The Secret Mother (27 page)

“There must be others.”

“I share a dorm with seven others. You soon find out who to avoid.”

“The atmosphere is good or bad?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

I pursed my lips and pulled nervously on the sleeve of my blouse.

“On the hours?” he asked. “The food?”

I nodded.

“So the girls in your dorm don’t like working at Forwood?”

“It’s not really a question of liking it, Herr Schnelleck, we’re there to work because we have to and because we want to live for ourselves; most of us came from the country. There aren’t many jobs back home apart from looking after your husband and his family.”

His wife no doubt filled her time with much more exciting pursuits than washing Schnelleck’s socks. She could play the piano in her T-shirt whenever she wanted; her cares all light as rose petals. “For you, in Europe, there’s no such thing as an arranged marriage?”

He paused, gave a laugh, and pointed to his shirt sleeves. “No, in my country a man must learn how to press his shirts using a travel iron!”

I was confused; did he mean the women were lazy?

“So you’re from the country?” he said.

“Hunan province.”

“Ah, Chairman Mao.”

Hunan. Mao. They weren’t words I felt as proud of as I was supposed to.

“Mai Ling, it strikes me you’re neither happy at home in the country nor in the city.”

“Happy?”

“Yes,
gāo xìng.
Is that the right word? I’m sorry my Chinese is below average, I’m learning it for business purposes.”

“I’m very happy at Forwood, as are the other workers,” I said, pulling myself together. “If I’ve given you any other impression, Herr Schnelleck, then I’m afraid it’s not true. Forwood Motor Corporation is the best opportunity a young woman like me could have in life. I have a great future there. I believe my job is well-paid and the prospects are the best of any factory and …”

A porter stepped before us. “Herr Schnelleck?” He offered a note on a tray.

Schnelleck read quickly. “I should never have come. Isla told me my daughter’s condition is worsening. Mai Ling, forgive me for dashing off like this.” He clasped his bristly head. “Please, give my regards to your Manager. Thank him for his hospitality, but tell him that there will be no business deal.”

“Pardon?”

“I can’t grant Forwood our account.”

“But …”

“It’s been a pleasure to spend time with you. But I fear I may have been too easily impressed with the cost-savings your Manager highlighted in his many letters.” He headed for the door.

“Wait! Don’t go! You must not have analysed the figures correctly.”

He hesitated. “Figures are not enough, your Manager will see that in time – maybe twenty years from now it will become clear. For now, he is a child learning to walk.”

Manager He was no child. He was the most enterprising man I’d ever met.

“With respect, you don’t know all our plans for Forwood. He’s a good man and you’re making a big mistake by leaving me here like this.”

“Please, Mai Ling, don’t be upset. My daughter needs me now.”

I grabbed him by the arm. “How can you say that? Don’t you know the effort we’ve gone to? At least talk to him, phone him now before you leave. I’m begging you to hear what he has to say about the future …”

“Let me make this clear to you, Mai Ling. From everything you’ve told me, I now realise that your Manager has no concept of how to run an effective business. You cannot cut corners with your staff and their safety – as was proved. Yes, I heard about the fire, it was in the local paper provided by the hotel. If I was considering investing in Forwood prior to this visit, then I am very sorry but that is no longer a correct option for me.” Schnelleck’s smile had vanished. “I wish you every good thing life has to offer, Mai Ling, but I must say goodbye.”

I watched as he darted through the rain towards reception and knew that my future, my luck, went with him. And in that moment I hated Beethoven, almost as much as I hated Isla with her ponytail and Gerda, poorly in some distant land.

Hours later the rain still beat against the shutters of our dorm. It was time for our evening meal, everyone was in the canteen, but I lay alone in my bunk, staring at the wires on what used to be Ren’s bed, wishing I was dead.

A scratching at the door interrupted my thoughts. At first I believed it was a rat, I had seen a few since the fire.

I opened the door to see Manager He. “Well, well,” he said, “you’re back early.”

“Manager, what are you doing here? We’re not meant to see each other in the dorm. We can’t …”

“I’ve come especially to find you, my little star.” His words were slurred. I could smell baijiu.

“You look unwell Manager; can I get you a drink of water?”

He shook his head, kicked a pair of work slippers out of his way and batted the overalls from around his head where they hung on the drying wires. “Not much space in here, is there?” he laughed, “Still, enough room for the
dagongmei,
eh, my little star.”

I didn’t like his tone of voice.

“So, how did you find him?”

“Herr Schnelleck?”

“The very same – was he good? Better than me? Was it large? That’s what they say about foreign men: big nose, big –” he broke off to belch. “Aiya! Pardon the hog. Don’t keep me in suspense, 2204, how long did it take before you and him got down to business?”

“We waited hours for you. What happened? Where were you? I’ve been so worried, I thought maybe the boss … Has there been an accident, you don’t look yourself?”

He fell down on Damei’s bunk and bounced, “How d’you sleep on this thing? And is that the breakfast pipe? I keep telling them to turn it off.”

“Manager, I think you should go, the others will be back soon. We could get into trouble if they find you here.”

He laughed cruelly, as though I’d told him the funniest story of his life.

“I might get into trouble? Since when were managers ruled by workers?” He scratched his belly. “Not learnt much since you arrived have you? Still thinking like you did back in the fields, up to your arse in mud? Anyway, you still haven’t told me how it went with Schnelleck? I tried calling him but they said he checked out hours ago.”

Why was he being so nasty all of a sudden when only yesterday he’d held me in his arms and we’d made love? I perched on my bed.

“Speak up, 2204, I can’t hear you. Tell you what, I’ll come and join you.”

He lumbered out of Damei’s bunk and pinned me down on the bed, his stinky breath all over my face.

“Now tell me, why would a man like Schnelleck decide to leave all of a sudden without even saying a proper goodbye, without calling to thank me?”

“There was an urgent family matter – his daughter was very sick.”

“You expect me to believe that, 2204?”

“It’s the truth,” I squirmed, frightened. “He told me all about her.”

“You weren’t there to talk, 2204. Your job was to be the bait. Tell me, did you screw him like I taught you?”

“Manager, you don’t know what you’re saying. Please, get off me, the others will find you.”

“Did you talk dirty like you did for me?”

I started to cry, but a sweaty hand clamped my mouth shut.

“A man doesn’t travel halfway across the world to be disappointed, 2204. You said yourself he should be treated like an emperor. I hope you did a good job?”

“I never did any of those things – you’re hurting me.”

“What happened? Didn’t he like the Chinese way? Wasn’t he interested in your little breasts? It’s not as though we didn’t practise enough, was it? How many times did I screw you?” He shook me by the shoulders. “How many?”

I was crying too much to answer.

“Stupid, dirty peasant.” He slapped me hard across the cheek, his ring slicing my skin. He wiped the blood on my pillow as though it were poison. “And now what’s happened to my chances, eh? You’ve ruined it all, you dumb bitch.”

He held me down so I couldn’t move, undid his zip and took down his trousers.

I counted the seconds until it was over. In my mind I counted the lighting strikes in the fields back home, the seconds between the klaxon on the conveyor belt, the wires on Ren’s old bunk. I counted anything but the number of thrusts it took to hollow out my stomach.

Afterwards, I bunched my knees up and stared at the wall, terrified. He demanded a cigarette and dug one of the hidden Marlboros from beneath my mattress. I heard the click of his lighter and smoke filled the space inside my bunk; eventually there was a sudden give in the bed. The stub of his cigarette lay discarded on my sheet.

Even if I scrubbed myself raw with soap, his stain would never come out. A deeper wound throbbed urgently, multiplying, growing out of my control: one new cell dividing every second, too many for me to imagine, let alone count. Too fast to be monitored or recorded or checked by any time analyst.

I started at a movement coming from the doorway. I looked up to see the face of Fei Fei, pale and horrified, before she disappeared to shadow.

I worked the bare minimum, stole sugar from the canteen, avoided overtime and, returning to the dorm numb with exhaustion, fell into oblivion until the alarm woke me and I began again; an endless repetition of seconds which dragged into days. When Fatty asked me why I’d swapped my bunk for Damei’s, I told her the new Bei
mei
farted in her sleep.

I think it was a Thursday when he returned, unshaven and wearing the same clothes he’d worn the night of the attack. He brushed past me down the line; the unmistakable odour of baijiu lingering in his wake. Bile rose in my mouth, but I swallowed it – as I had swallowed the secret of what he’d done to me.

Xiaofan grinned to see the end of my relationship with him; it was all a game to her. She had won. I was the star of nothing. Not one of my posters remained after the fire; if it did, I would have torn it to shreds, as Ren did that first morning.

He stayed in his bureau all weekend, until it developed a powerful, fermented stench that made several girls cover their noses with scarves as they worked. They nicknamed him the ‘wilder beast’.

My time of the month came and went, with only a few brown freckles on my underwear. Mother never really explained to me the ins and outs of sex, but she did give me this warning: “never do anything stupid with a boy.” If I did, “no life would be spared.”

April began slowly and with yet more rain. The mei trees in the courtyard remained black and spindly.

I was skiving around there one day when I heard the familiar sound of a girl crying. There, crouching on her haunches behind the black stub of a mei tree, was Fei Fei, her face buried into her knees.

“Fei Fei, what’s the matter?”

“Leave me alone,” she said, “I want to be on my own.”

“You can’t stay there, it’s going to rain.”

“I don’t care.”

“What is it? What’s happened?”

“I don’t want your help.”

“Alright, stay there, but you’ll be drenched.” I said angrily, wondering what she had to cry about?

“Everyone should leave me alone!” she screamed suddenly and bolted in the direction of her dorm, her lank hair slapping like a dead bird against her back.

I stared vacantly at the stub of the mei tree where she had squatted. There in the ash something had been crossed out. It was a heart and the word “Manager.” It was so obvious! How could I have missed the signs? Even a dog’s body like Fei Fei could have a crush on someone in charge.

A sharp twinge in my side made me double up. Another and I was limping to the dorm.

“Let me guess, Kwo’s rice has given you shits again?” Fatty joked.

I collapsed onto Damei’s bunk, clutching my belly. “Must have been that second helping …”

Fatty’s face dropped as she watched me curl up in agony. “You’d better get to the nurse.”

“No!”

“At least let me help you.”

Fatty guided me to the sanitary room and I threw up. She splashed cold water on my face. The colour returned to my cheeks, but I was still shaking. A memory of his urgent breath thumped inside my ear, the pain as he had forced deeper into me.
Stupid, dirty peasant … dumb bitch
… What love speaks like that? What love leaves a scar? I nursed my cheek and the cherry-coloured scab shaped like a sickle, inflicted by Manager He’s ring.

“Don’t worry, Mai Ling, whatever it is I’ll take care of you. Hunan
mei
stick together.”

I leant over the sink as the nausea washed over me again. “Thanks, Fatty. I’ll be better in a few days.”

Missing a period was nothing unusual, I told myself; other girls at the factory went months without theirs and everything turned out alright. It was just hard work, bad food and worry that had caused my bleeding to stop.

But the date of my next period came and went, again without a trace of blood. The sickness intensified. At all times of day I ran to the sanitary room, heaving to rid myself of the thing implanted within. I told the others it was the shit we ate, or made up a story about my
qi
being weakened by the fire. Fatty offered to come with me to see the nurse. I could feel my belly start to thicken for the first time since working at Forwood. The baby would soon protrude beneath my overalls. Unwilling to face it alone, and frightened because I had no means to care for a baby, I set out for Manager He’s bureau.

Empty bottles of baijiu and reams of papers lay strewn across the floor. The filing cabinets once so neatly ordered, were a jumble of loose sheets. In the middle of it all, he lay slumped over his desk, snoring. The place stank.

“Who’s there? Mother, is that you?” he called without lifting his head.

I refused to pity him this time.

“What’s going on?” His voice sounded hoarse, his head seemed rooted to the desk.

“It’s me.”

He groaned. “Turn off the light, 2204, my head’s killing me.”

I ignored him and opened the window overlooking circuitry.

Eventually he roused, his sweating face was the colour of congee. “I thought you’d come,” he said.

We sat in silence, neither mentioning what he’d done to me.