Talk like that from my father went in one ear and out the other. He thought I got a kick out of watching people busily running around, never considering that I might be concerned about the loneliest people down there. I kept searching out the mother and her daughter. With the oversized army raincoat draped around her, from a distance it was hard to tell if she was a man or a woman. But up close she was obviously a woman whose face showed that she was sick. Instead of continuing down the road, she paced back and forth on the riverbank. The weary look on her face could not mask the fact that she was pretty, her eyes exuding a charm and warmth that was tempered by signs of resentment, as if there was an unpaid debt owed her; it was a heart-chilling look. She seemed more emotional than my mother, yet given to bottling things up. Every time she came near the water I felt like asking, ‘Are you from Horsebridge? Did your family run a butcher’s shop? Is your family name Qiao?’ But the looks she gave me, cold and resentful, made me shrink back rather than engage her in a conversation. I could see that the raincoat did more than protect her from the rain, that it had multiple uses, in particular providing a makeshift roof for someone on the move. All her belongings were hidden under that raincoat, not to mention her daughter, the skinny little Huixian, who was never without her grimy little doll; she’d poke her head out every so often and blink once or twice before slipping back inside.
Tents had been thrown up on the school playground, some clearly marked ‘women’, where women with children were welcome. Maybe because she had her child with her, or maybe because she was just too shy, she walked into one of them and walked right back out again. As I continued my observation, separated from them by a strip of water, I concluded that they had to be looking for someone. But who? And although they were looking, they were not finding that person.
The day before the incident, I watched the woman pace back and forth by the piers, shielding her daughter with the raincoat. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought she was just out for a walk or checking the lay of the land. And as darkness settled around us, the rain fell harder, swallowing up mother and daughter.
After cooking dinner, I took the food to Father in the cabin. ‘Have you ever seen my aunt, the one who lives in Horsebridge?’ I asked him.
‘Yes, back around the time of our wedding. I’d have liked to see her again after that, but I never did, since the sisters had a falling out.’ That’s not what I wanted to hear. Apparently, they hadn’t come looking for my mother after all. Why I felt bad I couldn’t exactly say.
The incident on the pier occurred the following morning. Our barge was loaded with broken bricks and tiles, and we were about to weigh anchor and head downriver when a shrill wail burst from the shore. The voice was crisp and clear, but obviously juvenile and hysterical, and loud enough to drown out the rousing voice coming over the PA system. From aboard the barge I spotted the little girl; she was holding her doll in one hand and dragging the army raincoat in the mud with the other as she ran madly back and forth. Running and bawling, she attracted the attention of everyone within sight and earshot.
Several of the female labourers chased after the girl. ‘Stop running!’ they shouted. ‘Your mother’s coming back!’ Someone near me recognized the girl and told me she’d cried and made a fuss all night. ‘She can’t find her mother. At first I thought she’d gone off on some sort of errand, but it’s morning now and the girl’s still all alone.’ That was when we knew that something was wrong. The woman in the raincoat was missing. The labourers, loving mothers all, went up to Huixian with toys, food, even some plastic flowers. She fought off all their pity and heartfelt sympathy and ran towards the barges, biting one woman’s hand and spitting in the face of another. She dodged in between the legs of the women trying to catch her, and when she reached the gangplank to barge number one, she stopped in her tracks. Then she came aboard. ‘Where are you going?’ they shouted. ‘Your mama’s not on one of those boats. They bring people here, they don’t take them away.’
I still recall how Huixian searched for her mother aboard the barge. Stumbling along with terror-filled eyes, she looked everywhere, crying out for her mother the whole time. The tugboat started up its engine, but then shut it off. ‘Whose child is she?’ people wondered. ‘Why is she running around like that?’ She’d changed into a red-striped shirt since the last time I’d seen her; her braid had been combed and was tied with a bow. I recognized her right away, though. I noted that she’d not only lost her mother, but that her canteen and little blackboard were also missing.
While some of the crew members ran after her, others shouted across to people on the shore, discussing what might have happened to her mother. Opinions differed on the water and on the shore. The labourers on shore came mostly from farming villages and, given their view that females were next to useless, assumed that the girl’s mother had abandoned her. Few of the barge people accepted that, probably because they spent their lives on the water and had seen their share of drownings, many intentional. Their initial reaction was that ill luck had found the woman. I saw Six-Fingers and his mother, one at the bow and the other on the starboard deck, crouching down to look into the water. Looking for what? Everyone knew the answer. The tugboat crew were on the roof of the engine room searching the water, shielding the sun from their eyes with their hands. I knew that everyone on the river was of the same sad but unexpressed opinion that the woman would not be coming back, that she’d taken the easy way out.
Boat people consider it taboo to look for a dead person aboard a sailing vessel. But no one on the Sunnyside barges had encountered anything quite like this before. A taboo is meaningless to a seven-or eight-year-old girl, and nothing can change that. She had her own logic: her mother had brought her to Milltown on a boat, so that’s the way she was going to leave. People tried to talk some sense into her: ‘Little girl, we bring people here, we don’t take them away. Your mother isn’t here.’ But Huixian would have none of it. Even at her young age she knew adults’ weaknesses. ‘You’re lying!’ she said through her tears. ‘If a boat can bring people somewhere, it can take them away too.’
She stamped her foot in front of Sun Ximing, convinced that her mother was hiding below deck and trying to get her to come out. Sun Ximing’s son tried to get her to stop. ‘Don’t do that,’ he said. ‘You’ll stamp a hole in our hatch, and you’ll have to pay.’ But Sun’s wife pushed her son aside and opened the hatch to let Huixian see for herself. ‘See, little girl? There’s no one in there, nothing but bricks.’
Huixian got down on her knees and stuck her head in. ‘Are you down there, Mama?’ she cried into the darkness. ‘Come out, Mama! Please come out!’
The crew exchanged glances. Desheng’s wife wiped her moist eyes and glanced at her husband.
‘Why look at me?’ he said. ‘I’m not the Dragon King.’
His wife lowered her eyes and gazed down at the water. Since she couldn’t argue with the Dragon King, she took her frustrations out on the water. ‘It’s all because of this year’s floods. Why was there so much water? It’s the damned water. Come and stand over here. See how easy it would be to jump in.’