Blue Gold (20 page)

“It's almost curfew!” snapped Big Sister Choilai, who was sitting on the edge of her bunk, painting her toenails. “Better keep the noise down, unless you want a fine.”

“You're the one making noise,” Fen talked back.

“Watch yourself, Fen,” replied Choilai. “Your type always thinks they're destined for better things.”

“If you mean I plan to make more of myself than an ordinary worker after being here for as long as you have, you're right.”

Choilai scowled. Laiping started climbing up to her bunk so Choilai wouldn't see the smile on her face.

“Laiping,” said Choilai, “Your cousin was here looking for you.”

“What did she want?”

“How should I know what she wants? Something about your father.”

Laiping's blood ran cold. “What about him?”

“I'm not your answering service!”

“Quiet down!” came a sleepy voice from one of the bunks down the row.

Clutching her new mobile, Laiping barreled up the ladder to her bunk and punched Min's mother's number into the keypad, even though she knew she would be waking her up.

“Auntie,” she said, trying to keep her voice low. “Is something wrong?”

“It's your father, Laiping. He had a heart attack this afternoon.” Laiping felt her own heart miss a beat. “He's in the village clinic, recovering,” Auntie quickly added. “Your mother is with him.”

“Will he be all right?” she questioned her anxiously.

“They say he needs an operation, but the doctors at the village clinic are no good—they bought their diplomas on a street corner!” clucked Auntie. “Your father should be going to Heyuan, to a city hospital.”

“How much will that cost?” asked Laiping, reeling at the thought of poor Baba, and Mama, too. They must be so frightened. She wished she could be there with them.

“Thousands of yuan,” replied Auntie.

“Auntie, tell my mother I will send the money!” she said, although she had no idea how.

“You are a good daughter, Laiping. Not like Min, who never calls.”

But Laiping didn't feel like a good daughter. She was overwhelmed with guilt—she shouldn't have bought the phone! Still, she was owed almost a thousand yuan in back pay. If only they would give it to her, there would be no problem. She slept fitfully that night, knowing that her father's life depended on the mercy of the company.

 

OLDER COUSING MIN
had warned Laiping not to call the company's Help Hotline, which had been set up after the suicides. It was supposed to be private, a counseling service that workers could turn to when they had problems—but people said the calls were recorded and that any information a caller gave found its way to the bosses. When she woke up in the morning, Laiping decided out of desperation to risk it, and dialed the line on her new mobile.

“Are you feeling depressed?” came the sympathetic voice of a young woman.

“No,” replied Laiping.

“Are you having thoughts of harming yourself?”

“No!”

“Are you missing your family back home?”

“Well, yes,” Laiping admitted.

“You should get out of your room more often,” advised the young woman. “Go to the movies or go for a swim. The company provides lots of different kinds of entertainment. Have you heard about the karaoke competition?”

“I just need to find out how to get my back pay.”

“Oh,” said the young woman, sounding annoyed. “In that case, why are you calling us? You should go see Human Resources!”

Laiping knew only one person in Human Resources—
Miss Lau. An hour before her shift was due to start, she entered the factory building and made her way down the management corridor to Miss Lau's office. Timidly, she knocked. When there was no answer, she knocked again—a little louder this time. After a moment, Miss Lau opened the door.

“Yes?” she asked, wearing the same gray suit, and a humorless smile.

“Hello, Miss,” croaked Laiping, her throat suddenly dry. She was regretting her boldness in coming here.

“What is it?”

“I'm Laiping. Remember?”

“I meet many Laipings.”

“I…I need help,” Laiping faltered. In a rush, she explained about her sick father and her back pay. It was on the tip of Laiping's tongue to point out that it wasn't legal for the company to withhold the money she was owed, but she didn't want to seem like a troublemaker—not when she needed Miss Lau to be on her side.

“This is highly irregular,” said Miss Lau.

“But my father is ill,” Laiping explained again. “I need the money now, to pay for the hospital.” Miss Lau's jaw tightened. She shook her head. “Please,” implored Laiping,
tears budding in her eyes. Miss Lau seemed to soften slightly. Laiping thought about what Fen would do in this situation to get her way—she would lie. “The doctors say if my father doesn't have the surgery immediately, he will die!” she exclaimed.

Miss Lau let out a sigh. “Come with me,” she told Laiping.

Not daring to ask where they were going, Laiping followed Miss Lau back down the corridor from which she had just come. They veered off down an adjoining corridor and pushed through a glass door, into a large office in which many nicely dressed men and women sat at computers, typing.

“Miss Jang,” she said to a pretty young woman who had her hair up in a smart style, “please show this girl how to fill out Form G-32.”

“Yes, Miss Lau.”

Miss Lau turned to Laiping. “Miss Jang will help you apply to payroll for special consideration.”

Laiping was overjoyed. “Thank you! Thank you so much!”

“You see?” said Miss Lau, smiling her stiff smile. “At this company, we look after each other with a loving heart.”

With that, Miss Lau turned and left the office at a smart pace. Miss Jang smiled at Laiping—warmly, not the coiled-snake smile of Miss Lau. She took a form from a cubbyhole beside her desk.

“Write your name and employee number here,” she said, “and down here, the reason why you need the money.” Laiping couldn't stop thanking her. “It's okay,” laughed Miss Jang. “It's my job!” She leaned closer, as though letting Laiping in on a carefully guarded secret. “Just be sure to make it sound like a real emergency!”

Without warning, Laiping burst into tears, alarming Miss Jang.

“Don't cry!” she told her, half comforting, half insisting.

“I miss my mama and baba,” confided Laiping in a choked whisper. Suddenly she was overwhelmed with longing to see them.

“It's all right,” said Miss Jang, looking concerned. “I'm sure everything will be all right.”

Miss Jang showed Laiping to a counter where she could fill out Form G-32, then went back to her desk. Laiping cheered herself up by thinking about the money she would soon be able to send home. Perhaps she would go home herself soon—but that would require applying for permission to take leave, which was unlikely to be granted with the push for the launch of the new smartphone.
One thing at a time
, Laiping decided. First she must persuade the company to release her money.

After handing the form back to Miss Jang and thanking her again, Laiping climbed the wide staircase to the fourth floor for her shift. She lifted her knees higher than usual during marching exercises, and worked with extra concentration—ignoring Bohai at her side—so grateful was she to Miss Lau and Miss Jang, and to Steve Chen. Yes, the work was long and hard and some of the rules seemed unfair. Yes, there were a few bad eggs, like Bohai. But she saw now that, just as troublemakers were punished, loyalty would be repaid. She worked diligently all night—
circuit board-capacitor-solder-capacitor-solder; circuit board-
capacitor-solder-capacitor-solder
—counting her good fortune to be employed by a company so full of loving hearts.

MAMA MADE SYLVIE'S LIFE UNBEARABLE
after Marie shot the video, complaining to Lucie and Pascal—as though Sylvie wasn't sitting right there on the dirt floor mixing dough to fry—that their sister had no pride, letting a foreigner take pictures of them so that the whole world could see their miserable state.

“Sylvie wants everyone to laugh at how we live, like animals,” she told them. “When Papa finds us, he will give her the beating she deserves.”

Sylvie tried several times to explain that when these
foreigners saw the video, they would want to help them get out of Nyarugusu, but Mama turned away and pretended not to hear. Finally, Sylvie bit her tongue as she went about her daily chores, concentrating on making sure that the children were clean and fed, and that Pascal went with her to school each day.

In class, Sylvie found it hard to pay attention. The math teacher, Charles—a Congolese from South Kivu—understood less algebra than she did, and spent most of his time pestering the high-school girls to give him love in exchange for him giving them passing grades. Sylvie he left alone, for which she was grateful.
You're lucky you'll never have a husband
, Mama had told her. She was beginning to believe she was lucky, in many ways.

Marie had been right when she said to Sylvie that telling her story would make her feel better. She was having fewer nightmares, and her stomach didn't tighten every time someone stared at her scar. She held her head high and thought about what the future might hold, about becoming a doctor. Maybe even the kind of doctor who helped people like her.

“You mean you want to be a psychiatrist, or a psychologist,” said Marie, when Sylvie shared her dream during her shift after school on Thursday.

“Yes,” said Sylvie. But there was more. All week, a new idea had been taking shape. “Once I'm a doctor,” she told Marie, “I'm coming back to the Congo, to help the people, the way you do.”

Marie looked up and smiled. “That's a wonderful plan, Sylvie,” she replied. She didn't look up from the patient's chart she was reading. She didn't even smile. Sylvie was a little wounded—
she doesn't believe me
, she thought. Then again, maybe she was just tired. There were so many patients in Nyarugusu, and so few doctors.

“Are you all right?” asked Sylvie.

“Yes, fine,” Marie said, but her smile was fleeting.

“What have you heard from Alain?”

“The video is getting hundreds of hits. Maybe not so many donations yet, but it's been less that a week,” she replied.

Marie's expression clouded slightly, as though she wanted to say something more, but then thought better of it. Sylvie kept silent and watched her as she bent her head over a medical chart. Patience, she knew, was one advantage that refugees had; they were used to waiting. Finally, Marie relented and met Sylvie's steady gaze.

“It helps to talk,” Sylvie reminded her.

Marie laughed. “Are you going to be
my
psychologist, Sylvie?”

“If there's something wrong, you can tell me.”

“Everything's fine,” she said. Then, growing serious, she chose her next words carefully. “It's better if we don't mention the video and the website around the camp, that's all. Now, don't you have bedpans to clean?”

“Do psychologists clean bedpans?” Sylvie asked.

“Never.”

“Then that is definitely what I want to be.”

Sylvie carried a stack of bedpans to the sink at the back of the clinic and, pulling on rubber gloves, scrubbed them with disinfectant. She wondered what had changed, to suddenly make Marie so secretive. What did she know that she wasn't sharing?
Maybe she knows we won't be able to go to Canada, after all!
Her chest began to tighten at the thought, but she forced herself to breathe slowly, to control her heart rate, the way Doctor Van de Velde showed the man in the waiting area. Soon, she felt a little better.
Patience
, she reminded herself. That was her advantage.

 

ON FRIDAY
in the afternoon, after Sylvie gave the third grade a lesson in basic arithmetic, she took the worn atlas down from the small shelf of books that had been donated to the school and studied the world map. She found it impossible to imagine that Canada was real, and not simply a large pink rectangle on the page, surrounded by white for ice and blue for ocean. She found the Congo in the middle of Africa—also pink, but a fraction of Canada's size, and in its way just as unreal. She had been a child of ten when she last saw the hills of Kivu; Nyarugusu was the place where she had done most of her growing up. As she put the atlas away, she felt a twinge of longing for the place her father had loved so well. She had only a few pictures of it in her mind—their tidy house, the long low concrete block school on the edge of the village with one entrance for boys and another for girls. She realized there was a way to remember more, by asking the one person who dwelled almost entirely in memory—Mama.

When Sylvie came into the dark of the hut with Pascal after school, she found Mama sitting in the shaft of sunlight provided by the doorway, braiding Lucie's hair.