Frog

Chen Bi and Chen Er were confined in the commune. There was talk that they were strung up and beaten, but that was just a rumour. When village cadres went to see them, they were being held in a room with a bed and bedding, a vacuum bottle and two glasses. Food and water were delivered to them. Their meals were the same as the commune cadres: steamed rolls, millet porridge, and whatever else was being served. Father and daughter gained weight and healthy complexions. They had to pay for their food, but Chen Bi had plenty of money from his business ventures. The commune checked with the bank to see just how much: it was thirty-eight thousand yuan! While your aunt was in the hospital, the commune sent a work team into the village, where they met with the local members and announced that all able-bodied villagers were to search for Wang Dan and would be paid five yuan a day, all to come out of Chen Bi’s bank account. Some villagers said they wouldn’t go, calling it blood money, but were told that if they refused, they would be fined five yuan a day. In the end, all seven hundred souls turned out. Three hundred of them searched the first day; when they returned home they were given their five yuan, making a total outlay that day of about eighteen hundred yuan. The commune also announced that whoever located Wang Dan and brought her home would be given a two hundred yuan reward. A hundred went to anyone who produced a viable clue. That turned the village into a frenzied mass, some clapping their hands from delight, others privately uncomfortable. Father said, I knew that some people coveted those rewards, but most only searched half-heartedly, making a turn or two around farmland and shouting: Come out, Wang Dan. If you don’t, you’ll be wiped out financially. After a few moments of that, they went back and worked their own plots. At night, of course, they went to get paid; they’d have been fined if they hadn’t.

Didn’t they find her? I asked.

How would they find her? Father said. Everyone felt she’d gone far away.

A little thing like that, with short steps and a big belly, how far could she have gone? I’ll bet she was still in the village. I lowered my voice. She might have been hiding in her parents’ home.

They didn’t need you to point that out, Father said. Those people from the commune knew what they were doing. They wouldn’t be happy until they dug down three feet in Wang Jiao’s house. They even broke open the kang to see if maybe Wang Dan was hiding inside. I doubt there was a person in the village who’d have borne the responsibility of hiding her and not reporting. The fine was three thousand.

Could she have decided to end it all? Did they search the river and all the wells?

You underestimate that little woman. She was more intelligent than all the other villagers combined and had more ambition than the tallest man you could find.

You’ve got a point. I recall her pretty little face and her expressions, from crafty to headstrong. The problem was, she must have been seven months along by then.

That’s why your aunt was so anxious. She said, Before it was ‘out of the pot’ it was just meat, and it needed to come out one way or another. But once it was out of the pot it was a human being, even if it had no arms and no legs, and was protected by national laws.

I conjured up an image of Wang Dan: two and a half feet tall, with a big belly, her delicate little head held high, a pair of thin legs in motion, a bundle over her arm, moving clumsily across a bramble-infested mountain road as she looked over her shoulder, tripping but getting back up, and running again… or seated in a large wooden basin, with an oversized stirring slat as her oar as she paddles breathlessly down river rapids.

3

Three days after Mother’s funeral, according to custom, friends and family turned out to ‘circle the grave’. There we burned paper replicas of horses and people, as well as a paper TV set. Mother’s grave was only ten metres from where Renmei was buried. Bright green wild grass was already growing over her grave. I was told by a family elder to circle Mother’s grave with raw rice in my left hand and unhusked millet in my right. Three counterclockwise revolutions were followed by three clockwise revolutions, during which I let the rice and millet drop slowly from my hands as I intoned: A handful of millet, a handful of rice, we send the dear departed to Paradise. My daughter followed me, tossing grain to the ground from her tiny hands.