The Secret Mother

by Victoria Delderfield

  “I might get into trouble? Since when were managers ruled by workers?” He scratched his belly. “Not learnt much since you arrived have you? Still thinking like you did back in the fields, up to your arse in mud? Anyway, you still haven’t told me how it went with Schnelleck? I tried calling him but they said he checked out hours ago.”

  Why was he being so nasty all of a sudden when only yesterday he’d held me in his arms and we’d made love? I perched on my bed.

  “Speak up, 2204, I can’t hear you. Tell you what, I’ll come and join you.”

  He lumbered out of Damei’s bunk and pinned me down on the bed, his stinky breath all over my face.

  “Now tell me, why would a man like Schnelleck decide to leave all of a sudden without even saying a proper goodbye, without calling to thank me?”

  “There was an urgent family matter – his daughter was very sick.”

  “You expect me to believe that, 2204?”

  “It’s the truth,” I squirmed, frightened. “He told me all about her.”

  “You weren’t there to talk, 2204. Your job was to be the bait. Tell me, did you screw him like I taught you?”

  “Manager, you don’t know what you’re saying. Please, get off me, the others will find you.”

  “Did you talk dirty like you did for me?”

  I started to cry, but a sweaty hand clamped my mouth shut.

  “A man doesn’t travel halfway across the world to be disappointed, 2204. You said yourself he should be treated like an emperor. I hope you did a good job?”

  “I never did any of those things – you’re hurting me.”

  “What happened? Didn’t he like the Chinese way? Wasn’t he interested in your little breasts? It’s not as though we didn’t practise enough, was it? How many times did I screw you?” He shook me by the shoulders. “How many?”

  I was crying too much to answer.

  “Stupid, dirty peasant.” He slapped me hard across the cheek, his ring slicing my skin. He wiped the blood on my pillow as though it were poison. “And now what’s happened to my chances, eh? You’ve ruined it all, you dumb bitch.”

  He held me down so I couldn’t move, undid his zip and took down his trousers.

  I counted the seconds until it was over. In my mind I counted the lighting strikes in the fields back home, the seconds between the klaxon on the conveyor belt, the wires on Ren’s old bunk. I counted anything but the number of thrusts it took to hollow out my stomach.

  Afterwards, I bunched my knees up and stared at the wall, terrified. He demanded a cigarette and dug one of the hidden Marlboros from beneath my mattress. I heard the click of his lighter and smoke filled the space inside my bunk; eventually there was a sudden give in the bed. The stub of his cigarette lay discarded on my sheet.

  Even if I scrubbed myself raw with soap, his stain would never come out. A deeper wound throbbed urgently, multiplying, growing out of my control: one new cell dividing every second, too many for me to imagine, let alone count. Too fast to be monitored or recorded or checked by any time analyst.

  I started at a movement coming from the doorway. I looked up to see the face of Fei Fei, pale and horrified, before she disappeared to shadow.

  Letter to my baby

  I worked the bare minimum, stole sugar from the canteen, avoided overtime and, returning to the dorm numb with exhaustion, fell into oblivion until the alarm woke me and I began again; an endless repetition of seconds which dragged into days. When Fatty asked me why I’d swapped my bunk for Damei’s, I told her the new Bei mei farted in her sleep.

  I think it was a Thursday when he returned, unshaven and wearing the same clothes he’d worn the night of the attack. He brushed past me down the line; the unmistakable odour of baijiu lingering in his wake. Bile rose in my mouth, but I swallowed it – as I had swallowed the secret of what he’d done to me.

  Xiaofan grinned to see the end of my relationship with him; it was all a game to her. She had won. I was the star of nothing. Not one of my posters remained after the fire; if it did, I would have torn it to shreds, as Ren did that first morning.

  He stayed in his bureau all weekend, until it developed a powerful, fermented stench that made several girls cover their noses with scarves as they worked. They nicknamed him the ‘wilder beast’.

  My time of the month came and went, with only a few brown freckles on my underwear. Mother never really explained to me the ins and outs of sex, but she did give me this warning: “never do anything stupid with a boy.” If I did, “no life would be spared.”

  April began slowly and with yet more rain. The mei trees in the courtyard remained black and spindly.

  I was skiving around there one day when I heard the familiar sound of a girl crying. There, crouching on her haunches behind the black stub of a mei tree, was Fei Fei, her face buried into her knees.

  “Fei Fei, what’s the matter?”

  “Leave me alone,” she said, “I want to be on my own.”

  “You can’t stay there, it’s going to rain.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “What is it? What’s happened?”

  “I don’t want your help.”

  “Alright, stay there, but you’ll be drenched.” I said angrily, wondering what she had to cry about?

  “Everyone should leave me alone!” she screamed suddenly and bolted in the direction of her dorm, her lank hair slapping like a dead bird against her back.

  I stared vacantly at the stub of the mei tree where she had squatted. There in the ash something had been crossed out. It was a heart and the word “Manager.” It was so obvious! How could I have missed the signs? Even a dog’s body like Fei Fei could have a crush on someone in charge.

  A sharp twinge in my side made me double up. Another and I was limping to the dorm.

  “Let me guess, Kwo’s rice has given you shits again?” Fatty joked.

  I collapsed onto Damei’s bunk, clutching my belly. “Must have been that second helping …”

  Fatty’s face dropped as she watched me curl up in agony. “You’d better get to the nurse.”

  “No!”

  “At least let me help you.”

  Fatty guided me to the sanitary room and I threw up. She splashed cold water on my face. The colour returned to my cheeks, but I was still shaking. A memory of his urgent breath thumped inside my ear, the pain as he had forced deeper into me. Stupid, dirty peasant … dumb bitch … What love speaks like that? What love leaves a scar? I nursed my cheek and the cherry-coloured scab shaped like a sickle, inflicted by Manager He’s ring.

  “Don’t worry, Mai Ling, whatever it is I’ll take care of you. Hunan mei stick together.”

  I leant over the sink as the nausea washed over me again. “Thanks, Fatty. I’ll be better in a few days.”

  Missing a period was nothing unusual, I told myself; other girls at the factory went months without theirs and everything turned out alright. It was just hard work, bad food and worry that had caused my bleeding to stop.

  But the date of my next period came and went, again without a trace of blood. The sickness intensified. At all times of day I ran to the sanitary room, heaving to rid myself of the thing implanted within. I told the others it was the shit we ate, or made up a story about my qi being weakened by the fire. Fatty offered to come with me to see the nurse. I could feel my belly start to thicken for the first time since working at Forwood. The baby would soon protrude beneath my overalls. Unwilling to face it alone, and frightened because I had no means to care for a baby, I set out for Manager He’s bureau.

  Empty bottles of baijiu and reams of papers lay strewn across the floor. The filing cabinets once so neatly ordered, were a jumble of loose sheets. In the middle of it all, he lay slumped over his desk, snoring. The place stank.

  “Who’s there? Mother, is that you?” he called without lifting his head.

  I refused to pity him this time.

  “What’s going on?” His voice sounded hoarse, his head seemed rooted to the
desk.

  “It’s me.”

  He groaned. “Turn off the light, 2204, my head’s killing me.”

  I ignored him and opened the window overlooking circuitry.

  Eventually he roused, his sweating face was the colour of congee. “I thought you’d come,” he said.

  We sat in silence, neither mentioning what he’d done to me.

  “I suppose it’s only right you should know,” he muttered. “Know what?”

  “You’re going to be transferred, 2204.”

  “Who says?”

  He bowed his head. “It’s come from above.”

  “Where are they sending me?”

  “I don’t know. They hardly tell me anything these days. I’m amazed they’ve not chucked me out. Look at me 2204. Not exactly a picture of success, am I?” He gave a sour laugh and reached for the bottle of baijiu. “There’s no point arguing with them; they’ll come for you one day next week. You’ll be told what to do and instructed how to use the new machinery.”

  “So that’s it? All over, just like that!”

  He slugged at the bottle and wiped his chin against his sleeve.

  “I can’t go until I’ve told you …” There was a sharp twinge in my side, as though the baby wanted me to stay quiet. “I’m feeling sick all the time.”

  “Normal in a place like this.”

  “I’ve also missed two periods.”

  He rose and swayed over to the door, as though he was going to throw me out immediately. “What are you saying?”

  I put a protective hand over my stomach. “I promise I’m telling the truth. I’m sure of it … a baby, I mean.”

  “And you expect me to believe that? After everything that’s happened, I wouldn’t even trust you to bring me liquor. First you con me out of hundreds of yuan to buy yourself new clothes, then you get me to have sex with you – more than once – not to mention treat you like an empress. Now you say you’re pregnant? I don’t think so, 2204.”

  “I’m telling you first because I can’t keep this a secret for much longer,” I pointed to my belly. “I can hardly fasten my trousers. Listen to me, I’m pregnant with your child.”

  He shook his head. “If that’s the case, how many weeks are you? Tell me. I want the exact date. Give me some proof it was me and not one of those adolescent grease monkeys in engineering.”

  I burned with shame and anger. “It’s been two months exactly; it was the time you forced me to have sex in my dorm. Thursday 21st March.”

  His face fell and immediately he began searching the mounds of paper on his desk, rummaging through the drawers with increasing frustration.

  “Manager?”

  “I know I left it here somewhere, I can’t find anything in this dump. I can’t think straight!” he screeched. “No wonder I’m not performing, not achieving. Arse-licking Maoists every one of them … Ah, here it is.”

  He counted out a series of twenty yuan notes from his wallet. “This should cover it.”

  I looked at the grubby notes. “What are you saying?”

  “Well, you didn’t expect me to say ‘keep it,’ did you?”

  “But I can’t …”

  “Oh yes you can, 2204, and you will. If you think I’m going to risk my reputation, you’re mistaken. There’s no way this can ever get out. Understood?”

  He scribbled something on a scrap of paper and shoved it into my hand – he said it was the name of a place he knew that could do the ‘work’.

  I hurried down the steps into the gloom.

  “Do it straight away,” he called after me, “then come back and tell me it’s finished.”

  The street was set back from the main shopping district. Never-white washing hung between buildings while the smell of onion and fried ginger wafted from an open window. “A chilli for every dish, a teardrop for good flavour,” mother used to say, as she taught me to cook. Now my tears were all in vain.

  Fortune Alley was longer than it first appeared and I walked for a good ten minutes to reach Building No. 136. The red paint on the front door was peeling, the lower windows were barred. The upper balconies, though dilapidated, harboured a couple of rusty bicycles, some chairs, several bags stuffed to the brim with clothing, a vacuum cleaner and a broken TV.

  I rang the bell. The door buzzed and clicked open.

  Inside, the apartment smelt like the waste disposal unit at Forwood. A ragged-looking cat hunched protectively over a chicken bone on the stairwell. A door was ajar and opera music drifted out.

  The abortionist’s room was piled high with bric-a-brac: books, chairs, a desk, vases, paintings, papers, an easel, radios, tins of bean sprouts, several rails of clothing, most of which looked too moth-eaten to wear. At the centre of it all, a woman sat still as a cobweb on her meditation mat, the radio playing by her side.

  “If you’re wondering what all the stuff is,” she said, reaching out to turn down the music, “not all girls have the cash to pay me. Sometimes they nick things on the way here.”

  She unwrapped her legs and stood up in one fluid motion. Her eyes rested on my stomach. “But I have the feeling you’re not one of those kind of girls. Thirteen weeks, and large. Of course, the placenta could be at the front? Or maybe …” Her arms fanned over my ripening belly like a book opening at an old favourite page. “Probably best not to dwell on it.”

  “How do you know how far gone I am?”

  “Practise,” she said and picked her way over the junk.

  A slight breeze from the open balcony lifted my hair, but not my spirits. She told me to take a seat wherever I could find one.

  “But don’t make yourself comfortable, it’s better if we get started straight away. What’s he given you?”

  I thought that was obvious, why else would I be standing in her junk-filled apartment? It took a moment for me to realise she was asking for payment. The yuan totalled exactly one hundred. I gave her seventy five and she folded it inside a tea caddy.

  “A businessman, eh? What happened, did he have a wife?”

  I shook my head.

  “Do you need rice wine?”

  I nodded.

  She turned up the volume on the radio. “Just a precaution.”

  From a drawer, she took out several lengths of rubber tubing, an unlabelled bottle of liquid, a long sewing needle, some matches and soap. “It will hurt and you will bleed. You can have a bed here and an hour to recover, that should be long enough for the demons to leave the soul in peace. Once I start there’s no going back, do you understand?”

  My stomach twitched when I looked at the dirty mattress.

  “No.”

  “You want me to say it again?”

  “No. I don’t want the demons to come after my soul. I don’t think I can do this. In fact, I’m certain. Keep the money. I’ve got to go.” I scrambled for the door.

  “But –”

  The air was hot and the sun shone directly onto the porch where I paused, blinded momentarily by its brilliance.

  When I opened my eyes, some guys wearing white doctor coats were heading up the alley in my direction – one of them looked like Yifan. I reached for the buzzer and pretended to ring it. They stopped close by the porch and I could hear them talking.

  “This street is typical of where we find a lot of the women in our gynaecological unit,” said one.

  “What percentage of patients are found here, compared to those who self-admit?”

  “Around seventy. Quite often they’re in too bad a condition to make it to the hospital alone. They have little or no funds for any proper medical attention. They might have suffered haemorrhaging, secondary infection, perhaps show early signs of pneumonia and occasionally pulmonary …”

  I held my breath.

  “What kind of conditions do they work under? Any anaesthetic?”

  “Primitive, very primitive.”

  I glanced around. It was Yifan! And he was only a few feet away. Please don’t let him see me. Please don’t let him see me
… I stared at the buzzer, as if waiting for an answer.

  “Mai Ling? Is that you?”

  I turned into the light. “Hello Yifan.”

  “I can’t believe it! What are you doing here?”

  “Research,” I said, off the top of my head. “Work asked me to see what cars people are driving these days.”

  “Ah, testing the water, as we’d say?” He gave a nervous laugh.

  “I’m only supposed to be gone an hour.”

  My heart ached. I wanted to tell him about Ren, about Xiaofan starting the fire, about losing Schnelleck’s business deal and then the horrible thing Manager He had done to me. Most of all I wanted to tell him about the life growing inside of me. I blinked back the tears and shielded my eyes.

  “Are you alright? Pardon me for saying, but perhaps it’s a little early for you to be back at work so soon after the fire … That cut on your cheek looks inflamed. You should be resting. Your managers promised they’d take good care of you all. I’d rather hoped you might be convalescing at home on the farm.”

  “I’m fine. I need to get back.”

  “Well be sure to drink plenty of water in this heat.” Yifan hung back. “We’re always in such a hurry, you and I. It would be wonderful to spend more time with you. I had so much fun that night on the ferris wheel. I’ve thought about you often. After the fire I feared maybe …”

  I gave him a brief hug. “Thank you,” I said. “For saving my life.”

  He reached into his attaché case for a pen and scribbled down his phone number for me a third time. “Please, please call me. My exams finish next Tuesday. Say you’ll be there for lunch – meet me outside the medical library?”

  “Dr Meng!” called another doctor. “Are you with us or not?”

  “You’d better go.”

  Yifan kissed my cheek, near the cut. “Goodbye Mai Ling. I hope we’ll speak again.”

  I trembled at his touch, so kind, so gentle. Even in my bunk that night I quivered at the lightness of it.

  There was little hope of sleep. I tossed and turned in Damei’s bunk, the springs dug into my sides where the baby flitted about like a netted butterfly. The girl in Ren’s old bed had a habit of grinding her teeth as she slept and, for several hours, I listened to nothing but the eerie hum of the factory pipes and the irritating sound of her teeth. That was until I lost my temper, stood up and batted her with my pillow. She grumbled sleepily and turned over, but within minutes the grinding started up again.