and I only have one.’ Meili looks at the door, unconsciously preparing for an escape.
‘How do we know how many children you have? You said you were at the end of your cycle, but look how much blood there is on your sanitary towel. Are your periods usually so heavy? When did this one start?’
‘Ten days ago. They’re very irregular.’ She wonders whether the doctor has seen traces of Kongzi’s sperm inside her. A wad of surgical gauze is pushed into her vagina and twirled around. She grits her teeth and squeezes her eyes shut. Beads of sweat run down her face.
A cold pair of forceps yanks Meili’s cervix forward, then a long needle is inserted into her womb, extracted and measured against a selection of IUDs.
‘I suggest this oval one,’ the nurse says to Meili. ‘It’s a domestic product, and only costs eighty yuan. The Sino-foreign joint venture ones cost two hundred. Go for the cheaper one. With the procedure fee, it will come to 180 yuan.’
‘Oh no! I don’t have that much money on me,’ Meili says, wishing she could close her legs. ‘I thought the IUD would be free.’
‘It’s only free for local residents,’ the nurse replies.
‘Exactly how much money have you got?’ the doctor asks brusquely.
‘Check my pockets,’ Meili says, pointing to her trousers.
The nurse pulls out the cash from the pockets and counts it. ‘Only a hundred yuan,’ she says. ‘Are you sure this is all you’ve got on you?’
‘Haven’t I seen you in the market?’ the doctor says. ‘Do you run a stall there?’
‘Yes. I sell vegetables, herbs and pickles. Look out for me next time you go. All my produce is free from pesticides.’ Meili’s lease on the stall will soon expire, and the market’s manager has informed her that since she doesn’t have an official work permit it can’t be renewed.
‘Well, we’ll do it for a hundred yuan then. I hope you appreciate our leniency. Bring me the oval one, nurse.’ The doctor picks up the IUD with long blunt tweezers, opens the speculum even wider and slides the device inside. As her warm uterine walls tighten around the cold metal object, Meili stares at the two red gulls painted on the wall above the radiator.
The nurse hands Meili an appointment form. ‘You’ll have a follow-up examination three months from now, to check that the IUD hasn’t fallen out or been deliberately removed,’ she says. ‘Any woman who attempts to take out their IUD, even if it’s causing them pain, will be fined five hundred yuan.’
‘You may suffer cramps, nausea and light bleeding, but these side effects are usually only temporary,’ the doctor says, removing her face mask and revealing her brightly painted lips.
The nurse continues to fill in the examination report. ‘Did you say her vaginal ridges have flattened out?’ she asks, glancing up at the doctor.
Meili watches the bloodstained speculum being tossed into the bin and hears her cervix release a last thread of air before closing its entrance gate.
KEYWORDS: willow branches, dead chick, chicken wings, cotton fluffer, Three Nos, ox in a yoke.
‘COME AND JOIN us, everyone. It’s my daughter’s birthday. Let me fill your glasses so we can drink to her health!’ Kongzi is sitting on a broken, legless office chair he found on the rubbish dump and has tied to a tree trunk with rope. The battery-operated strip light he bought today is suspended from branches overhead, lighting up the plates of food set out on wooden crates.
‘Thank you, Master Kong,’ says Dai, a gentle man with large bulbous eyes and a deeply lined forehead. ‘Me and Yiping are simple peasants. It’s an honour for us to share a drink with a schoolteacher! A toast to your daughter, Master Kong!’ Dai grits his teeth and forces himself to down the drink in one. He and Yiping are from Purple Mountain in Jiangsu Province. They moved to the sand island six weeks ago, and have built a shelter under the trees just behind. Meili came across them over in the town. Dai was wandering through the streets with a pole on his shoulders, a bucket of clothes and pans on one end and a cotton fluffer for quilt-making on the other. Yiping, half his height and heavily pregnant, was waddling behind him holding their two daughters by the hand. Meili approached them and advised them to move to the island to avoid being arrested by family planning officers.
A skinny, bald man called Bo lifts his glass and says,