Shi Shi stooped as she walked behind the seamstresses’ dorm and stopped at the corner. A lone guard stood at the front gate, his silhouette visible under the dim overhead light. Shi Shi crouched down, held her breath, and listened. The light pattering of rain on the puddles of mud that had formed on the dirt ground was the only audible sound. She looked around in the darkness between the buildings, stood, and covered the distance between the seamstresses’ quarters and the factory in short, quick strides. She moved quietly among the fabric sheds behind the factory that held rolls of cotton, nylon, and hi-tech concoctions with fancy names like Rip-Proof Synthetic and Moisture-X.
Shi Shi stopped and repeated her crouch-and-listen routine.
Nothing.
With a final short sprint from the darkness, Shi Shi touched the side of the infirmary wall, crouching under the security lights just beneath Lee Chang’s residence. She wiped at the wet glass with the sleeve of her sweatshirt and peered through the window into the empty infirmary. “Where are you?” she said to herself in her native tongue.
She shuffled among empty boxes, garbage cans, and crates of discarded swatches of unused fabric. A dull yellow glow emitted from the next window on the first floor, the weak light drowning in the rain as it reached the end of its spectrum. A TV blared from Lee Chang’s residence above, the sound of screaming soccer fans broadcast live from China overpowering the sound of rain hitting the fabric sheds’ tin roofs. Shi Shi stepped up on two old crates and looked in the window next to the infirmary. The rain on her face and the textured sliding windows didn’t prevent her from immediately recognizing the body of her bunkmate of two years. She tapped on the window and Wei Ling sat straight up, pain shooting down her arm to her elbow. She looked through the glass, saw Shi Shi’s face, and began to sob.
Wei Ling tugged at the bed, moving the heavy frame and mattresses inch by inch until she could reach the bottom of the window. She put the pain of her left wrist out of her mind and stretched with her free hand, turning the lock and teasing herself with freedom. Shi Shi, still standing on the crates, pushed the window open, rain splattering into the room. She grabbed Wei Ling’s outstretched arm and embraced it.
“Wei, are you ok? We’ve been worried about you.”
“I knew you would come looking for me,” Wei Ling said, tears streaming from her eyes. “I’m pregnant,” she said before the sobbing spell escalated.
“From that night?”
“Yes. The American.”
“Wei. I’m so sorry.”
“Lee Chang keeps telling me that the doctor is coming to take me to the hospital, but I’ve been chained to this bed for a week now.”
“The doctor is dead.”
“Dead?”
“They found his body on the beach earlier in the week.”
“Are you sure?”
“Putani, the new girl from Thailand, is sleeping with one of the guards. He told her. He thought it was funny.”
“You have to get me out of here. That crazy Lee Chang is going to kill me.”
“It’s okay. If he wanted you dead, you’d be gone by now. I‘ll think of something, but I can’t get you out tonight. I’ll talk to some of the girls and see if they can help.”
“Make it quick.”
“What about Peter?” Shi Shi asked. “He will come looking for you sooner or later.”
“I hope so.”
“I’ll be back tomorrow or the next day. As soon as I can get out without getting caught.”
“Hurry.”
“Take care.”
Shi Shi kissed Wei Ling’s hand as Wei Ling caressed her face with her fingertips. The meeting through the window ended suddenly, the crate supporting Shi Shi’s small frame creaking once before giving way with a violent crash. Shi Shi’s arm was ripped out of the window and a muffled cry slipped out.
“Shi Shi?” Wei Ling repeated several times with no reply. She stretched to shut the window, her flesh cutting against the handcuff. Wei Ling sat down on the bed and continued to cry.
Hopeful tears combined with hopeless ones. ***
Shi Shi’s weight crashing through the crate brought the night guards out of their poker shed, whiskey and beer bottles in hand. Not detectives to begin with, their observation skills were further numbed by alcohol, their ambition robbed by greed and the chance to take money from each other through five card stud, deuces wild.
Shi Shi hid behind the building that housed the sweatshop floor and waited for the three guards to finish their half-hearted search of the back of the facility. When the cussing started again in the shed, Shi Shi limped across the small patch of wet ground to the seamstresses’ quarters and opened the door.
She limped down the hall, blood and mud trailing behind her. Her ankle was already starting to swell, a faint blue ring forming around the outside of the bone. She grimaced when she walked, the pain telling her something was broken.
Her roommates heard Shi Shi before she reached the room—the panting sound of the injured girl dragging one leg behind her. “Shi Shi!” her roommates said, turning on the small light next to the door.
“Shhhhhhhh, the guards are outside,” Shi Shi responded, flopping her butt onto the mattress of the lower bunk bed. Blood ran down her leg from her knee to her foot, a deep gash that everyone agreed would need stitches.
The roommates, dressed in light shorts and t-shirts as sleeping apparel, hurriedly tended to the wound with soap, water, and a stream of small Band-Aids. It was all they had.
“Did you find Wei Ling?”
“Yes. She’s in the storage room of the infirmary. They have her chained to a bed. She’s pregnant.”
Curses flew out in Chinese, English, and Thai.
“She’s in serious trouble. Lee Chang keeps telling her the doctor is coming and that they will take her to the hospital to get an abortion. But we know the doctor is dead.”
Shi Shi told the girls what she knew. It was a story no one wanted to hear. It could have just as easily been one of them. They had all been used as a tool to drum up business for Chang Industries. They would have to help her. She was family. And she would do it for any of them. ***
Lee Chang took his morning walk around the grounds with a cup of black tea. He spot-checked the fence out of habit, looking for holes or places where the fence had been pulled back. No one had tried to break into Chang Industries since a group of thieves had stolen a shipment of silk nearly two years earlier. The police were subsequently put on the payroll, and patrols of the road leading to Chang Industries increased enough to thwart any further crime from outsiders. He walked behind the building, checked the security of the sheds, and headed toward the sweatshop floor to see if everyone was in place. Heading back to his apartment for his morning shower, Lee Chang passed the broken crate under the window. He took two steps before the green-trimmed sandal registered in his mind. He set his cup of tea on the top of an empty blue plastic barrel and reached into the broken remains of the crate. He looked up at the window to the storage room and his heart skipped a beat. He slapped the bottom of the sandal against the palm of his open hand. “Son of a bitch.” He looked at the sandal closely, knocked off some dirt, and squinted at the faded Chinese characters. Lee Chang read the characters to himself, and then aloud with one addition, “Shi Shi fucking Wong.”
Shi Shi had her head down, sewing through her fifth jacket in the bottom half of the hour. A breakneck pace. Beneath her sweatpants, her leg was swollen, her cuts bleeding into the tissue that encased the lower leg like a soft-sided cast. She ignored her leg as best she could, putting the energy from the pain into her work. She thought about herself and then thought about Wei Ling.
She never saw the baton or the hand holding it. Lee Chang dragged her from her seat by her hair, Shi Shi’s screams bringing the work floor to a halt. When Shi Shi found her feet, Lee Chang punched her in the face until she lost her balance. It was the vicious beginning to a permanent vacation.
