The two women slipped the pink material over their arms and buttoned up. Hulan tied her matching bandana over her hair.
As they wound through the Assembly Building 's maze of corridors, Hulan whispered, "Can I ask you something about Miaoshan?" When Peanut nodded, Hulan asked, "You said she was a troublemaker. What did you mean by that?"
Peanut slowed, turned her head, and looked up at Hulan. "Always you are asking questions! What are the men doing? How do you get out of here? Now you ask about someone you never met. Why? Did the foreigners send you inside here? Is that why you were able to leave last night and sneak back in so easily? Am I going to lose my job because I helped you?" "No, no, and no."
Someone behind them called out, "Hey! Hurry up! We don't want to be late because of your slow walking!"
Hulan and Peanut picked up their pace. Hulan leaned her head toward Peanut's and spoke softly. "Remember when I came into our room the first time and you said no one wanted that bunk because of the ghost spirit? Since I slept there, I can't stop thinking about this girl. Even now she troubles me."
"Because her ghost spirit is the same as her live spirit. Miaoshan only brings trouble to people."
"Did she report others for their transgressions or complain to Madame Leung about the other women?"
"You are going in the wrong direction," Peanut said. "It was the other way. All the time she is complaining to us about the machines, about the long day, about the food we eat. She says to us, 'We can go on strike. We can make the company improve things.' All the time she is pestering Madame Leung and reciting all of the things that are bad in here. You know what she says? That our toilets are not good. I can't understand that. In my village no one had a toilet inside the house. In fact, I had never even seen a toilet like this until I came here. When I first saw those things, I didn't know what to do. One of the women had to show me."
They turned a corner and Hulan saw the entrance to the factory floor.
"I'll tell you something else," Peanut said. "You don't know many people here yet, but everyone is nice. Even so, I can tell you that everyone-even the mothers and the older women-were happy when Miaoshan died, because we were all afraid of her words. What if we had gone on strike? What would have happened to us if we all lost our jobs?" Entering the factory, Hulan saw Tang Siang already in position before the conveyor belt. Her face was slightly swollen from lack of sleep and her hair had not had the benefit of a brush. She didn't look happy.
At seven the bell rang, the machines cranked to life, and work began. The three women worked silently side by side, shoulder to shoulder. In such close proximity and in such a hot room, Hulan couldn't help but notice the smell of sex that radiated from Siang. She didn't seem inclined to talk. Peanut sensed this and bent her head to her work, expertly threading the hair through the doll heads. Although Hulan had many questions she wanted to ask, she followed Peanut's lead. Fortunately, Hulan didn't have to wait long before Siang broke her silence.
"Well, Peanut, aren't you going to ask me about Manager Red Face?" Siang petulantly demanded at last.
Wordlessly Peanut scooped up another head and began jabbing. "This I know," Siang said. "He is a man like any other. He talks sweet words until he gets what he wants, then talks some more when he wants it another way. I tell him I'm not a gutter girl, but he wants to do gutter things. He says, 'Miaoshan does this for me. You do it too.' Miaoshan, Miaoshan. Always I'm hearing that name. It makes me crazy!"
"But you knew he had sex with Miaoshan before," Peanut said. Her tone was so matter-of-fact that Hulan could almost forget that Peanut was only fourteen.
"You think I don't know that every penis that has been inside me has already been inside Miaoshan?" Siang asked bitterly. The question required no answer, so Siang went on. "You're still young, Peanut. It's good for you to be safe in here. You wait for your father to arrange a marriage for you."
"I am hoping for a true-love marriage," Peanut said wistfully, her voice barely audible over the machinery.
"True love?" Siang spat out. "Look around this room and tell me if there is a single woman here who has experienced true love."
"I have," Hulan said. "And I know you have too. I've seen you with Tsai Bing."
"Tsai Bing?" Siang sputtered. Then resolve crept into her voice. "Let me tell you something about Tsai Bing. Remember that day you found us in the cornfield?"
Hulan said she did.
"You asked him about the baby and he blushed. I hadn't known about that."
"You mean about the baby?" Hulan queried.
"No, that he was still having sex with Miaoshan even when he told me that he only loved me and that we would find a way to get married."
Hulan was in no way prepared for what Siang said next.
"He had sex with her," she continued sorrowfully, "even after I told him about seeing her with my father."
Next to Hulan, Peanut sucked air in through her teeth.
"So now you have sex with the manager to get back at the one you love." Hulan eased her voice over her words, erasing anything that might be taken for judgment.
"No, I let the manager put his organ in me so I can get promoted and make more money. The only way Tsai Bing and I will ever be together is if we leave Da Shui Village. The only way that will ever happen is if we have money." Siang brought her shoulder up so she could wipe away a tear. "A night or two with a foreigner is a small price for a lifetime."
But looking at Siang, whose toughness was as thin as a sheet of gold leaf, it seemed a very high price.
The morning wore on. The temperature in the room quickly rose over a stultifying forty degrees centigrade. Around them conversation dwindled to nothing as the heat and humidity drained the last bit of energy from the women who had already worked more than fifty-six hours this week. Hulan welcomed the relative silence from human voices. She had asked as many questions as she could today without drawing excessive attention to herself. Peanut's queries about what Hulan was doing here only reminded her of how transparent her mission was becoming. Similarly, she could not continue her conversation with Siang. The girl had shut herself off, working with her head bent and her shoulders slouched except for those times when Aaron Rodgers swung by on his rounds and she plastered a fake smile on her face.
Hulan-her hands bandaged, her stomach queasy, her shoulders aching, her head pounding from the heat and noise from the machines- made her mind focus on the enigma of Ling Miaoshan. Last night Guy Lin hadn't mentioned anything about a strike. Would Miaoshan have kept that information from him? Could Miaoshan have thought up the idea of a strike by herself? Could she have then moved forward, organizing, cajoling, frightening her fellow workers into following her without outside help? And if someone had helped her, who and why? Maybe this someone hadn't helped her at all. Maybe he-and knowing what she did about Miaoshan, Hulan had no doubts that it would be a he-had used her as a way to foment unrest for some reason that wasn't yet clear.
As Hulan circled around these ideas, she kept coming back to Miaoshan's promiscuity. To use the coarse words of the local Public Security captain, it seemed true that Miaoshan had spread her legs for any man with a beating heart. From the beginning of time there had been women who had used sex as a method of survival, as a way of getting what they wanted, as a means to an end. But also from the beginning of time there had been women who had been victimized, used, and tossed aside when their novelty wore off or they became diseased or old. Was Miaoshan the manipulator or the manipulated?