what they say: a sixth finger signifies a sixth talent. But if it bothers you, I can chop it off. No extra cost.’
Meili shudders at the thought, and feels the little finger of her own left hand begin to throb. ‘No, no, it’s fine,’ she blurts.
‘But the baby does seem a little slow to me. Take her to the district hospital in a month to have her checked. And keep a record of how much milk she drinks, the colour and frequency of her stools. These days there are so many pesticides on our crops, so much formaldehyde in our homes, it’s rare to see a baby born without a brain defect, cleft palate or other deformity. Make sure you regularly clear the duck shit from your enclosure. That sixth finger suggests to me that you caught toxoplasmosis during your pregnancy – it’s a disease caused by a parasite that lives in animal dung. A baby I helped deliver last week was born with no nose and no limbs, so you should consider yourself lucky.’
Meili’s heartbeat returns to normal and a rosy glow suffuses her face. She can’t find the strength to close her legs. Her womb feels like an opened cellar, with hot air wafting in and cold blood streaming out. ‘Sister Mao,’ she says, ‘I’ve changed my mind. Babies don’t remember pain, do they? So can you get it over and done with, please, and chop off the sixth finger now?’
KEYWORDS: paralysis, water on the brain, fishing net, male chauvinism, good by nature, soft spot.
THE EVENING SUN turns the papaya tree and dead banana trees behind the hut golden green. Moths swirl around the hut’s doorway. Kongzi sits on a cracked enamel washbasin, his head in his hands. By his feet, a line of yellow ants are marching across an opened tin of lychees. Since the sluice gates were raised last week, foamy floodwaters have engulfed the creek, risen to the pond and are lapping at the base of the willows a few metres from the hut. Half the ducks have died. Kongzi said the pollution in the floodwater must have killed them, but Meili thinks they were poisoned by the contaminated rice he’s been adding to their feed. Each time they swallow a grain, their heads jerk back in discomfort. When Meili steams the rice for supper, it turns yellow and gives off the smell of rotten tree roots.
Nannan is standing barefoot among towering water weeds, singing, ‘Four, six, seven, eight. The farmer stands by the gate. Too many ducks to count. For dinner he’ll be late . . .’ A white fishing net hangs over the boat’s bow like a bridal veil. Last week, when Kongzi saw that the flooded creek was teeming with dead fish, he bought the net so that he could scoop them out and sell them in the village. He’d heard that once the poisoned fish are gutted, salted and dried, the chemical taste is barely noticeable.
The stink of pollution and decay in the sweltering August air makes Nannan’s eyes water. When Waterborn is unable to latch on to Meili’s engorged nipples, she cries herself into a purple frenzy. Kongzi has noticed her eyelids are swollen, her mouth hangs open, and that she has a blood-filled lump on her crown, and suspects she might be mentally handicapped. He couldn’t afford the 800-yuan cost of a check-up at the district hospital, but with the help of a contact at the Radiance Hair Company, he was able to bribe one of the hospital’s doctors a hundred yuan to visit them at the hut. The doctor was a recent graduate and looked no more than twenty-two. After examining the lump on Waterborn’s crown and palpating the soft spot above her forehead, he said, ‘Her skull shouldn’t be this big. She might have a tumour, or water on the brain. If the head grows any larger, she could suffer paralysis and severe brain damage.’
Ever since then, Kongzi and Meili have been quarrelling over what to do with her. Kongzi wants to sell her, but Meili won’t hear of it. He raises the subject again now, and Meili charges out of the hut holding a greasy wok lid in one hand and Waterborn in the other, and shouts, ‘Over my dead body! She’s my flesh and blood. I’ll never let you take her away from me.’ Nannan, who’s sitting on a plastic crate eating a banana, kicks her legs about, sending the mud on her bare feet