Free Red Azalea by Anchee Min Page A

would run out of the room, raise up my face, stretch my arms toward the sky to feel, to taste and to say thank you to the rain. I would let the rain pour on my face, sink into my hair, go down my neck, waist, legs, my toes.
    As I sat by the window, I got lost in my thoughts, staring at the willow tree. The rain turned to mao-mao-yu—“cow-hair rain,” as the peasants called it. I stared at a window opposite mine. It was the window of the room of the company heads. Yan’s window. The window intrigued me. I often wondered how the people lived behind that window. I knew them well in uniforms but not in their mosquito nets. What about their nights? Were any of their nights like mine?
    The opposite window opened. I backed myself into my net. I watched through the curtain. It was the commander. She stuck an arm out. She was feeling the rain. She raised her chin toward the gray sky. Her eyes shut. She held that pose. It was such a private pose. Between her and the sky. Was she feeling the same way I was feeling: lonely and depressed? After Little Green went mad, my worship for Yan had turned sour. My sorrow for Little Green had transformed itself into anger toward Yan. I decided that Yan was no longer worth my respect. She was the murderer, although so was I. But she did it intentionally, and that was unforgivable. I executed her decision. Yet there was a stubbornness that grew inside of me. I found myself refusing to think that Yan was not worthy of my respect. For some strange reason I felt that I still needed Yan to be my heroine. I must have a heroine toworship, to follow, to act as a mirror. It was how I was taught to live. I needed it the same way Orchid needed knitting, to survive, to get by.
    I developed a desire to conquer Yan. More truthfully, to conquer myself, because Yan symbolized my faith. I wanted her to tell me what it was that drove her to take such cruel action against Little Green; I wanted to tear away her Party secretary’s mask, to see what was inside her head. I wanted her to surrender. I was obsessed.
    She suddenly turned toward my direction and stopped. She saw me staring at her. She put a finger into her mouth and whistled, Yan, the commander, whistled to order everyone to get back to work in the fields. She whistled. She drove away my thoughts. She closed the window without a wave of her hand, a word, a nod, a hint of anything.
    The rain had stopped. The sky was loaded with heavy dark clouds. The clouds looked as if they were about to fall upon our heads. The clothes I put out to dry before going to bed were wet and muddy. I took them down from the string and put them on, then dragged myself to the field.
    We were transplanting rice shoots. We worked for three hours without a break. I was working the edge of the field and noticed a trace of blood in the muddy water. I tracked the blood and found Orchid down on her knees in the water, her pants bloody red. Orchid always had problems with her period. It could last for half a month, bleedingher to exhaustion. She told me that she hadn’t understood what her period was when it first came. She felt too ashamed to ask anyone for advice. She stuffed unsterilized clothes into her pants. The blood was blocked but she got an infection. I asked her why she hadn’t told her mother or a friend about it. She said her mother was in a labor camp and her friend knew even less than she. Her friend was not sure whether Chairman Mao was a man or a woman.
    I asked Orchid why she had not asked the platoon leader for a day off. She said she did. She was rejected. The head sent her to Lu, and Lu said that the transplanting had to be completed by midnight or we would lose the season. I told Orchid that I thought Lu was an armchair revolutionary who demanded other people be Marxists when she herself was a revisionist. Orchid disagreed. She said Lu was tough on herself too. She said that Lu had never taken a day off when her period came. Orchid said Lu had serious cramps