Throwaway Daughter (20 page)

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 walked 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.”

“I always thought landlords and their kind were a bunch of ruthless, cold-hearted people,” offered another. “Going out of your mind over a baby girl, dead for a year? Unheard of.”

Chun-mei, the clinic doctor told me, suffered from “nerve sickness.” There was no mental hospital in our area. The nearest, in Yangzhou, about thirty miles away, had a long waiting list, and city residents got priority. Chun-mei would have to be cared for at home, like most of the mental patients in the village. In her case she had to be watched twenty-four hours a day so she wouldn’t hurt herself. His words left me nothing to look forward to but caring for an insane woman for the rest of my life.

Four days later, Chun-mei’s mother and elder brother showed up at our door. I took them upstairs, and when my mother-in-law saw Chun-mei tied to the bed like a caged animal, she broke down. And Gen-fa was all business. He had taken over the salted-egg company and become head of the family after his father had passed away.

“One of our relatives is a doctor in a hospital in Zhenjiang,” he said quietly, staring at the dishevelled bundle on the bed. “I have contacted
him. He may be able to pull a few strings to get my sister the treatment she needs. Of course you and your father will agree to let my sister come home with Mother and me.”

His words might have sounded humble and polite, but the tone made it clear he would not accept a negative answer. And why would I say no? The truth was, I felt a wave of relief bear me up. How could I help my wife, after all? Even if she were sane, she wanted nothing to do with me. No, it was better all around if she went away. I admit to a pang of fear that she would tell her brother the real story about what had led to her illness. Or even worse. But, I reasoned, Gen-fa wouldn’t believe her. Once a mad woman, forever insane.

My mother was heartbroken watching Chun-mei’s brother settle her in a “turtle cart,” a three-wheeled motor car. Less than a week later, Mother suffered a stroke that left her speechless and partly paralyzed. Although I was busy looking after my ailing mother, I did make an attempt to see Chun-mei, but when she caught sight of me she flew into a rage. When she was hospitalized, I tried again, but the doctor warned me to stay away. He said my visit interfered with the treatment.

The new year of the rooster brought no joy to our morgue-like household. I thought many times that I must now be at the lowest point in my life and that things could only get better, although how they would improve was anyone’s guess. Two days into the new year, I heard a woman shout my name outside our door. I recognized her voice immediately.

I pulled the door open, dumbfounded. I hadn’t seen Qiu-xiang for about two months. My mother, who had been sitting in a chair beside my father, wrapped in blankets and soaking up the sun by the window, stared intently at the strange woman. Qiu-xiang was no longer the slender little thing I remembered. The buttons on her padded coat strained against her swollen belly.

“Hello, Loyal.”

I said nothing. My father threw a withering glance my way. Mother kept gazing at Qiu-xiang, her toothless mouth sucking in and out like a bellows, her hand pressing her chest, breathing hard as if she couldn’t get enough air.

“Not much of a welcome here for the mother of your child,” Qiu-xiang said brashly.

“Keep your voice down,” I urged. “What are you doing here?”

“Isn’t that obvious? And don’t talk to me like that. It’s time for you to live up to your responsibilities. This is what happens when you play in flour when your hands are wet.”

PART SEVEN
Poplar Tree Village, Jiangsu
Province