Tiger's Heart

by Aisling Juanjuan Shen

  After sightseeing, we went to dinner at a crowded restaurant in a boat floating on the artificial lake in the garden. As I stretched my chopsticks toward the fish steamed with scallion shoots, one of the men who was sharing the same table with us caught my attention; he had blue eyes and the longest nose I had ever seen. His face made me think of a horse. He was staring at the head in the brewed whole-chicken soup, which was staring back at him, and holding his chopsticks in mid-air. When he looked up, he saw me and smiled, and we struck up a conversation.

  In my broken English, I told him about my frustration with being stuck in Ba Jin. “Yeah, it’s not easy being in a small town. You know, companies in Shanghai need people who can speak English. You might want to poke around there.” He spoke carefully and slowly to me, and I nodded my head thankfully. Master Liu pricked up his ears and looked at us curiously, trying to be involved. I didn’t care to interpret for him.

  The Chinese guy sitting next to him in a gray suit, an interpreter-type, shot a sideways glance at me and then another at the horse-faced man. He nudged the Westerner’s arm and said, “Come on, Paul. We need to get back to the city.”

  He was obviously a city guy, and he looked at me like I was the plague, an impertinent girl from the countryside who still had the color of dirt on her face.

  Paul was a consultant for a company called Solutions Computer Inc., and he left his business card on the table. I watched his tall back disappearing out the cabin door and then chuckled to myself. I could never imagine myself being in Shanghai, the most modern city in China. I tucked the card in my pocket, wondering if I would ever set foot in that city. It was only a two-hour bus ride away, but it seemed as far as the moon.

  6

  ONE EVENING WHEN I was sitting in my room alone, Ms. Xu showed up at my door smiling from ear to ear and told me that Principal Chen wanted me to join him in the JinSheng Building, the official entertainment center of the town. I readily agreed to go, eager to break the monotony of my endless days of teaching.

  Deafening karaoke music being sung in a husky voice blasted my ears as soon as I pushed open the heavy wooden door of the dark ballroom in the JinSheng Building. A disco ball hanging from the center of the ceiling rotated quickly, throwing colorful patterns around the dimly lit room. I spotted Principal Chen and Ms. Xu sunk into big leather couches, along with Mayor Huang, his secretary, and another thirtyish man. On the dance floor, I saw the red-faced Vice Mayor Li and Zhang, the dean of our school, each clutching the waist of a female teacher, wobbling all over the wooden floor. It seemed that they had soaked themselves in mao-tai at dinner, and now it looked like even their toes were drunk.

  “Come here, come here, Little Shen.” Principal Chen stretched his arm in my direction and beckoned me with two fingers. “Mayor Huang, Boss Pan, let me introduce you to Teacher Shen, a young and competent teacher.”

  Mayor Huang, who walked with his hands crossed behind his back and a solemn face when inspecting our school during the day, gave me a drunken smile and patted the space on the couch next to him. I went and sat between him and the thirtyish man, Boss Pan. I felt a little intimidated; after all, I had never been to a place crowded with powerful men like this.

  Boss Pan shook my hand firmly with both of his and kept saying hello. Beaming back at his pear-shaped, pockmarked face, I wondered what role he played in this ballroom. He signaled for the waitress and ordered another glass of beer, and I realized that his presence made perfect sense: politicians always joined up with businessmen for their entertainment; otherwise, who would pay the bill? Tonight’s partying would probably cost the equivalent of months of my salary.

  After several rounds of dancing, Vice Mayor Li called me over to the karaoke stand and asked me to sing a love song with him. Emboldened by the alcohol, I took over the microphone and sang loudly in front of an audience for the first time my life. When there was a pause in the lyrics, I glanced at the crowd. I saw everyone watching me and listening intently and Boss Pan standing in a corner with a look of admiration in his eyes. Everyone clapped loudly after I finished, and I smiled, excited and flattered.

  For the entire night, Boss Pan ran around in circles, making sure that the tea cups were always full, that the fruit kept coming, and that the music played smoothly. When he finally took my hand and glided with me onto the dance floor, it was the last song of the night. He tried to keep his stocky body, clad in a brown jacket and gray pants, an appropriate distance from mine. I was relaxed enough to listen to him talking over Vice Mayor Li’s loud and hysterical rendition of “Loving Birds Going Home Together.”

  “Wow, you’re terrific—a teacher at such a young age and a college grad too.” I couldn’t detect any falsity in his fervent voice. “I am glad I met you. If you need any help in the future, just ask. I know Mayor Huang well.”

  “Thanks,” I said, flattered by this praise from a successful businessman who had good relationships with the mayors. I had learned from Ms. Xu that he owned a big welding factory in the next town and was the youngest millionaire in his business circle.

  “You are an educated person, not like me. I’m a bit of a bore. I can’t even read a few characters. But I have given my daughter a good name, Yu Shi. Yu is pure as jade. Shi is like a poem. What do you think?”

  All of a sudden the music stopped and people surrounded us, shaking hands and saying their good-byes. Not used to social occasions like this, I didn’t feel like I belonged. I ran downstairs quickly to the foggy streets outside. I walked home alone, thinking Yu Shi was a very good name for a girl and regretting that I would never have the chance to tell Boss Pan this. I found myself attracted to this ordinary-looking but charming and successful man. But it didn’t matter, I thought: we would never cross paths again.

  To my surprise, a week later Boss Pan called the only phone in the middle school and asked to speak to me. I ran to Principal Chen’s office, not knowing who the caller was.

  “Little Shen, I’m treating some business friends tonight in my town, and I am wondering if you’d be kind enough to join us. You had such a good voice and sang so well the other night.”

  Shocked by the boldness of this married man, I hurriedly said yes and hung up the phone. Principal Chen had been giving me curious looks. “Oh, it was an old classmate from Suzhou, just saying hi,” I told him as I walked toward the door.

  I sat on the stairs to my dorm that night, completely bored, wondering if the phone call was just a joke. But while I was giving free rein to my imagination, Boss Pan suddenly appeared at the bottom of the stairs, giving me a start.

  “How did you get here? Bike? Your town is almost twenty kilometers away!” I blurted out, too surprised to keep my voice down. I felt happy to see him. I would have gone anywhere with him, just to escape the dreadful loneliness I was feeling.

  “No, motorcycle. I parked over there and walked. I wanted to see you too badly.” He came toward me, smiling broadly.

  “Walk with me out of the compound. I don’t want everyone to hear us,” I said, always nervous about my reputation in this small backward town. Thankfully, Spring was working late at the barbershop.

  Later, at his friend’s karaoke club, we sat side by side on a couch and talked the entire night.

  “My wife is a peasant woman, so uneducated. She can’t help me with anything in my factory. I don’t know what to do. I need an intelligent and pretty friend like you, someone I can talk to.” He threw his head back, frustration all over his face. Believing everything he said, I nodded my head shyly and felt a rush of sympathy. I thought it was fate that Boss Pan had come into my empty life. I was so hungry for love and attention. I knew I wasn’t in love, but I felt close to him.

  Two weeks later, he appeared again in the dark like a ghost. With his helmet in hand, he pushed open the unlatched plank door, calling my name. I sprang up and shoved him out into the hall, shutting the door behind us before Spring, who was spreading a sheet over her bed, could see him. I had never tried very hard to be a goo
d role model for her, but I didn’t want her to see me with a married man.

  Sitting on a motorcycle wedged between him and the driver, a friend of his who had a belly as big as Santa Claus’s, I raised my head and enjoyed the autumn wind blowing into my face as we zoomed down the asphalt roads between fields. He drew my face toward him and kissed my cheek and my red nose. I turned around more and leaned my body against him.

  “I want you,” he whispered.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never done this before,” I bleated.

  He stopped kissing me. “Get out of here. Are you a virgin?”

  “Uh-huh.” I turned back around, blushing.

  “No way. I don’t believe you.” He paused. “I don’t know if I should sleep with you then. You’d probably never want to leave me if we did that. I might have to get a divorce.” His arms encircled my waist again, and he laughed playfully in my ears. My heart jumped. I knew he was just joking, but suddenly I had the dim hope of having a family with him one day. It felt safe to be with him, a successful and mature man.

  A month after meeting Boss Pan, I was on a bus to the city of Wujiang. He had made plans for us to spend the weekend together, he’d told me on the phone the day before.

  My mind was in a whirl. There was a voice in my mind telling me to get off the bus, to stay away from this married man. But when a person is hungry enough, he’ll eat poisonous berries. I thought I now understood what my mother felt like when she was on a bus to a strange city to meet Honor. People always said that daughters resembled their mothers. My whole life, I had tried to be as different from my mother as possible. I knew what I was doing was wrong, and I condemned myself, but I couldn’t stop it.

  Boss Pan and I spent the entire afternoon with his friends at the dining table, toasting loudly and drinking in gulps, singing karaoke and dancing and flattering each other. I was the only female drinking and dancing partner, and my head felt heavy by the time the sun went down.

  Boss Pan’s Santa Clausbellied friend threw a cotton quilt into his arms and made a sly suggestion: “Why don’t you two just cuddle tonight over in my storage place across the street?”

  Boss Pan giggled and then laughed more playfully when he saw my reddening face. I knew what was coming, and I found myself nervously looking forward to it.

  After shutting the garage door, we saw nothing in the gloomy light of the dusty room but piles of raw textile materials, a chipped desk, and a few chairs. It was not exactly romantic. Boss Pan put six chairs together in two rows facing each other, so that there was space for both of us to lie there. “Sorry, Little Shen,” he said. “I’m afraid we will just have to make do with it tonight.”

  We lay down on the chairs with our clothes on. He wrapped his arms around me. We lay silently in the dark for a long time, and then I heard him breathing in my ear. “I don’t know if I should do it,” he said. “Shall we do it?” Feeling the heat from his body, a strong desire rose in me.

  Before I could answer, he had already unbuckled my belt and rolled my pants down to my knees. I heard the hard wood creaking under my back as he quickly climbed on me. My backbone hurt, and I wanted him to slow down, but I was too shy to say anything. Without taking off his pants, he quickly entered me, causing a sharp pain. He wiggled a few times on top of me; before the sharp pain had faded away, he stopped and rolled off. The whole thing lasted only a couple of minutes.

  Soon he started to snore. I lay in the dark, baffled, trying to figure out how I felt after losing my virginity to a married man. Sex wasn’t as enjoyable as the books made it sound, I thought, disappointed. It was so quick, painful, and cold. Eventually I dozed off.

  The next morning I turned over the quilt and examined it secretly while he was putting on his jacket.

  “What are you doing?” He smiled at me.

  “Nothing.” I dropped the quilt, puzzled by my fruitless search for blood, thinking that if I lived in Old China my mother-inlaw would be driving me out of the door by now. If a bride couldn’t produce a cloth with bloodstains after her consummation with the groom, she brought huge shame to the family.

  After that night, Boss Pan no longer called the school or showed up in the dark outside my dorm. I felt a little lost because I missed him, but I was also relieved. As each night passed, my conscience bothered me less and less. I thought I would soon forget that I was a shameless woman who had carried on with a married man.

  By the time people in the school started donning heavy cotton coats for the winter, I thought my life was completely back to normal, and I could start all over and be a good person like every other teacher in the school. But then one night a mysterious pain attacked me in my sleep.

  It felt like a long needle was drilling into all my internal organs. I curled into a ball. The sharp pain made goose bumps break out all over my neck. I was bleeding. Eventually, I couldn’t take it for any longer. I got out of bed and went to the night-soil bucket, where I could sit, making the pinching a little softer and the bleeding easier to control. I kept moving back and forth between the bed and the night-soil bucket until finally I was completely worn out and just stayed on the bucket.

  Spring woke up once in the middle of the night. “Jiejie, anything wrong?” she asked sleepily. “Nothing,” I groaned, and she went back to sleep. I sat there until the dawn broke through the newspaper on the windows.

  The pain boiled and simmered in me for three more days. I knew that I needed to go to a doctor immediately. I also knew that I couldn’t go to the hospital nearby—the news would be all over town in ten minutes. Plus I didn’t even have enough money to pay a doctor.

  That Saturday morning, Spring and I went back to the Shen Hamlet. She had finished her apprenticeship at the barbershop and was going home to stay. After paying for the bus fare, I only had a few pennies in my pocket, but I didn’t dare to ask my father for money. He was especially sulky and reticent that day because my mother was away with Honor.

  At last, Spring broke the silence for me. She looked at me and then at our father and said, “Dad, Jiejie is sick.”

  Reluctantly, my father pulled thirty yuan out of his pants pocket. “Go to Zhenze hospital,” he said. “Give me what’s left when you come back,” he added tonelessly.

  On weekends there was only one doctor in the gynecology department.

  After fiddling inside me with her cold instruments for a while, she had me sit on the old wooden stool next to her desk.

  “Married?” she asked while writing on my medical records.

  I was too embarrassed to answer. She gave me an impatient glance.

  “Oh, no, but I have a fiancé,” I lied.

  “You must have had sexual intercourse with him, then.” She looked at me with a stern face and said scornfully, “You reckless young people. You know our country advises you not to have sex before marriage.”

  I sat quietly, dropping my head and pressing my thumbs into each other.

  “Go downstairs for a urine sample check.” She tossed a small thin piece of paper onto the desk.

  Waiting outside the window of the lab, I stared at the girl doing the work on the urine samples and wondered why the doctor wanted me checked for pregnancy. It had never occurred to me that this was a possibility.

  The girl handed me a small paper strip through the window. I grabbed it and saw a “+” stamped in faint blue ink. I took a deep breath. Thank God, I thought. A positive sign was always good. No pregnancy.

  But after the gynecologist read the results, she looked grim. “You’re pregnant. What do you want to do now?”

  I froze.

  “I can do the abortion for you. You’re lucky; I’m the only one here today, and usually you can’t get it done without a marriage certificate. It costs sixty yuan. Wanna do it?” She tried to appear indifferent, but her eager voice gave her away. She really wanted to make this side money.

  “Oh, I need talk with my fiancé.” Still reeling from the news, I turned on my heels and got out of that white room fast. Whe
n I reached home, I handed my father the rest of the money and told him that it had been nothing serious. He took the cash and didn’t say a word.

  Worried sick, I called Pan right away and asked him to meet me in an alley in his town the next day. I didn’t feel at all happy to see him this time. With my hands in my coat pockets, I walked in silence beside him, trying to figure out how best to phrase my news. The bell on his bike jingled as he pushed it along the bumpy slab stones.

  “So, how have you been?” he said.

  “I’m pregnant.” I spit out the words, feeling like the female lead in a poorly written drama.

  He jumped back. “No way! This must be some sort of mix-up!” he said incredulously.

  I threw the medical records at his chest and kept walking.

  “Oh God,” he groaned. “Are you sure it’s mine?”

  I stopped, turned around quickly, and glared at him. It seemed that the melodrama was being played in the most clichéd way. Now the male lead was going to deny his responsibility. How ridiculous.

  “It was my first time,” I said and started walking again.

  He forced a smile. “Oh, well, we can’t prove that.”

  My eyes blurred. I wanted to turn around and punch him, but I just kept going, the space between us increasing. I was furious at him and even angrier with myself.

  He jogged up to me. “All right, all right, let’s go to Wujiang tomorrow, and I’ll find a way to deal with it.”

  The next day was a Monday. After getting a leave from the school, I took the bus to Wujiang and met him at his potbellied friend’s place. He talked with various friends for hours and couldn’t find anybody who knew any doctor at Wujiang Hospital. I sat to the side quietly during these conversations.