I rested my hand on my belly, feeling the faint kicks inside. That small pulse of life was the only strength that let me step into the mud house. It was never meant for birth. The walls were packed from yellow earth, the roof covered with asphalt paper, the bamboo door creaked like a wounded throat. I had thought I would be like my sister, my cousin from the next village, the countless women who hid here: either to leave with a son, to die in labor, or to watch a newborn daughter “accidentally” drown in the corner. We came one after another, fleeing the one-child policy line that hunted our bellies, desperate to bear a boy. For the family line to continue. For descendants to honor us after we were gone. For the ancestors to rest in peace. The house whispered: This one’s a boy, but not a whole one. Two years ago, it whispered the same of a girl. My mother-in-law, who helped deliver her, pressed the baby into the bucket meant for washing a grandson and left her to the house. This house had witnessed too many births, swallowed too many girls. It murmured to me when I felt lonely, sang eerie lullabies when I couldn’t sleep, each note threaded with a thin wail of infants. In the dry cold of winter, the walls wept tiny beads of water, like frozen candle tears. It had no window, yet wind seeped through, freezing me to the bone. It leaned like a half-fermented brown-sugar bun, misshapen but refusing to fall. When it rained, water leaked through unseen cracks in the roof; when the wind rose, the whole roof fluttered like it might lift away. Grass clawed up through the mud floor, trying to reach the walls. Under the bed lived generations of mice. Their rustling and squabbling sounded like a wet rag dragged across the night. The bamboo door was a moldy tongue, curling and drooping, twisting left and right. A ghost house, they said. A place even the birth-control officers wouldn’t enter. A refuge. Once you birthed a son, you’d never have to come back. I clutched the bedframe, groaning through the contractions, afraid to think. What if it’s a girl again? I pressed that thought down like pressing on a piece of ice. Then the thing that had occupied me for nine months loosened its grip in a tearing spasm and slid out. Slick. Decisive. I closed my eyes, pretending not to see the countless green eyes glinting above the rafters. I covered my ears, not to hear the house’s wet chewing. Perhaps the grief and rage of all the lost daughters had finally gathered here, rising in the house’s low, gurgling laughter. My mother-in-law lifted the newborn, her face drained of blood.
Between the child’s legs, a mouth grinned open, full of fine, sharp teeth.
Huina Zheng holds an M.A. with Distinction in English Studies and works as a college essay coach. Her creative work has been published in Baltimore Review, Variant Literature, Midway Journal, and other literary journals. She has received multiple nominations, including four each for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize, and one for Best Small Fictions. She lives in Guangzhou, China, with her family. She resides in Guangzhou, China, with her family.