Spilled Water (3 page)

Chapter Eight

To Market

The bus stopped a little way before a narrow bridge.

‘This is as far as I go,’ the driver addressed my uncle.

Uncle nodded, took my arm, and led me along the gangway.

‘Spilled water, is she?’ asked the driver.

Uncle didn’t answer, just pulled me down the steps.

‘I thought so,’ said the driver. ‘A lot of them are who come here. Yours is younger than most, mind.’

Uncle tried to pull me out of earshot as the driver, warming to his subject, called after him, ‘It’s illegal, you know,’ followed
by a dismissive, ‘but nobody seems to do anything about it.’

Uncle hurried me across the bridge. I was petrified. I didn’t know what the driver had meant, but I knew instinctively that
it was bad.

‘Where are you taking me?’ I demanded, sensing that this was my last chance to gain control of what was happening to me. ‘I
won’t go. You can’t make me go.’

‘It’s for the sake of your mother and your brother,’ was all Uncle would say. ‘You wouldn’t want them to suffer, would you?’

‘Of course I wouldn’t, but tell me, why can’t you just tell me?’

Ahead of me, set back from the road against a backdrop of granite cliffs, at the end of a rough track, I saw a huge, wooden,
barn-like building. Parked outside were large numbers of vans, rickshaws, motorised carts and several taxis. Muffled shouts
came from inside the building.

Uncle turned up the track. I stopped where I was.

‘I’m not going any further until you tell me, Uncle.’

‘And what do you think you’re going to do otherwise, madam?’ he snapped. ‘Your mother can’t afford to keep you and your brother,
so you have to go. Your brother is more important. It is he who will continue your father’s name and, when he is old enough,
he will work to keep your mother and to pay back the ever-increasing debt she owes me. What little money you fetch here will
also go towards paying back your mother’s debts. Is that what you wanted to hear?’

Suddenly, he looked horrified by the sound of his own words. He closed his eyes, bit his lip, then tried to put a hand on
my shoulder. I shrank away from him, unable to take in what he meant.

‘There’s no end to it otherwise, don’t you see?’ He seemed almost to beg my understanding. ‘No end to it.’

Chapter Nine

Doing Our Best

It was so good to have Mother back. We became an inseparable team. We attacked life wholeheartedly, determined that together
we could cope with anything. Mother didn’t say it, but I knew that she was driven by a need to prove Uncle wrong, while the
memory of my father kept us going when our spirits flagged.

We would work from the moment day broke until the dense dark of night. No challenge was too overwhelming for us. We set to
work straightaway on Father’s terraces, making up for the weeks of neglect with the most painstaking weeding and watering.
We were rewarded when the rows of wilted pakchoi and cabbage revived and flourished in the warm sunshine.

We gave Li-hu the job of feeding the hens and ducks and collecting their eggs. He loved it, especially chasing them away from
where they were sitting in case there was an egg hidden underneath them. We giggled at his shrieks of laughter while we tidied
the house and prepared our lunch.

On washing days, while Mother went down to the river, I walked into the village with Li-hu, pushing him in his cart, to do
the shopping. Sometimes the shopkeepers would give us a piece of meat or fish, or an extra portion of noodles.

‘Take it,’ they would say. ‘We know how hard it is for you and you deserve a little help.’

Others would come up to us and tell us how much they missed my father and what a wonderful man he had been. It made me feel
happy to know how much my father was loved. I always told Mother what had been said. She would nod and smile and her eyes
would go all misty with pride and missing him.

Mother began to use Father’s rickshaw. We filled it once a week with all our freshly-picked vegetables and rode to the market
in the next town, not bumping, but singing loudly all the songs that Father used to sing. We left Li-hu back in the village
with friends, and these were the times I relished the most, just being with my mother and being a team and doing our best,
which was good enough.

What saddened me the most was that I could no longer go to school. We couldn’t afford it any more, and there was too much
else to do with helping my mother and looking after Li-hu. I didn’t resent it, but I missed my friends. Once, though, I bumped
into my teacher in the village. She gave me a book to read and said to take it back to her when I had finished it and she
would lend me another one. Whenever I had a spare moment, I read that book. As soon as I had finished it, I collected another
one. Reading became my escape. I loved losing myself in adventure stories, away from the harsh demands of the adult world
into which I had been plunged.

Uncle stopped by once a week. He looked more and more affluent, more and more aloof, as though we were rather inferior to
him, and as though calling to see us was an irksome duty he was obliged to carry out in spite of himself. I thought he was
like a spy, and I felt that he wanted us to fail, though I had no idea why. He would stride over Father’s terraces, prodding
the ground with a stick and bending down to inspect the undersides of our crops. He would poke around in the shed, counting
the root vegetables we had stored there. He would walk round the yard, lifting the straw to see how fresh it was. Then he
would go indoors and pass his hand over the table and chairs, checking for dirt.

Uncle still expected us to feed him when he visited, though he never brought anything to the meal. He seemed taken aback when
we served him meat, and had to admit, grudgingly, that we were managing.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘it’s early days yet. The weather has been kind. It won’t be so easy for you when the weather changes.’

Not once did Uncle offer us any sort of help, and I began to wish that he would just stay away. If he wasn’t a spy, I thought
to myself, he was like a vulture waiting to pick over the bones of some poor dead animal.

Chapter Ten

Sold

I was so numbed by what Uncle had said that I did as I was told and followed him like a sheep up the track and into the barn.
‘Your mother can’t afford to keep you You
have to go What little money you fetch
'

I don’t know what I expected to find there, but nothing prepared me for the shouting and laughter, the stench of stale sweat
and the clouds of cigarette smoke that assaulted me as we went through the doors. Uncle too looked taken aback, but he spoke
rapidly to a man standing by the entrance and handed him some money.

Then he turned to me and said, ‘We’re here to find you a job. Take this notice and come with me.’

He gripped me by the elbow and led me across the room, through the hordes of men who were milling around. As we went by, they
eyed me up and down with an improper interest which made me feel humiliated and uneasy.

Dozens of other young girls were standing on the other side of a rope, most of them at least three or four years older than
me, some of them clutching scribbled notices, some with boards by their feet. I recognised the girl who had been slapped in
the street. She was holding a notice which read: ‘I am Jin Yanhua. I am 13. I can cook and I am very obedient.’ She still
bore the red marks across her cheek from the slap, and her eyes were wild with anguish. A man was leaning across the rope,
lifting her hair, stroking her bare arm. She shook him off and the man who had slapped her said something to her angrily.

‘Go behind the rope, Lu Si-yan,’ Uncle said tersely, ‘and please try to look agreeable.’

An old man stepped towards me and touched my face. I pulled away in disgust and ducked under the rope, happier to be amongst
the other girls than with Uncle and the leering men who terrified me. I looked at the notice Uncle had given me. ‘My name
is Lu Si-yan,’ it read. ‘I am young but can wash, cook and sew. I will be a good servant.’

How could Uncle do this? How could he? Father had asked him to look after me, not to sell me, for I realised now that this
was what was happening. Did Mother know just what he was planning? Could she have done anything to stop it? If only Li-hu
hadn’t been born, we would have managed, Mother and I. We would have done our best and managed. It was Li-hu’s fault. As I
stood there in my shame and humiliation, a tiny drop of spilled water, I hated my brother.

One after another, men called me forward to take a closer look at me, to inspect me, like some sort of item in a shop. Some
of them pointed at me and laughed. Others talked to Uncle in hushed voices, but once I heard him say ‘She is a very obedient
girl’ and another time I heard ‘You won’t find anyone better’.

A middle-aged man, short and fat, with dirty fingernails and missing teeth, kept coming back to examine me. I was petrified
that he was going to choose me, until Uncle sent him away, saying that he couldn’t afford me.

Another middle-aged man became very agitated with Uncle. He pulled a wad of money from his pocket and waved it in front of
Uncle’s face, but Uncle shook his head dismissively and pushed the man’s hand away. The man shoved Uncle in the chest, then
spat on the ground and sputtered, ‘Pah! Your puny little frog is not worth the money you ask. Take her back to your pond then,
where she’ll spawn a million more, all useless like herself.’

He marched off through the crowd. Uncle gazed at me awkwardly, then shrugged his shoulders and waited for the next approach.

By now I was faint with hunger. The smoke and noise and smells fanned a growing sense of unreality which took me far, far
away from the room and off into a sunlit world, where Father was on the river in his boat and I was skipping along the shore
waving to him. Suddenly, he caught an enormous fish. He hauled it into the boat, then held it up for me to see. ‘We’ll eat
well tonight,’ he said but, just as he said it, a dense mist came down and swirled around him. I cried out to him and I heard
him calling my name, over and over again, but the mist simply swallowed him up as he stood there proudly holding his fish.

When the mist cleared, Uncle was shaking me by the shoulder, across the rope, and telling me to pick up my notice.

‘Pull yourself together, child,’ he hissed. ‘No one will want you if you look ill.’

What if nobody did want me? I wondered. Would that mean I could go home? Would that mean the nightmare would be over? A flicker
of hope dared to ignite within me, only to be extinguished instantly when a sombre, thin-faced man approached my uncle. He
was well dressed in a smart suit, and seemed out of place among the noisy hordes. He was obviously impatient to conduct his
business and leave. He stared hard at me, then asked Uncle several questions. I strained to hear what was said, but the man’s
voice was too low-pitched. Uncle was eager, though, I could see that.

While they continued to talk, I studied the man. He was taller than Uncle – thin, with pockmarked skin and big hands. What
I noticed most was that his eyes were cold – empty and cold. They allowed not a hint of expression as he talked to Uncle,
which made me shiver nervously. I had long been the target of Uncle’s hostility and hard-heartedness and expected nothing
different from him, but there was passion and anger in him as well. This man seemed to show no emotion of any sort.

The man reached into his pockets and took out what looked like a photograph. Uncle studied it, then nodded approvingly, glancing
sideways in my direction as he did so. The man pulled out his wallet and held out a roll of money. Uncle hesitated, before
taking it quickly and putting it inside his coat. He shook hands with the man, then lifted up the rope and brought me over
to his side.

‘Lu Si-yan, this is Mr Chen. You will go with him. He is in charge of you now. Make sure you bring honour to your family by
your good manners and behaviour.’

‘I don’t want to go, Uncle. Please don’t make me go.’

I begged with him, pleaded with him. I thought for a moment that he might change his mind when his face seemed to soften and
he gazed at me briefly with concern. But he dismissed me quickly with a pat on the shoulder, and marched away without looking
back. My new owner signalled for me to go with him. I lowered my head, not to show obedience, but to hide my tears.

What was to become of me? I was eleven years old, far from my home, far from my family, in the hands of a stranger, and nobody
cared. As I followed Mr Chen from the building, I was certain of only one thing: that no matter what happened, one day, one
day soon, I would see my mother again.

A taxi was waiting outside. Mr Chen opened a door and sat next to me in the back. We drove for a few miles in silence, darkness
descending all around us, then I fell asleep. I woke when the car stopped and he told me to get out. We turned into a building
and waited for the lift. The lift doors opened, I walked uncertainly into the dimly lit cage and, as my stomach rebelled against
the upward motion, Mr Chen said, ‘You will work for my wife, Lu Si-yan. One day, when you are old enough, you will marry my
son. Is that understood?’