The Secret Mother (28 page)

“I suppose it’s only right you should know,” he muttered. “Know what?”

“You’re going to be transferred, 2204.”

“Who says?”

He bowed his head. “It’s come from above.”

“Where are they sending me?”

“I don’t know. They hardly tell me anything these days. I’m amazed they’ve not chucked me out. Look at me 2204. Not exactly a picture of success, am I?” He gave a sour laugh and reached for the bottle of baijiu. “There’s no point arguing with them; they’ll come for you one day next week. You’ll be told what to do and instructed how to use the new machinery.”

“So that’s it? All over, just like that!”

He slugged at the bottle and wiped his chin against his sleeve.

“I can’t go until I’ve told you …” There was a sharp twinge in my side, as though the baby wanted me to stay quiet. “I’m feeling sick all the time.”

“Normal in a place like this.”

“I’ve also missed two periods.”

He rose and swayed over to the door, as though he was going to throw me out immediately. “What are you saying?”

I put a protective hand over my stomach. “I promise I’m telling the truth. I’m sure of it … a baby, I mean.”

“And you expect me to believe that? After everything that’s happened, I wouldn’t even trust you to bring me liquor. First you con me out of hundreds of yuan to buy yourself new clothes, then you get me to have sex with you – more than once – not to mention treat you like an empress. Now you say you’re pregnant? I don’t think so, 2204.”

“I’m telling you first because I can’t keep this a secret for much longer,” I pointed to my belly. “I can hardly fasten my trousers. Listen to me, I’m pregnant with your child.”

He shook his head. “If that’s the case, how many weeks are you? Tell me. I want the exact date. Give me some proof it was me and not one of those adolescent grease monkeys in engineering.”

I burned with shame and anger. “It’s been two months exactly; it was the time you forced me to have sex in my dorm. Thursday 21
^st
March.”

His face fell and immediately he began searching the mounds of paper on his desk, rummaging through the drawers with increasing frustration.

“Manager?”

“I know I left it here somewhere, I can’t find anything in this dump. I can’t think straight!” he screeched. “No wonder I’m not performing, not achieving. Arse-licking Maoists every one of them … Ah, here it is.”

He counted out a series of twenty yuan notes from his wallet. “This should cover it.”

I looked at the grubby notes. “What are you saying?”

“Well, you didn’t expect me to say ‘keep it,’ did you?”

“But I can’t …”

“Oh yes you can, 2204, and you will. If you think I’m going to risk my reputation, you’re mistaken. There’s no way this can ever get out. Understood?”

He scribbled something on a scrap of paper and shoved it into my hand – he said it was the name of a place he knew that could do the ‘work’.

I hurried down the steps into the gloom.

“Do it straight away,” he called after me, “then come back and tell me it’s finished.”

The street was set back from the main shopping district. Never-white washing hung between buildings while the smell of onion and fried ginger wafted from an open window. “A chilli for every dish, a teardrop for good flavour,” mother used to say, as she taught me to cook. Now my tears were all in vain.

Fortune Alley was longer than it first appeared and I walked for a good ten minutes to reach Building No. 136. The red paint on the front door was peeling, the lower windows were barred. The upper balconies, though dilapidated, harboured a couple of rusty bicycles, some chairs, several bags stuffed to the brim with clothing, a vacuum cleaner and a broken TV.

I rang the bell. The door buzzed and clicked open.

Inside, the apartment smelt like the waste disposal unit at Forwood. A ragged-looking cat hunched protectively over a chicken bone on the stairwell. A door was ajar and opera music drifted out.

The abortionist’s room was piled high with bric-a-brac: books, chairs, a desk, vases, paintings, papers, an easel, radios, tins of bean sprouts, several rails of clothing, most of which looked too moth-eaten to wear. At the centre of it all, a woman sat still as a cobweb on her meditation mat, the radio playing by her side.

“If you’re wondering what all the stuff is,” she said, reaching out to turn down the music, “not all girls have the cash to pay me. Sometimes they nick things on the way here.”

She unwrapped her legs and stood up in one fluid motion. Her eyes rested on my stomach. “But I have the feeling you’re not one of those kind of girls. Thirteen weeks, and large. Of course, the placenta could be at the front? Or maybe …” Her arms fanned over my ripening belly like a book opening at an old favourite page. “Probably best not to dwell on it.”

“How do you know how far gone I am?”

“Practise,” she said and picked her way over the junk.

A slight breeze from the open balcony lifted my hair, but not my spirits. She told me to take a seat wherever I could find one.

“But don’t make yourself comfortable, it’s better if we get started straight away. What’s he given you?”

I thought that was obvious, why else would I be standing in her junk-filled apartment? It took a moment for me to realise she was asking for payment. The yuan totalled exactly one hundred. I gave her seventy five and she folded it inside a tea caddy.

“A businessman, eh? What happened, did he have a wife?”

I shook my head.

“Do you need rice wine?”

I nodded.

She turned up the volume on the radio. “Just a precaution.”

From a drawer, she took out several lengths of rubber tubing, an unlabelled bottle of liquid, a long sewing needle, some matches and soap. “It will hurt and you will bleed. You can have a bed here and an hour to recover, that should be long enough for the demons to leave the soul in peace. Once I start there’s no going back, do you understand?”

My stomach twitched when I looked at the dirty mattress.

“No.”

“You want me to say it again?”

“No. I don’t want the demons to come after my soul. I don’t think I can do this. In fact, I’m certain. Keep the money. I’ve got to go.” I scrambled for the door.

“But –”

The air was hot and the sun shone directly onto the porch where I paused, blinded momentarily by its brilliance.

When I opened my eyes, some guys wearing white doctor coats were heading up the alley in my direction – one of them looked like Yifan. I reached for the buzzer and pretended to ring it. They stopped close by the porch and I could hear them talking.

“This street is typical of where we find a lot of the women in our gynaecological unit,” said one.

“What percentage of patients are found here, compared to those who self-admit?”

“Around seventy. Quite often they’re in too bad a condition to make it to the hospital alone. They have little or no funds for any proper medical attention. They might have suffered haemorrhaging, secondary infection, perhaps show early signs of pneumonia and occasionally pulmonary …”

I held my breath.

“What kind of conditions do they work under? Any anaesthetic?”

“Primitive, very primitive.”

I glanced around. It was Yifan! And he was only a few feet away.
Please don’t let him see me. Please don’t let him see me …
I stared at the buzzer, as if waiting for an answer.

“Mai Ling? Is that you?”

I turned into the light. “Hello Yifan.”

“I can’t believe it! What are you doing here?”

“Research,” I said, off the top of my head. “Work asked me to see what cars people are driving these days.”

“Ah, testing the water, as we’d say?” He gave a nervous laugh.

“I’m only supposed to be gone an hour.”

My heart ached. I wanted to tell him about Ren, about Xiaofan starting the fire, about losing Schnelleck’s business deal and then the horrible thing Manager He had done to me. Most of all I wanted to tell him about the life growing inside of me. I blinked back the tears and shielded my eyes.

“Are you alright? Pardon me for saying, but perhaps it’s a little early for you to be back at work so soon after the fire … That cut on your cheek looks inflamed. You should be resting. Your managers promised they’d take good care of you all. I’d rather hoped you might be convalescing at home on the farm.”

“I’m fine. I need to get back.”

“Well be sure to drink plenty of water in this heat.” Yifan hung back. “We’re always in such a hurry, you and I. It would be wonderful to spend more time with you. I had so much fun that night on the ferris wheel. I’ve thought about you often. After the fire I feared maybe …”

I gave him a brief hug. “Thank you,” I said. “For saving my life.”

He reached into his attaché case for a pen and scribbled down his phone number for me a third time. “Please, please call me. My exams finish next Tuesday. Say you’ll be there for lunch – meet me outside the medical library?”

“Dr Meng!” called another doctor. “Are you with us or not?”

“You’d better go.”

Yifan kissed my cheek, near the cut. “Goodbye Mai Ling. I hope we’ll speak again.”

I trembled at his touch, so kind, so gentle. Even in my bunk that night I quivered at the lightness of it.

There was little hope of sleep. I tossed and turned in Damei’s bunk, the springs dug into my sides where the baby flitted about like a netted butterfly. The girl in Ren’s old bed had a habit of grinding her teeth as she slept and, for several hours, I listened to nothing but the eerie hum of the factory pipes and the irritating sound of her teeth. That was until I lost my temper, stood up and batted her with my pillow. She grumbled sleepily and turned over, but within minutes the grinding started up again.

I cracked open the shutters and peered through the slats at the bright lights that bleached the Nanchang sky. A row of illuminated factory windows meant workers were toiling into the night. It wasn’t like in the countryside, where the stars made the blackness seem bigger and deeper. I’d left home for this.

Ren’s notepad was still hidden under the loose floorboard by the door. I sat by the window where a little light seeped through the shutters, and felt the coolness of its pages. It smelled of the dies used in bonding, but there was also an earthy smell to the paper, like mud. Ren had grown up on the banks of the Yangtze. However far we travelled from home, some things always remained part of us. Her pen was heavy in my hand, burdensome. The page was striped with shadows where I began to write.

At first, I jotted whatever came into my head, random phrases or memories that became a torrent, flowing into paragraphs. Soon a letter formed on the page. A letter to my baby, to my dear child.

Who grows inside me as secret as a flower in the soil; who turns and moves and is stirring me up at night. A small grain of goodness in this bitter agony of life. I love you before you are even born.

I think of you all the time, from the start to the end of the day, and all during the night … I cannot sleep in my bed tonight … Thoughts of you burn like a fire over wild plains. When will I see your face? I see it already … I know your eyes and nose. I feel your tears inside the secret place. How much longer until these arms hold you?

The page was damp. I wiped the tears form my chin and tore it out, anxious it should be kept perfect. More perfect than the person writing it.

I shut my eyes and pictured my baby’s face. It would look like me and not the evil bastard who had forced himself upon me. It would look like Mother, Father, Little Brother. I resolved not to let Manager He persuade me into going back to the abortionist. I kept his name out of the letter, as he would be kept out of the baby’s life, at whatever cost.

You are my shadow
…
flesh not for cutting … essential as the beating of a heart …

They cannot take you from me. I will guard you with my life. No harm will ever reach you. Whatever they say, we’ll never be parted – not even for a second. Ha! Listen to the way your mother talks before you are born.

I signed it ‘Mama’ and replaced Ren’s pen and notepad beneath the floorboard, exhausted. I clenched and unclenched my fists, my hands numb. “Trust no-one,” Ren once said and she was right. I tucked the page inside my overalls’ pocket. I’d carry the letter to my baby with me wherever I went – safe, as I carried the child.

The next morning there was no breakfast alarm. Circuitry was deserted. The blinds were drawn and the door to his bureau locked. I banged several times and called out his name. No response, not even the sound of his snoring. I was about to call a final time when a hand clutched at my shoulder.

The clean-shaven man raised his sunglasses. Manager He gestured towards my stomach, his impeccable face unmoved. “Did you get rid of it?”

“Why haven’t the food pipes come on? What’s going on?”

A look of smug satisfaction crept over his face.

“Was it you who turned them off?”

“Maybe.”

I pushed him on the shoulder and he faltered, gripping the handrail. He straightened his tie, composed his sunglasses. The old determined Manager was back.

“I suppose you’ll only find out sooner or later … I’m the new Head of Production, 2204. The Chief Executive was a puppy dog in the end, he just rolled over.”

I stepped back in disbelief.

“Most of you will probably walk out once you realise you aren’t being fed. That gives Forwood a clean start. Remember how we talked of change, 2204, the bright future? News of Schnelleck’s visit – even though no business was done – has been in my favour. The factory’s practically mine now to do as I want.” He rattled the bureau door to check it was locked, “Anyway, that’s irrelevant now, especially for you.”

“Sorry?”

“I said you were being transferred, but omitted the details.”

“What details?”

“You’re officially being transferred to the street. Understand? It’s over. You’re out.”

“But – you can’t do that.”

“I’m firing you on the grounds of material damage. It’s all there in the rulebook.”

“Material damage?”