My Father’s Jade Ring
Olivia Bray, Group 3: Fiction, Island School
hey took my father in the night. It was years ago but I can still remember it as if it happened yesterday.
They took him the night before my fifth birthday. Seven years ago tonight.
Tomorrow, I turn twelve. I’m not expecting much when it comes to birthday presents because
I know that my mother can’t afford much. We don’t even live in a proper house. It’s so small that the
only things that we can fit in it are two small boxes and a crate to serve as a table and two chairs. Our
beds, pillows and sheets are just a few thin, worn blankets.
I tossed and I turned, taking care not to hit Mama who was sleeping beside me. I eventually lay still
and fell fast asleep. But my dreams wouldn’t give me peace. They ended up taking me back to the terrible night
when I lost half of everything I loved.
Footsteps woke me. At first I thought it was just my mother going to tend the fields like she does every
morning. Then I remembered that Mama’s feet sound lighter than that. That was when I saw the soldiers. Tall,
muscular men dressed in dark green uniforms and carrying knives at their belts that could kill with one stab.
They picked up Dada and dragged him bodily towards the door. Mama had already left. There was no-one to
help him but me.
“
No! Stop!” I rushed over to try and hug Dada one last time but the soldiers just laughed and pushed
me away. However, I did manage to slip the old jade ring that Mama gave me into his numb, cold hands.
As I fell I cut my cheek on a jagged broken floorboard. My cheek was really grimy and bleeding badly
but I didn’t care. I ran to the window and sobbed my heart out as I watched my father being dragged away.
I woke up dripping with sweat and tears. It was always the same dream every night. Since I couldn’t
sleep (I never could after these nightmares) and I had a few hours before I had to start work in the fields, my
thoughts turned to my father and my memories of watching him slowly deteriorate over seven long years.
The site of the Great Wall was very close to our home and even closer to the rice fields where Mama
and I worked every morning. My father also worked close to where we worked at first, building the foundations
of the Wall. I will always remember the look on his face. The only way I can describe it is that it was a picture
of all hope being lost. It was torture watching him struggle for years. In fact, it was as if he’d been placed there
deliberately, to torture Mama and I.
After they took my father away I couldn’t stop crying for weeks. I made myself sick with worry so I
couldn’t help Mama in the rice fields. I don’t know how or when it was that I found I could work again. I guess
eventually I just got used to misery.
I’d seen him almost every single day, working on the Great Wall. I watched him go from the tall,
strong ladies’ man that all the girls in the village admired into a dirty, shabby hunchback that barely looked
human. I watched him get beaten with a horrible, stinging whip that made half of his back look like a piece of
raw meat. Frequently he passed out from the pain and nearly tumbled off the steep wall.
At night I wondered if he even still remembered me and Mama. I wondered if he thought about us. One
day I knew for sure that he hadn’t forgotten us. He was helping to dig a ditch outside a wooden barrier
preventing anyone from crossing when he suddenly went running after something very small that had slipped
out of his hand. He climbed into the deep pit to look for it. His workmates yelled at him, “Move! Whatever it is
it’s not worth delaying our work over!”
“
I refuse to come out until I find it. It’s all I have left of my family”
I knew he was talking about the ring I gave him when he left. After scrabbling around for about ten minutes, he
found the ring.
When I was older I started to wonder about things; things that could get me executed for treason. The
people in our village said that the Wall was all for a good cause, to protect us from mysterious enemies. If there
were enemies so bad that we needed a huge wall that spread way across China to protect us, then why hadn’t
these fearsome enemies attacked before? I didn’t think that these enemies existed. I thought that the emperor
was just looking for an excuse to show off his power.
When I prayed in the temple for money, to be cured of a sickness or just because I had nothing better to
do, I wondered what the gods must think of all this wall building business. How they must laugh at us, enslaving
our own people by the hundreds just for some ugly old wall that nobody wants. I imagine them sitting back in
comfortable seats made of clouds up in heaven, watching over us and laughing like it was some sort of funny
show.
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