“Student? You student?” He said something to the soldiers. The two who weren’t holding her arms walked over. One ripped the purse from her shoulder, the other frisked her with rudely probing hands.
“I’m an American citizen! You can’t-”
“You be quiet.” The young man dug into her purse, tossed her tape recorder and camera to the second man, pulled out her passport, opened it, inspected the picture, came up with her student ID, compared the two to her. “Gloria Hall.”
“That’s right. I demand-”
A single word from the young man and the bullish man moved so fast she saw nothing, not even a blur. One moment he was behind the young man, the next and her entire face screamed agony. Her vision grayed, almost went black. It felt like she had been hit with a wooden mallet.
“That’s good. You quiet now, Miss Student Gloria Hall.” He flicked the plastic ID with his finger. She heard it through the ringing in her ears. “Georgetown is place?”
“A university.” The blow had dropped her voice an octave. “In Washington, D.C.”
The young man spoke once more. The soldiers began dragging her toward the main gates. She shrieked, “Where are you taking me?”
“You come all this way. You want to know about Factory 101.” The young man offered a thin-lipped smile. “No problem. We show.”
BY THE FOURTH WEEK, the work was routine enough for her exhausted mind to wander.
Gloria stood in a line of seventy identical steam presses that ran the width of the building’s fifth floor. The walkways ran diagonally. She faced the back of a woman operating a miniature weaving machine, making shoelaces. In front of her was a young man sewing labels inside finished garments. Then came a woman laminating soles on basketball shoes. Each process multiplied by seventy. Three machines in front of the laminator was a set of metal stairs, leading to two glass-walled chambers. The room to the left was the central office, from which they were always watched. Always. The room to the right was empty now. Even so, Gloria could not look in that direction. None of them could. Except for those times when the big man came down the aisles and screamed for them to do so. Then they had no choice.
To every side, lines of dark heads disappeared into the hot and misty distance. The noise was deafening. Many of the machines were brand-new. Others, like the press she operated, were extremely old. Her press hissed and complained every time it was rammed shut. Some of the presses were harder to operate than others. Some of the lighter women needed to grab with both hands and haul the top down by raising their feet off the floor. This was very tricky, as they had to release the handle and hit the floor and jump back before the steam hissed through the padding. After a ten-hour shift with three fifteen-minute breaks, it was hard to find the energy to keep jumping away. Exhaustion reached a point where the pain could not be felt. Gloria had seen in the showers that several of the women had welts around their middle from countless steam scaldings.
Gloria had her own scars, but the worst of them were healing. She bore welts on her right cheek, her neck, her forehead, both upper arms, her left elbow and wrist, and the palms of both hands. Many were from learning how to handle the steam press, but not all. Her right ear still throbbed from a beating two days earlier, and the warmth on her neck suggested it was bleeding again. She did not check. It would do no good. And if she got blood on another shirt, they would beat her again.
The throbbing and the hunger and the exhaustion worked at her mind. Which was not bad. The labor moved more swiftly and smoothly if she did not think too much. Just pull another freshly dyed and washed shirt from the hamper and slip it over the bottom padding. Smooth out the worst creases. Reach and haul down the top, ram the handle shut, squint, and lean away from the steam. Open the press, arrange the sleeves, haul and close and squint. Open the press, fold, close and lean and squint. Open and set the finished shirt in the stack to her left. Pluck out another shirt from the hamper. Repeat.
All this week she had been doing pajama tops for the New Horizons children’s line. Which was what had started her thoughts wandering down that particular road. She peered through the steam at one unironed sleeve. Dozens of dancing teddy bears smiled up at her, each framed by the company’s famous shooting-star logo with its trailing edge of sparkling rainbows. She opened the press, folded the sleeve in, and rammed the press closed. But hiding the tiny sleeve did no good. For when she squinted through the steam, she saw not the factory but another smiling face, this one belonging to her fiancé.
She shook her head and opened the press and folded the tiny shirt. Now it seemed as though Gary were behind her, moving in close, kissing the place at the base of her neck that always made her shiver. This time, however, the shiver released a flaming tide of regret. For the years and the life stolen from them, for the children they would never call their own. Gloria reached down and caressed the hot shirt, aching from the piracy of losses. So much had been taken from them.
She was ripped from her lamentation by the feel of her ankle being unchained from the machine. She gasped in terror, then released the breath in a cry of panic when she saw the bullish shoulders and the bald head rising into view. She screamed the first words of Cantonese she had learned after her arrivaclass="underline" “I meet my quota!”
The man was called Chou, and it was he who had hit her there in the dusty parking lot the day of her arrival. He had hit her enough since then, and she had seen enough of the others being struck, to know terror just by his approach. To have him come so close and see her not working was impossible. Still, it had happened. Again she screamed what everyone screamed when Chou came for them: “I meet my quota!”
Those were the words they were forced to shout at the end of each shift. Afterward the chains attaching them to their stations were released, and they were led downstairs to the dormitories with the lines of bunks and the bare tables and the stench-ridden toilets. But now the words had no effect. Chou gripped her upper arm with an iron hand and dragged her from the bench. She screamed again and clutched the steam-drenched press. She did not even feel her palms blistering. He wrenched her free and started down the aisle.
No one looked up from their work as she was dragged to the front. No one ever did. Not even the one friend she had made, the woman operating the laminating machine, a former university student with a few words of English. Hao Lin kept her face down and her hands busy. There was nothing anyone could do. To look up would only be a sharing of the terror, and they all carried too much of their own already. They would be forced to look soon enough.
She gripped the railing, the stairs, the doorjamb. Just as they all did. Shrieking and wailing and still dragged into the punishment chamber with its glass wall overlooking the entire factory floor. The steam rose from the presses and the machines clattered with angry laughter at her helplessness. Gloria heard nothing save the rising tide of her own terror.
She babbled pleas in English as she was lashed to the punishment chair. Chou straightened and left the room. He always did. Drawing out the wait was all part of the terror. She continued to moan and struggle and tremble so hard the chair rattled against the concrete floor. Chou returned, this time burdened with an armful of great metal rods. Her moans turned to sobs. She had no idea what it was he carried, only that it would hurt her very much.
He moved behind her and began clattering and banging. The owner’s son walked into the room, the slender young man who had spoken to her that day in the dusty square. He carried something too, something that looked vaguely familiar, only her panic was so great she could not draw it into focus. He remained at the other end of the table, setting up what appeared to be a tripod. When neither of the men touched her or even approached, Gloria managed to see through her fear. It was indeed a tripod, and on it he was setting a video camera.