1.4 Dream
Looking back, there was one vivid moment, where it had all begun for her. She had been taken to the rail terminal once when she was six years old; the market was close to it, and she had accompanied her mother there. She used to go with her mother to the market a couple of times a week, and the screen had always been there, but she did not remember if that was the first time she had ever seen the giant broadcast screen, or if it was the first time she had actually noticed it. She saw a woman talking on the screen, dressed in a way that she had never seen a woman dressed before. She spoke with authority, something she did not associate with women. No woman spoke like that in her little village in the eastern Sichuan region. Something about that image inspired her and stirred something within her. That woman turned out to be a poster child for progress, in her mind anyway.
In her mind, the role of a woman in this world was restricted to the confines of the house. Her father and five older brothers would go work in the fields and she would help her mother tidy up their little cottage, clean up, cook the meals and wash the clothes. She thought she knew exactly how her life would be. That she too would one day, grow up and get married to a farmer like her father, and tend to his house and raise a family. That had been the extent of her ambition thus far, mostly because she didn’t know any better. Seeing that woman had shattered her image of the world. Her mind had opened up and she felt strangely energized by it.
She asked her mother a lot of questions on their way back home. “Are there many women like that?” “’Is that the largest broadcast screen in the world?” ”How far is Chengdu?” “Have you ever been there?” Her mother, more concerned with the evening’s meal, replied absently in monosyllables and incongruent grunts. None of this quelled the young Cynthia’s enthusiasm, however. She continued asking questions persistently, imagining an alternate reality even as she did not find detailed answers forthcoming. She imagined Chengdu to be the center of the Earth. She had heard stories sometimes about her mother’s cousin who lived there. Until that point in her life, she had been aware of the existence of the big city in pretty much the same way one is aware of the existence of the sun or the moon. That image on the giant terminal changed that in a way that the young girl could not explain or understand.
When they reached home, her mother got to work immediately, boiling water in preparation for dinner. Cynthia, out of habit, washed her hands and feet and began helping out so that dinner would be ready before her father and brothers returned from the fields. As she looked around their little cottage, it started to feel small for the first time. Their house was no more than a little hut that overlooked a large field where his father and brothers spent the day. Her house and many other houses in this region had been untouched by the forces of the world outside. She was disturbed by that thought. Why had that image affected her so much?
Her five older brothers came in one by one, and they all said hello to her, teased her, hugged her. She was their baby sister and they all loved her. She loved them back, but was too scared to ask them any of these questions. Her father finally entered the cottage wearing clothes that were far too weather beaten, much like his face. His extremely thin, wispy beard made him look a lot older than his years. Her brothers considered traditional rice farmer hats unfashionable, but her father never left home without it. He meticulously took his mud soaked boots off and cleaned them outside the house so as to not dirty the floor. He came home and muttered a tired greeting to his wife.
They sat to eat dinner at a table that was way too small for eight. Cynthia was at her customary position between the two youngest boys, in her favorite yellow chair.
Dinner tonight was going to feature rice noodles in a soupy duck broth. They’d been having some variation of this meal for the past week. Meat had been hard to come by and her mother had been rationing the broth she had prepared from a wild duck a few weeks prior. Everyone looked at their bowls and wished there was more food than there actually was, but no one said it. They knew their bowls would be full if it were at all possible, and they had been conditioned by poverty into silent acceptance. Everyone sat and chomped, chewed or slurped without saying a word. Young Cynthia broke the silence between slurps.
“I went to the rail station today.” Everyone else at the table continued eating in silence. One of her brothers, the oldest, looked at Cynthia and gave her a kind smile.
“I saw a woman dressed like a man”, she announced. “You all should have seen it.” This time there was some laughter from the boys.
“Finish your dinner, Cynthia”. Her mother spoke in a full sentence for the first time since they had returned from the rail station. The little girl continued to eat without uttering another word.
Midway through her meal, she realized she wasn’t even that hungry. She offered the rest of her bowl of broth with some half eaten noodles to one of her brothers and the hungry boy gladly obliged. She was physically at the table, but felt miles away. She wasn’t even sure exactly how many miles; it would have been a number higher than she had learned to count.
As she sat there ruminating that image in her head, she realized that for the first time in her life, she realized that she could not, would not live her entire life in that house. That was the day young Cynthia Lee learned to dream.
The next few days passed without much incident. Her mother was a quiet person by nature, and neither Cynthia nor the men in the house noticed that the older woman was quieter than usual. What they were not able to see was that there she was wrestling with a thought in her mind, sometimes enthused and at other times scared by the seemingly absurd notion that had sprung up following her daughter’s questions. She knew exactly why those questions had bothered her. It had taken her many, many years back, to her own childhood. They had opened a box that had been locked up for a long time.
Then one day, when the men were off to the field to work, she asked her daughter to sit down. She had something she wanted to talk to her about. Cynthia saw the serious expression on her mother’s face and sat on her yellow chair, across her mother.
“Listen to me, bao”, her mother started off. “I want to tell you a story”. The little girl was intrigued because her mother was usually not one for stories. She sat up in her seat and listened intently.
“There was a little girl who loved to learn. She loved to read and write and play with numbers and draw and paint. She loved her school and her friends. Her father and mother loved her dearly and wanted her to study for as long as she wanted. Like your father, her father was also a rice farmer. He was similar in so many ways, but also different in many others. He wanted to send her daughter off to Chengdu to study.” Cynthia quickly realized that her mother was talking about herself. She knew that her father had been a rice farmer, but was hearing the rest for the first time.
“And then the drought came. It dried up the lands. Everyone thought it would go away soon, but this was a drought unlike something that had ever been seen before. It lasted for months on end and the earth was parched. What was once a lush landscape became arid and inhospitable. Everyone in the little village had no option but to pack up and leave.”
Cynthia had never heard about her mother’s life before. She had never imagined her mother being anything other than her mother, as no child does. As she heard this story, however, she tried to conjure up an image of her mother as a little girl. What was she like then? She got off her seat and went close to her mother. She hugged her mother and sat in her lap. Her mother held on tightly and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek before continuing the story.
“And so the little girl and her parents left the home they’d lived in for years. They packed up all their belongings and made a long journey on foot.” Cynthia could almost picture her grandparents making the trek across the crackling, dry terrain, with her mother in tow.
“They walked for miles a day and went from village to village in search of a spot that had not been ravaged by the drought. When they reached such a spot, they quickly realized they’d have to start all over again. Cynthia, do you know the place where they rebuilt their lives?”
Cynthia shook her head.
“Well”, her mother smiled for the first time since the story had begun, “We live there now.” Young Cynthia smiled and instinctively looked outside the window to look at the place about which she had learned a new secret. It would never look the same to her again. She would learn later that the drought her mother had referenced was referred to as the Great Drought. There were conspiracy theories that the drought had started due to a failed experiment in cloud seeding, but they were never proven. Her mother’s story had been mirrored across multiple households all across the region.
“There’s a reason I told you this story today, Cynthia bao. When you asked me all those questions that day, it took me back all those years, before the drought. I don’t usually think about that time because I can’t bear the memories.”
Cynthia continued to stare blankly at her mother. She wasn’t sure where this was going.
“My father wanted me to finish school and then move to Chengdu when I was older so I could do what I wanted. He certainly hadn’t imagined this life for me.” She looked around as she said that. “Your brothers have always wanted to be farmers, just like your father. They love what they do, and wouldn’t want to do anything else. But you have always been different”, she said, looking at her daughter. “You’ve always asked questions that make me think. Cynthia, you remind me of what I was like as a little girl.” Her mother smiled at Cynthia. “Somewhere along the way, I had lost myself, and just accepted that this is how things are and will be. But I’ve been thinking now for a few days when you asked me all those questions. I have decided something. I’m not going to let you inherit my misfortune. I’m going to let you have the life you want, the life you deserve, not the life that someone else chooses for you.”
The little girl was stunned. She had not expected this.
“I want you to have the life I wanted, Cynthia bao. If you want to go study in the big city, I’ll make sure you can.”
For all of her excitement from that day, the thought of leaving home to go to a strange and foreign place was altogether too scary for the young Cynthia. “No, I’m not going to leave you and go anywhere”, she hugged her mother tight as she said those words.
“You are not leaving tomorrow, my silly girl. Your mother isn’t as ignorant as you think. But remember that you can be anything that you want to be.” Cynthia stopped sobbing for a second, but continued to dig her face into her mother’s arm.
“But this has to be our little secret, you understand? Especially about going away.” Her mother looked directly into young Cynthia’s eyes. “You can’t tell any of the boys about this. Or your father. He won’t understand why we’re doing this.”
Cynthia peered back into her mother’s eyes and nodded.
“Ok, then what are you waiting for?”, Cynthia’s mother asked. “Grab some paper and that pencil from over there”, she pointed to a table at the corner of the cottage. “Let’s get started.”