Prison
YILAN’S DAUGHTER DIED at sixteen and a half on a rainy Saturday in May, six months after getting her driver’s license. She had been driving to a nearby town for a debate when she had lost control. The car traveled over the median and ran into a semi. The local newspapers put her school picture side by side with the pictures from the site of the accident, the totaled black Nissan and the badly dented semi, the driver standing nearby and examining the damage to his truck, his back to the camera. The article talked about Jade’s success as an immigrant’s daughter—the same old story of hard work and triumph—how she had come to America four years earlier knowing no English, and had since then excelled in school and become the captain of the debate team. It also quoted Jade’s best friend saying that Jade dreamed of going to Harvard, a dream shared by Yilan and her husband, Luo; and that she loved Emily Dickinson, which was news to Yilan. She wished she had known everything about Jade so she could fill the remaining years of her life with memories of her only daughter. At forty-seven, Yilan could not help but think that the important and meaningful part of her life was over; she was now closer to the end than the beginning, and within a blink of the eyes, death would ferry her to the other side of the world.
The year following Jade’s accident, however, stretched itself into a long tunnel, thin-aired and never-ending. Yilan watched Luo age in his grief and knew she did the same in his eyes. He had been a doctor in China for twenty years; they had hoped he would pass the board exam to become an American doctor, but, too old to learn to speak good English, he now worked in a cardiology lab as a research assistant and conducted open-heart surgery on dogs twice a week. Still, they had thought that the sacrifice of both their careers—Yilan had been an editor of an herbal medicine journal—was worthwhile if Jade could get a better education.
The decision to immigrate turned out to be the most fatal mistake they had made. At night Yilan and Luo held hands in bed and wept. The fact that they were in love still, despite twenty years of marriage, the death of their only child, and a future with little to look forward to, was almost unbearable in itself; sometimes Yilan wondered whether it would be a comfort if they could mourn in solitude, their backs turned to each other.
It was during the daytime, when Luo was at work, that Yilan had such thoughts, which she felt ashamed of when he came home. It was time to do something before she was torn in half into a nighttime self and a crazier daytime self, and before the latter one took over. After a few weeks of consideration, she brought up, at dinner, the idea of adopting a baby girl from China. They would get a daughter for sure, she said, for nobody would be willing to give up a son.
Luo was silent for a long moment before he said, “Why?”
“All these stories about American parents wanting their adopted girls to learn Chinese and understand Chinese culture—we could do at least as much,” Yilan said, her voice falsely positive.
Luo did not reply and his chopsticks remained still over his rice bowl. Perhaps they were only strangers living an illusion of love; perhaps this idea would be the gravedigger of their marriage. “Another person’s unwanted child won’t replace her,” Luo said finally.
Even though his voice was gentle, Yilan could not help but feel a slap that made her blush. How could she expect that a girl not of their blood—a small bandage on a deep, bleeding wound—would make a difference? “Such nonsense I was talking,” she said.
But a few days later, when they retreated to bed early, as they had done since Jade’s death, Luo asked her in the darkness if she still wanted a child.
“Adopt a baby?” Yilan asked.
“No, our own child,” Luo said.
They had not made love since Jade’s death. Even if pregnancy was possible at her age, Yilan did not believe that her body was capable of nurturing another life. A man could make a child as long as he wanted to, but the best years of a woman passed quickly. Yilan imagined what would become of her if her husband left her for a younger, more fertile woman. It seemed almost alluring to Yilan: She could go back to China and find some peace and solace in her solitude; Luo, as loving a father as he was, would have a child of his blood.
“I’m too old. Why don’t I make room for a younger wife so you can have another child?” Yilan said, trying hard to remain still and not to turn her back to him. She would not mind getting letters and pictures from time to time; she would send presents—jade bracelets and gold pendants—so the child would grow up with an extra share of love. The more Yilan thought about it, the more it seemed a solution to their sad marriage.
Luo grabbed her hand, his fingernails hurting her palm. “Are you crazy to talk like this?” he said. “How can you be so irresponsible?”
It was a proposal of love, and Yilan was disappointed that he did not understand it. Still, his fury moved her. She withdrew her hand from his grasp to pat his arm. “Ignore my nonsense,” she said.
“Silly woman,” Luo said, and explained his plan. They could find a young woman to be a surrogate mother for their fertilized egg, he said. Considering potential legal problems that might arise in America, the best way was to go back to China for the procedure. Not that the practice was legal in China, he said—in fact, it had been banned since 2001—but they knew the country well enough to know that its laws were breakable, with money and connections. His classmates in medical school would come in handy. His income, forty thousand dollars a year, while insufficient for carrying out the plan in America, was rich for the standard in China. Besides, if they brought the baby back to America, there would be less worry about the surrogate mother later wanting to be part of the baby’s life, as had happened to an American couple.
Yilan listened. Luo had been a surgeon in an emergency medical center in China, and it did not surprise her that he could find the best solution for any problem in a short time, but the fact that he had done his research and then presented it in such a quiet yet hopeful way made her heartbeat quicken. Could a new baby rejuvenate their hearts? What if they became old before the child grew up? Who would look after her when they were too frail to do so? An adopted child would be a mere passerby in their life—Yilan could easily imagine caring for such a child for as long as they were allowed and sending her back to the world when they were no longer capable—but a child of their own was different. “It must be difficult,” Yilan said hesitantly, “to find someone if it’s illegal.”
Luo replied that it was not a worry as long as they had enough money to pay for such a service. They had little savings, and Yilan knew that he was thinking of the small amount of money they had got from Jade’s insurance settlement. He suggested that they try Yilan’s aunt, who lived in a remote region in a southern province, and he talked about a medical-school classmate who lived in the provincial capital and would have the connections to help them. He said that they did not have much time to waste; he did not say “menopause” but Yilan knew he was thinking about it, as she was. Indeed it was their last chance.
Yilan found it hard to argue against the plan, because she had never disagreed with Luo in their marriage. Besides, what was wrong with a man wanting a child of his own? She should consider herself lucky that Luo, with a practical mind and a methodical approach to every problem in life, was willing to take such a risk out of his love and respect for her as a wife.
“No virgins, of course, or first-time mothers,” Luo said when she called collect and told him of the complications they had not expected. He was waiting for his flight, two months later than Yilan’s, to the provincial capital, where, with the help of his classmate, Yilan would have already finished her hormone therapy for the ovulation. It would have been great if he could have accompanied her to pick out the surrogate mother, and to the treatment before the in vitro fertilization, but he had only a few weeks of vacation to spare, and he decided that he would wait till the last minute to travel to China, in case the procedure failed and he needed to spend extra time for another try.
“You mean we want to pick someone who has already had a child?” Yilan said.
“If we have options, yes. A second-time pregnancy will be better for our child,” he said.
Luo had arranged to rent a flat for a year in the provincial capital, where Yilan and the surrogate mother would spend the whole pregnancy together. They had to be certain, he said, that the baby they got in the end was theirs—he could easily imagine them being cheated: an unreported miscarriage and then a scheme to substitute another baby, for instance, or a swapping of a baby girl for a baby boy. It surprised Yilan that Luo had so little trust in other people, but she did not say anything. After all, it was hard for her to imagine leaving her child to a stranger for nine months and coming back only for the harvest; she wanted to be with her child, to see her grow and feel her kick and welcome her to the world.
Yilan had expected a young widow perhaps, or a childless divorcée, someone who had little to her name but a body ready for rent. A mother would make the situation more complicated. “We can’t separate a mother from her child for a year,” she said finally.
“Perhaps it’s not up to us to worry about it if someone is willing,” Luo said. “We’re buying a service.”
Yilan shuddered at the cold truth. She looked out the telephone booth—the four telephone booths in the main street, in the shape of fat mushrooms and colored bright orange, were the only objects of modern technology and art in this mountain town, and to protect them from vandalism as well as probing curiosity, the booths were circled by a metal fence, and one had to pay the watchperson a fee to enter. The watchperson on duty, a middle-aged man, was dozing off in his chair, his chin buried deeply in his chest. A cigarette peddler across the street sat by his cart with his eyes turned to the sky. A teenager strolled past and kicked a napping dog, and it stirred and disappeared among a row of low houses, behind which, in the far background, were the mountains, green against the misty sky.
“Are you there?”
“I’m wondering.” Yilan took a deep breath and said, “Why don’t we move back to China?” Perhaps that was what they needed, the unhurried life of a dormant town, where big tragedies and small losses could all be part of a timeless dream.
Luo was silent for a moment and said, “It’s like a game of chess. You can’t undo a move. Besides, we want our child to have the best life possible.”
Our child, she thought. Was that reason enough to make another child motherless for a year?
“Yilan, please,” Luo said in a pleading tone, when she did not talk. “I can’t afford to lose you.”
Shocked by the weakness in his tone, Yilan apologized and promised that she would follow his instructions and choose the best possible woman. It saddened her that Luo insisted on holding on to her as if they had started to share some vital organs during their twenty years of marriage. She wondered if this was a sign of old age, of losing hope and the courage for changes. She herself could easily picture vanishing from their shared life, but then perhaps it was a sign of aging on her part, a desire for loneliness that would eventually make death a relief.
The next day, when Yilan brought up her worries about depriving a child of her mother, Yilan’s aunt laughed at her absurdity. “Twenty thousand yuan for only one year!” her aunt said. “Believe me, the family that gets picked must have done a thousand good deeds in their last life to deserve such good fortune.”
Yilan had no choice but to adopt her aunt’s belief that she and Luo were not merely renting a woman’s womb—they were granting her and her family opportunities of which they would not dare to dream. Yilan picked five women from the pile—the first pot of dumplings, as her aunt called it—to interview, all of them mothers of young children, according to the matchmakers. Yilan and her aunt rented a room at the only teahouse in town, and the five women arrived in their best clothes, their hands scrubbed clean, free of the odor of the pigsties or the chicken coops, their faces over-powdered to cover the skin chapped from laboring in the field.
Despite her sympathy for these women, Yilan could not help but compare them to one another and find imperfections in each. The first one brought the household register card that said she was twenty-five, but she already had sagging breasts under the thin layers of her shirt and undershirt. It did not surprise Yilan that the village women did not wear bras, luxuries they did not believe in and could not afford, but she had to avert her eyes when she saw the long, heavy breasts pulled downward by their own weight. She imagined the woman’s son—two and a half, old enough to be away from his mama for a year, the woman guaranteed Yilan—dangling from his mother’s breasts in a sling and uncovering her breasts whenever he felt like it. It made Yilan uncomfortable to imagine her own child sharing something with the greedy boy.
The next woman was robust, almost mannish. The following woman looked slow and unresponsive when Yilan’s aunt asked her questions about her family. The fourth woman was tidy and rather good-looking, but when she talked, Yilan noticed the slyness in her eyes. The fifth woman was on the verge of tears when she begged Yilan to choose her. She listed reasons for her urgent need of money—husband paralyzed from an accident in a nearby mine, aging parents and in-laws, two children growing fast and needing more food than she could put in their mouths, a mud-and-straw house ready to collapse in the rainy season. Yilan thought about all the worries that would distract the woman from nourishing the baby. Yilan was ashamed of her selfishness, but she did not want her child to be exposed so early to the unhappiness of the world. Not yet.
At the end of the morning, Yilan decided to look at more women instead of choosing one from the first batch. Even though Luo had explained to her that the baby would be entirely their own—they were the providers of her genes and the surrogate mother would only function as a biological incubator—Yilan worried that the baby would take up some unwanted traits from a less than perfect pregnancy.
When Yilan and her aunt exited the teahouse, a woman sitting on the roadside curb stood up and came to them. “Auntie, are you the one looking for someone to bear your child?” she said to Yilan.
Yilan blushed. Indeed the young woman looked not much older than Jade. Her slim body in a light-green blouse reminded Yilan of watercress; her face was not beautiful in any striking way but there was not the slightest mistake in how the eyes and nose and mouth were positioned in the face. “We’re looking for someone who has had a child before,” Yilan said apologetically.
“I have a child,” the woman said. From a small cloth bag she wore around her neck with an elastic band, she brought out a birth certificate and a household register card. The birth certificate was her son’s, four years old now, and on the register card she pointed out her name, which matched the mother’s name on the birth certificate.
Yilan studied the papers. Fusang was the woman’s name, and she was twenty-two, according to the register card, married to a man twenty years older. Yilan looked up at Fusang. Unlike the other married women, who wore their hair short or in a bun, Fusang’s hair was plaited into one long braid, still in the style of a maiden.
“Young girl, nobody’s recommended you to us,” Yilan’s aunt said.
“That’s because I didn’t have the money to pay the matchmakers,” Fusang said. “They refused to tell you about me.”
“Why do you want to do it?” Yilan said, and then realized that the answer was obvious. “Where’s your son?” she asked.
“Gone,” Fusang said.
Yilan flinched at the answer, but Fusang seemed to have only stated a fact. Her eyes did not leave Yilan’s face while they were talking.
“What do you mean ‘gone’?” Yilan’s aunt asked.
“It means he’s no longer living with me.”
“Where is he? Is he dead?” Yilan’s aunt said.
For a moment Fusang looked lost, as if confused by the relevance of the question. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “I hope he’s not dead.”
Yilan felt her aunt pull her sleeve, a warning about the young woman’s credibility or her mental state. “Does your husband know you’re coming to see us?” Yilan said.
Fusang smiled. “My husband—he doesn’t know his own age.”
Yilan and her aunt exchanged a look. Despite the disapproval in her aunt’s eyes, Yilan asked Fusang to come and see them again the next day. By then she would have an answer, Yilan explained. Fusang seemed unconvinced. “Why can’t you tell me now? I don’t want to walk all the way here again tomorrow.”
“Which village are you from?” Yilan’s aunt asked.
Fusang said the village name. It had taken her two and a half hours to walk to town. Yilan took out a ten-yuan bill and said, “You can take the bus tomorrow.”
“But why do you need to think about it?”
Unable to look at Fusang’s eyes, Yilan turned to her aunt for help. “Because we need to find out if you’re lying,” Yilan’s aunt said.
“But I’m not. Go ask people,” Fusang said, and put the money carefully into the bag dangling from her neck.
This was the story of Fusang that Yilan’s aunt had found out for her. “Not a reliable person, if you ask me,” her aunt said.
“Why? I don’t see anything wrong.”
“She lost her own son and did not shed one drop of tear,” Yilan’s aunt said. After a pause, she sighed. “Of course, you may need someone like that,” she said. “It’s your money, so I shouldn’t be putting my nose in your business.”
Yilan found it hard to explain to her aunt why she liked Fusang. She was different from the other village women, their eyes dull compared to Fusang’s. Young and mindlessly strong, Fusang seemed untouched by her tragic life, which would make it easier for her to part with the baby—after all, it was not only a service Yilan was purchasing but also a part of Fusang’s life that she was going to take with her.
The next day, when Fusang came again, Yilan asked her to sign the paper, a simple one-paragraph contract about an illegal act. Fusang looked at the contract and asked Yilan to read it to her. Yilan explained that Fusang would stay with her through the pregnancy, and Yilan would cover all her living and medical expenses; there was not any form of advance, only the final payment that Fusang would get right before Yilan and the baby left for America. “Do you understand the contract?” Yilan asked when she finished explaining it.
Fusang nodded. Yilan showed Fusang her name, and Fusang put her index finger in the red ink paste and then pressed it down below her name.
“Have you had any schooling?” Yilan asked.
“I went to elementary school for three years,” Fusang said.
“What happened after the third grade?”
Fusang thought about the question. “I wasn’t in the third grade,” she said with a smile, as if she was happy to surprise Yilan. “I repeated the first grade three times.”
Fusang showed up with a small battered suitcase and a ready smile, as if coming for a long-awaited vacation. When Yilan introduced her to Luo, she joked with him and asked if it would be hard for him to be separated from his wife for a year. It was an awkward joke, to which Luo responded with a tolerant smile. He acted deferential but aloof toward Fusang, the right way for a good husband to be, and soon Fusang was frightened into a quieter, more alert person by his unsmiling presence.
The procedure went well, and after two weeks of anxious waiting, the pregnancy was confirmed. Fusang seemed as happy as Yilan and Luo.
“Keep an eye on her,” Luo said in English to Yilan when they walked to the railway station for his departing train.
Yilan turned to look at Fusang, who was trailing two steps behind, like a small child. Luo had insisted that Fusang come with them. “Of course,” Yilan replied in English. “I won’t let our child starve. I’ll make sure Fusang gets enough nutrition and sleep.”
“Beyond that, don’t let her out of your sight,” Luo said.
“Why?”
“She has our child in her,” Luo said.
Yilan looked again at Fusang, who waved back with a smile. “It’s not like she’ll run away,” Yilan said. “She needs the money.”
“You trust people too easily,” Luo said. “Don’t you understand that we can’t make any mistakes?”
Shocked by his stern tone, Yilan thought of pointing out that she could not possibly imprison Fusang for the whole pregnancy, but they did not need an argument as a farewell. She agreed to be careful.
“Be very vigilant, all right?” Luo said.
Yilan looked at him strangely.
“It’s our child I’m worrying about,” Luo said, as if explaining himself. And after a moment, he added with a bitter smile, “Of course, for a loser like me, there’s nothing else to live for but a child.”
Yilan thought about the patients he had once saved, most of them victims of traffic accidents, when he served at the emergency center that belonged to the traffic department. They used to make him happy—since when had he lost faith in saving other people’s lives? “We can still think of coming back to China,” Yilan said tentatively. “You were a good surgeon.”
“It doesn’t mean anything to me now,” Luo said, and waved his hand as if to drive away the gloom that had fallen. “All I want now is a child and that we give her a good life.”
Yilan had brought with her a few books of paintings that Jade had loved, and now, when the stay in the flat was confirmed, she took them out of her luggage and put them on a rickety bookcase in the living room. “I brought these for you,” Yilan said to Fusang, who stood by the living room door, watching Yilan work. Clueless like a newborn duckling, Fusang had taken on the habit of following Yilan around until Yilan told her that she could go back to her own bedroom and rest. “When you are free,” Yilan said, and then paused at her poor choice of words. “When you’re not tired, spend some time looking at these paintings.”
Fusang came closer and wiped her hands on the back of her pants. She then picked up the book on top, paintings by Jade’s favorite artist, Modigliani. Fusang flipped the pages and placed a hand over her mouth to hide a giggle. “These people, they look funny,” she said when she realized Yilan was watching her.
Yilan looked at the paintings that she had tried hard to like because of Jade’s love for them. “They are paintings by a famous artist,” she said. “You don’t have to understand them, but you should look at them so the baby will get a good fetal education.”
“Fetal education?”
“A baby needs more than just nutrients for her body. She needs stimuli for her brain, too.”
Fusang looked perplexed. Yilan thought about Fusang’s illiterate mind. Would it be an obstacle between the baby and the intelligence of the outside world? Yilan did not know the answer, but it did not prevent her from playing classical music and reading poems from the Tang dynasty to Fusang and the baby. Sometimes Yilan looked at the paintings with Fusang, who was always compliant, but Yilan could see that her mind was elsewhere. What did a young woman like Fusang think about? Jade used to write in journals that she had not thought to hide from Yilan, so Yilan at least got to know the things Jade had written down. Fusang, however, seemed to have no way of expressing herself. She talked less and less when the increasing hormones made her sicker. She spent several hours a day lying in bed and then rushing to the bathroom with horrible gagging sounds. Yilan tried to remember her own pregnancy; Jade had been a good baby from the beginning, and Yilan had not experienced much sickness at all. She wondered how much it had to do with a mother’s reception, or rejection, of the growing existence within her body. She knew it was unfair of her to think so, but Fusang’s reaction seemed unusually intense. Yilan could not help but think that Fusang’s body, without any affection for the baby, was suffering intentionally. Would the baby feel the alienation, too?
Such thoughts nagged Yilan. No matter how carefully she prepared the meals, with little salt or oil or spice, Fusang would rush to the bathroom. Yilan tasted the dishes—tofu and fish and mushroom and green-leafed vegetables—which were perfectly bland; she did not see why Fusang would not eat.
“You have to force her,” Luo said over the phone. “You’re too softhearted.”
“How do you force a grown-up to eat when she doesn’t want to?” Yilan said in a frustrated voice. She had told Fusang to take a nap in her bedroom when she picked up Luo’s phone call, but now she hoped that Fusang would hear the conversation and understand their displeasure.
“There should be a clause somewhere in the contract. You could tell her that we will not pay her the full sum if she doesn’t cooperate.”
“You know the contract doesn’t protect anyone on either side,” Yilan said.
“She doesn’t know. You can frighten her a little,” Luo said.
“Wouldn’t a frightened mother send some toxic signals to our baby?” Yilan said, and then regretted her sarcastic tone. “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to be so cross with you.”
Luo was quiet for a moment. “Think of a way to improve,” he said. “I know it’s hard for you, but it’s harder for me to stay here, doing nothing.”
Yilan imagined her husband coming home every night to an empty house, the hope of the reunion with his wife and child the only thing that kept him working hard. She should be more patient with him, she thought. It was not like she herself was pregnant and had a right to throw a tantrum at a helpless husband.
The young woman nodded, her eyes swollen and teary.
“You’re a grown-up, so you have to know the baby needs you to eat.”
Fusang glanced at Yilan timidly. “Do you think I can eat some really spicy food?”
Yilan sighed. Spice would give the baby too much internal fire, and the baby would be prone to rashes, a bad temper, and other problems. Yilan wondered how she could make Fusang understand her responsibility to have a good and balanced diet. “Did you also crave spicy food last time you were pregnant?” Yilan asked.
“Last time? For three months I only ate fried soybeans. People in the village all said I would give birth to a little farting machine,” Fusang said, and giggled despite herself.
Yilan watched Fusang’s eyes come alive with that quick laugh. It was what had made her choose Fusang the first time they met. Yilan realized she had not seen the same liveliness in the young woman since she moved to the provincial capital. “So,” Yilan said, softening her voice, “did you end up having a baby like that?”
“Of course not. Funny thing is—his dad worried so much that he would cry at night and say that people were laughing at our baby. Isn’t he a real dimwit, with a brain full of lard?” Fusang said, her voice filled with tenderness.
It was the first time Fusang had talked about her previous life, full of mysteries and tragedies that Yilan had once wanted to know but that had been made unimportant by the baby’s existence. Yilan thought that Fusang would just remain a bearer of her child, a biological incubator, but now that Fusang had mentioned her husband with such ease, as if they were only continuing an earlier conversation, Yilan could not hide her curiosity. “How is your husband? Who’s taking care of him?”
“Nobody, but don’t worry. I asked the neighbors to keep an eye on him. They won’t let him starve.”
“That’s very nice of them,” Yilan said.
“Of course,” Fusang said. “They’re all thinking about my twenty thousand yuan.”
Yilan thought of telling Fusang not to underestimate people’s kindness, that money was only a small part of a bigger world. She would have said so, had Fusang been her own daughter, but Fusang had lived in a world darker than Yilan could imagine, where a girl could be stolen from her family and sold, and a son could disappear into other people’s worlds. “Are you going back to your husband?” Yilan asked.
Fusang studied Yilan for a moment and said, “I’ll be honest with you, Auntie, if you don’t tell this to others. Of course I’m not going back to him.”
“Where will you go, then?”
“There is always someplace to go,” Fusang said.
“It would be hard for a young woman like you,” Yilan said.
“But I’ll have the twenty thousand yuan you pay me, right?” Fusang said. “Besides, what do I fear? The worst would be to be sold again to another man as a wife, but who could be worse than a dimwit?”
Yilan thought about the husband who had enough feeling and intelligence to save Fusang from his parents. She could easily end up with someone with much more to be feared, and twenty thousand yuan, barely enough to cover two years of rent for a flat such as the one they lived in, was far from granting her anything. Yet Fusang seemed so sure of herself, and so happy in knowing that she had some control of her future, that Yilan had no heart to point out the illusion. She thought about her Chinese friends in America, a few divorced ones who, even though much older than Fusang, could still be a good choice for her. But would it be a wise thing to make that happen, when the best arrangement, as her husband had said, was to conclude the deal after the baby’s birth and never have anything to do with Fusang again?
They became closer after the conversation. Fusang seemed more settled in the flat and in her own body, and she no longer followed Yilan around like a frightened child. Despite her husband’s phone calls reminding her about nourishing both the baby’s body and her brain, Yilan stopped filling every moment of Fusang’s life with tasks. They found more comfort in each other’s absence. In fact, Yilan enjoyed reading and listening to music and daydreaming alone now, and a few times, in the middle of a long meditation, Yilan heard a small voice from Fusang’s bedroom, singing folk songs in a dialect that Yilan did not understand. Fusang’s singing voice, low and husky, was much older than her age, and the slow and almost tuneless songs she sang reminded Yilan of an ancient poem that kept coming to her since Jade’s death: a lone horse of the Huns running astray at the edge of the desert, its hooves disturbing the old snow and its eyes reflecting the last hopeful light of the sun setting between tall, yellow grasses.
Twice a day, Yilan accompanied Fusang to a nearby park for an hour-long walk. Yilan told strangers who talked to them that Fusang was her niece. Nobody doubted them, Fusang’s hand grasping Yilan’s arm in a childlike way. Yilan did not let Fusang go with her to the marketplace for groceries—there were many things Yilan wanted to protect Fusang and the baby from: air and noise pollution from the street crowded with cars and tractors, unfriendly elbows in front of the vendors’ stands, foul language of vendors arguing with customers when the bargaining did not work out.
Yilan and Fusang left the hospital arm in arm, and on the taxi ride home, Yilan changed her mind and asked the driver to send them to the restaurant that had the best spicy dishes in town. She ordered more than they could consume, but Fusang had only a few bites of the spicy dishes. “We don’t want the twins to get too hot,” she said.
“It may not hurt to let them experience every taste before they are born,” Yilan said.
Fusang smiled. Still, she would touch only the blander dishes. “I’ve always wondered what it’d be like to have twins,” she said. “To think we’ll have two babies that will look just the same.”
Yilan hesitated at Fusang’s use of “we” and then explained that the twins came from the implantation of multiple embryos and that they would not be identical. They might not be the same gender, either.
“Let’s hope for a boy and a girl, then,” Fusang said.
Yilan gazed at Fusang. “At my age, I wouldn’t want to bargain.”
“Auntie, maybe you hate people asking, but why do you want a baby now?”
Yilan looked at Fusang’s face, which glowed a soft peach color. The news of the twins seemed to have transformed Fusang into an even more beautiful woman. This was what Yilan was going to miss, a pregnant daughter sitting across the table from her, sharing with her the joy of a new life.
“Are you angry, Auntie? I shouldn’t have asked.”
“I had a daughter and she died,” Yilan said. “She was five years younger than you.”
Fusang looked down at her own hands on the table and said after a moment, “It’s better now. You’ll have more children.”
Yilan felt the stinging of the tears that she tried to hold back. “It’s not the same,” she said. Luo had been right—nobody would be able to replace Jade. For a moment, she wondered why they would want to take pains to get more children, whose presence could be taken away as easily as Jade’s; they themselves could disappear from the twins’ lives and leave them among the orphans of the world. Weren’t they the people in the folktales who drank a poisonous fluid to stop a moment of thirst? But it was too late to regret.
“You should stop thinking about your daughter,” Fusang said. “It’s not hard at all if you try.”
Yilan shook her head and tried hard not to cry in front of the young woman.
“Really, Auntie,” Fusang said. “You’ll be surprised how easy it is to forget someone. I never think about my son.”
“But how can you forget him? He came from your own body,” Yilan said.
“It was hard at first, but I just thought of it this way: Whoever took him would give him a better life than his own parents. Then it didn’t hurt to think of him, and once it didn’t hurt, I forgot to think about him from time to time, and then I just forgot.”
Yilan looked at the young woman, her eyes in the shape of new moons, filled with an innocent smile, as if she were not talking about the cruelest truth in life. Illiterate and young as she was, she seemed to have gained more wisdom about life than Yilan and Luo. Yilan studied Fusang: young, beautiful, and pregnant with Luo’s children—who could be a better choice to replace her as a wife than Fusang? Such a thought, once formed, became strong.
“Have you ever thought of going to America?” Yilan said.
“No.”
“Do you want to?”
“No,” Fusang said. “My tongue is straight and I can’t speak English.”
“English is not hard to learn,” Yilan said. “Take me as an example.” Take Jade, she thought.
“Are you matchmaking for me, Auntie? If possible, I want someone younger this time,” Fusang said, laughing at her own joke.
Yilan could not help but feel disappointed. Indeed Luo was too old for Fusang—her father’s age already. It did not feel right, Yilan thought, to marry someone your daughter’s age to your husband. “Where are your parents?” she asked Fusang. “Do you want to go back to them after this?”
“My mother died when I was two. I’ve never known her.”
“What about your father? Do you remember him?”
“He leased me to a beggar couple for ten years so I could support myself by begging with them. They were like my own parents and raised me from the time I was eight. They promised to return me to my father when I was eighteen, with the money I made as my dowry, so he could marry me off, but then they died and I was brought to my husband’s village and before I knew it, aha, I was sold.”
“Who sold you? Why didn’t you report it to the police?”
“The man said he could find me a job, so I went with him. The next thing I knew, I was locked in a bedroom with a dimwit. And when they finally let me free, my son was already born,” Fusang said, shaking her head as if intrigued by a story that did not belong to her. “What’s the good of reporting then? They would never find the man.”
When they exited the store, Yilan pointed out a fruit vendor to Fusang. It was the season for new bayberries, and they walked across the street to buy a basket. As they were leaving, a small hand grasped Yilan’s pants. “Spare a penny, Granny,” a boy dressed in rags said, his upturned face smeared with dirt.
Yilan put the change into the boy’s straw basket, which held a few scattered coins and paper notes. The boy let go of Yilan’s pants and then grabbed Fusang’s sleeve. “Spare a penny, Auntie.”
Fusang looked at the boy for a moment and squatted down. “Be careful,” Yilan said, but Fusang paid no attention. She put a hand on the boy’s forehead and he jerked back, but Fusang dragged him closer and said in a harsh tone, “Let me see your head.”
The boy, frightened, did not move. Fusang stroked his hair back and gazed at his forehead for a moment. “What’s your name?” she said, shaking the boy by his shoulder. “How old are you? Where are your parents? Where is your home?”
Before the boy could answer, a middle-aged man ran toward them from the street corner. “Hey,” he said in a dialect not of the province. “What are you doing to my son?”
“But he’s not your son,” Fusang said. “He’s mine.”
The boy recoiled from Fusang, his eyes filled with trepidation. The man pulled the boy away from Fusang and said to Yilan, “Is she your daughter? Can’t you see she’s scaring my child? Don’t think we beggars do not deserve respect and that you can shit on our faces.”
Yilan looked at the man, his yellow crooked teeth and big sinewy hands bearing the threat of a lawless wanderer. He could easily hurt the twins with a mean punch to Fusang’s belly. Yilan held Fusang back and said in a placating tone, “My niece lost a son, so please understand that she might make a mistake.”
“But I’m not mistaken,” Fusang said. “My son has a scar here on his forehead, like a new moon, and he has that, too.”
Already a group of people had gathered for the free street show. Someone laughed at Fusang’s words and said, “Five out of ten boys have a scar somewhere on their heads, haven’t they?”
“Hear that?” the man said to Fusang. “How can you prove he’s your son?”
“Can you prove he’s your son?” Fusang said. “Do you have his birth papers?”
“Beggars don’t bother to bring useless things with them,” the man said. He picked up the boy and put him on his shoulders. “Brothers and sisters, if you have a penny to spare for me and my boy, please do so. Or we’ll leave now so this crazy woman won’t bother us.”
Fusang grabbed the man’s arm, but with a small push he sent Fusang stumbling back a few steps till she sat down on the ground. Yilan’s heart quickened.
“If you dare leave now, you will not have a good death,” Fusang said, and started to cry. Neither her curse nor her tears stopped the man. The circle scattered to let him and the boy pass, and besides a few idlers who stayed to watch Fusang cry, the others left for their own business.
Yilan imagined the twins in Fusang’s womb, shaken by anger and sadness that they did not understand. She did not know how to comfort Fusang, nor could she believe in Fusang’s claim of the boy’s identity. After a moment, Yilan said, “Are you all right?”
Fusang put a hand on her belly and supported herself with another hand to stand up. “Don’t worry, Auntie,” she said. “The babies are fine.”
“You could’ve hurt them,” Yilan said. Her words sounded cold, and right away she regretted having spoken them.
Fusang did not reply. Yilan called a taxi, and on the ride home they let silence grow and distance them into strangers. When they entered the flat, Yilan told Fusang to take a rest and not to dwell on the incident; Fusang did not reply but followed Yilan to her bedroom.
“You don’t believe me, Auntie,” Fusang said, standing at the door. “But he’s my son. How can a mother make a mistake?”
Yilan shook her head and sat down on her bed. A moon-shaped scar could happen to many boys and it proved nothing. “You told me that wherever your son was, he was having his own life,” Yilan said finally. “So don’t think about him now.”
“I thought he would have a much better life,” Fusang said. “I thought people who wanted to buy a boy from a trader would treat him as their own son. I didn’t know he would be sold to a beggar.”
Yilan had heard stories of people buying or renting children from poor villages and taking them into the cities to beg. The owners made big money from the small children, whom they starved and sometimes hurt intentionally, so that the children, with their hungry eyes and wounded bodies on display, would look sadder and more worthy of charity. She tried to recall the boy’s eyes, whether they bore unfathomable pain and sadness unfit for a child his age, but all she could remember was the man’s big hand on his small arm when he was taken away from Fusang.
“Had I known this,” Fusang said, “I wouldn’t have let the trader take him away. I thought any parents would be better than his dimwit father and me.”
“Did you give your son away to a trader?” Yilan asked.
“We couldn’t give the boy a good life,” Fusang said. “Besides, his grandparents deserved it because of what they had done to me.”
Yilan was shocked by the venom in Fusang’s words, the first time Yilan had detected the young woman’s emotion about her past. “How could you make such a mistake?” Yilan said. “You’re the birth mother of your son and no one could replace you.”
“But if someone could give him a better life—” Fusang said. “Just like you’ll take away the twins and I won’t say a thing, because you’ll give them more than I can.”
“The twins are our children,” Yilan said, and stood up abruptly. She was stunned by Fusang’s illogic. “You can’t keep them. We have a contract.”
“If they’re in my belly, won’t they be my children, too?” Fusang said. “But don’t worry, Auntie. I won’t keep them. All I’m saying is sometimes mothers do give away their children.”
“Then stop thinking of getting him back,” Yilan said, and then regretted her frustration. “And perhaps he’s not your son at all,” she added in a softened voice. “Your son may be living a happy life elsewhere.”
Fusang shook her head in confusion. “Why is it that no one wants to believe me?” she said. “He is my son.”
“But you have no way to prove it,” Yilan said.
Fusang thought for a long moment. “Yes, there is a way,” she said, and suddenly became excited. “Auntie, can you give me half of my money now? I’ll go find the man and offer ten thousand yuan to buy the boy back from him. He won’t sell the boy if he’s his son, but if he only bought the boy from a trader, he’ll surely sell the boy to me, and that will prove that he is my son.”
Yilan did not know how to reply. Ten thousand yuan was a big sum and Fusang might be able to buy the boy from the beggar if indeed the man was only the owner of the boy instead of his father, but that did not make the boy Fusang’s son. Or did it matter whether he came from her blood or not? She believed him to be her son, and he might as well become her son, but what did Fusang have, except for the rest of the money she would earn from the pregnancy, to bring the child up? Fusang was still a child herself, acting out of wrong reasoning; she herself needed a mother to pass on generations of wisdom to her.
“Auntie, please?” Fusang said, her pleading eyes looking into Yilan’s. “I can send him to his father for now if you don’t like having him around.”
“But you’re planning to leave your husband,” Yilan said. “Plus, he can’t possibly take care of a small child.”
“I’ll find someone to take care of him in the village,” Fusang said. “I’ll stay with my husband if you think I shouldn’t leave him. Please, Auntie, if we don’t hurry, the man may run away with my son.”
What would Fusang do with a small child? Yilan thought. She found it hard to imagine Fusang’s life without her own presence, but what would Luo say if she told him about the situation and suggested they find a way to help Fusang and her son to America? Luo would probably say there was no clause about an advance or any other form of payment beyond the twenty thousand yuan. How could she persuade him to see that sometimes people without any blood connection could also make a family—and Fusang, wasn’t she their kin now, nurturing their twins with her blood?
“Auntie?” Fusang said tentatively, and Yilan realized that she had been gazing at the young woman for a long time.
“Fusang,” Yilan said. “Why don’t we sit down for a moment? We need to talk.”
But Fusang, mistaking Yilan’s words as a rejection, stepped back with disappointment. “You can say no, but remember, your children are here with me. I’ll run away and sell your children if I like. I can starve them even if you find a way to keep me here,” Fusang said, and before Yilan could stop her, she ran into the kitchen and climbed onto the dinner table. Yilan followed Fusang into the kitchen and looked at Fusang, her small figure all of a sudden a looming danger. “I can jump and jump and jump and make them fall out of my body now,” Fusang said. “I don’t care if I don’t earn your money. I have a husband to go back to. I will have more children if I like, but you won’t ever see the twins if you say no to me now.”
Fusang’s face was no longer glowing with a gentle beauty but with anger and hatred. This was the price they paid for being mothers, Yilan thought, that the love of one’s own child made everyone else in the world a potential enemy. Even as she was trying to find reconciling words to convince Fusang that she would do whatever she requested, Yilan knew that the world of trust and love they had built together was crushed, and they would remain each other’s prisoners for as long as they stayed under the same roof.