Factory Girl

by Josanne La Valley

  “There is no rush. Take all the time you need,” Mother says.

  For a while we sit in silence. I wonder if I will ever tell them what it was like. Their knowing would not change things.

  My stomach settles. I take a few mouthfuls of broth before I become so heavy-eyed that Mother lowers me to the pillow.

  “Sleep now, Roshen, but we will wake you every few hours to drink and eat.” She tucks the blanket in, wraps me in a cocoon. “Grandmother, Aygul, or I will always be here beside you. You will never be alone.”

  They wake me and feed me. They bring pans and buckets of warm water and wash my hair. I begin to like my own smell again.

  It’s not too long before I find myself wanting to stay awake. “Will you draw the curtain back please, Mother? I’d like more light.”

  She opens the window, too, and I hear cicadas and birds.

  “I’ll leave you to the beautiful outdoor sounds for a moment,” Mother says. “I’ll be right back.”

  A lark’s melody goes on and on. I lean back against a pile of cushions and blankets, content to listen to his music. With light coming through the window, I see more of the room. Books are stacked high on a chest along the wall. Another chest, much like mine at home, also stands against the wall. I think my eyes betray me; my mind still plays tricks.

  I look out the window and try to spot the lark who is bringing me his wonderful song.

  Suddenly his song stops. I hear hammering and the shrill whine of a power saw cutting through metal. I know these sounds. They’re the sounds of Uncle’s foundry.

  “No,” I cry in a voice too feeble to be heard as I turn away from the light—​the truth—​and sink into the pillows. Once again so weak I can’t hold myself up. This is not the way my dream was meant to go.

  Mother rushes into the room. Quickly closes the window. Draws the curtain. She comes to my side, rubs my brow, smoothes my hair.

  I again find shelter in the darkness, and in Mother’s familiar touch.

  “Mother,” I whisper, “why are we at Uncle’s and not home on the farm?”

  “Your father will tell you. He’ll speak to you soon, now that you seem to be getting better,” she says as she fluffs the pillows, tucks a blanket in around me, then heads for the door. “I must get back to the kitchen. I’ll send Aygul in.”

  I shake my head no, but she does not see. I don’t want to talk to Father. I want the curtain to stay drawn.

  I close my eyes. Pretend to sleep, but Aygul pumps my arm. “Wake up,” she says, and I try to shoo her away. “No, Roshen. It’s Ahmat. He’s here to see you. He comes every day, and Mother tells him it isn’t time yet. But I thought you should know.”

  “Tell him I’m sleeping, Aygul. For I am.”

  Can you hear me, Ahmat?

  I am here, yet I am not here.

  I lie caged in a faraway land.

  Perhaps one day I will waken and find my way home.

  Forty-Three

  “ROSHEN,” FATHER SAYS, “you must wake now. It’s time for your tea. Your mother brought a fresh bowl. Can you drink it yourself, or shall I call her to help?”

  My eyes blink open. There is only a soft light burning. I don’t know how long I’ve slept or if it’s day or night. I try to sit up, but my weakness has come back. “Call Mother, please,” I say. Aygul holds me while Mother spoons the tea into my mouth.

  “That’s enough,” I say after a few spoonfuls.

  “You must finish it,” Mother says. “You need the liquid, and it is your medicine.”

  I comply, and Mother and Aygul leave. I am left alone with Father.

  He sits near me, on the rim of the sleeping platform. He does not take my hand or reach out to me. He sits quietly, as if in prayer, his hands clenched tightly in his lap.

  “The new cadre came to see me, Roshen. He said someone from the factory had called him, told him you were deathly ill, that you would eat nothing and might die within days.” Father unlocks his hands. His shoulders sag.

  “If I offered to sell him the farm, the cadre would arrange for me to fly to Wuhan and have someone escort me to the factory so that I might bring you home. He would also settle all legal matters with the factory owner.”

  “No, Father!” I cry out, and the anger I’ve felt for months erupts inside me. I gasp for breath. I must tell him what happened, and I don’t know how. Father puts his hands on my shoulders, tries to calm me. I shake him away.

  “I made this happen,” I say. “It’s my fault.” I look away as awful images of the fat man, Boss Lee, Ushi crowd my mind. “They wanted me . . . to . . .” My throat clogs. I can’t speak these words to Father. “I starved myself to . . . to make myself ugly.” My breath comes in short bursts as I struggle to control the words that scream in my mind. “It . . . it went beyond my control.” My head is bowed. I see Father’s hands, clasped in his lap, balled into angry fists. He understands what I’m saying. “I’m sorry, Father. I was a coward . . . and we lost the farm.”

  “Your life, Roshen, is not a sacrifice I’m willing to make.” He stands and begins to pace, his feet heavy on the earthen floor. “It breaks my heart to think what you must have gone through.” He stops in front of me. A bewildered look crosses his face. “They kept reporting how happy you all were, learning new skills, making new friends. They didn’t let us contact you for fear it might make you more homesick.”

  He sits at my side again and takes my hands in his. “Listen, please, for a moment,” he says, his voice now calm but full of sadness. “It was only a question of time before the cadre and his people took over our land. The government doesn’t care that we loved our family heritage and could still make a good living from our farm. They have bigger plans, and they always get their way.”

  I want to pull away. But Father is so loving, so caring. So forgiving. Do I no longer know how to live in this world? I’m not the Roshen who left all those months ago.

  Father tells more of the story. How Uncle needs him to help with the foundry. How the market for aluminum and steel pots is growing. He’s invested money from the farm in Uncle’s business. The government will likely leave them alone.

  “I’m sorry, Father,” I say. “I know you loved the farm and the life we led—​I did too.” Gently, I push his hands away. “I have to sleep now.”

  And then, again, I say I’m sorry.

  I do not sleep. Had I chosen whoring, running away, or death, the farm would still have been taken from us. The idea that Ushi and Big Boss were instrumental in saving my life, that their action fell so perfectly into the hands of the cadre, appalls me.

  I drag myself from my sleeping platform. Will my body to crawl hand over hand to the window. Yank at the curtain until it plunges to the floor. The window will no longer be covered. This world I live in is too real to be erased with the drawing of a curtain.

  Forty-Four

  I SIT AT A TABLE outdoors under the arbor, wrapped in a heavy blanket in spite of the spring weather. Mother helps me to come out here, tells me I look less like a skeleton than I did two weeks ago. She leaves food, a warm drink. She trusts me to be alone. I need to be.

  I’m haunted by thoughts of my factory sisters. I didn’t mean to abandon them. I only wanted to make myself ugly so Boss Lee would have no interest in taking me to his club again.

  I pull the blanket tightly around me. Memories of the winter chill are more real than the warmth of the day.

  I pick up my pen and open my notebook, and Mikray’s voice comes to me: Someday you’ll turn our stories into poems for all the world to know. I can almost see her saying this, her forehead tight, her eyes boring into mine.

  I’m doing it, Mikray. Word by word, scratched out, tried again and again. Words to be heard by our Uyghur people and by the Chinese as well. The Chinese seem to be afraid of words, and I know some they may not want to hear about us factory girls—​young girls ripped from their homeland and treated as slaves. No one I know of writes about us. I’ll tell the truth about the vi
llainy that turned Hawa into a whore. About unpaid work and grueling hours, humiliations and cruelties and death. My poems will tell the story of Mikray, Gulnar, Jemile—​all those whose fate I may never know. Of Zuwida, who lies forever in a foreign grave.

  Will I ever be as brave as you, Mikray? Brave enough to send my poems into the secret network of our people—​so they will be told behind closed doors and become the whispers that rouse my sisters to action?

  Maybe I can do that. Be sweet, you said. I have no sweetness left, but I’ll go to school, teach by day, and seem content. If I’m discovered, the Chinese will silence me. But I can’t have voices shouting inside me and do nothing. Men build armies to rise against those who treat them badly. I must learn to make my words as powerful as an army.

  I smile now. What is it about you, Mikray, that makes me do things I would never have dreamed of? I push aside the blanket I’m wrapped in. I stand. Take tiny steps. Take a few more. I will get strong. I take a deep, full breath and see Mother hurrying toward me.

  “You have a visitor. It’s Meryam.”

  I can never again live in the world of my childhood. I’m not much older than when I left, but my youth has passed. I care for Meryam. I should ask about her married life. Perhaps, too, I’m ready to find out about her brother. When Aygul or Mother mentions Ahmat’s name, I shush them.

  “I’d like to see her, Mother,” I say.

  Meryam bounces out the door, her steps like a dance. I know she’s happy.

  She stops. Bites at her lip to gain control. She’s seen me—​this person whose reflection even I don’t recognize.

  “It’s all right, Meryam. Really. I’m so glad you’ve come.”

  The hug she was ready to give becomes a gentle holding of my hands. “Oh, Roshen, I didn’t know,” she says. “It must have been so awful.”

  We look away from each other, but our hands stay clasped.

  “You were lucky not to be chosen. It would have changed your life in ways . . . that would not have been good.” That’s all I say, for I’m suddenly exhausted, not by the words but by the emotions that overwhelm me.

  When Mother comes out with tea, she sees that I’m struggling. She stays to talk with Meryam. We find out that life at the silk maker’s compound very much agrees with her. She’s quite good at spooling silk threads, and she’s learning to get along with her mother-in-law.

  Mother picks up the empty tea bowls and prepares to leave. “It’s time for Roshen to rest,” she says.

  “Oh, please, not quite yet. I need to be with Roshen for one more minute,” Meryam says.

  I’m not certain I want her to stay. If she has been sent as messenger, I know now that I’m not ready to hear about her brother.

  She crouches next to me. “Please meet with Ahmat,” she pleads. “I’m worried about him. He’s a . . .” She stops. Leans in closer. “He’s a protester. He hates what the Chinese are doing to us, wants the Uyghurs to have their own voice. He promises he won’t go to rallies, but I don’t trust him. The gatherings are meant to be peaceful, but the police don’t always care. If he gets caught they’ll send him away—​or kill him. He must be careful. Maybe he’ll listen to you.”

  I must have nodded, or made some gesture of compliance, for Meryam returns to her chair while I struggle to take in what she’s told me.

  “Ahmat sent you a gift, Roshen.” She takes a package from her bag, places it on the table, and it’s as if the whole world stands still for a moment. I’m in the toilet room throwing away the black ruffled blouse, the panty-showing skirt, the lace stockings—​and the jade necklace. Ahmat’s jade necklace. The most treasured gift I’ve ever received. Defiled by a pig. Thrown into the garbage.

  My head drops to the table. I haven’t the will or the energy to sit up. Meryam’s hands tremble as she tries to comfort me. “He loves you, Roshen. When you first came home, he was here every day to see how you were. To see what he could do for you. Your family told him it was not yet time for him to see you. I know now that they were right, that you need time to heal. He’s sent something he thought you’d like. Please let me tell him you still care.”

  My heart is full to bursting, that he cares so much. That I care so much!

  When my breath comes back and I can once again speak, I say, “Tell Ahmat that I have deep feelings for him in my heart. Only . . .” I break off. There’s so much I must tell him. Will he understand? “You see . . . he does not know the person I am now.”

  I try to get up from my chair, but I can’t. “Please call Mother.”

  I clutch Ahmat’s package to my breast as Mother and Meryam help me back to my sleeping platform.

  Forty-Five

  I SIT UNDER THE ARBOR. Ahmat’s gift, still unopened, is on the table. It’s wrapped in plain paper and twine. I think he has done this himself. Meryam would have made it fancier.

  I’m ready to open it. I untie the twine, remove the wrapping.

  There is a note inside.

  Dear Roshen,

  Water flowing from the Kunlun; winds blowing from the desert. These words need no longer be codes between us. Thankfully, they are again a reality to us both.

  Having you nearby is a great comfort to me. I await your word of when we might see each other. Know, however, that I wait with impatience, but with respect.

  My deepest love,

  Ahmat

  P.S. There is much to talk about.

  When I can gather my emotions, I read the last line again. There is much to talk about.

  “Yes, Ahmat, there is,” I say out loud. It seems we have each journeyed to a new place. The naiveté of our first love is over—​as beautiful and innocent as it was, it is gone. I can never again offer him the purity of my body and mind. But I can offer him a friendship with a much deeper understanding. Together, perhaps, we can make a difference to our people.

  I look at my gift. It is a pen and a sheaf of rare handmade mulberry paper. The tears that so easily flood my eyes these days flow down my cheeks. Ahmat has been told that I sit out here day after day with my pen and notebook. He believes I can write words worthy of being put on this precious paper. And I will!

  I will not sign my poems. I can’t if I want to stay out of jail and help my people. My signature will be the mulberry paper that carries my words.

  I sit quietly. Strangely at peace. I place a sheet of the paper and the pen before me.

  Dear Ahmat,

  It is time for us to meet. Time for a new reality for both of us, which may, or may not, take us down the same path.

  I am no longer afraid to find out.

  My deepest love,

  Roshen

  My mind is at rest. I close my eyes and listen for the songs of the birds. I hear the high-pitched twitter of a wagtail, and the thud of a hammer hitting metal, and the screech of a buzz saw cutting through iron—​and my heart beats too fast. I can’t get enough air.

  The strikes of the hammer turn into the thud, thud, thud of Mikray’s rivet machine; the whine of the buzz saw becomes the relentless whir of sewing.

  I’m dizzy. Cold. So cold. I pull the blanket Mother has left for me around my shoulders and let my head sink to the table. Behind closed eyelids I see my sisters: Mikray, Hawa, Gulnar, Adile, Jemile, Patime, Letipe, Nadia, Nurbiya, Rayida, Zuwida.

  I open my eyes and reach for a sheet of the mulberry paper, and my pen.

  Afterword

  In 2004, implementing what was called the Transferring Surplus Labor Force to Inner China policy, the Chinese government began to focus on using Uyghurs to fill their work-force quotas. Village officials sought out vulnerable Uyghur families and identified them to government officials. At the age of sixteen, many Uyghur daughters were sent from their rural homeland to work in factories located in Chinese cities.

  Sending young girls far away from their homes is unthinkable in traditional Uyghur families. Uyghur parents hated the idea of their daughters living in a remote, hostile place where their culture would be suppressed,
but they were forced to comply or face harsh punishment.

  Radio Free Asia (RFA) gave this policy and the stories of Uyghur factory girls extensive coverage. Uyghur blog sites posted eyewitness accounts of Uyghur girls who became victims of sex slavery and organ trafficking rings. As a news organization, RFA was not able to confirm these accounts, since getting information on this kind of topic out of China is almost impossible. It is strictly controlled by the government.

  In Factory Girl, Uyghur girls’ experience in a Chinese factory where they and their workmates live under the scrutiny of local Chinese cadres is realistically conveyed through Roshen’s touching story. Working conditions in the factory, the cultural and religious antipathy and hardship country girls face in big cities, the lure of material temptation, and exposure to corrupt dark corners in Chinese society are depicted in Factory Girl as if the author herself lived through all of these ordeals.

  China continues to send young Uyghur women to coastal cities. Uyghurs must remain silent, as expressing their grievances would have dangerous—even fatal—consequences. It’s sad to say, but many Roshens will face the challenge of being uprooted to strange cities and trapped in sweatshops.

  Factory Girl gives voice to these young women in all their struggles and heroism, just as Roshen plans to do at the end of her story. It will open readers’ eyes to a startling reality that exists in the world they live in today. I hope it will open their hearts as well.

  Mamatjan Juma

  Senior Editor, Uyghur Service

  Radio Free Asia