Dr Gang lifts the syringe and stabs the needle into Meili’s upper arm. Meili sees the bulb dangling in front of her and the light filtering through cracks in the steel door begin to splinter and blur.
‘Where were you off to when I passed you in the corridor this morning?’ she hears the woman say.
‘To the latrines. The wawa I bought yesterday gave me the runs.’
‘Tell your wife that wawas must be soaked in boiling water and scraped clean before they’re cooked . . . Right, I think she’s under now. Lift her onto the table . . .’
The infant spirit watches Mother being tied to the steel surgical table all those years ago, her hands bound in plastic and hemp ropes, her pale, exposed bulge resembling a pig on a butcher’s table.
A man in a white coat rubs his nose, then plucks Mother’s knicker elastic and watches her flinch. ‘Give her another shot, to be safe,’ he says.
‘Don’t kill my baby, don’t touch my –’ Mother splutters, white foam bubbling from her mouth. But the man slides his hands beneath Mother’s bottom and pulls off her knickers. ‘Hooligan!’ Mother weeps. ‘If my baby dies, its spirit will haunt you for eternity.’ She tries to spit the foam covering her mouth onto his face, but it rises only slightly then falls back on her lips.
The man begins to prod Mother’s belly.
‘Don’t do it, I beg you . . .’ she moans. ‘Let me keep this child. I won’t have another, I promise . . . It’s a Chinese citizen. It has a right to live . . .’
The man is handed a second syringe with a much longer needle. He inserts the tip into Mother’s belly and pushes it all the way in.
‘Stop, stop! Don’t hurt my baby . . .’
The infant spirit observes its first incarnation writhe and squirm as the long needle enters its head. When the cold astringent liquid is released into the brain, the spirit sees the cells shiver and contract, and the fetus flail about in the amniotic fluid, pounding Mother’s warm uterine walls, then gradually grow weaker and weaker until all that moves is its quivering spine.
‘Is this what your mothers brought you into the world for?’ Mother cries out to the men. ‘To kill babies? Well, you’d better kill me too, while you’re about it . . .’
‘Good work, Dr Gang!’ the woman says. ‘You must have been studying me on the sly.’
‘It was much simpler than this morning’s one. Look, when you press the belly here you can see the head clearly. It was easy to hit the target.’
Ignoring her moans and handling her as roughly as they would a corpse, the doctors part Meili’s legs, slide a speculum into her vagina, mop up the discharge, then, when the mouth of the cervix is visible, insert a prostaglandin suppository. Meili tries to scream but can produce only a soft sigh. She tries to roll onto her side but, apart from her neck, nothing will move. ‘Forgive me, Happiness,’ she whispers. ‘I couldn’t protect you. I’d kill myself if I could, so that we could die together, but my hands and feet are bound . . .’ She lifts her head, squeezes her eyes to expel her tears and stares at her belly. A sharp pain shoots through her womb, spreads to her lower back and flows to every part of her body.
‘Goddess Nuwa, Mother of Humanity, rescue me!’ Mother wails. ‘Oh, Father of Darkness—’
‘What a fine voice you have,’ the man says coldly. ‘Your cries won’t change anything, though. We’ve seen it all in this room: vomit, faeces, blood, urine, screaming tantrums. But however much the women curse and resist, they must all surrender their babies to us in the end. You think you can defy the state? Don’t waste your breath.’
‘When we tied you to this table there were two of you, but when you get off there’ll be just one,’ a male nurse in a blue hat tells her softly.
‘Devils! Animals!’ Meili moans. She tries to cross her legs to close her cervix, but all she can feel is her toes clench slightly. The hot air in the room smells of deep-fried sausage.
‘May you die without sons or grandsons! May your family lines perish!’ Mother cries, drenched in sweat, her lips the colour of frozen meat.
‘If you want to leave this room alive, you’d better shut up!’ the male nurse says, taking off his blue hat and fanning his face with it.
‘Yes, if you don’t keep quiet, you’ll be responsible for any medical accident that might happen in this room,’ says the woman. ‘Your womb belongs to the state. Getting pregnant without authorisation is against the law. Argue your case with the government, if you want. Go to America – see what they say. China’s population control policy has the full support of the United Nations. Do you understand, you ignorant peasant?’
‘Doctors have a duty to rescue the dying and heal the wounded, but you—’
‘We’re professional surgeons. We had well-paid hospital jobs. You think we wanted to come here and operate on you lot? For the measly bonus they give us?’
‘If you don’t like this job, I’ll tell the director to transfer you back home,’ says the woman. The men behind her chuckle.
The blood-engorged walls of Meili’s womb begin to soften and the cervix is prised apart. She watches blood trickle down her thigh towards the fingers of her left hand, then sees the trickle become a stream which runs along the table’s incline and falls onto the floor.
‘This imported oxytocin seems to take effect much faster. Look, the membranes have already broken.’
The woman walks round and takes a look. ‘What thick black hair it has! Let’s use the forceps.’
Meili senses what feels like a hot soldering iron enter her body. When she hears the sound of ripping flesh, in her mind she sees the baby’s eyes, ears, throat.
‘Mother, help me!’ she howls through every strand of her hair. ‘Don’t come out, my child. Don’t come out into this evil world. Stay inside me and we can go to our deaths together . . .’ But the forceps continue to press around the baby and yank it from her flesh.
Hearing the baby cry, Meili lifts her head, desperate to catch a glimpse of it.
‘It’s still alive, the stubborn little thing,’ Dr Gang says, holding Happiness by the neck. ‘What shall we do with it?’ Happiness kicks its little legs about just as it did in the womb. Meili looks at the space between its legs. It’s a boy. She tries with her eyes to reach out to him, but soon all she can see is the colour red.
‘Strangle it,’ the woman says. ‘We’ll register it as a stillbirth. Don’t wipe its face. Illegal babies aren’t entitled to have their mucus removed. Squeeze the neck here. That’s right. Keep squeezing. That’s it . . .’
When Happiness’s body turns stiff, Dr Gang drops it into a plastic bag as though it were a criminal who’s just been dragged from an execution ground.
Meili cranes her neck, straining to catch another glimpse of her son. ‘Your mother heard you cry three times, my child. I heard you. Come back to me soon in your next incarnation and I’ll give you my milk to drink . . .’ She looks up at the doctors, and with no strength left in her voice mutters: ‘Murderers, murderers . . .’
‘I’m going to miss the afternoon boat and won’t get home until ten. I bet my son will sneak off to that damn internet cafe . . . Wen, fill this basin with water.’
‘They’ve just done the woman next door as well. Whose name shall I put on the abortion certificate?’
‘Guo Ni, the wife of the Road Bureau chief. She gave birth to a second son yesterday. The chief gave the clinic twenty thousand yuan this morning, so we’ll all receive a good bonus this month.’
‘It’s not your son you should be worrying about, Dr Su. I heard your husband visits the sauna house every night on his way home from work. Won’t be long before he finds himself a “second wife”.’
‘You want to break up our marriage? No chance!’
‘You don’t believe me?’ says Dr Gang, pulling off his bloodstained surgical gloves. ‘Just wait and see.’ He sits on a plastic chair, dangles a sandal from his toes and puts a cigarette in his mouth.
‘Stop stirring things up. And go outside if you want to smoke.’
The electric fan overhead circulates the smell of stale blood through the room. Meili’s placenta flops onto the metal table like a wet, purple sock.
The woman in white coils the remains of the umbilical cord around her gloved hand and puts the placenta inside a second plastic bag.
‘That placenta looks nice and plump.’
‘Well, you can’t have it. The Party Secretary has already reserved it . . .’
Meili feels as though she’s floating on water. Her thoughts become foggy and vague. Like the severed neck of a duck, the hole between her legs drips with dark blood.
When she returns to consciousness, the bulb is still shining and the electric fan still whirring. She remembers the image of Kongzi being forced onto the deck and handcuffed. The girl on night duty is curled up on the desk, fast asleep. Empty intravenous bags hang from a nail next to a clock with stationary hands. The room smells like rotten fish. Suddenly aware that she’s lying on the surgical table naked from the waist down, she lifts her limp hands to shield herself and discovers the ropes have been removed. She tries to sit up but can’t summon the energy. Her womb feels utterly empty. A jolt of pain shoots through her lower abdomen. Her legs are still leaden and numb. From a radio further down the corridor, a man’s voice sings, ‘
I’ve just met a beautiful woman with soft arms and dewy eyes . . .
’
The girl gets off the desk and rubs her eyes. ‘You’ve woken up, then,’ she says to Meili. ‘Here – once you’ve signed this form and paid the bill, you can leave.’ She takes Meili’s pillow and pulls off the case. Meili’s left arm is so swollen from the injection that she can’t bend it. ‘This bag is for you, too,’ the girl says. ‘There’s a free bottle of mineral water inside, four packs of condoms and a contraceptive handbook. Now, please get off the table. I need to wash it.’
After carefully shifting her legs to the side, Meili leans on the girl and lowers her feet to the ground, but as soon as she puts weight on them, her knees buckle. She collapses back onto the table and pulls her dress over her belly. The girl mops up the blood and amniotic fluid that has dripped onto the floor then helps Meili put on her knickers. Meili rolls onto her side, looks down and sees Happiness lying in the plastic bag below. His tiny corpse reminds her of the chickens she used to buy freshly plucked and slaughtered from the village market. He’s floating in a shallow pool of fetal and maternal blood, his eyes and mouth wide open.
‘Yes, that’s your baby,’ the girl says, glancing down. ‘If you want me to get rid of it, you’ll have to sign the form and settle the bill.’
‘He’s my son. I want to take him with me.’
Suddenly the door swings open and Kongzi charges in, pushing back the officer escorting him. When he sees the blood on Meili’s legs he explodes with rage. ‘Fucking bastard! May your family line perish! You bastard, you fucking bastard—’
‘Swear at me again and I’ll strangle you,’ the officer barks.
The girl hands Kongzi the bill. ‘It’s all itemised,’ she says. ‘Two hundred and ten yuan for the intrauterine injection, 160 for the anaesthetic, 190 for miscellaneous expenses – which is the fee for disposing of the corpse – then there’s laundry, labour. It comes to a total of 775 yuan. The usual fee for an eighth-month termination is 1,400 yuan, so you’ve been given a 50 per cent discount. I’d pay up and leave, if I were you. If you haven’t gone by midnight, you’ll be charged an extra thirty yuan for the room. You can take the form home and fill it out later. Just sign here, agreeing that you, Comrade so-and-so, willingly consented to terminate the pregnancy in accordance with state guidelines, and in so doing have made a glorious contribution to China’s population control efforts.’
‘You’ve killed our baby,’ Kongzi says, red with anger. ‘And now you want us to give you money and sign forms?’
‘Forget about the form if you want,’ says the officer, ‘but next time the Family Planning Commission arrests you, you’ll be sorry.’
‘Let’s pay the money and leave, Kongzi,’ Meili says, leaning down and picking up the plastic bag with both hands.
‘You can’t take the baby with you,’ the officer says. ‘It’s against the rules. Throw it in the bin. What do you want a dead baby for, anyway?’
‘We have a right to take our child away,’ Kongzi says. He takes a wad of cash from his trouser pocket, hands it to the girl and signs the form.
‘I warn you,’ says the officer. ‘We’re in the Three Gorges Epidemic Prevention Zone. If you dare bury that baby anywhere around here, you’ll be arrested and fined.’
‘Arrest me then, arrest me!’ Kongzi shouts. Two security guards appear, seize Kongzi by the arms and fling him out onto the street. Clutching the plastic bag, Meili carefully dismounts the table and hobbles out of the room, leaning against the walls for support. As soon as she leaves the main entrance, she crumples to her knees. Kongzi rushes over and pulls her up.
‘Get lost now, you vagrant scum!’ the officer shouts as they walk away.
A man on a motorbike pulls up and says, ‘Five yuan a trip. I’ll take you anywhere. Are you coming?’
Kongzi tries to help Meili onto the back seat. ‘I can’t get on,’ she cries. The blood clots clogging her vagina have begun to harden, and she’s terrified she’ll haemorrhage if she opens her legs. Gently, Kongzi lifts her left leg and moves it over the back seat. Squealing softly, Meili lowers herself onto the seat. Her face turns deathly white. ‘Does it hurt?’ Kongzi asks, sitting down behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist. ‘No, no,’ she hisses through her teeth. ‘Let’s go back to the boat.’ She closes her eyes and rests her head on the driver’s back. ‘Did you leave Nannan alone?’ she asks Kongzi. ‘What if she’s fallen overboard?’ The motorbike drives down the broken mountain road. No matter how hard Meili is jolted, her hand remains fiercely clamped around the plastic bag on her lap.
KEYWORDS:
newly hatched carp, water heaven, red dress, frozen blood, funeral song.