Finally, we reached our work area at the back of the factory. It was larger than our entire apartment. There was a long table and a towering stack of pressed clothing, which we were to hang, sort, belt or sash, tag and then bag in a sheath of plastic. Aunt Paula left us with the warning that the shipment was going out in a few days, and Ma and I were expected to get everything done on time.
Ma hurried to start hanging up the pants and she asked me to sort by size an enormous rack filled with pants already on hangers. She gave me an air filter as well, a rectangular piece of white cloth tied behind the ears, but we were next to the steamer section. The heat was stifling. I felt as if I couldn’t breathe and took it off after a few minutes. Ma didn’t wear hers either.
I spotted a wrinkled piece of Chinese newspaper in the industrial trash can and stealthily took it. It gave me heart to see the familiar characters. I spread it out on an empty stool next to me as I began my sorting.
After less than an hour in the factory, my pores were clotted with fabric dust. A net of red strands spread themselves across my arms so that when I tried to sweep myself clean with my hand, I created rolls of grime that tugged against the fine hairs on my skin. Ma constantly wiped off the table where she was working, but within a few minutes, a layer would descend, thick enough for me to draw stick figures in if I’d had the time. Even the ground was slick with dust, and whenever I walked, the motion displaced rolls of filth that tumbled and floated by my feet, lost.
Something mingled with the stink of polyester in my nostrils. I turned around. A boy was standing next to me. He was about my size, dressed in an old white T-shirt, but there was a tension in his shoulders and arms that told me he was a fighter. His eyebrows were thick, crossing his face in one line, and underneath them, his eyes were a surprising golden brown. He was munching on a roasted pork bun. The crisp crust glistened and I could almost taste the sweet and luscious meat in my mouth.
“You can still read Chinese,” he said, cocking his head at the newspaper.
I nodded. I didn’t mention that it was all I could read.
“I forgot everything. We’ve already been in America for five years.” He was showing off now. “You must be smart, reading and all.” This wasn’t a compliment, it was a question.
I decided to be honest. “I used to be.”
He thought about this a second. “Eat a bite?”
I hesitated. It isn’t Chinese to eat from someone else’s food. No kid in Hong Kong had ever offered any to me.
The boy waved the bun under my nose. “Come on,” he said. He ripped off a clean piece and held it out.
“Thanks,” I said, and popped it in my mouth. It was as delicious as it had smelled.
“You can’t tell though.” He spoke with his mouth full. “I swiped it from Dog Flea Mama’s station.”
I stared at him, confused and appalled. “Who?” I’d already swallowed my part of the theft.
“The Sergeant.” A sergeant is any cruel person in a position of authority.
I must have still looked confused.
He sighed. “Dog. Flea. Mama. You must have seen her.” Then he scratched himself on the neck, a perfect imitation of Aunt Paula’s habit.
I gasped. “That’s my aunt!”
“Ay yah!” His eyes were wide.
Then I started to laugh and he did too.
“I don’t normally take things, you know. I just like bothering her. Come find me at the thread-cutters’ when you take a break. My name’s Matt,” he said.
When Ma urged me to take a break later, I edged up to the thread-cutters’ counter. The tiny old ladies and kids were busy examining the garments in their hands, snipping off the excess threads with special scissors that spring back open after each cut. Some of the children were as young as five years old. I spotted Matt working with fast hands next to a younger boy in glasses. A woman who must have been their mother sat next to the smaller boy. She wore large rose-tinted glasses that barely covered the enormous bags under her eyes.
When the mother saw me, she squinted through her thick lenses.
“Are you a boy or a girl?” she asked. Matt stifled a laugh.
I knew I looked like a boy, completely flat-chested, with my hair cut short by Ma because of the Hong Kong heat. I wished I could disappear.
The other boy next to Mrs. Wu was slight, with glasses that dangled from his protruding ears. He didn’t look up. He only kept working on the same skirt. As I watched, he turned it over again and again, looking for threads he had missed. On the table next to him was a toy motorcycle with a color picture of an American Indian printed on the gas tank. It looked worn, as if it had been chewed upon.
“Hello,” I said to him.
When the boy didn’t respond, Matt leaned over and gently waved his hand in front of the boy’s face. He made some gestures with his hand that looked like a kind of sign language. The boy looked up and then immediately turned his gaze downward again. In that brief glance, I saw that his eyes seemed unfocused behind the glasses.
“Park doesn’t hear so well,” Mrs. Wu said.
“Ma, I’m taking a break,” Matt said, and he jumped off his stool. He turned to Park and made a few more gestures. I thought probably he was asking if Park wanted to come with us.
When Park didn’t react at all, Matt turned to me and said, “He’s shy.”
“Don’t be too long,” Mrs. Wu said. “There’s a lot of work that needs to be done.”
Some of the other kids gravitated to us when they saw that we were free, and we all moved toward the soda machine by the entrance. It cost twenty cents per bottle and I learned later that few people actually purchased from it because of the expense, but the idea of getting a cold soda in the sweltering factory was so attractive that the soda machine was a popular hangout anyway.
I suspected that most of the other kids were at the factory for the same reasons I was. They weren’t officially employed by the factory, but there was no place else for them to go, and their parents needed their help. As Ma had explained earlier, all employees were secretly paid by the piece; this meant that the work the children did was essential to the family income. When I was in high school, I learned that piece payment was illegal, but those rules were for white people, not for us.
Leaning against the humming soda machine, I could see Matt was the leader of the factory kids. They seemed to range in age from about four to teens. To save money, Ma made many of my clothes herself, even though she couldn’t do it very well, so I had on a home-sewn shirt while the other kids were wearing cool T-shirts with English sayings like “Remember to Vote.” They interspersed their Chinese with English to show off how Americanized they were and everyone apparently knew I was fresh off the boat. There was some whispering when they found out Dog Flea Mama was my aunt, but Matt seemed to have taken me under his wing and no one dared tease me. Despite the hard work, I was relieved to be among Chinese kids again.
After ten minutes, though, everyone started wandering back to the work they knew awaited them if they ever wanted to leave. I returned to Ma and resumed work but I was exhausted. I’d been there for three hours. I kept waiting for Ma to say it was time to go home. Instead, she pulled out a container of rice cooked with carrots and a bit of ham: we would have dinner at the finisher’s table. I couldn’t complain. She’d been there much longer than I had. We ate standing up and as fast as we could so we could get enough work done to stay on schedule. That first night, we left at nine o’clock. Later, I discovered that this was considered early.
The next morning, I stayed in the tiny bathroom a long time.
“Kim,” Ma said. “We’ll be late for school.”