerked me out of my seat and dressed me down, making me feel even worse.

At the next inspection, I mustered up enough courage to be the first to speak.

I said, "At the last inspection I didn't say anything, and Teacher Ti criticized me severely afterward. I know I was in the wrong, so this time I want to make up for my bad behavior. Teacher Ti is a dedicated man. For example, to help with today's inspection he stayed very late last night coaching us in what we should say."

After blurting out this long speech, I jubilantly sat down.

But as soon as the inspector had left, Teacher Ti bellowed, "Ni Niuniu, stand up!"

Again, he jerked me out of my seat and scolded me, this time even more severely than the last time. I really had no idea what I had done wrong. I swear that I meant only to praise him, even though I really didn't want to.

It wasn't only that I didn't understand what I had done wrong; the way his face changed so abruptly had upset me so badly that all I could do was look at my feet and mumble.

He demanded that I explain myself, but I couldn't bring myself to speak to him. As shy and timid as I was, there was no way that I could reveal to him even a single word of my inner turmoil. There was nothing I could do but stand there rigidly like a mute.

After that, nobody in the class would speak to me, and naturally I felt there was no one I could trust. I can't say exactly why, but I felt that even the daily weather was false, and when I was away from home I was a stray black cloud lost in the clear void. As I walked along, I said to myself that without hypocrisy the world would stop turning.

Every day my only wish was to get back home as soon as possible.

I couldn't depend on my father. That was one thing I was very clear on. He was an arrogant and pushy civil servant who never got very far. For many years (probably from about the time I was born), he had been pushed around and passed over. This intensified his arrogance, rancor, and neurosis. He thought it was beneath him to sit down and talk with a primary school teacher, even though it might have an effect on my future. And Teacher Ti himself was such an arrogant male that I was sure that if you gave them a few minutes together, they would hate each other. Because they were males.

So it was always Mother who went to see Teacher Ti, simply because Father had no interest in my affairs. In fact, I could feel that he had no interest in my mother either, that to him our problems were one and the same. He thought about nothing but himself.

I decided that when I grew up, I would not marry a man like my father, who neglected Mother and me. At that moment, it occurred to me that I should marry the Dean of Instruction. He could rake Teacher Ti over the coals, even box his ears. He wouldn't have to let his shame stew inside, as Mother and I had to do.

But then I thought about the kitchen renovations we were having done at that time. Not only was father no good at that kind of work, he also irritated the workers Mother had hired to help with the job, making it very difficult for her, constantly having to apologize for him. Seeing my mother's difficulties, I vowed that I would marry a man who knew how to build kitchens.

By this time my mind was in a mess. Whom should I choose? The Dean of Instruction or a man who could build kitchens?

The black raindrops still fell with a persistent madness out of a clear evening sky, surrounding me with a harsh and jarring clatter.

Through the rain, I suddenly caught sight of the silent silhouette of my mother leaning forward, stepping lightly on tiptoe, at the entrance to our street – a woman unswayed in her conviction, seeking light under the combined oppressiveness of the real rain and of the black rain that falls in human life. To her, the drenched figure of her daughter in the distance was a small slip of flame threatened by the flood around her – a flame that inspired her to rise to her toes in a dance of body and spirit upon the stage of human life.

When I heard my father shouting, the rain suddenly stopped.

Like a baby's crying, which has no prelude or progression from sobs to outpouring of tears, this rain began unannounced, and it ceased just as abruptly. There was no gradual diminution in its intensity, nor did the dark clouds slowly dissipate. To me it seemed as if the raindrops suddenly decided, in mid-flight, to stop their descent, probably because of my father's ability to fill them with terror.

Frightened, I stopped and pulled on my mother's sleeve. "Mama?"

Looking up at the heavy, now rainless sky and forcibly staying her own tears, she put her arm around my shoulders, and we resumed our steps homeward.

That she didn't want to say anything to me made me realize that she and Father had been quarreling again.

"Mama," I said, trying to clear my throat and suppress the fear and confusion in my heart, so that my words might spool out as smooth and unbroken as a cotton thread. I didn't want to stammer or make any awkward pauses. At last, in one breath, I quoted a passage from Mao Zedong's Little Red Book, which we read daily in primary school at that time. "Mama, Chairman Mao says that we should work to nurture unity, not division…"