Frog

Yours? Little Lion asked fiercely. Call her and see if she responds. If she does, you can take her with you.

You’re being unreasonable, and I won’t argue with you. I was wrong, Gugu, I admit it. Now, give me my daughter.

We’ll give her to you, after you go to the commune, pay your fine, and arrange her residency.

How much is the fine?

Fifty-eight hundred, Gugu said.

That much? I don’t have that much.

You haven’t got it? Gugu said. Then don’t even think about taking the child.

Fifty-eight hundred! Fifty-eight hundred! That’s more than my life’s worth.

You can keep your life, Gugu said. And you can keep your money to buy liquor and food and even visit your whorehouses.

I don’t do that! Chen protested angrily out of embarrassment. I’m going to sue you people. If I lose at the commune level, I’ll go to the county, and from there to the province and even the Central Government if necessary!

And what if you lose at that level? Gugu asked contemptuously. Will you take your case to the United Nations?

The United Nations? Why not!

You’re the man of the hour! Gugu said. You can get out of my sight now and come back for the child when you win your case. But I’m telling you, even if you do somehow win your case, you’ll have to promise me in writing that you will bring her up well and you’ll owe Little Lion and me five thousand yuan each as ‘burden fees’ for everything we did.

Chen Bi did not take Chen Mei with him when he left that evening, but once New Year’s passed, on the sixteenth day of the new lunar year, the day after the Lantern Festival, he showed up with a receipt for the fine and left with Chen Mei. The ‘burden fees’ were just something Gugu said in anger, and there was no need for him to pay them anything. Little Lion cried so hard she shook, as if her own baby had been taken from her. What are you crying about? Gugu scolded. If you want a baby that bad, have one!

But that only intensified her sorrow. Gugu rubbed her shoulders and said in a tone sadder than I’d ever heard, My life has already been settled, but your best days are ahead of you. Go on, forget about work for now, have a child and bring it back to show me.

After moving to Beijing, we tried hard to have a child, but Chen Bi’s curse seemed to be working. Little Lion could not get pregnant. She was a good mother to my daughter, but I knew that Chen Mei was the one she pined for. And that was why she was holding a doll that was the spitting image of Chen Mei.

I want this one, she said to Wang Gan, but more to me than to him.

How much? I asked him.

What does that mean, Xiaopao? he asked, obviously miffed. Are you trying to offend me?

You’ve got me all wrong. You can’t buy a doll without good faith, and how can you have that unless you pay for it?

You can’t have good faith if you do pay for it, Wang Gan said softly. When you pay for one, what you’ve bought is a lump of clay. You can’t pay for a child.

All right, I said. We’re at the Binhe community project, number 902 in Building Nine. Come see us.

I will, he said. And I hope you have a son soon.

I shook my head and forced a smile. After saying goodbye to Wang Gan, I took Little Lion’s hand and entered the temple’s central hall, walking against the crowd of temple-goers on their way out.

Fragrant smoke curled out of the iron incense burners alongside an array of flickering red candles coated with wax drippings. Many women, some old and grizzled, others hibiscus fresh, some in tatters, others heavily bejewelled, an endless variety, each unique to herself, and all wearing expressions of devotion, were burning incense, lighting candles, and cradling clay dolls.

Forty-nine white marble steps led to the entrance to the towering central hall. I gazed up at the inscribed board beneath the swallow eaves over the entrance; it read: ‘Moral Education for Children’ etched in gold. Bronze bells hanging from the eaves rang out with each gust of wind.