Now I owed forty-seven thousand to a loan shark in China, to be wired in twice-monthly installments if I wanted to avoid a higher interest rate. I knew what happened to those who didn’t pay enough, paid late, or didn’t pay at all. One threat, one knife-blade flash from the loan shark’s men, and it was pay now or disappear forever.
IN NEW YORK CITY, I changed. For one thing, I was no longer Peilan. One of the other girls in the Bangkok apartment had suggested Polly, an English name that sounded a little like Peilan. So it was Polly, not Peilan, who was doing thirteen-hour shifts in a garment factory, the same work Peilan had done in China except for eight times more money, and it was Polly who paid too much rent for a sleeping bag on the floor, the spot given to the roommate with the least seniority. I hadn’t thought I would live in a mansion like the one Jing-John built for his family, but I hadn’t expected to live in a shithole like the apartment on Rutgers Street, a cramped block with such an inferiority complex that things never smelled right, and the wind blew a steady stream of bags, cans, and plastic bottles down the sidewalk. The bedroom consisted of three bunk beds lined up so tight the women could only get out by crawling through the ends of their mattresses. I came home from work exhausted, ass throbbing from thirteen hours of sitting, and after a while I no longer noticed the jagged gaps in the walls or the floor tiles that had peeled away and exposed dirty crumbled plaster, or the cockroaches, or the drippy kitchen ceiling, and it didn’t bother me that I had to put my hand in the tank when I wanted to flush the toilet. Jing-John must have worked for years to buy that mansion and marble fawn.
I’d arrived at the tail end of a New York summer. At intersections I would play a game, walking in the direction of whichever light went green first, and in this way, I zigzagged my way around most of Manhattan. When I got lost I tried to remain lost for as long as possible, making turn after turn until the street ended at a highway or river, or until I asked the closest Chinese-looking person for directions. No matter how tired I was, I always felt more awake when I walked. How varied the people of New York were, how quickly they moved, inches apart, while avoiding physical contact. On payday I splurged and rode the subway, and the best part was when I went up the stairs to the street and got to the next-to-last step, anticipating what I would see when I reached the sidewalk, if this neighborhood would be full of tall brown buildings or small gray ones, what kind of people lived there, what the stores were like. I saw myself in this neighborhood, that apartment building, that car.
New York was noisier than Fuzhou, and the sounds were different, car alarms and rattling subways, people blasting music out the windows of their apartments. There were so many restaurants, serving food I’d never heard of. My roommates and I took turns cooking. One put peppers in her beef, another fried her vegetables but barely salted them. I made fish balls and although the ingredients weren’t as good as the ones back home, the taste made my chest hurt. My new life was unstable and unsure, but each new day was shot through with possibility.
Didi was the roommate I got along with the best. She was from a village near Xiamen, had been in New York for a little over a year. She introduced me to the best places to buy vegetables, fish, and meat, took me to a tea shop on Bayard that sold sweet black sesame soup with chewy dumplings, which we slurped sitting next to American-born Chinese kids who teased one another in loud, slangy English. Didi didn’t leave Chinatown unless she had to. “We’ve got all we need here,” she said, “so why are you taking the train to all those weird neighborhoods?”
All this time, you were with me. What I had hoped would work during the long hours in the box from Toronto had not. You were alive, stronger than ever, kicking harder. I was getting used to you, but I was so tired.
One of my roommates said to me, “Girl, when are you due? Tomorrow?”
Maybe cold weather makes for cold people. But when I saw my reflection in a store window it looked like I’d doubled in size. This body definitely did not belong to me.
It was Polly, not Peilan, who went to the free clinic uptown, where there was a woman doctor who was Chinese and spoke Mandarin.
“Do your parents know?” She handed me a paper shirt.
“I don’t have parents.”
The doctor’s hair was cut short, forming a trim arrowhead at the nape of her neck, and her eyes were dark and kind. “How old did you say you were, Miss Guo? Sixteen?”
I sat on a long metal table that was also lined with paper. My feet stuck out of the paper shirt and I stared at a ring of dirt on the floor. I’d told the doctor my name, address, and birthdate, which she scribbled on a form. “Why does it matter how old I am? I don’t need anyone’s permission to be here.”
“You’re right, you don’t.”
There was a plastic figure on the counter with what appeared to be organs inside, and I wanted to remove them and tap them against the doctor’s desk.
She looked at the form again. “Eighteen. Sorry, you look a lot younger. How did you get to New York?”
“I came by myself.”
“That must have been hard.”
“No big deal. I wasn’t scared.”
The doctor opened her mouth as if to talk, then closed it.
“Lay down. Scoot up a little,” she said. “That’s good.”
I was poked, first with fingers, then with a cold metal tongue. The doctor asked where I was from.
“Fujian. Where are you from?”
“Zhejiang.”
“And did your parents bring you here?” I asked her.
“I came here for university and stayed after medical school, to work.”
She ran a boxy device attached to a cord over my belly and pointed to a television screen with a black-and-white image of a shadowy blob. “Looking good.”
“I don’t want it,” I said, though I’d lived with you for so many months, it was hard to be entirely sure.
The doctor looked at the form again. “Oh, you hadn’t mentioned that.” She switched off the video screen. “You can sit up now.” She walked around to face me. “You’re over seven months pregnant.”
I counted backwards, trying to recall how many months it had been since the motel with Haifeng, but I could barely recall his face.
“Twenty-nine or thirty weeks.” The doctor’s face looked sad. “We can’t terminate after twenty-four weeks, or six months. I’m so sorry.”
“I’ll go to another clinic, then.”
“It’s the law. They won’t do it either.”
My thighs were clammy against the table, my stomach smeared with jelly. Slime dripped from between my legs.
“I can give you some resources. I’d like to refer you to another doctor, so you can get the proper care.”
“I have to have the baby?”
My belly grew cold. The doctor lowered her voice. “Listen, don’t be afraid. They have good hospitals here.” Her Mandarin accent was citified, polished. “I can also share information about adoption.”