Ling was told that she lives on an island in the pacific, below Japan and above Australia. A place called Saipan. Ling is an only child. She had never been a good student, and was often caught, by her teachers, daydreaming. She had one of those imaginations that took her other places and then snapped out of it the way a person wakes up from sleep. The recruiter told her parents she would find much success in America, even a white husband. He said, “It only takes one person to make a whole family rich.” Her father borrowed nine months worth of wages, $7,000, and paid the recruiter to ensure Ling's one year contract. At $3.05 an hour, the island's minimum wage, she will pay off her debt in three and a half years.

As soon as she arrived, she was put right to work. The island, she was told, was where factories produced “Made in U.S.A” clothing, but didn't have to abide by U.S. labor laws. She became lost among black ponytails bobbing to the sounds of sewing machines, tick tick tick. The workers separated themselves into two groups, the Chinese and the Filipinos. What began as a language barrier, turned into a competition that the management used against them. The group that did well slept early; the group that did not, worked overtime for free. Their quota was to produce 15,000 garments in one day.

Ling has only been here for three weeks, yet she lives and sleeps sewing machines. They sound like clocks, although not clocks that tick one per second, but 10 or 20. Time passes in a similar fashion. Her job is to sew a collar to a denim jacket. She pushes the material through the machine, cuts the thread with scissors, throws it in a pile, pushes the material through the machine, cuts the thread with scissors, throws it in a pile. The same upward movement. The same dull pain in her shoulder. The same dark blue jacket.

Ling shifts from side to side, adjusting the pad stuck to her underpants. The heat makes her sweat everywhere. Rashes have formed under her arms, along the waist of her pants, and now along her inner thighs. She sits straight, looking over heads, through dust. Three rows in front of her, her bunk-mate Xiao-Yin, is face down-focused as usual. When the others fall asleep, Xiao-Yin will tell her of the women who were fired and became prostitutes for the tourists. Ninety percent of the prostitutes on the island are former Chinese garment workers. After three years of employment, Xiao-Yin is six months away from paying off her recruiter's debt. Her success in the factory has to do with her ability to blend in. “Don't complain, don't fall behind, don't ask for anything, and don't look pretty,” she advises. “The secret is to hear the machines and become one.”

Ling raises her hand for permission to take a bathroom break. Mr. B is the factory manager-a medium-tall, stocky man with dark skin like an African. Although he can't speak Tagalog or Mandarin, just English, the women find him scary. His voice is loud and violent, and when they're behind schedule, he waves his fists like a boxer. He shouts words at her that she can't understand. Dropping her focus, and bobbing her head, she answers, “Yes, Mr. B, yes, yes.”

Her workstation is in the center of a large room, amidst rows packed densely into a small space. In order for her to walk to the aisle, she must interrupt the entire assembly line. She says, “ma fan ni,” excuse me, to each seamstress in her way, who stops their work to stand and move their chairs forward.

Mr. B is not happy with this interruption and screams, “Get back to work!”

Ling covers the back of her pants with her hands, running with thighs pressed together. Two Filipino workers look up and exchange words judgingly. A Chinese girl says, “Don't be long.” The brightness of the sun makes her squint and for a moment she is briefly blinded, but within a couple of steps, she can smell the outhouses. They look like tall shipping crates; dark rot spreads from the bottom. More flies than she has ever seen circles the area.

Ling stacks newspapers into her underpants, and is sure that the rash along her inner thighs will spread. But she prefers the discomfort over the humiliation of blood on the back of her pants. She has seen the stained underwear strung in her room, the napkins, paper towels and pads in the garbage cans. All of this blood with nowhere to go. Her mother would say, “This is what happens when women live together without men.”

She swats away a fly and heads back to the factory. She counts off from the front - eight rows back, six girls in, and finds her empty seat. Mr. O, the director of the factory, paces the aisles in a nearby section. Mr. O is an American, but different than Mr. B, because his skin turns red under the sun. His balding head sprouts brown hairs that don't cover his scalp successfully. He is tall and round, and although he never yells, the girls fear him, too.

Xiao-Yin had warned her, “Mr. O takes beautiful women into his office.” She advised Ling never to brush her hair, never to dress in revealing clothes, and to practice her ugly face in the mirror. “If you get pregnant, they will force you to have an abortion.” She can feel Mr. O's eyes watching her walk, so she juts out her bottom lip, squints her right eye, and hunches her shoulders like an old woman. She squeezes her way back to her seat, interrupting the row of productivity again, “Ma fan ni, xie xie, ma fan ni, xie xie, ma fan ni.”

A Chinese girl says, “Don't let us fall behind.”

“Dui bu qi,” “I'm sorry.” Ling settles into her seat, moving quickly to make up for lost time: push the material through the machine, cut the thread with scissors, throw it in a pile, push the material through the machine, cut the thread with scissors, throw it in a pile… tick tick tick.

***

Ling's fingers have turned completely numb. The most common accident in the factory is the needle running over skin without the worker noticing. Only when the worker sees the blood will she realize she's hurt herself. Xiao-Yin lost two fingernails during an overtime shift. The scars on a woman's hands reveal how long they've worked here.

Mr. B scolds a worker who has fallen asleep behind her. His voice rings in her ears, which sends an urgent shiver up her spine. Ling imagines that Mr. B is not actually the unhappy factory manager, but has a secret life, as the stable family man. Away from the compound, on the island with 60,000 inhabitants, he is married to a local woman, equally as dark, who has given him a son. He spends his weekends near the ocean, fishing with a harpoon and net. When the sun sets on the Pacific, he emerges from the water to bring fish for his family, who all wait for him on the beach with red rice, potato salad, and sweet coconut snacks. He will grill the fish with onions, salt and pepper, a touch of chili sauce, encouraging his son to eat more so that he can grow up to be big and strong like his father. He will smile, his voice won't be gruff, and say, “Work hard and you will be successful like me.”

Suddenly, a woman in front of Ling stands up and screams, “She is dead!” She points to a girl who is unconscious, half draped over a seat. Her needle continues working, stabbing into still material. Mr. B yells instructions and workers spill into the aisle. He charges though the narrow opening, knocking down chairs. By then, other women have grown curious over the commotion and stop to see who has fallen. They ask, “Is she Filipino or is she Chinese?” This does not please Mr. B, who shouts with fists waving, “Get back to work!” This causes every worker to sit down and resume their sewing. He picks up the girl, whose arms dangle limp like a doll's.

Ling does not believe that the girl is dead, but merely passed out from heat exhaustion. The island's humidity takes time to get used to. Ling stopped carrying a bottle to work, but trained herself to stay productive off of one cup of water. Perhaps the girl who sat in front of her is new to the factory. She will eventually learn, as they all have, how to survive. Two more shifts like this and the girl will be punished for her weaknesses. They will send her back to China and her family will owe the company more money than she had made.

Ling strives to be as successful as Xiao-Yin. She must blend in like every other worker, in dress, hairstyle, mannerisms and work. If going to the bathroom means laziness, then she will drink less water. If her appearance is unique, then she will dress in unappealing clothing. If it takes three years to pay off her debts, then she will work with little complaint, with little desire, until she is through. Three more years of this and she'll be granted a U.S. Green Card. Her entire family can be American.

***

The hours pass and Ling needs to change her papers. Mr. B grants her permission to use the bathroom. His voice has grown softer, almost melodic, with her exhaustion. At this point in the day, she struggles to hear beyond the tickings. The machines run through her veins like a pulse.

Ling returns with fresh paper in her underpants to find Mr. O and Mr. B, at the end of her row, pointing at the missing chairs. She approaches the men slowly. “Dui bu qi. Ma fan ni.” She points to her empty chair, fixing her features to reveal her best ugly face.

Mr. O steps aside and offers her a hand-palm open, stubby fingers wiggling. The buttons of his shirt are half undone, revealing a round belly. His skin, sticky like sugar water, swallows her hand aggressively. His thumb traces her nail and she begins to regret this gift she has given him. She retracts her hand with a tug, and makes her way back to her seat. “Ma fan ni, xie xie, ma fan ni, xie xie, ma fan ni.” She does not rush, and Mr. B does not yell at her. She goes back to pushing denim through the machine.

***

Last year, when Ling was twenty-years-old, her mother told her a story of first love. Ling was not aware that her mother had been in love before her father. Her mother confessed that nothing physical had happened between her beloved, not a kiss, not a touch. They were too young, too nervous, to act upon their feelings. Bai was the son of her uncle-her first cousin, who was five years older then she was. They were left together while the adults played mahjong. He expressed his affections to her in poems more beautiful then any book of poems she had ever read. When Bai married another woman, in an arranged marriage ordained by a matchmaker, Ling's mother was heartbroken. She grew weak from not eating. When Bai's wife gave birth to their first son, thoughts of suicide crossed her mind. Life was too unfair to dangle a love so strong, within her reach, and then to take it away. But then it was her turn to marry, and she met Ling's father. At that moment, she realized her fate would take her down another path. “Often life may seem unfair, but time will pass and give you clarity. Obstacles in life make you stronger.”

Ling did not know that her mother possessed such romanticism. Before, she always viewed her mother as strong and independent - a girl from a wealthy family forced to survive poverty. There were other experiences that Ling believed were far greater obstacles, like the Japanese invasion of World War II and the Cultural Revolution. Before the Communist took over China, Ling's grandfather was the country's most renowned physicist. He owned a sprawling house with a courtyard, which was filled with servants and mistresses. But during Mao's reign, he was sent to the countryside to be “re-educated.” He died plowing the fields - an academic without the skills to work with his hands. How could her mother compare human suffering, war, and starvation, to a schoolgirl's crush on a cousin?

***

The work bell rings, and Ling waits for the girls to exit; she stands up and stretches her arms. She reaches for the ceiling with the right arm then the left. Stretch stretch stretch. The room has grown quiet and Ling whispers, “tick tick tick.” She says it faster and faster, “tick tick tickticktick,” until her tongue vibrates against the roof of her mouth. A Pilipino curses her in Tagalog. At least, judging from the tone, Ling believes they're curse words. She's too exhausted to discern between words she can and can't understand. All the shouting rings in her ears the same way. She shrugs her shoulders and says, “tick tick tick.” The woman looks angry and this makes Ling laugh. “Get it? It's a stitch and it's a second and it's all manmade.” This philosophical moment strikes Ling as deeply profound. One day, long ago, someone just like her, defined time.

Mr. B is waiting for her at the end of her row. He motions her to follow him. Understanding her fate, she nods her head and says, “yes, Mr. B, yes, yes.” They walk past sewing machines to a corner office with glass windows. She looks inside into the brightly colored world, where the lights shine like the sun, where the floor is soft and clean enough to sleep on, where the sewing machine is replaced with a fancy computer. Mr. O's wooden desk is so shiny, she wants to press her cheek against it.

The air-conditioned room refreshes her skin, and she sighs a soft, “awww.” Mr. O smiles at her with dark sunken eyes. His English words chirp like a morning bird's song, as the cool air whirls magically around her, the office door shuts softly, and the plastic blinds draw ceremoniously shut. Mr. O draws her to the couch, and places a hand on her face. She drops into his cupped palm, which is surprisingly not sticky but soft, like a pillow she could take a night's rest on. Ling has spent so long dreading this exact moment, stuck alone in Mr. O's office, but now that she is here, she is surprisingly at peace.

Deepening his voice and inching closer - his breath like the steam of a kettle - he leans in to kiss her. His lips brush hers, gentle like a mother kissing a baby's forehead, and she suddenly becomes aware of menstrual fluids leaving her body. She imagines the papers overflowing with her blood, seeping down her legs, through her underwear, through her thin work pants, onto the cream-colored couch. What if Mr. O overlooks her stain, and turns off the light, locks the office door, unaware of the bright red spot fading into a deep maroon. The next morning, he'll unsuspectingly invite a client into his office, a meeting that will determine essential export/import investments. He will smile in ironed clothes with arms outstretched, as the client, noticing the stain on the fabric refuses to take a seat. The client will picture the menstrual fluid's germ-infested journey and with disgust, tell Mr. O that in his thirty-five years of business he has never seen anything like this before. He will lecture Mr. O on the importance of abiding national health codes. Not only will he never to do business with Mr. O again, he will report this to the health inspector, and recommend that the factory is shut down forever. Meanwhile Ling will be working outside, eight rows back, six girls in, pushing the material through the machine, cutting the thread with scissors, and throwing it into a pile, pushing the material through the machine, cutting the thread with scissors, and throwing it into a pile.

Mr. O sticks his tongue between her lips. It is slippery and curious. She touches the roof of her mouth, and with an exhalation, releases a succession of tick tick tickticktickticks. She laughs. Not a dainty laugh, but a high-pitched shrill that echoes off the walls. Her chest shakes, tears gather in her eyes. Mr. O grabs her by the shoulders and throws her to the floor. He slaps her hard across the cheek, and even then, with her face stinging, she cannot stop laughing. She curls up into a little ball, feeling the soft carpet under her shoulder - laughing, dreaming, sewing.

Moments later, Mr. B is there to pick her off the floor, and escort her out of the office. She takes a final look at Mr. O sitting in his chair. He has buttoned up his shirt, smoothed down his hairs, and sits straight in his seat looking professionally at the monitor. She realizes that Mr. O is not a scary man, but a sad one. He is stuck on this island, too, except he doesn't have a family to fish for.

The lights in the factory have been turned off, excluding the single bulb near the exit. The sewing machines, now empty, have disappeared under the darkness. Ling trips on a piece of cloth, and grabs onto Mr. B's arm to support herself. His muscles tighten to catch her. Holding onto his thick arms, she says, “dui bu qi, xie xie.” He nods. They walk towards the exit through the silent room. She whispers, “tick tick tick,” and imagines Mr. B smiling.