by Ting-Xing Ye
Even to this day I can recall with dread the screams passing through that closed door. Each one tore my heart. I wanted to be with Chun-mei, but tradition strictly forbade it. I wanted to go outside and walk the paths of the village, but the weather made it impossible. I felt as if I was trapped in a pen. My father was no help. He paced around, upstairs and downstairs, inside his room and out again. When his hands weren’t fidgeting, scratching his forehead or rubbing the back of his neck, they found brief refuge in his sleeves.
When the baby’s cries echoed in the house, his eyes lit up like lanterns and my heart soared. I forgot my wife’s discomfort. My father clapped me on the shoulder. “Listen to his lusty bawling!” he said with a laugh. “A chubby little boy for sure!” But there were no sounds of celebration behind that door. When the baby quieted there was only silence.
“What’s going on?” Father shouted, pounding the door with his fists. “Bring out my grandson.”
There was no response. The light left my father’s face, and I myself was overcome with the dreadful feeling that something had gone wrong. Then the door cracked open, revealing my mother’s drawn features and desperate red eyes. No baby lay in her arms. Behind her, my wife wept weakly among tangled sheets, as if the screams I had heard only moments before had drained the life from her.
“There is no son, my child,” Mother murmured, sadly shaking her head. “It’s a girl.” Then she closed the door.
“It has to be a mistake,” I said, pushing open the door. Sister Liu, her shoulders hunched as if she expected a blow, scuttled behind me out of the room. I heard my father’s angry words.
I walked around the bed and stared down at Chun-mei and the tiny bundle resting in her arms. I reached out to the blankets to see for myself the gender of the child, but Chun-mei hissed, “No! Don’t touch her!” Her words were like knives; her face twisted with—what? Not hatred. A kind of animal defensiveness that made it clear she would die before giving up that child.
Numb with confusion and guilt and grief, I ran up and down the stairs all night carrying messages between two strong-willed people who had become enemies. Each time I entered the room Chun-mei clinched the child closer. Though she was so tired that opening her eyes was an effort, her head was as clear as spring water and her voice was firm as she stated her conditions. If she could keep her baby, she would indebt herself for life to pay the fine when she became pregnant again; she was willing to have her allotment of land taken from her; and she would go away, stay in hiding, until the second child was due and safe.
My father would not agree to anything she suggested. He sat on the edge of his bed, smoking, shaking his head. She must hand over the child. That was his bottom line. I carried his threats to my wife. I couldn’t believe how her beautiful eyes had turned so cold, how her sweet modest voice had grown so hard.
“If you harm my little girl I swear I will give you and that old man no peace until I die. In case you have forgotten”—she let her words out one at a time—“I am the daughter of a landlord, a survivor. There is not much for me to lose. Leave us alone, and give me two more days. I promise Dong-mei will disappear from your lives. Go tell that to your old man. There will be no more talk.”
She closed her eyes then and turned her back to me. She had called the child Dong-mei, as if she had known all along it would be a girl. Winter Plum-blossom fit with her own name, Spring Plum-blossom.
Chun-mei kept her promise. Two days later, when the snow and ice had melted away, she left the house before dawn and returned after dark, without the child. She walked in the door and went straight to our room without saying a word. No one dared to ask her where she had gone and what she had done with the baby. My father’s relief was visible on his face. My mother was silent and glum. For my part, I tried to look ahead to the future.
Next day, my father sent Sister Liu to Chun-mei’s village to make quiet inquiries. She reported that there was no sign of a baby living in her parents’ household. “From what I could gather,” the old midwife and matchmaker said, “the Mas have no knowledge of the newborn. They are preoccupied with their business as well as caring for the King of the Salted Egg, who is ailing. Badly, they say,” she added. Chun-mei’s father had suffered a stroke three months after our marriage, losing his ability to speak. He had been bedridden ever since.
When he received the news from Sister Liu, my father smiled for the first time in days. “It’s better this way,” he said to me. “Time will pass and heal the wounds. Then you and your wife can try again.”
Meanwhile, the whole family, especially me, had to put up a front. It wasn’t a matter of pulling the wool over others’ eyes. For the past couple of years people in the village had stopped asking questions when a newborn died, especially if it was a girl, as if an understanding had formed among the villagers. There seemed to have been a sharp increase in the number of stillborn girls. Some choked on their own vomit, some were accidentally strangled by the cord, some just stopped breathing, as simple as that. In the cities, I had heard, a doctor had to be present, a death certificate made out. Not in Liuhe Village.
So when it was my turn to put together a small wooden box and bury it in our vegetable plot, I received the usual condolences and sympathy. The strange thing was, I did feel as if my child had been born dead.
My wife endured her one-month confinement without me, keeping to the room, sleeping or staring out the window. Her meals were taken up to her by my mother. Often the food went untouched. I slept in the storage room at the back of the house, alongside the farm tools, sharing a wall with chickens and pigs.
On the day when the monthly confinement was over, Chun-mei emerged from her room. Her clothing was twisted and wrinkled, she gave off a sour odour, and her once shiny hair was a mess. She walked straight to the village barber and had it cut off shorter than mine. When she saw the three of us staring at her, goggle-eyed, she laughed. But it wasn’t her old laugh. It was cold and bitter. The next day she went back to work.
My father had said that time would heal her loss, but for my wife time offered no solace. A month later, just after the Lunar New Year, which marked our first wedding anniversary, Chun-mei’s father passed away. I accompanied her to Poplar Tree Village and helped with funeral arrangements. Her family knew no more about what had happened that December night in the Chen household than anyone else. So far as I could see, the whole thing was behind us, or buried in that wooden box.
This time, it was Chun-mei who had to put up a front. She sat beside me on a bench during the funeral service, next to her mother. Once, she took my hand during the eulogy. It had been a long time since I had felt the touch of her skin. When the three-day mourning period came to an end she told me, to my surprise, that she was going home with me, not staying with her mother. I had been worried that she might use the funeral as an excuse to stay away from me and my family.
But when it came time to leave, her grief broke my heart. She was in tears before we stepped out of the house, and every two steps she took, she ran back three. She wailed and cried and fell on her knees in the middle of the road, asking forgiveness from her dead father.
“There is nothing to be forgiven, my dear child,” her mother comforted her. “Your father knew you were busy with your work and family duties.”
She didn’t add “and your pregnancy and dealing with your own loss.” But the words hung in the air.
That night, back home, was the first that Chun-mei allowed me to lie beside her. But she kept silent with her back to me. I heard her weeping in the dark and mumbling in her sleep. We both tossed and turned until dawn broke.
When spring arrived, my wife’s spirits lifted somewhat. Her pallid skin took on some colour and she walked with a lighter step. She grew her hair out a bit, although it was still short, and some of the girls in the village copied her style. One day, on my way home from the market, I passed her workroom at the factory and saw her laughing with a co-worker, her head bent back, her face up to the late aftern
oon sun and her hair catching the light. I swore she was the most beautiful woman on earth. I would have given anything if she would share that laugh with me.
To everyone in the village, Chun-mei was herself again. When the May Day Fair was held in the town market, I wasn’t surprised that she was chosen as Queen of the Fair. She was dressed in red robes with a metal crown on her head, and paraded through the streets in a wooden cart pulled by a donkey festooned in red bunting. Young girls, lined up to be “received” by her, the Queen, shrieked with excitement, and new mothers with babies in their arms chatted while waiting their turn. When one of them pushed her baby girl onto Chun-mei’s lap, saying she hoped her child would grow up to be as beautiful as the Queen, Chun-mei blanched, thrust the child into her mother’s arms, yanked off the metal crown, and ran away.
Half a year passed before Chun-mei and I became husband and wife again. I dared to be happy again, but gladness is never pure. I couldn’t stop thinking about my duty to plant a child. Around that time I read in a magazine that it was the husband, not the wife, who determined the gender of the baby. I could hardly believe it. Our tradition was to blame the mother for a girl, praise her for a boy. What an awful discovery that was!
I didn’t need any magazine to tell me that anyone could make a baby. Look at my parents. Neither one could read or write, but they had produced half a dozen kids, no sweat. Practice was all that mattered. That was what I kept in mind all that summer and far into the autumn. Considering Chun-mei’s track record—she had gotten pregnant less than a month after our wedding—she ought to have had good news right away. But there was no sign. I was getting anxious but didn’t dare let it show.
Eventually suspicion grew in me like a snake. I knew all about having fun without making babies. Birth control was drummed into everyone’s head, old and young, by the government. Chun-mei and I were not controlling anything, as far as I was aware. But just to be sure, I visited the brigade’s clinic where condoms and pills were given out free of charge. I persuaded the assistant to let me check the ledger, which listed the comings and goings of the patients and their treatment and prescriptions. Chun-mei’s name wasn’t there. I also paid a visit to the doctor, an old crony of my father’s, and he promised to tell me if Chun-mei ever showed up asking for birth-control stuff.
And then one Sunday afternoon, in early October, Chun-mei had to go to work at the factory to finish her quota. I decided to tidy up our bedroom, hoping to impress her. When I pulled a clean sheet from the top shelf of the wardrobe, a package tumbled down with it. The fine print on the label said “avoiding pregnancy pills.” A few were missing.
I shook with rage. Chun-mei was lucky that she wasn’t around. She had been cheating me, and my family, destroying my dreams, leaving me and my father with no heir. Hours later, I heard her footsteps in the house and shouted for her to come upstairs. When she saw the silver package I was holding, she turned pale.
“Tell me you haven’t been taking these,” I demanded.
She didn’t answer right away. She walked to the window where the sun’s rays were disappearing below the horizon. “Yes, I’ve been taking them,” she said calmly.
I grabbed her sleeve. “Who gave them to you?”
“No one. I got them myself.”
“Liar!” I shouted. “Tell me the truth!”
I raised my hand but caught myself just in time. When she saw that, the steely look she had given to me on that December night after the baby was born reappeared.
“There is no more to tell,” she said and left the room. She quickly returned with a big basket full of the baby clothes she and her mother and my mother had made during her pregnancy. She pulled out blankets, tiny shirts, sweaters and cotton-padded jackets and diapers, flinging them onto the floor. Five more boxes of pills flew into the air.
“There are more here. Do you want to see them, too?” she sneered, tossing a box at me. “Or would you rather have a look at some of Dong-mei’s unused diapers?”
She cast a handful of the cotton squares against my chest. I stepped forward and grabbed the collar of her blouse, twisting it into a tight knot. “Why are you doing this to me!” I screamed.
“Because I won’t give you or your father another baby to kill.”
I slapped her hard across the face. Chun-mei took the blow silently, her eyes flashing. I heard a gasp behind me. My mother was standing in the doorway.
“What have you done, Loyal?” she hissed through trembling lips. “The devil finally got you, didn’t he?”
Chun-mei stood where she was, the welts caused by my fingers rising on her cheek. With her sleeve, she wiped away a trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth. There were no tears in her eyes. I too had become her enemy.
This time it was Chun-me who moved out of our bedroom. She set her bed in the nursery that would never be a nursery, a couple of planks resting on two benches. To outsiders, our household remained normal. Chun-mei left for the factory each morning and sat with us at the supper table every evening. After helping my mother to clean up the dishes, she disappeared for the night behind the closed door of her room. Occasionally she spoke to my mother, but to me and my father she was as silent as a ghost. I tried a few times to make up, but she ignored me, and when she did look at me her eyes were blank.
One November day, when I was waiting to get my pushcart repaired at the town market, I met Qiu-xiang, a young woman who worked at a noodle stand. It was more than her strange accent that got my attention. She was not pretty, but pleasant enough, with a saucy provocativeness that made my heart itch. After that I made sure to pass the noodle stand each time I was in town. She was very friendly to me, and gave me extra noodles, sometimes meat, and chatted with me, all smiles and compliments.
Where she used to live, she told me, was ten times poorer than our area. She and her friends, who were sharing a room nearby, had travelled a long way to get here, taking up jobs that the locals didn’t want, hoping to be able to save up for a hope chest, essential if they wanted to get husbands.
The first time she invited me to her place I was shocked and turned her down immediately. She teased me about being shy. “We’re both grown-ups,” she said, giving me that look that brought sweat to my forehead. “I won’t bite you.”
Eventually I gave in, starting with short visits. We’d sit on the edge of her bed, listen to music and talk, and drink a little rice wine. Then we began to lie down side by side. Soon I spent the night with her, once a week, then twice, and more. Sometimes her friends were around, but Qiu-xiang assured me that the three of them had reached a mutual understanding when it came to visits by men.
I insisted that she take pills. To save her the trouble and embarrassment of going to a clinic, I brought her the boxes that had belonged to Chun-mei. Why not, I said to myself. She had no use for them. Most important, it was my way of showing her that, just because the tailor who lived at home wouldn’t sew for me, it didn’t mean I had to wear rags.
One chilly December day as dark was falling I came back from town to find my mother waiting for me at the threshing ground. She was bundled up against the cold, a scarf wrapped around her mouth.
“What’s happened, Ma?” I asked.
“Chun-mei didn’t come home from work. We haven’t seen her since this morning.”
It turned out Mother had gone to the factory when Chun-mei didn’t come home at her usual time, and discovered that my wife hadn’t turned up for work at all. She’d been gone the whole day, and no one had seen her.
“Don’t worry, Ma,” I told her. “She might have gone back to Poplar Tree Village. I’ll go there tomorrow if it will make you feel better.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Mother replied. “Do you remember what day it is today?”
I had no answer.
“I thought so, a busy man like you! It was a year ago today that Chun-mei gave birth to your child!”
Chun-mei came home a few hours later. The three of us watched silently as she walke
d into the house, bringing in the bone-chilling northeast wind. If I had met her on the street I wouldn’t have recognized her. Her face was expressionless; her eyes were two empty holes. She had on an old faded jacket of mine that I hadn’t worn for years. She passed by the table where we were sitting, leaving the door open behind her, and climbed the stairs.
My mother got to her feet and followed. My father buried his face in his hands as if the silence was too much for him. I hadn’t mentioned what day it was, and I said nothing now. But I knew the cause of Chun-mei’s behaviour.
The scream came, from the back of the house, after I had gone to bed. I ran downstairs and threw open the back door to find a clutch of my neighbours staring up at the second-storey window.
The double window of the nursery was wide open, and Chun-mei stood balanced on the sill, looking down at the crowd. A scarf was gathered around her neck and she had on the same tattered jacket. The chilly wind whipped her hair around her face. Her arms were held in front of her as if she carried a bundle. She began to sing, gently swinging her arms sideways.
I shouted at her to get down, conscious of the eyes of the gossips near me. But Chun-mei put one finger to her lips and said quietly, “Shhhh, you’ll wake Dong-mei.” And she continued her song.
I dashed into the house and ran back upstairs to find my father standing behind Chun-mei, pounding his fist into his hand in frustration. My mother, her body shaking uncontrollably, was begging Chun-mei to step down. As if it were not enough humiliation to last a lifetime, eventually I had to ask two of my neighbours for help, because Chun-mei screamed each time I tried to approach her. The two men coaxed my wife from the window.
My mother and Sister Liu cared for her, bringing her tea and food, but not before I had tied her to the bed frame by her wrists and ankles.
Some of the neighbours couldn’t resist comments as they pretended to console me. “She ought to have nerves as hard as steel,” said one, “considering what she and her family have gone through in the past.”