Northern Girls: Life Goes On

by Sheng Keyi

  He beamed and moved a bit closer. He stretched out his right hand and put it on her right shoulder. With his left hand, he held out two fifty yuan notes. ‘Ah Hong, take this and use it. If you have any problems, come and find me.’

  Xiaohong cursed to herself, This guy is even more disgusting than the mayor. And he expects me to sleep with him? I’m not going to end up hooked on his bait.

  ‘This… Mr Zhuang…’ Xiaohong said, deliberately seeming a little tempted.

  ‘Ah Hong, take it.’ He tried to press it into her hand. He was not a big man and his arms were too short. With his right arm wrapped around her, he had hoped to pull her into an embrace, but he could not reach all the way around her. Pretending not to understand his intentions, she hesitatingly took the two notes from him. She said a few nice words to him, and deliberately stood up to put the money into her wallet, trying desperately to find a way out of this entanglement.

  Suddenly, she gasped, ‘Mr Zhuang! I’ve got diarrhoea. You sit, I’ll be right back.’

  He looked at her askance. Ignoring his stare, she unwound a long length of toilet paper and ran off to the washroom.

  By the time she returned from the fetid toilet, he was gone. Li Mazi was there smoking, and Sijiang was washing an apple. Xiaohong sat on the bed, pulled the blanket up over her mouth and laughed. The other two looked at each other in confusion.

  ‘What a pain! Without anything in the bowels, I can’t believe I spent so long squatting over the toilet.’ She told them what had happened, offering a few choice insights in conclusion.

  ‘Honghong, you really have a way of seeing right through people,’ Sijiang said, handing her the apple.

  ‘Hey Sijiang, pack your things. We’re leaving in the morning.’ And with a loud crunch, she took a big bite out of the apple.

  ‘What? Tomorrow?’

  ‘Yep. If we don’t get out of here, Mr Zhuang is going to start docking Li Mazi’s wages.’

  Three

  I

  ‘Hey, Sijiang, look! Dorm beds, ten yuan a night.’ After craning her neck and looking in all directions, Xiaohong finally came across some cheap accommodation.

  ‘Where? Where?’ Sijiang’s small eyes were locked in a sort of tunnel vision.

  ‘There, the Spring Hotel,’ Xiaohong pointed toward a humble sign, under which was a forked path. On the sign, carefully drawn in red ink, was an arced line that pointed straight ahead, topped with a tiny arrow. It was a sleek, slippery marking of the path, standing erect like a living thing.

  ‘Sijiang, what does that remind you of?’ Xiaohong said, bursting into laughter.

  Sijiang looked at the arrow, scratched her chest and pondered a moment, ‘It just looks like an arrow. What you laughing at?’

  Xiaohong tweaked her friend’s nose and, not wanting to make her feel bad, decided not to say, Doesn’t it remind you of the mayor’s thingy?

  ‘You two ladies looking for a room? Come on. Follow me,’ a woman, looking young and pretty, said to them with a smile. At a second glance, they thought she seemed a little wilted, her age indiscernible. She wore dark red lipstick and her eyes had been outlined with two thin black marks. It took a moment for Xiaohong to realise that the eyeliner had been tattooed on.

  ‘It is ten yuan a night?’

  ‘Yeah, definitely. Not a penny more.’

  ‘Alright, we’ll have a look.’ Holding hands, the two girls followed the woman’s large rump around a few bends to a very quiet back street, through a dark, narrow passage, and clacked their way up a wooden staircase to the second floor.

  ‘It’s like our old place, with bunk beds and everything. How many people per room?’

  ‘Five. Two per room costs thirty a night. Which one you wanna stay in?’

  ‘Five to a room,’ Sijiang rushed to put her bag on one of the beds, as if afraid someone was competing with her for a place.

  Once their money had been collected, the owner wiggled her well-rounded hips as she made her way out the door.

  ‘Well, it’s got a strong perfume smell,’ said Sijiang, wrinkling up her nose. The room was messy, but too dimly lit to really see how dirty it was.

  ‘They’ve still got mosquito nets up. That’s weird.’

  ‘The mosquitoes are even worse in winter than other times of the year. Stay here long enough and you’ll see for yourself,’ a female voice said in their hometown dialect.

  Xiaohong stared at Sijiang. ‘Did you say that?’

  ‘You mean it wasn’t you?’

  They were both bewildered.

  ‘Eh. It was me.’ A head popped out from under the mosquito net on one of the upper bunks, a pair of bleary eyes looking out from a pretty face.

  Such an angel! But what kind of girl would be hiding in bed asleep in the middle of the day? Xiaohong thought, wearing an expression of surprise mingled with scepticism. Sijiang looked even more perplexed.

  ‘I said it. So, what are the two of you doing here? Take my advice and go back home,’ the pretty girl said lazily, and retreated behind the mosquito net. The two girls stood where they were, confused.

  ‘Hey! I’m sleeping! Keep it down, will ya?’ another girl said in a muffled voice.

  Xiaohong’s stomach started rumbling. She stretched out her upper body, gave an exaggerated shrug, and whispered, ‘Hey Sijiang, at least it’s not expensive. Let’s give it a try and see how it goes. We’ll have a look around the area while we wait for news from the Lucky Duck Handbag Factory. Maybe we’ll even meet some guys who want to hang out for a couple of days and buy us dinner.’

  After going out for some fried noodles, they returned to the dorm and found the other girls sleeping soundly. The leisurely lifestyle was apparently contagious. When Xiaohong and Sijiang lay down on their bunks to daydream, they, too, ended up sleeping until dinner time.

  When the three other women in the room got up, they took the cups and bowls beside their beds and, rattling them, flip-flopped about the room. A thick smell of perfume filled the quarters. Sijiang, with a nose like a dog’s, was sensitive to the heavy smell and sneezed several times. The three women in their fine-quality sleepwear were all very good-looking. They twisted their bodies lazily inside their pyjamas, showing off their supple forms. When they’d finished washing, they sent out for dinner.

  ‘You two eat yet?’ the first girl to speak – let’s just call her Li – directed the question towards Xiaohong.

  ‘We’re not hungry. We had a snack,’ Xiaohong waved her off, while Sijiang stared unblinkingly at Li’s pretty clothes and pretty face. They ate hurriedly and without expression, as if merely going through the motions. The second girl, Lu, cleared the dishes and took out the rubbish when they had finished. The third, Liu, opened a small handbag and removed three bottles, laying them on the table. They placed three stools in front of the table and dropped three derrières onto them. Xiaohong and Sijiang stared at the backs of these graceful figures. The mirror reflected the entire room. Sijiang sat with her feet dangling off the bed, the mosquito net covering half of her shape. Xiaohong leaned against the bed, gazing at the three girls in the mirror. Each clutched a small hand mirror, inspecting first the right cheek, then the left, using it like a magnifying glass. They lightly touched here, carefully pinched there, applying this and that to their faces, then tapped the skin lightly.

  ‘Fuck. Last night, my damned rich uncle and his dirty mouth… it made me want to puke.’ Li applied the tweezers to her eyebrows, bit by bit, like a chicken pecking at grains of rice.

  ‘His Hong Kong dollars aren’t bad, though. You score a bull yet?’ Lu bared her teeth, using her fingernail to pick at a spot as she hissed.

  ‘A bull? Without going to bed, you think a rich uncle’s going to part with a bull?’ Liu said, who was stouter than the other two. She teased her short hair to stir a little life into it.

  ‘Hey, you two girls, what the hell you doing, so young and here on your own? It’s hard to get out once you start working in this line. I suggest you both go b
ack home,’ Li said, using her fingertip to pick something out of a little bottle and apply it to her half-opened eyes as she swept a glance over Xiaohong and Sijiang.

  A bull? And what the hell line of work is this? Xiaohong thought to herself.

  ‘Oh well. Why don’t you both wash and get made up? You can come to the Sea Pearl Hotel with us tonight and sing,’ Li said.

  ‘We don’t have any makeup.’ Sijiang looked enviously at the newly-constructed faces. She had always wanted to experience such a makeover.

  ‘You can sit here. I’m done. I’ll get dressed now,’ the short-haired Liu got up and stripped naked. She displayed her bare chest proudly, looking first for her bra, then her panties, searching through a row of underclothing hanging on a line stretched across the room, her large breasts jiggling as she moved. Sijiang, unused to seeing other women’s naked bodies, stared right at her. She found that all the essential parts were the same as her own, but not identical. As she looked, her face burned with embarrassment, and she couldn’t help but take a second look at such an attractive physique. Feeling dwarfed, she forgot to close her mouth, which was gaping in astonishment.

  ‘Go on then,’ Xiaohong said, nudging her. Sijiang clamped her mouth shut and her throat issued a little gurgling sound. She walked to the table. Seeing the bottles that covered it, she was stupefied.

  ‘Apply this first. You got any other clothes?’ Li asked, handing Sijiang a bottle of toner.

  ‘Some, in my luggage. Wow, your eyes are so dark, and your lashes are really long. And your skin is so fair,’ Sijiang said, enviously.

  ‘Here. Do the foundation, then a little powder.’ Li, seemingly used to hearing such praise, pushed the case of powder toward Sijiang and continued, ‘The lights are dim at night, so you need plenty of makeup if you don’t want to look pale as a ghost.’

  Sijiang nodded and rushed to put a layer of powder on her face. Looking at the mirror, she added an additional layer.

  ‘Hey Sijiang, don’t overdo it,’ Xiaohong stood to one side, stifling a laugh. Just at that moment, she noticed several dark red scars on the inner part of Li’s arm. Obviously, they were cigarette burns. She looked at Li in surprise, but only received an indifferent smile in return.

  ‘Working in this line, there’s no place for any real feelings. Showing true emotion is a sign you’re finished,’ Li said, placing a white pearl earring on her left earlobe.

  There it was again, ‘this line’. What exactly was ‘this line’? Xiaohong wanted to ask, but thought better of it.

  Lu, her fingers bent back at an awkward angle, applied a heavy coat of varnish to each nail, the brush licking at them like a cat. Finishing the job, she held them to her lips and blew gently. The sharp claws looked like a ready defence against any attacker.

  Liu, facing the mirror, put on her bra. Twisting her arms behind her to close the clasps, she entrusted the care of her breasts to the garment. She turned sideways as if posing, then said to Xiaohong, ‘Why aren’t you getting ready?’

  ‘I only need ten minutes to get made up,’ Xiaohong gazed at Liu’s bust to see the effect. The embroidered, lacy bra gave her chest a boost and Xiaohong suspected it was not a cheap piece of clothing.

  ‘Nice bra. Expensive?’

  ‘Embry brand. It cost me a hundred.’

  ‘Wow, that’s pretty steep,’ Sijiang said, startled.

  ‘These briefs, fifty-eight. Oh well, at least it’s not cold.’ Liu wiggled her hips. Both cheeks were exposed, with a small strip of cloth cutting up the median line between them, converging with another string around her waist.

  ‘Ha, that’s ridiculous. You may as well wear nothing!’ Xiaohong said, talking straight, even to a stranger.

  ‘It’s sexy, don’t you know? My rich uncle loves it that way, and so do the young guys!’ Liu took a long, admiring look at her buttocks then turned around to put on her jacket. Sijiang, her makeover finished, showed off the results of Li’s basic operation. Her tiny eyes looked considerably bigger, her skin a powdery white with a rosy tint to the cheeks. Her hair was let down and combed out. When she looked in the mirror at her apple-shaped face, her eyes filled with excitement.

  ‘Oh yeah, I forgot to ask – are you two virgins?’ Li’s expression was serious.

  ‘I was, once upon a time,’ Xiaohong said, giggling.

  ‘Then it’ll be easier. Go and get dressed.’ Sijiang grabbed her crumpled jacket. Li looked at it and said, ‘Don’t wear that. I’ll find something for you.’ She turned and asked Xiaohong, ‘And you?’

  She just shrugged. ‘Me? I’ll just wear what I’ve got on.’

  II

  Sea Pearl Night Club flashed on and off, first green then red. Seen from a distance, it dazzled like an elegant woman walking at the end of a long country road, but upon drawing nearer, it was clear just how thin the layer of glitz really was. Everything around it was desolation and construction work, making one wonder what the owner had seen in the location. Xiaohong was awed by the grandeur of the place and suddenly felt shabby standing beside it. She regretted not dressing better for the occasion. Seeing Sijiang in her white jacket pulled snug around the waist, she thought the younger girl looked like a star.

  ‘You look like you could party all night. I mean it,’ she said, fingering the fine fabric appreciatively.

  Her friend, obviously aware she was just stating the facts, pouted and said, ‘When we make a little money, I want to buy tons of nice clothes.’ Sijiang was always saying this sort of thing, as if she were afraid she would forget why she had left home.

  ‘Come on you two! People’ve been asking and we told them we had some new girls,’ Li called back to them over her shoulder. ‘You don’t need to pay the cover charge.’

  When the waitress opened the heavy wooden door, the powerful beat of the music flooded over them, startling Sijiang. She clung to Xiaohong’s hand. Shadows flickered in the strobe light as it played over the crowd. Sijiang, spooked by the quick switches between starkly lit images and sudden darkness – making everyone look like ghosts – was too disoriented to make out any faces. She could only see flashes of teeth and the whites of strange eyes, unable to tell who anyone was.

  ‘Hang on a while,’ Li shouted to them. ‘There’ll soon be people looking for a little company while they sing. There’ll be plenty of chances to pick up some cash then.’

  ‘Don’t we have to pay to sing?’ Xiaohong asked.

  ‘Pay? The guests should pay you to sing!’ Li retorted.

  Xiaohong had put her foot in it again. Ever since meeting Li, she had committed too many blunders and been confronted with too many ominous sounding terms. Like, what did she mean by ‘bull’ or ‘this line’, and now ‘guests’? They not only didn’t have to pay to sing, but they would get paid for it. Was this some kind of scam? Her eyes scanned the crowd as it grew, seats gradually filling up. Groups of girls scattered, each gravitating to a different table. Some were invited to sit with the men, whose arms quickly snaked intimately around their bodies. Some couples made their way to the dance floor, embracing each other feverishly and swaying to their own rhythms.

  Sijiang’s palms were sweaty. She shivered.

  ‘You cold?’ Xiaohong asked.

  ‘No. I’m just scared some guy’s going to ask me to dance and I don’t know how to.’

  ‘You call that dancing? Looks to me like they’re just groping each other.’

  A man came over and led Li and Lu away. Li turned back and said to Xiaohong, ‘When you finish singing for your guests, remember to get a tip.’

  So that’s what she meant by ‘guests’.

  Before long, Liu was led away as well. Sijiang clung even more fiercely to Xiaohong. ‘Let’s sing together, OK? I don’t want to split up.’

  ‘Yeah. I know.’

  It wasn’t long before a tall guy approached and politely asked, ‘You ladies waiting for someone?’

  The two girls shook their heads and followed him to a private room. Inside, a short-legged
man sat on the sofa, one leg dangling over the arm, singing a drunken raucous tune. The tall guy nudged Sijiang toward him.

  ‘Dude,’ Shorty said in Cantonese, ‘you got a good eye. Keeping Big Tits for yourself, huh? How about you let me at her when you’ve had your fun?’

  ‘You beauties understand Cantonese?’ the tall guy asked, fingering a strip of long whiskers growing out of a mole on his chin.

  ‘Not a word,’ Xiaohong answered, eyes glued to the black strands of hair.

  ‘It’s your first time here?’

  ‘How’d you know?’

  ‘Because I’ve never seen you before. How long have you been in Shenzhen?’

  ‘Just a coupla days,’ popped out of Sijiang’s mouth before Xiaohong could answer.

  ‘Come and pick a song to sing for us.’ The tall guy handed the song list to her, lit a cigarette, and started chatting with Shorty. Sijiang sang the 1980s Taiwanese hit Innocence, while Xiaohong searched frantically for some familiar tune to sing.

  After a while, the tall guy put out his cigarette and asked, ‘Hey beautiful, how about some tea?’

  ‘Yeah. Tea and a late night snack,’ Shorty chimed in, pulling at his waistband.

  ‘Tea? They serve tea in places like this?’

  ‘I didn’t mean here. Let’s go out for dim sum and a drink.’

  ‘Go out? Where d’you have in mind?’

  ‘Not far. Come on, it’ll be fun!’

  The girls followed them to a van in a dark corner of the car park. They piled into the vehicle, and Shorty squinted through the windscreen as he drove, trying to find his way through a series of twists and turns in the unlit streets. After several minutes of driving through the darkness in silence, he came to a sudden stop in a deserted area.

  ‘Where are we? What are you doing?’ Xiaohong said, voice pinched in anxiety. It was beginning to dawn on her that they had been misled.

  ‘What are we doing? You can’t see for yourself? We’ll save money on the room and give you two a little extra. Win-win, right?’ The tall guy laughed cruelly, voice quivering with desire. Unable to wait any longer, he pushed Xiaohong from the van and banged the door shut. Shorty grabbed Sijiang and held her tight.