Red Azalea by Anchee Min

created by Madam Mao, Jiang Ching, at the People’s Great Hall. She liked the three-inch-wide belts the performers were wearing. She traded her best collection of Mao buttons for a belt. She showed me her belt. It was made of real leather and had a copper buckle. It was designed by Comrade Jiang Ching, my heroine, she said. Have you read Mao’s books? she asked. Yes, I did, I said, all of them. She said, That’s wonderful, because that’s what I did too. I memorized the Little Red Book and know every quotation song.
    I told her that I was a Red Guard since elementary school, my experience much less glorious than hers, though I would not be fooled about how much one knew about Mao quotation songs. She smiled and asked me to give her a test. I asked if she could tell where I sang.
    The Party runs its life by good policies …
    Page seven, second paragraph! she said.
    If the broom doesn’t come, the garbage won’t automatically go away …
    Page ten, first paragraph!
    We came from the countryside …
    Page a hundred forty-six, third paragraph!
    The world is yours …
    Page two hundred sixty-three, first paragraph!
    Studying Chairman Mao’s works, we must learn to be efficient. We should apply his teachings to our problems to ensure a fast result …
    She joined my singing.
    As when we erect a bamboo stick in the sunshine, we see the shadow right away …
    Where are we? I shouted.
    Vice Chairman Lin Biao’s Preface for Mao Quotations, second edition! she shouted back, and we laughed, so happily.
    We were still talking when we reached the barracks. We stood in the dark, filled with incredible delight. Be careful, she said. I nodded and understood: avoid Lu’s attention. We took separate paths and went back to our room.
    I could not sleep that night. The room and the mosquito net felt very different from yesterday. Yan did not speak to me in the room, but there was life and fresh air. I felt spring. The growth of the reeds underneath the bed for the first time became tolerable. I thought I would like the green in the room. Would Yan? She was in the bunk beneath me. There was so much that I wanted to share with her. But I dared not talk to her. Lu’s bed was next to ours. We, eight people, sleeping in one room, compartmented by mosquito nets.
    Lu would be jealous of us, of our delight. I felt sorry for her. I wished I could be her friend. It was sad that the only thing she was close to was the skull. I felt sympathy for her for the first time. It was a funny feeling. Whatmade me care for Lu? Yan? Lu was two years older than Yan. She was twenty-five. She wanted so much. She wanted to control our lives. What was she doing with her youth? Wrinkles had climbed on her face. Soon she would be thirty, and forty, and she would still be at Red Fire Farm. She said she loved the farm and would never leave. I wondered how anyone could love this farm. A farm that produced nothing but weeds and reeds. A complete darkness. A hell. Lu spoke no truth. She did not know how. Did she have feelings? Feelings that Yan and I shared tonight? She must have. She was young and healthy. But who dared to be dear to her? Who truly cared for her besides flattering her for her power? Whom would she be sharing her feelings with? Would she marry? What a funny thought to think of Lu being married. Men in the company were afraid of her. They yielded to her, accepted her dominance. Men surrendered before they faced her. The shadow of her appearance chased men away. They treated her like a poster on a wall. They showed her their admiration but framed her on their mind’s wall. I saw loneliness in Lu’s eyes. The eyes that stared into fields on rainy days. The eyes of thirst.
    Lu went to bed late. She sat on a wooden stool studying Mao’s works. Every night she practiced this ritual. She took about ten pages of notes each night. She was the last one to go to bed and the first to get up. She cleaned the room and the hall. I love to serve the people, she