The Cooked Seed Read Online Free

celebrate,” my mother said. “Finally I get to see my children in daylight!”
    After we arrived home, Mother cleaned the house with absolute joy. I was so happy to spend time with my mother.
    Mother started to wear black clothes. When I asked her the reason, she explained, “I’ll be in the right clothes if I don’t wake up tomorrow morning.” She was smiling, but her words gave me nightmares. I dreamed about my mother lying on her deathbed, asking me to take care of my siblings.
    When I asked my mother about men and love for the first time, I was turning seventeen and about to depart for the labor camp. Mother was embarrassed. “Shame on you” were the only words she offered. It is a memory I wish I didn’t have. I never asked Mother a question of that nature again. Throughout school, I had been assigned to sit next to a “bad girl” to influence and help her. She was deemed “morally corrupted,” which meant that she had had an inappropriate relationship with a man. She was looked down on by everyone. I learned from her lesson and avoided attention from any male. Yet I was curious about how a marriage would take place. My mother told me, “A man who is meant to be your husband will look for you when the time comes.”
    Unfortunately, the man meant to be my husband never appeared. It wasn’t a problem until I turned twenty-seven. If I had discovered anything about myself, it was that I was unable to attract men. I didn’t know how to approach them, how to express myself and show my interest. My self-confidence was so shaken that I gave up trying. Yet the need for affection pained me.
    I had no idea that my mother suffered for me. She was confused that no young man had knocked on my door. Many years later, after my mother passed away, my father revealed the extraordinary efforts she had made. She went to the college campuses around Shanghai and loitered around the medical school buildings. When an appealing man appeared, she would approach him with my photo and ask if he would be interested in dating me. My mother was chased off by campus security guards.
    I was in tears imagining my mother in such a humiliating position. It was the only way she could think to help me. I imagined her pain and her bravery. It was only then that I realized the depth of her love.
    My father hated to be dragged by my mother and her children on any kind of outing. His only passion was astronomy. During the week he labored at the print shop and had no time to work on his own project. Sunday was his only time. He resented doing anything except sitting in front of his little desk working on his star charts. I watched my father stare into the night sky and asked him why he was interested. He replied that it was because the stars wouldn’t hurt him.
    My mother said that my father had little “guts,” or courage, left. The first time he lost his guts was when Japanese soldiers invaded his village in 1937. His family’s front yard was turned into a military training ground. The teenage Japanese soldiers were scared of killing at first. They were drilled until they became killing machines. My father witnessed his cousin tied to a post and poked to death with bayonets. He was never the same after that.
    The second time my father lost his guts was over a postcard to Russia. My father was twenty-seven years old. He had been in touch with a Russian professor who encouraged him to go to Moscow University to study astronomy. My father wanted to know if he would still be permitted to go, since China was breaking ties with Russia. My father didn’t want to be accused of being secretive, so he communicated in an open way that he thought would be safest. He sent a postcard for everyone to see with his question addressed to the professor through the Russian embassy in China.
    Forty years later, my father learned that the postcard never reached the Russian embassy. Instead it landed on the desk of the security boss at my father’s work unit. My