The Great Divide (2 page)

The first two soldiers gripped her arms and pulled her away from the buses. Two more posted themselves between her and the vehicles. The interpreter had instantly vanished. The arriving workers dispersed almost as swiftly.

Gloria shouted, “I’m an American citizen!”

Another man stepped in close, as diminutive as the others but younger and dressed in civilian clothes. “So, American citizen, who sent you. United Nations? Red Cross?”

“Nobody.” Behind the man stood another civilian, bigger and older. The second man had the shape of a bull on two legs—huge arms, no neck, flattened face, eyes as hard as the young man’s voice.

“What, you just some little tourist, you come to ask questions about Factory 101?”

“I’m a student at Georgetown University.” Wishing she could control her voice, remove the wavering tone. “I’m researching labor practices in China.”

“Student? You student?” He said something to the soldiers. The two who weren’t holding her arms walked over. One ripped the purse from her shoulder, the other frisked her with rudely probing hands.

“I’m an American citizen! You can’t—”

“You be quiet.” The young man dug into her purse, tossed her tape recorder and camera to the second man, pulled out her passport,
opened it, inspected the picture, came up with her student ID, compared the two to her. “Gloria Hall.”

“That’s right. I demand—”

A single word from the young man and the bullish man moved so fast she saw nothing, not even a blur. One moment he was behind the young man, the next and her entire face screamed agony. Her vision grayed, almost went black. It felt like she had been hit with a wooden mallet.

“That’s good. You quiet now, Miss Student Gloria Hall.” He flicked the plastic ID with his finger. She heard it through the ringing in her ears. “Georgetown is place?”

“A university.” The blow had dropped her voice an octave. “In Washington, D.C.”

The young man spoke once more. The soldiers began dragging her toward the main gates. She shrieked, “Where are you taking me?”

“You come all this way. You want to know about Factory 101.” The young man offered a thin-lipped smile. “No problem. We show.”

B
Y THE FOURTH WEEK
, the work was routine enough for her exhausted mind to wander.

Gloria stood in a line of seventy identical steam presses that ran the width of the building’s fifth floor. The walkways ran diagonally. She faced the back of a woman operating a miniature weaving machine, making shoelaces. In front of her was a young man sewing labels inside finished garments. Then came a woman laminating soles on basketball shoes. Each process multiplied by seventy. Three machines in front of the laminator was a set of metal stairs, leading to two glass-walled chambers. The room to the left was the central office, from which they were always watched. Always. The room to the right was empty now. Even so, Gloria could not look in that direction. None of them could. Except for those times when the big man came down the aisles and screamed for them to do so. Then they had no choice.

To every side, lines of dark heads disappeared into the hot and misty distance. The noise was deafening. Many of the machines were brand-new. Others, like the press she operated, were extremely old. Her press hissed and complained every time it was rammed shut. Some of the presses were harder to operate than others. Some of the
lighter women needed to grab with both hands and haul the top down by raising their feet off the floor. This was very tricky, as they had to release the handle and hit the floor and jump back before the steam hissed through the padding. After a ten-hour shift with three fifteen-minute breaks, it was hard to find the energy to keep jumping away. Exhaustion reached a point where the pain could not be felt. Gloria had seen in the showers that several of the women had welts around their middle from countless steam scaldings.

Gloria had her own scars, but the worst of them were healing. She bore welts on her right cheek, her neck, her forehead, both upper arms, her left elbow and wrist, and the palms of both hands. Many were from learning how to handle the steam press, but not all. Her right ear still throbbed from a beating two days earlier, and the warmth on her neck suggested it was bleeding again. She did not check. It would do no good. And if she got blood on another shirt, they would beat her again.

The throbbing and the hunger and the exhaustion worked at her mind. Which was not bad. The labor moved more swiftly and smoothly if she did not think too much. Just pull another freshly dyed and washed shirt from the hamper and slip it over the bottom padding. Smooth out the worst creases. Reach and haul down the top, ram the handle shut, squint, and lean away from the steam. Open the press, arrange the sleeves, haul and close and squint. Open the press, fold, close and lean and squint. Open and set the finished shirt in the stack to her left. Pluck out another shirt from the hamper. Repeat.

All this week she had been doing pajama tops for the New Horizons children’s line. Which was what had started her thoughts wandering down that particular road. She peered through the steam at one unironed sleeve. Dozens of dancing teddy bears smiled up at her, each framed by the company’s famous shooting-star logo with its trailing edge of sparkling rainbows. She opened the press, folded the sleeve in, and rammed the press closed. But hiding the tiny sleeve did no good. For when she squinted through the steam, she saw not the factory but another smiling face, this one belonging to her fiancé.

She shook her head and opened the press and folded the tiny shirt. Now it seemed as though Gary were behind her, moving in close, kissing the place at the base of her neck that always made her shiver. This time, however, the shiver released a flaming tide of regret.
For the years and the life stolen from them, for the children they would never call their own. Gloria reached down and caressed the hot shirt, aching from the piracy of losses. So much had been taken from them.

She was ripped from her lamentation by the feel of her ankle being unchained from the machine. She gasped in terror, then released the breath in a cry of panic when she saw the bullish shoulders and the bald head rising into view. She screamed the first words of Cantonese she had learned after her arrival: “I meet my quota!”

The man was called Chou, and it was he who had hit her there in the dusty parking lot the day of her arrival. He had hit her enough since then, and she had seen enough of the others being struck, to know terror just by his approach. To have him come so close and see her not working was impossible. Still, it had happened. Again she screamed what everyone screamed when Chou came for them: “I meet my quota!”

Those were the words they were forced to shout at the end of each shift. Afterward the chains attaching them to their stations were released, and they were led downstairs to the dormitories with the lines of bunks and the bare tables and the stench-ridden toilets. But now the words had no effect. Chou gripped her upper arm with an iron hand and dragged her from the bench. She screamed again and clutched the steam-drenched press. She did not even feel her palms blistering. He wrenched her free and started down the aisle.

No one looked up from their work as she was dragged to the front. No one ever did. Not even the one friend she had made, the woman operating the laminating machine, a former university student with a few words of English. Hao Lin kept her face down and her hands busy. There was nothing anyone could do. To look up would only be a sharing of the terror, and they all carried too much of their own already. They would be forced to look soon enough.

She gripped the railing, the stairs, the doorjamb. Just as they all did. Shrieking and wailing and still dragged into the punishment chamber with its glass wall overlooking the entire factory floor. The steam rose from the presses and the machines clattered with angry laughter at her helplessness. Gloria heard nothing save the rising tide of her own terror.

She babbled pleas in English as she was lashed to the punishment chair. Chou straightened and left the room. He always did. Drawing
out the wait was all part of the terror. She continued to moan and struggle and tremble so hard the chair rattled against the concrete floor. Chou returned, this time burdened with an armful of great metal rods. Her moans turned to sobs. She had no idea what it was he carried, only that it would hurt her very much.

He moved behind her and began clattering and banging. The owner’s son walked into the room, the slender young man who had spoken to her that day in the dusty square. He carried something too, something that looked vaguely familiar, only her panic was so great she could not draw it into focus. He remained at the other end of the table, setting up what appeared to be a tripod. When neither of the men touched her or even approached, Gloria managed to see through her fear. It was indeed a tripod, and on it he was setting a video camera.

From behind her Chou hit a switch, and suddenly the room was bathed in a harsh light. Gloria flinched as the young man walked toward her. But he merely slapped a sheet of paper down on the table in front of her and commanded, “You read this.”

“What is it?” But she was already squinting over the scrabbled writing. And when the words swam into focus, she could not help sobbing.

“No, no cry! You read words!”

But she could not stop. Just four weeks she had been here. Yet it had been long enough for the reason she had come and the nine months of planning and the two years of researching and the loss of her beloved Gary to melt into a puddle of random thoughts and aching remorse. Now, here upon the table before her, the plans became real again. The plans and the hope and the purpose. She sobbed so hard she could scarcely draw breath. She had won.

“You stop tears or we make real pain!” The young man slammed an open palm upon the table. “You stop now!”

“Y-yes. All right …” Gloria drew a hard breath. Another. She had to do this. She gave her head a violent shake to clear away the tears. Blinked away those yet unshed. Squinted. Focused. Took a deep breath. And read the words aloud.

As soon as she was done, the young man drew the tape from the video and left. Chou cut off the harsh lights and followed. Soon enough they returned. Chou walked over and released her. An iron hand gripped her arm and lifted her erect. She was walked from the
chamber and down the stairs. But not back down the aisle. Instead, Chou pulled her around to a second set of stairs leading to the doors no prisoner ever passed through more than once. She knew this because Hao Lin had told her. Gloria’s sobs became louder still as Chou half carried her down and away. She had indeed won.

I
CALL MARCUS GLENWOOD to the stand.”

Judge Gladys Nicols turned to where Marcus sat, isolated and unprotected. “One last time, Marcus. Go find yourself legal representation.”

He scarcely heard her. The meager portion of his mind that functioned normally watched as someone else rose to his feet and approached the witness stand. This other person took the oath and settled into the seat. And waited.

Suzie Rikkers was a tiny waif of an attorney, made smaller by her habit of wearing oversize clothes. Today it was a dark skirt with a matching double-breasted jacket whose shoulder pads were so thick they raised the lapels up in line with her ears. She had been looking forward to this moment for a very long time. “You are Marcus Glenwood?”

“Yes.” He had known the agony of two sleepless weeks over what was about to come. Marcus had visualized the scene in such vivid detail that now, filtered as it was through a fog of fatigue, his imaginings seemed far more real.

Suzie Rikkers was an associate in his former firm. He had been instrumental in blocking her promotion to partner. As she walked toward the witness box, she granted him a smile of pure revenge. “You reside in the Raleigh area known as Oberlin?”

“Not anymore.”

“Of course.” She spoke with the voice of a broken pipe organ, all shrieks and fierce winds. “You sold that house, did you not?”

“Yes.”

“And how much did you have in cash after paying off the mortgage?”

“You have the figures.”

She spun about. “Your Honor, please instruct the witness to answer the question.”

Judge Gladys Nicols had been Marcus’ friend for several years, ever since he had joined her in pressing the state bar to pass a measure requiring pro bono work from all big firms. Pro bono meant “for the public good,” and signified work done for clients who could not pay. Back when most North Carolina legal work was performed by a tight-knit clan of locals, anyone who refused pro bono assignments was shunned. But nowadays, attorneys who regularly accepted non-paying clients were classed as fools.

Judge Nicols’ expression clearly showed how much she disliked leaning over to tell him, “You know the drill, Marcus.”

“About a hundred thousand dollars,” Marcus replied.

“Plus another eighteen thousand dollars from the auction of your wife’s collection of antiques. Which, I might add, had been valued at around nine times that amount.”

“She didn’t want them. I wrote—”

“She didn’t
want?
” Suzie Rikkers’ pacing had such a catlike quality that Marcus could almost see her tail twitching. “You contacted Carol Rice while she was still recuperating in the hospital, and when she did not respond immediately, you sold everything she had brought to the marriage! Is that not true?”

“I gave her a chance to take them. I had no place to store—”

Suzie Rikkers chopped him off. “You were a full partner in the local firm of Knowles, Barbour and Bradshaw. That is, until they fired you. Is that not correct?”

“I resigned. They did not fire me.”

“Of course not.” Suzie Rikkers continued to stalk about his field of vision. “Would you not say that your rapid rise within the firm was due in large part to your wife’s connections?”

“She helped a little.” And complained bitterly whenever asked.

“I would suggest that it was more than a little. I would suggest that it was the primary reason behind your being made partner. You were elevated within the firm so that the Rice Corporation and the Rice family name and the Rice family connections would bring in more business.”