the first birthday she has celebrated properly. Swept up in the excitement, she helps Kongzi finish a whole bottle of rice wine. Only when he raises his last cup and makes a toast to their future son does she finally wake from her happy daze and see the infant spirit flit before her eyes once more.
KEYWORDS: balloons, uterine walls, work permit, vegetables, vaginal speculum.
AS KONGZI BOARDS the ferry holding a bag of rape seeds he plans to sow in Time Square, Meili asks Xixi to look after Nannan for the morning and prepares to go into town. She’s determined to prevent the infant spirit re-entering her womb, the fleshy prison in which it would be doomed to await another execution.
Standing at the edge of the river brushing her teeth, she watches Kongzi disembark on the other side. The colourful rags and plastic bags caught in the trees above him remind her of the balloons that were hung above their front door on their wedding day. It suddenly occurs to her that this view is unfamiliar. The river level must have fallen, exposing the rubbish-festooned trees. In the bright morning sun, the rags and plastic bags sparkle like jewels. The river has dropped and the days are getting colder. Meili remembers Kongzi say that they should start trying for a baby before winter sets in, so that by the time her bump shows it can be concealed under thick jumpers. He ejaculated twice last night onto the entrance gate of her state-owned womb. Get on with it, she tells herself. No time to waste.
The street is dusty and scattered with broken bricks. Workers with greasy hair push past her. When she catches sight of the forbidding sign of the Family Planning Centre, she hesitates. Installing a security device at the entrance of her womb would enrage Kongzi, but the thought of falling pregnant again and being bound to the surgical table of an abortion room fills her with greater dread. Happiness’s motionless face flashes through her mind.
She walks in and goes to the reception. ‘Comrade, I want an internal examination and an IUD insertion,’ she says to the young nurse sitting behind the counter.
The nurse’s eyes narrow. ‘I’ll need your identity card, marriage certificate and migrant workers’ fertility record.’
Meili’s mouth goes dry. ‘I only have an identity card and an abortion certificate,’ she replies. The nurse gives her invoices for a forty-yuan pelvic examination and a fifteen-yuan disposable vaginal speculum, then takes her to the Family Planning Management Room at the end of the corridor and hands her a married woman’s gynaecological and fertility assessment report form.
A female doctor wearing a white face mask palpates and prods Meili’s breasts and abdomen, then tells her to lie on the bed and let her legs flop apart. The nurse tears open a sachet, pulls out a plastic speculum the shape of a duck’s head, inserts the device’s cold beak into Meili’s vagina and opens it. A smell of disinfectant wafts into Meili’s body.
‘You say you just have one, three-year-old child, but it’s clear you’ve given birth much more recently,’ the doctor says, shining a torch onto Meili’s cervix. Then she turns to the nurse and says, ‘Write: smooth, no cervical erosion or polyps.’
‘Yes, look – you can tell these red nipples have just been sucked,’ the nurse says, resting her pen in her mouth and squeezing Meili’s left breast.
‘There’s no milk in there!’ Meili says. ‘I have no baby, I promise, just one daughter who’ll be four next month. I had an abortion last year. Why would I lie to you? I came here to have an IUD inserted because I don’t want to fall pregnant again.’ Meili is embarrassed by the redness of her nipples. It’s Kongzi’s fault: he insists on sucking them every night as he drops off to sleep.
‘Why didn’t you have one fitted after your first child?’ asks the doctor, glancing at Meili’s abortion certificate. ‘And what does your husband do?’ She clearly assumes that Meili is a hair-salon prostitute.
‘He’s a boatman, and grows some vegetables on the side,’ Meili answers, feeling ashamed of Kongzi’s diminished status. She winces with pain as the speculum continues to stretch open her cervix.
‘All right, we’ll give her an IUD,’ the doctor says, pulling on rubber gloves. ‘You’re lucky the director isn’t here today. If he were, we’d have to take you straight up to the third floor and get you sterilised.’
‘But women are only supposed to be sterilised after their second child,