by Keyi Sheng
Zhima bought a pound of fresh meat and brought it to our house, asking my mother to look after Yihua for him for a little while – several months at least, he said. At the time, Shunqiu was still recovering from the injury to his leg. He could hobble a few steps on crutches, but was also an idle mouth to feed, and now Zhima wanted to add another dead weight, and this one did not even have our surname. My father said, ‘No way. We are surrounded by ditches on every side here, and if anything happens to a member of the Liu family, we can’t afford to bear this responsibility.’
Zhima knew my father’s temperament, so he begged Shunqiu to intercede. Zhima did not know that my father had borrowed money to help treat my brother’s leg, depriving my brother of all rights long ago, leaving him no more qualified than Zhima to plead the case. But Shunqiu was moved by Yihua’s helpless, innocent look. She seemed aware that she was an extra burden, and was like a small animal lowering its head as it listened to buyer and seller bargain over its price.
When Shunqiu interceded for Yihua, it was as if my father had been scalded with boiling water. He bounced up, and his voice got louder and louder. Shunqiu stared at his own knees, listening patiently to the tirade. He had no objection, feeling that my father had the right to express his dissatisfaction. My father repeated the same things over and over. There were two core issues: our house was not an orphanage, and there was no one to take responsibility for Yihua. Shunqiu quietly answered my father, saying he would eat less, to compensate for Yihua’s share, and that he would look after her safety, taking responsibility if anything happened to her.
Zhima went home happy. That night he told Chuntian to pack her things. Early the next morning, they snuck out, escaping to his Aunt Liu’s house in Yuanjiang. My sister carried Yicao, who was awakened suddenly by the rough journey. Chuntian looked furtively around her in the dark, then someone’s dog barked and scared the child, making her cry.
They ate a bowl of noodles in town, then went to the jetty at the ferry crossing to wait for their ride. There were huge red words painted on the white wall opposite them, reading, We would rather bleed a river than allow the birth of one more child. Chuntian knew these words. Unconsciously, she lowered her head and imagined bleeding a river. It made her uneasy. Later, she again told Zhima that once this one was born, she would not have any more. If it was not a son, she would just accept their fate. But both Zhima and his father were the only sons in their generations; even if he agreed, his father would not. No matter what, he had to bring home a son.
At two o’clock that afternoon, after an early start on a long journey by land and water, the Liu Family reached their secret destination. Aunt Liu offered a lukewarm greeting, as if she could just barely tolerate them. When Yicao smiled upon seeing Aunt Liu, the old woman was a little embarrassed, so smiled in return. This made Yicao laugh out loud, which in turn pleased the older woman. She rushed to cook some peppers fried with pork, steamed eggplant, and fried eggs. While they ate, Aunt Liu took Yicao off to one side to play. Later, she used bricks to make a bed in the main room where they kept the farm tools. Zhima stayed one night, then left. He wanted to sell his last batch of mosquito nets that he brought with him before the weather turned cold.
Aunt Liu had been widowed for some years. Her daughter was married, and her son was working at a toy factory in Guangzhou. She was lonely and reluctantly took care of others for nothing.
Chuntian was a diligent worker. She passed Yicao to Aunt Liu and set about cleaning the house from top to bottom. The land reclamation skills my father had taught her came in handy at this time. She quickly turned a half acre of wasteland into a vegetable plot, planting cabbage seeds, which grew into tender seedlings in just a month’s time. Early in the morning while the dew was still fresh, she picked the cabbages and took a basketful of them to sell in town. Coming back before breakfast with the basket now empty of cabbages, she would always have a few pancakes or steamed buns inside. Aunt Liu was overjoyed. One day she took the initiative to take Chuntian to the hospital to find out the sex of her foetus. When the results showed it was a boy, my sister cried openly in an expression of her own feelings and, in gratitude to Aunt Liu, she complained about my father in passing.
After this, the smoke from the chimney in Aunt Liu’s house livened up a good deal. As if the liveliness were meant to incite the envy of others, when my sister’s belly began to shake violently, Aunt Liu’s son returned, bringing a pregnant girlfriend home with him. They planned to marry, have the baby, then leave the child in Aunt Liu’s care while they went back to earn their fortune. When Aunt Liu saw that her son had brought a pair home all at once, she was ecstatic. This naturally brought about a decline in the interest she took in Yicao. She was about to have a descendant of her own flesh and blood. Yicao could laugh and cry all she wanted now; Aunt Liu would not be so easily moved.
Chuntian was seven or eight months pregnant by this time. There was no going back now. Victory was at hand. If she could not escape the fines for having children outside the state plan, she might as well go home and give birth in peace. Zhima, too, had long ago grown weary of life in exile, so they packed up their things, expressed their gratitude to Aunt Liu, and the bloated family tottered out the door and headed home.
I never quite knew what the convicts did in prison. From what I had seen on television programmes, I thought the prison was like a school: the reforming prisoners like students in clean uniforms, listening to the instructor lecture, watching television, playing basketball, celebrating the Spring Festival, some even preparing for the college entrance exam, and each one eventually looking into the camera to express their gratitude toward the prison. . . This made prison life look more interesting than the world outside its walls, so that there were always people going in – so much so that when some convicts were released, they missed the place so badly they found a way to break the law and be sent back again.
Before school started in September, I asked Shunqiu if his early release was like in school too, where you could complete a four-year programme in two years by working hard and taking extra credits. He smiled shyly, as if he was surprised by his own good results, and said, ‘This country has no law whatsoever. Whether to catch you or not, sentence you or not, is all up to a few people to judge and weigh. Whether they let you graduate or not, it all depends on the instructor’s mood.’
My brother had worked desperately hard to outperform in the prison reform farm. He cited an example. If his quota was to finish carrying enough soil for 10 000 plots in a year, he worked hard and did it in half a year. He could put down an acre of paddy in three days, and like a reaping machine, he could complete rolling in two. The farm planted two seasons of paddy and he learned everything he needed to know about the labour involved. The instructors all said that he was so honest he did not qualify to be in the labour reform camp. When my brother was released, everyone asked him to add a handful of soil to the ancestral grave in hopes that his filial remembrance would secure their protection for him. Our family only had one ancestral grave. Inside it lay Li Xinhai’s wife, her feet bound, who died during childbirth. Very early on, my grandfather had blocked out the others, so nobody else knew what unhappy events had happened among our ancestors.
My brother made the vast farmland sound very attractive, highlighting features such as large plots of reeds, hidden marshes, muddy ponds, lakes, and flood control dykes, all within a hundred mile radius. Sometimes the sky was not variegated, and other times it was quite turbid. The prisoners moved like a flock of birds, sometimes lined up in a V-formation, sometimes in a straight line. The instructors walked back and forth with their hunting rifles, sometimes shouting or cursing, and when the situation got out of control, firing their guns into the air. Those who were disobedient were punished with solitary confinement, sealed in a room the size of a coffin, to reflect on their mistakes. Those who were tired of prison life and tried to escape ended up in one of two situations – either swallowed by the swamp or having their sentence extend
ed. Another violent end came to those who chose to swallow spoons and razor blades.
Shunqiu was not affected by any of this. He was very thankful for the protective callous that had grown naturally on his hands, which was even tougher than the handle of a hoe. I asked him what the easiest work was. He said it was weeding. It was only later that I discovered that weeding was not actually easy. The weeders spent ten hours every day in the water, bent at a ninety-degree angle, facing downward, their faces so swollen by the end of the workday, they were hardly recognisable. Imagine that. The artistic quality is no less than Jean-Francois Millet’s famous painting The Gleaners. One did not know what went on behind the scenes, like what happened to prisoners who did not know how to distinguish between weeds and rice. Pulling the rice seedlings would have a negative effect on production. Prisoners who did that were criticised. A light punishment was given to them, such as a demerit on their record or solitary confinement. Heavy punishment would be extended sentencing. But absent of that knowledge, one cannot deny the poetic quality and beauty of the picture presented by prisoners weeding. When these same people were not working on the farm, they were repairing roads or embankments or carrying silt, with so many people passing back and forth, creating an impression of ants in motion.
My brother looked at his leg and said he had hurt his knee while working in the prison. But there were much more terrible things there, such as the deadly mosquitoes on the farm. These mosquitoes would normally form themselves into an egg-shaped swarm, then when they saw people, would rush forward, surround, and attack, covering the inmates’ white clothing so thoroughly it appeared black. While they worked, they tied the cuffs of their sleeves and trousers tightly and covered their faces with cloths, leaving only the eyes exposed. When one of the prisoners had talked back to an instructor, he was thrown into a ditch to feed the mosquitoes. Later, the prisoner’s entire body was covered in blood, and his face swollen to the size of his arse. When he returned, he was sent to solitary confinement, where he died two days later.
There were many things that bit in the prison. Besides the gadflies and leeches, there were numerous poisonous things, for which no one even knew the names.
Auntie Cui did not come with a friendly attitude this time. She did away with polite greetings and feigned tactics. Even her hair was fluffed really high because of her rage. She pointed at my sister’s belly, saying, ‘This is a serious insult to my IQ. When the family planning workgroup comes to visit, you have to deal with it yourself. There’s not much human sympathy in the face of policies.’
My sister did not know how to engage in artful talk. She thought she had actually deceived Auntie Cui, but she did not feel the least bit bad about it, for she felt Auntie Cui’s scam was much bigger than anything she had done. Everyone cheated. Of those who shared a kinship or friendship with the village cadres, not one of them was without mischief, and they were never punished for having more children than was allowed.
My sister was very calm. She rubbed her belly with a circling motion, like a farmer appreciating the fruits of her harvest. When the produce had grown, who could change it back to its original form? But when the birth control group arrived, she started to panic. They were like the Eight Immortals, five of them in military fatigues, and one in a Mao suit. One wore a worker’s hat, and one of the women in the group was an accountant. It was like a heavenly host had descended from above, riding the clouds and fog, and when they touched the ground, their celestial aura was not extinguished, and their expression remained immortal. It was the first time Chuntian had seen a group of such creatures, so it really shocked her.
They did not sit. The official in the Mao jacket asked questions, which my sister answered. Another recorded the conversation.
‘What is your name?’
‘Li Chuntian.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-five.’
‘How many children have you had?’
Three . . . one of them died.’
‘What is your condition now?’
‘I’m eight months pregnant.’
‘Do you know about the family planning policy?’
‘Yes. One is fine, two is tie, three and four is scrape, scrape, scrape!’
‘And?’
‘If you didn’t tie when you were supposed to tie, we will demolish your house; if you didn’t abort when you were supposed to abort, we will destroy your house and take away your cow.’
‘Which do you choose?’
‘How much is the fine?’
‘Twenty thousand.’
‘What?!’
‘This is considered a light punishment.’
‘I don’t have that kind of money.’
‘You can abort.’
‘. . . Can it be reduced? Say, maybe 5000?’
‘How can you haggle over the policy?’
‘OK, 8000 . . . I can go to 8000.’
‘Don’t talk nonsense! If you dare to have the child, I will dare to fine you . . . But of course, our aim is not to fine you; our aim is to control the population growth. You have three days. Either get the abortion or pay the fine.’
When they had finished saying this and the ticket had been issued for the fine, the Eight Immortals stepped back onto their cloud and departed from my sister’s world. Chuntian was left behind like a heap of rubbish they had dumped onto the floor on their way out. She did not move for a long time. Finally, she opened the cupboard and pulled out a drawer. She touched a cloth bag in the corner, in which she kept all her money. She counted it. There was 183 and a half yuan. Before, that had seemed like a lot of money; now she found it was nothing more than a louse or a scrap of skin on an elephant’s body. Every time Zhima went on a business errand to sell mosquito nets, he only came back with 180 yuan, and she sold a basket of vegetables for about a third of one yuan. They might be able to save up 20 000 in ten years.
My sister rubbed the notes, as if working a spell that would turn them into a great sum of money.
Zhima had been afraid he would be caught and forced to have a vasectomy, so he stayed away from home, hiding out. At midday, he slipped in through the back door. Hearing that the fine was 20 000, his face turned bright red and he kept muttering, ‘Thieves,’ or, ‘Bandits.’
By contrast, Chuntian felt she had violated the policy and was in the wrong. She had no right to blame others. She was calm in the face of reality. It was no use continuing to curse. It was better to set about trying to borrow the money. Zhima sat for half a day, thinking. He mulled over all the close and distant relatives, those he had contact with, and those he had long been out of touch with, and mapped out a reasonable traffic route. When he had eaten his lunch, he carried some field rations and hopelessly set out again.
Her belly jolting with each step, Chuntian made her way to the relatives on our side of the family. She first sought out our oldest uncle, whose family situation was about average. It was our aunt who held the purse strings. After a great deal of effort, my sister got 1000 from her. Our uncle then added another 200 from his own private stash. My sister wept as she said goodbye, feeling unsettled. She walked around a bit, then suddenly realised she had no more relatives on our side of the family. She thought it would have been much better if our maternal grandparents had had many children, and better yet, that each of those children had been both wealthy and generous.
When she got to our house, it was already ominously dark. Dinner had just been cooked, so my sister sat at the table with us. All the way to our house, she had been pondering the issue of money. When she realised she had arrived at our door empty-handed once more, she became uneasy. The dinner was as dull as usual. My father was lukewarm. He assumed my sister had come to get Yihua, so he recited all the girl’s errors during her stay, such as breaking a bowl or wetting the bed at night. Although Yihua was still small, she knew what it was to be embarrassed. In a small voice, she said, ‘I want to go home.’
Several times, Chuntian thought to mention that she had
been to our uncle’s house, hoping this would create an opening for her to talk about borrowing money, but seeing how Shunqiu looked, she did not say more. When she had finished eating, she took out 200 yuan and gave it to Shunqiu. She told him to buy some nutritional supplements with it. Shunqiu took the money, but later placed it in Yihua’s pocket.
Chuntian chatted with our mother, all the while in her mind, she went through the names of all her childhood friends. They were generally poor. One had married well, but they had since grown apart. My mother said that the one in the village who was doing best was Li Letian, who had made a fortune from raising pigs and had built a three-storey house. Letian was the son of the village party secretary, the one who had been the cause of the beating my sister had long ago received from my father.
Taking my mother’s cue, Chuntian sat thinking for a long time. Stroking her belly, she eventually came up with a shameless idea. Anyway, many years earlier our father had cursed her and called her shameless. She had always felt she owed him for that. Well, now she would repay him; she would prove him right.
Chuntian stopped about six metres away from Letian’s house. Light from the house fell on the ground, as if it was the pity in Letian’s eyes, carrying with it a little sigh. Chuntian struggled to turn around. With her back to the light like that, it looked like she wanted to leave. She paused for a moment, then turned awkwardly around, looked at the high-rise, and solemnly advanced to the door.
It is not difficult to imagine the scene in which Chuntian spoke up and asked to borrow money from Letian. She did not know how to flatter him, nor to sweet talk in any way. As soon as she sat down, she launched right into the matter, pouring out her heart’s desire. Whether he loaned her the money or not was up to him.