Air (or Have Not Have)

'My god,' whispered Kwan, when she saw Mae's bruised face.

Kwan let her sleep late. About midday she came up to Mae's attic room with tea, and sat with her.

'Will you leave the village?' Kwan asked.

Normally, that would have been the answer. Mae and Ken would have packed up and gone away, to live in the city. Balshang, probably. God, what a fate, to bake in those sweltering tower blocks, with no money, no air, no friends. Until they ended up hating each other, as was normal.

Mae shook her head. 'I have to help here.'

Kwan held her hand. 'You are not in a good position to help.'

Mae shrugged. 'I will still have my school.'

'No one would come to it,' said Kwan. Her eyes were sad, her mouth firm. She held her friend's hand.

So Mae had lost the school, too. She looked at Kwan's hand. The hand was the village, all she had left of it. Mae loved the village.

The fields she had worked in all summer were her husband's. They were not hers to work any longer. The rice she had nurtured, watered with her sweat, was hers no longer.

The house she had cleaned was no longer hers, the pans, the brazier, all the old spoons. That house had seen her through three children. She had stirred the laundry and the soup alike as the babies fought and wailed around her ankles.

Her home.

She nearly lost even the rough old sewing machine. Mr Wing fetched it for her, and had to remind Joe that legally it belonged to Kwan.

The sewing machine now sat in the corner, next to Mae's suitcases. They looked small in the empty loft room. The only furniture was a couch that Kwan and Wing had wrestled into the space. The roof had a window through which sunlight streamed. Wing had taped clear plastic where panes of glass had been. Everything was coated in a fine white dust.

At midday, just under the tiles, it sweltered. In winter, she would freeze. Swallows cried urgently to be fed from nests under the eaves.

'Bloody Shen,' said Mae. 'Joe's come back with no money and who will buy dresses from me now? I don't even have the loan to pay for any cloth.' Mae sighed and shook herself. 'Still – nothing broke. I kept all my teeth.' Such was peasant luck.

'Joe has been getting drunk with Young Mr Doh,' said Kwan. 'People say that he lost his job through drinking. Siao and Old Mr Chung will work on the construction.'

Mae groaned for him. He had come back with nothing, to find nothing. 'What are they saying about Shen?'

'To me? Nothing. My dear, I am your champion. There are people who will walk past me as if I am not there.'

Mae pondered this for a moment. What was her position in this house? She would have to make some kind of contribution, both in money and in attention and gratitude. How long could she stay? She needed to stay, but every friendship can wear out.

'God, I hate being poor,' said Mae. Poverty afflicts everything, in the end, everything that should be sacrosanct. Love, friendship, the chance to dream, how you live, with whom you live.

'You can stay here as long as you like,' said Kwan, quickly, to get it out of the way.

'If I get my business back together, can I run it from here?'

Kwan faltered ever so slightly. She saw cloth, sewing machines, strangers coming into her house.

'I can work from one of the barns. I know it's difficult.'

Kwan fought her way to honesty. 'I have to ask Mr Wing.'

If not… Well, things would be bad if not. Well, things had always been bad and a dishonoured woman in a village had to settle for what she could get.

'Could you tell Joe for me about the TV charges? How I bargained with Sunni? And that the interest on the loan has been waived? That should ease his mind a bit.'

Kwan nodded and worked Mae's fingers in her own.

'You are still fond of Joe.'

'Of course. I lived with him for thirty years.'

'And Mr Ken?'

'The saddest thing of all is that I had decided to end it.'

Kwan sighed, and patted her arm. 'You rest,' she said.

Mae fought her way to honesty as well. 'There is something else,' she said.

Kwan could not help putting her hand on her forehead. What now?

'I think I am pregnant,' said Mae.

Sezen came to call, still blinking, with black hair in her eyes.

Sezen said, 'You sit in bed? You have work to do.'

Mae was not in a position to admonish her for rudeness. Merely visiting Mae had put Sezen in the position of being owed. 'I will start work again, soon,' said Mae.

'Your face is a mess, but no one has to see it,' said Sezen. 'Musa and I can get the cloth for you. No problem.'

'I'm not doing bad-girl clothes,' said Mae.

'Of course not,' said Sezen. 'Just whatever you need the cloth for.'

Mae adjusted to this in silence.

Sezen added, 'Aprons, oven gloves. Things people really use.'

What is it with you, Sezen? Why can't I understand what you want? Why, in a word, are you sticking by me?

Sezen jerked sideways in an angry, harnessed way that was entirely new. 'I have bad news,' she said, and her jerking body expressed impatience with herself for not knowing how to begin. 'Han An has gone off to work for Sunni. I saw the two of them still going around with clipboards, trying to look as if you had not done it first.'

Mae judged the seriousness of the blow. Finally she said, 'That is the least of my worries.'

'She's a traitor,' said Sezen, pouting with scorn.

Mae thought she was going to defend An, but found she could not be bothered. 'Yes.'

'Hmm! She'd better stay clear of me or I will pull out all her hair. Musa and I can go this afternoon to buy your cloth. But we will need the money to do that.'

Her hard brown face, her demanding dark eyes.

Mae felt her deadened face strain towards a smile. 'There is no money, Sezen,' she said.

The girl blinked.

Mae kept explaining: 'The loan was to my husband. It's his money.'

'We will do something else, then,' Sezen said, her jaw thrusting out.

'We?' wondered Mae.

'That government man, he must be good for money,' said Sezen.

'You mean I should ask the government man for money!' Mae felt outdone in audacity.

Sezen shrugged. 'He keeps saying how advanced we are. Meaning you. So. Ask.' She sniffed and then said, 'I can't have you going soft, like my mother.'

'I won't do that' said Mae. It was a promise.

In the evening, Mr Oz called.

His eyes said: How could you do this to me? 'This is a serious setback to our programme,' he said. He tutted. Light caught his spectacles. 'I was relying on you to be our model.'

'If only I'd known,' replied Mae. 'I would not have fallen in love.'

'I have to write my report.' Mr Oz swayed, as if under a burden. 'I have nothing to say. Except to tell them it is all a mess, everywhere.'

'When hasn't it been?' said Mae, and thought: How could they send a boy like you out on his own?

Down below, on Kwan's landing, the men were gathered around the box. Mae could hear the barking announcer and a sighing crowd: the sound of fut-bol on TV.

'Can you continue your school?' Mr Oz demanded. 'Can you still teach others?'

Mae pondered just how much she needed this young man. She wanted to tell him off. 'My main worry now, Mr Oz, is my own life. I have lost a home and a husband.'

He understood that, and winced and rubbed the back of his neck.

'Mr Oz. Do you want to help?'

He looked up as eagerly as a puppy. 'That's what I'm here to do!'

'Then teach me how to make screens, so I can sell my goods.' Mae sat up on her bed. 'I want to specialize and spread my geography. I want to make things to sell abroad to specialist markets that will express the buyer's interest in Third World issues. I want to sell my goods to New York, Singapore, Tokyo…'

The government man was in love. His pulse had quickened, his eyes gleamed, this was what he yearned to report. 'Yes, yes, I can do that for you… I can set them up, I can show you how. I can show you how to tell people how to find your screens…'