"When we get off in a bit, you two stay right behind me. Once we’re in the city, keep yourselves composed. Don’t go looking like you’ve never seen the world."
The women’s federation cadre in the front seat turned halfway around. Her voice was calm, not loud, but she meant every word.
"This is New China now, a new age. You’ve come down from the mountain and returned to ordinary life, so let the old stuff stay in the past. Don’t keep living with the mind of a nun."
"At the social mixer, if you see a male comrade you like the look of, just go up and speak to him. Don’t be shy and don’t act all awkward. There’s no need to hide anything either. Just tell him your situation plainly, exactly as it is."
"If both sides think it’s a good match, I can settle it for you right there on the spot!"
"Remember this: you’re no different from any other ordinary city folk. You should eat when it’s time to eat, drink when it’s time to drink, laugh when you want to laugh, cry when you need to cry. Those are all things a person ought to have in life."
The car rolled along at an unhurried pace. Every so often the cadre turned back again and said a few more words. She talked a lot, but somehow it wasn’t annoying to listen to.
In the back seat sat two young women. Both wore dark nun’s robes, and both had shaved heads smooth and bare. One look was enough to tell they had come straight out of a convent.
One had her eyes closed and didn’t say a word. No one could tell whether she was really asleep or only pretending.
The other looked as if she had just jolted awake from a nightmare. Her eyes flew open. Lost and dazed, she first swept her gaze around the inside of the car, then finally fixed it on the endlessly talking woman comrade.
Slowly, she lifted a hand and touched her bare scalp. She felt it once, then again, and yet again, as if she had to make sure. A storm of emotion rose in her eyes at once—shock, confusion, and a wild joy she could hardly keep down.
Celeste Vance had never imagined this.
She had actually been reborn.
Back to the very day she and her junior sister left the convent together.
In her last life, the sisters in the convent had gone down the mountain one after another and returned to secular life. Those senior sisters who had taken vows halfway through life each had somewhere to go. They packed up their things and went back to their hometowns to seek out kin or old acquaintances.
Only she and her junior sister Rosemary Vance had nowhere at all to turn.
The two of them had been taken in by the convent when they were little. They knew nothing about where they had come from, nothing about their own families, and they could not even find a single relative to rely on. In the end, they had no choice but to go to the resettlement office and beg them to help think of something.
What the office offered was simple enough. They could arrange for the two girls to go down to the countryside, join a production team, and register their household in a nearby village. It was the year sixty-seven, and the movement sending educated youth up to the mountains and down to the villages was in full swing. Batch after batch of city young people slung bedrolls over their shoulders and headed for the countryside, talking about putting down roots at the grassroots and building the revolution.
She and her junior sister were eighteen and nineteen, about the same age as those young people being sent down.
For the time being, the resettlement office had no spare capacity to arrange city work or a place for them to stay. Seeing that things were heading that way, they were just about to hand the pair over to the educated youth office and send them off with the rest to settle in the villages.
Then, by sheer chance, right at that moment, the city women’s federation sent someone down to do publicity work and ran into this matter.
After hearing the full story of the two girls, that women’s federation leader thought to herself that these girls had grown up in a convent from childhood, with no parents, no family, no one to depend on. If they were really sent to the countryside, they would most likely be bullied so badly they would have no way to survive.
And with that thought, her heart softened.
So the women’s federation officer pointed them toward a different road.
The city women’s federation was putting together a youth mixer with the unions from several big factories. If the two of them were willing, they could go and try their luck. Maybe they’d meet a suitable man to marry.
If they married into the city, their household registration could be moved straight onto the husband’s side.
And once they had a city hukou, they’d get grain and oil coupons, draw their rations every month like clockwork, and wouldn’t have to go down to the countryside for rustication.