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commotion was about. The village Party secretary, Yuan Lian, and Brigade Commander Lü Ya (Tooth) was among them. Tian Guihua was a distant aunt of Lü Ya, close enough to be considered family. Wan Xin, he said to Gugu, aren’t you ashamed to hit an old woman?
    Who did Lü Ya think he was, scolding me like that, a creep who battered his wife to make her crawl around the house?
    Old woman? Gugu said. Old witch is more like it. A demon! Ask her what she was doing here.
    I don’t know how many people have died at your hand, but if a woman like me had a gun, she’d happily put a bullet in your head. Gugu pointed her finger at the old woman’s head. She was all of seventeen at the time. The crowd tittered at her use of ‘a woman like me’.
    There was more Lü Ya wanted to say in Tian Guihua’s defence, but he was cut short by Yuan Lian: Doctor Wan did nothing wrong. Old witches who play games with people’s lives deserve to be severely punished. Tian Guihua, stop the phoney act. You got off lightly with only being struck. You ought to be sent to prison! From now on, Doctor Wan is to be called when any woman is about to have a child. Tian Guihua, if you ever again show up to do what you do, I’ll rip those dog fingers right off your hands!
    Gugu said that Yuan Lian was not an educated man, but he could see which way tides ran and knew the importance of justice. He was a good cadre.

4
    Sensei, I was the second child Gugu delivered.
    When my mother’s time came, my grandmother did what tradition called for her: she washed her hands, changed clothes, and lit three sticks of incense, which she stuck in a burner in front of the ancestral tablets. Then she bowed three times, rapping her head against the floor, and sent all the males in the family outside. It was not my mother’s first child: two boys and a girl had preceded me. You’re an old hand at this, my grandmother said to her, you don’t need any help. Just take your time. Mother, my mother replied, I don’t feel good about this one, there’s something different. My grandmother would not hear of it. How different can it be? she said. You’re not expecting a unicorn, are you?
    My mother’s feeling did not betray her. My brothers and sister had all come out headfirst. Me? Leg first.
    My grandmother was scared witless when she saw my tiny leg emerge. There’s a popular saying in the countryside that goes: If a leg is foremost, then you owe a ghost. Owe a ghost? What does that mean? It means that in a previous life someone in the family had an outstanding debt, and the person owed had returned as a newborn baby intent on making things difficult for the woman in labour. Either both woman and child die together, or the child hangs around till a certain age, then dies, leaving the family destitute and devastated. So Grandma tried her best to appear calm. This one, she said, is born to be a runner – someone who runs errands for an official. Now, don’t worry, she said, I know what to do. She went out into the yard, where she picked up a copper basin, carried it inside, then stood at the foot of the bed, and beat it like a gong with a rolling pin –
Bong! Bong!
Come out, she shouted, come out now! Your father wants you to deliver an urgent message, and you’re in for a whipping if you don’t come out right this minute!
    Sensing that something was indeed seriously wrong, Mother tapped on the window with her bed whisk and shouted to my sister, who was waiting anxiously in the yard, Man – my sister’s name – go fetch your aunt, and hurry!
    Quick-witted as always, my sister ran to the village administrative office, where she asked Yuan Lian to phone the township health centre. I later put that ancient hand-crank telephone away as a keepsake. You see, it saved my life.
    It was the sixth day of the sixth lunar month, a day when the Jiao River overflowed its banks and submerged the local bridge, although waves crashing over the stones made it easy to see where it