Authors: Victoria Delderfield
“Why?” said Ricki. “That’s what happens. People die all the time.”
“We all like to think we’re immortal, especially artists.”
“Art makes you immortal,” said Ricki.
“Yeah, but what if you’re not an artist? What if you’re just a normal, everyday person? Or a woman like Madam Feng who everyone wanted, lusted over, but no-one loved or properly knew? Your stuff is what’s left of you. It can’t sum you up, or tell the truth. It doesn’t reveal your inner life, the parts we keep hidden, even from ourselves. But objects tell stories and can become art – even if the State forbids it.” He gave a dry laugh.
Listening to Guan, Jen was reminded of the chess piece in her pocket. May’s Queen. She had intended to give it to Yifan.
“Guan, do you think you could give this to your dad for me?”
He looked at it carefully, turning it over in his hand. “That’s funny, Dad has a set just like it. The double happiness symbol is carved into the base, right? It’s his lucky set.”
She nodded. “I figured it might belong to him. Tell him it was tucked inside her pillow will you, he’ll know who I’m talking about.”
“A pillow? I love a good mystery. I won’t ask who it belonged to – we’ve learnt not to quiz each other too much.”
Guan poured espressos, black and intense. The smell revived Jen and she asked about his family.
“I’m an only child. After my first dad died, Mum and Yifan decided to play by the rules. He sacrificed a lot. Yifan’s a good man. Listen, will you come with me for a walk? I should really get some fresh air; I’ve been sifting through this stuff all day. I can give you a quick tour of the streets around here and tell you more about my shy father.”
They finished their coffee. Guan put on a baseball cap and a scarf. He stopped to buy sliced melon from a man on the corner and passed them a carton each. It tasted deliciously sweet after coffee.
They walked past the Suseng Teahouse, in the direction of the banks and office blocks. Old and new buildings jumbled together like photos in a drawer, flashes of the city’s different eras. Guan took an unexpected turning and they entered a grubby residential area.
He lit a cigarette. “This is where Dad spends most of his spare time. I’ve taken photographs around here, but I don’t store them on my laptop – the authorities wouldn’t be too happy if they thought I was making any kind of political point. One must always be patriotic.”
“What do you mean?” asked Ricki.
“The Party doesn’t believe in creative freedom. But if you stay safe there are still ways to bend the rules. My dad’s a lecturer by day and by night he comes here, looking for women to help.”
“Prostitutes, you mean?”
“Sometimes, not always. They’re in a bad shape for all sorts of reasons – homelessness, unwanted pregnancy, sometimes addicts … Mum doesn’t approve, she worries all the time about his safety, but he’s stubborn and comes anyway. I think she’s accepted it now. She’s stopped nagging him to quit.”
“So he’s like a street doctor?” Jen cut in.
“Exactly. He gives women on the spot treatment, whatever he can, and makes sure they know where to find a bed for the night. He tries to get them into God’s Help, but they don’t always want to go there. They don’t want anyone finding out they exist – the State, I mean. It would create hassle. They’ve not always lived by the rules. There’s plenty of people lining up to punish them.”
“What sort of punishment?” said Jen.
“Prison, forced sterilisation, fines, sometimes the women just vanish. They’re pretty dispensable, in some people’s eyes.”
“That’s sick,” Ricki added.
“That’s what dad thinks, but it’s not every man who has his guts. Especially not a man like him with a good job, a loving wife and apartment sorted. He’s far braver than me; I’m just a dreamer, I want art to change the world.”
“And can it?” said Ricki.
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “I hope so.”
“It looks pretty deprived around here,” said Jen. “It’s a side you don’t see in the guidebooks. Who lives here?”
“Poor families as you’d expect, then there are the widows, the dealers, the abortionists. The State know they’re here but they let them get on with it – so long as they stay in their bubble. I guess the abortionists are doing them a service; less mouths to feed. Believe me, your mother could have chosen differently when she abandoned you.”
Jen shivered and rubbed her arms, but the chill remained.
“Come on, guys, we’d better hurry. I’ve probably already shown you too much. It’s a shame we don’t have more time, I could have taken you to see a film. There’s a new indie feature out by Gao Wendong, I’m surprised it got past the censors.”
“Wait,” said Ricki. “Before you go marching off, there’s somewhere I need to go. Please? Come with me, it won’t take long.”
They followed Ricki through the People’s Park. Guan lit another cigarette from the packet in his top pocket. The smell reminded Jen of Stuart’s kisses; Stuart who belonged to a different life.
“Are you going to tell us where we’re going?” said Jen.
Ricki stopped dead.
“Don’t tell me you’re lost?”
It’s over there. If I don’t go now I never will. You’ll come with me, won’t you?”
Jen had never seen her sister look so scared. She realised, suddenly, where they were heading.
“You don’t have to do this …”
But Ricki was already walking.
A flight of eighteen steps led to a first-floor entrance. The steps. The ones. Shit, they looked steep, thought Jen, as she approached the welfare institute.
There was also a ground floor entrance. A large porch supported by six columns, three on either side, painted red. Four-storeys, fifteen windows to every floor. Four bands of colour painted on the central windows marked out each floor; the colours had faded: white, pink, pale blue and red in ascending order. There were also six circular windows at the front of the building. It reminded Jen of something Blue Peter might make. She stared long and hard until she could remember every detail with her eyes closed. It was the least she could do – the only thing – to remember it properly and precisely.
“Be careful,” Guan smiled. “If they catch you, they’ll take you back in.”
They crossed over to a bench shaded by overhanging trees and sat unseen. The scene played on in Jen’s imagination, of May hurrying away from the steps. She pictured it to be a cold morning, frosty, her sister turning blue. Ricki’s early medical records reported ‘mild hypothermia’, Jen’s dental records said ‘malnutrition’ and ‘bleeding gums’. They must have been half starved when May left them.
The sound of the playground bell was sharp. Jen looked up to see the small yard fill with toddlers: some running, others playing on the swings in the scrub beyond. They were monitored by a girl wearing a white coat who looked little more than a teenager herself.
The railings were damp where Jen pressed her face to peer into the compound. The kids were so tightly wrapped up, like bundles of post ready to go all over the world. The girl caught sight of them and quickly gathered up the children, who threw tantrums at being led back through the darkened glass doors.
“Are you crazy? Come back to the bench,” Guan urged.
“But we’re not doing anything wrong. I’ve not taken any photographs. What, so now they think I’m some kind of paedophile?”
“Worse,” said Guan. “You’re a young woman who’s abandoned her baby and come back for it. Or, you’re a foreign reporter out to cause trouble – especially if they hear us speaking English.”
“I want to go inside. I want to see it. I have a right,” said Ricki.
Through a first floor window, Jen noticed the teenage girl pointing in their direction.
“Shit, Ricki, we’d better go.”
Ricki pulled away in the direction of the steps. “I’m staying.”
“Let her go if she needs to,” Guan said.
“I can’t let her go. She’s my twin.”
Jen chased after Ricki and knelt beside her on the institute steps.
“I wanted to leave the past where it should be, Jen. That means leaving this here.”
In her hand was the photograph of May taken at their sixteenth birthday party. Ricki tucked it inside May’s red birthday envelope and placed it on the steps, as the supervisor appeared. Guan pulled them away. They ran and didn’t look back.
As Ricki thanked Guan, a look of exhilaration and relief danced over her face.
“Listen, I hope you two are going to be okay? No more stunts like that. You need to take care. It’s not so free here. Don’t play it so risky.”
“We have to,” said Jen with urgency. “Or we’ll never find out the truth.”
“Help us,” said Ricki.
“How?”
“Your grandparents are from Hunan. Take us with you. It’s our best chance of finding May’s relatives. Our biological grandparents. Our uncle.”
Guan rubbed at his shaved head. “Remember what I said about Madam Feng’s businessman, how his mobile didn’t ring any more? Sometimes, the past just wants to stay hidden behind a wall.”
There was a sudden shift in the clouds and the sun made everything luminous.
Guan shielded his eyes. “I suppose Dad is always complaining I don’t go back home enough …”
Jen’s heart quickened. “We would need our parents’ permission.”
“You’ve no idea how far we’ve come,” said Ricki.
Guan nodded. “I’m too like my dad to say no.”
Jen and Ricki walked the backstreets to the Bluewater Hotel, avoiding the midday traffic which swelled and roared. They stopped at McDonald’s for a Coke, neither mentioning May. However, Ricki removed her hoodie to reveal the double happiness tattoo on her upper arm.
“Shit, when did you get that done?” said Jen.
“After our birthday.”
“You know they’ll kill you.”
Ricki swirled ice with her straw. “I doubt that.”
Jen wished she had her twin’s nerve. “So how do you know about double happiness?”
“I looked it up.”
“In Yifan’s book?”
“On the Net, stupid. Promise not to tell them, Jen, or they’ll never let us go to May’s village.” Ricki would tell them about the tattoo in her own time, the way she did everything. The way she accepted her past – little by little.
Jen thumbed the outline of the double happiness symbol; tried for a moment, half a moment, to work out where one character ended and the other began and realised she couldn’t.
The sound of crying babies woke me. The bed felt unfamiliar with its stiff white sheets smelling of jasmine and something else – bleach. The clock said half past two. Was it day or night? I wished the babies would shut up; where was their mother?
A face came into view. He was young and wore glasses.
“Am I dead?”
He smiled. “No, you’re not dead, Mai Ling, and neither are they.”
I followed his gaze to the reed crib, where two screaming babies lay cocooned in white woollen blankets.
He held up a bottle of formula. “Time for a feed.”
I stared, uncertain.
“Yifan?”
“Yes,” he picked up the baby and snuggled it into the folds of his doctor’s coat.
Two babies …?
I edged up the bed; a shooting pain gripped my lower abdomen. A tube inserted into the back of my hand connected me to a bag of clear liquid by the side of my bed.
“Don’t be scared, that will make you strong again.”
Yifan reached into the crib and passed the second baby from his arms to mine. “Here, be gentle with her, she’s still very weak.”
I directed the bottle to her lips and she sucked greedily. Her eyes rolled in contentment. White spots freckled her nose and cheeks.
“I can’t remember … what happened …”
“These are your children, Mai Ling. Your baby girls. You’re all going to be fine now; you’ve been getting stronger every day.”
I stared at him. He had loved me – hadn’t he? And loved me now in spite of my babies? Or maybe I never told him? There were vague shards of memory – a
yīshēng,
the bucket, running barefoot in the rain to survive.
“Mai Ling, I’m so sorry, but we had to operate.” Yifan paused; his shoes tapped against the side of the bed. “The operation was to remove
zi gong
.” He explained this was my
infant’s palace.
He said I nearly bled to death in the doorway of a block of flats.
The baby in my arms stared at me, her eyes mesmerising, pulling me into her. Just looking at her made my breasts ache.
“But I’m afraid there is something else, a more pressing problem,” he said, “that is, the matter of where you will live. This is a missionary hospital, Mai Ling. We’ve subsidised your operation, but we can’t keep you here once you’ve recuperated sufficiently to return home.”
“Home? But I don’t have a home.”
Yifan peered at his shoes.
“How soon?” I asked.
“Tomorrow morning.”
I gazed at the drowsy infant, swathed in blankets.
What next Mama?
She seemed to ask before her eyes pursed in sleep.
I don’t know baby.
Under sleep’s anaesthetic, I returned to the dingy clinic where Doctor Quo slavered to chop my flesh into pieces with a meat cleaver and boil it into soup. When he turned round, I realised it was Kwo, the factory cook. He ladled the blood out of a deep vat. Peering inside, I saw two babies bob to the surface, their webbed hands splayed.
Don’t let us become broth,
they begged.
The dream felt so real, I hurried to check the twins were safely asleep. My pillow was damp with sweat; the bed seemed to be shrinking. My stomach ached from the bottom of my pelvis up to my ribs and for hours I lay awake listening to the sound of other babies crying, mothers’ snoring, footsteps squeaking down the corridor. In the half-light I watched the slow
drip-drip
of liquid as it plinked through the tube into the back of my hand.
I lumbered back onto the bed. There had to be someone in this big city who could help us? I thought of Cousin Zhi, Fatty, Ren, Fei Fei, Madam Feng … And my family? I could never shame them with these children. Yifan was my only remaining friend; I would swallow my pride and plead with him for help.
An hour or so later, an insistent hand tapped me on the shoulder.