by Ken Liu
My mother gripped her skirt in her hands, ducking her chin further into her bosom. My father’s words should have made me equally distraught, but I was numb. My breath froze in my lungs. His announcement rang through my head like an echo in a dark long cave.
“The only choices remaining are the Francis Parkman Good Works for Good Women Program or the Surrogacy System.”
Mr. Zhang approached my father and placed a crystal tumbler full of honey colored liquid upon a marble coaster on the table next to him.
At fourteen, I possessed no natural inclination for children and the surrogacy program disgusted me. Girls were bred for men who wished to raise children without the direct involvement of women. I didn’t particularly want to raise a litter of my own but I didn’t like the idea of having my insides rented out. I bit my cheek to keep from begging not to be placed there. Expressing a preference would be a guaranteed way to have just that happen, if only to teach my sisters their place.
“Master Calvin, please, what about the Registry?” my mother whimpered, risking a hand upon my father’s knee.
He ignored her and stood. “I will make a final decision by the end of the week and then that will be the end of my involvement in the affair. Mr. Zhang will attend to the details. That’s enough time wasted on the concerns of your gender.”
“Master?” my mother ventured and I held my breath. To be entered into the Registry never entered my mind as a possibility. I’d pitched all my hopes against someone petitioning for me despite my lack of interest in the realities of marriage. I’d rather listen in when the mothers think the children aren’t paying attention to hear their gossip from other houses or when Mother Hwei read to them in whispers. It made her a criminal and despite my mother’s bowed head and gentile demeanor, even she couldn’t suppress the urge to know what lay within the pages when Hwei somehow procured another book.
But now, a month since my first bleed, and my father said there were no bids.
He sighed, “The Registry is too expensive for a girl child.”
“But it is done.” She pushed harder than I’d ever seen, usually she barely spoke and none of his wives repeated a request or challenged his decisions.
“The Registry is for eldest daughters of First Mothers and younger boys. It’s not a match-making service.” He straightened the lapels on his shirt and pulled the sleeves of his shirt tight. “But I’ll consider it.”
My father placed a hand on her head in a rare display of affection and then left us without a word.
“Thank you, Xie xie.” My mother chanted, complete in her submission.
We sat in quiet for long enough to be sure he wasn’t likely to return. My knees hurt and cold air tickled at my ears. I tried not to wiggle, but with nothing to occupy me but worry and uncertainty I hated the stillness.
When we returned to the work rooms, my sisters and youngest brothers busied themselves, not looking at me until Mother left us for her own rooms.
“Did they show you a picture?” Veronica asked, her long dark hair flowing down her back. A pang of jealousy shot through me when I looked at her curls. My head itched.
“Is he handsome? I hope he’s handsome and not old like the one Kathleen ended up with last year.” Kuan-yin added, hoisting Edmund up on her hip. Her broad build resembled her mother’s. She would make a good wife when her time came.
“There’s nothing to tell yet,” I said, fighting the tears threatening to spill from my eyes.
“What do you mean? Is Father considering more than one bid?” Veronica jumped up and down, her newly grown breasts bouncing beneath her dress.
“Mother’s asked him to put me on the Registry.”
My two closest sisters quieted. The others had less interest in my fate, being the only daughter of our father’s favorite wife led to jealousy and I knew some of them would gloat over what the news meant.
“Oh no.” Veronica stilled, covering her mouth with her hands, tears in her eyes.
I spent the next three days wandering the work rooms without accomplishing much. I ruined the clothes I ironed and managed to sew my skirt into the christening dress I worked on for Father’s newest son.
“Stupid girl, no wonder there weren’t any bids for you.” My older brother Ezekial chided, slapping me on the back on the head. “You’ll be bald your whole life. Father should have sent you to the factories.”
“Chiu Se, Ez,” I shouted and ran from the room.
I hid until dinner, curled up in the crawlspace beneath the stairs. I came here as a child when I tried to avoid chores, but Mr. Zhang always managed to find me even when the others couldn’t. He never told the Mothers where I hid though. I wondered if he never told because he was keeping my secret or because it was improper for him to address them directly. I never knew, but it remained the only place I could find quiet away from my siblings.
At dinner, I kept my thoughts to myself, despite the furtive looks of my sisters and the sneers making their way over from the boys’ table. I ate quickly and excused myself, volunteering to do the dishes while the rest of the girls ate. I’d rather be alone while I waited my fate, all the expectation only made the days longer.
That night, Mother shook me awake from a dreamless sleep dressed only in her night clothes. She held a lantern in her hand with the gas turned low so I could just make out her face in the shadows. “Quiet now, come with me.”
I followed her from the girls’ room, passing between the rows of beds which held the sleeping forms of my sisters. Would any of them be sent to the factories to work their hands raw, or would they be given the options I received? I harbored no hope of Father approving listing me on the Registry. As he said, such sums of money would be wasted on a girl child. I’d heard things like that for so long I almost believed it. Reading would be wasted on me because I lacked critical thinking skills. My sex made it impossible. Better to keep my place. But then why did the Mothers listen to Hwei read with such intense looks on their faces? Surely they understood the words.
I followed my mother through the work rooms and into the main house. I’d never been in these rooms at night, rarely entered them during the day. We weren’t allowed to play in the richly colored inner-sanctum of our father’s rooms.
“Where are we going?” I whispered, but my mother waved my question off with a stern look. She moved through the house, her white sleeping dress dancing along the floor as if she floated instead of walked. An apparition in a world of stern solidity. My own footsteps sounded like a herd of Mongolian horses stampeding through the rooms. We hurried from one room to the next until we stood in an area of the house I’d never been in. Swords hung on the walls as well as the heads of animals I’d only heard about in stories. The open mouth of a tiger appeared to lunge out at me and I stifled a scream. Its razor sharp teeth ready to devour my young virgin flesh.
Once she closed all the doors, Mother faced me with a sly smile. Her eyes sparkled in the gas light. “Helen, it’s your turn now. It’s your turn to live. Your father won’t put you on the Registry and I won’t see you shipped off to war as a nurse or forced to breed like cattle. You have to take control of your own life.”
“What are you talking about, Mother?”
“You’re too young to understand, my love.” She pulled me to her and I breathed in the scent of lavender and honey. “A wedding was the best I could offer you, and now that it’s no longer an option, all I can try for is to help you find freedom.”
“Freedom?” The word sounded alien, something the boys debated after class. Our country based its laws on that one idea, they said. Freedom for men to pursue their dreams. The concept didn’t apply to me.
“Climb out this window. Mother Hwei has arranged for a car to take you to the house of a friend of hers. The driver’s name is Manuel.”
“I’m in my night clothes!”
“They’ll have clothes for you there, and they’ll explain everything. But you must go before anyone notices we’re missing.” She embraced me aga
in, squeezing me so tightly I imagined my bones might break. “This is all I can give you. Know that I will always love you most.”
“When will I see you again?” I clung to her, my words muffled in the fabric of her gown.
“You won’t. Forget me, forget your father, forget your sisters. You can’t come back.”
“Then I don’t want to go,” I cried, the words louder than I meant them to be. Tears streamed down my face and my nose ran.
Mother held me at arm’s length and bent down, looking me square in the eyes. “Do you wish to be a surrogate or nursemaid? Do you wish to be sent to the factories? Do you want every day of your life to be spent at the whim of someone else?”
I shook my head. She never spoke this much and the ferocity of her words frightened me.
“Mother Hwei is a Sufragista.”
I stepped back out of my mother’s hold. Mother Hwei? I had no idea I lived in the presence of a criminal. A terrorist!
“Is anyone in there?” Mr. Zhang’s distinctively high voice called out.
“You must go,” my mother said, her eyes frantic as she stood and stepped toward the door. “I’ll distract him, but you must go. Gan Kwai!”
“I don’t want to.” Tears slid down my cheeks.
“No more crying, no more agreeing.” She grabbed one of the guns mounted on my father’s wall. “You are stronger and smarter than you can ever imagine.”
She stepped from the room and I stood in the center of the Persian rug, surrounded by the menacing faces of the animals my father had slaughtered. I couldn’t move.
Outside the room I heard Mr. Zhang shout and my mother scream, then a gunshot rang out in the night and Mr. Zhang wailed, “Master Calvin, your wife! Your wife!”
I ran to the window, threw my legs over the sill and jumped.
The drop from the window to the ground was farther than I thought and when I landed, I bit my tongue. The sharp pain rang through me, making it impossible to think about my mother’s actions. She had never been a brave woman or even overly special other than that she attracted my father’s attentions enough to make him willing to take on a seventh wife. Her ability to birth sons secured her place in the house, but other than that, I knew very little about her.
Thick liquid filled my mouth, making me gag. I stumbled away from the house with no idea which way to go. I couldn’t go back now without having to explain what happened and that would mean betraying my mother but running away guaranteed my father would send me to the factories should I ever be found.
My white sleeping dress shone out like a beacon on the dark street, but as screams rose from within the house, I had to risk running. Soon the police and medics would arrive, perhaps even the funeral home. I would miss my own mother’s funeral.
The thought of her body, her blood seeping into the plush cream pile of the living room carpet, made me retch. Her blood ran cold and mine filled my mouth. Blood. It all came down to blood, didn’t it? Before my blood arrived, unwanted and unwelcome, thoughts of marriage and futures were silly dreams whispered about with my sisters at night. Now, those very things drove me from my home, alone in the dark.
“Girl!” an unembodied voice called out from down the alley. “Girl, are you Helen? Girl, come here.”
I slunk through the alley, keeping to the wall. As I neared the main street, I saw a dark-skinned man standing in the shadow of a car.
“I’m here to take you to Ms. Candy,” he said.
“I’m not going with you. I’m not going anywhere with a Negro man.”
He frowned and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his overcoat. “I ain’t taking offence to that right now, girl. You just been birthed into the real world from that house. Come with me before the police get here. Your mama took a big risk asking Ms. Candy to take you in. So come on.”
A siren wailed in the distance and from where I stood I noticed the light by the front door of my home flicker on.
“My mother’s dead,” I said, wiping snot across my face with the back of my hand.
“I’m real sorry to hear that, but we still got to get out of here. You can cry about it later.”
He reached out with his large dark-skinned hand and I placed myself in his care.
From inside the car, I couldn’t see much. Curtains were drawn over the back windows and the road bumpy. First Mother told us girls we weren’t allowed to ride in cars because the rough roads would bounce our insides so hard we wouldn’t be able to have children if we did it too often. Other than going to church on Christmas and Easter, I’d never been in one. I wrapped my arms around my middle, trying to hold my insides in. I’d seen what happened when the blood came, the horror of what a woman’s body could produce and I could imagine my parts falling right out from the shaking of the car.
We rode a long way and in my numbed state I dozed, too tired and grief stricken to think on the decision I made. At fourteen, I had become a criminal, an outlaw. To anyone else, I’d be seen as a fugitive Suffragista.
When the car stopped, I had almost convinced myself this was all a dream, the car simply a manifestation of my mind and if I could wake up I would see my mother, smiling as she ran her fingers through my hair and called me out from a fevered state. But when Manuel opened the door and his dark figure loomed before me, I knew this was no dream. It was a nightmare.
I climbed out and followed Manuel into a large run-down brick building. It looked exactly how I imagined the factory warehouses to look, but there were no smoke stacks and the streets were empty.
Manuel held the door open for me but the darkness of the interior made it difficult to see anything more than the outlines of shadows. Alone in a strange building with a Negro man. My life morphed into one of the Mothers’ stories about girls who strayed from their father’s wishes.
“Betty?” Manuel called out as he flipped a switch and florescent lights buzzed to life overhead.
Despite the dilapidated exterior, the inside of the building was immaculate. We stood in a grand foyer, with double winding staircases leading up to the second floor. A petite woman with short hair, like a new mother would wear, came running from behind the stairs, her skirts covered in flour. A scarf hung around her neck, no doubt intended to cover her hair and forgotten during her work.
“You’re back.” She threw her arms around Manuel’s neck and greeted him with a heated kiss.
I’d never seen a man and woman kiss like that before, and certainly never seen a white woman with a colored man. My face burned with embarrassment and I averted my eyes as Manuel wrapped his arms around the woman’s waist.
“I thought for sure you’d be caught,” she said, releasing him from her embrace. “Such a risk.”
“This is the girl,” Manuel turned a kind smile toward me.
He kept a hand on the small of the woman’s back and seeing their comfort with one another, I considered Manuel anew. Before, in the dark, I’d dismissed him as one Negro like any other; better suited to manual work and service. But there must be something special about him for her to focus her attention on him, almost as if he were a man before his race was considered. For a moment, I wondered if perhaps being a person could come before sex entered the equation in a similar manner.
“My name is Elizabeth, but you can call me Betty.” The small woman said. Her round face beamed down at me and a laugh erupted from deep within her. “Hwei said you were a rescue case, but you didn’t even pack! Still in your dressing gown. Let’s get you some clothes.”
I nodding, wanting so much for Betty to be kind to me after everything I’d been through that I didn’t even worry about the fact she was an outlaw.
“Wait a moment,” a voice called out from the top of the grand double staircase.
I found myself confronted with the most contradictory person I’d ever encountered. They wore a man’s shirt and vest over a floor-length black skirt. The hair atop their head shone silver in the florescent lights, giving it a reflective appearance; the sides cut short while t
he top remained long, the same foppish style my brothers preferred.
“Hwei said nothing about us taking on a child.” The person before me descended the stairs, coming close enough for me to see the swell of breasts pushed tight against the buttoned up vest.
A woman!
A woman with short hair not shorn out of shame, but styled and uncovered!
When she reached the bottom of the stairs she stared at me. I felt naked under her appraising gaze and wished I wore a proper dress. Her stern face and self-composed manner reminded me so much of a man I found it difficult to consider her a woman. Perhaps she was one of the perversions we’d been told of. Women with the delusion they were equals, or worse, someone born with the parts of both, a chimera of the sexes.
“You’re young,” she said. “We don’t take children without a guardian, this isn’t an orphanage.”
“I’m fourteen.” Old enough to be married.
“Where is the refugee Hwei told us about? Did you sneak out and get mixed up in this by accident? Where is your mother?”
“My mother is dead. She sent me out a window to meet him.” I pointed to Manuel, my hand shaking.
“I have no use for a child, barely old enough to bleed.” She turned her back and began to re-ascend the stairs. “Take her back.”
“I can’t go back!” Impulse drove me forward until I stood a few steps above her, blocking the way. “If I go back, they’ll arrest me or send me to the factory. My mother sent me because there were no bids for my hand.”
“Then do what all the other girls do and become a surrogate or go into service.”
“They won’t take me if they think I ran away and...” I took a steadying breath and forced the words from my mouth, “I don’t want to be a surrogate or a nurse.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Can you even read?”
“No, Sir.”
