The Secret Mother by Victoria Delderfield Read Free Book Online

burger and fries. Then we’ll hang out in the park.” Zhi pointed to a white island glistening amidst the smoggy shades of grey: pagodas and a humped bridge, a partially frozen lake laced with snow-burdened willows.
    “Girls go there on Sundays, when they’re tired of window shopping. But you have to watch out for the snake.” Her eyes widened. “A few years ago, the park keeper went missing; he was swallowed alive by a python twenty feet long and a foot wide. They found his eyeballs in the reptile house.”
    “Aiya!”
    “Come on, wimp, or we’ll miss our stop.”
    We wrangled for the exit and jumped down from the bus.
    Zhi threw out her arms. “Welcome to Nanchang, Cousin! Fastest growing shit-heap in the motherland.”
    Our national pride – a limp red flag – drooped from a flagpole at the centre of the square.
    “I didn’t imagine it to look so … grubby”
    “You’ll get over it,” said Zhi, already several paces ahead.
    We walked in the shadows, coiling through the crowds that shifted and churned. The frequent blast of car horns hurried cyclists along as they wheeled against the kerb and out again, netting together in an unfathomable formation. My heart leapt when I passed a man in a straw hat pulling a barrow of coal bricks and for a moment I thought it was Father. Along the kerb, I found a pair of wet, discarded biker gloves and stuffed them in my coat pocket.
    We turned a corner down a back alleyway where a group of big noses in suits rolled out of a bar called The Blue Banana. Their gruff laughter rose to meet us and the smell of fish juice and liquor smarted in my nostrils. A couple of women wearing low-cut sequinned tops staggered after them. Mother always said the westerners were decadent and unruly, but this was the first time I’d seen them.
    “Zhi,” I panted. “Can’t we stop for a rest? I’m hungry.”
    “Not now, we’ve got to make you official.” She beckoned me over to a street phone, hemmed in by looming slabs of coal-stained buildings, and was already tapping in a number.
    “Hi, I’m going to need a fake high school certificate, an unmarried status card and a work permit pass. How soon can you do them?” Zhi’s voice didn’t falter. She rummaged in her pocket for a lipstick and daubed a street name on the back of her hand. “I’ll meet you there,
ciao.
”
    She hung up. “Now we need to fix your hair so you look like a
dagongmei
with prospects.”
    I’d come too far to turn back and needed a new identity, one good enough for the city and the factory gates.
    That night, Zhi and I slurped hot and sour soup at the junction between Zhongshan and Shengli Road, where street vendors traded hats and felt bags, ivory boned-fans, high heeled shoes, flip flops and jewellery. I browsed the stalls, exploring the treasure trove of textures, letting threads of wool, silk, linen and gauzy chiffon glide through my fingertips, each conjuring a different image - of Empresses and Beijing Opera singers, film stars like Priscilla Chan. I flushed, remembering the tall, professional westerners at The Blue Banana – “
No shame, they have no shame,
” corrected Mother’s voice in my head.
    The stalls were swarming with young workers like Zhi,
dagongmei,
who buzzed with a newfound taste of freedom. They sang Cantonese pop songs, bartered loudly, bragged about their pirated Hong Kong movies. They puffed Marlboro cigarettes, whose smoke coiled upwards in the sharp night air and mingled with the smell of rendering duck fat.
    Zhi saw a couple of factory girls she knew from Forwood, but she pulled away suddenly in the direction of a stall selling necklaces. We tried on beads made of pearls and fake rubies. For a few hours, I forgot about my family and was free. Zhi, I noticed, kept checking over her shoulder.
    I steered the conversation onto Forwood. “It must be strange coming back to the city; everything here is so different, so exciting compared to the village.”
    “But at home, I get to