The Secret Mother (30 page)

Madam Feng was staring down at me. The bandage on her hand was gone and I could see the angry writing ringed in puffy, red flesh.

“You decided to stay? A good decision for someone in your situation.”

My fists unclenched.

“You gotta be careful around this part of town,” she said. “Don’t carry so much cash. Be smart. Maybe we’ll get you a tattoo to help you to fit in.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Ah come on, kid, lighten up. Your face is too pretty to look so miserable. Whatever brought you here, forget it now. Trust me, you’ll survive. But I have to sleep, I’m wrecked after last night. The clients thought ‘Take a Chance’ was an open invitation. Anyway, got to sleep.”

My bedroom door clicked shut.

As Madam Feng slept, I rummaged in her cupboards and found dried egg noodles, some powdered spices and a jar of coffee. Her fridge contained a tin of half-eaten lychees that tasted off. I sat at her desk and held the tattoo needle, as if I was back on the line. It was actually made up of a group of small needles. The sudden memory of Zhi jabbing Fatty made me drop the equipment. Where was Cousin? I wondered, staring at my washed-out reflection in the mirror. Violet circles had appeared beneath my eyes, I dabbed them with Madam Feng’s whitener and told myself to forget Zhi.

Over the days that followed, Madam Feng and I fell into our own separate routines. Her days were largely spent sleeping; occasionally I’d hear her singing in the bedroom. The albums kicking around on her bedroom floor were Western stuff – a black female singer with tightly-cropped curls, a man playing a trumpet as shiny as his soulful face. I wondered how she’d got hold of them, but I didn’t ask questions and she didn’t either, nor did she refer to Manager He. There seemed to be only one rule at Madam Feng’s place: no drugs. If she caught me with opium I’d be out on my ear, she said.

Every day, she spent exactly one hour in the bathroom before leaving for work. She wore sequin-studded gowns and covered herself up in a long grey trench coat on her way out. The gowns hugged her muscular body in a way Mother would call scandalous. She was a very powerful woman dressed like that. She stayed out all night, almost every night, and her key turned in the lock at six every morning, as predictable as the breakfast alarm. She never answered personal questions, though, and would leave the room if I asked about her work, “Hell, kid, since when did you become one of them?” I knew she meant The Party.

During the day, I emptied bins, mopped floors and cleaned windows so she had no reason to get rid of me. The work was child’s play, I couldn’t believe my luck. It ceased to matter how she knew Manager He, she gave me free digs and didn’t care I was living illegally in Nanchang.

Occasionally, I left the apartment to buy cheap melons from a stall on the corner. My baby had started to crave anything juicy and refreshing. Going out was well worth the swollen ankles and terrible fatigue. It gave me space to think, sometimes to plan – but never to dream – dreaming was for naïve little girls who didn’t know any better.

I had agreed to meet Yifan on a Saturday and got up early to wash my hair. The water was cold, but that didn’t matter. At least, I didn’t have to share the sink with a dozen others. Away from the factory, my hair started to regain its sheen and my nails grew longer and strong.

I found Yifan pacing the shaded footpath near the panda enclosure in the People’s Park. He wore a pair of smart, khaki trousers and a brilliantly white, crisp shirt which dazzled in the sun. His head was bowed and he seemed to be talking to himself. I approached via the side gate and crept up on him through the willow trees, nervous in case Manager He’s spy was still tracking me.

Yifan was singing off-key. It jarred compared to Madam Feng’s perfect voice. He turned round embarrassed.

“Awful isn’t it?” he said, “I only sing when no-one’s listening. Stretching the bronchial tract is a great form of relaxation. You should try it.”

I smiled. “I don’t think the Beijing Opera will be calling you any time soon.”

He asked if I’d eaten. There was a stall selling his favourite steamed pork with rice flour dumplings on his way into the park. We bought some and ate on a nearby bench; two tame ducks waddled around our feet.

“How does it feel to be free?” I asked. “I mean, without revision.”

He tossed his last scraps of pork to the ducks. “Actually, I’ve been playing a lot of chess. The guy I share an apartment with likes to think he’s better than me. So far I’ve beaten him ten games to one – though he put me at an unfair disadvantage by playing rock music throughout our game.”

“You got any other hidden talents?” I asked jovially.

Yifan slid off the bench and sat crossed-legged on the grass. He pulled his feet up behind his neck and grinned. “I can do this!”

“Ay! That looks painful!”

“Not if you’re flexible in the gluteus maximus.”

He jumped across the grass on his backside, his legs wrapped around his neck like an acrobat from the state circus.

“I’m the only one in our meditation group who can sit cross-legged for four hours without even stretching. Did you know, Mai Ling, the femur is the longest bone in the human body, but your intestines are ten times longer than you?”

“That’s a lot of guts.”

He gave a shy belch and unhooked his legs from around his neck.

I suggested we take a walk now that the sun was less intense. It pleased me to stroll along the winding footpaths, and we crossed a bridge leading to a highly scented area of the park. The pineapple trees were ladened with ripe fruit and the borders crammed with exotic-looking plants. Yifan told me some of their names and we chatted about our families, the villages we’d left behind in Hunan and the characters we’d grown up with – we had a lot in common, although being an only boy, he’d known privileges I could only dream of, such as his education. He described his school and Teacher Herzu who sparked his interest in biology.

“She encouraged me in every way possible and would let me spend time in her laboratory during lunch hour and also after class – that’s when I started to learn how amazing the human body is.”

I glanced sideways, feeling a mixture of curiosity and something else.

“My parents say I’m more inquisitive than a honey bee.”

I broke a palm spear from an overhanging pineapple tree and threw it over the bridge into the little stream. Yifan did the same and we rushed to the other side to see whose spear came through first. I wished Little Brother was with us at that moment.

“Mai Ling,” said Yifan, gazing into the stream. “I’m sorry if I bore you. I feel so free to talk that sometimes I lose track of time.”

“You don’t have to say sorry,” I said. In fact, I wished he would stop apologising all the time. “I’m the one who should apologise to you.”

His gentle eyes looked steadily into mine. For a split second I thought I’d tell him everything, the whole story from start to finish. “There’s a lot I haven’t told you,” I began, but trailed off.

His hand fell lightly on my shoulder. “Tell me then, I promise to listen.”

He was so kind and earnest; he may even have agreed to see me again. But Yifan deserved better than a reject. I leant over and kissed him on the cheek. “Maybe I will, one day,” I said. “But for now let’s walk.”

Our meetings continued along this vein for several more weeks over the summer. The baby grew heavy in my abdomen and I disguised the bump with loose-fitting shirts stolen from a neighbour’s washing line.

Yifan decided to stay in the city rather than return home to Hunan. He wanted to improve his chess game. By mid-August, he’d been spotted by a local scout from the State Federation of Master Chess Players who asked him to represent the province at a national competition. The tournament took him away from Nanchang for a week while he travelled the long train journey up to Beijing. He returned dejected, having reached the finals and lost out to another student his age from Guangzhou.

We met up shortly after he returned and took our usual stroll around the park, followed by tea in one of the rooms overlooking the panda enclosure, popular with tourists, especially Americans – who were around every corner in those days. I always did a double take whenever I saw a couple of big noses with a Chinese baby girl in the park.

Yifan filled me in on the chess competition. The winner, Ban Ji, hadn’t spoken to anyone throughout the whole tournament, not even a polite hello.

“He never ate or drank. Some say he didn’t even go to the bathroom. When he wasn’t playing, he watched the other contestants – he was very intimidating.”

As the sun crept over our table, Yifan put a hand out and covered mine.

“Close your eyes,” he said. “I’ve bought you something.”

The gift was small and wooden inside my palm.

“She’s my winning queen,” he said proudly. “I played with her all the way through to the finals. She brought me luck.”

I turned the chess piece over and found a double happiness couplet carved into the base.

“You do know the story of double happiness, don’t you?”

I nodded, blushing at the mention of my favourite love story.

“When I was a young boy, I dreamt of being the student in that story. I think to find someone who you can love from the heart, someone to share life’s journey, is the greatest gift of all.”

I thanked him with a kiss on the cheek. “It’s lovely.”

He reddened. “It’s not much. I am glad you like it. I was desperate to find something personal, something you could keep. There are so many shops selling so many things in Beijing. I searched a whole day and found nothing; it was only when I returned to my room I realised the most obvious gift was there all along, sitting on her square on my chessboard.”

“You looked all day, for me?”

“You say I’m clever, but I am actually very slow. I didn’t appreciate what mattered most was right in front of me – as you are now.”

The chess piece felt smooth in my hand. I wished holding Yifan could be so easy. “We should walk some more; it’s cooler now.”

We stepped outside and walked a little way along the garden path, but soon he stopped and turned to face me.

“Mai Ling, you make me so happy. I love being in your company. When we’re together, everything’s right and when we’re apart I can hardly think of anything except when we’ll next see each other.”

The baby rolled in my secret place.

“Speak to me, Mai Ling, put me out of my misery.” He reached for my hand. “Tell me you feel the same way? Tell me this is more than just friendship and pleasant walks through the park?”

He stepped closer, until I could smell his aftershave. Or was it the roses in the tearoom garden? He pressed against the baby. How much longer could I lie to kind, gentle Yifan? He would make someone a good husband, but it would never be me.

I bowed my head and let my hand fall away from his.

“I’ve made an error of judgement, a very grave one …” he said.

“Yifan –”

He stepped back, his eyes brimming with tears. “I must go.”

I watched the back of his crisp white shirt disappear up the garden path and out into the park. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, but it was too late.

I was so miserable that I didn’t go back to Madam Feng’s place for two whole days and nights. Instead I slept rough in the People’s Park in the hope Yifan might come back and find me there, waiting for him. I agonised over my decision not to embroil him in my messy life, and my heart ached for him. I desperately wanted somebody to take care of me and love me kindly. I cried so bitterly my baby must have felt my grief.

Madam Feng didn’t ask where I’d been or why, but she was surprised when I demanded a favour from her.

“Why the change of heart?” she said.

I sat at her desk and held out her tattoo machinery. “No questions, right? You just do it. I need this.”

She pulled up a chair beside me and took a pen out of the drawer.

“I want you to tattoo double happiness on me. Right here, inside my wrist. Here, here, you see. This place. Here. Where I can feel the blood. Pumping. Here. It’s beating. My heart. You know? It does. Here. It doesn’t. Stop. But …”

“Sshh, kid. Sshh, you’ll upset the baby. Don’t lose your breath.”

The needles punctured me. The double happiness symbol stood proud. My skin was rubbed and raw. The tattoo she gave me was no pain at all.

The bigger I grew, the harder it was to sleep on my mat and so I moved to the settee. There, I made up for lost time: all the nights in the factory spent doing overtime, working until dawn for Manager He. Sleep like a coma. I never heard Madam Feng come in from work and could sleep through any amount of noise in the street below. Until one morning, the loud bang of a gun jolted me awake.

A man’s hand was grappling to unlock the chain on our front door. His fingers poked around the jamb, feeling for the bolt. “You’ve gone too far this time, bitch. Open up,” he shouted.

Instinctively, I rushed to hold back the intruder, but the door broke and swung open. The guy was in his thirties and wore a bomber jacket. “Who the fuck are you?” he barked and grabbed me by the hair.

“Please don’t hurt me.”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know, I swear.”

He let go and barged around the apartment, into all the bedrooms. I could hear doors being flung open, first Madam Feng’s and then mine. It sounded like he was trashing the place. I was so scared I didn’t dare grab her tattooing needles.

“I want you to tell her I’ll be back. She’s not going to get away with her tricks, you understand?”

I nodded, shaking.

The door slammed. I waited to hear the sound of his boots on the staircase, before creeping over to the balcony. He skulked off in the direction of the melon stall, his outward appearance no different to any other guy in that part of town.

The next morning, Madam Feng arrived home later than usual. I jumped when the door creaked open.

“Shit, kid, the guy’s a psychopath.”

She rushed to the balcony and drew the curtains, then called her workmate Solino. “Get out now, Sol. You’ve got to leave Nanchang before he comes for you too.”

Despite the hour, she poured us both liquor. I cradled it to my cheek.