Cho Chang
The first thing that my mother taught me at home, translated to English, roughly means, “Don’t speak unless spoken to.” I’m Cho Chang and this is my story.
I lived in a big house in the Hunan province. The house was a typical Chinese house. It had two floors and a large courtyard. People who hadn’t seen my house believed rumors that my courtyard alone was bigger than two of the other houses put together. Those who had seen my house, however, did not ‘believe’ because they knew for sure.
My family was quite distant. My mother and father gave me all the amenities a girl could want. In exchange, I was well behaved and silent. My parents were strict. The warmth and hugs of the other mothers were not the style of my family. When I come home from school, my mother would not ask me, “How was your day?” Instead, she silently would point to the door of the bathroom.
My father is a rich businessman. The name is known all over the province. My father owns a mine. He is powerful and influential.
I went to school like other children, but I was served special food and had a special seat. Even the teachers favored me over the other students. This is actually not as fun as it sounds.
I had many friends, yes, but they were the kind that wanted my friendship due to my status and not my personality. And if I had many friends then I had twice as many foes. The children whose fathers were my father’s rivals, the poor ones, and the intelligent ones, who were jealous of the favoritism showered on me by the teachers.
My father too had many enemies. They would do anything to control his mines. My uncle hated my father. He would do anything to control my father’s mines. But my father was too well protected by security.
The first attacks were made to seem like accidents. A car swerving dangerously across the road, a rod of iron falling and narrowly missing me. One day, I came home with a wound on my forearm, a result of a nasty fall. Only then did my father believe my seemingly fantastic stories about my horrific experiences. He sent me bodyguards to take me to and from school.
I was walking home from school one day, when my bodyguards began acting strangely. One of them took out a large rod. It smelled very strange. Then everything was black.
I woke to find myself in a room with whitewashed walls. There were no windows that I could see. Yet I didn’t seem to be suffocating. My watch had been taken away, as had all my jewellery. I began to tap the walls.
A man opened the door and whispered softly, “Don’t worry, I’m not one of them. I’ve come to help you to escape ... what are you doing?”
I replied cautiously, “I’m finding a weak spot in the plaster. Oh here it is!”
I had been tapping the wall for the past fifteen minutes and had at last heard a hollow sound on the wall.
I explained “I’ve been here for at least a few hours. I’m still alive and am not suffocating so there must be air passage. The door has been covered with weather strippings to seal the room to make it soundproof. But it also cuts off circulation. So the air must be entering from elsewhere. I guessed it was through an opening in the plaster. So I started looking for weak spots in the wall. This spot I’ve found does have an opening.”
The man was looking at me with a mixture of surprise and impressment. I scratched at the plaster to make a decent sized hole through which I climbed. I looked back.
“Are you coming?”
He grinned, “Sure.”
We escaped onto the main road and he carried me home.
“A little princess deserves some royal treatment doesn’t she?” he said. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said and done for me in my life.
“I’m a spy, Cho,” he said. “It’s not only my job to find gangsters, but also my job to find young recruits. I could send you to a school where they train children to be spies. Your parents wouldn’t know. They’ll think it’s a regular boarding school. What do you say?”
I beamed at him, words not sufficient to express my gratitude.
When I reached home, the man walked up to my father.
He explained in low tones everything that happened, except, he didn’t mention that I was the one who had thought of a scheme to save my own life. Instead, he made it seem like he was the one who had protected me.
This may seem upsetting but it really wasn’t. I would not have liked my father to know about my ingenuity. I’d like it better to be left alone. The man seemed to sense that.
He handed my father an envelope and left. He paused before walking out the door. He leant over to me and whispered, “I’ll be back for you, princess!”
Later that night, my father called me to his room. He pointed at the letter and said, “I have decided to send you to a boarding school. Tomorrow, you will be dropped at the station. He took out a train ticket from the envelope and handed it to me. “That is all. You may go.”
I maintained a straight face all through the conversation. When I reached my room, though, I could not contain my glee. A maid came up to help me pack my bag.
I couldn’t believe it. For the first time, I was free. This school would be different. No one would know where I was from. I would start on a fresh page. Maybe, this was my chance to make some real friends. I smiled myself to sleep.