Sheng Keyi - Northern Girls - Life Goes On

Many pairs of eyes looked on, blank and puzzled, in a sort of numb confusion. They all sat there together in mutual sympathy.

Before the peak season of sterilisations had come round again, Xiaohong had been deployed to another department in the hospital. To be more precise, she was sent to the kitchen. She would wield a knife there, or at least accompany the person wielding the knife to prepare the meals, while the hospital used the opportunity created by the additional traffic to earn a little extra income. It was important to look after the welfare of everyone in the hospital and improve the lives of the working class in this way. Before the hospital chairman Dr Lei had gone into battle, knife in hand, he had sought out Xiaohong for a talk. He made it clear that if she did a good job on kitchen duty then, when the peak season for surgery was over, it would be for the good of the cause. They would all, whether they took up the knife in the kitchen or the operating room, be comrades in the heat of strife, and both jobs were equally glorious.

When Dr Lei broke the news to Xiaohong he said, ‘send you down’. It was a loaded phrase. If going to work in the kitchen was really nothing to feel ashamed of, then this silly charade was full of a unique sort of significance all its own.

‘I’ll do whatever’s assigned to me,’ Xiaohong said. She felt strange and unhappy, but when the higher-ups so solemnly ‘send you down’, it doesn’t matter whether you feel good or bad, panicked or relaxed, you’ve just got to knuckle down and get it done.

Next, it was Xia — or the new Publicity Director Mr Xia — who sought out Xiaohong for conversation. Though he had not yet officially been notified of the appointment, he was already starting to break in the new job title. Xia’s message was the same as Dr Lei’s, almost quoting him word for word, in fact. His performance skills, however, were not quite up to scratch and he gave rather a bad imitation of the doctor’s precise accents and emphases. When facing Xiaohong, he was not quite up to acting the part of the hospital chairman.

Xiaohong went straight to the kitchen. She washed vegetables, washed bowls, served vegetables and served rice. Wherever they were short-handed, there she went, flitting here and there like a nightingale. On the third day when they opened for lunch, Xiaohong rolled up her sleeves and in deft movements ladled out the soup and scooped the rice. She collected meal tickets without even looking at the faces of those she took them from. She was too busy to care. It was not at all easy work to serve food during the peak hours. When she finally relaxed, wiping the sweat from her brow, she suddenly noticed Specs lingering outside the window. He had a meal ticket in his hand, but it seemed he didn’t know what he was supposed to do. He was not wearing his glasses and he looked like he hadn’t slept all night. From his lifeless eyes, she knew for sure something was wrong. She called him but there was no response. When she had called him for the third time, he finally walked over to the window.

‘What are you doing? You want something to eat? Who’s ill?’ Xiaohong fired a volley of questions through the gap in the window.

‘Xiaohong. You’re here. Sijiang’s ill. She’s ill.’

‘What? Not pregnant!’

‘No. Not pregnant. She’s…’

‘Well, go on. What’re you stammering for?’

‘Ah Hong. Last night, she… she was sterilised!’

‘Oh God! Fuck!’ Xiaohong slipped back into her hometown dialect as she cursed. She threw her spoon, splattering the carrot and pork rib soup everywhere. She wove her way through the kitchen on her two slender legs and followed Specs hastily to the Inpatient Ward.

III

The Inpatient Ward was calm and peaceful, like the rhythmic toss of a boat enduring a storm. Patients and their relatives laughed softly, chatting about the past, reviving family memories and renewing the ties of kinship. Occasionally, a woman would groan. Mostly it was just whining, since the physical pain was only minimal, as if to remind her loved ones she had gone under the knife and of the sacrifice that she had made. Ninety per cent of the women here had undergone the sterilisation procedure. The ones who had endured the knife lay on the beds like cut grass scattered across a field. Xiaohong and Specs were like farmers planting rice. When they traversed the field, it was not a smooth path. They squeezed between the wall and the row of beds, knocking their shins countless times as they crossed the room, advancing toward Sijiang’s bed.

The air was full of a smell, an odour of complex nuances. Not just the clothes stained black as mud, and not merely the smell of unbathed human flesh caked with filth. No single odour could be identified. It was more like the odour of pus in a wound, a fatty, sour, fermented smell. Xiaohong controlled herself, suppressing the impulse to puke. After a moment of gaining her composure, a fresh wave of overwhelming sadness hit her, renewing the desire to vomit.

Living people, but dirtier than animals. In the pig sty at home, with a sow and her dozen or so piglets, eating and drinking from a common space, the smell was not even a tenth as disgusting as this place.

People valued less than animals. Even a pig set aside to be spayed was allowed to wait until its proper time. Sijiang was just nineteen, and here she was neutered like an old sow.

Sijiang would have cherished the feeling of being a new mother more than most. Someone who would especially relish the whole birth experience, if sterilised, would definitely feel the pain of the blow more acutely than most. Oh, Li Sijiang! Xiaohong didn’t dare to think about how her friend might actually be feeling right now.

A few years ago, something similar had happened back in Xiaohong’s village. The Family Planning Office made a surprise attack in the middle of the night to round people up. It seemed that a woman who had three daughters escaped, so the staff took the youngest girl and sterilised her. Whether it was a case of mistaken identity or a matter of spite, the outcome was that she was barren, plain and simple. She would never be able to bring another labourer into the nation’s workforce. Who would want to marry her? The girl finally ran to the river and killed herself, making the outcome plainer and simpler still.

Xiaohong, worrying as she walked, suddenly saw the homely form of Sijiang, lying on a white bed. She didn’t know why, out of so many white beds, her eye found Sijiang at a single glance. The girl lay there blankly, limbs flopped carelessly on the sheet, blandly staring up at the ceiling until Xiaohong reached her. Two tears plainly flowed down her cheeks.

‘Hey Sijiang, don’t lie there like this,’ Xiaohong advised, suppressing her own tears as she persuaded her friend. She just wanted to cheer Sijiang up, but even she felt it was all a load of crap. If she were the one who had been sterilised, she would be even more deeply in despair than Sijiang was. She would snap at anyone who came near.

Xiaohong tried to quell the anger in her belly. She kept herself from cursing aloud. She knew this was not the time for cursing. This was the time for easing Sijiang’s suffering. Sijiang couldn’t move — didn’t want to move — and so just lay there, face becoming more drawn. She was no longer that young girl from the days at the salon, face fresh and round as an apple.

Specs sat quietly on the bed watching her, looking even more uncomfortable than if he had been castrated himself. In fact, as a man who had failed to protect his woman, he had been emasculated. He felt guilty. And, with his woman’s sterilisation, he was as good as castrated anyway. He patted Sijiang’s hand a moment then put a hand on her forehead, as if hoping to bring back the old Sijiang with his touch. Her listless eyes looked straight ahead, hoping for a miracle. After lying still as a block of wood for a long while, Sijiang suddenly showed a ruthless urge to cry, but that pulled at the wound and the physical pain it caused made her restrain herself. She slowly resumed that wooden gaze.