The Borrowed Womb

Chunling

Chunling was twenty-four that year, living at the foot of Yunling Mountain in Shenjia Hollow. Her mother had a wheezing cough; her father hauled sacks in the township for a living and never saved more than a few coins in a year. Her little brother Xiaoman had been born with a hole in his heart, and the doctor said an operation was needed - three hundred thousand yuan.

Three hundred thousand. A mountain pressing on the whole family's skull.

Chunling had finished a vocational school in the county and learned a little bookkeeping, but the township had no use for a bookkeeper. She went to the provincial capital to stay with a cousin, washing dishes in a restaurant for twenty-four hundred a month, sleeping in a basement that smelled of damp. Money ran through her fingers like water; three hundred thousand was a shadow she could never touch.

That twelfth month, a woman in a red wool coat came to the restaurant. Her surname was Chen, and everyone called her Sister Chen. She spoke slowly, and when she smiled the flesh piled at the corners of her eyes, like an aunt from next door. She said she arranged a "good turn" for people, and asked Chunling whether she would "help a couple who could not bear children, lend them ten months of her body, and take a sum to keep for her old age."

Chunling did not understand what "lending one's body" meant. Sister Chen was not in a hurry. She took Chunling to a hotpot meal and said the lady of that house was very rich, only her womb would not cooperate, and she was anxious for a child; if Chunling would simply lodge ten quiet months and bear the child, one hundred eighty thousand yuan, cash on delivery.

One hundred eighty thousand. Chunling counted the night through in the basement: three hundred thousand minus one hundred eighty thousand left one hundred twenty thousand, but her brother could have his operation first.

She nodded.

Sister Chen took her to a flat in the west of the city with no number on its door. Three other girls shared the rooms, all with swollen bellies, all saying they were "helping someone." A fat nurse came once a month to take their blood pressure; the rest of the days the door was locked from outside. Chunling wrote home that she had found good work in the capital, well paid, and told her parents not to worry.

The first months passed well enough. By the seventh month Chunling's legs swelled bright and tight; the fat nurse glanced and said it was nothing, eat less salt. In the ninth month she was seized by cramps at night and beat on the door till dawn with no answer. Only at daylight was a doctor let in, who listened briefly to the fetal heart, dropped two pills, and said, "Bear it; then you'll deliver."

The day the child fell out, Chunling never saw its face. Sister Chen carried the baby away and pressed an envelope into her hand. Chunling trembled as she opened it: eighty thousand yuan inside, and a note - board and meals thirty thousand, medicine twenty thousand, risk deposit fifty thousand, breach penalty twenty thousand, balance eighty thousand, all settled.

Chunling said, Was it not one hundred eighty thousand we agreed?

Sister Chen smiled, that same aunt's smile. Girl, your swollen legs at seven months, your cramps at nine - which of those did we not cover? And as for your brother's operation, we never forced you. Goods and money squared; do not come again.

Chunling tried to stand and her legs gave way; she sat back down. Only later did she learn that the hasty delivery had left a wound, and she would never bear a child again.

She carried the eighty thousand back to Shenjia Hollow. Her brother's operation was done; his life was kept. But the eighty thousand spent, and forty thousand more was owed outside. A scar lay across Chunling's belly; behind her back the villagers said she had "ruined her body" in the capital. The matchmakers stopped coming.

The next spring, Sister Chen's company changed its name and, in another nameless flat elsewhere, began arranging the next "good turn."

Now and then Chunling passed the baby shop in town and saw the dolls in the window; she would think a moment, then walk on.

In this world some babies are born as lives, and some as money. Chunling touched both, and in the end the life was her brother's, the money belonged to others.