By late January, my belly seems as large as a watermelon. The baby is restless inside me like an upset stomach. It moves around a lot, but each time it does, I’m surprised. And alarmed that I’ve let things go so long. When I first got here, I thought I would have an abortion and go back to work within a month, but time keeps ticking by. Yong hasn’t come back or sent any money. He hasn’t even texted me in weeks.
I clamp my hands over my stomach. I should’ve known Yong wouldn’t come through, that he wouldn’t actually pay for the procedure. I should’ve figured out another plan by now. But I’ve been lulled into not doing anything because I’ve felt so sickly and Ma insists on taking care of me.
Yong’s ma comes into the house, letting in a flash of winter light as she opens and shuts the door. She sees me at the table, holding my belly. “Is he moving?” Her eyes are greedy for the baby as she pulls off the woolen hat she wears, a castoff of Yong’s or his brother’s. Her thin cheeks are chapped red from the wind.
I shrug and move my hands away from my middle, placing them around the hot cup of tea I’m drinking.
“Not much longer now.” Ma grins. “He’ll be here a few weeks after Spring Festival.”
Ma is sure it’s a boy. Months back, when she saw that I was nauseous every day, for most of the day, she declared, “Sick all day means a boy! When I got pregnant the second time, I was so sure it was a boy, we decided we would pay the fines instead of having an abortion. I just knew it was another boy, because of how sick I was. I’ve been very lucky!” Her eyes stole over to me, lighting on the pocks on my face, and she sighed. By then I knew the rest of the story. Yong’s father died before they paid the fines, and Yong never got his hukou.
Now, Ma tears her eyes away from my belly. She goes to the big cupboard, rummages in a sack of potatoes, and brings out three fat sweets. “Come over here,” she says as she moves to the stove. “I want to show you how to cook these. You have to learn how to cook and take care of things. Come on. We have to get ready for Wei.”
Wei is Yong’s older brother. He works as a cleaner in a plastics factory in Quingxu. Ma told me that he’s not been able to find a good position because he doesn’t meet the minimum height requirements of most of the factory jobs. He doesn’t make very much money.
Ma hums as she scrubs the potatoes. “I don’t know what he’s thinking, coming home this time of year. He shouldn’t take time off. His boss shouldn’t let him off. It’s too close to the Spring Festival. That’s the time to come home.” Even as she rails against him, she talks cheerfully and peels and chops with quick, light movements. She doesn’t seem to care that I just stand there watching instead of doing anything myself. “See, see.” She pauses to show me how to hold the knife. “I know you know how to work. You worked so hard in that factory. Now you have to cook the baby.” She elbows my belly gently and laughs.
I can’t help but chuckle too, not at what she said about the baby, but at Ma herself. Ma’s not bad to me. She actually takes pretty good care of me. She makes me special teas and broths, pushes me to eat all the time. I used to go with her to the market and help her with the fieldwork, but she made me stop once I started to get big, even before the growing season was over. Now she only asks me to do light chores around the house. And if I don’t do them, she doesn’t yell at me.
The door opens and bangs shut. “Ma!”
We turn to see Wei standing there. Ma bolts over to him, clucking and patting and swiping the dust off him. He isn’t much taller than Ma. He stands slumped forward, clearly worn out. His hair looks like it’s been buzzed by a roadside barber.
As soon as she settles, Ma ticks her head toward me. “Your brother’s wife.”
Wei shakes off an overnight bag slung on his shoulder and hands it to Ma. He nods at me, unsmiling. “Your husband’s been arrested.”
The baby rolls inside me.
Ma drops Wei’s bag as she lets out a strangled cry. Her hands fly up to her face. “What are you talking about?”
Wei moves to the coal heater in the middle of the room and puts his hands near it to warm them. “They say he’s abducted someone.” He stares through the open hole at the red glowing coals. “Yong says that he’s been mistaken for his boss. That his boss tricked him.” He throws a glance at us over his shoulder. “He needs money to get out.”
Ma rushes over to Wei and clutches his arm. She starts crying and drilling him with questions. I stop listening. Blood roars in my ears. Bride collecting.
“Yun! Yun!” Ma shouts at me. She and Wei are both looking keenly at me. “Do you have any money?”
My mind flies to the 532 yuan hidden in the lining of my comforter. I thrust it out of my mind and shake my head, keeping my face as plain as millet porridge.
Ma rushes around the room, going through her bag and a small crock where she keeps loose change. “I only have what you boys send me. So little! I’ve been using it all to buy good food for the baby. How much do we need?”
Wei crosses his arms and leans against the stove. “Not sure. As much as you can get.”
Ma stops counting her wrinkled bills and coins. She lowers her voice. “You think they’ll take a bribe?”
“Yong thinks it’s more likely than getting bail. Faster.”
Ma’s face crumples. She grips her money in her hands and clasps them together, moaning into them. Wei and I look at each other. His eyes jump briefly to my belly. I don’t know what to make of his look. His eyes and mouth seem neither angry nor sad, and of course, there’s no happiness in them. I wonder if he believes me about the money.
***
All night, the baby churns and churns as if it wants to break out. My sleep is fitful. By dawn the baby has settled on my bladder and when I can’t hold my water any longer, I crawl out of the warm blankets, slip on my coat and shoes, and walk to the communal squats at the end of the lane.
The air on my face is as sharp as knives. The cold, wet air and the blotchy, metal-colored sky make me think it might snow later. I hope it holds out until Ma has borrowed enough money to send Wei back to Gujiao to get Yong out, even though I’m not sure I really want Yong to come here. We haven’t felt like an actual couple since I told him I was pregnant. I don’t think about him the way I used to. I don’t feel any hunger to be with him.
After I piss and leave the toilets, I see Wei coming down the lane, one gloveless hand shoved in his pants pocket. The other hand holds a cigarette. He draws on it, then coughs. The white puffs streaming out of his mouth are made larger by his breath in the cold.
I hesitate. He sees me and makes a gesture for me to wait as he strides over.
“I thought you might be here. I wanted to talk to you alone.” He takes another drag on the cigarette before he drops it and coughs out another stinking white cloud. “The baby, do you know if it’s a boy or girl?”
His question catches me off guard. “Your mother and Yong think it’s a boy.”
“How do they know? Did you have an ultrasound to determine the sex?”
I shake my head. “The doctor I saw said that’s illegal.”
He glances around like he’s afraid someone is listening. But there’s no one around except a few chickens scratching at the weeds by the side of the lane. There are some clinics and mobile vans that will tell you for a big fee. But I guess you have to know where to find them.
He coughs again, bringing up a wad of phlegm. He twists around and spits it out behind him. “Yun”—he says my name as if we’re old friends, but it sounds strange to my ears—“I’m going to find a way to get Yong out of jail. But you know it’s all true.”
He’s standing less than five feet from me. His eyes are troubled. They rove past me to the alley walls, the gravel under foot, the leaden sky.
“He isn’t the main one who finds the girls. I don’t think he knew about it when he first started. He really was just a driver for his boss at first. But he definitely knows everything that’s going on now.” He sighs. “I don’t know what happened to my little brother. All he cares about is money these days. Ever since he went to the city. He couldn’t get a good job in the factories because he doesn’t have the hukou. Eventually he found work with this boss, got a taste of nightclubs and motorbikes and money. Romancing girls and tricking them, taking them to the countryside and selling them.” He tracks a scattering of black birds as they fly overhead, cawing and beating away the dead of the morning. “He’ll do anything for the money. It’s the money that’s changed him.”
I have nothing to say to that. I know what it’s like to feel that you have no options. But it seems to me that even without a hukou, Yong was better off than I was growing up. He’s always had a home, a good mother, an unblemished face. I can’t find it in my heart to pity him.
Wei sighs. “But he’s my brother and I have to get him out for Ma. He’s going to come back here. When the baby is born, if it’s a boy, he’ll want to keep it. But if it’s a girl . . .” His eyes are grim.
“If it’s a girl, what?”
“Maybe he’ll want to sell her.”
Sell a girl? I think of all those kids in the Institute. The baby girls with nothing wrong with them except that they weren’t boys. “Why would anyone want to pay for a girl? People can just get a girl from an orphanage.”
Wei shakes his head. “It’s actually not that easy if you can’t afford to pay the required ‘donation’ to the orphanages. Even though people here are getting richer, those fees are way too high. And apparently, since that earthquake in Sichuan last year, there’s been a huge spike in demand. Thousands and thousands of people lost their kids, and now they’re desperate to adopt because they’re too old to get pregnant again.”
I don’t know how to feel about this. It sounds heartless to sell a baby. But really, I don’t want this baby anyway. If it’s sold to a good home, so much the better. Still, the fact that Yong thinks that he could decide this for me makes me angry. It must’ve been his plan from the beginning, and instead of telling me, he let me believe he’d help pay for the abortion.
I never should’ve trusted him.
Wei glances around again. The lane is still empty. “I know you and Yong aren’t married.”
I cross my arms and try to rub off the cold. “So? It doesn’t bother me. Yong just told your mother that so she wouldn’t lose face.”
“But don’t you get it? If you’re not his wife, there’s nothing to stop him from . . .”
He trails off, letting the rest go unspoken. Now it sinks in what he’s trying to tell me.
Yong might sell me too.
Probably to some distant farmer who needs someone to make a baby, take care of him, work in the fields.
I haven’t been unhappy here in the country with Ma taking care of me. But I am not going to be the drudge of some stinking farmer too old or ugly to find himself a wife.
I’ve got to get away before Yong comes back.