有钱能使鬼推磨
/part i.
Money is power.
It's not that obvious at first; disguised as media and propaganda, people are fed lies - that happiness changes hearts, you can turn your life around, even the smallest of people take the biggest of steps. It might be true, for some people. For some extraordinary individuals. They can climb their way up the social ladder and manage to keep their own integrity intact. Those people are, in fact, one in a billion, and rarely flowered.
I used to believe that people were all born innocent. I mean, how could you blame a new born infant for something that they didn't do? How could you expect a child to think in the same intricacies, look at the world the same way adults do? But as we grow, innocence gets corrupted. People change. Nothing lasts forever, and happiness doesn't influence what other people do - it's money.
When I was young, I learned that money meant everything. They say that money can't bring happiness, but I believe they go hand in hand. How can you be happy if you have to watch where you sleep at night? How are you happy when all you do is worry over bills and rent and food? Money does bring happiness, and without it, people are bitter and relentless and miserable.
My mother used to sell her body for money. For happiness. Not her own, exactly, but for mine and my family's. She used to work all day and night, in factories and in street stalls, as a janitor and a seamstress and a housekeeper and a babysitter and all those mindless, meaningless jobs that no one pays attention to. You know - those background jobs that keeps society running but never gets acknowledged anyway.
Before, I never used to understood why she did such things. I mean, my mother had a college degree in English. She's been to England before. Why spend her life wasting away when she could get a proper job and then receive all those precious paychecks? It was only until I was older did I understand.
It was never about her, not one moment. It was about me.
I was only maybe ten or eleven at the time. My father had died years before and we were still trying to pick ourselves up from the aftermath of his death. I don't remember how he died, exactly - back then, all I knew was that Papa wasn't coming back home. He had gotten sick, so sick that he couldn't even speak anymore, and that it was Mama's turn to bring in the bread.
At around ten years old, I woke up from a nightmare about fire and smoke and antiseptic, only to come to my mother for comfort - and to see that she was alone in her room, counting the money from her latest job. I didn't go to her and ask for any hugs or a glass of milk. I didn't move, but instead stood there and then sat when my little legs got tired. I watched as she cried her heart out because, turns out, we couldn't stay here. Pay wasn't high enough to cut it.
I'm not really that sure how my mind had formed the idea, but it came through little bursts of uncomfortable mornings in the classroom as the teacher inspected our uniforms. Mama wasn't cutting the deal, and my brother wasn't doing that well either. At that time, my other brothers and my older sister were with my aunt in Britain - they were old enough to think for themselves. But I, my brother, my little sisters...we were too young, too precious for our mother to let go. We were her pride, her joy, her happiness. And what else could we give but a little happiness to our distraught mother?
One day, I didn't go to school with the other little boys and girls that were ushered along in the morning. Instead, I veered off the track and into the warehouse districts. There, I did something that I thought would help.
I got a job.
It wasn't that hard, in fact; I was dirty and sweating and tired, and my school clothes hadn't been washed for a while because of the cost of water and soap. I was as desperate as my mother - like any other girl, I wanted to be normal. I wanted to have nice clothes and pretty hairbands and be able to go and buy something from the nearest convenience store. The woman at the counter took one look at me and my despondent self and assigned me right away to my loom.
It was a textile factory, I soon learned, and in there they made the clothes that were used for the production of clothes that would be shipped off into the west. Back then, I didn't mind it much, but now the very mention of the other side of the world brings a bitter taste in my mouth.
The next day, I forged my mother's signature and gave my teacher a note that said that I couldn't come to school for most of the week, because I had contracted a serious illness that kept me from others for a while. It was a petty lie, but it worked - with one eyebrow raised and a distasteful look, my teacher sent me off and I was excused. It was most probably because I looked like hell too. A small little girl, smaller than most her age, with downtrodden eyes, pale skin and constantly fidgeting fingers.
At my job, I worked seven hours a day, seven days a week. I came home with my school uniform dusty and covered in little maggots, but my mother never noticed. At the end of the week, I would get my pay - and it was the greatest thing I ever received, really. All my hard work - all those days of sticking my hand in boiling water, coughing and spitting out blood, watching as blisters formed on the corners of my fingers meant nothing when I got the money. All the pain faded away.
When my mother was asleep, I used to wipe the ash off my face and then clean my body as best as I could with my towels, and then slip the money I made into her little envelope hidden in an ancient pot that she always kept. It was where we kept our savings.
Soon we could afford our apartment, and we weren't behind rent. Me and my brother didn't have to share our food with the little ones. Things were going fine for a while.
Then, on one of the most meaningless days, when Mama was putting the clothes on the heater so that they could dry faster, she noticed my hands as I put up a sock.
"Baobao," she started, "What's that on your hands?"
I glanced at my palms. "Nothing, Mama."
I tried to move them away from her sight, but she grabbed them and I cried out in pain at the touch. My hands were red and ashen, like they were different limbs apart from my body. They were cut and swollen, some still red and raw as my eyes burned. I didn't dare look my mother in the eye. She spoke, her voice quiet, "Where did you get these, baobao?"
"Nowhere, Mama."
"Don't lie to me."
I said nothing. The quietness of the air was cut by the hiss of the heater, and I flinched as hot air touched my skin. Mama made a silent gasp, or a sob. I'm not sure, to this day. But I do remember her letting my hands go and her telling me, "Go play with your brother." And I left, scurrying out as my heart pounded traitorously in my chest.
That night, I woke up to the sound of my mother's wretched sobbing as she hunched over the dining table, her form small and bony. I should've cried then - felt something, anything, in the sympathy of my mother, but I couldn't. Not when she began to call out my name in a wail, apologies mixed in with her own tears. My throat closed and I couldn't bear to walk another step forward.
In that moment, I felt so terribly, startlingly empty. My chest seemed to be hollow, for I couldn't hear the steady thrum of my heartbeat, nor did I feel like I was breathing. It was almost like I had stopped living.
More so, I remember going to bed as soon as dawn came and my mother's cries were reduced to small sobs, then slowly to nothing at all. I stood in my corner as my brother walked past me and placed a blanket on Mama's sleeping body. He gave me a look and motioned toward the kitchen; it was my responsibility to make the tea in the morning and some breakfast for the young ones. So as I scurried on my shaky legs, my brother called my mother's boss and told him - very apologetically, my brother was always much more professional than me - that Mama wouldn't be coming in to work today.
With my voice hollow, I told my brother to call another number; one I had memorized like the back of my palm. "Gege, please?"
He pursed his lips and gave me a hard look, one that told me that he knew what I had done, knew what kind of pain I had caused my mother. I knew then that my brother had been aware - of me running to work, of me being able to pull it off for so long. I told him the number and he called my workplace and told them that I wouldn't be coming in.
"Jiejie!" My little sisters ran into the room, their little feet padding along the hardwood floors. I told them to be quiet quickly, and they hushed. The littlest, barely six, ran up to my brother and hugged him, giggling. "Gege, I got a gold star from my teacher yesterday! Did you see? I showed Mama but she was tired." The littlest pouts for a moment before continuing on. Her rambles are endless but my brother shoulders it with steel, his eyes calm. Even still, she speaks in a quiet voice.
"Jiejie," the second youngest catches my attention as I slide a bowl toward her. "Will you stop working, now?"
I twitched. "How did you - "
"Hui Lang," she said in response. "She has those wounds on her hands too."
Looking at my little sister, with her ten-year old eyes so full of knowing in a way that mine was not when I was her age, made me stop in my tracks. I stood there, shaking, and feeling the burn of my eyes make my head heavy, I looked down in shame.
The second youngest took her bowl and began to eat from it, her movements clumsy and awkward as I stood behind the counter, gripping the edge with white knuckles and scarred fingers, and cried for what seemed like years in front of my family.
No one said a word. I cried, and cried, cried until my eyes hurt and my breath came in gasps. cried until every single ounce of energy in my limbs drained, until the tiredness of my bones wracked my small frame across the kitchen. I fled into the room me and my brother shared and I stuffed my face into one of my father's shirts, the ones that Mama never threw out. I cried and cried and cried, even when Mama came in hours later and patted my head, silent tear tracks staining my face. She put her hand on my head and I turned away.
Three years, I had wasted, thinking that I was going to make life better, when really, I was the one who brought pain on those who cared the most for me.
"Baobao," Mama said. "Stop crying. And get your uniform ready, you need to be ready for school tomorrow."
I hadn't gone to school in three years. My uniform would be much too small for me. With a shaky laugh, I told Mama so. She smiled.