|
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|||||
|
Wah-Ming Chang The Tenth Girl |
|||||
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|
||||
|
In October 1998 my landlord
found me a job at his son’s advertising agency, and with my experience in
bicycles I gained the immediate title of Troop Leader. I was part of a new
campaign and should bring along, I was instructed, my own bicycle. Since I no
longer had one, my landlord lent me his gray ’84 Mountaineer whose rusty
kickstand loudly clicked when twisted up or down. In general, though, the
bike was in very good condition. I tested it in my apartment, which meant
about just a yard of space to slide forward and to slide back, and on the
morning of the first day, while testing it out again, I felt myself finally
relax into its contours. Pleased, I left my apartment and sped toward the
office. At the driveway just off We huddled around her extended
arm, and shivered from the cold seeping in through the walls. The map was
old, the inset key faded. The neighborhoods, mere pale yellow squares, were
small and indistinguishable. The itinerary was a straightforward loop. “Excuse me,” said a voice. “Do
we get umbrellas? The forecast calls for heavy rain today.” Madame Ji checked her watch and
said, “It’ll let up by I nodded. “You’re the Troop Leader,
remember. Keep a good pace, take a break every thirty minutes or so, and
there shouldn’t be any trouble. These are good men,” Madame Ji said, patting my
back, and as she turned away the mist absorbed her expression. Fei, directly behind me, clapped
his hands at the group. “Everybody ready?” he said, and we stepped out toward
The first hour went by
quickly—nobody stopped us, and traffic was not a problem. I pedaled fast to
take advantage of this space, but the men yelled for me to slow down. Fei was
panting and muttering curses. I guided us carefully across the train tracks,
then sped up again but not so much that I’d get more complaints. The men were
at least fifty years old, and from their grimy fingers and faces I knew they
used to be factory workers, accustomed to hard manual labor but not to the
long, simple rhythm of a bicycle. Once on We continued steadily down The light changed, and as we
started up again a truck sidled along beside us and the driver threw a bottle
out his window. I swerved in time so that it hit the pavement, and then I
heard Fei swerve and soon the rest of the men, too, and again we fell apart.
I kept my balance easily, but the men tripped over their bikes. “You all
right?” I asked them. Fei, his face red, answered that maybe now we should
have lunch. “Here?” I exclaimed, and then shut my mouth, for the others had
taken up Fei’s impatient expression. Old Pinky suggested a park in the next
town, just five minutes away. “Good idea,” said Fei, and he indicated with
his hand for me to move on, which I did quickly, merging us onto Fei was motioning me over to
him. He stood with an old woman who introduced herself as Duchess Ding. She
owned a house down the block, she said, and liked television and knitting.
She had ten grandchildren, she said, all of them college-educated with a
future in business management. She slept each night at nine-thirty and woke
each morning at six. She spat on me while she talked, and I didn’t think it
was by accident. I said good-bye and rode away, and I heard one of the men
explain to her, clumsily, the idea behind our advertisement. She clapped in
delighted fury and ran after me. “Where’s my goddamn color wheel?” she cried.
The men hastened to calm her, but instead of following me down the block she
turned off to a driveway. Her white hair had come undone from its bun and her
ugly housedress billowed frantically around her shapeless legs, and then she
disappeared behind a hedge. When I saw Fei speeding toward me, taking the
corner in a wobbling skid, I braced myself against my bike wondering at the
agitation standing out on his forehead—but was not prepared for the way he
halted directly in front of me and into my space, and though he was just an
inch or so taller, he seemed massive. “We had our first customer in three
hours,” he said in a pant, “and you refused to give her any samples?” “But she was obviously crazy!” I
said. “Obviously,” said Fei, “but
still deserving a color wheel. Don’t you understand your job?” He looked back
toward the other end of the block, where the men stood squinting at us and
kicking the dirt. Bean had stooped down to check the spokes in his wheels,
and Old Pinky was taking another pee break. A few cars idled past, curious
about our untidy group. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “What?” Fei said. “I apologize. I suppose I made a
mistake.” Fei straightened his bike with a
deep sigh. “All right,” he said, then beckoned to the others and they all
lined up. We maneuvered through Then I saw what Fei was shouting
about: a body lay sprawled ahead of me. I hit it and flew off my bike,
landing hard on my side. When I blinked Bean was crouched
over me, his long face full of pity. The rest of the men, checking on me with
a glance or two, hovered over the body in a collective murmur. With Bean’s
help I got to my feet. His hand on my arm meant I should keep still, but I
went to join the others. It was a woman—eighteen or
nineteen. Little hourglass-shaped bugs curled themselves within a pale eye
socket. She wore two long braids and a school jersey, her lip was split, her
eyebrow gashed, and I searched her neck where a string of plastic beads had
slipped out from beneath the collar but not a drop of blood or even a cut.
Her tight uniform outlined small breasts and a caved-in waist, and grass and
leaves had laced themselves into her hair. A thin tire mark slashed the crook
of her bent arm where I had hit her. I stood and the men stepped back nervously.
All around us was the block of gnarled woods, seemingly without end. We had
come upon a small clearing for campers, and some feet off was a trickle of a
creek. I thought suddenly of Lu Jin. Her case, as the other women’s, had not
been widely publicized. In the few articles I’d hungrily read, no suspects
had ever come up, and the new police commissioner and prosecutor did not want
negative attention so early in their careers. In the past the mayor would
have simply pointed to a random face in a random photo, and his troops
marched to this person’s house for an immediate arrest. The new mayor did not
work this way. He had trouble dictating any specific action, and chose to
remain close-mouthed rather than admit such hesitation to the press. However,
in Lu Jin’s case, as Madame Ji had explained to me, the mayor was forced to
hold a private meeting with several reporters. But still he’d dodged
questions. “Rubbish!” he sniveled to the reporters, who found this outburst
and similar ones following not only mystifying but rather disconcerting, and
in the end, after he finally explained that his police force would handle the
matter, the reporters, rookies really, decided to look into the story no
further. Besides, there had been the
threat of war to write about, and its courageous soldiers to profile. Also,
an outbreak of a new fatal virus. A little foreign baby stuck in a well. Fei, alert to my rigid posture,
took the backpack from me. He pulled out a short roll of wallpaper and laid
the entire sheet over the girl’s body. Where there had been a human being was
now a mass of lumpy wallpaper with yellow and red stripes: the elbows
pointing in opposite directions became thick sticks, her big and quiet head
was a grinning pumpkin; she seemed bloated, parts of her carted off in
indiscriminate chunks; and the men drew back further. Dimly I heard Old
Pinky’s voice behind me—he was mumbling a prayer—and I forced myself to stare
at the only part of her that remained exposed: her black buckled shoes which
touched at the heels and parted wide at the toes. Fei dialed the operator on the
cellular phone. He recited his identification number and was put on hold. The
sky suddenly turned purple with clouds. We scrambled toward a small shelter,
an old bus stop with a roof overhang, and left the bikes piled outside
because there wasn’t enough room inside. My landlord would be upset about his
bike getting rusted over. Already there were scratches everywhere, small but
noticeable, and the metal tire rims had dented. At last Fei said into the
phone, “Please—this is an emergency,” and a minute later when the rain
finally came down, hitting the perimeter of concrete we stood on, he hung up
and announced that the police would arrive shortly. It was “No,” said Bean. “This is a
crime scene. The police should be the first to touch her.” For a while nobody responded,
and I strained for the echo of Bean’s voice. I had not expected it to be so
smooth, so cadenced. Old Pinky, playing with plastic molding, said, “Weren’t
there a few others got killed around here?” “One in March and seven last summer,” said Bean. “All a single person did them?”
Old Pinky exclaimed. “That’s what they say.” “And same person did this one?” “Probably.” “Think they’ll find him?” Bean shrugged. He took the
molding from Old Pinky and held it between his knees like a musical
instrument. When I peeked in his direction, in the guise of surveying the
group, I noticed several things at once: the one with a bandage over his
nose, Ou-lan, was fiddling with his pockets; Panai, who seemed at once sleepy
and alert, was whittling a piece of wood with his pocketknife; some dozed
stiffly against the wall, while others partnered up to play Scissors, Rock,
Paper; everybody’s hair beneath their caps was black, blue from here, their
white uniforms smudged brown with their own fingerprints, and they all bore
clear dark eyes, cartoonlike in the shadows; and still I was waiting, hoping
for Bean to speak again—but instead he gripped the molding now like a samurai
sword, sweating and concentrating with gritted teeth and working nostrils. I
leaned closer to Fei, who was sipping from his canteen and staring out. There
were old houses somewhere beyond the dense fence of trees, with old families
living out the rest of their existence. Watery music mingled with the strum
of rain. When the police arrived, the sky
had lightened to great fluttering clouds against a painfully blue backdrop
and the rain stopped. The sun almost came through. I stood behind Fei while
he talked to an officer, pointing here and there, and the officer peered at
our clothing with suspicion. Fei, looking at me once as though to cue me into
the conversation, explained that we were a mobile campaign ad for Free
Design, Inc., then pointed to Old Pinky, who had shouldered on the backpack,
and offered to show the officer a floor plan or two. “Maybe later,” the
officer said, and finally turned to me. “I’m Lieutenant Jeng—How’d you get
that?” he asked, pointing to the cut on my shoulder where my shirt had torn open. “I fell,” I said. “Let’s clean that up,” he said,
and snapped shut his notebook. He took my arm and guided me to the squad car,
where another officer writing up notes put down his pen and frowned at my
shoulder. “How’d she get that?” he asked. “She fell,” said Lieutenant
Jeng. They had me sit me on a rock and
the second officer dabbed at my skin with a Q-tip and then applied a bandage.
The lieutenant asked, “How well do you know these men?” His voice was low,
different from the way he’d spoken to Fei. “I only met them today,” I
answered. “It’s our first day on the job together.” “Have you noticed odd behavior
from any of them?” “Odd, sir?” “Odd,” he said and refused to
elaborate. “No, sir,” I said. He glanced back at the group.
Some men waited to be interviewed, others talked to
a third officer. A fourth was unraveling yellow tape, creating a square
blocking us from the body. Without my noticing, the strip of wallpaper had
been replaced with a long white cloth melting damply into the girl’s open
mouth—and from where I sat, the sheet seemed to undulate. Lieutenant Jeng asked, “Are you
in school?” “No,” I said. “Shouldn’t you be?” “I graduated a year early, sir.” The other officer patted my knee
approvingly. “Good for you,” he said. “Yin,” said Lieutenant Jeng. Yin removed his hand and started
putting away the bandages. But he watched me, and watched me—even while the
lieutenant dismissed me and phoned in to his superior, even after I followed
the worn path back toward the bus shelter where Fei and the rest were
waiting, even after we biked off the road heading toward Madame Ji, past the
tracks, skimming Bottlecap Junction before reaching the highway again as a
fast, rolling line. Only when we’d been riding for five minutes did I feel
the weight of Yin’s stare lift. I found myself examining the road, though I
couldn’t say exactly what I was looking out for—the leaves had cleared, the
pavement was unaccountably smooth. Several curious people actually waved us
down, but I had no energy to attend to them and soon we were gliding down a
hill. The wind swept through me. I almost closed my eyes. When I was little I
rode down hills with my head tilted up and my hands on my knees. At ages ten
and twelve I won small awards in a few local races. My legs were strong, and
I biked everywhere I could—I grew my hair long so that when I was coasting,
like now, I could feel it stream behind me like a hot cloud. Then the year I
turned fifteen, my father lost his job and sold most of our belongings,
including my bicycle. Afterward I borrowed friends’ bikes, but it was never
the same. And then finally there was no more money coming in. To compensate I
ran away from home. At the bottom of the hill beyond
the old cemetery, we had settled back on the highway when Fei yelled for me
to stop again. I turned around and watched the other men pedaling toward a
ramp, the exit for the next town. Bean led the way, though he did not seem to
be aware of them: he pushed off his bike and now staggered on bare feet, a
slender figure on the grass. He was returning to the woods. We braked
beneath a yield sign. “He’s gone,” Fei said, panicky. That part of the woods was
private property, with several conspicuous signs posted before the first row
of trees. A brief jail term could result from trespassing. The men stood by
the highway ramp, some watching the traffic, some peering in Bean’s
direction. Old Pinky scratched his forehead. “What now?” he asked. An unfamiliar voice spoke up:
“She’s Troop Leader—she should head after him.” “Good idea,” said another.
“They’d let her off easy. The police don’t want to arrest women.” This was
spat out. “That’s right, Gao,” some men
murmured. “That’s right.” “We want to go home,” said yet
another voice. I looked at each of them in
alarm. “Nobody’s going anywhere,” I said shrilly. “The uniforms—We’re a unit,
we have to return in one piece. We have to get Bean!” But somebody had
already started pedaling onto the ramp. Others followed. Soon they were back
on the highway, with only Fei and Old Pinky remaining. Fei was shaking his
head. “I’m sorry,” he said, and Old Pinky added, “We trust that you’ll do
just fine.” They said they’d wait for me here. They looked at each other but
not at me. Without another word I turned
around and ran toward the woods. At the first trees I paused: there were two
paths—one lined with birds’ nests, sticks and feathers piled into several
columns; and the other a scorched camping trail. Rainwater dripped from above
but the checkered ground, black and brown from a fire a month ago, was mostly
dry and dead. Bean’s footprints glittered from this second path, and I
stepped into them. Before long I could see his figure leaning against a tree
in an exhausted slump. He held his head. When his hands came away I lurched
to a stop, for a moment recognizing a different man in his eyes. Then he saw
me. From where I stood I asked, “Are
you all right?” I had to raise my voice. “Fine, thanks,” he replied. “Good,” I said. He picked at his nails. “Let’s go back, shall we?” I
said. “Shall we?” he mocked, and then
walked away, farther into the woods. The shuffle in his steps was pronounced
by a limp, and I trailed after him at his pace. He didn’t slow down until
there was a clearing. Several tall brightly colored trees held up swaying branches,
and orange and red leaves sifted down to the ground in a rustle. At a large
outcropping of rocks Bean stopped and removed his shoes. Behind him was an
expanse of clear blue sky I hadn’t seen in a long time,
and near the horizon where the color turned almost white was Shihli city, a
shimmering slender band of yellow. The days were getting shorter. “We have to go back,” I pleaded
with him. He nodded and returned to
inspecting his feet. There were old blisters, healing but still red and
bulbous. Then he put his shoes back on. A breeze started up and he lifted his
face to breathe it in. His lips were moving. I stepped toward him carefully.
I even reached out my hand to touch him, my fingers about to close over his,
but then he opened his eyes and turned, climbing onto the tallest rock and he
jumped away from me and was gone. I scrambled forward and shouted his
name—but he’d landed on a slight rock ledge, which jutted out just enough for
him to twist around and grab hold of my arm, and then he jumped again and he
was soaring. |
|||||
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|
||||
|
Arts & Letters is supported by |
Arts & Letters Journal of Contemporary Culture Campus Box 89 Georgia College & State University Milledgeville, GA
31061 Phone: (478) 445-1289 E-mail: al@gcsu.edu
|
GC&SU is a member of |
|||
|
|
|
|
|||
|
|||||
