Mountain Girl River Girl (15 page)

Chapter
Twenty

“I can’t let you do this, Pan-pan,” Shui-lian said, watching Pan-pan gathering her belongings. “I don’t want to be your burden anymore.” Shui-lian lay on her back, listening to Pan-pan’s account of her meeting with Ah-Wu. Her left arm was now slung across her chest, suspended on a leather belt looped around her neck, her bandaged thumb, a bloodstained lump. Every bit of her exposed skin was covered by a bumpy heat rash, red and angry, as though ready to explode.

“Stop talking nonsense, Shui-lian. You’re not a burden. My mind is made up. We came here together and we’re leaving together.”

“Please, I beg you. I’ll be fine. You have a future here.”

One minute Shui-lian was talking, the next she was all tears, barely able to get the words out. “I’m sorry, Pan-pan.” Her body shook so violently, the words left her mouth syllable by syllable.

Pan-pan stopped folding an undershirt. “What are you talking about? I should ask for your forgiveness. I’m the one who got us into this mess—slaving every day to make people like Ah-Wu rich.”

“No, no.” Shui-lian squeezed her eyes shut. “Pan-pan, I don’t deserve your friendship and your sacrifice. I was jealous and resented you. And … and I lied to you. I didn’t just run away from my abductors as I told you. I was gang-raped. So were the others I was with. And then the police came and arrested us for prostitution. I was too ashamed to tell you the truth, afraid that you would look down on me and refuse to be my friend. Now you’re leaving the factory because of me. Pan-pan, how can I accept this? I’m no good to you or anyone else.”

Pan-pan felt like she had been kicked in the stomach. She sat down on the edge of the bunk beside Shui-lian, numb and nauseated. She couldn’t begin to imagine what Shui-lian must have suffered.

Pan-pan sat with Shui-lian for a long time, thinking. “Listen to me, Shui-lian,” she said, breaking the silence. “There is nothing for me to forgive. I haven’t been honest with you, either. My mother didn’t die in a fall from a narrow track on a mountain. What killed her was a botched operation that she hoped would cure her fox smell. Mom thought it an unspeakably shameful social handicap. People looked down on her as if it were a disgraceful disease. And,” Pan-pan paused briefly, shifting her eyes away, “I’ve inherited it from her. Probably you’ve known all along.”

“Well …” Shui-lian hesitated, but Pan-pan kept on.

“Because of it, my friends and people in the village shied away from me. My Ah-Po and Xin-Ma were constantly afraid I might pass it to them and to my little brother.” Reaching for the powder tin, Pan-pan continued. “And this is supposed to help me, to be my disguise and my shield. It seemed to work. When I met you I promised myself that I wasn’t going to tell you about my condition. That night when you were the only one who didn’t ask for the powder, I sensed that you knew, and I thought you would despise me and abandon me like everyone else. But you didn’t. Shui-lian, you have no idea how relieved and grateful I was.”

Pan-pan silently turned the tin round and round in her hand. “The others claimed that I had some kind of foresight when they found the powder, showering me with praise. The truth was, after the powder was gone and I couldn’t find any more in the market, I just stopped worrying, because I realized everyone here smells from sweating and lack of clean water. And everywhere stinks, inside the shop and outside the compound, from the dorm to the toilets, even the washing area, and even the ditch that circles the factory’s outside wall. Earlier Ah-Wu mentioned something about people around the world having all kinds of names for factories like ours. One of them is sweatshop. Well, they sure know what they’re talking about. The sweat we pump out every day and night could have filled a pond by now!”

“Yes, I know. But fox smell? That’s the worst gibberish I’ve ever heard in my life. I bet whoever came up with that exaggerated term has never laid eyes on a real fox,” Shui-lian said, drying her eyes with the back of her good hand. “But I’m sorry for your mom and what you had to put up with. I wish I had known. Lao Zhou was right, calling us suffering sisters, wasn’t he?” She looked up at Pan-pan. “But what are we going to do? I don’t want to go home, not like this.”

“I have an idea.” Pan-pan spoke again. “I think we should go to Beijing. First, it’s not as hot there. Your heat rash will go away. Second, we can look for Sun Ming. You remember her. Ah-Po said she was a nice girl. Of course, that was thirty years ago. But I’d like to find her. Maybe she can help us find a better job. Not making shoes, for sure, and no more dealing with Ah-Wu and his demons. After all, it’s the capital city! There must be better jobs. What do you think?”

Shui-lian blinked, licking her parched lips. She opened her mouth to speak but changed her mind. She was afraid she might not have enough money to get to Beijing.

“Don’t worry,” Pan-pan said, as if reading her friend’s mind. “I’ve saved enough for both of us.”

“All right. Let’s do it. I promise to pay you back the train fare,” said Shui-lian, a weak smile appearing on her face, the first since the accident. With some effort, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed. “Let’s pack up and get out of this place.”

S
HORTLY AFTER
the shift ended, Fang-yuan rushed into the dorm, hot and sweaty, a white ring left by perspiration around her shirt collar. Most of the other women had already flopped onto their bunks and sat fanning themselves as they chatted.

Fang-yuan stood before Pan-pan, hands on hips. “Is it true that you were both fired?” she asked.

“No,” Pan-pan replied calmly. “We quit.”

The bamboo fans ceased flapping and the conversations died. All eyes fixed upon Pan-pan.

“You what?” Fang-yuan exclaimed, blinking in disbelief. “Tell me you’re joking.”

“She’s not,” Shui-lian put in. “I was fired, she’s quitting.”

“What happened?” another woman asked from the end of the room as the fans resumed their rhythms. “What did Ah-Wu have to say about that?”

Pan-pan repeated what she had told Shui-lian, but left out the part about her and Shui-lian not being cousins.

“Animals,” a third woman spat. “How could anyone be so heartless? Throwing an injured girl out on the street. How can they get away with it? It’s a pity labour unions no longer speak for the workers of this country. What we need is—”

“Maybe we can all go to talk to Ah-Wu,” Fang-yuan interrupted. “He should realize you two are good workers.”

“It’s kind of you, Fang-yuan,” said Pan-pan with emotion. “But Ah-Wu has made up his mind. And so have we.” She paused for a second, shifting her eyes to Shui-lian, who was trying to zip up her bag with her good hand. “And we, or rather I, haven’t been totally honest with you. We told you on our first day here that we were cousins.”

Fang-yuan smiled. “I remember. And I got mad at you.”

“Well, we aren’t related. She’s from Sichuan, and I’m from Guizhou. The recruiter advised us not to say she was Sichuanese. But it turns out Ah-Wu knew the truth all along.”

Elder Sister Meng, who had dropped by the dorm to say goodbye, asked, “And he used this against you?”

Pan-pan nodded. “You could say that.”

“But, Pan-pan, you’re giving up your job because someone who is not even related to you got fired?” another woman chimed in.

Fang-yuan turned to the speaker. “It’s called sacrifice.”

“I wouldn’t use that word,” Pan-pan said, eyeing Shui-lian, who had finally managed to close the bag. “The way I see it, we came here together and we’re leaving as a pair as well.”

“But where will you go?” Elder Sister Meng asked again. “Home?”

“Not home,” said Shui-lian quickly. “We’re off to the capital. Pan-pan has a contact there. We’re going to find her—and better jobs than this.”

“You are both brave girls,” Elder Sister Meng commented, smiling. Bending over, she dragged an empty washbasin from under a bunk. Before she set it on the floor in front of her, she dropped in a twenty-yuan note.

“Man zou—
go with care,” she said softly, then left the room.

By the time Pan-pan and Shui-lian were ready to leave, the basin was more than half full of crumpled bills. After a final goodbye to everyone in the dorm, and one last look at the bare bunk, they headed toward the door.

“Wait!” someone called out.

It was Fang-yuan. She gave each of the two friends a bone-crushing hug. “Goodbye, cousins,” she said, smiling, her eyes brimming with tears.

T
WO GUARDS,
leaning against the door frame of the hut, watched them approach. One frowned; the other just shrugged his shoulders. The guards saw workers coming and going all the time. While all the new arrivals brought different dreams and expectations, every departing worker acted more or less the same, crushed and defeated. Many had to be hauled out of their dorms, dragged across the compound, and thrown out the door, their belongings tossed after them over the closed gate.

But the scene they were witnessing today was something entirely different. One of the girls had a dirty sling on her chest. There were no tears, or angry shouts. They looked almost triumphant as they walked past the gatehouse. They didn’t stop or turn their heads when the gate was pushed shut with a loud clunk.

Chapter
Twenty-One

When Shui-lian opened her eyes, she saw, through the train window, the pale light of early morning illuminating the landscape. Trucks and carts drawn by horses and donkeys were lined up at the rail crossings as the train sped past, its horn a long, mournful cry. Gradually, the orderly cultivated fields yielded to paved roads that grew wider and longer by the minute. In the distance, the roads appeared in stacks, one on top of another. A few merged with the sky at the horizon. Shui-lian realized that these must be the freeways Pan-pan had talked about, like the one that her father had been labouring on for years. Alongside the tracks, the simple, sparse dwellings gave way to tall buildings that kept growing larger and soaring higher.

Then the train began to slow down, reducing its speed to that of a turtle as it crawled to a halt. “Beijing Central Station!” the conductor declared.

Slinging their bedrolls onto their backs and their canvas bags across their shoulders, Pan-pan and Shui-lian stepped down from the train and trailed after a stream of passengers toward the exit. The air was hot and dry. Their plastic sandals felt like dough, warm and soft against their bare soles as they moved along the sun-baked platform and into the station. Finally, they stopped in the centre of an enormous circular hall, where they were surrounded by the echoing din of thousands of voices and moving feet. Dozens of large colour-TV monitors mounted on the walls showed not pictures but lines of text.

Pan-pan put down her bedroll, leaning it against her leg. She wiped the sweat from her forehead with her shirt sleeve, letting her eyes devour everything in front of her: the smooth, shining marble floor that must feel cool and heavenly if she were allowed to lie on it; the giant lamps dangling in the corners, suspended from the towering ceiling—lamps that could brighten the entire place like the crystal palace at the bottom of the Eastern Sea, she thought, recalling a fairy tale she had loved hearing her mother tell.

Shui-lian’s wandering eyes fixed on a pair of moving staircases, one carrying people up, the other bringing them down—all so effortlessly—and probably a lot of fun. From the look of it, the ride was free. She pulled Pan-pan along beside her to the moving steps. They rode, laughing, up and down three times before they reluctantly got off and headed for the station’s main exit.

Out in the square, Pan-pan reminded herself that they had better ask how to get to Sun Ming’s place or they might end up having nowhere to spend the night and the days to come. After a furious discussion, in which Shui-lian wouldn’t give in to Pan-pan’s suggestion that they look for a policeman, Shui-lian pointed to a middle-aged woman shouting at the top of her lungs, selling maps.

“How about her?”

“One yuan,” the woman said to Shui-lian, peeling a sheet from a thick stack draped over her outstretched forearm.

“Fine, Auntie,” Pan-pan answered before Shui-lian had a chance to, reaching inside her pocket. “But first, could you help us find a certain street? We’re new in Beijing.”

“Tell me quick,” the woman grumbled. “I have to sell a hundred of these maps a day, the entire stack, to make a profit.”

“It’s Chaoyangmen—Chao-yang Gate,” Pan-pan said without hesitation, for she had memorized that part of Sun Ming’s address long ago.

“Aiya,
typical
wai-di-ren,”
the map-seller cried out.
Wai-di-ren
referred to someone who wasn’t a local, but Pan-pan knew it could be a put-down, meaning a country bumpkin. As soon as she saw Shui-lian’s face darken, a prelude to an outburst, she grabbed her elbow. Quickly she added, “Please help us.”

“Whereabouts on Chaoyangmen?” the woman demanded impatiently. “There are lots of places named after the Gate of the Rising Sun. First of all, there’s Chaoyangmen District. As for the streets, there are Inner Chaoyangmen Avenue and Outer Chaoyangmen Avenue, Northern Chaoyangmen Road and Southern Chaoyangmen Road. So which one are you looking for?”

When she saw Pan-pan take a piece of paper out of her bag, the woman snatched it from her hand. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” she sighed.

“You know where it is?” Pan-pan chirped anxiously, her eyes flashing. “I hope it’s not too far.”

“I know where it is all right, or should I say, where it used to be.”

“What do you mean?” Shui-lian cut in finally. “It’s a place, not a piece of ice that may have melted on a hot day like this. The street couldn’t have just disappeared, could it?”

“It has disappeared, young woman. Don’t you understand what’s happening in this city?” The map-seller raised her voice again, but this time Shui-lian could tell that the woman’s anger was not directed at her. Tapping Sun Ming’s address with her finger, the map-seller went on. “The whole area was levelled not long ago to build fancy hotels. Now the damned Olympics!” she spat. “Ever since the announcement, everything in the city is subjected to the Olympic Games. When the time comes, the government wants to pretend to the rest of the world that China is as rich as the West.”

The woman rattled on, not realizing that most of her words, in particular the reference to the Olympics, were going straight over Shui-lian’s head.

“But what happened to the people who used to live there?” Pan-pan asked when the map-seller finally decided to catch a breath. “We don’t care about what’s going on there. We just want to find this person.”

“Gone,” the woman replied, lashing her free hand into the air.

“Gone?” Pan-pan stumbled. “Where? All of them? Are you sure? How…?”

“If you don’t believe me, go check it out yourself,” the woman scolded and began to shout. “Map! Get your Beijing map!”

“Wait, Auntie. At least tell us how to get there,” Pan-pan pleaded. All the expectations she had harboured since she decided to leave the factory were threatening to evaporate.

“That’s what the map’s for!” the woman snapped. Shaking her head, she took a pen out of her pocket and circled an intersection within a maze of crisscrossed lanes on Pan-pan’s map. “Here’s where we are.” She then moved the tip of the pen upward and drew a square over a web of thin lines. “Here’s the area where your relative lives, or used to. These thin lines are
hu-tongs,
the residential alleyways. Most are gone now. Some are still being demolished. You’ll see for yourself.” She pointed north with her free hand, and her voice softened. “Walk straight and pass …” she stopped, looking up at a hazy sky and counting in murmurs, “pass seven, maybe eight streets, I’m not sure anymore. Anyway, you won’t miss it. It’s the second wide street next to Changan Avenue. Cross on your left and walk a few more blocks before heading north again.
Aiya,
why am I telling you all this? It’s a wasteland now. A ruin. You can’t miss it.”