Spilled Water Read Online Free Page A

me up and down with an improper interest which made me feel humiliated and uneasy.
    Dozens of other young girls were standing on the other side of a rope, most of them at least three or four years older than
     me, some of them clutching scribbled notices, some with boards by their feet. I recognised the girl who had been slapped in
     the street. She was holding a notice which read: ‘I am Jin Yanhua. I am 13. I can cook and I am very obedient.’ She still
     bore the red marks across her cheek from the slap, and her eyes were wild with anguish. A man was leaning across the rope,
     lifting her hair, stroking her bare arm. She shook him off and the man who had slapped her said something to her angrily.
    ‘Go behind the rope, Lu Si-yan,’ Uncle said tersely, ‘and please try to look agreeable.’
    An old man stepped towards me and touched my face. I pulled away in disgust and ducked under the rope, happier to be amongst
     the other girls than with Uncle and the leering men who terrified me. I looked at the notice Uncle had given me. ‘My name
     is Lu Si-yan,’ it read. ‘I am young but can wash, cook and sew. I will be a good servant.’
    How could Uncle do this? How could he? Father had asked him to look after me, not to sell me, for I realised now that this
     was what was happening. Did Mother know just what he was planning? Could she have done anything to stop it? If only Li-hu
     hadn’t been born, we would have managed, Mother and I. We would have done our best and managed. It was Li-hu’s fault. As I
     stood there in my shame and humiliation, a tiny drop of spilled water, I hated my brother.
    One after another, men called me forward to take a closer look at me, to inspect me, like some sort of item in a shop. Some
     of them pointed at me and laughed. Others talked to Uncle in hushed voices, but once I heard him say ‘She is a very obedient
     girl’ and another time I heard ‘You won’t find anyone better’.
    A middle-aged man, short and fat, with dirty fingernails and missing teeth, kept coming back to examine me. I was petrified
     that he was going to choose me, until Uncle sent him away, saying that he couldn’t afford me.
    Another middle-aged man became very agitated with Uncle. He pulled a wad of money from his pocket and waved it in front of
     Uncle’s face, but Uncle shook his head dismissively and pushed the man’s hand away. The man shoved Uncle in the chest, then
     spat on the ground and sputtered, ‘Pah! Your puny little frog is not worth the money you ask. Take her back to your pond then,
     where she’ll spawn a million more, all useless like herself.’
    He marched off through the crowd. Uncle gazed at me awkwardly, then shrugged his shoulders and waited for the next approach.
    By now I was faint with hunger. The smoke and noise and smells fanned a growing sense of unreality which took me far, far
     away from the room and off into a sunlit world, where Father was on the river in his boat and I was skipping along the shore
     waving to him. Suddenly, he caught an enormous fish. He hauled it into the boat, then held it up for me to see. ‘We’ll eat
     well tonight,’ he said but, just as he said it, a dense mist came down and swirled around him. I cried out to him and I heard
     him calling my name, over and over again, but the mist simply swallowed him up as he stood there proudly holding his fish.
    When the mist cleared, Uncle was shaking me by the shoulder, across the rope, and telling me to pick up my notice.
    ‘Pull yourself together, child,’ he hissed. ‘No one will want you if you look ill.’
    What if nobody did want me? I wondered. Would that mean I could go home? Would that mean the nightmare would be over? A flicker
     of hope dared to ignite within me, only to be extinguished instantly when a sombre, thin-faced man approached my uncle. He
     was well dressed in a smart suit, and seemed out of place among the noisy hordes. He was obviously impatient to conduct his
     business and