The Garlic Ballads

Jinju shrank inward until her legs froze and her lips were tightly shut. Lowering her head in abject shame, she held on to Gao Ma’s jacket. Feelings of remorse returned, and a sense that the road ahead was sealed to her. Thoughts of the future were terrifying.
    Meekly she followed Gao Ma up the stairs and stood beside him on the filthy tiled floor, finally breathing a sigh of relief. The vendors, quiet now, were beginning to doze off. It was probably just my imagination, she comforted herself. They didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. But then a frazzled, slovenly old woman walked out of the building and, with loathing in her dark eyes, glared at Jinju, whose heart shuddered in her chest cavity. The old woman walked down the steps, sought out a secluded corner, dropped her pants, and peed on the ground.
    When Gao Ma wrapped his hand around the door handle, slick from coundess thousands of greasy hands, Jinju’s heart shuddered strangely again. The door creaked as he opened it a crack, releasing a blast of hot, nauseating air into Jinju’s face that nearly sent her reeling. Still, she followed him into the station, where someone who looked like an attendant yawned grandly as she crossed the floor. Gao Ma dragged Jinju over to the person, who turned out to be a very pregnant woman with a faceful of moles.
    “Comrade, when does the bus for Lanji leave?” he asked.
    The attendant scratched her protruding belly and looked at Gao Ma and Jinju out of the corner of her eye. “Don’t know. Try the ticket counter.” She was nice-looking and soft-spoken. “Over there,” she added, pointing with her hand.
    Gao Ma nodded and said “Thank you”—three times.
    The line was short, and he was at the ticket window in no time. A moment later he had their tickets in hand. Jinju, who hadn’t let go of his jacket all the while he was buying the tickets, sneezed once.
    As she stood in the doorway of the huge waiting room, Jinju was terrified by the thought that everyone was looking at her, studying her grimy clothes and mud-spattered shoes. Gao Ma led her into the waiting room, whose floor was carpeted with melon-seed husks, candy wrappers, fruit skins, gobs of phlegm, and standing water. The oppressively hot air carried the stink of farts and sweat and other nameless foul odors that nearly bowled her over; but within a few minutes she had gotten used to it.
    Gao Ma led her in search of seats. Three rows of benches painted an unknowable color, running the length of the room, were filled with sleeping people and a few seated passengers squeezed in among them. Gao Ma and Jinju spotted an empty place on a bench next to a bulletin board for newspapers, but upon closer inspection they saw that it was all wet, as if a child had peed on it. She balked, but he just brushed the water off with his hand. “Sit down,” he said. “ ‘Conveniences at home, trouble on the road.’ You’ll feel better once you get off your feet.”
    Gao Ma sat down first, followed by a scowling Jinju with her swollen, puffy legs. Sure enough, she soon felt much better. For now she could lean back and present a smaller target for prying eyes. When Gao Ma told her to get some sleep, since their bus wasn’t due to leave for an hour and a half, she shut her eyes, even though she wasn’t sleepy. Transported back to the field, she found herself surrounded by jute stalks on the sides and the sharp outlines of leaves and the cold gleam of the sky above. Sleep was out of the question.
    Three of the four glass panes over the gray-green bulletin board were broken, and a couple of sheets of yellowed newspaper hung from shards of broken glass. A middle-aged man walked up and tore off a corner of one of them, all the while looking around furtively. A moment later, the pungent odor of burning tobacco drifted over, and Jinju realized that the newspaper was serving as the man’s roll-your-own paper. Why didn’t I think to use it to dry the bench before we sat down? she wondered, as she looked down at her shoes. The caked-on mud was dried and splitting, so she scraped it off with her finger.
    Gao Ma leaned over and asked softly, “Hungry?”
    She shook her head.
    “I’m going to get something to eat,” he said.
    “Why? We’ll have plenty of opportunities to spend our money from here on out.”
    “People are iron,” he said, “and food is steel. I need to keep up my strength to find work. Save my seat.”
    After he laid his bundle beside her on the