Feather in the Storm: A Childhood Lost in Chaos by Emily Wu, Larry Engelmann Page A

for each of us to squeeze through. We crawled out the hole and took a new route to school.
    Nobody followed us that day. The next morning we met outside Xiaolan’s apartment building and hurried to our secret exit. After we’d slipped through it we looked down the street toward the main gate and saw several of the students who’d chased me lingering in the street. I pointed them out to Xiaolan, and we had to cover our mouths to stifle our laughter. We ran through alleys and down side streets we’d never taken before to get to school. This became our regular route. We eventually gave the crescent-shaped hole in the wall a name—Moon Gate.
    We evaded our tormentors for the next few weeks. We hoped they’d tire of looking for us.
    But before long we got into trouble with another group.

19
    One of our most malicious classmates was a tall, temperamental girl named Sun Maomao. Her father had been provost of the university. He was a powerful man who freely used his position for personal advantage. His family lived a life of luxury. Even in hard times, they ate well.
    My parents were high on his hate list. At a political meeting of the university faculty and staff a few years earlier, the provost gave a long speech—a directive as well as a criticism—about birth control. My parents had two children at the time and my mother was expecting a third. Looking straight at her, he said that the best policy for black families was a one-child policy. “Having more than one child,” said the father of six, “is irresponsible and unpatriotic for a black family. Such people who produce more than one child will suffer dire consequences.”
    One morning Xiaolan and I were playing quietly in a corner of the school yard before class started. We found that when we pulled up a clump of crabgrass and cleaned off the roots, we could chew them and extract a sweet-tasting juice. While we chewed the roots, we wove the blades of grass into a bird’s nest. Perched on our knees on the ground, we talked about the birds that would come and lay eggs in our nest. We imagined how they would look, their wonderful colors, the size andcolor of the eggs and the number of baby birds we could watch. There were almost no birds in the city. Eight years earlier, a fanatical campaign had succeeded in exterminating wild birds in the cities and the countryside because Chairman Mao believed they were pests that ate crops that might otherwise be consumed by people.
    Xiaolan was wearing a new white blouse with tiny blue flowers printed on it. Her mother had made it and Xiaolan was quite pleased with it. The bell rang. We ran to class. Xiaolan held the nest in her hands. She didn’t want to drop it, and she would get into trouble if she brought it inside the classroom. She shouted, “Maomao! Look!”
    I turned to see her fling it high into the air, as though it were a bird, rather than a nest, and would take flight. As it left her hands it came apart into wet roots and blades of grass. Behind us came Sun Maomao. The disintegrating nest rained down on her. She was furious. She sprang at Xiaolan, grabbed her by the collar, slapped her twice across the face and shrieked, “How dare you, you rotten little historic anti-revolutionary!”
    As Xiaolan tried to pull away, Sun Maomao jerked her forward. They struggled, and Sun Maomao tore off Xiaolan’s blouse. I stepped between them and pushed Sun Maomao away. She tripped over her own feet. “You rightist bitch,” she screamed. She was about to charge me when Xiaolan jumped in front of me. She was half naked; Sun Maomao still clutched the remnants of her new blouse. In a flash Xiaolan was clawing furiously at Sun Maomao’s face like a ferocious cat. Sun Maomao screamed, dropped the blouse and covered her face. “My eyes!” she cried. “You hurt my eyes!” Xiaolan broke off her attack, snatched up her torn blouse and ran home. Sun Maomao cowered nearby.
    All five of Sun Maomao’s siblings attended our school and