A Chinese Affair

by Isabelle Li

  Suddenly another voice broke out in the crowd: ‘Little Third, Little Third!’ It was Uncle Feng. I looked around, half expecting Little Third to be right behind me. But he was not there.

  Someone had seen Little Third exit the gate behind his brothers. People started searching further around the yard, behind the trees. Uncle Feng ran back into the house, but came out by himself, holding Little Third’s winter coat.

  Little Third was lost. Later we learned that Black More went missing on the same day.

  All sounds receded as tiredness set in. My father picked me up from my mother. Lying in his arms, I saw the snowflakes falling from the infinite night sky, so many, so free.

  I woke up lying side by side with my sister under a table on the bed. My mother was taking off my coat and laying an extra blanket on top of us. She kissed me and patted me from outside the doona. Her eyes were red and swollen, but she smiled at me.

  3

  Pebbles and Flowers

  Pebbles and Flowers

  The waiting room was surprisingly spacious and already crowded at seven o’clock in the morning. The abstract paintings synthesised the creamy green walls and the bright orange sofas. Two middle-aged receptionists with amiable smiles sat behind the counter, obscured by a vase of fresh flowers.

  Raven registered her name at the end of a two-page list and ticked the columns headed ‘Blood’ and ‘Drugs’. She sat down next to a coffee table and picked up a pregnancy magazine that was filled with expectant mothers proud as generals, and newborn babies cuddly as puppies. She put it back and picked up a National Geographic.

  The women in the room were mostly well dressed in their coats and boots, some more feminine than others, none below thirty, and none overweight. Maybe being underweight was an overlooked factor, Raven wondered, given that fat cells contain oestrogen.

  ‘Raven?’ A radiant young nurse called her name.

  Green corridor, another green room, a reclining green leather couch. The nurse tied a tourniquet around her upper arm and asked her to squeeze a green stress ball. ‘Just a little sting,’ she said with an English accent.

  Raven felt the needle puncture her skin. No blood. The nurse twisted the direction of the needle, but still no blood. She apologised profusely and pulled out the needle.

  The other arm, all over again, but to no avail. The glossy complexion of the nurse started to show a tinge of red. ‘This has never happened before, twice in a row,’ she said, shaking her head.

  A senior nurse was called in, a stocky Islander with a neat bun on top of her head. She brought with her a hot rice pack to put under Raven’s arm and a heated green stone for her to squeeze. She used a finer needle with butterfly wings.

  ‘Relax, dear. A little sting, dear.’ Dark red blood ran into the collection tube. ‘It’s the cold outside, dear.’

  Raven thought that one day she would tell her child about her veins that refused to bleed and the heating process that involved a rice pack and a green stone. They would imitate the tone of the senior nurse and call each other ‘dear’. She smiled, forgetting the needle and the pain.

  Julian and Raven woke together at dawn. Maybe one of them had stirred in their shallow sleep. Despite the polite distance between them, they were aware of each other’s movements. Or it might have been the birdsong in the nature reserve outside their bedroom. They got up quickly.

  From the living room above the staircase, Julian watched Raven performing her morning ritual. She sat with the pillows and doona around her, back curled and bare shoulders leaning forward. She looked closely at her abdomen, taking a long time to find a good spot to insert the needle, so focused that she never noticed he was watching. He had read the information sheet and researched on the internet. He could feel the needle under his skin, and the chill of the drugs that had been kept in the refrigerator.

  When she straightened up, he went back to preparing breakfast, packing lunch. The water tap was hissing, the kettle boiling, the microwave oven beeping, filling the silence. He stoked the fire, slotting in big blocks that he hoped would slowly combust, keeping the house warm until she returned from work.

  From the corner of his eye he saw her walking around the house, barefoot, finding her clothes, getting ready for the day. He often thought of her as a pencil drawing, her thick hair messy in the morning, long eyelashes and smoky eyes heavy with the night’s sleep, cheeks flushed, and that fine shadowy indent between her lower lip and delicate chin.

  For the past three years, they had wanted to have children. It started with her sudden surge of interest in babies in the supermarket. He was forced to take his eyes off the shelves and look at babies in shopping trolleys—big or small, clean or dirty, happy or cranky. She would linger, look back towards the trolley before turning into the next aisle, and finish with ‘He’s so cute’ or ‘She smiled at me.’ This change was followed by lighthearted arrangements for more frequent lovemaking around the middle of her cycle. After a year, Raven started to measure her basal body temperature. When she woke up each morning, the first thing she did was reach for the thermometer. She recorded the temperatures on a chart to plot a graph. On the days when her temperature dropped, they would make love, and the next day and the day after, to coincide with her ovulation. After another year, she found a product that tested her hormone levels. Nine days after her period, she would test her urine for five days. The result was always unclear. That was when they went to see a gynaecologist. The consultation was followed by a series of tests. His sperm count was average. Her hormones were normal and her fallopian tubes clear. A hysteroscopy revealed some polyps in her uterus, which were removed, and she had a sore throat for a week from the anaesthetic. Doctor Campbell then recommended a laparoscopy for suspected endometriosis, or simply going straight to IVF. Raven had not suffered from menstrual pain, and the idea of open wounds did not appeal to her, so she opted for IVF.

  Julian left while Raven was taking a shower. He said goodbye from outside the bathroom, and heard a muffled response amid the splashes, which he could not decipher.

  He put on his oilskin hat and walked into the morning drizzle.

  Standing in front of the mirror in the warmth of the orange globe, Raven transferred her contact lenses, two light-blue half-circles, from the tip of her forefinger to the surface of her eyes. She blinked to let them settle. Her vision became clear. Large doses of oestrogen had enlarged her breasts and they were tender to the touch. Her belly swelled with enlarged ovaries. Her body felt plump from increased water retention in the tissue.

  She combed her hair. Another few silver threads that were definitely not there before. Her hair had begun to turn grey a year ago, starting from the hairline around the forehead and the temples, spreading like the weedy undergrowth of a garden, surreptitious, unstoppable. She plucked the visible ones with a pair of tweezers and discarded them in the rubbish bin, hiding the indisputable evidence of ageing.

  The house was empty. She wished Julian had waited for her.

  They first met at an evening French class. Once they went to the same student canteen and bought the last two pitas together. They ate under the fluorescent light. The only other person about them was an Indian cleaner, pattering around, spraying lemon-scented cleanser on the empty tables.

  They practised French together. He had learned it at school and was way ahead. To make up for it, she taught him Chinese. Because Chinese is a tonal language, the normally shy and reserved Julian had suddenly become animated, shaking his head and waving his arms, as if he needed to run upstairs for the second tone and come downstairs for the fourth. It made her laugh. One day, when he shook his head so much, she grabbed his ears to prevent him having a concussion. They both stopped, embarrassed by the physical contact.

  They had been meeting at her place, which she shared with two other Chinese girls. They changed the venue of their language practice to his apartment. That year they travelled around Australia. Along the way, he collected pebbles while she pressed flowers. The followin
g year they married. Now she had forgotten the French and he had forgotten the Chinese. They spoke to each other in English.

  Raven had learned to drink more water in the morning, which helped enlarge her veins, but there was nothing she could do to prepare for the vaginal ultrasound. The small waiting room of the radiology clinic, two levels above the IVF clinic, always seemed sombre. The two young receptionists chatted with each other, their voices loud and clear. Raven assumed they must have been used to dealing with pregnant mums during the day, when the atmosphere was more cheerful.

  While being probed by a cold, hard stick, Raven focused her attention on the screen hanging off the ceiling.

  She had been given a pencil and a piece of paper by the ultrasonographer.

  ‘Endometrial thickness: ten centimetres.’

  She wrote the number next to the capital letter E.

  The nurse rotated the probe.

  ‘I have a retroverted uterus,’ Raven said.

  ‘You sure do.’ The ultrasonographer tried a different angle. Raven felt the pain from the pressure and started to perspire.

  Follicles, big bubbles of water with tiny eggs inside. Eggs, the largest cells of the human body. Seven to the left, five to the right. Twelve ripe fruits ready to be harvested.

  Julian arrived at the outplacement office earlier than the others. Having been with the same company for twelve years, he had forgotten how to look for a job. He felt tired. He had been feeling increasingly fatigued in recent years. He just wished he could take a few months off to have a decent break.

  Others started to arrive: William, a retail marketer who had been made redundant four times in his career; Bryan from Hong Kong, who had not told his wife that he had lost his job; Veronica, who had opted for voluntary redundancy after working in a company for eighteen years. Bryan had had the most interviews, but none successful. He thought those employers considered him too old.

  William and a friend of his were trying to set up a ‘Him Buying for Her’ lingerie business and asked everyone to look through the mock-up website. Julian wondered why men would buy underwear for women when all they wanted was to take it off. While browsing the fancy items on display, he thought of Raven’s simple undergarments bought in China: white, yellow, grey, some with little purple flowers. She told him lace hurt. Then he thought of her smooth skin, and her obliviousness to her physical beauty.

  He had got used to the long shopping list every time they visited China: bed linen, towels, napkins, clothing, plates, bowls, dried black fungi, dried dates, dried longan, and much more. It took a while for him to convince her that they should buy towels from Australia because the Chinese towels shed lint. She was determined to meet the weight limit of forty kilograms for the two of them on both legs of the return trip. She bought sheepskin, kangaroo skin, cashmere doonas and, once, a tray of nectarines to take back to China. They used to visit twice a year, and Raven spent the time in between compiling two lists: what to take and what to bring back.

  At first, people back in Raven’s hometown asked why she had not had children. They exchanged good-humoured speculation that she was trying to establish herself in a new country and get ahead in her career, and that in Western countries, it was not unusual for women to have children later in life. Over time, she was asked less and less, and on recent visits the question was not raised at all. The caring curiosity had turned to sympathetic silence.

  At midday, Julian gave in to the dread. Maybe tomorrow—he would see what jobs were out there and send out some letters. William and Veronica had left. He packed his bag and said goodbye to Bryan.

  It was bright outside. The pedestrian walkways were crowded with people, some on their phones or checking their phones, others walking briskly. Many were wearing suits, like different robotic models from the same factory.

  It was busy at the gym. The treadmills were mostly occupied by energetic, determined office workers, their strides confident and commanding, landing heavily in unison. The mixed smells of deodorant and sweat permeated the air. ‘You can do it. You can do it,’ a personal trainer was encouraging his overweight client.

  He found a stationary bicycle and started to warm up. In front of him were nine TV screens, each showing a different program. After just five minutes he started to feel the back of his head throbbing from the blast of sound and images. He got off the bicycle, walked downstairs to the weights section and found a quiet corner next to the dumbbells.

  After he and Raven married, Julian thought he should sell his apartment and together they could buy a slightly bigger one in a good suburb. But Raven believed that the value of real estate was in the land, and after careful research she chose a derelict house on a large piece of land in an upcoming suburb with high-growth potential. Meanwhile, she organised his apartment to be rented out. He hated walking back to their new home. It was like walking into a rubbish dump. There were smells in the wind and particles in the air. Traffic noise was ubiquitous. Everywhere he looked, he saw ugliness.

  They borrowed eighty per cent of the value of the property and he’d thought that was why they could not buy any furniture. But later he realised she had put every spare cent into a Mortgage Interest Saver Account, to reduce the loan balance. She said there was a compound impact and the interest they saved would be equivalent to tax-free income. But they were still living in a nearly empty house with only his furniture. Her belongings were mostly in cardboard boxes and her clothes hung on rails. He felt trapped in a neighbourhood with littered bus stops and roadsides, in a house that was bleak and empty.

  During the seven years they’d been together, he saw her salary increase at an average of ten per cent a year, while his barely increased as much as the consumer price index. She was always working long hours, taking work home, and accepting additional responsibilities in order to get good pay rises and bonuses. Then she would save all the money as if she was preparing for a life that had not yet started.

  He wondered if she had secretly loathed him for not trying as hard or earning as much. If he had made more money, they could have started planning for children earlier. And now he didn’t have a job at all.

  ‘I am doing the trigger injection tonight,’ Raven said while drying her hands on a tea towel. She had unplugged the sink, and the soapy water with white foam was spiralling down the drain, making a glugging sound.

  ‘Do you need any help?’

  ‘According to the schedule, it’s time for you to ejaculate to make room for fresh sperm.’

  ‘Don’t you find this whole process a bit mechanical?’ He raised his voice, folded his arms and started pacing. ‘To have a baby, you first start on oral contraceptive pills. Then we need to abstain. And then I have to masturbate, not once, not twice, but three times. This is all insane!’ He stomped off.

  She flicked off the kitchen lights, went into her study and turned on the computer. She was working on an investment plan for a sixty-year-old engineer which would enable him to transition from full-time to part-time employment and start withdrawing superannuation while salary sacrificing most of his income to achieve significant tax savings.

  The alarm clock went off at a quarter to nine, when she had more or less finished the investment plan. She turned off the computer and had a shower. At nine o’clock, she did the trigger injection. In the next thirty-six hours, her eggs would fall off the walls of the follicles and become available for harvesting.

  Julian came to bed long after her, with heavy steps and rough movements. He groaned while lying down. ‘It’s done, in case you’re wondering,’ he said, turning onto his side, away from her.

  She felt the cold draught coming in from the gap between them where the doona was propped up by his shoulder. She shuffled to close the gap without disturbing him.

  The day surgery was quiet on a Saturday. Raven was given a plastic wristband with her name and address on it. Then she and Julian were let in to the change room and given a bundle of clothes.

  She undressed from the waist down an
d put on the surgical gown. He thought he could help her to tie the laces behind her neck and back, but she did it herself and then put on the dressing-gown. She placed her clothes inside a locker and sat on the bench.

  He only needed plastic covers for his shoes. He did not want to sit down, because if he did, the two of them would be looking at themselves in the mirror.

  The nurse returned and asked them to follow.

  They both realised at the same time that Raven had left her shoes under the bench.

  ‘Give me the key and I’ll put them in your locker.’

  She handed him the key attached to a large safety pin and went with the nurse. A door shut behind them.

  Lying under the bench were Raven’s leather pumps, which she wore instead of her winter boots to make the changing and storing process easier. They were cream outside and strawberry red inside, like two open mouths making a curious ‘O’ sound, vulnerable, defenceless. Julian picked them up and opened the locker. A faint smell of Raven’s skin, so familiar and yet so elusive, emphasised her absence. He lifted her sweater and coat, which seemed to bear her body temperature, and placed her shoes underneath.

  He hurried through the unmarked door, fearing she might have been taken away.

  Doctor Campbell looked more at ease in a white gown in the operating theatre than in his creased suit in his office. He pressed the back of Raven’s hand like an artist feeling the smooth surface of timber. He gave it little slaps, as if to wipe off any dust, then rubbed it vigorously. After looking at it from different angles, he inserted the needle and adjusted it until blood came through the soft tube. The nurse then attached a solution of painkiller to the end of the tube and the blood flowed back with the drug.

  As if she was about to go to sleep, Raven became acutely aware of every detail of her surroundings, yet everything was distant. All voices were clear, but somehow reverberated. She felt Julian’s hand on her forehead. Her heart ached, seeing his concerned face.