The Secret Mother (9 page)

No, my hands felt gnarled and numb as root ginger. I couldn’t keep up with the beat. There wasn’t always enough time to check the display screen properly and a few times I skipped step six, the bit about checking for defects in the glass. Press this, press that … My hands fumbled with the pincer tool used for handling wiring and a tiny shock shot up my forearm. Was it my imagination, or was the young manager watching my struggle?

By mid-morning, I improved, and the conveyor belt started to move faster. The coldness of the room kept me alert. I decided I would write down the English words at the end of my shift and learn them in the dorm. At the start of the day, the circuit boards were coming every two minutes, but by the end of the morning I counted only ninety seconds between each klaxon. It was like counting lightning strikes in the fields back home, working out how long until a thunderstorm broke.

“This one is not functioning at optimum efficiency,” said a sudden voice from behind.

I jumped and dropped my board.

“I agree,” said a second man.

“Too much time wasted on inserting the COMMS card.”

“Yes. Far too much time wasted.”

“Five seconds, to be precise.”

“Five seconds.”

“Almost two and a half fewer circuit boards per hour.”

“Two and a half.”

“Not sufficient.”

“No.”

One of the men straightened me up, while the other pushed my stool closer to the work station. They angled the tray of COMMS cards so there was less distance for me to reach. I felt like Little Brother’s clockwork toy.

“Time improvement?” asked the first man.

“Two seconds,” said the other.

“Two seconds.”

“Increase per hour?”

“One board.”

“One board.”

“It will need to be monitored.”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

The men went over to Xiaofan’s station. The one with the clipboard whispered in her ear. She nodded. He gave her an encouraging pat on the shoulder, like the owner of a well-trained dog. The men passed down the line, checking each girl’s speed with a stop clock.

The light above the conveyor belt flashed and the next shoal of circuit boards swam down the black belt towards us. Zhi seemed hardly to acknowledge the arrival of the two men and I could only assume their presence was a normal part of life on the line, even so, they gave me the creeps. They appeared twice more that morning and each time recorded the speed of my work. They always spoke to Xiaofan who worked more swiftly than anyone else, twice as fast as me.

Only once, that first morning, did the belt slow down. Fatty raised her hand for an
out of position permit.
She needed to go to the sanitary room.

To break the monotony, I counted five minutes and twenty six seconds. When Fatty returned, Zhi ordered her to stand on her stool.

“Oh, come on,” said Fatty. “I used my permit.”

“That’s irrelevant; you spent too long away from the line. Now get up.”

Everyone stopped and gawped as Fatty climbed unsteadily onto her stool.

“Worker 1946, you’ve neglected one of the main principles of factory life: your time is factory property. You are factory property.”

Fatty hunched her shoulders.

“You will spend the rest of the morning standing on the stool while your workers finish the order. As repayment to Forwood, you will spend the night cleaning equipment.”

A groan rippled down the line, with murmurs that we were going to miss lunch making up for Fatty. An hour later, she was swaying badly. I thought she might fall headlong onto the belt. But she never cried. Instead, she made the mistake of tutting at Cousin behind her back.

“What was that?” said Zhi, reaching for the pincer tool.

Fatty yelped as Zhi jabbed her ankles.

“Don’t ever undermine me, 1946. I’m your line leader. Now get back to work, all of you!”

The conveyor belt resumed.

What kind of a monster had Zhi become? I glanced up at the manager’s office. Surely he wouldn’t condone Zhi’s behaviour – didn’t he have anything to say? To my surprise, he lay with his head on his desk looking, for all the world, sound asleep.

I resolved to find Zhi’s dorm and take things into my own hands as soon as possible. Perhaps she slept in a different part of the factory, with the other line leaders?

When Damei, the bully, arrived two hours later, Fatty was still standing on the stool, limp and miserable, her legs shaking.

Damei kowtowed mockingly at Zhi. “Line Leader Zhen, what an honour it is for me to escort you to Personnel.”

“What’s this all about?”

“You’ve been caught on camera.”

“What? I’m not going anywhere. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“My boss wants to know why you pulled a worker off the line. This order’s due out tomorrow.”

“It will be ready.”

“Save it for the boss,” said Damei, helping Fatty down from the stool. “The rest of you have fifteen minutes to eat your lunch then you’re to come straight back to the line.”

“You can’t tell them what to do.”

“Instructions are instructions Line Leader Zhen, I’m only fulfilling management’s desires – you of all people should know about that.” Damei smirked.

Zhi refused to budge. “You must think I’m stupid, believing Personnel have sent a low life like you here to get me.”

“Watch your mouth, Hunan
mei
,” said Damei and grabbed Zhi by the arm.

She let out an undignified squeal.

I dropped my circuit board. The conveyor belt ceased. A worker on my line got up from her station. The others quickly followed, including Fatty. Xiaofan, however, continued working. I thought she muttered the word ‘traitors’.

“Come back, girls,” said Zhi. “I have not instructed you to go. I’m the line leader, you must show me respect!”

The pull of food was too great for most and they scurried off. I hung back to stick up for Zhi.

“Oh it’s you,
slug
,” said Damei. “What’s wrong – don’t you Hunan
mei
eat?”

Zhi’s eyes caught mine and she softened. “Leave her out of this.”

“How sweet, your cousin’s sticking up for you. What would Manager He say if he knew you were showing favouritism?” Damei laughed and nodded up towards the upper office.

So that was his name. Manager He, the one who’d interviewed me, who’d praised my wooden figurine, touched my hands. Manager He, the one asleep in his office.

Zhi glanced towards the bureau where he sat slouched over his desk.

“Come on, let’s get this over with,” said Damei, “I want my lunch.”

Damei shepherded Zhi towards a different exit on the far side of the room.

“Wait! Zhi!” I called, “What will happen to you?”

“Go and eat,” Damei said.

“Zhi!”

She didn’t look back. The door closed with a deadening bang. I rattled it in the silence, but it was locked and I was left behind with Xiaofan.

I hurried away down a white tiled corridor that led not to the canteen, but a door marked
Bonding.
The smell was nauseating. I pressed my ear to the door but there was no sound. It seemed an unlikely place to find Zhi. I pulled gently on the handle, slipped inside and the door closed behind me, extinguishing the wedge of light from the corridor. My steps were tentative, but I was determined to find my cousin.

Through the darkness, I edged forwards, feeling for a surface, a wall, a handle. I sensed a presence, but had taken too many steps into the room to get out quickly.

“Who’s there?” I called.

The sound of breathing deepened. I stumbled into a blunt edge of machinery. Instinctively, I raised a hand to stop myself falling, but instead caught hold of a lever. The machinery creaked into life. A klaxon sounded and I could hear the whirr of a fan, the drop sound of cog teeth moving. A warm gust of air blew over my face and a voice screamed. It was mine.

Torchlight loped over the ceiling. It afforded me a brief picture of bodies bent double at their desks. Suddenly, a hand covered my eyes. I was hauled into a bright adjoining room and directed onto a chair.

“And to think, we were about to send out a search party, 2204!”

The woman peering down at me wore a nurse’s gown. Her mouth was covered with a cloth mask. She reached out a gloved hand and shone her torch into my face.

“Where’s Zhi? What have you done with her?”

“Don’t worry. This won’t take long.”

I squirmed, trying to free myself as the woman held my mouth open.

“No obvious dental problems,” she said to the assistant who unclipped my ID badge.

“Please take off your overalls, 2204. We need to check you over.”

“What for?”

“Just do as I say.”

“Let me go. I want my cousin.”

“Be still.”

“But you’re hurting me.”

“Be still.”

“I’m not taking my clothes off.”

Something stung my skin and I yelped. The light was so bright. Somewhere in the background I heard a voice calling, “Sky Eyes, Sky Eyes,” and then, when blackness swallowed up the words, there was a name, “It’s Ren, Ren … you’ll be okay.”

The room I found myself in had no furniture. The walls were white, the windows long and open, the ceiling high. A breeze clacked at the blind. A bird hopped onto the window sill, cocked its head as if to ask what I was doing there. Other birds flowered in the courtyard’s bare mei trees, singing.

The door opened and a stranger entered. She didn’t speak but handed me a small square of folded paper, then left.

It smelt of Father’s tobacco.
Please, let it be a note from him, begging me to come home.
I brought it to my face and breathed deeply. The smell was his hands, the insides of his pockets and the winter melon candy he stashed there. It was also his face, his mouth puffing on the bamboo pipe. I ached for him to come and take me home. My tears spidered an ink-stain on the paper. It wasn’t his writing.

Due to the
inevitable
unfortunate incident with Line Leader Zhen this morning, and her departure, I now require your assistance. Come to my bureau tomorrow night, 3am prompt. Do not tell anyone. Destroy this note immediately.
Mgr. He

I wasn’t so stupid as to go to his bureau wearing blue overalls. I waited until Damei’s mouth slackened into a lazy ‘o’ and her body bunched worm-like beneath the blanket. Damei – the only girl in our dorm to have a clerical job – would be the one caught on camera slinking through Forwood in the middle of the night.

The doors of the dorms were all closed along the corridor. I picked my way through space which seemed to shrink into darkness. I felt for the banister. Fifty-one steps to the sanitary room. Another fifty and I was in
Circuitry.
After that, Manager He’s bureau.

A desk lamp glowed in the distance. Something dark hovered up there, but when I looked again there was nothing.

Be brave, he’s a man not a tiger,
I told myself as I tiptoed down the line.

“
Tsst
,” came a voice. Manager He hovered on the bottom step of the staircase that led to his bureau. “You’re late.” He hurried up the steps and disappeared inside the office, leaving the door ajar. “Don’t just stand there, come in.”

The room was warm and dark. He gestured to the corner and I grappled in the half-light until I found a stool. He shuffled through the papers on his desk. The vacuous gloom of the circuitry room stretched out below.

He wasn’t the manager I remembered from my interview: no tie, no suit jacket or shiny black shoes. In fact, he wore soft slippers and a velvet coat. Balls of scrunched up paper were strewn across the floor. The bureau smelled stale.

“Time … frittered away again,” he muttered and slumped back in his chair. “Talk amongst yourselves, I need to clear my mind.”

I searched the shadows and an old man leaned forwards into the skirt of lamplight, his eyes wrinkling into a smile. “
Wănshàng hăo,
young lady,” he said and tapped the leg of my stool with his cane.

I startled, forgetting to bow my head.

He looked at my chest, the nipples pert as goji berries beneath Damei’s thin blouse, and removed his deerstalker. “Want to try it on? I see you’re cold.”

I folded my arms. “A man’s hat does not sit well on the head of a girl.”

“Ha-ha! Wise and stubborn, you’ll make a wonderful wife,” his thin lips smacked together to make a
tac-tac
noise.

He set a pipe to rest between his gums and produced a small metal tin filled with dark shreds of tobacco. He pressed the shreds lingeringly into the bowl of his pipe as if savouring it with his fingertips. His eyes closed and he inhaled deeply, manipulating the tobacco with a needle. A few short puffs then he sucked contentedly on the stem. The bureau filled with a sickeningly sweet smell as the smoke uncoiled like calligraphy ink in water. The old man’s eyes rolled and the pipe fell from his lips.

Manager He blew out the spirit lamp. “It is time to talk about the greatest of all honours. Can you imagine what that might be?”

“Erm …”

Manager He stood up and gazed at the portrait of Deng Xiaoping on his wall. “I’m talking about the honour of leadership.” I glanced around for Chairman Mao’s picture but it wasn’t there.

“Worker 2204,” he said, beckoning me to his side, “I’ve brought you to my office because I am going to make an example of you.”

His hands were very warm on my shoulders. His breath smelt of peppermint. I swallowed purposefully, trying to suppress the urge to hiccup brought on by the sudden tension.

“What, no reply?” he said.

“I … I don’t know what to say. If there’s a problem with my work, then I promise to correct it. I can’t afford to lose this job.”

“Eh?”

“You said you were going to make an example of me.”

“I have no intention of firing you – quite the opposite.”

Manager He took a flask from his drawer and poured himself a cup of peppermint tea. He also produced a tin of candies, removed the lid and offered me one.

I salivated.