Girls on the Line

by Jennie Liu

  She clicks off and digs some cash out of her bag. “I have to go.” She glances at me while counting out some bills. “Take this and pay for you and me. You can keep the rest in case you need anything. Pay me back once you’ve got a job.” She thrusts the bills at me, and my hand moves automatically to take them. I’m dumbstruck that she’s leaving. My stomach tightens.

  Zhenzhen shoots Yun a sly smile. “So that was Yong calling you?”

  Yun’s already turning away from us. “I’ll meet you back at the dorm,” she calls over her shoulder as she rushes out of the restaurant.

  Through the window I see her smoothing her hair as she crosses the street. She walks to the farthest pool table and leans against it as a guy in a snug black T-shirt takes a shot. He has sunglasses perched on his head, over hair that’s greased and slicked back.

  Hong and Zhenzhen are watching them as well. “Come on,” says Hong. “Let’s pay and go back to the dorm. She won’t be back for hours.”

  Chapter 2

  Yun

  “Is that the girl you told me about?” Yong mutters through the cigarette clamped between his teeth. He stretches over the pool table, stares down his cue stick, and jerks his head toward the restaurant. “Your friend from the orphanage?”

  I tear my eyes away from him to look across the street. The narrow restaurant is wedged between the Modern Women’s Health Clinic and a row of clothing stalls, their metal doors rolled up and the shop owners hovering over the stray customers as they finger the bright rayon dresses and tables of socks.

  Through the grimy window I can see the girls under the fluorescent light. I nod. “Luli.” She’s watching us, again with that same sad-eyed, scared look I remember from when we first met. From here, she could be eight years old. “She just went out today.”

  “You shouldn’t have left her if she just got out.” Yong takes his shot, then straightens up, swiping the sweat on his forehead up and back to his hair. He wears a close-fitting black T-shirt and jeans. It’s easy to see the lean muscles on him as he walks around to the other side of the table.

  I flush at the sting of his criticism and glance back at Luli. “I wanted to watch you play. Luli understands.”

  He shakes his head and gives a short laugh.

  For a while we don’t say anything. I lean against the table and watch Yong play against himself. The haze over the city is turning purple as dusk falls, but the air is still hot and humid. I flip my shirt to fan myself in the heat. When the only streetlight on this end of the road lights up, the noise from the guys at the other tables swells.

  “What was it like there?” Yong asks. For a second, I don’t know what he’s talking about. I realize he means the Institute.

  I shrug. I rarely think about it anymore.

  “You never talk about it.”

  I wrinkle my face. “What’s to say? I grew up there. It was all I knew.” I start to pull on a thin lock of hair but catch myself and toss my head back, smiling. “I guess I didn’t know anything then. Now, I see what I’ve been missing. Going out. Fun.”

  “Work.”

  “I knew about work. They taught us how to work there.” I pick at some worn-out felt near a corner pocket of the table.

  “What kind of work?”

  “Mopping floors, doing wash, taking care of babies.”

  “Women’s work.”

  I make a face at him.

  “Sounds like it was easier than the factory.”

  I have to think about that. The work I do—hunched over the factory table full of charger cords for electronic cigarettes, winding them, then twisting a bit of plastic-wrapped wire around them—is mind-numbing, finger-numbing, neck- and back-aching. The days are so long. But I’ve gotten used to them.

  I put my hands behind my head and stretch back against the stiffness in my body, the constant aches I’ve learned to ignore. Yes, in a way, the work at the orphanage was easier because a person didn’t have to do the same thing all day.

  “Well, maybe. But I like making money. I would rather work and do what I want than still be living at the orphanage working with all those sad, sick little ones. I’m definitely better off now.”

  ***

  I was nine and Luli was eight when she came to the Institute. Just out of the isolation period, she was brought into the dayroom. Her thin face and arms were tanned, which made me think she had come from the countryside. Her eyes moved across each child, the six or seven of us who were able-bodied enough to have free run of the room. First she looked at Guo, who stared back with his far-apart eyes. Then she gaped at the others, who shambled in their aimless courses around the room or rocked side to side on their haunches. When her dark pupils turned to me, I saw she was looking at my eyes instead of the pocks on my face. I was so surprised that I gaped at her as dully as the others until she dropped her gaze to the floor.

  Caretaker Wong poked her head into the dayroom and shouted at me to start feeding the little ones. And to take the new girl along.

  She followed me into the hall, and I asked her name. She didn’t answer but studied her feet instead.

  “I’m Yun.” I said. I gave her a smile, which felt strange on my face. There wasn’t much to smile about in the Institute.

  She glanced at me again, then mumbled her name: “Luli.”

  I was pleased that she could speak. Most of the other older kids here couldn’t really talk. “We big ones that are able have to work.” I led her down the stairs to the kitchen. “We have to get the food now and help feed the little ones. Really, it’s better than standing around all day. But it can be disgusting.” Saying so much felt strange. There hadn’t really been anyone to talk to for some time, at least no one who answered. “Nice to have someone to help me.” I gave her another big, stiff smile over my shoulder as I grabbed two spoons and four bowls from a rack just inside the door.

  “I don’t know how to feed babies,” she mumbled.

  “Don’t worry, it’s not hard.” I handed her two of the bowls, took two myself, and went over to the cook, who scooped millet and green vegetable porridge into them. I led her to the toddler room, where rows of cribs were crowded side by side.

  “Just go around the room and give them each a bite.”

  She looked at the bowls in her hands and then around the room. The babies who were able were pulling themselves up to stand in their cribs. Some cried and reached out to us. Others just stood there.

  “Come on. Hurry up.” I grimaced. “I can’t stand it when they start making so much noise.”

  We each put one of our bowls on the ground, and she watched me for a moment before she started. After she fed the first two babies, she began to talk to them with a sweet, whispery voice, but they just stared back. One shot her arm out to grab the bowl and nearly toppled it out of Luli’s hands. She quickly learned to stay out of their reach, but she still grinned at them.

  “How did you get here?” I asked.

  The smile fell off her face. She fed another baby before she said anything. “Granddad’s sick. Can’t take care of me. Said I have to stay here until he gets better.”

  “Oh. Dying then.”

  She spun around with a wild look on her face. “He’s just sick!”

  I drew back at her shouting. Lots of times I’d seen kids come in when someone was too sick or too old to take care of them. They only left with new parents. “If he was going to get better, he wouldn’t have sent you here,” I said softly.

  Her face turned to a terrible ruin. Her mouth pulled down and her eyes squeezed. It occurred to me that it was probably awful for her to hear these things. I groped for something else to say before she started crying. “At least they can’t put you up for adoption until he dies. Unless he signed you away.” I pulled another smile and gestured with my spoon for her to keep going with the food.

  She stood for another moment staring at the bowl in her hands, but the babies were whimpering and demanding their food. We worked without talking for a while until she asked, �
��How long have you been here?”

  “Since I was a baby. Left on the street near a grocery store. I was sick. Heart problem, and this.” Still holding the spoon, I tapped the side of my face with the pocks.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Four black marks on my face. Unlucky four. Unlucky heart problem. No one wants unlucky. They won’t even try getting the papers to put me up for adoption, not even to the foreigners.”

  Luli swung around again. “Foreigners?”

  “When I was very little, there was a foreign lady who came to the orphanage and worked for free. She had friends from overseas who sent clothes and money for medical care. That’s how I got my heart fixed. Caretaker Wong told me that the orphanage didn’t want me to get the surgery because I would never be put up for adoption. But this foreign lady insisted. I’m fine now, but they still won’t show me because of the pocks.”

  “What about the foreign lady? Why didn’t she take you?”

  I shrugged. “She had her own children. She tried to get them to show me. Said that lots of foreigners wouldn’t care about the pocks. Some were even willing to take kids with medical problems. But the orphanage doesn’t believe that. Besides, we don’t get many foreigners. They go to the bigger institutions in Taiyuan. And there are more than enough normal babies. People mostly want the babies.”

  By then we had fed all the babies in the cribs against the walls and had started on the ones in the center of the room. I could see Luli looking at me, this time examining each pock. I didn’t mind. I even tipped my chin up so she could get a better view. She reached over, spoon still in hand, and with her little finger she touched my face in four spots, counting, “One, two, three, four. Like the arrow.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “The arrow in the sky. Granddad showed me in the stars at night.” Her mouth trembled, and I could tell she was going to cry. I’d seen so much crying here. I tried to ignore it, but if everyone started crying, it annoyed me. She closed her eyes, trying to hold back the tears, but they seeped out and began to slide down her face.

  The babies were wailing for their food. I went back to feeding them. When I looked over at Luli, her eyes were still wet. Her shoulders began to heave, and then she was sobbing. The little girl closest to her was screaming, leaning over the crib rail. She grabbed Luli’s arm, and this time the bowl fell clattering to the floor, the last lumps of millet spilling out.

  I ran over, thrust my bowl into her hands, and began scraping the food back into the fallen dish. I stood up and pushed food into baby girl’s mouth. The baby stopped crying and so did Luli. Her red-rimmed eyes were shocked.

  “But that food was on the floor!” she said, wiping the tears from her face.

  I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. They’ll eat it. See?” I had put a spoonful into the next gaping mouth. “Besides, there won’t be any more if we don’t give it to them.”

  ***

  The orphanage seems like another life. I glance over at the restaurant. Luli and my roommates are still eating.

  “Zhenzhen and Hong will take care of her,” I say to Yong.

  An amused grin comes briefly to his face as he takes another shot. He says nothing else, and for a while I just watch him play.

  I’m glad to see my old friend from the orphanage, and maybe I should feel bad that I left her, but I want to be with Yong.

  I met Yong last month through Ming, my old boyfriend from school who helped me get a position at the factory. Ming’s a year older than me and works as a floor runner at the factory; his dad supervises our unit. Ming and Yong are friends, play pool here. When Ming found out Yong was calling me, that I was meeting up with Yong without him, he got angry—told me Yong was a bride trafficker.

  I didn’t know what that was, but from the way he spit it out, I figured it wasn’t good. When I asked Yong about it, he gave me a hard look at first, but then he said, “Bride collector.” He explained that he works for a marriage broker. He picks up brides and drives them to their new husbands. There’s nothing wrong about it. Ming’s just jealous because I’m with Yong now.

  Yong’s eyes narrow to judge the distance between the balls. He checks the angles by pointing the cue stick this way and that. Slowly he moves to my side of the table and lightly bumps my shoulder with his arm to tell me to move out of the way. I smile, peering at him through my lashes like the pretty girls in television serials. As I back a few steps away from the table, he gives me an intense, lingering look. It’s the kind of hungry expression that Ming gave me, but different, because a heat blooms through me as he flexes his long back over the pool stick. In the moments Yong hovers, tuning his aim, I hold my breath. Then in a quick, hard move, he sets the balls to clattering and smacking.

  What I’ve done with Ming, I’ve done because he helped me. With Yong, it’s going to be different. When I’m near him, my pulse speeds up and I can feel my body humming. My head feels both foggy and clear at once. Foggy when it comes to everything and everyone around me, crystal clear about what I want. Since I went out of the Institute, I’ve seen that I can get the things I want. And I’ve decided that what I want is Yong.

  ***

  On the back of Yong’s motorbike with my arms wrapped around him, we speed through the city, the roar of the engine loud in my ears. At night, the ugly smog falls away as the lights of the city come on—lighted signs of every color overhead, streetlights and headlights in every direction. I hold tight as Yong weaves us around the cars, ignoring the blare of horns and traffic signals to keep us zipping along. When he picks up speed, my hand tightens around his chest, and I inhale the scent of him.

  He drives us around awhile until we come to a dirt lane where he has a room on the backside of a rundown building.

  Inside, he grabs a Coke, drops into a chair, and begins to fan himself. I glance around as I put my bag on the table. The room is half as large as my dorm, with a narrow metal bed at the back of the room, peeling green paint on the lower half of the walls, cloth tacked over the window beside the door.

  I sit in the chair beside him and lean against him. He turns to me, and I lean forward for a kiss. This time the kissing doesn’t end with me pulling back, like the other times he’s kissed me. Instead, I let it grow more hungry and wet, and soon I’m pressing against his cheek, arms, skin. His hands and limbs wrap around me, and soon we’re stroking up against each other. I only have to stretch a little in the direction of the bed and he stands me up, his body long against me, rubbing as he sway-walks me toward it.

  The springs creak with our weight. The pressure of his body on top of me, wet sounds of his mouth, warm tongue, skin—all I feel is the humming of my body, calling out for more rubbing, more touching, a craving so strong. All thoughts fall away as I push down my jeans. Yong props up onto his knees and helps me yank them off. He tosses them aside and rolls beside me to shed his own pants and shirt. A moment later he’s looming over me and I am caught up in his scent again. The heat of his skin, our legs entwined, all the time nuzzling and kissing as he pushes my shirt up over my head. He reaches up under the mattress and flips beside me onto his back.

  “What is it?” I pant impatiently.

  “Condom.” He holds up a small square of plastic between two fingers.

  “Oh.” Ming never wore one.

  As if he’s reading my mind, Yong says, “A lot of guys don’t like to use them, but I know better.”

  Yong smiles in a superior way, tears the square open, and strokes the condom onto himself.

  In a second, he’s back on top of me, and I’m pulling him inside me.

  Chapter 3

  Luli

  I’m leaving the restaurant with Yun’s roommates when Yun and her boyfriend—Yong, Zhenzhen called him—roar past on his motorbike, the smoky exhaust from the tailpipe burning the inside of my nose.

  The sun has dropped away, but in the light of the noodle shop window, I see Hong and Zhenzhen flash sly smiles at each other. They throw knowing grins my way, but I can
only pull my mouth to a stiff line. I watch Yun getting smaller as the motorbike zooms off down the potholed street.

  I trail the girls past the low buildings and construction sites back to the dorm. The halls and bathrooms are crowded as I follow Hong and Zhenzhen to the room and through the routine of getting ready for bed. When we’ve all washed and changed, I slip into Yun’s bunk and watch the other roommates who’ve come off their shift. After Hong explains who I am, the others take no notice of me. They go on chatting with each other, talking or texting on their phones, settling themselves into their bunks. The girl who didn’t come out with us to eat, Dali, is still reading in her bed.

  At the Institute, the girls’ room was so very different. There were no photos of movie stars pasted on the walls, no stuffed animals, no clutter of purses, bags, and clothes, no bright-patterned, tumbled bedding. There were only a few of us sleeping in low cots under scratchy wool blankets. All the other girls at the Institute, except Yun, were disabled and much younger than me. I used to help them get dressed and get to the dayroom to eat before I went to school.

  I can’t believe that it was only this morning that I gathered together my few pieces of clothing, my comb, and Yun’s letters at the Institute. I collected my identification card from a silent office worker and would have gone through the gates without anyone saying goodbye to me if I hadn’t run into Caretaker Wong.

  “Going out now?” she called, her voice ringing across the deserted courtyard, sounding too loud.

  I nodded.

  “All the young women want to work in the factory now,” Caretaker Wong said. “I don’t see why you would turn down a good position here.” She shook her head, frowning. “You would have had security. So easy for you because you already know what to do!”

  It was true I knew how to lug laundry and change diapers and prop bottles up to babies. But I had not liked it there.