Throwaway Daughter

by Ting-Xing Ye

  Maybe I didn’t make the best judgment. But lying in my damp and soiled bed, exhausted and disheartened, I decided I had one choice and one choice only: to get Dong-mei far away from her father and grandfather, so that they would never find her. In order to save her, I had to give her away.

  My only first-hand knowledge of an orphanage was what the name means: a place filled with unfortunate children who had lost their parents. Nothing more, nothing less. On my shopping trip to Yangzhou before my wedding I had passed the place, a derelict and forbidding redbrick building close to the bus station. Of course at that time I never thought I’d ever pass through the big double wooden doors with the peeling green paint, although I did wonder whether my brothers and I would have ended up there if my parents had been executed like so many other landlords in the early years.

  One day in the workshop, long before Dong-mei was born, one of my co-workers mentioned that since the new family policy had come into effect, orphanages all over the country had become dumping grounds, or “collection houses,” for children who had been abandoned by their parents because they were deformed, disabled, retarded—or female. Police were usually involved trying to locate the parents but often failed, and the numbers of “orphans” had been rising rapidly. But the thought that one day I would be one of those parents didn’t cross my mind then.

  On the third day I crept down the stairs long before dawn and let myself out into the freezing dark. My baby was bundled so thickly with so many layers of blankets that she was truly a “candle parcel” as we say in our part of the country, and her little face was covered with a thin scarf. She hung in a sleeping sack around my neck, her head resting under my chin.

  Not a single light shone in the village as I slowly made my way down the path, between the houses of my sleeping neighbours. Most of the snow had melted but the air was frigid and damp, and my breath soon formed a layer of frost along the edge of my cotton scarf.

  I was light-headed, as if walking on clouds. At twenty-four years of age I was a healthy woman, and strong, thanks to a lifetime of hard labour in the fields. But the last few days had worn me down. The birth itself would have been enough, but the cut between my legs, which still burned and bled, and the strain of keeping Loyal and his father away from my child for the last three days, had taken a heavy toll. Only my decision to save my daughter kept my legs moving, but after a half-hour of walking, I began to fear that determination might not be enough to carry me through the journey.

  If there ever was a god, something I had never believed because he hadn’t been there when my family and I needed him most, I found him that morning. Thin, pale light was seeping into the landscape, revealing the forlorn paddies with frost-covered brown stubble and the black, naked branches of the trees reaching into a grey sky. I heard a truck behind me, and when it drew abreast of me, it stopped.

  The driver, a young guy with a few wisps of hair on his chin, leaned out of the cab and asked me where I was going.

  “To Yangzhou,” I said simply.

  He pushed his cap with the red star on it back on his head. People hadn’t worn caps like that for years. “Hop in. I can take you there,” he said.

  Circumstances make us do things we would ordinarily push away. Accepting a ride from a strange man on an empty road was unthinkable. But I climbed awkwardly into the truck, relieved and grateful, for I couldn’t have gone ten more steps. The young man drove silently, making no attempt to start a conversation. Occasionally he glanced at me and the quiet bundle resting on my lap. Only the engine made a sound throughout the trip. He let me off at the city’s bus station shortly before seven o’clock.

  My plan was to spend the day in the dingy waiting room of the bus station until darkness fell and I could leave my baby at the orphanage unseen. The fewer people who saw me, the better. But I had to be careful. I couldn’t just park myself on a bench and doze off, or I would be noticed. I got up once in a while, walked around as if I was waiting for someone. I could hardly stay awake, even though the station was noisy with blaring announcements over the loudspeaker and busy with the tramp of feet going to and fro, the roar of bus engines outside the walls, the incessant din of chattering mouths.

  In the late morning I had to go to the washroom. I had tried to put it off as long as I could. I got up off the bench and went through the door to the toilets. The stench was so overpowering my eyes began to water. I noticed right away that the doorless cubicles were so narrow I couldn’t possibly take Dong-mei with me.

  I returned to the waiting room, to the corner where I had been sitting, and reluctantly put my baby down on the bench, knotting her blankets to the slats. I rushed into the toilet, found an empty cubicle, and squatted over the ditch, trying not to breathe, hurrying myself. But my dressings were blood-soaked and I had to rummage in my pockets for the fresh strips of cloth I had brought with me. Moments later I heard yelling. I looked up and caught my breath. A woman stood in the doorway, holding up my baby, demanding to know who she belonged to.

  A man’s voice came from behind her. “It’s one of those again, isn’t it?”

  “Looks like it.” Another man.

  “They’re everywhere nowadays. In bus terminals, train stations, even in ditches. The poor baby girls. We got to educate these country people better!”

  The woman marched in and stood in front of the cubicles. “Whose baby is this?” she asked again.

  I don’t know why I didn’t call out immediately, but I had spent the day trying not to attract anyone’s notice. I was squatting over a foul-smelling ditch, layering rags inside my underpants. I stood and pulled my clothing into place. “She’s mine. I had to use the toilet.”

  The damn woman insisted on making an announcement. “I found the mother. The baby wasn’t abandoned after all.”

  That evening, after dark, I made my way to the orphanage, left my daughter on the steps, and ran into the deepest shadows beside the building, weeping.

  I would never have done what I did if I had known Dong-mei was going to disappear. My thinking when I placed her on the steps that night was that she would be in the care of a government facility. I had heard that some city folks sent their children to boarding nurseries and schools, seeing them once a week or so. I hoped that in a few years the government might change its rules, as it had so often in the past, reversing this policy or that. I had less hope, but still some, that Loyal and his father might have a change of heart.

  But when none of my wishes came true I lost my courage. I went back a year later to reclaim my child, ready to take whatever punishment the police might pile up on me as long as I could have her back. When I was told by a woman at the orphanage that my baby girl was not there, I broke down. She refused even to acknowledge that Dong-mei had lived at the orphanage. She looked distressed when I mentioned the piece of paper I had tucked into Dong-mei’s blankets. I had the feeling she wanted to say more, but how could I read her mind when I was losing my own?

  It was disgusting and hypocritical but no surprise to me when the commune leaders used my father’s funeral as a show for the living. Such dishonesty was typical of our rulers at all levels. It was the government that carried out the political campaigns that almost killed my father and gave the rest of us a life filled with poverty and misery and ridicule. It was the same government that reversed things after Deng Xiao-ping came along with his talk of white cats and black cats, how it didn’t matter what colour a cat was as long as it could catch mice. Suddenly men like my father, who had been cast down for their business sense and experience, were now praised and encouraged to do business, to catch mice.

  As soon as the news came that Mr. Wang, my father’s former business partner, was coming from Hong Kong to pay his respects, two officials turned up to take charge of the funeral ceremony. Even I knew that Mr. Wang and his father had fled to Hong Kong to escape Chairman Mao’s government, and throughout my youth men like them had been called enemies of the state and capitalist traitors.

  Now, here
were the officials from the commune, spending hours gluing pieces of paper with names on them to the benches, then changing their minds, ripping them off and regluing them to different spots. They were trying to get the ranks in order. The hotshots ended up perching on their own names in the front rows, while behind them sat the mourning relatives and friends. The bosses turned my father’s funeral into a monkey show. Nothing personal, everything businesslike.

  While they were playing their political chess, I mourned not just the father I had lost but the child I had abandoned. I grieved for the evils I had committed, a mother who didn’t stand up to protect her own child. Staring at the small wooden box that held my father’s ashes, I recalled the bad years when he’d been forced to kneel on a pile of broken bricks for hours, hands tied behind his back, his head weighed down by a tall hat made of sheet metal. Eventually he fell forward and lay on the ground, but they didn’t set him free even then. No matter how inhumanely he was treated by the kind of men who now took over his funeral, he never lifted a hand to his wife or children, or lost his love for us. His memory was like a reproach for what I had done to my own daughter. His death was my punishment. Everyone at the funeral took my overwhelming sorrow as grief for the loss of both my father and child. How right they were, and how wrong. But I couldn’t share with anyone the truth, not even my mother.

  The saying goes that time cures all wounds. “Eases” was more like it in my case, for my wounds could never be healed. I tried my best to take up my life again, knowing nothing could be the same but willing to do my best. That was what Loyal and his father had expected. The day after I got back from Yangzhou, Loyal had already dug the phony grave and buried the “stillborn” child. It’s there yet, I hear, covered with tall grass. It was his father’s idea and as usual Loyal went along. Loyal would tend the grave occasionally, weeding the mound and adding dirt after heavy rains. I often wondered what he was thinking when he engaged himself in that stupid task.

  When my one month’s confinement was over, I went back to the factory. I had my hair cut off like a man and neglected my appearance. I couldn’t care less if Loyal or any man ever found me attractive again. When I did return to Poplar Tree Village to see my mother, it was difficult. No matter which of my three brothers’ houses I sat down in, the question was the same. Was I pregnant again yet? Each time I heard that word I could have jumped out of my skin. But how could I explain to my family that I didn’t want to have another child? What if I gave birth to another girl?

  I got the pills as soon as I could. I was well aware of the close relationship between the doctor at the clinic and the old man, so I went to a drugstore in Yangzhou after telling Loyal I was going to visit my mother. The pills there were free and nobody asked any questions.

  It was just a matter of time, I suppose, before Loyal discovered my secret. In a way I was relieved. By then we had resumed the life of a husband and wife. He was disappointed each time my period came, but he tried to be patient. Yet when he found the pills he gave me no time to explain. His palm was too ready.

  If the marriage could not go down the road he had planned, then for him it wasn’t worth having. Shortly afterwards he began to spend hours away from home, then whole nights. By then I had moved into the nursery.

  I don’t remember anything about the night when I lost my mind, but I’d already felt that I was drifting away, as if sanity was a shore and I was in a rudderless boat carried out to sea by currents I didn’t understand. I recall going home to Poplar Tree Village, and my stay in the hospital, and long days of confinement in the houses of my brothers. I drifted for I don’t know how long. Then one spring I began to feel myself growing strong again.

  From time to time news would reach me about my former life. I learned that I was divorced, and that Loyal had remarried and his new wife had fulfilled her assignment. Good for her. I never laid eyes on her or the boy, although people said she had a tongue as sharp as a sickle and just as hard. No matter. She’s Empress Dowager now. She provided the Chens with an heir.

  Sometimes hard labour is a blessing.

  For the first few years after my brother brought me home, the people in our village shunned me, whispering behind their hands as I passed by, as if mental illness was contagious. Even my brothers regarded me as a woman who might fall back into madness at any time. They would not allow me to care for my niece or nephews for fear I’d hurt them. When she changed dwellings each year, moving from one brother’s house to another’s, my mother carried me with her like a damaged suitcase.

  So I lost myself in the intense rhythms of farming. In winter we sowed wheat in the dry paddies. In spring we harvested the wheat, sending the bundles to the threshing ground, then flooded the paddies before transplanting the rice seedlings. I stood bent at the waist, knee deep in brown water, thrusting seedlings into the mud. We took two crops of rice off the paddies through the hot months, then drained them for the winter wheat.

  I went to the fields every day. Afterwards, as the light faded, I chopped weeds in our vegetable plot and watered the melons, beans, and cabbages. The only break came with the Lunar New Year’s celebrations, when the wheat in the fields and turnips in the gardens needed less attention. Gradually, as the years blended into one another, I was accepted again by the villagers, though never completely. I watched my brothers’ kids grow as my mother declined. Before I knew it I was well into my middle age.

  Then came the day when the village bristled with talk about a young foreign woman who had showed up in Liuhe Village, causing an uproar. More startling were the rumours about who she was, and her intention to come to Poplar Tree Village.

  I dismissed the gossip. I had long since stopped being surprised at the nonsense some people would believe. Nor did I want to open old wounds with speculation. But in spite of myself I mulled over the words the woman at the orphanage had said to me. She had pretended Dong-mei had never been there. Was it possible my daughter was sold to a foreigner?

  It made no sense, but the questions dogged me on the way to the paddies and all through the day and then on the walk home to my brother’s house. So just like my silly neighbours, I, too, waited for the foreign woman to show up.

  Nearly twenty years dissolved in one second. She arrived, standing in front of me, tall, healthy, and beautiful. Our eyes met and the empty place inside me filled with joy and happiness. My daughter. My lovely Dong-mei.

  Before she left that first day to go back to the place she was staying, I showed her a water-colour that my father had given to me as a wedding present. The painting shows a black branch heavy with blossoms.

  “But where are the leaves?” she asked in her strange accent. “There are flowers but no leaves.”

  “That is what makes winter blossoms unique,” I told her. “They bloom while surrounded by ice and snow.”

  GRACE

  (1999)

  In a way I felt cheated—finding my mother, finally, then realizing I had only four days before I had to leave China. So I spent the rest of my stay in Poplar Tree Village. You would have thought Chun-mei and I would use up the whole time talking our heads off, trying to compensate for nineteen years of lost time. But her three brothers, my uncles, didn’t give us the chance. Each of them held a banquet at his house, with the same cousins and friends and neighbours at each feast, eating and drinking and singing songs, and insisting that I eat more, eat more! When I got home, I knew, I’d have to diet for six months to make up for the watermelon, baked duck, winter-melon soup, stir-fried vegetables, chicken, steamed fish, and the local delicacy, pig’s feet stewed in soy sauce, with thick layers of fat and skin that the others chewed with noisy enjoyment. Not to mention pop and wine and cakes.

  So Chun-mei and I talked in the evenings and mornings. She would sit across the table from me and hold my hands in hers, as I told her about my life in Canada. Chun-mei asked a thousand questions about school and my friends, my sister and parents. I could tell that some of my answers bewildered her.

  Her mot
her, my Wai-po, sat on the couch as we talked. It was clear she couldn’t understand what was happening around her, although her wrinkled eyes would occasionally shift between Chun-mei and me as if trying to make some kind of connection. Chun-mei told me the stroke Wai-po had suffered a few years earlier ripped away her voice and put her mind to sleep. “Two women in the same household whose minds can’t be trusted,” Chun-mei had said with an ironic smile.

  Uncle Gen-fa had told me a bit about Chun-mei’s breakdown after I made a quiet inquiry about her condition. “She’s been steady, or normal, for a few years,” he had said. “But my sister has changed greatly. She used to be a quiet woman, but determined. My father often said that when Chun-mei made up her mind, even nine water buffaloes yoked together weren’t strong enough to change her decision. Now she is more passive. Maybe that’s better. She’s middle-aged now. There are no battles for her to fight. And yesterday, Dong-mei, I saw her smile. That is your doing. It was the first time since she came home from Liuhe Village.”

  I thought briefly about staying longer, but I would have to extend my visa, and to do that I’d have to go back to Shanghai, and there wasn’t enough time. On the morning of my last day there, I said goodbye to Wai-po at the house. Chun-mei and all my uncles and their families, and almost everyone in the village, it seemed, walked me out to the paved road where I could catch the bus. My youngest uncle, Gen-shen, insisted on carrying my pack, which was loaded down with gifts they had given me for Megan, my parents, and my grandparents. Chun-mei asked me again and again if I would come back, and each time I promised I would. I told her I might even come to China to study for a year or two. She was concerned about whether my Canadian parents would allow me. When we saw the bus down the road, floating in the shimmering heat waves that rose from the pavement, despite my decision not to do so, I put my arms around Chun-mei. She didn’t push me away. She held me tight and said softly into my ear, “Goodbye, my beautiful daughter. I’m in peace now at last.”