But you’ve been here before, lying in bed wondering if this is the one you will keep. You must not be stupid. You must be sure. You contemplate the list of omens, which you have repeated silently to yourself so many times that they are more like mantras than they are fortunes. There is order in this list, in its numbers, in trying to get through the entire prophetic inventory without your mind wandering. You start again from the top. 1. Afternoon vomiting is a sign that it is a girl and that it will compete with you for your husband’s attention. 2. Craving sweets is a sign that it is a boy and it will love you sweetly in the ways sons do. 3. Nighttime conception, under the humble, decent covering of the marital quilt, will lead to a respectable, albeit humble, fortune. 4. A partially-clothed daytime conception is dangerous and could result in a son who forsakes his family to seek his own fortune or, even worse, a son who chooses an ungrateful bride. 5. A fully-naked daytime conception leads to an uncomplicated, dutiful son who keeps no secrets from his mother.
Every town has its own set of superstitions just as it has its own set of laws. Had you grown up in a different village, you would now be contemplating a different list of signs compiled by a different sightless soothsayer. Had you grown up east of Xiantao instead of west of it, you would be spending this sleepless night recounting whether the moon had been full (boy) or whether you had emptied your bladder immediately after (girl, and a weak one at that). Just because another town’s soothsaying tradition offers an alternative fate, it does not make your hometown’s omens any less potent. Rather, it gives them roots.
You uprooted your omens and carried them from your childhood village all the way to your husband’s apartment in the fast-developing town of Xiantao. It was not a long distance, but it was a long way. Such a long way would frighten a less sturdy girl. Or a less stupid one. But you are glad now that you have your omens here with you in this town, in this apartment, this room, this bed. At a time like this—when you are alone with your secrets in the sprawling solitude that sweeps over a marriage bed just before dawn—these familiar superstitions are all you have. So you hold them. You lovingly cling to them. Like childhood dolls in the darkness.
You try to remember all the times you had sex. You think of what sounds you made. You think of your clothing. His clothing. The quilt. Although the differences are subtle, the stakes are high. You remember the night of the blackout and the afternoon of the heavy rain. You remember his silences and his grunts, and you remember the time he grabbed the back of your head and told you to pretend he was someone you didn’t know. You count the days, the hours, the thrusts. You need to be precise.
It is easier this time because you know the questions to ask yourself. And because the sex is less frequent, the math is simpler. But what makes this one trickier compared to the previous two is the timing. This one will be born at either the tail end of the Horse Year or the head of the Sheep Year. There is no need to list the consequences of these scenarios because every aspiring mother knows that a baby born in the Year of the Horse will have success and fortune whereas a baby born in the dreaded Year of the Sheep will be doomed to a future of unspeakable hardship. How could the line between these two drastically different fates be so subtle? How could you have been so careless? You count again. It is too close. This calculation is not an exact science. It should be, though. You should have done this better. You thought you were smart. You thought you were modern. But it is 2002, you are college-educated, you speak a foreign language, and you still plan your future like an old lady with tiny feet in the pre-Mao days. You are a stupid, stupid girl.
The first time, you told him right away because you were young and very stupid, and he knew about things that you did not. At that time, you did not yet know the power of a secret. But he did. He knew about the incident in Tiananmen Square, even. He was one of those students. That’s how old and knowing he was. Is. What he did not—could not—understand was that you only had one opportunity. Only one chance to create the person who will take care of you after he dies. You needed to make sure it was the right child. You needed to make sure it was a son. And now after #1 showed signs of being a girl and #2 showed signs of being a boy conceived during an inauspicious hour, this current attempt seems like the one you could be sure about if you wanted to.
But what if it isn’t a son? Or what if it isn’t the right son? Or if it takes too long to materialize and is born a Sheep instead of a Horse? And what if it is the one, but you mistakenly get rid of him? Regardless, if you do get rid of it, then you will have to wait until after the Year of the Sheep. It will be a long year. It will be another New Years Eve with his mother asking why you are not pregnant. Another year of having to drink that fertility tea she makes for you, the one that smells like rotten mushrooms and tastes like punishment.
And if this is the year, and if this is the child you were intended to have, then will your husband make you quit your job? Will he have any reason to come near you? Will he start teaching the child and forget about you? Who will you be for him then, if not his student? Will you be his housekeeper? His equal? You roll your eyes, knowing that even though you are getting wiser at this marriage thing, you are still a stupid girl. A stupid, stupid girl.
He is sleeping now, deeply, loudly, like an old man. Although he is only approaching middle-age, he has been beaten down by life. You used to think this made him appear wiser, but now it just makes him seem older. He will not live forever. You calculate this also. You are twenty-four, which means that he is forty-four. By the time your son graduates from medical school, this sleeping husband could be dead.
You really want your son to be a doctor. He wants his son to be a daughter. What man wants a girl? One who wants to replace you when you are old and have learned how the world really works. He wants a student more than he wants a wife or a child. And he wants a girl so that he will not have to compete with her. But you will. You will have to compete with his philosopher daughter. You will have to tame the rebel child so that she does not render herself an unmarriageable adult. You will have to make sure that she is not wooed by her father’s ideals as you were. Stupid, stupid girl, you were. Are.
You could end this whole marriage thing and move away. You could disappear within a large foreign-owned industrial complex within a large coastal city. You heard there are rich companies that will ask no questions. That will issue new ID cards and offer cash and a bunk as long as you tolerate the pollution and the factory hours. You have options.
You have no options. Eventually, you will have a child. Your only decision is whether this will be that child. How do you know if it is? You go through the list one more time. You add to it: 6. If this is not meant to be your child, the next pregnancy will be #4. But Four is the cursed number that shares the same pronunciation as the word, die, rendering it indisputably ill-fated. To terminate #3 for the sake of #4 is not the prudent choice. Do not be stupid. You would have to wait until #5. Or better yet, just wait an additional three more until lucky #8. That would be the smart thing to do. But that would be a lot to endure, even if it is worth it. By endure, you are not thinking about your health, about the doctor visits, the recoveries, the conceptions. You are thinking about enduring the voices. You begin to make a list of voices and quickly realize that the only audible one belongs to your mother-in-law and her humiliating criticism. The other voices are silent, but they are the ones that you’d have to endure daily. Are you strong enough for that? You might be stupid, but are you strong?
The voices belong to the wives who belong to his colleagues. A collective voice? Many individual voices? It’s hard to tell because they are soundless. You count the meanings of their snubs. 1. The wives will either know—in the way that men do not—that you are repeatedly forcing the fetus to fall. They will secretly hate you for your clandestine control. 2. Or they will not know, and instead, they will think that you cannot conceive. They will secretly hate you because your misfortune could be contagious. Either way, they will hate you.
They already hate you. They do not say it to your face, but they never waste an opportunity to share their judgment with you. They serve it to you when you come to their homes for dinner, and it tastes like pity but it sits in your stomach like something that needs to be surgically removed.
His silence is something else. It is the reason you chose him. He does not take up too much space. He does not waste words. He uses his words for good. That is why he wants to teach you. You remember when he seemed exciting to you, back when he was officially your teacher. He was no more exciting four years ago than he is now, but you were young, and he knew about the world. Now you understand that you were the exciting one, and that he had the world beaten out of him. His silence had not been his by choice. He had been silenced. You realize this now.
You are not so stupid. His silence is deep and frightening, and it needs for you to be light and joyous and young and stupid. His silence reeks of a Beijing prison, of a deal that was made, and of a friend who was tortured because he did not make the deal so readily. But he did make the deal, the friend. Eventually, albeit not as quietly or swiftly as your husband did. Decisions are not born of choices as much as they are born of exhaustion. Succumbing to exhaustion sooner rather than later does not seem so stupid.
And what if you decide not to endure? What if you decide to keep it because you think #3 is a good number? Because you think it will be a boy? Because you think it will be born before the Sheep Year? You think of the year ahead, in which he will not mount you, in which his mother will not disdain you. The year will be full of promise. It will be a dream year. Do you want to take your dream year now, or should you wait? Maybe you should wait because you may need the promise of good fortune in a future year. You may need it more later than you do now, because now you are enduring. And you are still stupid enough to ease his pain, to fill his silent spaces with small amounts of joy. Once you have a baby, you cannot go back to the way things were when they were endurable. Maybe the baby will be born in the Horse Year. You count. You count again. You cannot be certain. But you must be certain because although 3 is a lucky number, a Sheep baby is a blighted baby. All local soothsayers, regardless of their village, agree on this point. This ancient and unanimous truth trumps any of your lists.
Still, your mind creates lists and repeats them over and over. Anything to distract you from the recurring thought of a Sheep baby. Just keep quiet. Do not wake him. Do not let your secret spill out onto your marriage bed. Your silence makes your secret feel powerful. But it also makes you feel like an addict. Like someone who cannot stop doing the quiet, covert thing, the destructive deed known only to one’s self and one’s doctor.
For how long will the doctor keep silent? How many more times will he allow you to do this? There is always another doctor. But is there? You list the doctors in town. The doctors out of town. The women who are rumored to take care of such situations discreetly. Yes, even if there is not another doctor, there is always someone willing to keep your silence.
You calculate how many days you have until this decision is to be finalized. You are unclear. In the future, you will be smarter. You will keep a record of every time he climbs on top of you. Such a record is only necessary if you decide that #3 is not meant to be your child. In the event that he is your child, the doctor will seal off your fallopian tubes right after he is born. This could be the last decision you make for yourself. You only have one chance at this, and how do you know that this is the child you were meant to bring into the world? You wish you believed in gods instead of omens. It would be easier. You count your omens, you weigh them, you inspect them, but you are no closer to a decision than you were yesterday.
Soon the sun will rise, and you will not have any more clarity than you do now. Nor will you feel any less exhausted. But you will have work to do, and work is comforting. When he wakes, you will fold the quilt, sweep the kitchen floor, and boil water to make rice porridge. He will do his morning exercises, read, and come to the table. You will place his bowl in front of him, and you will give him a spoon. He will say something about his reading. You will nod in agreement. Or, better yet, you will ask a thoughtful question. He will eat, and you will look to him for a sign. He will not know it, but he will make this decision. Will he leave a lump of porridge at the bottom of the bowl or will he scrape the sides of the bowl with his spoon, greedily ridding the vessel of any trace of your handiwork? You know what a scrape means. Wait, do you? Is it his insatiable hunger for a family—any family, any child—not just the perfect one? No, you understand what a scrape means. How a scrape feels. You know you can only endure so much.
