Part 12 (1/2)

'Think about your future, Meili,' says Hua. 'Bringing up a handicapped child is expensive, and exhausting too. All that money and effort, and you won't even be able to marry her off in the end!'

Meili crosses her legs, rests a foot on a burnt tin can and pushes her nipple back into Waterborn's mouth. 'What does your husband do, Hua?' she asks.

'He works at the Radiance Hair Factory. I believe your husband's delivered some stock to them.'

'What do they do with the hair?' Meili asks, coiling her own hair into a bun then securing it with a twig.

'If it's long, they make wigs out of it. If it's short, they ferment it.' The two sisters are now sitting down on the beer crate, cooling themselves with the paper fans Nannan has just made.

'Ferment it? To make shampoo?' Meili closes her eyes briefly and imagines sailing upstream to a clean stretch of the Xi River, then jumping in and was.h.i.+ng herself with soap. Although according to custom she is allowed to bathe now that her confinement is over, she still wouldn't dare enter the filthy creek. Kongzi brings back bottles of clean river water from his trips, but never enough to wash more than her hands and face.

'See that brand of soy sauce you have there?' says Hua, pointing her fan at the bottle. 'It's made from fermented hair. Hair is amazing stuff: it's full of nutritious protein and amino acids, and it never rots. A corpse's hair can survive thousands of years.'

Waterborn frowns nervously. She has very little hair on her scalp, and small scratches on her eyelids and forehead. Although she's in the shade, she doesn't dare open her eyes. Her damp face glistens like a peeled lychee.

'I've heard that parents in the village mutilate their babies then rent them out to illegal gangs,' Meili blurts, unable to restrain her curiosity.

'Nonsense!' exclaims Hua, the gold wedding ring glinting on her chubby finger. 'Only a couple of families have done that. They may have nice houses now, but no one will speak to them. They've ruined the reputation of the village.'

'She's got your ears, I see,' says Gu, 'and your upward-slanting eyes.'

'Thank goodness the family planning officers are relaxed here, or I would have got into deep trouble,' Meili says.

'They used to be much stricter,' Hua replies. 'When the Fujian couple's third daughter was just three days old, the officers came down here and drowned her in the pond.'

'No!' gasps Meili, her eyes moving to the pond's still surface. The drake is floating in the middle, his beak in the air, while the ducks drift slowly around him with bowed heads.

'No, they didn't drown the baby they kicked her to death up there,' Gu says, pointing to the terraced hill behind. A dog's black tail darts down a path running between the overgrown fields.

'I heard someone's offered you seven thousand yuan for her already,' Hua whispers to Meili.

'If you wait any longer, the price will go down,' Gu says softly.

'So, you're agents?' Meili asks, staring at the crate lying at the edge of the creek, which she uses as a rubbish bin to keep the flies away from the hut.

'It can't be cheap, rearing ducks. Look, it's not as if you're paying Sister Mao to break her legs. You'll be selling her to an orphanage who will export her to a foreign country where there are no mosquitoes in summer, no flies in winter, and medical care is free. She'll be in Heaven!'

'Your baby's r.e.t.a.r.ded, no doubt about it. So do it for her sake. If not for her sake, then do it for your husband and your elder daughter.'

'But I heard that if orphanages can't get the children adopted, they sell them to child traffickers who break their limbs and force them to beg on the streets,' Meili says testily.

'No, no, that's complete nonsense,' Gu says, flicking a fly away from her bottle of fizzy orange.

'Trust us, egg lady, we wouldn't lie to you,' Hua says. The drake on the pond puffs out his chest and grunts.

'My name is Meili so don't call me ”egg lady”!' Meili says, staring down angrily at the plantain leaves on the ground.

'But that's what we call people who live on boats. Perhaps you northerners use a different term.'

'We're not from the north, and we're not from the south we're from the very centre, just like this!' Meili says, pointing to her crotch, then laughing triumphantly. The sisters roll their eyes, not knowing where to look. 'Yes, I was born in the birthplace of Nuwa, the G.o.ddess of fertility and the founder of the Chinese race. So don't patronise me.'

Gu pulls out a box from her bag. 'Try one of these, my dear. I made them myself. You've only recently finished your confinement. You need to build up your strength.'

Meili takes the box and lifts the lid. 'How pretty! Nannan, come and look! I've never seen sticky rice cakes as green as this before.'

'It's a local speciality,' Hua says. 'We colour glutinous rice with crushed motherwort, then divide it into small b.a.l.l.s which we steam then roll in shredded coconut.'

'Would you like to buy today's batch of eggs?' Meili asks, trying to steer the conversation further away from Waterborn. 'I'll sell them to you for three mao each and you can sell them on for five. Pay me later, if you don't have cash on you.'

'All right,' Gu says. 'I'll take some and see how I do. If they don't sell, I'll preserve them in salt and eat them myself. Those bananas up there look ripe. Feel free to chop some off.' Most of the banana trees have died; only two are still producing fruit. A swarm of flies are now circling the sisters, attracted perhaps by the smell of warm rice rising from their clothes. They stand up and get ready to leave.

'You're so clever, you family planning violators you've realised you can make far more money having babies than you could raising pigs!' Hua says conspiratorially. 'How many more do you plan to have?'

'I'm finished now!' Meili says, getting up and brus.h.i.+ng off the coconut shreds that have fallen onto her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. 'My husband's desperate for a son, but I refuse to have any more.'

'I only ever wanted one,' says Gu. 'I read in the papers that if a woman eats tadpoles on a regular basis, she'll never get pregnant. So after I had my first child, I scooped some from a pond every week and swallowed them. Fine lot of good it did! I was pregnant again within two months!' Gu laughs loudly, revealing her long yellow teeth.

'But who can afford to have more than one child these days, the way school fees and medical fees keep rising?' Hua says.

'So how many children do you have, Hua?' Meili asks, glancing down at the braised duck simmering on the stove.

'Four. Only two of them are legally registered, though.'

'I've told you, Hua, you must hurry up and buy permits for the other two or they won't be able to go to school,' Gu says.

'If you do decide you want to go ahead with the sale, come and speak to us,' Hua says to Meili. 'Don't go to that guy who runs the sc.r.a.pyard. He's a nasty crook. If the babies are alive, he sells them to traffickers, and if they're dead he sells them to restaurants.'

'I would never sell my own child,' Meili says, softly rocking Waterborn as she starts to cry again. 'If she does turn out to be mentally handicapped, I won't mind I'd be happy to look after her for the rest of my life.'

'We just want to help you secure a good future for your daughter, and for your family as well,' Gu says. 'If you sell her, everyone will benefit.'

'Yes, it will be a winwin situation, just like President Jiang Zemin said to the US in the international trade discussions last week,' Hua says. 'Come on now, let's go and choose our eggs.'

When the sisters walk past her, they seem to give off more heat than the scorching pot on the stove.

KEYWORDS: flea-ridden, magnet, sc.u.m, beautification fee, gangsters, Custody and Repatriation Centre.

RETURNING TO THE hut and seeing Nannan sitting alone under the porch and the boat gone, Meili knows at once that Kongzi has gone to give Waterborn away.

'Where's Daddy, Nannan?' she shouts.

'He said he's taking Waterborn on a trip. He said he'll be back very soon, and when he comes back I'll be his only daughter and he'll only love me.'

'The evil b.a.s.t.a.r.d! I know what he's done he's gone to sell her to a Welfare Office! Kongzi, you monster! You force me to get pregnant, then you take my baby from me. You're worse than the Communist Party. I despise you. I never want to set eyes on you again!' Shaking with rage and howling curses, she kicks out at the wok and bowls on the ground, stamps on the peanut oil and mosquito coils she just bought in the village, then turns round and marches away into the fields. The ducks in the pond flap their wings and take flight.

'Mummy, come back, I'm frightened . . .' Nannan cries out, but Meili is so delirious with rage she can't hear her. She strides across the fields all the way to the public road, then stops a pa.s.sing minibus and jumps aboard. She wants to go as far away as possible. No she wants to return to Nuwa Village, to her birthplace. She finds a seat at the back, buries her face in her scarf and weeps. May you get struck by lightning, Kongzi! she mutters under her breath. All these years you drone on about benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, then you go and sell your own daughter! How could I have married such a monster? . . . When she met him at seventeen, she believed marriage was for ever, that the government protects and cares for the people, and that husbands protect and care for their wives. But as soon as she got married, these naive beliefs were shattered. She discovered that women don't own their bodies: their wombs and genitals are battle zones over which their husband and the state fight for control territories their husbands invade for s.e.xual gratification and to produce male heirs, and which the state probes, monitors, guards and sc.r.a.pes so as to a.s.sert its power and spread fear. These continual intrusions into her body's most intimate parts have made her lose her sense of who she is. All she is certain of is that she is a legal wife and an illegal mother. I'd be better off dead, she mumbles to herself. I should throw myself into the Yangtze and join Happiness on the riverbed. With a jolt, she remembers Nannan and wishes she'd had the presence of mind to bring her with her. She decides to spend the night in whatever town the minibus is taking her to, then to sneak back to the hut in the morning and fetch Nannan.

Only at night, when the minibus pulls into the terminal and she steps off, goes outside and looks at the dark road running downhill, does she begin to feel helpless and alone. On a dimly lit fruit stall, peeled pineapples gleam like freshly plucked ducks. The pavements are littered with the trampled pulp of chewed sugar cane. Sensing that the road leads to the centre of town she follows it down. It stretches on through the darkness, desolate as a barren field. At last, in the distance, she sees neon signs flas.h.i.+ng from tall buildings, and begins to walk towards them as though pulled by a magnet.

The road bends and becomes wider and brighter. There are cars and buses now. After crossing two junctions, waiting for the pedestrian lights to turn green, she begins to realise that this is not a town but a city. She must ask someone where the train station is. She'd like to go home now and see her parents. The thought of being fined or arrested doesn't frighten her any more. If there's no train to Nuwa, she'll return to Guai Village in the morning, take Nannan and a few belongings, and set off for Heaven Towns.h.i.+p, leaving Kongzi to fend for himself. She approaches a small kiosk to ask for directions. When she sees the red telephone on the counter, she has a longing to phone Weiwei and pour her heart out to him, but she doesn't have his number on her. She thinks of phoning Kongzi's parents, but is afraid the line might be bugged, and besides, she's not in the mood to speak to them. Clubfoot has a telephone too now, as well as a laptop computer and satellite TV, but she has forgotten his number. The only other person in Kong Village whose number she can remember is Kong Zhaobo. He's opened a dairy farm that supplies milk to an infant formula company. She phoned him a couple of times in Guai Village, asking if he could give her brother a job.