Red Scarf Girl Read online

  “It isn’t true, is it?” I sobbed. “Grandpa wasn’t a landlord, was he? Dad isn’t a rightist, is he?”

  “Of course your father is not a rightist. Don’t listen to your classmates,” Grandma said immediately, but she sounded nervous.

  “And Grandpa wasn’t a landlord either, right?” I looked straight into Grandma’s eyes.

  Grandma heaved a sigh and hugged me to her chest.

  “Whatever he was, it doesn’t have anything to do with you. He’s been dead for over thirty years.”

  It was true, then. Grandpa was a landlord.

  I did not want to listen anymore. I turned away.

  When I opened my eyes the next morning, Dad was standing by the bed.

  “Get up, Ji-li. I’m taking the three of you for a walk.” He patted my cheek.

  “I don’t feel like going.” I rolled over and faced the wall, my eyes swollen and my head heavy and aching.

  “You must come. I have something to tell you,” he said gently but firmly.

  Ji-yong and Ji-yun each took one of Dad’s hands, while I listlessly followed. Mom and Dad had spent a long time talking in the bathroom last night, the only place in our home where they could have a private conversation, and I was sure this walk had something to do with what happened to me yesterday.

  It was Sunday. The workday streams of people and bicycles were gone, and the street was quiet and peaceful.

  We stopped at the China-Soviet Friendship Mansion. The square in front of the mansion was empty except for the white doves, cooing and chasing each other around the fountain.

  We sat on the broad steps in front of the entrance. I leaned against a pillar.

  Dad came right to the point. “Grandma told me that Ji-li wasn’t elected a Red Successor because her classmates asked about our family class status.” He turned and looked straight at me.

  I bowed my head and fiddled with my red scarf.

  “Things like that will probably happen again because of this Cultural Revolution, so I want to tell you something about our family.” Dad’s voice, like his face, was calm.

  He had been born into a large, wealthy family, he told us, with five generations, more than a hundred people, living together in one big compound. The family had once owned vast amounts of land, many businesses, and other kinds of property. By the time Dad was born, most of the money was lost to extravagance and bad luck, and soon the big family was broken up. When Dad was only seven, his father died, and Dad and Grandma lived by themselves. There was not much money left. Dad went to St. John’s University in Shanghai on a scholarship, and he tutored some private students to make money, but even so Grandma had to sell some of her jewelry to pay for their daily expenses. When Dad graduated from St. John’s in 1949, the Communist Party had just liberated China from Chiang Kai-shek’s rule, and Dad was appointed a vice-principal of a primary school.

  “This is the true family background,” Dad said. “I am not a rightist, and anyone who says I am can go to my work unit and confirm it. As for your Grandpa, he was a businessman and a landlord.”

  “Dad,” Ji-yong asked suddenly, “did Grandpa whip the farmers if they couldn’t pay their rent?”

  “Or make their daughters be his maids?” Ji-yun added.

  Dad looked into their horrified eyes and slowly shook his head. “Grandpa lived in Shanghai all his life and was never in charge of finances. He was already sick when he married Grandma, and he was bedridden until he died eight years later. Of course, I’m not saying that he wasn’t guilty. All landlords exploit, and that is certainly a crime….”

  “Why did Grandpa want to exploit people?” I interrupted. I just had to know.

  Dad looked at me and did not answer. After a moment’s silence he took all of us in his arms and said, “Now listen. What I want you to know is, whether or not your Grandpa was a landlord or an exploiter, it isn’t your responsibility. Even I don’t have a clear memory of him, so it doesn’t have to matter to you at all. You can still hold your heads up. Understand?”

  “But it’s still true that because of him I can’t be a Red Successor.”

  “Yes. Your classmates may talk, and our neighbors may talk. We can’t help that. You may not be able to join the Red Successors. We can’t do anything about that, either. But you don’t have to be ashamed, because it isn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. Do you see that?”

  Looking at Dad’s tender eyes, I felt a little better.

  In a few weeks I would graduate. I would enter an elite school and study even harder. Maybe I had a bad class status, but I would have good grades. No one could take those away from me.

  “It’s not my fault,” I repeated to myself. “It’s not my fault.”

  The ten Red Successors were elected, Du Hai and Yin Lan-lan among them. Immediately after the election the two of them strutted around with their red armbands prominently displayed, giving orders to the rest of the class. Du Hai squinted more than ever to show that he should be taken seriously. Yin Lan-lan rushed everywhere, with her head up and her chest thrust out proudly. Yang Fan was elected too, and now she echoed everything Du Hai and Yin Lan-lan said. Yu Jian was also part of the group, though his class background was not red. But he seemed uncomfortable following Du Hai and Yin Lan-lan.

  I became more quiet and pretended to have no interest at all in their activities.

  One afternoon after a class I was hurrying to erase the blackboard. “Come on, Pauper!” I called to my partner, Deng Yi-yi. It was our turn to be classroom assistants. “We’ll be late getting the tools for Handicrafts.”

  “Hey! Don’t call people by nicknames!” someone barked. I turned around. Yang Fan was standing in the doorway right behind me.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot. I promise I’ll never call you that again,” I told Deng Yi-yi with an apologetic smile.

  Yang Fan gave a haughty sneer but seemed content with my response.

  “It isn’t simply a matter of calling people by nicknames. It’s a matter of your looking down on working-class people.” Yin Lan-lan and two other Red Successors appeared in the doorway behind Yang Fan, all wearing stern expressions. The classroom was suddenly dead quiet.

  “Deng Yi-yi is from a poor family and she isn’t neatly dressed, so you look down on her and call her Pauper. This is connected with your class standing, Jiang Ji-li. You should reflect on your class origin and thoroughly remold your ideology.”

  “It wasn’t I who gave her that nickname. Everybody calls her that! And I already apologized.” I struggled to control my anger.

  “What other people do is a totally different question,” said Ying Lan-lan. “Other people don’t have a landlord grandfather and a rightist father. They don’t need to remold themselves.”

  “Shut up! Don’t you dare say my father is a rightist! Who says he’s a rightist? Why don’t you go to my father’s work unit and ask them?”

  Yin Lan-lan was shocked. I was so confident, she could tell I was not lying. “Well… what about your grandfather then?”

  “What about him? He died when my father was just seven. I never even saw him. Why do I have to remold myself? What does he have to do with me?”

  “What? Your grandfather was a landlord and you don’t need to remold yourself?” Raising her voice and waving her arm with the new Red Successor armband, she screamed almost hysterically to the whole classroom, “Hey, listen everybody! Jiang Ji-li just said that she had nothing to do with her landlord grandfather and she doesn’t need to remold herself! She’s denying the existence of class struggle!”

  She turned back to me, still shouting. “Chairman Mao said, ‘In a class society everyone is a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a particular class.’ There is no doubt that your grandfather’s reactionary class standing had a bad influence on your father’s thoughts, and he naturally passed them on to you. And your grandmother is a landlord’s wife. She tells everybody how much she loves you,
and she must have a bad influence on you too. And you say you don’t need to remold yourself?”

  A large crowd was watching from the doorway. I opened my mouth, but no words would come out. The bell rang to begin class. Du Hai, who had been watching the whole time, suddenly announced, “Jiang Ji-li, stay after school. We Red Successors want to talk with you.”

  “Uh-oh,” I heard someone say.

  For the next two periods I did not hear anything the teacher said. The terrible words “landlord” and “class standing,” Yin Lan-lan’s cold face, Du Hai’s sly, squinty eyes, spun in my mind. I had always been a school leader, a role model. How could I have suddenly become so bad that I needed to be remolded thoroughly? I had never even met my grandfather. My head ached, and I pressed my fingers hard on my temples.

  I walked into the gym. Yu Jian stood by the parallel bars, discussing something with Yang Fan and Yin Lan-lan, who were sitting on the balance beam. Du Hai was beside them, bending over and writing something. Several other Red Successors leaned over his shoulder. When they saw me, they all stopped. Everybody looked at me seriously but hesitantly, as if they did not know how to start.

  “Jiang Ji-li,” said Du Hai at last, in long, drawn-out tones, “the purpose of our talk today is to point out your problems.” He tilted his head slightly, trying to seem very experienced.

  I suddenly remembered one day when he had had to stand in the front of the classroom. He was being punished for tying a piece of paper to a cat’s tail and setting it on fire.

  “Your problems are very serious, you know. For instance…” He looked at the paper in his hand. “You and your grandmother often take a pedicab, which reveals your extravagant bourgeois lifestyle. And your family has a housekeeper. That’s definitely exploitation. And you never do any housework—”

  “Yes, we sometimes take a pedicab instead of a bus, but only when someone is sick and has to see the doctor.” Timidly, I tried to explain. “And I’ve had several talks with my mother about Song Po-po, but she said that Song Po-po doesn’t have any other job, so she needs to work for us.”

  “Shut up!” Yin Lan-lan cut me off with a ruthless wave of her hand. “Today we are going to talk to you, not the other way round. Nobody asked you to talk. So just listen. Understand?”

  I went numb. I stared at her, unable to hear another word. Was this the person I knew? I had helped Yin Lan-lan with her math three times a week for years, explaining each problem to her over and over until she got it right. And Yang Fan. My friends and I had carried her on our backs to and from school for three months when she had broken her leg two years ago. And all of them. What had I ever done to them? Why were they suddenly treating me like an enemy?

  One after another they continued to criticize me. I stared at their moving lips, understanding nothing.

  Was it my fault that my family was a little better off than theirs? Many a time I had wished that my parents were workers in a textile mill and that we were poor. I had always begged Mom to let me wear patched pants. I had insisted on washing my own clothes even though we had a housekeeper. When my class did collective labor every week, I always volunteered for the heaviest jobs. Hadn’t Du Hai and Yin Lan-lan ever noticed that? Suddenly I wished that I had been born into a different family. I hated Grandpa for being a landlord.

  “Why won’t you answer?” Yin Lan-lan jumped up from the balance beam and roared at me.

  “What?” I looked timidly into the enraged circle of faces in front of me.

  The Red Successors exploded.

  “You weren’t even listening, were you?” shouted Yin Lan-lan. “I tell you, Jiang Ji-li, you’d better stop thinking you’re the da-dui-zhang. It’s the Cultural Revolution now, and there are no da-dui-zhangs anymore. You’re not the chair of anything now.”

  “It’s different now. The teachers won’t be protecting you anymore.”

  “No wonder you didn’t write any da-zi-bao criticizing the teachers. You have serious problems with your class standing.”

  “Your grandfather was a big landlord, and you’d better watch out. We won’t put up with any of your landlord tricks.”

  It was so unfair. I was being punished for something I had not done. “No tears. Not now,” I told myself, but I could not hold them back. I started to cry.

  The Red Successors did not know what to do. They looked at one another and did not say anything. After a minute Du Hai said in a softer voice, “You can go home now. We’ll talk later. You’d better think seriously about your problems.”

  I walked out of the gym, my mind made up. We were going to graduate in a few weeks, and I would never speak another word to any of them.

  Alone in the corner of the school yard I saw a little wildflower. She had six delicate petals, each as big as the nail of my little finger. They were white at the center and shaded blue at the edges.

  She was as lonely as I was.

  I did not know her name. Softly I stroked her petals, thinking that I would take care of her, as I wished someone would take care of me.

  GRADUATION

  Teacher Gu announced the latest revolutionary reform of the educational system. The junior high school entrance examination had been abolished. There would be no final exams for us this year. Everyone would automatically graduate.

  “Hurray!” An Yi turned around in her seat and beamed at me. “The summer is ours!”

  The junior high school entrance examination dreaded by all of us was gone. What a relief! We would not have to spend the whole summer studying for the exam and worrying about what school we would get into. We could play.

  Du Hai sat on his desk roaring with laughter. To him, and to Yin Lan-lan, and to the others who were not even sure of graduating, this was wonderful news.

  But as I watched Du Hai, my elation suddenly evaporated. Yes, I would have a whole summer to play. But without an entrance exam, how would they pick the students for the elite schools? Ever since third grade I had been counting on getting into Shi-yi, one of the best junior high schools in Shanghai. Then I had planned on attending an elite high school, and then one of the famous universities. Without an entrance exam, how could I be sure of getting into Shi-yi? What could I do to make up for my family background?

  While the others were laughing and shouting with delight, I mourned.

  An Yi had an asthma attack and was out of school for a week. I went to school and went home by myself. I spoke to almost no one. I kept away from the Red Successors, from the rest of my classmates, from everyone.

  “Good morning, Teacher Gu.”

  I met her in the hallway, but I tried to avoid any more than a polite greeting.

  “Ji-Ii, wait a minute.” She would not let me go.

  I avoided her eyes as I waited for her to speak.

  Teacher Gu had been our homeroom teacher for two years. In those two years she had been more than a teacher to us; she had been a devoted friend. I knew that she had a daughter just my age, and I often felt she was like a mother to me, too.

  Before the Cultural Revolution she had been a Model Teacher. Now she was the subject of many da-zi-bao calling her an opportunist, a black executioner, a corruptor of the young. Even though I did not believe these accusations, I did not want to be seen with her. I did not want to give the Red Successors another excuse to attack me. Besides, I was ashamed of my own black background. For nearly a month I had tried to avoid her.

  “Ji-li, don’t be so unhappy.”

  “I’m not unhappy,” I tried to say, but when my eyes met hers, my voice broke. I turned away. I did not know how to face her after all my recent humiliations.

  “I have some good news for you.” She gently turned my face toward her.

  My eyes darted down the hall to make sure no Red Successor saw us together.

  “You know the junior high school admissions policy has been changed,” Teacher Gu said. “Instead of an entrance exam, teachers are assigning students to their schools.” She paused. “Ji-1i, all the sixth-grade teachers agre
ed to assign you to Shi-yi Junior High.”

  “Shi-yi…?” My dream! In spite of everything it was coming true!

  “That’s right,” she said. “You looked like you needed some good news to cheer you up.” She patted me on the head and turned toward the office building.

  I could not move as I watched her walk away. Shi-yi! Even though I could not be a Red Successor, I would go to Shi-yi! I saw the badge of Shi-yi Junior High sparkling on my blouse. I had almost given up, but my teachers had not. The lonely flower had not been forgotten after all. I was happier than I had been for weeks.

  Then I felt myself blush. I had tried to avoid Teacher Gu. I had not wanted anyone to sec mc talking to her. I had not supported her as she had supported me.

  “Teacher Gu!” I called after her. “Thank you!” She turned and smiled at me, and 1 thought of something else. “Teacher Gu, what school was An Yi assigned to?” Seeing her hesitate I added, “She’s been sick. She needs some good news too.”

  “The same as you. Don’t tell anyone, okay?”

  I ran all the way to An Yi’s house. People turned to look at me as I raced by, but I could not stop grinning. I would always work hard, I told myself. I would never let my teachers down.

  We graduated.

  We had no graduation ceremony, and no party. With so much happening, it seemed that no one had time for such things. An Yi and I were disappointed, but thinking about Shi-yi made us happy again. We decided that we could not wait until fall to get our new school supplies, and so one day we went shopping for them.

  We threaded our way through the crowd at the Number One Department Store, searching the store for just the right green schoolbag, large enough to carry ten big books. At the stationery counter we carefully chose new pencil boxes. An Yi’s had two long-legged cranes on the cover. Mine had a range of snowy mountains. Our new lunch boxes were the kind we had always dreamed of: bright aluminum with two removable trays, one for rice and one for a meat or vegetable dish. They were real grown-up lunch boxes, proof that we had risen to the status we had looked forward to for so long.