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her head under her wing. I was using my full strength. I began to pull her beard off. My hands were weak. I made myself ignore it. I kept pulling until Big Beard’s neck showed. I picked up the scissors. My arms were stiff. It was seven twenty-five. Big Beard pulled her head out from under her wing. She looked at me, her face was red. She kept struggling. I heard the neighborhood committee’s drum beating in the next lane. I folded Big Beard’s head back under her wing. I raised my scissors and aimed at her neck. She struggled violently. It was seven-thirty. The bell of the Wu-Lee Hardware Workshop rang; the women poured in. The committee people arrived at the door; the slogan shouting was like waves raising and falling. I clapped the scissors. Big Beard pulled her head out and made a go-go-go sound. She pushed an egg out of her body.
    I could not look. I brought the scissors down. When I could look again I saw Big Beard flying over everybody’s head, dripping blood on her way. My sisters and brother were looking down from the window. Big Beard was on a tree, almost as high as our window, then she dropped down on the white cement ground.
    I ran upstairs. I said I could not touch the hen again. No one in my family would. Big Beard lay dead on the cement yard, next to the bowl and a container of boiled water. The egg was stepped on. When the water got cold, Little Coffin came to me and asked what I was going todo with the hen. It’s going to spoil, she said. I begged her to take it. I said it would make a good dish to go with wine. I knew her father and grandfather were alcoholics. She took it.
    I went upstairs after dinner. Little Coffin’s family was in a Mao seminar section. Big Beard had become a handful of bones lying in a garbage can in the corner. Little Coffin told me that Big Beard tasted excellent.
    I n school Mao’s books were our texts. I was the head of the class on the history of the Communist Party of China. To me, history meant how proletarians won over the reactionaries. Western history was a history of capitalist exploitation. We hung portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin next to Mao in our classrooms. Each morning we bowed to them as well as bowing to Mao, praying for a long, long life for him. My sisters copied my compositions. My compositions were collected slogans. I always began with this: “The East wind is blowing, the fighting drum is beating. Who is afraid in the world today? It is not the people who are afraid of American imperialists. It is the American imperialists who are afraid of the people.” Those phrases won me prizes. Space Conqueror looked up to me as if I were a magician. For me, compositions were nothing; it was abacus competitions that were difficult. I wrote compositions for my brother and sisters, but I felt I had not much in common with the children. I feltlike an adult. I longed for challenges. I was at the school day and night promoting Communism, making revolution by painting slogans on walls and boards. I led my schoolmates in collecting pennies. We wanted to donate the pennies to the starving children in America. We were proud of what we did. We were sure that we were making red dots on the world’s map. We were fighting for the final peace of the planet. Not for a day did I not feel heroic. I was the opera.
    I was asked to attend the school’s Revolutionary Committee meeting. It was 1970 and I was thirteen years old. I discussed how to carry on the Cultural Revolution at our Long Happiness Elementary School with the committee people, the true revolutionaries. When I raised my hand and said I would like to speak, my face would no longer flush. I knew what I was talking about. Phrases from
People’s Daily
and
Red Flag
magazine poured out of my mouth. My speeches were filled with an impassioned and noble spirit. I was honored. In the early seventies my being a head of the Little Red Guards at school brought our family honor. My award certificates were my mother’s