The Secret Mother

by Victoria Delderfield

  “That’s young for a scholarship?” Guan said.

  “You are joking – what good is education?”

  “She never went to university?” said Jen.

  He laughed.

  “She told us she’d done a degree in engineering, that she’d won a scholarship!” Jen protested.

  “No. She ran away to avoid marrying a boy.”

  “Who?” Jen asked.

  “The coffin-maker’s son. Mother and Father set it up, but she wouldn’t go through with it.”

  “Jen, what’s he saying? I can’t understand.”

  “You didn’t know any of this? Your parents in England didn’t tell you?” Guan said.

  “Will someone please tell me what the fuck’s going on? Is he telling us who our dad is?”

  Guan offered Ricki a hand up, “Come on, your breathing’s not good … I promised your parents I’d take care of you. We shouldn’t have come up here in this heat.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Jinsong rolled onto his side where he lay on the pine needles; the word Rage folded into Machine. What else could he tell them? A whole world of growing-up, but where to start with such a vast map? Childhood so difficult to unpick.

  “Did Mai escape on her own?” Jen asked.

  “Funny girl.”

  “I’m not trying to be.”

  “It was Cousin Zhi that put her up to it. I think Mai Mai might have gone through with the marriage if it wasn’t for Zhi being so arrogant and persuasive … they were always together, whispering plans. Zhi and Auntie looked down on us. Not any more.”

  Jinsong was talking faster, becoming agitated. Who was this cousin May had never mentioned?

  “Tell us slowly what happened,” said Guan, trying to translate for Ricki at the same time.

  Jinsong spat on the ground. “The last I heard of Cousin Zhi was through Benny - him and Zhi had a thing together … He sent a message back from Nanchang that Zhi had been thrown out of the factory and was working on the street.”

  “A prostitute?” said Jen.

  Jinsong nodded. “Not so clever after all. The shame almost killed Auntie. Benny found out Mai Ling wasn’t with her, but he didn’t know where she was either. The factory burnt down; most of the workers were left to fend for themselves. There was no way of getting in touch with Mai Mai, of bringing her home. We tried, Benny went to the city and stayed there a month, but he never found her. The factory where they worked had been bulldozed. A new block of high-risers took its place.”

  “So May did work in a factory,” Jen said, excited to hear the truth.

  She turned the figurine necklace over in her pocket. She’d brought it hoping to find a place, somewhere to return it. He stood in front of her – that place, that man, that home. She held it out to Jinsong. “May would want you to have this.”

  He took it without looking. “Promise you’ll tell her I love her … I miss her … tell her she has a nephew who likes playing in the yard, but who is destined for better things. Tell her he’s brave and strong and clever. Don’t tell her how pitiful the farm is.”

  “I won’t. I’ll say you brought us to your forest.”

  He placed the figurine necklace on the pine needles. “Xièxiè.”

  Together, they trudged back down the red dirt track. Jen could see Guan and Ricki already on the road below the farm.

  She bent down and scooped up a handful of the red soil. Its colour was not the royal red of blood, but a burnt, rusty orange in her palm. It felt warm as she emptied it into her pocket. She would take the soil to May. A part of Jinsong going home.

  A fly buzzed in the moonlit dark that night in Yifan’s faded blue bedroom. Jen was brushing her hair at Năinai‘s calligraphy desk.

  “What’s it like being so clever?” said Ricki in bed.

  She turned round. “What are you talking about?”

  “I can see why May lied about her scholarship … People admire brains.”

  “She was clever enough to bullshit us for six years,” said Jen.

  The fly circled their heads.

  “I’ve decided not to bother applying to uni. My grades aren’t good enough,” said Ricki.

  “I don’t know whether to go either.”

  “But the Milne family honour’s at stake if you don’t take up a place at Oxford or Cambridge.”

  “All I ever wanted was your love,” said Jen.

  Ricki glanced away. “What will you do with that soil?”

  Jen hadn’t thought it through that far. So many things her supposedly big, brilliant brain didn’t know. Only that she needed a hug and that she wanted to go home now. To Manchester.

  Ricki folded back the thin sheet and Jen climbed in beside her. The fly found its way out into the night, its path illuminated by the chunky spit-faced moon.

  “Ricki,” she whispered. “I have a letter you should read; it’s addressed to us both. May wrote it a long time ago.”

  Effects and belongings

  Never let you go.

  That’s what I promised them.

  The Bluewater Hotel was a ten minute walk from the welfare institute. In the mornings I served breakfast and washed pots. In the afternoons I cleaned rooms and steamed sheets in the hotel laundry. The hours were easy compared to Forwood and I was even allowed an hour’s break, mid-afternoon.

  I spent it hanging around the welfare institute; I’d sit on a bench and pretend to read my hotel copy of the Jiangxi Daily, when really I watched and waited to see who came for my babies.

  Around 4.30 in the afternoon, the welfare workers took the babies out into a small tarmac yard. A high wire fence made it hard to see individual children’s faces, and I daren’t risk getting any closer, in case the staff reported me. I never saw my babies, not once during all the weeks I sat on that bench, and yet I was sure someone from the institute must have found them on the steps. Somewhere inside that grey, ugly building were my daughters and it killed me every time I had to whisper goodbye and return to work, I feared I’d miss their departure.

  The Bluewater Hotel got away with paying me a pittance because I had no work permit. I didn’t care, money wasn’t the reason I stayed. The guests were my reason – the foreigners who came to The Bluewater to collect their adopted Chinese baby daughters. I saw at least ten baby girls arrived at the hotel in the space of a fortnight. It was only a matter of time and mine would come.

  My boss at the hotel was called Suzinne. She’d suggested to the Domestic Manager I start on a trial basis; perhaps she saw something of herself in me. I was eager to do whatever she asked and grafted hard. After a few weeks, the Domestic Manager forgot all about the trial. My foot was in the door and I proved too valuable to lose, especially when a glut of cleaners walked out for better paid jobs at the State Waste Disposal Unit. In gratitude to Suzinne, I kept my gob shut when I caught her stealing from the hotel safe.

  One cold December morning, I was cleaning the lobby and emptying ash trays when a pair of westerners checked into The Bluewater. I was in the habit of memorising every foreign face. The woman was typical of many guests – in her mid-forties, with pristine clothes and the nervous demeanour of a first-time parent. Her husband wheeled their matching green cases up to the reception desk. They were booked in for ten days under the name of ‘Milne’. He carried a posh camera. She gawped at her surroundings and ran a finger along the reception desk when she thought no-one was looking.

  At breakfast the next day, I served their congee. They requested English breakfast tea and cold meats. The husband thanked me in Chinese and introduced himself. He was Iain, his wife’s name was Nancy.

  I bowed. “Nín hăo Nan-see.”

  Suzinne told me off for making contact with them. “They’re desperate people,” she said.

  In fact, she wanted their tips. We all knew how to smile sweetly and be polite to get the most out of westerners. Suzinne was one of the best at it, having worked at The Bluewater longest of anyone.

  A whole week passed without an
y baby deliveries from the welfare institute. The babies hadn’t been taken out to the yard and I began to panic. Had they run out of babies? Were they poorly? I feared for my girls.

  The foreigners at The Bluewater became increasingly edgy. Iain and Nancy were forced to book in for an extra week’s stay. Their guide cleared off, leaving them without a translator. Kim, the receptionist, spoke a little English and so did Suzinne – between them they figured out what guests wanted: mainly, to know what the hell was going on with their babies.

  One morning, there was an urgent knock on the laundry room door. It was Iain. Suzinne stepped outside and I overheard a flurry of whispered English. I spied Iain as he gave Suzinne some yuan, which she later claimed was a tip, for providing extra bed linen.

  She laughed it off. “You know what these foreigners are like? If they don’t get clean sheets every single week they think they’re going to catch bird flu.”

  Three days later the hotel lobby reverberated with the sound of crying babies. I was cleaning rooms on the first floor and ran downstairs, my hands tingling. I scanned the lobby full of tightly wrapped bundles. There were ten babies in all. The welfare institute staff carried two each and failed to comfort them. Kim, on reception, was frantically phoning around, telling the couples to “come quickly, your baby has arrived.” She worked under the glare of the welfare institute manager, whose job was to ensure the correct matching of kids and foreigners. I hovered by the lifts.

  Iain and Nancy were first downstairs. They were instructed to line up and a woman from the institute checked each passport in turn. I watched, rigid, to see if any of the babies would be handed over as twins – the possibility of them being separated was too awful to consider.

  One by one the babies were given out. The westerners cradled them so carefully it was as though they were holding their life’s worth in gold. No doubt they were. I’d heard a rumour that the average baby cost three thousand in fees to the institute.

  I approached the three couples that were left. The two remaining babies didn’t look like my girls. But what if I didn’t recognise them? It had been three months since I had left them on the steps of the welfare institute. They might have already gone.

  Just then a white coat appeared through the revolving door carrying two more babies. I knew it was them. It had to be. In the next instant they were handed over to Iain and Nancy. The noise in the lobby rose to such a level my head felt light.

  Iain immediately began taking pictures of Nancy with my girls. He pulled back the hoods of their little jackets and she bounced them, one in either arm, to get them to smile. They didn’t want to smile for his stupid camera. Nancy looked to Iain, bewildered and unsure.

  Put them on your shoulder, hold them high and whisper you love them so that it tickles their ears.

  They weren’t her babies, how could she know? I thought foreign mothers planned for these moments, waited and planned, and now she was left unprepared like a fool.

  One of my babies screamed and I could see all her gums, angry and inflamed. Her crying set off the other daughter. It was how they used to be.

  Sshh, don’t cry. Don’t cry little girls …

  They were scared of this Nancy woman staring down at them with tear-filled eyes and springy grey hair, so unlike their real mother’s. Her cloying floral perfume enveloped them, filled their noses; they needed the comfort of my skin, the warming tang of spice, of home.

  “Aren’t they beautiful?” Nancy beamed at me.

  I hadn’t realised how close I was, peering around her elbow at the two bundles. I clasped my hands behind my back to stop myself from reaching out and grabbing what belonged to me. Their hair had grown! They had gained weight, their cheeks now plump as cherries.

  “Yes, yes, very beautiful,” I said and began to hum one of their lullabies.

  My youngest, with her dimples, stopped crying for the briefest of moments. Her eyes moved to find my voice.

  I watched Nancy kiss them on the top of their heads. These are mine, the kiss said. I forced myself to smile and congratulate her.

  Iain gestured for me to take a picture on his expensive-looking camera. I had to do it, didn’t I? They fit perfectly inside the square viewfinder. A perfect, happy family and I was nowhere in the photo.

  “Xièxiè!” they said. “Xièxiè.”

  How could they know how much there was to thank me for?

  I couldn’t bear it a second longer and rushed to the toilets, where I fell to my knees inside a cubicle.

  My sickness turned out to be a stomach bug. I clutched my belly for twenty four hours. Suzinne took pity on me and let me rest in the laundry room. The warm air and constant whirr of the driers made me drowsy and I found myself dreaming about Manager He; his hands all over me; pleasure exquisite as warm syrup dripping from a spoon. We were in his bureau, he told me he loved me and would never leave me, he even promised to love my babies. He caressed my stomach swollen with pregnancy, kissed the place where the babies kicked and jostled against his cheek.

  A tapping sound woke me; it was coming from the small window above the tumble dryers. Someone was throwing bits of gravel against the glass. I opened the window and breathed in the bracing December air. There below me in the yard was Fei Fei, hugging herself warm; her cheeks white with cold.

  “Hello Mai Ling.”

  My immediate reaction was to leave the two-faced cow standing there.

  “Please, don’t shut the window, I’ve brought your things,” she said.

  “What things?”

  “Let me in and I’ll show you.”

  I met Fei Fei at the back door and hurried her inside the laundry. She settled beside the radiator and blew her cupped hands warm. Her fingers were bony, her knee caps visible beneath her jeans. Her hair smelled unwashed. Nothing remained of the girl whose ambition was to be beautiful, like a lady who shopped on Women’s Street.

  “I gathered your belongings from the dorm when I realised you weren’t coming back,” she said. “They threw me out.”

  I stopped emptying the tumble dryer and dropped onto a laundry basket. So it was true, the workers had been disposed.

  “They tried to fob us off with redundancy pay-outs, but we knew they’d never do it. Crock of bureaucracy shit. It was a rubbish place to work anyway,” she laughed bitterly.

  I laughed too, comforted to see suffering in someone else’s face other than my own. “You want a drink?”

  I stole Suzinne’s liquor which was hidden behind the washing machine inside a small cavity in the brickwork. The heat of it warmed my throat and settled my aching guts. My eyes returned frequently to the carrier bag containing Yifan’s book of traditional tales and my wooden figurines. Fei Fei poured us both another drink and helped herself to some of Suzinne’s peanuts while I flicked through Yifan’s book.

  “To our pride and joy, our dear son …”

  I thought of my own family, their faces fading as the months passed, their voices reduced to common phrases, “Husband! Your food is making the chickens fat!” and “Wife, why aren’t the chickens making us fat?” The inscription wished Yifan “a happy life, working his hardest for the good people of China.” Gentle Yifan, working hard and loving deeply, he had been a friend when I needed one. His soul was goodness. I couldn’t say the same of mine. I couldn’t say I was a good woman of China.

  I left the other items in the bag. It was too much to go through everything, all those broken pieces of the past.

  “I’m sorry,” Fei Fei said.

  “Don’t apologise.”

  “Not for the bag, I mean I’m sorry for not doing more to help you.”

  “Maybe you should leave,” I said in an attempt to hide our past behind the wall. “My boss will be coming back soon to check up on me.”

  Fei Fei wiped her nose on the sleeve of her thin and mucky jacket – it was the denim one I’d bought her the night of the ferris wheel.

  “It was me who followed you to the abortionist, Mai Ling,” she blurted
suddenly. “I told Manager He you hadn’t gone through with it. I snitched about Yifan, too. I said you were seeing each other … I’m so sorry. I was on my way to warn you the night Manager He came to your dorm and … oh, Mai Ling, I made things worse not better. I didn’t realise what I was doing or the consequences … I was so stupid.”

  “Stop!” I stared at her, numb.

  “He said I was beautiful. He gave me extra money to send home to my family. I didn’t know he was using us. He told me not to worry. I asked why I was spying on you, he said it was for our own good, for our safety. I followed you into town and all around the factory.” Fei Fei shook as she confessed.

  “I thought I was going mad,” I said, remembering the feeling of being watched wherever I went. I knew someone was there; that day I met Yifan in the Suseng Teahouse, I saw something at the window and then you were gone. And in town, when you bumped into me on your way to buy melons. You insisted I buy the pink shoes; it was him who sent you to bring me back to the factory, wasn’t it?”

  Fei Fei nodded, her head bowed in shame. “I’ve come to say sorry … not to be forgiven.”

  I picked the bag of my belongings off the floor and held them close to my weary heart. “You’ve said it, so now you can go.”

  Suzinne appeared at the laundry room door, scowling.

  “Who’s she?”

  “She’s just leaving.”

  Suzinne shouted at me about the state of the breakfast pots, how I hadn’t scrubbed them hard enough – another guest had gone down with stomach pains. I felt humiliated being told off in front of Fei Fei. It was like we were back at the factory. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Fei Fei cowering.

  Suzinne shoved a pile of sheets into my arms. “And make sure you tuck the sheet corners in tightly.”

  “I can see you have work to do. I’ll go.”

  I felt a twinge of something, perhaps sorrow or maybe an impulse to forgive her. We had all made such terrible mistakes at Forwood.

  “Fei Fei –” I called after her.

  She kept on walking. Her legs were so thin, unlike the rest of the plump, well-fed guests who sauntered along the hotel corridors. Without my belongings Fei Fei had nothing to carry. I think perhaps they were all she had owned in the world. I closed the laundry door and put the dirty bed linen into the machine. Then I watched the machine fill with water and started to plan.