Mountain Girl River Girl

by Ting-Xing Ye

  After she had bathed, Pan-pan put on the clothes Lao Zhang had lent her. The pants were the right length but the waist was far too large, so Pan-pan secured it with her own belt. The socks turned out to be brand new, thick at the bottom and soft against her bruised soles. But as she reached for the folded blouse, her hand stopped in midair. “I can’t wear this,” she said to herself. The constant warnings of Xin-Ma and Ah-Po rang in her ears. She might pass her fox smell to Lao Zhang. “It’s just another silly old wives’ tale,” her father had said to her before she left home. But at the same time, both Ah-Po and Xin-Ma had sounded so certain of it. “No wind, no waves,” Xin-Ma had argued. No matter what, Pan-pan concluded, she couldn’t risk offending the woman who was being so kind to her.

  Then another thought occurred to her. If she appeared in front of Lao Ma, Lao Zhang, and their sons the next day still wearing her own soggy, bloodstained shirt, she might as well have the words fox smell written on her forehead. How on earth could she avoid them asking questions? The agony of indecision was splitting her head into halves. She wished her mother were there, or even Xin-Ma, with her quick decisiveness.

  Pressing her lips together, Pan-pan picked up the blouse. She would wash her own clothes first thing in the morning, at dawn. When they were dry, she would then wash Lao Zhang’s garments and hope that her brief contact wouldn’t contaminate them.

  Later, lying alone on a cot in a small spare room, Pan-pan wished for the first time that she was back in her own bed, sharing the room with Ah-Po, with Xin-Ma and Gui-yang next door. But how would I tell them about the stolen money and the new clothes and the quilt I lost? she thought before falling into a troubled asleep.

  WHEN PAN-PAN WOKE UP, it was almost noon, and the first thing that came to her mind was her unwashed laundry. Now what could she do? The house and the courtyard were quiet, so she got out of bed, put on her borrowed clothes, and entered the kitchen, where she found Lao Zhang seated at the table, a newspaper open before her.

  “There you are,” Lao Zhang said cheerily, taking off her glasses. “My goodness! Look at you. I had no idea I’d grown so big. My pants look like a skirt on you.” She laughed, pointing toward the courtyard. “But don’t worry. Your clothes were nearly dry last time I checked. Are you feeling a bit better today?”

  “My clothes?” Pan-pan repeated silently, missing Lao Zhang’s question. She stared out at the clothes hanging on a line in the sun and her eyes froze on her shirt whipping in the wind. She glanced at Lao Zhang, searching for any sign that she had noticed anything out of the ordinary when she washed Pan-pan’s clothes.

  “How are you feeling today?” Lao Zhang asked again.

  “Oh, much better, I think. I’m sorry I slept in. You shouldn’t have—” She stopped, pointing at the laundry.

  “Don’t mention it. I’ve got nothing else to do. You had a rough day. I’ll get you some tea, then we’ll eat.”

  Over a bowl of dumplings filled with stir-fried eggs and minced cabbage, Lao Zhang told Pan-pan that she had taken a day off from her new job as a thief-catcher in a nearby supermarket. “It was the only kind of work I could find after being laid off from the steel factory where I’d been a bookkeeper for over twenty years,” she said bitterly. “The state-owned mill went bankrupt and closed down because of the government’s new economic policies. So all of us workers have been thrown out on the street, jobless and penniless.” According to Lao Zhang, the steel mill was once the pride of the city and the largest employer in the region. Not long ago, a wealthy businessman from Hong Kong had bought it and turned it into a recreation centre.

  “Palace of Eternal Delight,” Lao Zhang went on, shaking her head. “Who would have thought it? Where the furnaces used to stand, there’s now a dance hall and bowling alleys. Where the steel was made and shaped, people now sing karaoke every night. I won’t last at this new job. It requires someone who has a heart of stone. I’ve been there for less than a month and already I’ve lost two days’ pay for failing to report shoplifters. They were jamming food into their mouths—blackened bananas and stale buns—the kind of things most people wouldn’t buy anyway. They were so desperate, in their shabby clothes, that I couldn’t bring myself to stop them.”

  Wrapping her hands around her tea glass, Pan-pan sat gazing at the tabletop, listening to Lao Zhang out of politeness. She didn’t understand some of the words and phrases and wondered why Lao Zhang was telling all this to a young woman she didn’t even know. At first Pan-pan had thought the kindly woman might just be lonely. But it soon became clear that Lao Zhang had her own agenda. Sharing the worries and anxieties she had harboured for some time was her method of dissuading Pan-pan from continuing her trip to Beijing.

  “Pan-pan, we’d be more than happy to buy you a ticket home,” she said abruptly, and quickly added, “express class.”

  “Why would you want to do that, Lao Zhang? We’re not even related.”

  “Because,” Lao Zhang answered, lowering her eyes to her tea, “because I want you to set an example for my sons. They’re only ten and twelve and already they’ve been talking about leaving Bengbu to work and live in larger cities.”

  “But I’ve never even spoken to your kids,” Pan-pan said wearily. “It’s not my fault if they want to go away.”

  “Of course not.” Lao Zhang softened her voice, but kept frowning. “But it’s madness again. You see, when I was a bit older than you are now, the government forced me to leave home, to live and work among total strangers. To be re-educated, as they called it, by peasants. I hated every minute of it. Now everyone, especially the younger ones, is eager to head for the cities. They think they can get rich there. But they’ll all end up being as exploited and as lonely as I was.”

  As Lao Zhang clattered on, Pan-pan’s mind drifted back to the sights at the train stations she had passed—the throngs of travellers, the different dialects humming inside the cars and outside on the platform, and, always, people seeing someone off or waiting to be taken somewhere. It seemed the entire population was on the move.

  Now Lao Zhang was trying to talk her into abandoning her plan and returning home. Yet listening to what she had been saying only made Pan-pan realize that she had already missed plenty of opportunities and lagged far behind the rest of the country. Even Lao Zhang’s young sons want to be part of the excitement, she reminded herself. I should at least give it a try. But how am I going to explain that to her? It will only disappoint her—and she’s been treating me like her own child. As soon as Pan-pan heard Lao Ma’s voice, she rushed out to greet him.

  “Good news,” he called out as he entered the courtyard.

  Pan-pan followed him back inside.

  “First things first,” Lao Ma said, looking in a mirror to adjust his white cloth cap on his head. “Someone turned in your luggage to the station manager in Beijing. Second, I reported your situation to my leader. He’s agreed to let you complete your journey without extra cost. That is, if you still want to.” He glanced at his wife. “Or you can forget the whole thing. I’ll arrange to have your luggage sent back here, and we’ll be very glad to buy you a ticket home.”

  “Express class,” Lao Zhang repeated, beaming.

  “Thank you so much,” said Pan-pan, her throat thick with emotion, “but—” She stopped, and her head bowed low before she looked up again. “But I have come this far already. On top of that, if Lao Zhang, Sun Ming, and millions of kids my age did what they had to years ago, travelling hundreds, even thousands, of kilometres away from home, I’d like to give it a try too.”

  “But it was different then, Pan-pan,” Lao Zhang interrupted. “We were forced to go! We had no choice. But you do.”

  Choice. The word struck Pan-pan’s ears like a beating gong. The last time she’d heard the same word spoken was in that bitter argument between her parents years ago. Mom had used it to rationalize her trip to Tongren, the trip that killed her. Was it really a good thing to have more than one choice? Pan-pan wondered, momentarily doubtin
g herself.

  “How about letting me get your luggage back here first,” Lao Ma suggested. “It will take only a day or two. Meantime, you’re welcome to stay with us and have more time to think the whole thing over. This afternoon, we can all go watch a soccer match at our sons’ school. That’s why I’m home early. The boys would love to meet you. What do you think?”

  Suddenly, Pan-pan’s throbbing head seemed worse, and she felt tired again. “All right. I’ll think about it while my luggage is being returned. But if you don’t mind, I’d like to lie down a bit and skip the game as well,” she said weakly.

  The next day, Pan-pan’s headache was almost gone, and her customary energy had returned. After seeing her sons off to school, Lao Zhang insisted on taking Pan-pan sightseeing. Bengbu—the city of Clam Wharf—built on the south shore of the Hui River, turned out to be much bigger, noisier, and crowded than Tongren. Pan-pan was amazed to see that shops and restaurants lined both sides of the main downtown street. Half the goods displayed in the store windows she couldn’t identify, especially the items covered with shiny buttons and keys, blinking and twinkling and glittering in broad daylight. There were stylish clothes in every direction she turned: dashing, colourful, but, most of all, strange. The prosperity and progress were a huge contrast to the life she had known. As she tagged along, at times lagging behind, she couldn’t help wondering why Lao Zhang’s sons wanted to go somewhere else.

  As the morning whiled away, Pan-pan came to realize that Lao Zhang had another motive for taking her sightseeing. From time to time she stopped and pointed, making comments like a tour guide. “Look over there, Pan-pan, on the corner. See the woman who’s selling tea-boiled eggs? She’s not a local. She probably came here to find a good job, but look what happened: She ended up cooking and selling eggs on the street. Heaven knows where she goes to wash and where she sleeps at night.”

  Lao Zhang then pointed out a young woman leaning against a brick wall outside a store, with her hand outstretched. “See that? I’m sure she’s from the countryside, too. How awful! She should be at home with her family instead of begging on the street.”

  By the time they stepped into Lao Zhang’s courtyard, Pan-pan was wracked with self-doubt. What had happened in the past few days was more than she had experienced in her entire fifteen years. At home, everyone she knew, including her father, had assumed that her decision to leave home was because of her cursed fox smell, no matter what she had said about wanting to see the world beyond her village. Pan-pan had overheard Xin-Ma talking to her father. “Like mother, like daughter,” she’d said. “If someday she wants to get the problem fixed, you can’t stop her as you tried to do with her mother. And what’s a better place than the nation’s capital? It has proper hospitals and real doctors.”

  Was that why her father hadn’t argued hard against her plan? Was he afraid if he tried he would only push her farther away and harden her decision—and cause another tragedy? Ah-Po must have harboured the same fear. After swallowing her original objections, she had been more than willing to dig out Sun Ming’s address. Or were they all, like Lao Zhang, waiting for her to discover on her own that the outside world was a crueller place than she could handle?

  The next morning, Pan-pan could feel the heat of the sun on her back as she headed toward the train station to collect her bag and bedroll. But as on the previous day, the sun soon got lost behind the haze. Around her the trees were coming into leaf and the pale yellow willow twigs dangled over the sidewalks as if to greet the morning pedestrians. The scene reminded Pan-pan of home, where the flowers had already been in bloom when she left.

  Pan-pan was glad to be alone again, glad to be out of Lao Ma and Lao Zhang’s house for a change, to be away from her lingering sense of awkwardness and embarrassment. The night before, when Pan-pan thought everyone had gone to bed, she had risen from her cot and crept out to the bathroom. Fearful that someone might hear her, she had closed the door before starting to wash Lao Zhang’s blouse. But a few moments later, Lao Zhang had appeared outside the door.

  “Don’t worry about it, Pan-pan,” she said quietly. “Leave that for tomorrow. We’ve bought a little washing machine. Go to sleep now.”

  Pan-pan stared down at her suds-covered hands. “I … I’m almost finished.”

  “All right,” Lao Zhang replied. “But listen, Pan-pan. Don’t ever let small things crush you. Lift up your head. No one is perfect in this world.” Then she went back into the house.

  Later, tossing and turning on the cot, going over and over Lao Zhang’s words, Pan-pan sighed. Of course she knew. She knew from the morning she washed my clothes. And so did the boys. Is that why they were so silent each time she appeared, why they excused themselves so quickly from the dinner table? Lao Zhang said they were shy in front of strangers. Pan-pan wasn’t so sure.

  Pan-pan found Lao Ma in a small office at the station, jammed with desks, benches, and chairs. Phones were ringing, fingers tapping on the outside windows; both were ignored. There had been a few train delays, Lao Ma explained to her, but the passengers were too impatient and too demanding. He asked one of his co-workers to take Pan-pan to get her luggage from the storage room before he picked up a ringing phone. “Go back home. I’ll see you tonight,” he called out, covering the mouthpiece.

  Pan-pan slung her bedroll over her shoulder, picked up her bag, and slowly lurched out of the station, making her way down the stairs. Lao Zhang had pressed a twenty-yuan note into Pan-pan’s pocket, her taxi fare back to the house. But at the corner of the busy square, Pan-pan stopped and put down her bag and bedroll. Despite Lao Zhang’s words of comfort and despite the fact that neither she nor Lao Ma had given any hint that they’d noticed her fox smell, Pan-pan was growing more anxious the more she thought about her problem. It was just a matter of time before their sons turned against her, a smelly stranger in their house. Besides, Pan-pan had no doubt that as soon as she walked through the door, Lao Zhang would start in on her again, urging her to return home.

  In spite of all that had happened, Pan-pan felt she couldn’t just slink back to the village of Western Clouds. For one thing, she would lose face; but more important, she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she threw away her dreams after one little bump in the road. Yes, she would carry on with her journey.

  But she had no money, except the twenty-yuan taxi fare. Pan-pan let out another anguished sigh as she looked across the bustling square, at the people, the cars and buses, the ringing bicycles—all rushing to and fro with a purpose, a place to go, a destination to reach.

  Chapter Eleven

  With her bedroll as a cushion, Pan-pan sat leaning against the bottom step of the staircase leading to the train station. She closed her eyes, lifted her face toward the sun, and enjoyed the solitude, free at last from the talking, thinking, and unending self-consciousness of the past three days. She had been showered with enough metaphors, wise expressions, and quotations to last a lifetime.

  A high-pitched voice, an accent she recognized, caused her eyes to pop open. Pan-pan sat up, searching for the source. No more than five metres from her stood a young woman wearing a heavy brown corduroy jacket, despite the humidity that had been looming over the city for the last couple of days. While the jacket hung loosely on her tiny frame, her pant legs ended inches above her plastic flip-flops. Pan-pan leaned forward for a better look. The young woman’s face needed a good scrub, as Ah-Po would have said. But the discoloured patches on her cheeks were not dirt spots, nor birthmarks, Pan-pan realized. They were bruises. Her greasy hair dangled in strands, brushing her shoulders. Her accent, similar to that heard in Guizhou Province, placed her as a native of Sichuan, the province just to the northwest of Pan-pan’s village.

  She’s about my age, probably a lonely traveller like me, Pan-pan said to herself. Yet the young woman had only a small bag with her, swinging weightlessly on her wrist. She was trying to stop a woman passerby.

  “Auntie, could you tell me where I can buy a train tick
et to Shanghai?”

  “Shanghai?” The elder woman grimaced as if she had just swallowed a live worm. Tucking her purse deeper into her armpit, she snarled, “Don’t come any closer! I know your type. One minute you’re asking for information, the next you’ll be gone with my money.”

  “You don’t have to insult me,” the young woman replied.

  “Take a look at yourself,” the woman kept on. “A ticket to Shanghai?” she chuckled. “You’re about as believable as those beggars over there. You’re young, and you have no missing arms or legs. Why can’t you work to earn a living instead of fibbing and stealing?”

  “Stealing?” the young woman shouted. “I’m not a thief, you old goat. And I’ve never cheated anyone in my life.” She turned around, facing the small crowd that had formed around the two of them. “I have my own money. I’ll show you if you don’t believe me,” she said, thrusting her hand into the cloth bag.

  “Don’t!” Pan-pan shouted as she jumped up and charged toward the gathering, thrusting one arm in front of her like a magic wand. “Don’t take it out!”

  OVER A GLASS OF TEA in a food stall behind the station, Pan-pan and Shui-lian sat and talked, ignoring the owner’s scornful looks after they had repeatedly refused to order more drinks. Hours slipped by as they chatted. Morning rolled into noon. Sipping their tea and sharing a sweet bun, they exchanged their experiences, concluding that they had both been derailed on their way to their destinations, and their goals remained as far apart as the two cities they had intended to reach: Beijing to the north and Shanghai to the south.