Frog

You can stop worrying. I’ve come up with a plan. I’ve fought it out with women like her for decades, and I know exactly how they think. They’re all talk, and she won’t kill herself. She likes living too much. It’s the quiet ones who might hang themselves or take poison. In all my years working with family planning, the women who kill themselves do so for some other reason, so you have nothing to worry about.

Then what do I do? I said, still troubled. I can’t truss her up like a pig and drag her to the hospital.

We may have to get tough with her, Gugu said, especially since it’s your wife. Being my nephew is your bad luck, because if I let her go ahead, how am I going to deal with the masses? They’d be on me as soon as I opened my mouth.

I have no choice but to do as you say, I said. Should I bring members of my unit to help out?

I’ve already sent your unit a telegram.

Was it you who sent the first telegram?

Yes, it was me.

Since you knew early on that she was pregnant, why didn’t you take care of it then?

I didn’t know till I returned from attending two months of meetings in the county capital. That bastard Yuan Sai, she sputtered, all he ever gives me is trouble. Fortunately, someone reported him. That will save us trouble later on.

Will he be punished?

If I had my way, they’d shoot him! she said angrily.

I doubt that Renmei was the only one.

We have a handle on this. There’s your wife, the wife of Wang Qi at Wang Clan hamlet, the wife of Jin Niu in Sun Family Village, and Wang Dan, Chen Bi’s wife — she’s the farthest along. There are another dozen or so in other counties, but they’re not our concern. We’ll start with your wife, and then the rest, one after the other. No one will get away.

What if they leave the province?

Gugu sneered. Even the magical monkey Sun Wukong could not escape from the Buddha’s palm.

I’m in the army, Gugu, so Renmei should have the procedure. But Wang Dan and Chen Bi are farmers, and their first child was a girl. According to policy, they can have a second. She’s so tiny that getting pregnant is always hard…

Gugu cut me off with a taunt: You haven’t taken care of your own problem, so what are you doing speaking up for them? The policy is that they can have a second child, but only after the first child’s eighth birthday. How old is their daughter, Chen Er?

It’s only a matter of a few years, I said.

How glib that sounds, Gugu said sombrely. Just a few years early, but what if everyone was just a few years early? This would be a terrible precedent, it’d make a mess of things. Forget about other people. You’ve got problems of your own.

9

Gugu led a special family-planning team into our village. Her second-in-command was the deputy commander of the armed police bureau. In addition to Little Lion, the team consisted of half a dozen brawny militiamen. They arrived in a van equipped with a loudspeaker and a powerful caterpillar tractor.

But before the team entered the village, I knocked on my father-in-law’s gate for the second time. This time he allowed me in.

You were in the army too, I said to him. There we do as we’re told. Disobeying an order is not an option.

He mulled over what I said as he smoked a cigarette. If you knew she couldn’t have another child, he said finally, then why let her get pregnant? How is she supposed to have an abortion so late in her pregnancy? What if she doesn’t get through it? She’s my daughter, the only one I have.

Don’t blame me for this.

Then who should I blame?

If you’re looking for someone to blame, look no further than that bastard Yuan Sai. He’s already under arrest.

I’m telling you now that if anything happens to my daughter, I’ll come looking for you and will put these old bones on the line.

My aunt says there’s no problem. She says they’ve even done it at seven months.

Your aunt isn’t a human being, she’s a demon! my mother-in-law jumped in. How many lives has she destroyed over the past few years? Her hands are covered in blood, and when she dies the King of Hell is going to chop her into pieces.

What good does saying things like that do? my father-in-law said. This is men’s business.

How can it be men’s business? she asked shrilly. They want to push our daughter down to the gates of Hell. How is that men’s business?

I’m not going to argue with you, Mother, I said. Tell Renmei to come out here. I need to talk to her.

Why are you looking for her here? She’s a member of your family now and that’s where she lives. What have you done to her? Give her back to me!

Hear that, Renmei? I said loudly. I had a talk with Gugu yesterday. I told her I planned to give up my Party membership and my commission and take up farming again so you can have the child. She told me I can’t do that. That business with Yuan Sai has shaken things up all the way up to the provincial government, and county authorities gave her an order that all illegal pregnancies in her area had to be terminated.