The Dark Road

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KEYWORDS: sterilised, dugout, breast milk, family planning squad, date tree, longevity locket, Nuwa Cave.

THE INFANT SPIRIT sees Mother sitting on the edge of her bed, her hands clutching her swollen belly, her legs trembling with fear…

Meili rests her hands on her pregnant belly and feels the fetus’s heartbeat thud like a watch beneath a pillow. The heavy banging on the compound gate grows louder, the dim light bulb hanging from the ceiling sways. The family planning officers have come to get me, she says to herself. She raises her feet from the basin of warm water in which they’ve been soaking, hides under her quilt and waits for the gate to be forced open.

This afternoon, as warm sunlight was melting the last patches of snow on the maize bundles in the yard, their neighbour Fang was laying out sesame seeds to dry, her three-week-old baby suckling at her breast, when suddenly four family planning officers stormed in and dragged her off to be sterilised. Fang kicked and howled like a sow being towed to the slaughterhouse. The glutinous rice she’d left soaking in a basin on the ground in preparation for dumplings was overturned, and two mongrel ducks scuttled over to peck at the grains. Eventually they managed to tie her hands together and force her into the open back of their truck. Her white vest was ripped by then, and her shoulders smeared with blood that had fallen from the shaven-headed officer’s nose when she’d kicked him in the face. He was crouching at her feet now, binding her flailing legs with rope and firmly securing her to the metal bars. Trapped from the waist down, Fang leaned over the side and shouted: ‘I damn the eight generations of your ancestors! Have you forgotten that every one of you was nursed by your mother as a child?

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