I stood facing the rack, no, the wall, of purses. There were so many and I looked at them globally first and individually second. I picked up the purses and inspected their quality. They were very well made and the stitching was impeccable, but I didn’t know anything about that so I guessed that it was impeccable. The purse colors waned from vibrant to mundane, some of them were purple and had raised surfaces and others were plain, the drab eggshell of old ladies. One tag described the purse as mustard. I picked that one up and opened the latch and looked into it. There was a small wad of tissue paper inside and I took it out and held it up to look at it in the overhead fluorescent lights. The paper had been deliberate. Someone, somewhere, made the paper, then crumpled that paper into the ball that I was holding. The paper had a purpose and I put it back and snapped the mustard purse closed again. The tag on the purse declared that it was “Made in China” and it cost 12 dollars.
I left the purse section and walked the tiles of the store. My mind took up the fight and thought about the purses as I walked. The fluorescent light was too bright and I walked the main circuit of the store with my cart. I picked up other items that I thought had merit. There were candles, toys, cards, everything. They were all made in China; I checked all of the tags. I put the items back and surmised that the Target that I stood in, that very one, was solely responsible for the trade deficit between China and the United States. I should have been outraged, but I just made another circuit of the tiles and lights.
I passed a small Oriental woman who worked there. She wore a red, long sleeved shirt and khaki pants and her name tag said, “Pang.” I thought that sounded okay and then I thought about Pang’s day. I couldn’t imagine her correctly as an Asian woman, living in my town, and then, inadvertently, I thought about the purses again. I thought that Pang might have relatives in China, that she might know the purse makers, that she could send them letters on holidays, and she knew the vagaries of the purse production industry. I walked on and my mind ran away with itself, grasping tangentially at things that I couldn’t, that no one could, possibly know.
I couldn’t help myself and I imagined the factories, sitting in some ink washed valley somewhere in China. There were legions of workers filing into the factory's courtyard and the workers gathered there and did calisthenics en masse. Maybe that was Japan, but the image was so strong, I believed that I knew that the factory I saw was the one where the store’s purses were made. Those workers were the ones who stitched the purses, those hands crumpled the paper. One of those people put the wad of paper into the mustard purse. I felt warm all over with the knowledge and I stopped to look at some outdoor Christmas lights.
I picked up the box of lights and looked it over. This box didn’t say where its contents originated, but touted an 80% reduction in the energy used. There was an energy savings of 80%. A little boy came up next to me and I looked at him.
“Can you believe this,” I asked him, “These lights have an energy savings of 80%. Do you realize the hypocrisy in this statement?”
His small eyes misunderstood the words and he said emphatically, “Yeah!” Then he ran back to the cart where his mother stood, boredly surveying merchandise. I put the lights back on the shelf and walked on with my cart. My mind was shaken with the little boy and his mother, but it gradually tended back to the Chinese factory workers. Again I couldn’t help myself and my mind worked up the image of the individual worker, the one, the absolute one who had stitched the mustard purse, the one who crumpled the paper and closed the latch. I saw her clearly in the noise of the factory, she was an island of calm, a Zen nun, and she radiated elegance. Her name was Darla.
I’m pretty sure that wasn’t really her name and that the name was from some long dead aunt, but I had decided. I created her past, complete with her unorthodox parents who were shunned by their village when they named their daughter “Darla”. Why didn’t they choose a traditional name, like Pang? What was their problem? Didn’t they know that Darla was picked on at school because of her name? Still, they encouraged her to excel at school and hoped she’d branch out into mathematics, science, and engineering, maybe all of them. She didn’t, though. She hung around the village, did usual things, and got older. She graduated and her parents insisted that she get a job with her cousin at the new purse factory that opened in the city below the village. Darla worked alongside her cousin in the factory and they traded little jokes about their profession. Darla and her cousin got a studio apartment, or whatever passed for a studio apartment in China, and they spent their days working and their nights walking the town. Darla met a man, a nice Chinese man. His family was nice and he would lunch with her in the factory break-room and enjoy a bowl of noodles together. Darla liked him. They moved in together and she worked at the factory and he drove trucks for the city.
I walked back to the purse wall and stood again, looking at the mass of non-leather material and color palette. I picked up the mustard one again and took it to the register to pay. I wondered then, if Darla knew I would find this. I wondered if she hated me for holding it now and not fully appreciating the craft of her stitches and paper crumpling. I imagined her, one last time, telling her partner and cousin about the selfish, middle aged woman who would hold her purse in America and not appreciate the stitches. Darla’s voice elevated from the gentle sounds of words that I’d never understand into a shrill barking at my ignorance. I paid for the purse and took it over to the exit and dropped it into the big trash can there.
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