The Dark Road (34 page)

‘Get back on your chair and finish writing your diary,’ Meili says, her nerves on edge. Remembering suddenly that she brought some electric plugs back from work today, she places them in the wok, adds some river water and lights the stove.

‘The ball hit my hand and broke my nail . . .’ Nannan mumbles to herself as she draws a picture in her diary.

Might as well stay busy while I wait for the pill to take effect, Meili says to herself, popping some haw flakes into her mouth, hoping that they too will help encourage a miscarriage. The work isn’t too difficult. All she has to do is wait for the plugs to melt, then pick out from the black gloop the brass prongs which the workshop manager will sell tomorrow for three yuan a jin. Once Nannan is asleep and her work is finished, she scrubs the wok, pours half the bottle of castor oil into it, fries an egg and swallows it, then mops up the oil with a dry piece of bread. By midnight, she’s so tired she can hardly keep her eyes open. She turns on the television and sees the Qing Dynasty Empress Cixi tuck into a lavish banquet, then she picks up Nannan’s diary and reads today’s entry: ‘Mummy told me to brush my teeth. I told her my gums hurt, but she looked at me with angry eyes, so I had to brush them. Red-Dress Doll was very naughty today, but after I gave her one of my angry looks, she sat quietly at my feet and let me flick her head . . .’

KEYWORDS:
gritted teeth, sprung mattress, tiled roof, bathed in glory, abortion, Workers’ Day Procession.

AFTER TWO TABLETS
failed to bring about a miscarriage, Meili was worried that if she changed her mind and decided to continue with the pregnancy, the drugs might damage the baby’s brain, so she didn’t dare take any more. When her belly became visibly enlarged, Kongzi was so happy, he stopped playing mahjong with the neighbours in the yard, and instead stays indoors all evening, serving Meili hot meals and cups of tea. Meili feels stifled by his affection, especially now that they’ve moved into a new home with a soft double bed, and he insists on making love to her every night. Meili endures this nightly torment with gritted teeth, hoping that it might cause a miscarriage. Go on then, she says silently when he enters her. As long as there’s a chance the fetus will perish. As Suya wrote in her diary, ‘The fleshy channel between a woman’s legs doesn’t belong to her . . .’ But when she feels Kongzi pressing down on her belly and begin to thrust with force, she often pushes him away and grunts, ‘Stop it. Get off me. Enough . . .’

‘Why do you always push me off just as I’m about to come?’ Kongzi says to her tonight. ‘You’re already knocked up, so what are you afraid of?’

Meili shudders and wipes the sweat from her face as images she knows she can never wipe away return to her mind. She’s surprised that Kongzi hasn’t noticed the change in her. The truth is, since she was raped she has lost all ability to feel pleasure. When Kongzi is approaching climax, she often looks up at him and says blankly, ‘The prenatal handbook said that men shouldn’t penetrate too deeply when a woman’s pregnant,’ then she rolls over and folds her arms over her chest.

‘The baby’s a girl,’ she says to him, staring up at the ceiling. ‘I dreamed about her last night.’

Kongzi is lying on his back, dripping with sweat. Now that his penis has left her body, it has shrivelled up like a snail that’s lost its shell. ‘It can’t be a girl!’ he says. ‘I paid a feng shui expert to examine the dates, and he assured me that it’s a boy. I will call him Kong Heaven, and register him later as Kong Detian, the seventy-seventh generation male descendant of Confucius.’

‘But when have I had a dream that hasn’t proved to be correct?’ she says. Kongzi doesn’t know that, this morning, she summoned up the courage to visit a government hospital. A doctor in the Department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics told her that a free abortion could be arranged for her straight away. A pregnant woman would pay for the procedure on condition that the abortion certificate was made out in her name so that she could carry her own child to term. Meili paced the corridor. If the fetus turned out to be a boy and Kongzi discovered she’d got rid of it, he’d beat her to death. She’d have to tell him she suffered a miscarriage, but what reason could she give? The wrong dose of pills, too much sex, a fetal abnormality? She was certain the truth would come out in the end. Then she thought now that they’re living safely in Heaven, the baby should be given the chance to take a look at the world. She thought how nice it would be for Nannan to have a little brother or sister to play with. Then she thought of Happiness lying on the riverbed, and of Waterborn begging on some street corner in Shenzhen or eating cakes in a house in California, and it occurred to her that the birth of this fourth child might diminish the pain of losing her last two. So, still undecided, she left the hospital and went home.

Kongzi lights a cigarette and stares at Meili’s belly. This one-room house has not only a proper bed with a soft, sprung mattress, but also a table, two chairs, a cupboard and an electric fan, and the rent is just two hundred yuan a month. It may be damp, stuffy and infested with mosquitoes, but it’s a solid brick structure with a proper tiled roof that shelters them from the elements.

‘Get a scan,’ Kongzi says. ‘If it’s a girl, you can have an abortion. My brother and his wife have just had a second daughter, and they won’t be trying again for a son, so it’s all down to me now to carry on the family line.’

‘No, I will not have an abortion,’ Meili says, sensing suddenly that she was wrong ever to contemplate the idea. She glances at Nannan, who’s lying asleep on the long narrow bed Kongzi made for her with scrap timber, and feels a wave of maternal love. ‘Whether it’s a girl or a boy, it’s here through the will of Heaven,’ Meili continues. ‘Look at Nannan. Do you wish I’d had her aborted?’

‘Listen, there’s no need to make up your mind now. Have a scan, then see how you feel.’ Kongzi stubs out his cigarette and drops it into a bowl. Meili gets out of the bed, puts on her underwear and looks outside. The concrete yard is softly lit by beams of light from the surrounding windows. The folding stools have been toppled to the ground, and maggots and flies are crawling over watermelon peel in the corner. The three other one-room houses around the yard are also occupied by migrant families. In the evening, the adults take turns to wash themselves and clean vegetables at the outside tap while the children wrestle with each other or play catch. Today an older child threw a toy truck at Nannan which left a deep cut on her forehead. Meili was furious, but since she couldn’t hit the culprit, she released her anger by slapping Nannan instead.

‘I admit, it’s not great timing,’ Meili says. ‘After four years of aimless travelling, we’ve finally got our lives in order and moved into a proper brick house. I wanted to open my own shop – I know I could have made a success of it. I hoped that in a few years’ time we could buy a car and drive home bathed in glory. But once this child is born, none of that will be possible. I wanted to be a modern woman with a briefcase full of documents and one of those credit cards that you swipe over machines.’ Meili is lying down on the bed again, staring at her swollen feet.

‘Have you forgotten that we’re family planning fugitives? Our residence permits have been annulled. When the whole country becomes linked by computers, every institution will be able to see our criminal records, and no one will issue you with a credit card or a shop licence. So you’d better give up your pipe dream of living a modern life.’

‘I’ll buy fake licences then. In Hong Kong Road, you can buy any fake document you want: ID cards, birth permits, shop licences, degree certificates.’

‘You think I don’t dream of achieving something great, of returning home with my head held high? I’ve always hoped that one day I could open Confucian primary schools in every town and city in China. But no ambition is more important to me than producing a male heir. Once our son is born, we can do whatever we like.’

‘Have you lost your mind? Not content with breaking the family planning laws, you now want to spread Confucianism around the country!’ Meili glances at Nannan again to check that she’s still asleep. ‘Fine, I’ll have a scan. But whether it’s a girl or a boy, it’s my flesh and blood and I will give birth to it. I tell you now, though: this one will be my last.’ She sits back against the pillow, drapes a nightie over her legs and looks Kongzi in the eye. ‘I need to ask you,’ she says gravely. ‘Where did you take Waterborn? I’m her mother. I have a right to know.’

Kongzi throws his hands in the air. ‘Huh! Confucius was right! Of all people, women are the hardest to deal with! You have a “right to know”, you say? There you go again: spitting out words you don’t understand, like a mouse chewing through a dictionary! All right, I’ll tell you. I gave her to the Welfare Office in Dexian. When I went back a week later, they told me a man from Hunan had taken her away.’

‘So she’s still in China. As soon as the One Child Policy is repealed, you must go to Hunan and bring her back . . .’

Rain splatters on the tiled roof and mosquitoes flutter around the ceiling. The infant spirit watches the echoes from the house shake raindrops from the cobwebs in the yard.

‘Congratulations, Kongzi!’ Mother says loudly. ‘For a few grubby coins, you consigned our baby daughter to a life of begging! You know very well that those child traffickers break children’s limbs! You evil bastard! One day you will have to find her. You will have to search for her high and low and bring her back to me.’ Mother puts on a black nightdress and takes a red journal from under her pillow.

‘Write down the Welfare Office’s address and telephone number in here,’ Meili says, handing Kongzi the red journal.

‘So you think the One Child Policy will be repealed soon? Are you planning to start a revolution with Kong Qing? Well, he’s still in prison with three other Kongs from our village. We’re lucky we left when we did.’

‘What other news is there from the village?’ Meili asks, staring at a gecko crawling across the ceiling. A few months ago, Kongzi learned that his sister had married a Pakistani trader she’d met in Tibet, and was so angry he said he’d never speak to her again. He didn’t even send any money to her for the wedding. Since then, Meili hasn’t dared ask him about his family.

‘Kong Wen’s been sacked from the village family planning team, apparently, and has returned to Guangzhou to set up her own business. And that spindly woman, the mother of my old pupil Xiang, has contracted a serious illness. Her husband’s sold all their possessions to try to pay for the medical treatment. Xiang’s dowry wasn’t enough to cover the cost.’

‘What, Xiang’s got married? But she’s only twelve years old. No, of course, we’ve been away so long, she must be sixteen now. Still, that’s very young.’

‘You were only sixteen when you married me,’ Kongzi says proudly.

‘Seventeen,’ Meili corrects him. She remembers the colour photograph of herself aged sixteen, standing arm in arm with her friends Qiu and Yang in the municipal park. All three had their hair in neat ponytails, and she was wearing a cream-coloured jacket and red headscarf, Qiu a blue jumper and Yang a long yellow coat. Meili hadn’t joined the Nuwa International Arts Troupe then, but was already dreaming of being a famous singer. She and her friends had travelled to the county town with a group of Nuwa villagers to take part in the 1 May Workers’ Day Procession. In the evening, the three of them wore lipstick for the first time, and went to a karaoke hall with the village Party Secretary. Meili never saw Qiu again after that night – apparently she stayed on in the town and found a job as a backing singer in another karaoke hall. A year later, she returned to Nuwa Village with ten thousand yuan and bought a house and fifty pigs, but by then Meili had left home and started work at the Sky Beyond the Sky Hotel.

The rain is still falling. It streams over the bowed heads of the birds in the straw nest on the roof, runs down the tiles and gushes over the eaves. Inside the four small houses around the yard, everyone is asleep. The infant spirit watches Mother lying on the bed, her hands resting on her belly, and little Heaven floating in the amniotic fluid inside. For a moment, the silence is broken as Nannan’s electronic toy sings out, ‘I’m a beautiful angel, a beautiful angel . . .’ Then everything goes quiet again until all that can be heard is the sound of falling rain.

KEYWORDS:
dismantle, frightened and sick, bitter-sweet, ultrasound, twins, tenderisers, gel.

WITH AN ENVELOPE
of cash in her small backpack, Meili leaves the workshop and on her way home returns to the lane filled with makeshift shelters and rumbling machines where the illegal clinics are located. In her white shirt, low-cut jeans and sandals, she picks her way over piles of scrap computer monitors. Bare-chested men smeared in black ash stare blankly at her breasts, belly and thighs. Beyond a parked truck loaded with broken printers, she sees the street stall her workmate told her about. She walks around the crates of soft drinks and enters the small house behind. The doctor sitting at the desk is wearing a face mask. At first glance, she looks just like Suya. ‘Your surname isn’t Wang, is it?’ Meili asks her, before she’s even sat down.

‘Yes, it’s Wang, spelt with the water radical.’

‘You look just like a friend of mine – same large eyes and high forehead. She’s from Chengdu in Sichuan. Her surname is Wang, but it’s spelt the usual way.’

‘I’m from Sichuan too, but from Fengjie, on the Yangtze River.’

‘I travelled down there a few years ago. I suppose most of the towns have been demolished by now.’ Meili’s feet are sweating in her tight sandals.

‘Yes, they’ve all been torn down. We could see the Yangtze from the backyard of our old house. Now we’ve been relocated to a village high in the mountains. It’s in the back of beyond and there’s nothing to do . . . So, you’ve come for an ultrasound? How many months gone are you?’

‘About six, I think. But I didn’t have any symptoms during the first three months.’

Dr Wang opens a cupboard and brings out a computer, a probe and a tube of gel, then she lifts Meili’s shirt, lubricates her belly and slides the probe over it. ‘Look, that’s the head,’ she says, pointing at the image on the computer. ‘The eyes. The spine. If there’s one dot here, it’s a girl. If there are two, it’s a boy.’