Frog

CHEN MEI: (on her knees) Please, Your Honour, pass your fair judgement. I wanted to have this baby at first to earn enough to pay my father’s hospital bills, then drown myself in the river. But death stopped being attractive once I became pregnant and felt him moving around inside me. There were other women like me, but who hated the children they were carrying. I loved mine. My disfigured face and scarred body itch and hurt on rainy, overcast days, and on hot dry days, my wounds crack and bleed. It was hard to carry my baby to term, Your Honour. I suffered miserably, but by being careful I was able to have a successful delivery. But those people lied to me, saying my baby was stillborn. I knew he wasn’t dead, so I searched and searched until I found him. I don’t want the surrogate fee, a million, ten million, I don’t care, I just want my baby. Please, Your Honour, make them give me my baby…

GAO MENGJIU: (to Tadpole and Little Lion) Are you legally married?

TADPOLE: For more than thirty years.

GAO MENGJIU: And all that time you had no child?

LITTLE LION: (unhappily) What would you call him, if not a child?

GAO MENGJIU: You look to me to be in your fifties, am I right?

LITTLE LION: I knew you’d ask that. (points to Gugu) This is our Northeast Gaomi Township’s doctor of obstetrics, who has delivered thousands of babies and has cured many women of infertility. Who knows, maybe you yourself were one of her babies. She will testify for me, since she was with me throughout my pregnancy to the birth of my baby.

GAO MENGJIU: I have long been familiar with Gugu’s reputation. You are a local sage, someone who enjoys universal respect and whose words carry great weight.

GUGU: I delivered that child.

GAO MENGJIU: (asks Chen Mei) Did she deliver your baby?

CHEN MEI: They blindfolded me in the delivery room, Your Honour.

GAO MENGJIU: This case is difficult to adjudicate. We will need DNA results.

The director goes up to whisper something to Gao, who has words with him under his breath.

GAO MENGJIU: (sighs, then sings) Strange case, strange case, a very strange case — putting old Gao in a difficult place — to whom does the child belong — an ingenious plan has come to me. (steps down) Hear me, everyone, since your case has fallen into my hands, I must turn make-believe into real life and make my judgement! Yamen clerks!

CLERKS: Yes, sir!

GAO MENGJIU: If anyone disputes my judgement, use a shoe on their face.

CLERKS: Yes!

GAO MENGJIU: Chen Mei, Little Lion, each of you tells a convincing story, and I cannot choose one over the other. Therefore, I must ask Little Lion to give the child to me for now.

LITTLE LION: I won’t…

GAO MENGJIU: Yamen clerks!

CLERKS: (in unison) Woo-wei…

The director whispers to Tadpole, who nudges Little Lion and indicates she should hand the baby to Gao Mengjiu.

GAO MENGJIU: (softly as he looks down at the baby) A fine baby for sure. No wonder the two families are fighting over him. Hear me, Chen Mei, Little Lion, I cannot decide to whom the child belongs, so I must ask you to try to take him from me. Whoever wrests the child from my hands gets him. A messy case deserves a messy resolution. (holds the child over his head) Now!

Both Chen Mei and Little Lion rush up and grab hold of the baby, who begins to cry. Chen Mei wrests him away and holds him to her breast.

GAO MENGJIU: Yamen clerks, take the child away from Chen Mei and arrest her.

The clerks take the baby from Chen Mei and hand him to Gao.

GAO MENGJIU: Audacious Chen Mei, you falsely claimed that the baby was yours, yet you did not hesitate to wrest him out of my hands, something a real mother would not do. When Little Lion heard the baby cry, her motherly instincts would not let her do anything to harm her child, and she let go. Magistrate Bao settled a similar case centuries ago. The one who let go was the true mother. With this precedent, I award the child to Little Lion. For trying to take another’s child and lying in court, I ought to sentence Chen Mei to twenty lashes with a shoe sole. But in view of your disability, I mercifully withhold punishment. Leave this court!

Gao Mengjiu hands the baby to Little Lion.