Red Azalea Read Free Page B

down on a chair. She sat there, motionless, as if passed out. I would have Blooming get a wet towel and a jar of water, Coral a bamboo fan, Space Conqueror a cup of water, and I myself would take off Mother’s shoes. We then waited quietly until she woke up, and we would begin our service. Mother would smile happily and be served. I would do the wiping of her back, with Blooming fanning. Coral would resoak the towel and pass the towel back to me when Space Conqueror changed the water. By then we would hear our father’s steps on the staircase. We would expect him to open the door and make a mock-face.
    We often ran out of food by the end of the month. We would turn into starving animals. In hunger, Coral once dug out a drug bottle from the closet and chewed down pink-colored pills for constipation. She thought it was candy. Her intestine was damaged. Space Conqueror gorged fruit skins and cores he picked from the trash box in the street. Blooming and I drank water while longing for the day to end.
    Mother received her salary on the fifth day of each month. We would wait for her on that day at the bus station. When the bus door opened, Mother popped down with her face glittering. We would jump on her like monkeys. She would take us to a nearby bakery to have a full meal. We would keep taking in food until our stomachs became as hard as melons. Mother was the happiest woman on earth at those moments. It was the only day she did not look ill.
    My father did not know how to make shoes, but hemade shoes for all of us. The shoes he made looked like little boats, with two sides up—because the soles he bought were too small to match the top. He drilled and sewed them together anyway. He used a screwdriver. Every Sunday he repaired our shoes, his fingers wrapped in bandages. He did that until Blooming and I learned how to make shoes with rags.
    One day mother came home with a lot of drug bottles. She came from the hospital. She had tuberculosis and was told to wear a surgical mask at home. Mother said that in a way she was pleased to have the disease because she finally got to spend time with her family.
    I became a Mao activist in the district and won contests because I was able to recite the Little Red Book.
    I became an opera fan. There were not many forms of entertainment. The word “entertainment” was considered a dirty bourgeois word. The opera was something else. It was a proletarian statement. The revolutionary operas created by Madam Mao, Comrade Jiang Ching. To love or not love the operas was a serious political attitude. It meant to be or not to be a revolutionary. The operas were taught on radio and in school, and were promoted by the neighborhood organizations. For ten years. The same operas. I listened to the operas when I ate, walked and slept. I grew up with the operas. They became my cells. I decorated the porch with posters of my favorite opera heroines. I sang the operas wherever I went. My mother heard me singing in my dreams; she said that I was preserved by the operas. It was true. I could not go on a day without listeningto the operas. I pasted my ear close to the radio, figuring out the singer’s breaths. I imitated her. The aria was called “I won’t quit the battle until all the beasts are killed.” It was sung by Iron Plum, a teenage character in an opera called
The Red Lantern.
I would not stop singing the aria until my vocal chords hurt. I went on pushing my voice to its highest pitch:
    My Dad is a pine tree, his will is strong.

A hero of indomitable spirit, he is a true Communist.

I follow you,

Walk up with you and never hesitate.

I raise the red lantern high,

The light guides me on.

I follow you to beat the beasts,

My generation and the next …
    I was able to recite all the librettos of the operas:
The Red Lantern, Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, Sha-Jia Pond, The Harbor, Raid on White Tiger Regiment, Red Detachment of Women, Song of Dragon River.
My father could not bear my loud