Mountain Girl River Girl (18 page)

Chapter
Twenty-Four

Link Plaza was a huge shopping mall that took up the corner of a block. Shui-lian and Pan-pan approached a bank of glass doors, the one in the centre revolving mindlessly. Behind it a hall stretched as wide as a street, flanked with glittering windows filled with outlandish clothing; shoes and sandals with spike heels; exquisitely shaped bottles of coloured liquid; soaps, and shampoos, and hair oils; beds jammed with pillows and cushions of all forms and sizes; shiny pots and pans and many other cooking utensils and machines. The place smelled like flowers and candies. No wonder it was called Link Plaza, Pan-pan said to herself: store after store, just like links on a chain. The second floor held an expansive food court, the source of the exotic aromas that hovered overhead. The mall was cool and spacious compared with the hot and crowded streets outside. Pan-pan and Shui-lian walked slowly, savouring the pleasant change of atmosphere, sliding and skidding playfully on the floor’s smooth surface and passing shop after shop.

Shui-lian halted suddenly, her eyes drawn to the display window of a clothing store before her. It wasn’t the sheer, colourful summer dresses that attracted her attention. She found herself looking at a young woman wearing worn pants and a soiled shirt, with one sleeve rolled up above the elbow and the other inside a dirty sling hung across her chest. The woman gazed back at her through familiar eyes. Her eyes, but sadder and less determined than she was used to. How out of place I look, Shui-lian thought. Surrounded by stylish, costly garments and glittering lights, I’m more like an alien from another planet. Moving closer, Shui-lian tilted her head to the left, then to the right, studying the reflection, willing it to be someone else.

Turning to leave, she spotted herself in the side window of the same store and in the shop window across the aisle. As she quickened her steps to catch up with Pan-pan, the same image followed her along the shiny marble walls.

“Pan-pan, look. It’s you over there, and down here,” she called out excitedly, pointing at the marble floor.

“I’ve noticed it,” Pan-pan said cheerfully. “It’s kind of weird, seeing ourselves everywhere we turn, like we were movie stars. Talking about stars,” she went on, pointing to a clothing store called
Xiao-ge-zi—
Petite—across the hall, “see the red dress in the window? What a beautiful colour! It reminds me of wild fire. You know what, Shui-lian, I bet it would look ten times better on you than on that pale, yellow-haired mannequin. Let’s go and take a closer look.”

“What for? I could never afford it.” The colour reminded Shui-lian of the sweater her mother had knitted for her.

“Who said we have to buy it? It’ll cost us nothing to look at it. It’s called window-shopping. Besides,” Pan-pan giggled, “how can they tell? There are no words on our faces saying that we have no money. Come on, we’re in a mall, not the Niavia compound. We’re free to go in and walk around.”

Inside the store, every light was on, as if in competition with the midday sun pouring through the side windows. Half the floor was taken up by rows of racks packed with shirts, pants, dresses, and skirts. Wooden shelves lined the walls, each stacked from top to bottom with folded garments. Shoppers browsed, flipping through hanger after hanger before moving to the next rack. In one corner, a stylish young woman stood in front of a full-length mirror holding a floral dress against herself, tilting her head from side to side.

Pan-pan spotted the red dresses like the one she had seen in the window on a rack at the back. Eyes bright and faces gleaming, the girls made a full circle around it, marvelling at the soft material.

“It even has a lining,” Shui-lian whispered to Pan-pan, lifting the bottom hem with the fingertips of her good hand. “The same shade of red, see—”

“What do you think you’re doing?” A stern voice rose sharply. Shui-lian quickly withdrew her hand. Pan-pan turned her head to find a clerk glowering at them.

“If you’ve caused any damage you’ll have to buy it,” the woman asserted, stepping forward and pushing Shui-lian out of her way.

“How can we cause any damage by merely touching it?” Pan-pan argued. “Like everyone else is doing?”

“You’re not everyone else. Your hands are dirty,” the clerk shot back. “Take a look at your hands and fingernails—the two of you. They’re black and filthy. With hands like those, you’re not allowed to touch anything here. What have you been doing, anyway? Digging ditches with your bare hands? This store isn’t for people like you.”

“Let’s go, Pan-pan,” Shui-lian urged, pulling Pan-pan’s shirt and refusing to make eye contact with the clerk. “We don’t belong here.”

“That’s right,” the woman snarled. “And find a place to clean your hands.”

“Not until we use them to dig a grave for you,” Pan-pan said calmly.

“Sh! Pan-pan! You’ll get us into trouble,” Shui-lian hissed, pulling Pan-pan out of the store. “I’m the one who should have told her that.”

“Who says?” Pan-pan replied, laughing.

“Look, Pan-pan, I don’t want to stay here any longer. Let’s go back.”

“Back where?” Pan-pan said with alarm, stopping in the middle of the mall. “You’re not giving up already, are you? What am I going to do without you?”

“What are you talking about?” Shui-lian cut her off. “I meant go back to Lao Feng’s place.”

Pan-pan broke into a smile. “You scared me. I thought you meant go back to Sichuan. All right, let’s go. We can build the wall some more.”

“Yes,” Shui-lian said, taking one last look at herself in a shop window before she led Pan-pan back the way they had come and strode out onto the street.

O
VER THE NEXT TWO DAYS,
as the wall grew longer, word spread through the neighbourhood. Many people came to take a look at what the two young women were doing. Most of them stood around, chatting and pointing at Shui-lian and Pan-pan and commenting on their handiwork. Some marvelled at their patience and skill, and told them so; others laughed, shaking their heads as they wandered off. The entire demolition crew even walked over to see the wall during their break. Some shrugged their shoulders; some looked at one another bewildered before returning to their work. Even Lao Feng’s mother seemed to sense something was going on outside her house. She beamed each time she saw Pan-pan and Shui-lian.

As she worked on the wall, Shui-lian withdrew into her thoughts. Her brief, humbling experience at Link Plaza proved that she didn’t belong in Beijing, with its traffic and noise; its soaring, gleaming buildings; and its people who, like the clerk in the clothing store, seemed so knowing and worldly. How could she, a river girl, ever fit in? What kind of future could she look forward to, dressed in rags, with a grimy face and blackened hands? The girl I saw reflected in the storefront glass, she told herself, could never be a part of modern city life.

And Shanghai, people said, was even more fast-paced and sophisticated. How had she ever imagined there would be a place for her? She should be back on the boat with her family. No one could say she hadn’t tried. Not even her mother. Maybe she’ll change her mind and not force me to marry the old boatman, she thought. But what was she going to say to Pan-pan, the friend who had been so loyal to her?

Shui-lian sat down on a broken wall foundation, watching Pan-pan carefully stack the bricks the way her father had taught her. Sliding her arm from the sling, Shui-lian pulled the dusty cloth over her head and, using her unbandaged hand, worked the knot free. She smoothed the cloth on her knees, then folded it and stuffed it in her pocket. I’ll tell Pan-pan tonight, she decided.

“P
AN-PAN, THERE’S SOMETHING
I need to talk to you about,” Shui-lian said. It was late afternoon on their third day camped in Lao Feng’s yard, and they were about to quit for the day. The wall was getting closer to the busy street, but neither Shui-lian nor Pan-pan had mentioned one word about what they would do when there were no bricks left.

Pan-pan rose, her back to the lowering sun. Shui-lian walked over and stood next to Pan-pan, screwing up her courage to tell her friend her decision. But Pan-pan spoke first.

“It really does look like the Great Wall, doesn’t it?” she said. “The way it twists and turns.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen the Great Wall.”

“I haven’t either, but my mother showed me pictures. Maybe someday we’ll have a chance to see it with our own eyes, since it’s not far from here. Anyway, what is it you want to talk about?”

“Well,” Shui-lian began, “I—”

“Hey! Hello! You girls, hello!”

Pan-pan and Shui-lian turned in the direction of the voice and saw a middle-aged woman heading toward them from the street.

“Were you calling us, Auntie?” Pan-pan asked.

“Yes, I was,” the woman replied pleasantly. “Where are you two from?”

“Who wants to know?” Shui-lian asked, annoyed by the interruption. Probably another nosy, useless stranger who was about to offer her comments on their wall. Straightening up, she eyed the woman suspiciously. The woman wore a silk blouse and light-coloured pants. She reminded Shui-lian of Comrade Guo, the government auntie from the women’s federation. She even sounded like her.

Ignoring Shui-lian’s rudeness, the woman spoke again. “Okay, if you don’t want to tell me that, how about giving me your names?”

“I’m from Guizhou, Auntie,” Pan-pan answered, rubbing her palms together to clean off the brick dust. “Tell her, Shui-lian.”

“Sichuan.”

“Did you travel all the way to Beijing by yourselves?” the woman asked, sounding almost delighted. Without waiting for an answer, she turned to Pan-pan. “Where in Guizhou?”

“Yunxi Village. Why?”

“What’s your name?”

“Bai Pan-pan.”

The gleam that Shui-lian had seen a moment ago faded from the woman’s face as she murmured, “I knew a village of the same name once, and a boy named Bai Dao-feng. But it’s a popular surname in the region, and I may have remembered wrong. It was a long time ago.”

Upon hearing her father’s name, Pan-pan’s heart leapt. Could this woman be—

“I’m Chen Shui-lian,” said her friend. “I lived on the rivers of Sichuan. Now it’s your turn. What’s your name?”

The woman hesitated. “I know no one in Sichuan and have never been there. My name is Sun Ming, and I came here because I heard you two were looking for me. Obviously …”

“Sun Ming …” Pan-pan slapped her hand over her mouth as if to prevent her heart from leaping out, then quickly removed it. Her eyes blinked rapidly. “Are you the girl from Beijing who came to live with my Ah-Po many years ago? Of course, you don’t know me. I wasn’t born yet. The boy you mentioned is my father, and you knew my mother as well. She was the little girl who, according to Ah-Po, followed you everywhere.”

“Lin-fei is your mom? How could I forget her? Her parents were beaten to death by the Red Guards in the early days of the Cultural Revolution. Ah-Po was so brave to take her in.”

“She is my late mother,” Pan-pan murmured.

Sun Ming frowned. “Did you say ‘late’?”

“Yes. Mom died three years ago.”

Shui-lian’s eyes darted back and forth between Pan-pan and Sun Ming, trying to make the link between the red-cheeked girl she’d heard about and this drawn and tired-looking older woman. It was hard to imagine that this was the same person who, according to Pan-pan, had been swept away from the village in a Jeep thirty years ago, laughing and calling out, “Come and see me when you’re in Beijing!”

Shui-lian excused herself and headed toward the tent. She returned with Pan-pan’s canvas bag and handed it to her.

“Do you remember this?” Pan-pan asked, unfolding the bag to reveal the wrinkled red star.

“Oh, my goodness, you still have it. My father gave that to me when I was sent down to the countryside. I had forgotten it until now. Your Ah-Po has kept it all these years?”

S
UN MING WANTED
to take the girls for a meal so that they could talk some more.

“We can’t,” they both said at the same time.

“Thanks, but we have to look after Da-Ma,” Shui-lian added.

So the three of them sat on a broken beam in the courtyard, watching the clouds gather and the sky grow dark. Sun Ming wiped away a tear after Pan-pan’s brief account of her mother’s death. She clucked angrily as Shui-lian told her about her injuries and the treatment she, Pan-pan, and the other workers suffered at Niavia, and about Ah-Wu and the Demons.

“I’m sorry to hear it, girls. I don’t know what else to say,” she murmured, sadly shaking her head. “I’ve heard that the same sort of thing goes on here in Beijing. I’m glad my poor father isn’t around to hear this. He was a soldier and laid down his life for the Communist Party’s victory and a new China where people were free from that kind of exploitation. Now it seems our society is going backwards. It makes me so furious to think that working conditions like you’ve described exist in our country.”

She took Shui-lian’s hand in hers and looked at the soiled bandages before continuing. “I overheard someone in my restaurant talking about you two, and about the wall you’ve been building. It made me curious. Then one night a man walked in. I don’t know him. He started asking my customers if anyone knew a woman named Sun Ming who used to live in his neighbourhood. He said it was a long shot. But my grandfather used to say that if there were no coincidences, there’d be no books, no stories, or plays. And he was right. You see, if I didn’t own the restaurant, or if I hadn’t overheard the man, I wouldn’t have known that you were looking for me.”