A Girl Named Faithful Plum by Richard Bernstein Page B

came down to his eyes.
    “Zhongmei?” the man said, speaking over the rumbling sound of the motorcycle engine.
    “Policeman Li?”
    “I’m so glad to find you!” Policeman Li said. “I’m so sorry! We’ve been worried to death about you. I don’t understand how this could have happened, because I went to the train station on the day you arrived, and I looked all over, but I just didn’t find you. I even had the station master make an announcement over the public address system. They called your name and asked you to go to the number one ticket window. I waited there a long time but you never came.”
    Zhongmei remembered the incomprehensible public address announcements reverberating in the vastness of the Beijing train station.
    “I didn’t understand the announcements,” Zhongmei said. “I was just standing there, waiting for you.”
    “Well, why didn’t I see you there?”
    “How should I know?”
    “It’s a mystery,” Policeman Li said. He was a large man with a big belly and kindly eyes. Looking at him, Zhongmei began to like him. “Da-ma will be so happy,” he said.
Da-ma
means “big mother.” It’s a standard form of address in China for an older woman who is actually not your mother. Policeman Li was talking about his wife. “She’s been scolding me every day since I didn’t find you at the train station. ‘How could you not find her?’ she’s been saying. ‘How manyeleven-year-old girls traveling by themselves could there have been?’ And she’s right. I looked everyplace. I just don’t understand how it was that I didn’t see you.”
    “I was worried you didn’t want me anymore,” Zhongmei said. This was the girl, after all, still haunted by all those threats, casually muttered over the years, to give her away to another family. If her own family wasn’t sure they wanted her, how could she be sure that Policeman Li’s family would?
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well, when you didn’t come for me at the train station, I figured you didn’t want me to come to your house,” Zhongmei explained.
    “What sheer nonsense!” Policeman Li said. “Da-ma has talked about nothing besides you for a week. I’m glad we’ll be able to talk about something else now.” He smiled and turned to Chen Aiyi, who was standing in the entryway watching and smiling.
    “If you don’t mind, comrade, I’m going to take her home now. My wife is waiting impatiently. Thank you for your help.”
    “You’re welcome,” said Chen Aiyi. “Zhongmei,” she said, “please come to see us before you go back to Baoquanling.”
    “I will,” Zhongmei said happily, feeling suddenly lighter than before, the weight of her worries lifted from her shoulders.
    “Have you ever ridden one of these before?” Policeman Li said, nodding at his police-issue motorcycle. “No? Well, climb on behind and hold on to me.”
    Policeman Li turned his motorcycle around and drove slowly out of the lane. Zhongmei turned and waved to Chen Aiyi, who was still standing at the courtyard gate. PolicemanLi turned the motorcycle down Old Drum Tower Street and picked up speed. They passed bicycles, trucks, and streetcars. When they roared past the Drum Tower, Zhongmei suppressed the urge to wave at it, as at an old friend. She felt the wind in her face and her hair blowing behind her.
    “I’ll take you past Tiananmen!” Policeman Li shouted. “Have you been there yet?”
    “No,” shouted Zhongmei. She was still a little scared on the back of the motorcycle and wrapped her arms around Policeman Li, but he was so big that her arms didn’t reach all the way around. They were in the middle of the widest street Zhongmei had ever seen. Soon, looming into view was an expanse of asphalt so vast it seemed to fade almost to the horizon. At one end was a great red wall and a massive gate surmounted by the same kind of curved tile roofs she’d seen at the Drum Tower. Three arched marble bridges led over a moat and toward the massive,