Hot Poppies

by Reggie Nadelson

Dawn turned the flashlight on. The floor was raw concrete. There were cribs, seven of them jammed into the space, but they had no sheets, no mattresses. The stink that came from them almost made me gag.

  In one of the cribs, two babies were wedged together so that they could barely move. Bottles of milk stood on the ground out of reach. There was no way the babies could get to the milk or feed themselves.

  Against a wall was an iron cot with a baby on it. “Girl or boy?” I said.

  “Don’t you get it?” Dawn whispered. “They’re all girls here.” She shone the light on the infant, who looked about four months old. “She’s two,” Dawn said.

  “Two months?”

  “She’s two years old.”

  Her legs were like sticks, like children in the Nazi camps or the Ethiopian famine. Stick legs. Dawn lifted the child’s shirt gently and showed me her skeletal ribs.

  Water dripped into a tin basin in a corner. Plaster had fallen off the ceiling. Water dripped through it. Paint chips came down with the water. Plink plink plink, the noise was insistent, unrelenting. Dawn turned her flashlight on the other side of the stinking room.

  A few feet from the basin was a row of crude three-legged stools, a baby on each, heads lolling as if they were drugged. Under the stools were more chipped metal bowls. The babies were dressed in thick pants and shirts. One of them opened her eyes and seemed to see us. She made a mewling kind of noise. Like the others, she was tied down to her stool, she was its prisoner, tied to it by her legs.

  Gently, Dawn touched the little girl. “I’m going to take this one.”

  “She looks all right. She doesn’t look sick.”

  “She will be soon. ‘Summary resolution’, they call it.”

  “What?”

  Dawn picked the child up and wrapped her in a blanket she had in her bag.

  “‘Summary resolution’. Death by starvation. They don’t have to be sick. There are state orphanages where it’s completely random. Babies are starved and beaten. For a while, people thought it was only the big orphanage in Shanghai, the one that made all the papers. State orphanages, private ones like this. It’s all over the place. The idea is to reduce the number of babies and let westerners adopt the others. Adoption involves a hefty contribution. If you run an orphanage properly, you get a bonus. That’s how I gather it works. That’s how it works here, anyway, Artie. It took me some time to find out. Can you take her, do you think?”

  I took the baby and held her. She wasn’t heavy but she was warm.

  “Sometimes, if a baby is simply considered too unattractive, they let her starve. They think this one is funny-looking. She’s not pretty. That’s her crime. Do you want to see the rest? It’s pretty tough stuff.” Dawn crossed the room to a rough wooden door that swung open on a rusty hinge.

  In the next room, there were only two bare plank benches. It was dark except for Dawn’s flashlight. What could be tougher than this? What? I followed her into the next room.

  “They call it the waiting for death room,” Dawn said. “The babies that are diagnosed as having congenital maldevelopment of the brain—which is often doublespeak for bullshit—are starved, then they put them in here. They leave them on those benches to die.”

  For a few seconds we stood in the doorway. I looked at the benches. Seemed to see a baby on the bare plank.

  “We have to go now.” Dawn closed the door to the dying room behind us. “Now you know what I do, Artie. I take them one at a time. I pay for as many as I can or, if they won’t let me, I steal them. I take them to Hong Kong, to the orphanage. We have to move fast. In a few months, it will be impossible to get in here, or anywhere else.”

  “Why can’t you just take them all if no one wants them? You’re not short of cash.”

  “It would ruin the system. There’d be evidence. Don’t talk now, Artie. There isn’t much time.” Dawn looked at the baby in my arms. “Are you all right with her?”

  Dragging her leg heavily, the matron found us outside the room. She whispered to Dawn.

  “Something’s not right. Someone’s been making phone calls. Let me put the baby back,” Dawn said.

  The baby smelled terrible but she had attached herself to my shoulder. She was easy to carry. I didn’t want to put her back. I said, “I’m taking her.”

  “Put her in the car then. Everything is in the back. Clothes. Papers. If you have to go without me, just go. OK? Promise me.”

  Carrying the baby, I followed Dawn. As we turned a corner in the corridor in the main building, I could see a man in the hall. He had on a shiny green suit and he cracked his knuckles and yawned. Then he hurried away through a door. To the toilet, maybe. We had a couple of minutes’ grace time.

  I thought I could hear the rain water and the fat babies crying upstairs. Mine was wet. My shirt was soaking. It would have been funny any other place.

  “Let’s just go,” I said softly to Dawn. “Let’s just keep going.”

  The man in the suit never reappeared. He was probably on the phone to the cops already. Maybe he was a cop. I didn’t wait to find out.

  There was an infant’s seat in the back of the car and we put the baby into it. We got in. Dawn locked the doors, turned the key and drove slowly out of the courtyard, lights off, waiting, listening, peering out through the sweaty rain.

  “It happens,” she said. “Sometimes they call an official to check. Usually, I tell them I’m just visiting.”

  “And they leave you alone? Why?”

  “Sure they do. After all, I’m Mrs Peter Leung.”

  Dawn drove the Volvo into the street. “You still don’t get it, do you? This, you see, is my husband’s business.”

  Negotiating the outskirts of the city, Dawn checked her rear-view mirror constantly. “You thought it was me.”

  “I thought about it.”

  “You thought I was doing business with illegals. You could say I am, I guess.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  Suddenly, Dawn pulled into the parking lot of a Japanese fast fishburger restaurant. It was shut. The garbage piled out back stank of fish.

  “Why are we stopping?”

  “I heard something. Let’s wait a minute. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s a cop.”

  “How did you find out about Pete?”

  Dawn tied a black cotton scarf around her head. “Pete did a lot of business in Shenzhen. In Fuzhou. It didn’t make sense. Pete’s a banker. And he likes the high life. Beijing, Shanghai are his kind of places. Listen, Artie. It’s quiet now. There’s nothing. You hear anything?”

  “No.”

  “You know how to change a baby?” Dawn chuckled. “You don’t, do you?” She crawled into the back seat and got out some diapers, glancing out at the street every few seconds. “When I went to work with Alice at the Children’s Center in Hong Kong, Pete got crazy. I couldn’t figure it out. We were rich women doing a little light charity work. But Pete was already furious that we didn’t have a baby. I’d had a miscarriage. He got angry. I started doing pills, uppers, downers, tranqs, ludes. Pete got me whatever I needed. I even tried shooting up. Sometimes I can get straight these days. Sometimes not. I guess you noticed.” Dawn got back into the driver’s seat.

  “Do you want me to drive?”

  “I’m all right.” She turned the car and drove carefully through Shenzhen and onto the highway.

  “What about Lily?”

  “I told you. He likes games. Maybe he had the hots for her. Perhaps it was a sort of quid pro quo. You and me. Pete and Lily. Maybe it was just to spite me because we didn’t have a child.”

  “Couldn’t you adopt?”

  Dawn laughed and took some gum out of her pocket. “Pete wanted his own child. His own blood. A son. Is it hot in here?”

  “Yes.” I rolled down the window.

  “But in New York, Pete was nervous. I didn’t see him much, but I could sense he knew I was on to something. You showed up. I had an idea that a girl you knew in New York had b
een here, as a helper. She was an illegal en route to America, they told me. Somehow I got the idea that she had connected it all up for you, the babies, the illegals, the whole business.”

  “A girl named Pansy Loh?”

  “I never knew her name.”

  “I wish you’d said something.”

  “What was there to say? I wasn’t sure until I got back to Hong Kong. You couldn’t help me. I couldn’t help myself. I’d quit my real job, I was too strung out. I scored some bad stuff. I got a hole in my gut. How the fuck did I get from there to here? I would think. For a while I thought I was going to die, so I decided I’d do something useful. High drama, huh, Artie? One of life’s little epiphanies. Alice saved my life. By the way, I was telling the truth, darling, when I said I was crazy about you. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not.”

  It was raining harder. The highway was slick. Massive long-haul trucks carried their loads of electronics and livestock. Their windshield wipers swept away water in a frenzy.

  “We’re almost there,” Dawn said. “Oh shit,” she added a moment later. “Look at that.”

  Ahead of us, running up to the border, trucks jammed the road. We inched forward.

  A border guard on a motorcycle drove up and down the line of cars and trucks, stopping here and there to peer inside, tapping on windows. I reached in back and covered the baby with my jacket. She was fast asleep.

  We were second in line now. To the right, through the blur of rain and fog, I could make out buildings—customs sheds, I assumed. Then the guard knocked on the window of the Volvo. Dawn rolled it down, delivered her most seductive smile, pulled a cigarette out of her purse and asked sweetly, in English, for a light.

  He didn’t understand English but he got the message. He produced a lighter, cupped his other hand around it and held it for Dawn. He looked through our passports.

  Ahead of us, I thought I could see the glow from Hong Kong’s lights in the sky. Shoulders hunched, Dawn smoked, but her face was calm, impassive, like a mask. There was one car in front of us now. In her sleep, the baby whimpered.

  “We’re almost there,” Dawn said. “The other side will be a piece of cake. A few more minutes.” She stuffed her cigarette into the ashtray.

  Border crossings still get to me. It was the banality that scared me: the grey concrete building. The wet black road. The guards in their lousy uniforms. It wasn’t sinister. It was drab. The worst places I’ve ever been were always drab, the bright lights always just out of reach.

  As a kid, I’d been taken to East Berlin. The place had a concrete soul. In the Alexanderplatz, Aunt Birdie took me up to the top of the television tower that looked like a flying saucer.

  “Look,” she cried. I looked. Even on a clear day, the lights in West Berlin were on. Loads of lights. I could see right into West Berlin, could almost touch the buildings. It was so close. And I thought: this is for me. But how would I get there, me, a boy from Moscow? I could almost touch it, but I couldn’t get across the wall.

  Now, I thought I could see Hong Kong’s red glow. But it was all taking too long. “I don’t want to be here, Artie.” Dawn peered out of the window.

  “Is the baby OK?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “Why don’t you get in the back seat with her?”

  Dawn didn’t argue. She slid out of the driver’s seat into the back and I moved into her place.

  The guard returned. He signaled us to pull out of the line. He waved in the direction of the buildings at the side of the road.

  “Do what he says,” Dawn whispered. “And Artie?”

  “What?”

  “In case I don’t make it.”

  “Don’t even think it.”

  “You don’t understand. They think of me as Chinese. They think I belong to them. I need to tell you something.”

  I pulled up in front of the building. “What is it?”

  “Pete has a lot of influence. Pete can cut any deal he wants. He can do what he likes. He’s American. He’s Chinese. No one can touch him. He has dozens of businesses, he has hundreds of ways of moving money. He can buy anyone anywhere. And he has absolutely no scruples. Do you understand? He isn’t really a human being.”

  “It will be OK,” I said, as Dawn picked up the baby and we got out of the car.

  “Please listen to me. Listen to what I’m trying to tell you.” Her voice shook with rage and increasing panic. “What I’m trying to tell you is that it’s my husband who they call the Debt Collector.”

  34

  “Hello, darling. Hiya, Artie.”

  Pete Leung entered the room where we sat waiting for our passports. With him were two other men, their thuggish bodies only barely concealed by the suits. Like every room at every border crossing, it had a few benches, plastic chairs, a table, peeling paint and official notices on the wall. Pete spoke briefly to the bodyguards and they left the room and shut the door. I knew they would be outside. The official border guards never came in. Maybe Pete had bribed them. Maybe he didn’t need to. He was in charge.

  But the charming man who rode a bike in the snow and loved the movies was gone along with the corduroy pants and the raffish smile. Pete Leung wore a suit.

  “I’ll take the gun, by the way, Artie, if you’ve got one. It wouldn’t be at all popular with our friends here in the PRC if you shot me. The folks here are real big on squashing crime, and there’s no extradition with your country.” I tossed him the weapon.

  “I want to go,” Dawn said, the baby in her arms. “I want to get out of here.”

  “I don’t think that’s such a great idea, sweetheart. Don’t look at your watch, Artie. We have all night. Is that one of my babies you’ve got, Dawn?”

  “One less for you to kill.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t suppose I’m personally involved, do you? It’s just the way things are. Drugs have become difficult to move, I’m told. In the West, officials have to pay attention to drugs.” He pulled some cigarettes out of his pocket, tossed them on a table and sat down. “I can see you need a lesson in the new economics of the free market. Cigarette?” I reached for my own. “Leave your hands on the table, if you don’t mind. So. In the new world order, you can move people cheaper than any other resource. Women especially. Illegals for cheap labor. Hookers for export. Wives for Chinese village men who have none because the one-child-family rule means that too many girl babies have been aborted or killed. Ironic, isn’t it? It’s cheap and it’s easy and there are huge profits. In the next century, it will be the great resource,” he said. “Body parts is also quite lucrative. Time consuming, though. A fresh liver has to be delivered in twenty-four hours.” He looked at us. “You’ve both lost your sense of humor. I’ve heard much sicker jokes at New York parties and so have you.”

  Holding the baby, Dawn looked around. He would kill her if she tried to leave. Leaning his elbows on the table, Pete flicked the collar of his white shirt nervously. He ran his hand through his hair, lit a cigarette, tossed it into the cheap tin ashtray. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his glasses on it. He was jumpy; Dawn made him jumpy.

  I looked at the window. It was small and there were bars on it. Beyond it was the highway and the border guards. Pete didn’t miss a thing, neither would his thugs.

  “What about the illegals? What about the illegals your people ship to New York? The people they extort,” I said.

  “You think it’s better to spend the rest of your life in a shitty village with no work, no hope, no money? They know the risk. It costs. It always costs to get to America. They call it the Golden Mountain.”

  “And the murders?”

  “Perhaps someone forgot to pay. If they don’t pay, well, a deal’s a deal, or so I’m told.”

  “And the sweatshops?”

  “It’s a business. We’re not talking Schindler’s List here.”

  “How come you’re telling me all this?”

  “Why not? No one’s going anywh
ere tonight.” His laugh was corrosive. “Maybe not tomorrow either.”

  “But for Shenzhen, Pete?” I said. “For that one shithole.”

  “No, no, Artie. Hundreds. Dawn, make that baby stop crying, will you? Listen, in the next century, when borders are irrelevant and people expendable, the trade will explode. Look at the map. The old borders are gone.”

  “Why are you here? What do you want?”

  “To see my wife, of course. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to the races. You thought you’d keep me in Hong Kong and away from Shenzhen, did you, darling? I was amused that you put Alice Wing up to asking me, though.”

  “What about Lily Hanes?” I said.

  “God, I’m bored with Lily Hanes.” He looked at his watch. “Swatch,” he said. “Sharp. I hate expensive watches. As for you, Artie Cohen. You got in the way. That’s all.”

  “And the babies? The ones you let die?”

  “No one wants a sick baby. Or an ugly one. Do they, Artie? Do you?”

  The baby in Dawn’s arms was fast asleep, and she handed her to me, then reached for a cigarette in the pack that lay on the table. Slowly, she lit one, inhaled and blew out the smoke. “He calls the babies Poppies,” she said. “Like opium poppies. Like the irradiated opium poppies in the heroin he got for me. If they get too big or too ugly or too sick, they must be cut down. Hot Poppies is what he calls the babies he kills. It’s his joke. Pete’s a real poet.”

  Except for the dull roar of the trucks passing outside, it was deadly quiet in the room. There was only the one door. There was no other way out.

  Pete reached over and, lightly, with the tips of his fingers, he stroked Dawn’s face.

  “You didn’t have to fuck him, did you?”

  Before I could put the baby down and make a move, Leung pulled Dawn to her feet and grabbed Dawn’s wrists. He held them behind her back. Twisted them.

  “I’m not so small as my brothers in China, perhaps. But I’m the same. I went to Oxford. To Harvard. Penn. I sound like you. I sound better. Different brain, though. The Chinese are different. We don’t like our wives screwing around.” His expression changed. “I loved Dawn. I really did. But she was a fake.”