Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh

  Her grumbling merged with the infernal buzzing of the flies, nearly liquefying my brain. “Knock it off!” I shouted hysterically.

  That shut her up. I stared at her face, which, out of rage and fear, had undergone a dramatic change. I could also hear my daughter, who was playing with a neighbor girl somewhere in the lane. Girls, girls, unwelcome girls everywhere.

  Despite all my care, some of the fetal feces soiled my hand. There was something wonderful, I felt, about cleaning up an abandoned baby's first bowel movement. Feeling honored, I went back to cleaning her up, scooping out the dark excrement with my finger. Out of the corner of my eye, I looked at my wife, whose mouth hung slack, and at that moment, a sense of deep-rooted loathing for all of humanity exploded inside me. Naturally, self-loathing topped the list.

  My wife came up to help. I neither welcomed her help nor rejected it. When she reached down and expertly straightened the swaddling cloth, I stepped back, scooped up some water, and washed the excrement off my hand.

  “Money!” my wife cried out.

  I held up my hands, turned, and saw her holding a loose piece of red paper in her left hand and a wad of crumpled bills in her right. She let go of the red paper, spit once, and began counting. She did it twice, just to make sure. “Twenty-one yuan!” Her face exuded tenderness.

  “Go get Shasha's baby bottles,” I said, “and wash them. Then fill one with powdered milk and feed the baby.”

  “Are you serious about taking her in?” she asked.

  “We'll worry about that later,” I said. “For now we don't want her to starve.”

  “There's no powdered milk in the house.”

  “Then go buy some at the co-op!” I took out ten yuan and handed it to her.

  “We're not using our own money,” she said, waving the dirty bills in her hand. “We'll use her money.”

  A cricket bounded out from a corner of the damp wall and landed on the edge of the bed, then crawled over the red wrapping. The insect's coffee-colored body looked especially somber against the deep red of the satin. I saw its antennae twitch nervously. The baby stuffed one of her hands into her mouth and began to suck. The white skin over her knuckles was peeling. She had a full head of black hair and two big, fleshy, nearly transparent ears.

  Just when, I don't know, but my father and mother had moved up beside me and were watching the hungry baby chew her fist.

  “She's hungry,” Mother said.

  “People have to learn how to do everything but eat,” Father said.

  I turned to look at the two old folks, and waves of heat rolled up from my heart. As if they were praying to the Holy Ghost, they stood with me admiring the dirty, bloodstained face of a girl who might someday become a great woman.

  My wife returned with two sacks of powdered milk and a package of detergent. I mixed a bottle of milk, then shoved the plastic nipple, which my daughter had nearly chewed to pieces, into the baby's mouth. The baby rocked its head back and forth a time or two before wrapping her lips around the nipple and beginning to gurgle.

  After finishing the bottle, she opened her eyes. They were black as tadpoles. She struggled to look at me, but her gaze was cold and detached.

  “She's looking at me,” I said.

  “A newborn baby can't see anything,” Mother said.

  “How do you know what she can and can't see?” Father objected angrily. “Did she call you up and tell you?”

  Mother backed away. “I'm not going to argue with you. I don't care if she can see or not.”

  Just then our daughter ran in from the lane and shouted, “Mother, did you hear that thunder? It's going to rain.”

  She was right. From where we were standing inside the house, we could hear peals of thunder rolling in from the northwest, like the sound of a millstone turning. I saw dark, downy clouds through holes poked in the paper covering of the rear window.

  Shortly after noon, the skies opened up, and a gray curtain of rain sluiced down from the tile overhangs, the sound merging with the croaking of frogs. A dozen or more huge carp shaped like plow blades had been carried along by the river of rainwater and were now flopping around in the yard. My wife was fast asleep in bed, holding our daughter in her arms; I could hear my parents’ heavy breathing in their bed in the other room. After placing the baby girl in a bamboo winnowing basket, I carried it into the front room and set it down on a tall stool, then sat down beside her and gazed out at the wild torrents of rain falling outside. When I turned back to look at the baby, she was curled up in the basket, sleeping soundly. The rain sheeted down off the eaves onto an upturned bucket, the sound shifting from a crisp pelt to an urgent dull pounding. What little light entered the room from the leaden skies was a dark blue, turning the baby's face the color of orange peel. Worried that she would wake up hungry, I held a bottle of milk in readiness, as if it were a fire extinguisher, just in case. Every time she opened her mouth to cry, I stuffed the nipple in it, stopping the crying before it had a chance to blossom. Not until I noticed milk seeping out of the sides of her mouth did I come to my senses: the baby could die from too much to eat as easily as she could starve. I stopped feeding her and cleaned the milk out of her eyes and ears with a towel, then turned again to look anxiously at the steady rain. It was already obvious that this baby had become a burden, my burden. If not for her, I'd have been in bed by then, sleeping off the fatigue from my long bus ride. Instead, because of her, I was sitting on a hard stool, watching the numbing rainfall outside. If not for me, by then she might already have drowned, either that or frozen to death. She could have been swept along into a trough by the gush of rainwater, to have her eyes pecked at by hungry fish.

  One of the marooned carp lay on the path in the yard, belly up, its tail flapping against the tiles, a muted glare emerging from it. Finally it flipped back into the puddling water. When it stretched out straight, it looked like a plow knifing through the water. I was tempted to run out in the rain and scoop it up for a treat for Father, something to go with his wine. But I held back, and not just because I wanted to avoid getting soaked.

  That afternoon, with rain falling like darts, I suffered the onslaught of mosquitoes as I pondered my hometown's history of abandoned children. Without having to consult any written material, I had a clear historical sense of children who had been given up by parents in my hometown. Relying solely upon the keen bite of memory, I chewed open up a dim tunnel through the sealed history of local abandoned children. Heading down that path, I kept bumping up against their cold, white bones.

  I grouped the children into four general categories, knowing full well that there was unavoidable overlap.

  The first group of children included those abandoned by families mired in poverty; unable to raise the children, they drowned them in chamber pots or simply left them by the side of the road. Most of these cases occurred before the founding of the People's Republic, when family planning was unheard of. This sort of abandonment appears to be a worldwide phenomenon. I was reminded of two Japanese stories. One, entitled “Snow Babies,” was written by Minakami Tsutomu; I can't recall who wrote the second one, entitled “Dolls of Michinoku,” but maybe it was the famous author of The Ballad of Narayama. Both works deal with abandoned children. In “Snow Babies,” the children are left in the snow to die, but those whose will to live is strong enough to carry them through the night in their snowy tombs are retrieved by their families and taken home. As for the babies of Michinoku, before they even cut loose with their first wail, they are dumped headfirst into a vat of hot water. People back then believed that babies had no feelings until they drew their first breath, and that drowning them then was not an inhuman act. If the babies managed to cry, their parents were obliged to raise them. Both means of abandonment were known in my hometown, and their causes were as I stated earlier — my groupings were based upon causes. I was confident that over the years a great many local babies had died in chamber pots, in dirtier and far crueler fashion than their Japanese counterparts.
Of course, even if I'd asked all the local elders, none of them would have owned up to such infanticide. Yet I recalled the looks on their faces as they sat by wattle fences or at the base of a broken wall; to me those were the looks of baby killers, and I was sure that some of them had ended the lives of their own sons or daughters in chamber pots or by leaving them by the sides of roads to starve or freeze to death. They were children no one bothered to save. To these people, leaving children by the side of a road or at an intersection was somehow more humane than drowning them in a chamber pot; in fact, this was nothing more than self-consolation by decent fathers and mothers in the grip of poverty. Put out to die, these children had an incredibly slim chance of living, and most probably ended up filling the rumbling stomachs of wild dogs.

  The second group of abandoned children includes those born with disabilities or who are retarded. These children aren't even entitled to end up in a chamber pot. In most cases, the parents bury the child alive in some remote spot before the sun comes up. They then top the burial mound with a brick directly over the infant's abdomen, to keep it from being reborn during the next pregnancy. But this is not always carried out. Shortly after Liberation, Li Manzi, who is now a local district chief, was born with a harelip.

  Illegitimate children comprise the third group of abandoned babies. “Illegitimate” is a powerful insult for anyone, and in my hometown, anytime a young woman gets particularly angry at someone, this is what she calls them. An illegitimate child, of course, is one born to an unmarried woman. Most of these children are bright and attractive, because men and women who are adept at sneaking around to produce a love child are nobody's fools. These offspring have a somewhat higher survival rate, since childless couples are often willing to raise them as their own; often they'll arrange to take them in beforehand, and once they're born, their biological fathers deliver them to their adoptive parents in the dead of night. Others are left someplace where they're easily spotted. And most of the time, money or valuables are tucked into the swaddling cloth. This group of abandoned children often includes boys, while there are seldom any boys in the previous two categories, except for those who are disabled.

  The period after Liberation, owing to improvements in living standards and hygiene, saw a significant drop in the occurrences of abandoned children. But the numbers began to rise again in the 1980s, when the situation grew very complicated. First, there were no boys at all. On the surface, it appeared that some parents were forced into acts of inhumanity by rigid family planning restrictions. But upon closer examination, I realized that the traditional preference for boys over girls was the real culprit. I knew I couldn't be overly critical of parents in this new era, and I also knew that if I were a peasant, I might well be one of those fathers who abandoned his child.

  No matter how much this concept tarnishes the image of the People's Republic, it is an objective reality, one that will be difficult to eradicate in the short term. Existing in a filthy village with foul air all around, even a diamond-studded sword will rust. So, it seems, I awakened to the Truth.

  All night long it rained, but as dawn broke, a ray of sunlight — blood-red, wet and hot — split the dark clouds. I carried the baby over to the bed and asked my wife to watch her. Then I went outside to slosh through the muddy puddles of rainwater and to cross the river on my way to the township government office to ask for help. As I entered the lane, I saw that the sorghum stalk fence had been blown down by gusty winds, leaving lush morning glories to soak in the water. Purple and pink blossoms had turned to face the clearing sky, as if offering a sorrowful complaint. Now that the collapsed fence was no longer a barrier, a clutch of half-grown chickens, their feathers still growing, rushed into the yard to peck frantically at large heads of cabbage.

  The river's floodwater all but submerged the little stone bridge, sending spray high into the air when it crashed against the stones. I twisted my ankle when I jumped off the bridge, and as I hobbled along the dike, I couldn't help but think that this was not a good sign, that this trip to the township office might not solve my problem. But I kept hobbling as best I could toward the row of tiled buildings.

  Rain had washed the government compound until everything was clean and fresh. Red bricks and green tiles, and the surrounding thickets of green bamboo, sparkled wetly. There were no human sounds in the compound. A pointy-eared mongrel watchdog with a missing tail lay on the concrete steps staring at me warily, before narrowing its eyes. A check of wooden signs above a series of doors led me to the office I was looking for. I knocked — three times. Suddenly I heard a rustling behind me, just before I felt a sharp pain in my leg. I looked down, but by then the damned watchdog, which had just bitten me on the calf, had already returned to the step and was sprawled out lazily. It didn't make a sound as it lay there licking its chops; it even flashed me a friendly smile. How could I help but feel a fondness for a dog like that, even though it had just bitten me? You might think I'd hate it, but I didn't hate it. In my view, it was one terrific dog. But why had it bitten me? It was not a random act, so there must have been a reason. In this world, there is no love without reason or cause; nor, for that matter, hatred. Most likely the bite was intended for me to reach a sudden awakening through pain. True danger never comes from the front, always from the rear; true danger is not embodied in a mad dog with bared fangs, but in the sweet smile of, say, a Mona Lisa. I'd have missed that fact if I'd not been forced to think about it; once the thought struck me, I was startled into awareness. Thank you, dog, you with the pointy snout and a face drenched in artistic colors!

  My pant leg felt sticky, and hot. That must have meant blood. Anytime I bled for someone, the person who'd drunk my blood would curse me, “Your blood is rancid! Get the hell out of here!” I wondered if this abandoned child I'd rescued might also curse me for having rancid blood.

  The door, whose green paint had begun to peel and chip, was flung open, and there in front of me stood a dark-skinned mountain of a man. After sizing me up, he demanded, “Who are you looking for?”

  “The Township Head,” I said.

  “That's me. Come in, have a seat. Hey, your leg's bleeding. How'd that happen?” “Your dog bit me.”

  The dark-skinned man's face twisted into anger. “Damn! Would you look at that! I'm sorry. It's all Scarface Su's fault. The People's Compound isn't some landlord's mansion, so why keep a watchdog around? Is that a hint that the People's Government is afraid of the people? Or that we're in favor of having vicious dogs rupture the flesh-and-blood ties with the people?”

  “That doesn't rupture ties,” I said, pointing to my injured leg, “it molds them.”

  By then the blood had dripped from my calf down to the heel of my shoe, and from there to the brick floor, where it was soaked up by a long cigarette butt. I saw the brand name — it was Front Gate, the tobacco strips the color of yellow chrysanthemums.

  “Little Wang!” the dark-skinned man shouted. “Come in here!” The man rushed into the room and stood with his arms at his sides, waiting for instructions. “Take this comrade soldier over to the clinic for treatment,” the dark-skinned man said. “And bring a receipt back for reimbursement. Then go borrow a rifle from Supply Department Head Xia, and shoot that damned dog!”

  I stood up. “Chief, that's not why I'm here to see you,” I said. “I want to report something important. I can take care of the injury to my leg myself, and I'd rather you let the dog live. He's quite a dog, and I'm in his debt.”

  “I don't care. We were going to have to shoot that dog sooner or later anyway! It's a menace! You couldn't know, but it's already bitten twenty people! You're the twenty-first. If we don't put the thing down now, it might really hurt somebody someday. There's enough chaos around here already. We don't need any more.”

  “Please don't kill it, Chief,” I said. “It's got its reasons for biting people.”

  “All right,” the dark-skinned man said with a wave of his hand, “all right. What is it you want to see me about???
?

  I fumbled in my pocket for a cigarette, which I handed to him. “I don't smoke,” he said with an emphatic wave.

  Somewhat embarrassed, I lit one for myself and stammered, “Chief, I found an abandoned girl.”

  His eyes lit up like torches; he snorted.

  “It was yesterday, about noon, in the sunflower field east of Three Willows. A girl, wrapped in red satin, along with twenty-one yuan.”

  “Here we go again!” he blurted out, annoyed. “I couldn't just let her die!” I said.

  “Did I say you should have? What I said was, here we go again! Here we go again! You have no idea of the pressure I'm under. Once the peasants got their land, they saw themselves as free men, who were also free to have as many kids as they wanted. One after another, that's all they did, at least until they got the sons they wanted.”

  “Don't we have a one-child policy?”

  He smiled a wry smile. “One child? Two kids, three kids, four, even five, I've seen it all. One-point-one billion people? That's a laugh. I'll bet we're up to one-point-two by now. There isn't a township anywhere that doesn't have at least two or three hundred unregistered kids. And they'll all rot right here in China!”

  “I thought they could be fined.”

  “That's right. Two thousand for the second child, four thousand for the third, and eight thousand for the fourth. And so what? People with money don't care if you fine them. You're from East Village, aren't you? Do you know Two-Toothed Wu? He's got four kids. No land, a run-down three-room house, one big cook pot, a water jug, and a rickety three-legged table. So we fine him, and he says, ‘I don't have any money, so I'll give you kids instead. You want one? Take one. You want two? Take two. They're all girls anyway’ So tell me, what are we supposed to do?”