husband will be a limp cock!’ Ah-Fei sniggers behind her face mask.
Nannan runs inside with Lulu to drink a glass of water. They’ve been in the backyard, clambering over a heap of computer carcasses and gutted video machines. In the front yard, workers are breaking open television sets and computer monitors with kitchen cleavers and extracting the circuit boards. The thick glass interiors are shaped like huge light bulbs, with the flattened screen at one end. They are of no use any more, and are placed in a pile in the corner.
‘The family planning officers in this town only take bribes – they don’t bother enforcing the law,’ says Cha Na. ‘So we’d be stupid not to take advantage of the situation and have as many children as we want.’ Noticing her engorged breasts begin to leak onto her shirt, she turns to the side, pulls them out and squeezes the milk onto the ground.
‘My husband never took bribes when he was head of the village family planning team,’ says Pang, a middle-aged woman whose wiry black hair is braided in tight plaits. ‘Everyone looked up to him. He’d come home at night, open a beer and sing: Armed with violation notices, through every village we scout. When we find a pregnant woman without a permit, we rip her baby out.’ Pang has poor eyesight, and can often be heard yelping as she burns her fingers on the molten lead.
‘The mere mention of family planning officers sends shivers down my spine,’ Meili says, feeling Heaven’s arms jerk about inside her womb. ‘Those bastards have blood on their hands. They’ll get their just deserts in the end.’ Pang gets on Meili’s nerves. Her husband has visited the workshop a few times. Last year he was sacked from the family planning team after fracturing his pelvis in a road accident, and moved to Heaven with Pang and their daughter hoping to pick up some work.
‘You’re right there, Meili. Pang’s husband’s certainly got his just deserts in that car crash, didn’t he? It knocked the life out of his “life rod”! Ha!’
‘You may snigger, Cha Na, but your husband’s dick will go limp too, one day, mark my words,’ Pang says, then coughs into her sleeve. ‘Anyway, I don’t miss him sticking his dirty sausage into me every night. Never gave me much pleasure . . .’
‘Well, I suppose you can at least get a good night’s sleep these days,’ Cha Na says, her breasts pressing against the metal table as she reaches for another circuit board.
‘You really think her husband’s gone limp?’ Ah-Fei says with a grin. ‘I bet when he goes to a hair salon, his hard-on hits the front door before he does!’
‘Mind your language, please, there’s a young girl at the table,’ Xiu says, pointing at the fifteen-year-old girl with shoulder-length hair, dark skin and large anxious eyes. A few years ago, this girl was playing hide-and-seek under the table, just like Nannan and Lulu are doing now.
Yes, one day all those family planning officers will be punished for their crimes, Meili thinks to herself, staring blankly at the eight women as they shake their hand-held heaters over the circuit boards. The fluorescent light above them shines on their hands, the boards and the blue vapours rising from them. Once the lead solder has melted, the women grip a copper wire, a chip, a capacitor or an electrode with their tweezers, wobble it to loosen the hold, then gently pull it out and place it into one of the thirty tea cups arranged before them. When all the components have been removed, they drop the empty boards into the red plastic buckets on the ground . . . Yes, those doctors and nurses who murdered Happiness will receive their punishment one day, Meili says to herself, kicking an empty cardboard box lying by her feet into the corner.
Old Shao, who’s responsible for buying and distribution, has taken off his shirt, exposing his round belly and small flabby breasts. He’s squatting in the doorway now, picking up the copper strands that Meili has extracted from the cables. He looks up at her and says, ‘If you don’t buy a fake birth permit soon, Meili, your baby won’t get a residence permit. I’ve heard you can pick one up in Hong Kong Road for five thousand yuan.’ Meili likes Old Shao. She always sits next to him at lunch. He’s the only person in the workshop who knows that she is