by Ami Polonsky
I find the laptop in Mom and Dad’s room and send the two maps that I saved to the printer. As I do, a wave of panic washes over me. We’re leaving in a few hours and I still haven’t figured out how I’m going to convince Mom and Dad that we should find and visit a factory prison that’s a few hours outside of the city.
Eh, you’ll figure it out, Lola would say. You’ve got a long flight ahead of you—to think. I can practically see her grinning at me over the banister as I walk downstairs to collect my maps.
Mom is standing next to the sink, rummaging through a cabinet. “Hey, honey, did you print something out, or was that Dad?” She puts a bottle of Advil into a Ziploc of toiletries.
“It was me,” I say calmly. The second map is pulsing its way out of the printer. Mom zips up the plastic bag and walks past me, toward the stairs.
“Oh, maps?” she asks, glancing over my shoulder.
“Yeah, I thought it would be cool to know ahead of time what’s what.”
Mom stops and smiles at me. She has dark circles under her eyes. “I guess last time we were in China you were just a kid, huh?”
“I guess so.” I’m sure Mom is thinking about the fact that I’m growing up and Lola isn’t, and I can’t bear the thought of that. “So we’re leaving in an hour?”
She looks at her watch. “An hour and a half.”
I nod and run up the stairs with my maps, past the smiling ghost of my sister.
In my bedroom, I fold the papers and tuck them into the inside pocket of my pink backpack next to the copies of Yuming’s note and photograph. I have to come up with a plan, and time is running out.
Help me, Lola, I think. I need to find the pink factory that’s somewhere outside the capital of China. I need to somehow get us there. And then, I need to figure out how to get Yuming out.
Yuming
WHEN I WAKE up, the sky is dark gray. Wind wildly rustles the leaves, branches snap and sway, and fear washes over me. I can’t believe I took the risk of sleeping. What would Wai Gong think?
Groggily, I inch my way out from the tiny cave and massage the back of my head, which is sore from the rutted stone that I somehow allowed myself to fall asleep on. Still tucked under the overhang of rock, Kai twitches in his sleep. On top of the ledge, Li sits in Jing’s lap as she sings him a soft song. Like Wai Po used to do with me.
I rub my eyes and try to clear my head. “What time do you think it is?” I feel disoriented. Could it be dawn? Could Mr. Zhang and his men be watching us right now, waiting for the perfect opportunity to leap out, grab us, and drag us back to the factory?
“I’d guess it’s probably just after dinnertime,” Jing says. Li is playing with her long fingers.
I nod. Dinnertime. “I’m hungry.”
Li looks up from Jing’s hands. “Me, too,” he says quickly, checking around Jing’s back as if a meal might magically appear from behind her.
“I don’t think it’s safe to stay here much longer,” I say to Jing. “We should get as far away from the factory as we can.”
She nods, gently pushes Li off her lap, and stands and squints into the woods that shielded us when we escaped. “Well,” she says, “it’s getting dark. That’s good.”
“We should get through the woods before nightfall,” Kai mumbles. I turn to him. His eyes are still closed.
“That’s true,” I say, moving toward the trees. “We should go.”
Kai pulls himself out of the crevice and stretches. “That bed makes the sewing room benches seem luxurious,” he says.
The wind picks up and dark clouds tumble in the gray sky. I don’t know how Kai can joke at a time like this. Now that I’m out of the factory, I’m more eager than ever to get to a train or a bus—anything that will take me south. I can just picture it: The door will close behind me, I’ll wave to Jing and the boys, and I’ll be off—back to Shanghai, and then home to Yemo Village.
But how can I board a bus or a train without money?
An owl screams in the woods, and I look around again. The mountain range towers behind us, mushroom colored in the dusk. Before us is the narrow stretch of forest. As Li and Jing hop down off the rocky ledge and join me, the question bullies its way into my mind again: How, in this country of a billion and a half people, will I ever find my brother? I swallow hard. Behind the question slithers the phrase this life is not my life; this life is not my life, but I silence it, because, for now, this life is my life.
“Come on,” Kai urges, heading into the woods. I try to shut off my thoughts as I follow him.
In the dying light we stumble over dead branches, under low-hanging boughs, and around gnarled trunks as we head in the direction of the village. Maybe we could find food there, and a place to hide for the night. We all are aware—too aware—that to get to the village, we will need to pass the factory.
I can imagine Mr. Zhang yelling at one of his paid police officers this very moment, furiously pounding his fist on a desk as he describes us, knowing that if his secret leaks outside his inner circle, he’ll surely go to prison. That idea makes me smile, despite my aching legs, empty stomach, and parched throat.
Daylight is completely gone now; the hazy moon appears and disappears as clouds blow across the sky. It smells like rain.
Kai taps my arm and motions to our left. Jing and I nod. The air is thick with humidity, and light from the moon occasionally filters into the forest. I can’t help but think of Wai Po sitting on the edge of my bed, singing, The moon is bright, the wind is quiet, tree leaves hang over your window…
Her song runs through my mind over and over as we weave our way through the woods. As though in a trance, I barely feel the branches that scrape at my arms. When we near the edge of the forest, we stop, panting, and peer out into the darkness, searching for the factory.
Jing points. It’s to our right, a little way behind us now—a dark, angular mass against the night sky. Soot from its smokestacks is just barely illuminated by the dim light that seeps from the windows. In the basement of the factory, completely hidden from view, twenty children are surely sewing in the hidden room.
But I can’t think of them—not now. First I need to save myself; that’s what Wai Gong would tell me. I’m relieved to see that we’ve traveled farther than I thought. A narrow dirt road leads down to the valley below, where lights from the small village twinkle in the black night.
“That will be the road into town,” Kai whispers, pointing. “Let’s take it.”
I look at Jing. “I don’t think so,” she says quickly, and I nod, relieved that she and I are in agreement.
“Definitely not,” I add. “Too risky. If Mr. Zhang isn’t in the woods, he could be on the road. Better to walk down the hill here.”
Kai seems surprised to be challenged, but he shrugs and we begin to make our way down, through tall grass and prickly bushes. It doesn’t feel as steep as it appeared from above, but when the moon peeks out, I can see that the hill flattens to our right, next to the road. Kai seems to have noticed the same thing. “Let’s at least walk in that direction a bit,” he says, pointing. “We don’t have to take the road.”
We head downward and toward the right, the tiny village growing slightly brighter as we descend. Think, Yuming, Wai Gong would say. How will you do this? Once you arrive in the village, you’ll need to stay hidden and get money. That will be tricky.
A challenge, Wai Gong, I think. You know I like a challenge.
“Get down!” Jing suddenly whispers. I look around for a second before Kai grabs my arm with one hand and Li’s with the other. The four of us fall to our knees in the tall grass. “Lower,” Kai whispers. I plaster myself to the earth. A car is rumbling behind us and to our right. We are much closer to the road than I’d realized.
My heart pounds. Crickets screech. The car is traveling slowly—perhaps because the road is bad, or perhaps because the driver is searching for four runaways. My pulse thuds against the earth into which I wish I could somehow burrow and disappear. Th
e headlights paint the grass a dark, shimmering green. I want to close my eyes, but I don’t let myself. Let us be hidden, I pray. Wai Po, Wai Gong, let us be hidden.
“It could be anyone,” I whisper, as much to calm myself as the others. Next to me, Li whimpers a little, and Kai puts his finger to his lips. I grab Jing’s hand and we all watch, our bellies flat on the hillside, as the car creeps by, no more than fifteen meters from us. The windows are down and exhaust rolls over us. The car is parallel to us now; it is so, so close.
Through the grass I can make out Mr. Zhang’s wife in the driver’s seat, her hair pulled into a tight bun, her scowl illuminated by the moonlight. In the passenger seat is a man, his head fully out the window, searching the other side of the road with a flashlight. It could be one of the guards or Mr. Zhang himself. I can’t tell.
I want to look and I don’t want to look. For some reason, I recall Wai Gong’s dead body, still and cold in his bed, and how I’d wanted to both run from it and stay with it. I squeeze my eyes closed, like I did that morning I found him. I’d made a wish that he would be alive when I opened them again. But it didn’t work; he was gone. He is a spirit now, I had thought, tears streaming down my cheeks.
I open my eyes. The car is crawling even more slowly than it was a moment ago—so slowly that it has nearly stopped. It has just passed us, and the man’s head is still sticking out of the passenger window, his flashlight painting flickering green lines on the grass across the road. Mrs. Zhang is staring straight ahead. The car bumps over a pothole and she curses.
“Ouch!” the man cries—it’s the night guard. “My head! Are you not looking?” I hear him bark. “What good are you if you cannot both drive and look at the same time?” I wonder where Mr. Zhang is.
Mrs. Zhang turns her head to her left, toward us, and her rodent-like face scours the hillside. She rolls her eyes. Jing squeezes my hand. I hold my breath.
The car bumps over another rut and Mrs. Zhang looks straight ahead, cursing again. She maneuvers the car around it before poking her head out the window one more time. To spot us now, she or the guard would have to get out and look behind the car, or turn it around on the narrow, one-lane road. But they continue to creep forward. I breathe a sigh of relief and roll onto my back.
I look up at the patches of faint stars between the clouds. Though I am probably more than a thousand kilometers from home, they are the same stars that Wai Gong and I sometimes gazed at when we sat at the edge of the rice field in the months after Wai Po died.
“Thank you, Wai Gong,” I whisper.
“From us, too,” Kai adds, and I giggle. Only the orange rear lights of Mrs. Zhang’s car are visible now, and Jing begins to giggle, too. Soon the four of us are laughing so hard it feels like there’s a knife in my side, but I don’t mind it.
“I need to tell you something, Kai-Kai,” Li says, hysterical.
Kai smacks him on the head. “Don’t call me that. What?”
“I am going to pee.”
We all burst into more laughter. Kai sits up, wiping tears from his eyes. “So go in the grass. You’ll have to go pants-less if you ruin your only pair.”
Li pops up and runs several feet away before we hear what sounds like water rushing from the pump back home, and the three of us burst into laughter again. “Stop laughing,” Li whispers. “I can’t pee and laugh at the same time.”
He returns to us and, with my stomach sore from laughter, I scour the dark stretch of road. Mrs. Zhang’s car is nowhere to be seen. “They’ll get to town, search for us, and then drive back up here,” I whisper. “Hopefully, we’ll arrive after they have left.”
“Yup,” Kai agrees.
We walk farther from the road and slowly make our way toward the twinkling lights of the village. My shoes and pants are soaked with dew, and the scrapes on my hands and knees sting, but I don’t care. Bolin, I will find you, I think. Somehow….
The village is even smaller than it appeared from higher up. We silently cross a farmer’s field, picking our way carefully through rows of wheat, and creep by a small home where perhaps a family is asleep. I have no idea what time it is. Across a dirt road is a small row of closed stores, a few of them shuttered with metal doors, as protection from thieves. We stand in an alley at the end of the street, considering our options. We have to eat soon—my stomach feels hollow.
Kai wipes the sweat from his face with his shirt, exposing his bony torso, before putting his hands on his hips, obviously thinking. Li moves from Jing’s side to stand next to his brother. He puts his hands on his hips, mimicking Kai. I can’t believe how far he has walked without complaining.
We start walking toward the stores. When we get close, I hear men’s voices talking and laughing in the distance. Perhaps there’s a bar on the next street. “Let’s go talk to them,” Kai says, jerking his head in the direction of the sounds.
“No!” I say immediately. “Mr. Zhang has probably told them to be on the lookout for four runaways!”
“No way,” Kai replies quickly. “Then they’d know he has children working for him. He’d never tell. And anyway, I don’t believe that he works with the police; he was just trying to scare us.”
Li nods. “You should trust my brother,” he says solemnly.
“How trustworthy could he be if you two ended up in the factory?” Jing asks Li, smiling a little.
Li looks at Kai, surprised, and then shrugs. “I’m going to see what’s over that way, Kai-Kai.” He points to the end of the row of stores and wanders off.
For a moment, Kai, Jing, and I look at one another. I feel strangely nervous, waiting to hear Jing’s response to Kai’s latest suggestion. “It’s not worth the risk,” she finally says, and I quietly breathe a sigh of relief.
Kai shrugs like Li did.
“Hey, Kai, come have a look!” Li calls from the corner.
Kai trots off, but I am too hungry to expend any extra energy. I sit down, my back against a bumpy corrugated metal door, and empty the dirt and pebbles from my wet shoes. Jing does the same. My feet are covered with blisters. It’s strange not to feel hair in my face as I lean over and try to examine my heels. I know I should not let my guard down yet—the Zhangs are just up the hill, barely out of sight—but my heartbeat is starting to settle, like a row of sewing machines slowing down.
“Look at this blister,” Jing says, holding up her foot. She’s smiling, like she’s proud of it.
“Jing,” I ask her, “how long were you in the factory?”
“Four years and eleven months,” she answers without hesitation.
I swallow hard. “Almost five years?”
She nods.
“And how old are you?”
“Thirteen.”
“Me, too. So you were there since you were—”
“Probably just a bit older than Li,” she answers quickly. She’s pressing at her blister with her thumb.
“How did you end up there, anyway?” I ask her.
“My family needed money.” She says it matter-of-factly, offering no hint of her feelings about it.
I nod. I don’t know how else to respond. “Well, after five years in the factory, no wonder you look so happy to have a nasty blister,” I finally say.
“You know, Yuming, if it weren’t for you, I’d still—”
I look away, remorseful once again, and I’m relieved when Kai’s voice interrupts her.
“Yuming! Jing! Come here!”
Jing leaps up, wiggles her foot back into her wet shoe, and reaches down to me, as if forgiving me for my selfishness. “Thank you,” she says, and I nod, even though I didn’t do anything—I did less than nothing. Besides, if Kai and Li hadn’t arrived, I’d still be there, too.
I let Jing pull me up and we half run, half limp down the block to where Kai is standing. All the way there, I watch Jing gawk at the unfamiliar surroundings. Five years. I remember Bolin telling me about war prisoners who, once released, went crazy because they no longer knew how to operate as a pa
rt of society. As I study her face, she turns and smiles at me. I think of the sharp scissors—the ones with the orange handle—and how she knew her way around the factory. I think of her hand pulling me up from the sewing room floor, her grip stronger than I expected. She doesn’t seem crazy to me.
“Where’s Li?” I ask when we reach Kai, suddenly feeling nervous again. He just grins and points up to a staircase that runs along the outside of a splintering, wooden three-story building. At the top, leaning against a dangerously rickety-looking rail, Li is smiling down at us under the mostly obscured moon.
“Careful, Li,” I call up automatically.
He motions for us to join him, and Jing, Kai and I tiptoe up the wobbly stairs.
My thighs ache from running, and Jing’s seem to as well, because Kai passes us, taking the steps two at a time. He doesn’t seem tired at all, and I wonder, again, where he and Li came from, what kind of life they’ve led before now.
When we reach Li on the third-story landing, Jing looks down at the ground and then up at the dark sky. She holds her hands up in the air, as if feeling wind for the first time.
Behind us is a closed wooden door. To someone’s apartment? I put my finger to my lips and look around uneasily. The window next to the door is cracked open, and I can smell the lingering scent of dinner. It makes my mouth water. A dirty cat pushes its way through the window, startling us, and jumps onto the landing to wind its way around our legs. We lean against the flimsy railing.
Another gust of wind rolls over us and blows our hair off our foreheads as we stand in single file. In the distance, beyond the row of stores, the wheat stalks sway. They give way to dark rolling hills, which eventually rise steeply into looming black mountains.
At the base of the nearest mountain is a squat two-story building. Dim lights shine from within. I can see now that it seems to be composed of several different-size rectangles shoved together haphazardly. Four smokestacks of varying sizes jut upward from the roof, three of them spewing ghostly smog. On one side, a small enclosure protrudes slightly from the pink wall. Pale light seeps out of a horizontal gap where the walls should meet the roof; I recognize it immediately as the bathroom.