Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden by Zhuqing Li

Author:Zhuqing Li [Li, Zhuqing]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-05-05T00:00:00+00:00

A week into her daily vigil, Hong noticed a man’s pair of feet in her field of vision. They seemed just planted there. The man chain-smoked, dropping cigarette butts all around her, but stayed silent as a ghost, unmoving. The shoes and the cigarette butts were there again the following day, and after a few days’ absence, they returned the following week, but this time the cigarette butts bounced on the ground with unusual force.

Finally, he said something. “Yan Ling is dead.” His voice was low, confiding, forced through clenched teeth. He didn’t want anybody besides Hong to hear. “They said they could do a caesarean ‘without Chen Hong,’ ” he continued. “Well, I found a metal clamp in the ashes.” He paused. “Hers and the baby’s.” A last cigarette butt flew across Hong’s line of sight, skidding into a pool of foul water. The man disappeared for good.

Hong remembered Yan Ling well. She was a patient and had had a normal pregnancy. Both she and her husband were the only children in their families, unusual at the time, and they had been eagerly expecting their first baby. Now she was learning that the woman and child were both dead and had been cremated. Hong would never learn why Yan Ling had had to undergo a caesarean, but the clamp was powerful evidence of medical incompetence. She remembered Yan Ling’s face, young and dreamy, peering into life’s mysteries and promises, and now what was left? A clamp in her ashes.

Hong felt a rage rise within her, blending in with the heat and dust and noise of the busy crossroads in Fuzhou where she stood. Her anger filled her chest and throat. It pounded her head and squeezed into her eyes, until, literally, she saw stars sparkling in a black void.

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