The Secret Mother (20 page)

One protested. “We were only asking!”

“In that case, 2320, you won’t be concerned if we make you surplus to requirements.”

“What Mr Ting means is …”

“What I mean is you’re fired.”

“Now come with us,” said Chen, taking her by the arm and leading her towards the manager’s exit.

“And back to work the rest of you,” called Ting.

The door closed behind them, and Xiaofan leaned into the light above her station, “What’s the matter 2204?” She whispered, “Worried you might be next?”

I stiffened.

“It’s only a matter of time. They’ll get rid of you the way they do all troublemakers. I’ll make sure of it. No-one gets ahead of me in this place.”

“You’re just trying to scare me.”

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’ve been up to with Manager He. How you’ve been stealing Damei’s uniform. I was there, in the toilet. I saw you scrubbing your blood from her skirt. You’re the same as your cousin. You Hunan
mei
can’t help yourselves.”

The klaxon sounded and another batch of circuit boards flowed towards us. A self-satisfied smile wormed its way across Xiaofan’s mouth.

Our lunch break was delayed 26 minutes while we made up for lost time. I had no appetite and hurried to the dorm in search of Damei’s uniform, eager to destroy the evidence that might incriminate me. I was relieved to find it folded beneath her blanket and bundled the skirt up tightly beneath my overalls.

As I descended the basement to the bins, the stink of rubbish hit me. I side-stepped the stray bin bags heaving with trash: the empty packets of noodles we weren’t supposed to eat, newspapers with the job adverts torn free by those hoping for a better life. The air was thicker in the basement. The stench overpowering. My footsteps sounded loud against the concrete. I found the bin marked
Overalls,
flung open the lid and pushed Damei’s uniform towards the bottom. As I turned to leave, someone pulled me into an alcove.

“Shhhh,” he covered my mouth. “Don’t make a noise or they’ll find us.”

Manager He kissed me, hard, like a starved comrade tucking into meaty ribs. He tugged urgently at my overalls. We didn’t have long and did it right there, amidst the trash, pinned to the wall.

Afterwards, he spoke with urgency. “You mustn’t come to my bureau again, do you understand, Mai Ling? Someone has told them I’m fooling around with Damei. They’re on my case. They’re watching me all the time.”

“But that’s not true. You’ve only been with me – haven’t you?”

“I denied everything. They have no evidence; the cameras don’t really work, Mai Ling, they’re only empty boxes, there to make you work harder. The boss warned me to keep in line, but I can take care of him. I’m his best manager. He won’t fire me in a hurry.”

“I’m frightened.”

“Keep doing what you’re doing with the workers, 2204. Show off your new clothes, show them your rewards. Tell them you’re going to be promoted – anything! I need them to be ready for Schnelleck. He’s responded to our last letter already. He’s coming! Much earlier than planned. Another week and he’ll be here. I need you to step it up a gear.”

“But what about the boss?”

“He doesn’t need to be involved until the deal in Europe’s secured. By then I’ll have him eating out of my hand. He might be a traditionalist, but no-one at the top can resist tripling a profit.”

“I love you,” I said. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”

I went to kiss his cheek, but he pulled away and I ended up kissing thin air – the smell as rotten as mouldy congee.

Ricki’s tattoo tingled. The bluish-black outline of the ‘double happiness’ symbol had turned strawberry-coloured, the skin on her upper arm peeled away like sunburn. She should have waited longer before pulling off the gauze patch.

But there was no way she was going back to Afflecks after what happened with Lisa and the red envelope. How could she begin to explain? Well actually, Lisa, you were right, the woman who gave me the envelope was my real mum – my Chinese one – and yeah, somehow, God knows how, she tracked us down … She taught my brainy sister Chinese on Saturday mornings for more than five years and we never realised what took you five minutes to see plain as day.

#Totalfreakinmuppet

She twisted the lid of Tattoo Goo and applied a thin layer. It smelt like weed. Then she climbed into the hobbit hole of her duvet and flicked on her laptop. A
Wiki
link came top of her search, followed by
Lonely Planet, BBC, China’s Tourist Office, China Today …
She scrolled down.

Blah-blah-blah.

Who cared about China’s etymology, history, pre-history, geography or politics? She was looking for a face like hers. A link to
Chinese inventions
caught her eye at the bottom of the page: chopsticks, exploding cannonball, kite, rice, toilet paper … Surely rice wasn’t an invention? Unless they meant genetically modified rice. Hell, maybe the Chinese invented a super-grain that could multiply enough times to feed the whole population? She put nothing past the ingenious folks who spawned a new baby every two seconds. Two seconds! No wonder they needed rid of her and Jen.

In infant school, her teacher Mrs Wimperis, ‘Wimpy’ as she was known, had asked them to choose a country for a special project. Wimpy told Ricki to enlighten the class about China. Ricki looked up ‘enlighten’ in her dad’s big dictionary, it said
to shed light on
. So she borrowed his globe and took it to school. Ricki spun it round in front of the class until the small magnifying glass shone directly over the yellow blob of land that was China.

“… And?” said Mrs Wimpy. “What are you going to tell us about China, Ricki?”

“Tell you?” she panicked. She hadn’t planned on saying anything, only to enlighten.

She couldn’t ask Jen for help. Jen had been moved up to Mr Matthews’ class.

“You must know something about where you’re from?” said Wimpy.

Some of the kids started to giggle.

“I know my tummy mummy lives there,” she said.

“Your what?” said Wimpy.

Tummy mummy,
it sounded like a cross between a Tamagotchi and a Teletubby, a person who would die if she wasn’t fed enough custard.

“She means her proper mum,” said Keith Gait. “The one with narrow eyes.” He pulled his eyelids up at the corner, and Amber Jenkins rolled backwards clutching her sides with laughter.

After that, Wimpy never asked Ricki to talk about China again. She suspected her mum had given the teacher a gob full at parents’ evening after Jen blurted the story of the globe over dinner. Ricki sulked for a week and wouldn’t let Jen borrow her binoculars to spy on James Best, the boy from year seven who lived in the house opposite – and who Jen fancied the pants off.

Ricki never fancied anyone, not even at secondary school. She tried to like a boy called Philip, who was very serious. He was also shit hot at art and drew political cartoons of Tony Blair in the art room during his lunch break. His nickname was Pullup. He was so scrawny, always pulling up his trousers. Ricki tried to fancy him because she liked his drawings. But after a whole term, she realised she didn’t want any boy, irrespective of how slack they wore their trousers.

She clicked on a few more sites about China then wandered onto one selling cheap airfares to Beijing. For £384 she could be leaving Manchester that evening and arrive in Beijing fifteen hours later.

Three hundred and eighty four quid!

It probably cost May twice that amount six years ago. She must have given up a good job in China to come and find them in Manchester.

Ricki closed the session. She switched back to her photographs and watched the thumbnails of her recent pictures load, anxious to find ones good enough to impress Noel. They were mainly shots of the city centre: shoppers and office workers taken low angle and long-range. She’d gone for people on mobile phones with urgent looks on their faces; the end of the world was coming and they knew it. Last phone calls home to loved ones.

A couple of shots were pretty good. Especially one of a little kid crying and holding her hands out to be picked up. Ricki managed to get it just right so the kid looked abandoned in a stampede of legs. She double clicked it to full size and stared at her blubbering face. Her red bobble hat was vivid against the greyish street. She was holding a bag of Buttons, her mouth smeared in chocolate like any ordinary kid on any ordinary day, except the picture said otherwise. Sometimes photos fell into place. It was luck, she guessed. Her dad called it “waiting for the sun to dip.” She would run it through Photoshop, change the skimming clouds to blood red and hey presto,
Apocalypto.
That was her theme.

She flicked on through the series, but stopped, suddenly, at an unexpected photograph of May at the party, the day she was mowed down. She’d forgotten it was on there. Ricki’s finger hovered over the delete button. It didn’t belong with the rest of her pictures, any more than May belonged with their family. But if it didn’t belong there, then where? Every picture has a home. Could she find the balls to take it back to its rightful place?

Hot tears rolled down Ricki’s face. She knew the answer.

Maybe Nanchang would have a Metrolink like Manchester? Maybe the Chinkies all rode bicycles? Cycling proficiency was the only thing she’d ever been better at than Jen. Yeah, she could ride her bike and fit right in with the other millions of faces that looked like hers. All the other billions of babies.

Slowly, her finger moved away from the delete key.

The idea came to me on waking, the way good ideas often do. It wasn’t new clothes or fancy shoes that workers wanted most, they could save up for those themselves. What they couldn’t buy was freedom. We heard on the radio that the new ferris wheel had arrived in town and everyone wanted a ride. If I could get permission for a few of us to go, the others would be jealous. They would soon pick up speed if the reward was excitement and adventure away from the line. I had little more than a week.

I searched under my bunk for the tin box. It had been a while since I’d spoken to my wooden figurines, what with working so hard all day and visiting Manager He. I stroked the smooth pinewood of Madam Nie’s head. She smelt of the forest back home. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, hoping Mother might hear my apology.

Mrs Nie agreed the ferris wheel was a good ploy. I lay her back inside the tin box and set off in search of Fei Fei.

In the empty courtyard I wavered, disorientated and weary. My memory was increasingly hazy and I couldn’t remember the exact location of Fei Fei’s dorm. The cold, petrol-filled air assaulted my senses and I jolted as someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to see Fei Fei.

“I was just looking for you,” she said.

What a funny habit she had, popping up out of the blue. “Shouldn’t you be tidying the canteen before breakfast?” I asked.

“The boss sent me on an errand. What are you doing?” Her question was strangely pressing.

“I have some good news.”

“Oh?”

“Manager He’s agreed to let me out for a night. I worked my backside off last week for a big order. As a reward, I’m allowed to take two friends into Nanchang to see the new ferris wheel. I’m going tonight.”

She shook her head. “I don’t believe you. Managers don’t let us out at night.”

“It’s true and he suggested I choose you because of the great work you did cleaning our equipment in time for that order. Say you’ll come, Fei Fei? We’ll have fun. It will be like the last time.”

“That can’t be right.”

The alarm reverberated in the courtyard.

I squeezed her hand. “Listen, meet me after work. I’ll wait by the gate. Wear something nice.”

Like a dupe, she nodded in agreement.

Ren was harder to convince. I sought her out over lunch and took a different tack.

“No-one wants to know me, Ren. They say I suck up to management. You were right, ‘Star of Forwood’ was a scam to con us into submission.”

She pushed the rice around her bowl. “Like I said, there are no stars around here.”

“You know so much about factory life. I’ve been naïve. Not like you, you’re experienced.”

“Look where experience got me,” she gestured to her leg.

“You need more time off – away from this place.” I let the words hang in the air.

Ren chewed slowly on her food; I could tell she was thinking about Du.

“Why don’t we do something rebellious?” I said. “You and me, let’s escape for a night.”

“Not many stars go in for acts of rebellion.”

“I’ll bribe the guards.”

“You’re still not listening, Sky Eyes. I said trust no-one in this place.”

“But I trust you.”

Ren caught my eye. “Maybe not even me.”

“You can’t go on like this, Ren. You need a break.”

“They’ll be all over us. We could lose our jobs.”

“Not if we’re careful.”

“But if I go, I might never come back,” she said and pushed away her tray, unable to face any more of the old green egg at the centre of Kwo’s ‘two dish surprise’.

Luckily, the guard on duty that night was a greedy southerner whose eyes darted all over the bribe as I pressed it into his glove. He didn’t seem to notice the tremor in my hands or the way my voice wavered as I told him we’d be back around midnight.

“If anyone asks, say we’re on a private errand for the Chief Executive.”

He nodded, disinterested, as he counted his fistful of yuan.

Feeling bold, I said, “And don’t breathe a word about the money I gave you, or he’ll fire you.”

Beneath the glare of the perimeter floodlights, my heart thudded. One small glitch and it would be us that got the push.

The gates clicked open and Fei Fei slid the heavy-looking bolt. I slipped an arm into Ren’s and bundled her out, as fast as she could manage, her leg sweeping its invisible weight.

We walked the road leading to the express route and flagged a taxi over the river. The driver smoked roll-ups and played American music. Disco lights rigged along the back window of the taxi pulsed and flickered. I lost myself in a swirl of colour and sound.

The world and his girlfriend were out in Nanchang.