Three Souls (16 page)

How could they talk about cakes?

“Stepmother, Second Sister. You must help me.”

They turned in unison, my stepmother stern, my sister troubled.

“We have been helping,” Stepmother said. “No thanks to you, Madame Pao will return with favourable reports. Sueyin has been so charming she’s managed to dazzle that woman into believing that you’re capable of gracious manners as well.”

“I don’t care what they think of me.”

Sueyin looked at me, anxiety and exasperation creasing her brow.

“But you must care, Third Sister. You’ll be living with them for the rest of your life. Don’t you understand?”

I ran ahead of them into the house and up to my room. I slammed the door. I did understand. To be treated well by one’s in-laws was considered good enough. But a wife had to gain her in-laws’ favour, otherwise, life could be unbearable. But it was all irrelevant because I wasn’t going to marry Lee Baizhen. I wasn’t going to forget what Madame Sun Yat-sen had said about the duty our generation’s young women owed to China. I wasn’t going to give up on my dream of a life with Hanchin.

I still had the money Father had given me before my journey to Shanghai. I opened my jewellery box and wondered how I could trade its contents for cash. If I went to a pawnshop, how much would that jade pendant fetch? Or my pearl necklace? I had no idea. How would I even find a pawnshop, one that wouldn’t cheat me?

I stretched my hands out, inspecting the three jade bangles on my wrists. They were the most valuable things I owned, their colour a pure deep green like moss, their sound when tapped together a sweet chime. They had been my mother’s and I would never sell them.

Tomorrow, when Father returned, I would beg him to cancel the betrothal. If he didn’t, I would lean the gardener’s ladder against the orchard wall and climb over. I would take a rickshaw to
China Millennium’s
offices. If Hanchin wasn’t there, I’d wait all night. I’d beg or bribe his colleagues not to tell my family, to lie about my identity if anyone asked. This was the plan that had come to me since Madame Pao’s visit, which had focused my thoughts, made me realize that my impending marriage was no idle threat.

But if I ran away again, Father would never take me back.

There was a knock on my door. It was Stepmother, her voice low.

“I’m taking you out.”

“But I’m forbidden to leave the house.”

“I’ll wait outside while you get ready.”

My heart beat wildly, hope stirring inside me. I rolled up some clothing and stowed it in the largest bag I owned. Money, jewellery, and my precious letter from Hanchin.

We left through the laneway beside the orchard, Stepmother unlocking and then relocking the side door. At the top of the laneway, she unlocked another door. This one opened out to the street around the corner from where Lao Li kept guard at the main gate. A rickshaw waited there and we squeezed onto the seat. I fought to keep eager questions from spilling out as hope and excitement pulsated through my veins.

“To Comb Alley Market,” she said to the rickshaw puller. “But first, take us through the mill district.”

The puller set off on callused bare feet, the knotted muscles of his thin brown calves bulging as he ran.

“Where are we going, Stepmother?”

“I want to show you something.”

“Are you helping me escape?”

“After we go to the market, you can decide.”

This was more help than I had hoped for from Stepmother. The threat of Pinghu and the Lee family suddenly felt slightly less ominous. We left the streets I knew so well, the ones that were wide and smoothly paved, shaded by old sycamores and elms and lined with high whitewashed walls, a gatekeeper seated at every grand entrance. The rickshaw turned away from the canal and soon we were in a warren of narrow streets and dilapidated buildings that gave way to small, dirty storefronts. Ragged beggars, some with stumps instead of hands and feet, called out to us. Every corner and alcove seemed to shelter a vagrant. Our own street saw very few beggars, for the gatekeepers shooed them away.

A fetid stench assaulted my nostrils. Rotting food and worse filled the cracks between the paving stones. An ox cart ambled down the centre of the street probably after having delivered vegetables to the market. Some wilted cabbage leaves clinging to the side of the cart peeled off as I watched. An old woman, her back so crooked and bent she had to crane her neck to see ahead of her, picked her way quickly through the street, reached down, and stuffed the musty leaves into her mouth. I wanted to gag.

Stepmother tapped the rickshaw puller on the shoulder with the tip of her parasol, and pointed at a long, two-storey building. “Stop there and wait for us.”

The entrance to the building bore no sign, there were just the words
Tang Shan Cotton Factory
painted in red on the dingy grey wall. A rank smell hung in the air. As soon as we entered the vestibule, the smell intensified and I could hardly think for the noise of machinery pounding behind the heavy double doors in front of us. An elderly clerk seated behind a battered desk stared at us with suspicion, squinting in the dim light. He stood up, a thin, short man in a faded blue tunic, his luxuriant grey hair out of place on his desiccated form. Then he broke into a smile, showing stained, broken teeth.

“Second Young Mistress, welcome, welcome!” He bowed to Stepmother. “I haven’t seen you since the day you left home. What brings you here?”

“Good day, Ah Mao. I’m here to show my stepdaughter what a cotton mill is like. May I take her up to the observation floor?”

“Please, please. No need to ask. Your father and uncles are the owners! Please, up those stairs.”

Stepmother and I ascended metal treads that clanked with every step. At the top she pushed open a door and the din grew louder. We emerged into a long gallery that ran the length of the building. A few light bulbs hanging from wires criss-crossed the ceiling, so dim I felt as though I had walked into twilight. There were large windows near the ceiling, but they were so dirty they seemed to keep out rather than let in the light. The stagnant air stifled my lungs.

“This part of the factory is for weaving.” Stepmother’s voice was matter-of-fact.

There was barely enough space between the looms for workers to pass one another, and the machinery looked very dangerous. Some of the workers were just girls.

“They work more than fourteen hours a day,” said Stepmother, “and get nothing more than a bowl of millet gruel at noon to eat.”

“What’s that smell?”

“That comes from the other room, where the cotton is dyed. The dyes are cured with urine.”

I counted about fifty women sweating behind looms, hair bound tightly in kerchiefs, arms in constant motion, faces grey with exhaustion. I looked closer.

“Those are babies and small children down there! Sleeping between the machines!”

“Yes. The little ones look after the babies and try to keep out of the way.”

“What about their husbands and fathers? Why do they allow this?”

“Some of the women are unmarried. Some are widowed or were abandoned by their husbands. Some have husbands but can’t get by with one income. Some were sold into labour to pay off their families’ debts.”

A foreman carrying a thin bamboo cane patrolled the narrow aisles, his cane swinging from side to side while he shouted at the women. A boy ran to hide behind his mother and crossed the foreman’s path. The cane shot out, slicing the boy’s cheek. The foreman didn’t pause in his stride, even as the child’s shriek tore the air. No one bothered to pick up the child, not even his mother. The boy ran sobbing to wrap his arms around her knees.

“Stepmother! Do something. Your family owns this mill.”

Moisture glistened in her eyes, but when she replied, her voice was brisk. “If I interfered, that woman would lose her job and another would simply take her place. Let’s go now.”

I threw a last glance at the little boy. When I told Hanchin, he would write about the disgraceful treatment of workers at this factory. No, I would write about it myself and send the letter to all the national newspapers.

We climbed back into the rickshaw, the sun scorching hot now as morning gave way to noon. I didn’t want to think about how the air inside the factory would grow even more oppressive.

“Stepmother, I thought your family owned a dry-goods store.”

“They do. But since I became your father’s concubine, my family has been able to secure credit more easily. They now own this cotton mill as well. My father and uncles have prospered.”

“But why do they allow those women to be treated so badly? Maybe they don’t realize what that foreman is doing. If those workers don’t receive better conditions, they’ll go elsewhere or organize a union. That would disrupt your family’s business.”

It was a good argument. It came straight out of
China Millennium.

Under the shade of her parasol, my stepmother suddenly looked old. She was a plain woman. Her eyes were her one beauty, large and intelligent. Now there was tension around her mouth, too much colour high on her cheeks.

“Those women consider themselves fortunate to have this work, Leiyin. It means the difference between living in squalor and not living at all. It means they can keep their daughters instead of selling them. They can’t afford to care about workers’ rights. They’re just trying to survive day-to-day. China has an infinite supply of poor people and not enough work.”

We continued in silence along the street; we were now in a neighbourhood of cheap restaurants and dingy shops. Here were men and women in threadbare clothing. Children, some of them naked, stared at us with crafty, feral expressions. A middle-aged woman hobbled unsteadily on her crutch, moaning as she moved. When she leaned against a wall, I saw her bandaged feet were bloody, the rags wrapped around them oozing pus. I looked away.

“Some poor families still practise foot binding even though it’s banned,” said Stepmother, seeing my reaction. “They hope to sell their girls to wealthy older men. Usually, the girls end up crippled and unsaleable, spurned. Without proper care, their feet rot away.”

“Can’t we help her?” I whispered, knowing the answer even as I spoke.

“She’s dying already, of blood poisoning from gangrene.”

The rickshaw entered a street of shabby homes whose ground floors were used as shops. Women sat outside the doorways, dressed too elaborately for this hour of the morning. They yawned and stared at us with dull curiosity. Some were combing each other’s hair, others mending clothes. A few of the women laughed and struck poses when they saw us. Others simply sat there, limp and forlorn. I realized suddenly the houses were brothels.

My shock must have been obvious, but when Stepmother spoke, it was as though she were pointing out the features of a garden.

“There was a girl from our neighbourhood, from a respectable family. She didn’t like her in-laws and ran away, returning to her family. But they refused to take her back. She had shamed them. I’ve heard she was seen working at a brothel somewhere on this very street.”

“Stepmother, I know what you’re trying to tell me. But I have an education. I can be a tutor. My life wouldn’t come to this.”

“Do you even know how much it costs to rent a room, Third Stepdaughter? How would you find pupils? How many hours of tutoring would keep a roof over your head and food in your belly?”

It was all true. I didn’t know the answer to any of those questions. But surely Hanchin would help me.

The rickshaw rolled past more of the houses. One woman was dabbing a cloth at another’s face, her thin blouse nearly slipping off her shoulder as she tended to her friend. The other woman turned to look at us and I saw she was young, a wasted figure with bruises around her eyes, rope burns around her wrists. I shuddered, not wanting to know the story behind those wounds.

Whenever I had read articles about poor workers, I had imagined sturdy men toiling away in factories full of shiny modern machines. I hadn’t imagined women worked to death in stinking, stuffy buildings full of dangers, with babies underfoot. In the classic novels I knew, prostitutes were pretty young girls from poor families who entertained clients by strumming on the
pipa
lute. These were hovels, and none of the women looked young or pretty.

“The world is a cruel place for women, Leiyin,” Stepmother said. “You’ve been raised in privilege. Don’t mislead yourself into thinking you could live without three meals a day, a clean bed, and the protection of your family. Once you fall out of favour, it may be impossible to climb back into the fold. You’ve come perilously close and if your father didn’t love you so much, he might have abandoned you already.”

“Hasn’t he done that?” I didn’t bother biting back my bitterness. “He’s married me off to a family in some miserable backwater town no one’s ever heard of.”

“No. He’s entrusted you to the care of another family, a respectable family.” Her voice, which had been so calm and reasonable, turned harsh. “The Lees value an alliance with our family. If you’re stubborn and rude, it will be hard to repair the damage later. You’ll spend the rest of your life at odds with your in-laws. Treat them with deference and you’ll gain their affection. You can find contentment, if not happiness.”

I remained silent as the rickshaw carried us to Comb Alley Market. Stepmother got out to buy some dried fish and a few bundles of long string beans. When she came back, she pointed at the bag at my feet.

“I see you came prepared to run away. Now is your chance. I can leave you here in the market square, or you can come home again.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw a plump woman at the edge of the square, an affable and artificial smile on her face, gold bangles on her arms. Beside her stood two young women, or perhaps they were just girls, it was difficult to tell under their thick, gaudy cosmetics. Their eyes were vacant, without hope.

And yet, when my thoughts turned to Hanchin, I knew I wouldn’t end up like those girls. And I knew I could endure poverty as long as he was by my side.

I got out.

***