China's Son Read Online Free Page B

write a confession of all the treasonous things you have said, to explain the motivation, and to state who told you to say these horrible things. Like perhaps your father, mother, or your landlord grandparents.” He was trying to involve my family. They would put my dad in prison. They would take Grandpa out into the street and beat him to death.
    “They did
not
tell me to do or say bad things against the party! They didn't!” I cried. I couldn't afford to have my family dragged into this. I was scared and began to sob helplessly. The sky had just caved in and I felt that nobody could help me. I would be a young counterrevolutionary, a condemned boy, despised by the whole country. I would be left to rot in a dark prison cell for life. That was what had happened to Shi He, another high school kid, who was caught listening to an anti-Communist radio program from Taiwan,and worse, to the banned Teresa Deng's love songs. His prison sentence had been twenty years.
    I don't remember how long I cried that morning. When I walked home alone in the afternoon's setting sun, I felt the weight of shackles already around my ankles.
    A condemned man at the age of nine! Confession tomorrow! The thoughts played over and over in my mind.
    When I got home, I told Mom what had happened and she started sobbing, hitting her face and chest and pulling out her hair. She mumbled hysterically, in broken sentences, that their generation had brought the curse to the next generation. After a while, she sat down quietly, weak and limp like a frightened animal. Finally, she got up and sent Si and Jin to Dad's camp to ask for advice. They got to talk to him by using the excuse that Mom was very sick again.
    It was after midnight when, breathless, they ran back. I was still sitting in my room, staring at a piece of blank paper. I had not eaten anything. For the first time in my life, I had absolutely no appetite.
    The message from Dad was simple. There was nothing to confess.
    Go back to school tomorrow and tell them that, he instructed. What were they going to do to you? Nothing, if you did not confess. Everything, if you did. If school becomes too hard, then quit. Dad's words gave us power and courage even from afar, allowing me to feel hopeful again that everything would be fine. But I dreamed that night of the teacher's face and smelled the dank odor of a dark, wet prison.
    The following day, I dragged myself along the cobbled street, my eyes fixed on the ground, wishing I were as tiny as a mosquito. When I entered the classroom, there were silent stares from the other children.
    The lesson was on fractions, but nothing sank in. My mind kept wandering to the piece of paper I carried with me. What would the teacher say? What were they going to do to me? Each hour of class crawled torturously by. I couldn't wait to hand in the confession and run back home to my family.
    Finally, the day came to an end. My classmates filed out as I put my books in my schoolbag and prepared to face the teacher.
    “You're not going anywhere, are you?” La Shan questioned sternly, not looking up from the homework he was grading.
    “I was just going to give you this.” I pulled out the piece of paper. “May I come up to your desk, please?”
    “You have your confession?” he asked sharply, arching his eyebrows.
    “I thought long and hard, and all that I have to say is here, honorable teacher.” I put the “confession” on his desk and turned to walk away.
    “Stop!” His voice was so angry and disgusted it startled me. I stopped and stood there with my head down, afraid to look at him.
    “You confessed nothing?” he screamed at me. “Did your parents tell you to write this?” He crushed the paper into a ball and threw it at me.
    “No, it is all from me and it is the truth. I swear upon my ancestors' graves that I am honest and innocent.” Tears trickled uncontrollably down my face. I was so nervous that my head began to feel hot again.
    Desperately, I felt