Blue Gold (23 page)

“Laiping! Wake up! Your cousin is here to see you!”

Laiping wondered,
Why didn't Min just phone me?
She checked her mobile, which she kept beside her pillow while she slept, and discovered that the battery had died. Doubly anxious now between her dream and Min's unexpected arrival, Laiping maneuvered quickly in her bunk to pull off her pajamas and put on jeans and a top. She found Min waiting for her in the common room and took in her worried expression.

“What's wrong?” asked Laiping with alarm.

“It's your father,” she said, tears budding in her eyes. Laiping went light-headed. She gripped Min's arm, fearing the worst. Min saw the shock on Laiping's face and quickly added, “He's alive! But Uncle ignored the doctors' advice. He went out to plow, and he collapsed. Here,” said Min, handing Laiping her own mobile. “Call my mother. She will tell you.”

Laiping's fingers were trembling so much that Min had to take the mobile back and punch the speed dial for her.

“It was another heart attack, a bad one this time,” Auntie said when she came on the line. “He's been taken to the district hospital in Heyuan. He must have the surgery soon.”

“I'm coming home!” Laiping said into the phone, choking on tears.

Hearing this, Min leaned into other ear, warning, “If you leave without permission, they will never give you your pay!”

“There's nothing you can do here, Laiping,” Auntie was saying at the same time. “The best thing you can do for your baba is stay there and work.”

Min took the phone and spoke to her mother for a moment before hanging up.

“She says she'll call if there's any more news,” Min reported to Laiping.

Laiping's whole body was trembling. Min put her arms around her waist and held her tight, her head coming up to Laiping's chin.

“What if he dies? What if I never see him again?” sobbed Laiping.

“Don't say that!” Min told her. “Don't even think that! What you need is to eat something, and stay strong!” Min sounded just like their grandmother, which gave Laiping a little comfort.

 

LAIPING WENT WITH MIN
to the cafeteria and picked at her vegetables and rice, eating little. After dinner she went to the factory for her shift, turning a single thought over in her mind all night, so that by morning it was sharp and clear and hard.
Baba will live if I get the money I'm owed to pay for the surgery
. In the morning when she finished work, she went down the wide staircase with the other workers. But on the main floor, instead of going outside she veered off to the corridor where the managers' offices were located. At Miss Lau's door, she knocked. Miss Lau opened the door, and—recognizing Laiping this time—frowned.

“Yes, what is it?”

“My father had a second heart attack yesterday,” Laiping told her. “Please, Miss Lau, I need my money—today.”

“I'm sorry about your father. Is he…?”

“He's in the hospital.”

Miss Lau nodded as she took this in. “Come. Sit down,” she said, standing aside to let Laiping enter.

Laiping took the same chair she'd sat in the last time she was in Miss Lau's office, when she was unfairly punished for Bohai's poor workmanship. Miss Lau seated herself behind the large desk and found Laiping's file in a tall stack. She opened it and read through it while Laiping waited. Laiping could see her G-32 form at the top of the papers inside the file. When she finished reading, Miss Lau folded her hands together and leaned forward.

“We have reviewed your request. The decision has been made that we cannot make an exception for you.”

Laiping's mouth fell open in shock. Her first thought was that she hadn't heard correctly—there had to be a mistake. After all this time waiting!

“That can't be right!” she exclaimed.

Miss Lau showed no emotion. “You told Miss Jang that you were homesick,” she stated.

“No, I didn't,” Laiping replied in confusion.

“She was very clear about it,” said Miss Lau, picking up the G-32 form to show her. Laiping could see that someone—Miss Jang?—had written notes on it. “She says you told her you miss your mother and father.” Miss Lau put the form back into Laiping's file. “If we give you this money, what is to prevent you from quitting and going home?”

“I won't! I promise!”

But Miss Lau looked doubtful.

“Many migrant workers are homesick when they first arrive. You need time to fit in and feel that you belong here. Mr. Chen understands this. That's why he made this rule.”

“But—”

“There will be no further discussion! Mr. Chen is paying you much more than other factories pay, in other parts of China. If you're a good worker, you will have future paychecks to send home.”

Laiping wanted to tell her that by the time she received her next paycheck, her father might be dead. But she could see the look on Miss Lau's face—the same look that Mr. Wu got if a worker questioned him.
The ability to obey instructions is the best way of judging a worker.

Miss Lau smiled her tight smile, dismissing Laiping. “I'm happy to hear that your father is recovering.”

 

INSTEAD OF GOING BACK
to the dorm to sleep, Laiping went directly to the Internet café where she'd last seen Kai, even though the chances of finding him there on a Tuesday morning were slim.

“Do you know a boy named Kai?” Laiping asked one of the servers behind the counter.

“I know twenty boys named Kai!” she replied.

Laiping's palms were moist with anxiety—Kai now seemed like her only hope, even though she had only the vaguest idea of how he might help her get her money. But she had run out of places to turn for help.

An idea sprang to her mind. She remembered the first place she met Kai and hurried to the employment office building. When she got there, she saw that the line of job-seekers was even longer than the day she and Fen, who was then Yiyin, were hired. Hundreds of people were waiting for their chance to go inside the building and apply for work.
It's true what the bosses say
, she thought. There would always be somebody else willing to take their place. So maybe she shouldn't have been thinking about making trouble. But how could she not, when her father's life was at stake?

Laiping walked down the line, scanning the crowd. There were girls in baggy jeans and T-shirts who looked like they had just come out from the countryside, and others in short skirts and fashionable tops, bent over mobile phones—like the girls downtown Fen said were office workers—but there was no sign of Kai. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw a security guard near the building's entrance eyeing her suspiciously. Realizing she couldn't remain there loitering, she rounded the corner of the building and went to the end of the line, as though she was one of the new applicants. She waited for fifteen minutes, watching for Kai to appear and listening to the nervous chatter of the girls and guys in line around her, sounding so much like she and Fen had on their first day—frightened but excited, worried about whether the employment office would deem them company material. Was it only eight weeks ago? It felt like a lifetime had gone by since then.

Suddenly, Laiping was weary—so weary she thought she could fall asleep right there in line, standing up. So weary, her arms and legs felt like lead. She let her eyelids drop like weights, just for a second or two. She snapped awake, uncertain if she had actually gone to sleep, or for how long, although the line hadn't moved. Then something caught her gaze—a crumpled paper caught in the tall weeds growing along the wall of the building. She picked it up and unfolded it. It was yellow, not pink like the paper Kai had handed her eight weeks ago, but the message was the same:
Know Your Rights!
There was an email address.

Hiding the paper from those around her, Laiping slipped it into her jeans pocket. She stepped out of the line and walked quickly away, being careful not to look back. She kept her eyes forward all the way to the Internet café, imagining as she cut through the crowd of hundreds waiting for busses along the main boulevard that any one of them could be a company spy—afraid of what would happen to her if they found out she was carrying the yellow paper. At the café, she waited for her turn on one of the computers.

“
I need to know my rights
,” she typed. “
Please contact me.
”

She included her cell phone number in the email and signed her name. Then she worried all the way back to her dorm that the email address was a trap set by the company to catch troublemakers, and that she had given herself away. As she reached the building, she glanced at the nets surrounding the dorm. She tried imagine what it was like for those people—how frightening it would be to jump from the roof, and how horribly desperate they must have felt. Then a realization came to her, an idea so fully formed that it hardened immediately into resolve: Once I get my money, I'm quitting and I'm going home.

 

EXHAUSTED
, Laiping went back to the dorm to catch a few hours of sleep before her next shift. But she couldn't sleep. Her senses were full of longing to be back home in her own bed, listening to Baba snore behind the thin wall. She imagined the sound of oxen lowing softly in the village pen, and of a rooster crowing—smelled the tangy aroma of the fields outside the open window. But she must have at last drifted off, because she was jolted awake by the ringing of her mobile. She grabbed it from under her pillow and fumbled to answer it.

“Mama?” she said, dopey with sleep.

“Laiping?” came a man's voice. Laiping was filled with dread, certain that someone must be calling from the hospital with news about Baba. But the voice continued lightly, “It's Kai. You were looking for me?”

“Where have you been?!” replied Laiping.

“Away.”

“I need your help,” she told him. “Can we meet?”

“Not at the usual place,” he said.

An hour later, Laiping was sitting with Kai at a small table in a near-empty bubble tea shop, located in a small strip mall clear across the factory campus. Kai hadn't wanted to meet at the Internet café—especially after learning that Laiping had sent her email from there.

“You can't be too careful,” he said. “The company has spies everywhere.”

“I've been looking for you there,” Laiping told him.

“I've been traveling, to Dongguan and Guangzhou,” he replied, naming other factory cities in the Pearl River Delta, “meeting with workers, to see how conditions compare, and what can be done.”

“That's dangerous, isn't it?”

“Of course it's dangerous! There are work camps full of people whose only crime is trying to change things. If somebody dares to speak out about being worked to death, or about corrupt officials taking all the money for themselves, the next thing they know, police are busting down their door in the middle of the night.”

Laiping shivered and thought of Fen's father, the troublemaker. Perhaps that was where he was, in a work camp somewhere.

“I thought…” she began, then hesitated about saying what was on her mind. Kai was discussing such important things, and she didn't want to appear to be shallow, or selfish.

“What?”

“I was afraid you were mad at me,” she said, “because I didn't want to go to your meeting.”

“I was rude last time,” he told her, his voice softening. He reached across the table and took her hand, like a boyfriend would. Laiping felt a thrill run through her. “You're so new here,” he said, “it takes a while to understand why we have to fight back.”

“I understand now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I applied for my back pay because my father is ill—”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

“They refuse to give me my money. Is there anything I can do?”

“To be honest,” he said with a shrug, “no. The company has the power to do what they want.”

Laiping's heart sank. Kai squeezed her hand.

“Come to our meeting the day after tomorrow,” he said. “Talking with others at least makes you feel you're doing something.”

Laiping nodded. “My cousin might want to come, too,” she added. “People on her line are getting sick.”

Kai looked her in the eye—measuring, assessing. “If I tell you where the meeting is, you can't tell anybody else. It's too risky. We could be arrested.”

Without meaning to, Laiping pulled back slightly. Kai saw her uncertainty, and dropped her hand.

“Do you want things to change, or not?”

She answered without hesitation, “I want things to change.” And she wanted him to take her hand again.

Kai nodded and smiled. He did a quick shoulder-
check to make sure no one was watching, then he told her, “Give me your mobile.”

Laiping fished in her bag for her phone and handed it over. Kai typed an address into her date book.

“Come to this address on Friday morning,” he said, and handed the phone back to her.

“I'll be there,” promised Laiping.

When they left the tea shop, he held her hand as far as the bus stop on the main boulevard. When they paused to say goodbye, she wondered if he'd kiss her right there in public the way some couples did—even though such displays were frowned upon by the older generation—but he turned away from her and quickly lost himself in the crowds along the sidewalk. Laiping watched him until she lost track of which bobbing head was his, already counting the hours until she'd see him again.