Nine Continents by Xiaolu Guo

Author:Xiaolu Guo [Guo, Xiaolu]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780802189325
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2017-10-12T04:00:00+00:00

Abortion

My mother couldn’t stop me and I managed to keep my secret. Nobody knew I was with Mr Lin, not even my classmates. I had always been a good pretender. The affair lasted for a year or two, our bodies entangling together many evenings. At some point, my mother gave up on me.

The affair also resulted in my first pregnancy at the age of fifteen. My parents didn’t know anything about it, and I was in deep distress. It was clear that if people knew I was pregnant, I would be finished. I heard somewhere that a woman could bring on a miscarriage by jumping up and down non-stop until the foetus dropped out between her legs and onto the ground. So, whenever we had a break between classes I would find a quiet corner of the school and jump up and down wildly. My stomach ached, but nothing came out from in between my legs. I tried in my bare feet in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep. But still nothing. The nausea continued and I could taste a metallic bitterness on my tongue. I had also heard that a mouthful of ash caused a miscarriage. So I snuck into the canteen of my mother’s factory and filled my pockets with the remnants of the coal fire. I gathered my courage and swallowed a mouthful. It was so terrible that I choked and coughed, but in my desperation, swallowed some more. It was deranged. But still there was no effect. Knowing it would be a big scandal if we were discovered, Teacher Lin began to contact places. He found an abortion clinic in another town. He raised the money and told me to use a fake name when registering. We made something up, something so ordinary that I had forgotten it by the next day. He also found some womanly-looking shoes with a medium-high heel for me to wear on the day of the operation, so I would look a bit older than I actually was. I had long straight hair back then. Maybe I should curl it so I didn’t look so much like a schoolgirl? But I didn’t have the chance, I didn’t want my parents or anyone else to see and grow suspicious. On the day, Teacher Lin left school before me and waited for me at the bus station. I left class at noon and met him there. After about an hour and a half on the bus we arrived at the isolated clinic. It was dirty, nothing more than a country hospital with very basic facilities. I remember seeing piles of rusty metal waste at the back of the hospital. And further in the distance, buffaloes grazing on a patch of grass in front of an expanse of paddy fields. In the 1980s, abortions performed in the countryside barely involved any anaesthetics. Teacher Lin told me I would just have to endure the pain. The two female doctors led me into a separate room, apparently not noticing my real age.

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