Spilled Water Read online

  When Father played the same games with Li-hu as he had played with me, sometimes I minded a bit, sometimes I felt jealous, but most of the time I watched and laughed and urged him on. If Father wasn’t there, I played the same games and took his role, grown-up as anything. Father and I still had our own special moments, especially after Li-hu had gone to bed, doing things that my little brother was too young to join in with or understand. Father said I was his big girl now, which made me feel very important.

  I started to go to the village school. Father wanted me to learn to read and write, and one day to go to university.

  ‘You shall have every advantage that we didn’t have,’ he declared. ‘Anyone who still thinks that women have no need for education is living in the dark ages. Go and learn and make me proud.’

  I worked hard at my lessons, for I wanted to make Father proud. I came home each evening and we sat down and he would ask me what I had learnt that day. It was only as I began to be able to read and write, and Father questioned me in detail about particular words, studying their shape and the way different strokes were added, that I realised he could barely read and write himself. Then he became my pupil and I loved teaching him.

  Uncle called him an old fool for even thinking that he could learn at his age, especially from me.

  ‘It’s a waste of what precious little money you have, sending this girl-child to school,’ he tutted, ‘and it’s a bigger waste of your precious time to sit with her believing she can teach you anything but nonsense.’

  ‘The journey of a thousand miles starts from beneath your feet,’ Father quoted, and, though I struggled to understand what he meant, I could see from the brightness of his eyes that our lessons touched his soul.

  ‘Your father is like a young child with a new toy,’ Mother smiled.

  ‘This young child will never grow tired of his new toy,’ Father laughed back.

  He was right. He didn’t grow tired of it. He didn’t have the chance to. Father died, and the sun went out of our lives.

  Chapter Six

  To Market

  ‘Questions, always questions,’ muttered Uncle Ba.

  Before I could pursue my question, and I was determined he should answer me, a boy pulled out on his bicycle right in front of the bus. The bus driver stamped hard on his brakes, throwing us out of our seats. The bus screeched and shuddered to a halt inches from the cyclist. Then the driver opened his window and let out a torrent of abuse, accompanied by a pantomime of rude gestures, as the boy recovered his bicycle and disappeared down a dusty track. Uncle shouted something about ‘stupid simpletons’. For the next few minutes he and the driver engaged in a loud exchange about the stupidity of peasant farmers and their offspring.

  From my window I saw that we were leaving behind a barren stretch of rocky countryside to enter a colourless old town. Steep and winding alleyways spidered off from the road above and below us, crammed all along with dilapidated wooden shacks. These gave way to grey apartment blocks, their balconies hung with washing, dried meats and plaits of garlic, and so close together that their occupants could shake hands across the passages in between. The road was now lined with shopfronts, their goods spilling out on to the pavements, where chickens pecked at anything they could find and dogs ran wild. A little boy waved at me as we went by, and I wanted so much to be back with Li-hu and Mother.

  I was about to ask Uncle again when we would be going home, when I suddenly noticed that a number of young girls were walking all in the same direction, up the road. Several of them were on their own, but others were holding hands with men whom I assumed to be their fathers. They all looked thoroughly miserable. Where were they going? I wondered. Why were they so unhappy?

  The bus drew level with a girl of about thirteen. She was two or three paces behind a man and was looking nervously around her. Just at that moment, she threw her bag to the ground, turned and ran off down the road. I stood up to watch as the man she was with tore after her. He caught up with her and slapped her hard round the face, before dragging her back up the road. I was so shocked that I slumped back into my seat and burst into tears.

  ‘I want to go home,’ I spluttered. ‘Please let me go home.’

  ‘It’s too late, I’m afraid,’ replied Uncle quietly. ‘We’re here now.’

  Chapter Seven

  All You Have is

  What You Grow

  I was nine when my father died. It was very sudden. One day he was there, the next day he wasn’t. Mother didn’t tell me very much. She couldn’t. She hugged me and she hugged Li-hu and we hugged each other and cried together, hour after hour, but she couldn’t speak. I don’t think she could bring herself to say the words that bore the truth of what had happened – words that meant that Father was never coming back.

  Uncle Ba said that my father had been hit by a taxi which had swerved to miss a child. He had died almost instantly and wouldn’t have felt much pain. He had begged the people who tended him to ask Uncle to look after us. He had left us his undying love.

  For days afterwards, our friends from the village visited us to offer their sympathy and support. They made tea, brought us meals, washed our clothes and worked on the farm. Mother seemed to perk up while they were around, but, after a week, Uncle asked them to stay away, saying that we had to learn to fend for ourselves and that the time for mourning was over. He told my mother that she must be strong for her children. He told me that until my brother was old enough I must take on my father’s role. We weren’t ready, though. Our grief was too crippling.

  Everything reminded me of Father. His old rickshaw sat rusting in the yard. No more bump, bump, bump, but Mother couldn’t bear to part with it. His jacket hung by the door as though waiting for him to struggle into it, just as he had every morning after breakfast. Our mahjong set sat on a shelf gathering dust. Li-hu kept asking when Father was coming home. He was too young to understand.

  I tried. I tried so hard. I took Li-hu with me to help feed the ducks and hens, and turned collecting their eggs into a game. I carried slops out to the pig and spread clean straw across the yard. I loaded Li-hu’s wooden cart with some of the turnips Father had stored in his shed and pushed it to the village, Li-hu riding on top. I exchanged the turnips for rice or tea or noodles. Back home again, I prepared our meals and tried to make Mother eat. She sat in a chair, gazing out of the window down towards the river, scarcely saying a word. Li-hu clambered on and off her lap over and over again. She would stroke his hair, he would suck his thumb, but she wasn’t able to give him the comfort he needed, so he would pull himself abruptly away and demand my lap instead. We would snuggle up together and he would ask me when Mother would stop being sad. For a while I felt that I had lost not only my father but my mother too, and I felt the chill of suddenly being all alone.

  Uncle kept away during those early days. I was glad because I didn’t want to hear him say anything bad about my mother.

  He arrived one evening, unannounced, and claimed that business matters had taken up his time, and that in any case we couldn’t expect to rely upon him.

  He walked all over Father’s terraces, then sat down to eat with us.

  ‘How are you going to survive?’ he asked bluntly at last, cutting through the silence that had even claimed my brother with its awkwardness.

  Mother shifted uncomfortably on her chair, her meal untouched before her.

  ‘All you have is what you grow,’ Uncle continued, ‘and yet already you are neglecting your lifeline, the lifeline my brother left you. How can you dishonour his memory in this way?’

  I watched the despair spread across my mother’s face.

  ‘And look at you, sister,’ he said more gently, but his words were harsher. ‘Look at your shrunken body. Look at your dirty clothes. Look at your filthy house. Look at your ragamuffin children. When are you going to come to your senses?’

  I couldn’t bear it any longer. ‘Leave us alone!’ I shouted. ‘We’re doing our best. Can’t you see we’re
doing our best?’

  ‘Then your best isn’t good enough, madam,’ retorted Uncle. He stood up from the table and walked out of the house.

  When he had gone, Li-hu crawled on to my lap, thumb in mouth. I sat for some time, my thoughts too wretched to air. Then Mother rose, as though from a dream, put her arm round my shoulder and kissed me gently on the forehead.

  ‘Why does Uncle Ba have to be so cruel?’ I asked.

  ‘Your uncle is hurting, Si-yan,’ my mother replied.

  ‘For all his harsh words, he loved your father and misses him terribly. They went through so much together when they were young.’

  I was astonished at what she said. If Uncle loved my father, he had a curious way of showing it.

  ‘And perhaps your uncle is being cruel to be kind,’ she added. ‘He is right. I must pull myself together, for all our sakes.’

  I threw my arms round her waist, happy that at last my mother had come back to me.

  ‘Thank you, Si-yan, thank you for keeping things going,’ she said then. ‘We’ll do this together from now on, you and me and little Li-hu. No more tears. We’ll make your father proud of us.’

  She picked up Li-hu, kissed his fat cheeks and squeezed him tight. Li-hu hugged her back, making up for the days when she had neglected him. He refused to let go until I put on Father’s jacket and gave him a pocket ride round and round the yard.

  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 en
trance 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.