With another cross word to her daughter, the old lady separated the stamped money into six piles and asked Zhuang to write the name of a deceased family member on each one. The father-in-law’s pile, of course, was the tallest, followed by the old lady’s parents, her uncle, and her elder sister. The final pile was for a sort of second mother to Yueqing, her so-called dry mother. Yueqing poked fun at her mother’s sense of obligation to so many people as she slipped the large new ring onto Zhuang’s finger. He struck a rich man’s pose, leaning back on the sofa and swinging his foot up and down, the shoe balanced on the tip, as he tapped the arm of the sofa and complained that the shirt he was wearing was out of fashion, that he needed a new one.
“I bought you a red T-shirt just this morning, but was afraid you wouldn’t wear it. Lao Huang in our office wears one. He’s sixty-two, and it makes him look ten years younger.”
“It won’t go with these pants,” Zhuang said. “People are wearing Hong Kong suit pants these days, and I need to get a pair. Then, once I have those, I will need new shoes, a new belt, new socks…”
“Enough already,” Niu Yueqing said. “At this rate you’ll be seeing a plastic surgeon to get a new face. And a new job, and a new wife!”
“Last year you traded a hair ornament for a gold tooth cap, and ever since then only nuggets of wisdom have come out of your mouth. What you say goes in this house. You wanted me to wear a ring, so you had it made.” He laughed, took off the ring, and laid it on the table, complaining that she was always following the latest fad, and wondering what she wanted to turn him into.
That upset her. “What you’re saying is that instead of kissing your ass I’m biting your balls, is that it? I try my best to make you look better, but you won’t listen to me. So from now on, don’t tell me how to do my hair or what to wear.”
The old lady let them fight on, since she had discovered to her alarm that the old fellow was going to get money only in denominations in the hundreds, nothing smaller. “Won’t that make it hard for him to buy things in the underworld?” So Zhuang picked up a stack of manuscript paper and stamped it with ten-, five-, and one-yuan bills, after which they took it all out into the lane to burn it-
It was pitch-black outside. Few cars or people were out on the street, which was dimly lit by a streetlight a few hundred yards away. The fire cast the flickering shadows of three ghostly figures onto the wall. Paper ash floated into the night sky, then settled to the ground. Zhuang and his wife knelt close to the fire at first, but moved back as it burned hotter and hotter, while the old lady began incanting the names of the dead, calling for them to come get their money, telling them to tuck it away safely, and urging them to spend it wisely but not to scrimp. They were to come tell her when it was gone. But a chill overcame Zhuang and his wife when they saw an eddy of wind swirl alongside the flames, which they quickly smothered with paper money, as a red light appeared in the night sky. They looked to the west. “Hungry ghosts are fighting,” the old lady said. “I wonder which family they belong to. Damn your descendants for not giving them money. They’re trying to steal from my husband.”
Niu Yueqing shuddered. “What nonsense is that, Mother? It’s a factory welding torch. What makes you think it’s fighting ghosts?”
The old lady kept staring into the sky, and muttered something. Then she sighed. The old man was too quick for them, she was saying. He kept them from stealing our money. “Yueqing, does a pregnant woman live in number 10 over there?”
“They’re colliers from Shangzhou. They made some money after coming to the city and sent for their families. One of them is pregnant.”
“Those women have all had second or third pregnancies, despite the national family policy,” Zhuang said. “The poorer people are, the more children they have, and that makes them even poorer. I don’t know what they’re thinking.”
“I was at the hospital the other day,” Yueqing said, “and the woman from number 10 was in the outpatient department. She said she wanted a doctor to check the position of her fetus. He wanted to check her abdomen with a stethoscope. When she undressed, he saw that her belly was so filthy, so black, he had to clean it with rubbing alcohol, leaving white streaks with each swipe. ‘You should have cleaned up before you came here,’ he told her. She turned red. ‘My husband’s a collier,’ she said.” Niu Yueqing laughed. So did Zhuang Zhidie. “A reincarnated ghost,” the old lady exclaimed. “The child’s about to come into the world.”
The words were barely out of her mouth when the bawl of a newborn baby pierced the air, followed by the sounds of running and pounding on a door. “Gensheng!” a man yelled, “She’s had the baby! Let’s go to Dongyang Street to buy wheat pancakes and a pot of rice wine. She’s so hungry she could eat a cow.”
Zhuang and his wife exchanged looks, wondering if maybe her mother knew what she was talking about. They looked back into the sky, turning somewhat fearful. Quickly burning what was left of the spirit money, they were rushing inside when a figure burst out from behind a parasol tree at the end of the lane. “Mrs. Niu!” she shouted, “Mrs. Niu!”
“Who is it?” the old lady asked.
“It’s me.” When she came close enough to be seen in the light of the fire, Zhuang recognized her as the Wang woman from the lane to the right. He snorted and went inside.
The Wang woman, a one-time prostitute at Spring Garden, had married a secretary to General Hu Zongnan and borne him a son who died in a motorcycle accident as a young man. A few years later, the former secretary died, leaving her, a childless widow, to live out her days alone, hard, lonely days. She had opened a private nursery in her spacious home two years before. Since she lived nearby, she visited often to gossip. Zhuang did not welcome her visits, for she was evasive, crafty, and sneaky. He complained that she was a bad influence on the children in her care, a comment that upset his mother-in-law and drew accusations of prejudice from Niu Yueqing. To be sure, Wang usually dropped by when Zhuang was not there, seldom when he was. Some six months earlier, she had wondered aloud why Zhuang and Niu Yueqing still did not have a child at their age, a comment that Niu Yueqing’s mother found heartbreaking. She explained that her daughter had been pregnant the year after she was married, but because they were not ready to have a child, she had had an abortion. The second time, they had said that he wanted to wait till he was fully established before having a child, so that pregnancy was also terminated. Now they had everything they wanted, but she could not get pregnant. The Wang woman said she knew of a secret formula that guaranteed not only pregnancy, but the birth of a son. Thrilled by the news, the old lady passed it on to Niu Yueqing, who tearfully admitted that she desperately wanted a child, but that nothing had worked, and that Zhuang’s potency was on the wane. She found it strange that he was virile when he didn’t need to be, and impotent when he did. None of the many doctors they had consulted could help him, leading them to accept the fact that they would grow old childless. Niu Yueqing’s mother fretted over this for days before coming up with a plan: they would go to the northern suburbs to ask the elder daughter of Niu Yueqing’s “dry mother” to carry a child whom they would then raise as their own. A family member was preferable to raising a child by a total stranger. By sheer coincidence, the woman was pregnant when they divulged their plan to her, and she was beside herself with joy. The old lady had one condition: they would only take a boy, and she demanded that the woman submit to an ultrasound exam. It was a girl, so she aborted. Next the old lady took her to see the Wang woman, who told her what to do: she was to have sex three days after her period ended to get pregnant, then begin taking a patent medicine, one small spoonful in the morning, another at night, putting up with the bitter taste and ignoring the slight discharge. The old lady gratefully offered to pay for the bottle of dark, thick liquid, but Wang told her she need not pay anything till a baby boy was born. The medicine’s most valuable ingredient was agar wood, which had to be imported. The woman told them she had some that had already been paid for, and was giving it to Mrs. Niu for her urgent need. They would have to buy enough to make another batch for the donor family. Niu Yueqing searched for agar wood, and Zhuang Zhidie was not happy to hear what she was doing. That led to arguments.