The Cooked Seed Read Online Free Page A

father was labeled a “potential traitor,” although he was never notified. He didn’t understand why he was never promoted no matter how well he did his job.
    To be strong and dependable was what my parents expected of me. No matter how scared I was, I had to wear a brave mask. I was made a caretaker as soon as I could walk. I closed the windows so the neighbors wouldn’t complain to my mother about my younger sister’s crying. After we four children grew into adults, the six of us shared one room. There was no privacy. Everyone was constantly in each other’s way. We shared a toilet with twenty other neighbors. Beating the morning toilet rush was always a challenge. Relationships between neighbors were strained because the toilet room was also used as a kitchen, laundry, and sink. I could be waiting for my neighbor’s mother to get off the pot while watching his sister cooking breakfast on the stove, his daughter brushing her teeth by the sink, and another neighbor washing sheets in the tub next to them. When it was my turn to use the toilet, I was always embarrassed. I dreaded the stink. Someone taking a shower meant that nobody could use the space.

{ Chapter 3 }
    The shadow of a girl stood in front of my mosquito net. It was dawn and the temperature was freezing. I heard her climb down from her bed, go out to use the washroom, and then return. Her name was Chen Chong. Later, in Hollywood, she would become Joan Chen, a woman who embodied beauty, grace, and glamour. She would be the sex symbol of Asia. But for now, she had just turned fifteen and was only one of my roommates. The day I met her she had come with her grandmother. The girl had an egg-shaped face, ivory-smooth skin, and a pair of large almond-shaped, crystal-clear eyes. They reminded me of a dragonfly. She had a straight nose and a petal-like, full-lipped mouth. She wore a homemade sleeveless white shirt. I noticed her strong shoulders. According to her grandmother, she was a swimmer and a member of a rifle shooting team at her middle school. She had been discovered by the Shanghai Film Studio talent scout. The girl was timid and shy. She hunched her back to conceal her developing chest. Her grandmother had gently pushed her toward us, asking her to introduce herself.
    The girl revealed her cute “tiger teeth” as she smiled. Her hair was tied into two buffalo horns. She didn’t introduce herself with a sloganlike phrase of our time, such as “I’m here to follow the Communist Party’s call, to learn from my comrades, and to give all my heart and soul to serving the people.” Instead she spelled her father’s name, first and last, followed by her mother’s name, then finally her own.
    The dorm-mates giggled. “This girl must have been drilled by her grandmother on what to do when lost in the city.” When asked how she came to be here, the girl replied that she had been ordered to take acting lessons. She was assigned to play a child Communist in Madame Mao’s propaganda film, but the production had been canceled. She had no idea what to do or where to go next. She brought her schoolwork with her because her parents were not pleased that she was missing school.
    When asked to explain the meaning of her first name, she replied,“
Chong
means to charge forward.” I learned that her parents were physicians and that her grandma was the editor in chief of the popular book
The Family Medicine
. The elderly lady asked everyone to help her granddaughter mature. Since there were only upper bunk beds available, the grandma picked one opposite mine. She tied bamboo sticks around the bed frame to support a mosquito net. When finished, she took out coils of rope. She rounded the bed with the rope to create a kind of barricade. She feared that Chong might fall off the bed at night. “The child has never slept in a bunk bed, and she loves to roll in her sleep.”
    Chen Chong sucked on sweet-and-sour dried plums. She hurried her grandmother to depart.