2025 MFP: The Lying Life of Children

In those days, everyone called her Dark Face behind her back, for her molasses-toned skin, and the fact that her father was a mingong from the North. Gossip trickled down from the chicken-necked grandparents to the kindergartners.

         “How did she get into our nursery?”
         “Her Ma is Shanghainese.”
         “What kind of Shanghainese marries a rural hukou?”
         “She’s a cripple.”
         “Ahhh.”

         I paid little attention to Mei then, my six-year-old frontal cortex already overloaded from a clandestine battle with my archenemy – the ever-popular Fangfang, always in silky floral dresses and golden butterfly bling-bling, who, through the pulsing air, smeared shame all over my dull brown overalls. I carried a wobbly love triangle in my head: the glamorous witch-princess, the ugly duckling me, and the Boy. The Boy in question possessed a pair of tiger-slaying eyebrows and a philosopher’s brooding stare, reminding me of the Gourd Brother, my favorite cartoon character on CCTV. He buried his long-lashed eyes and button nose among the monster trucks, oblivious of his heart-throb status. 
         Where do children glean the concept of love? In 1988, my world was sanitized and sealed. I had never witnessed a romantic kiss, not on TV or in real life. But children don’t need empirical evidence of love – I’d mouthed that line decades later in my Toronto suburb, passing through the crowd of sweaty protesters hopelessly resisting the new Sex Ed. When it comes to the matter of birds and bees, children are entrepreneurial, autodidactic, knowledge generators, their neural pathways pre-marinated in the ancient soup responsible for our species’ perpetuation. My young heart ached and itched whenever Fangfang rested her luscious gaze on the Boy. At pickup time on those days, I’d play innocent and tug at Nainai’s sleeve, pointing at Fangfang and her perm-haired mother, unleashing Nainai’s reliable fury: “Bad mother! Dressing a little girl like a feudal missy. ‘Reform, reform,’ they say. Look at the filth that’s roaring back!” Her rant soothed me to no end as we strolled along Huahai Road toward our Soviet-style matchbox apartment. Later, I’d wait for Nainai to disappear into the communal kitchen before locking myself in my parents’ bedroom. I’d try on Ma’s pink peony lipstick and her single pair of heeled slip-ons, swiveling and curtsying before the mirror. On one such afternoon, after Fangfang had flaunted her new earrings all day, I unsheathed a glinting needle from Ma’s sewing kit and stabbed it into my earlobe. Pain flooded me. Drops of blood trickled from my broken skin, but the needle did little damage to my stubbornly doughy earlobe. I’m not brave like that witch. I let out a grunt of despair. Not even for love.
         That night, over Nainai’s signature red-braised pork belly, Ba brought up his upcoming work trip. He morphed into a crimson-cloaked Superman, which happened whenever he spoke about his mysterious job. A self-taught cinematographer, Ba started his new career only two years earlier, but already had a TV series and a movie under his belt. I liked to spy on him as he planted himself behind his desk, buttressed by tall stacks of screenplays. I wanted a key to his magic kingdom. 

         “Three months?! Again? Are we chopped liver to you?” Nainai never hid her dismay about Ba’s frequent travels.
         “I’ll call often.”
         “What’s wrong with your old job? That was a good factory, a great assignment, Iron Rice Bowl…”
         Superman clenched his jaw. “I can’t go back there. The Reform has gone on for ten years. I know you don’t like Little Deng as much as Chairman Mao.”
         “Nonsense! Of course I love Chairman Deng.”
         “He asked us to ‘smash the Iron Rice Bowl and plunge into the ocean.’ Didn’t you get the memo?”
         “Not everyone, maybe the young…”
         “You want me to suffocate at that factory forever? That’s what you aspire for your only son?”
         Ma, quiet on the sidelines until now, tugged at Ba: Enough. But Superman trained his eyes on his meddling mother. “Five hundred yuan a month on set. Aren’t we the first in the building to buy a big fat fridge?”
         Nainai sank back into her chair. Her beloved big fat fridge. Saved her daily trips to the butcher, and the humiliating ritual of plastering cabbage leaves all over the cold metal railings in the communal kitchen.
         “After two more projects, a washing machine. In a year or two, a piano for our little Ling. What do you think of that, huh?” Superman had dwindled into a cajoling nursery teacher. 
         “Take it easy, that’s all I’m saying,” Nainai murmured. “Your kid’s growing fast. Your Ma’s not getting any younger."
         “A piano and a washing machine are exactly what we need then.” Ba squeezed my hand. “Did I mention I’ll call all the time?”

In my uphill battle for the Boy’s attention, my unwitting and only ally was Miss Wu, our crescent-eyed, bodhisattva-esque homeroom teacher, whose empire-waist dresses flowed over her ample bosom, tent-like.  Being an aspiring future decoder of commercial screenplays, I paid utmost attention in her reading class and soon earned the status of a teacher’s pet. So when I volunteered for nap duties, she didn’t ask a single question before handing me the brass key to the cot cabinet. Every day after lunch, I’d spend a giddy, solitary half hour arranging beddings in the hollow room, while my classmates burned off energy under the midday sun. By the time of their return, I’d have transcribed the beautiful sleeping chart in my head onto our old Redwood floor. Miss Wu would mouth a silent thank-you and peck me on the head. I’d wriggle under the blanket next to my prince, my heart humming a victorious song, thunderous only to the ears of my rival, who had been squarely exiled to the outskirts. In the ensuing hour, I’d gaze into the Boy’s face, regal in his slumber, and inhale his sweet, trembling breath. 
         Fangfang caught up in a few days. She was not just a pretty face. 
         “Ling works too hard, Miss Wu. Not fair for her. Please let me help.”
         “Good girl. You two can split the days then.”
         I drowned in my own medicine on Fangfang’s days of duty. Flailing in my lonely corner, I watched her snuggle up to the Boy like a sneaky python encroaching on an innocent dove. 
         It was on one of those sad days of exile that I discovered Mei next to me. It must have been Fangfang’s cruel prank. I cursed the witch and held my breath. Fangfang had told all the girls that Mei’s breath smelled like fermented curd, but nothing like that whiffed into my nose. Shame gnawed at me - I’d blindly allowed that witch to construct a corner of my belief system (although I didn’t have those words then). I studied Mei’s sleeping face and decided she was in fact nice-looking, her high cheekbones and full lips exotic even. Satisfied by the day’s epiphany, I let my eyelids drop. Presently, I stepped into a lush garden with grass made of mung bean candies. My parents, in their matching pajamas, sipped jasmine tea under a lacquered pavilion, holding hands and giggling the way I’d always imagined them when nobody was watching. The Boy hovered near a fountain of chilled plum drink. I could taste the tart-sweetness on my tongue as I treaded toward him…
         A warm patch glided gingerly from my knee up along my inner thigh. It grew tentacles, pressing a button under my skin. My eyes popped open. Groggy and confused, I scanned my dark surroundings. Another jolt! I let out a low cry and ducked under the blanket. A disembodied hand was playing invisible keys between my legs. Heat filled my throat but I didn’t scream again. I understood the gravity of this situation instantly. Surrender, acquiesce, don’t make a scene. Or disgrace will stain you for life. Mei kept her eyes shut and her breathing steady. She must be demon-possessed. What could be done about her? The exorcist of Nainai’s childhood village – if he were still alive – would have to burn cloves and frankincense around this beast. I lay still; wave after wave of electricity punctured my insides, tenderizing me. The world tilted and spun as I fell off a cliff, my flesh tightening before falling apart, melting into a puddle of glue on the ground. When her fingers stopped, a solid, aching mass expanded my hollows. I peered at Mei and caught a faint lift at the corner of her mouth. I wanted to hug and smack her at the same time, but I couldn’t possibly do either. 

When Ba called that night, a film set humming in the background, I couldn’t stand the distorted, faceless voice coiling through hundreds of miles of wire. Instead of responding, I burst into tears. Ma took over and told Ba how much I’d missed him, which, horrifyingly, triggered his sobs. What useless farce. I wrestled the receiver out of Ma’s hands and hung up. Ma pulled me into her. I pushed her away, outraged over her cluelessness.

         I spent the next morning avoiding Mei. When Miss Wu called on me to answer a question in her class, I stared blankly and muttered nonsense. Her eyes turned a shade of red as she studied me. Whenever the Gourd Brother nailed an evil spirit, blood or smoke would ooze out of its “seven apertures.” I was certain my dirty secret was oozing out of mine and drifting toward my beloved teacher. I looked down, took a deep breath, and pinched my mouth, trying my best to plug off as many “apertures” as possible. My cheeks burned. I felt faint, until the lunch bell blasted through the room and triggered a collective sigh and a swift dismissal. 
         It was my turn for nap duty after lunch. I placed my cot next to the Boy’s and settled Fanfang’s to its usual corner in the exurb. Clutching Mei’s yellow bedding, I paced the room. I could fling it out of the window. No, push it down the spiral staircase and let it fester among the spiderwebs. I battled against the memory of the unusual heat, the exhilaration of charging headlong into an abyss. 
         Never again. 
         I dropped her cot on the other side of mine just as my classmates filed into the room. Fangfang’s deflated face offered me a reliable boost, until Mei hopped into my sightline, glancing knowingly at our cots, her hand inching up her hip and tapping at it. My chest pounded: the audacity! I burrowed under my blanket, turning sharply away from Mei and toward the Boy. He wore a searching look as he stared at the ceiling as if it were crawling with monster trucks. Then, abruptly, his eyes closed and mouth parted, a snore escaping his pouty lips. The now-familiar tentacles had already left a tingling trail on my backside; they were climbing over the hill of my hipbone and descending toward the valley. I might have slapped them away once or twice; at least I’d like to believe so afterwards. The exact route of their advancing and landing was hazy, but I remember the queasy,  swelling sensation, and the Boy’s peaceful face dilating before me. A mysterious force, before sweeping me toward a white light, corralled the many mismatched fragments inside me and stitched them into something coherent – the same coherence I’d repeatedly seek in my adult moments of passion but would never quite find again. I leapt off a precipice and into the best nap I’d ever had. 

After school, I walked in silence with Nainai. When we arrived home, Ma was wrestling with a rooster in our communal kitchen, its crested head attached to the rest of its body by a thin thread. With surprising vigor, the rooster jigged and flittered, spraying a mist of blood over the floor and walls. Ma squealed despairingly and tailed the high-strung fowl, her own movements, ironically, growing lifeless. 
         “Useless!” Nainai muttered in exasperation. “Grab it! Pin it down!” She rolled up her sleeves and charged into the battlefield herself.  Within seconds, Nainai had crushed the long-suffering rooster to the table and, with a cleaver, decapitated it in one clean chop. She restrained the still-writhing animal and bled it into a rice bowl. 
         “Just clean up the kitchen before the neighbors return, will you?” Nainai shook her head. “This place looks like the scene of a heinous crime. Do you want them to report us to the Residential Committee?”
         Ma was on the brink of tears. She filled a bucket with soap and water, sank to all fours, and started scrubbing. I edged toward her. 
         “Away. Don’t get your shoes dirty,” Ma rasped, wiping a streak of blood onto her white cheek.
         I retreated into my parents’ bedroom and plopped on their bed. I was one of those children cursed with an early awareness of the fragile civility adults wore like a second skin. It would take me a few more years to understand the exact reasons, but I knew the two women did not get along. I’d later learn that Ma’s blood was not red enough; her parents never took up arms to fight the Japanese, or the Nationalists, as Nainai and my martyr Yeye had done. I was a sorry half-breed thanks to Ma: half Revolutionary and half Petty Bourgeoisie. Now that Ba, the emotional cushion between the two women, was constantly on the road, they had to tiptoe around each other. I pictured the day when they’d direct all their simmering wrath at me and make my life hell. The door flew open, and in stomped Ma, covered in a membrane of filth. Without looking at me, she went straight into the bathroom, slamming the door that had long come off its hinges. It bounced back halfway, offering a view of her stripping and flinging the dirty laundry onto a washboard. She rolled the garments hard against the wooden ridges, with a raging energy I’d come to miss later, after life’s steady grind had worn her into numb submission. I’d remember the rhythmic swing of her melon-like breasts from that day, the torrent of tears coursing down her cheeks and flushing away the animal blood, until all that remained was her clean, lonely face.       

On the day of Ba’s scheduled return, I indulged myself in a lucid dream – all hugs and laughs and larded dumplings – as Mei did her magic. I was inching toward the white light when the floorboards creaked and startled me. The witch’s face filled my vision, a muted shock rippling under her delicate skin. Fangfang squeezed her eyes, straightened up, and pattered away to the bathroom. All afternoon, I felt the weight of her accusatory stare. It haunted me even when Ba materialized in the evening, tanned and road-weary, grinning at me. “What happened? Where’s my bear hug?” He swept me into him, at once crying and laughing, oblivious that I was no longer the child he knew. 
         We sat down to a steaming pile of zhajiangmian. 
         “Dumplings when mounting the horse, noodles when dismounting,” Nainai said cheerily. 
         I shoved a long strand into my mouth.
         “So, what’s your new movie about, son?”
         “It’s an education film.”
         “On what?”
         “A kind of disease.”
         “What’s with you today – squeezing toothpaste? What disease?”
         “It’s called AIDS. Better not talk about it at the dinner table.”
         “Ah, I remember! It was in the Internal Review once, with pictures and all.”
         “Let’s not…”
         “Ulcers and blisters. Swollen lymph nodes. A whole person turns into a skeleton.”
         “Come on. The kid’s here.”
         “Isn’t that a disease of the West?” 
         “They’ve found it here too.” 
         “Whites brought it in?”
         “I guess so.”  Ba pivoted at me abruptly. “Anyway, how’s my little prodigy?” He flashed me that unbearable smile again.  
         “Fine.” I rammed another strand of noodle onto my tongue.
         “Awfully quiet today. Not happy to see your old Ba?”
         “Of course I am. I missed you,” I mumbled with my mouth full. 
         “Something’s bothering you – tell me!” 
         “Just worried about my homework.”
         “Homework already?” 
         “Miss Wu pushes them hard lately,” Ma chimed in. “The kid holes up in our room and reads all evening.” 
         “Reading is good.” 
         “Can I go read now?” I seized the opportunity. 
         “Ah, sure.” Ba nodded at me, puzzled but proud.

I woke up around midnight in my shared bed with Nainai. Tiptoeing toward the communal bathroom, I passed by my parents’ room and found their door ajar. Weak yellow light fanned out like silk ribbons. They were huddling in front of a tube TV and a VHS player. I covered my gasp when a hairy-chested white man appeared on screen. I’d never seen a white person, and I gawked at the dramatic geometry of his face – the big bulging eyes, long straight nose, sharp chin - like a cartoon character rendered with exaggeration. The scene unfolded shockingly as the foreigner approached a scantily-clad Chinese woman with an open-mouthed kiss. The young lady disappeared behind a folding screen of pink peonies and reappeared in a second room, her lips sealed onto a Chinese man. My heart rammed into my rib cage as she pranced from man to man as if in a frantic Kungfu sequence, except the fighting was replaced with fevered dance duets under an ornate blanket. My overactive brain conjured up background folk music – of rigorously plucked zithers and warring pipas. Two of her lovers dashed into an austere hall from opposite ends, a punch thrown and returned. A mosaic fadeout led to a hospital scene where a stern-looking doctor examined the purple-black blisters on the men’s arms and shook his dejected head. 
         “They aren’t really going to show this at universities, are they?” Ma whispered.
         Ba only shrugged.
         “They want to torture young people?”
         “I’m sure they’ll cut a lot of it.”
         “They’ll have to cut all of it.”
         “Come on, not so bad. Suggestive at best.”
         “It’ll give young people all sorts of wrong ideas.”
         Ba leaned into Ma. “It’s certainly giving me lots of ideas…” He kissed her open-mouthed, like the foreign devil in the movie.
         Ma pushed him away. “Close the door.” 
         I held my breath until the door clicked behind me, and I was alone in the dark hallway. Later, I climbed back into bed next to Nainai, my stomach heaving. I lay still and listened to her steady breathing, at once excited and devastated by my newfound wisdom. Ba would touch Ma the same way Mei had touched me. He’d make her soar into the clouds like a phoenix reborn, all her sadness burned away and left behind in a heap of ashes.

The next day, Miss Wu called the three of us – Fangfang, Mei, and me – into her office. She looked waxy and greenish behind her peeling wooden desk. We stood in a line and listened to her clear the boiling phlegm from her throat. At last, she raised her eyes. 
         “So…Fangfang mentioned something to me yesterday. Something unsettling.” She shifted in her chair, another wet cough. “Anything I should know… about nap time?” 
         Static buzzed in my head. Beside me, the witch nodded like a territory-asserting lizard, and then, amazingly, broke into tears. 
         Miss Wu sprang up and rushed to Fangfang’s side. “Darling, I’m so sorry. My fault, I shouldn’t have called you in here.” She gathered her into the folds of her oversized tutu, a laboured, motherly embrace. “Why don’t you go get some fresh air with the rest of the class?”
         The teacher ushered the shivering she-devil out of her office and closed the door. Her face looked ashen when she turned; even the greenish tinge was draining away.
         I tried to avoid her eyes and ended up staring at my hands. A few days earlier, Mei had taught me to reciprocate the magic. Those fingers. What they are capable of. 
         “Don’t make me repeat what Fangfang told me.” A warning and a plea wrapped in one. I heard the sad exhaustion in the teacher’s voice. My vision dimmed, my fingers turning a purplish black.
         “I did notice she’s by your side a lot at naptime.” She. The teacher wouldn’t even call Mei by her name. Was it out of spite or fear? When I recalled this horrifying scene years later, I wondered if the teacher was even using the right pronoun. She, it, they sound the same in Mandarin. Did the teacher, well schooled in the cheap dehumanizing tactics of the previous decade (“cow demons and snake spirits!”), instinctively pull the pages from the old playbook?
         Miss Wu sighed. Then, another change of ploy: “You’ve always been my best pupil, Ling. What happened to you? It’s like you’ve been living under a spell. I can protect you, you know?” 
         I glanced at Mei and regretted it immediately upon meeting her martyred eyes. Those eyes said: Coward. Shanghai missy. Of course you’ll throw me, a dirty mingong’s seed, under the bus. 
         “Shall I call your father?” Miss Wu made her Hail Mary move. My levee broke. I trembled like a helpless dove. 
         “So she did lay her hands…? Answer me!”
         I nodded. 
         Miss Wu gasped. “Why didn’t you come to me?”
         “I was scared…I’m so, so sorry.” 
         I was wailing now. I saw Miss Wu’s shuffling feet in her Mary-Jane flats before the heat of her plush belly hit me – my head clasped into the ripples of her floral dress, her maternal scent sickly familiar. 
         “Shhh, shhh, it’s ok. It’ll never happen again.”
         It felt right to return to her good graces.
         “Not under my watch,” she said again with a frightening resolve. 
         A whimper slipped from Mei, faint, startling. I pictured the teacher locking eyes with Mei at last, disgust twisting her lips. My temple throbbed and throbbed. I couldn’t bear to look at either of them.

After Mei’s expulsion, there was some righteous talk among the parents and grandparents, about the Order of the Universe being restored. I’d hear this talk with frequency later in life – in whatever country and culture I embedded myself in – and I’d switch to the other side, becoming a threat myself. For a month after, Ma and Nainai took turns weeping into the night. Ba was thankfully away at a new movie set, and the two women vowed never to tell him what had happened, briefly united in their shameful incompetence. Mei’s spot was swiftly filled by an obese local boy, a Stay-Puft marshmallow baby whose father was a manager at the city’s first KFC, which could explain the boy’s perpetually greasy fingers. The spoiled brat soon became the bane of Miss Wu’s existence, for his refusal to pick up Standard Mandarin. I didn’t understand the teacher’s vexation then, nor that schools stood at the forefront of a language nationalization campaign. I only felt a sudden lightness, a poetic justice, whenever he set sail a string of soft and sticky Shanghai dialect toward Miss Wu’s despairing face. 
         For a short while, I went back to pining for the Boy and battling Fangfang in covert ways only preschool girls were privy to. But I never regained the same earnestness, and was soon bored by the Boy’s clueless perfection. At nap times, I’d travel back to that first afternoon with Mei, that beginning of the end of my childhood. I’d touch myself the way Mei had taught me. Sometimes, skeletal bodies with purple-black blisters tumbled behind my eyelids. You are bad, you are bad, they breathed foul air on me. I’d elbow through their throng of rotting flesh until Mei’s hand seized mine. We’d run and run and spring off a rock face still attached, stretching our arms wide like a single long-winged eagle – falling and soaring, falling and soaring, knowing that it was the only way to live. 

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