Paper Baby

Chapter 4

The old lady turned her head and glanced in the direction of Huang Zhi's house. In that one glance, I truly felt that she was genuinely afraid.

But what is she afraid of?

"I watched Huang Zhi grow up," the old woman began to tell Huang Zhi's story.

Huang Zhi calls Old Man Huang "Dad." Old Man Huang is an old bachelor in Datang Village who adopted this orphaned girl in his old age. People say that raising children is for old age security, and Old Man Huang probably meant the same thing.

When Huang Zhi arrived, she was just a five or six-year-old girl, very sensible. Within a few years, she was helping Old Man Huang. Old Man Huang was a fisherman, and back then, the small river flowing through Datang Village had plenty of fish. He could easily catch a dozen or twenty fish every day by rowing his small boat out for a few hours. Huang Zhi had been exposed to wind and rain since childhood, but some people are naturally tan-free, which would infuriate many city girls who slather on sunscreen.

Before he was truly too old to move, Old Man Huang went fishing on a stormy day and his small boat capsized. Huang Zhi swam ashore, but when he looked back, he couldn't see his father. Having spent his whole life on the water, this time his foot got tangled in seaweed, and by the time he was pulled from the water, he was already dead. Huang Zhi was sixteen years old that year.

But given this unexpected incident, no one can say that Huang Zhi is unlucky.

Not long after, Huang Zhi married Zhou Guodong. About a year later, while she was pregnant with Zhou Qianqian, Zhou Guodong's father passed away due to illness.

At this point, the villagers still didn't think much of it. On the contrary, because Zhou Guodong was an alcoholic and would beat Huang Zhi when drunk, they often advised him to treat his wife better. With such a girl marrying into the family, and his own family having no one left, it was understandable that she had no social standing.

Zhou Qianqian was not yet three years old when her grandmother, Zhou Guodong's mother, disappeared. That day, everyone in the family was working in the fields. In the afternoon, when the sun was scorching, Zhou Guodong told his mother to go home and rest so he could take care of the baby. When she returned home at sunset, she found only Zhou Qianqian alone. By nightfall, the elderly woman was still nowhere to be seen, so the couple reported her missing to the police. The police searched for a long time and even posted missing person notices in the neighborhood, but to this day, they have received no news of her.

As a result, rumors about Huang Zhi's overly strong birth chart causing harm to others quietly began to circulate.

When Huang Zhi's belly grew again, and she became pregnant with her second child, Zhou Guodong mysteriously disappeared. According to Huang Zhi's account to the police, Zhou Guodong was drunk again that night and beat her severely. After the beating, Huang Zhi hid in the toilet and cried. Half an hour later, she came out of the toilet, but she couldn't find Zhou Guodong anywhere. She thought her husband had gone out drinking or playing mahjong again, but he still hadn't appeared by the next evening. Of course, the police suspected Huang Zhi, but whether it was a disappearance or a murder, there were no leads, and it became a cold case. After that, the villagers rarely interacted with her family, and their eyes became evasive when they looked at her. During an interview at the hospital, Huang Zhi told me that her husband was "gone." I thought he was dead, but it turned out he really was "gone."

But before the matter was over, Zhou Qianqian disappeared again.

"What? Zhou Qianqian is really missing?" I asked in surprise when I heard her say this.

"They've disappeared. Of this family, only Huang Zhi is left now." The old lady said, glancing again in the direction of Huang Zhi's house.

When did this happen?

"It's been two or three months now. Huang Zhi has lost her mind and doesn't really care about her daughter anymore. It's good that she knows how to buy groceries, cook, and drink. Her child is always running wild outside, hanging out with strangers. If you ask me, she should have been scammed long ago." The old lady said, squinting her eyes.

"mingling with strangers?"

“They’re not from the village; I’ve never seen them before.”

"Did that little girl get lost, or was she really abducted?"

"Who knows? Nobody knows. It's better that the little child is gone." The old lady sighed.

I was taken aback. It seemed that the old woman in front of me was not lamenting Zhou Qianqian's disappearance, but rather seemed relieved.

Why would this seemingly kind old man say something as outrageous as "it's better if he doesn't exist"? It's even a bit malicious.

Noticing my surprise, the old man did not take back his words, but continued, "No one in the village wants to hold this baby. I think she and her mother are both people you can't get close to."

"ah?"

"You've never seen anything like it. At such a young age, you neither cry nor laugh nor speak, but your eyes are cold and sinister. Just one look at you sends chills down your spine."

When Zhou Qianqian was mentioned, the old woman's expression became quite unnatural, revealing a greater resentment towards the child than towards her mother. I disagreed. I had actually met Zhou Qianqian before; three years ago, she was a quiet, introverted child. The series of misfortunes in her family would naturally affect her; an outgoing child could become introverted, and an introverted child could become withdrawn. Coupled with a mother shunned by everyone in the village, it was no wonder Zhou Qianqian was disliked by her neighbors. It's just that these villagers are too superstitious; life is truly difficult for an orphan and her mother.

Why didn't I come here sooner? I secretly blamed myself.

"What did the police say? Did they have any leads?"

"Anyway, we haven't found her yet, and her mother's words are all incoherent. How are we supposed to find her?"

From the old woman's answer and expression, I understood a little. The missing girl's only relative was mentally ill, and if the villagers who might provide clues all shared the old woman's prejudice against Zhou Qianqian, they naturally wouldn't cooperate. Add to that this family's history of unsolved disappearances, and this case would likely become another unsolved one; no one wanted to put any more effort into it.

If I think about it, Huang Zhi probably wrote to me for help the moment her daughter went missing. Why didn't I come sooner? I asked myself again.

Back when I first became a journalist after graduating from university, I probably would have gone to great lengths to verify even a letter from a mentally ill person, perhaps even calling the local police station to confirm. But now…

I shook my head, banishing some thoughts from my mind. No matter what, I would do everything I could to find Zhou Qianqian.

“I told you this because I think you have a good appearance and you want to come back and talk to me. Don’t go to her house, listen to me,” the old lady said.

"Actually, it's because no one was home that I came back so quickly," I laughed.

"She's not home? Impossible!" the old lady said definitively.

"No, I've rang the bell several times."

"No way, she keeps herself locked up at home and rarely goes out. She can't possibly not come back by this time when she's buying groceries. Besides, I've been sitting here since early this morning, and I haven't seen her come by except for lunchtime." The old lady stopped what she was doing, thought for a moment, moved the basin aside, and stood up.

“Let’s go take a look,” she said.

The old lady was no taller than my shoulder, but despite her age, she was very agile and walked quite fast.

"What brings you here to see Huang Zhi?" The old lady only then remembered to ask me why I had come.

“I’m a reporter from the Shanghai Morning Star newspaper, and she…”

I was only halfway through my sentence when the old lady interrupted me with an "Ah!" and said, "So those letters and drinks were sent to you. I didn't expect you would actually come to see her. We always say that a big reporter is so busy, always concerned with national affairs and people's livelihoods, how could he have time to deal with a crazy woman? Sigh, speaking of Huang Zhi, I watched her grow up from a young age, and I told her many stories when she was little, I never thought..."

The old lady perked up and chattered on and on, making me blush a little. In today's increasingly entertainment-driven news world, perhaps only a rural old woman like her would show such high respect to a reporter. It seems that Huang Zhi's letters were mostly sent by people in the village, so who she sent letters to must have become an open topic of conversation in the village.

The villagers still managed to look out for each other at least. Even if the old lady was superstitious, she still came to check on Huang Zhi, who was unusually away from home.

In the blink of an eye, I arrived at Huang Zhi's door. I stood at the door and rang the doorbell again, but there was still no response.

"Let's go take a look at the back."

I followed the old lady to the back door.

"Try pushing the door open," the old lady said to me.

"Push the door open?" The door was closed. I glanced at the old lady in surprise, and she nodded at me affirmatively.

I reached out and pushed the door, and it shrank slightly inward.

"Put some effort into it," the old woman's voice came from behind.

I applied force with my hand, and the door lock made a soft click as I pushed it open.

"The lock on her back door has been broken for a long time and won't lock properly, and she hasn't had the money to replace it with a new one. Fortunately, there are no bad people in our village, and her house doesn't have anything of value."

I was a little flustered. Did they want me to go inside? Entering someone's home is illegal.

"What are you standing there for? Go in and see if anything's wrong. I'm not going in, but judging from your expression, you don't believe in that stuff." The old lady smiled shrewdly.

"Okay." I hesitated for a moment, then went inside.

The windows were covered in dust, indicating they hadn't been wiped clean in a while, so they didn't let in much light. Plus, it was almost evening, and the sunlight had long since lost its vibrancy. As soon as I entered the Huang family home, I felt a slightly gloomy and cold atmosphere.

This should be a storage room; there were some broken planks and newspapers piled up in the corner, nothing else. As I passed by, I glanced at it and noticed that the top newspaper was the Morning Star.

The front hall was still empty, with a few more items than the storage room: a long wooden bench, a small square table, two wooden crates, and a rickety cabinet propped up by its head, on which sat a fourteen-inch television—an old-fashioned item that even junk collectors in the city wouldn't be interested in these days.

On the other side was the kitchen, with several pots next to the stove, one of which was patched up. The paint on the single-door refrigerator was also peeling off, and the sides and back were covered in rust. Every item showed the owner's poverty.

The old lady outside was clearly worried that something might happen to Huang Zhi, but from a cursory glance downstairs, she didn't find anything unusual.

I glanced at the refrigerator a few more times. In this kind of environment, the refrigerator evokes many associations, and as a person with a rich imagination, many thoughts would involuntarily pop into my head.

I gripped the refrigerator door handle, hesitating. Was it necessary? I was just coming in to check if Huang Zhi was alright, but opening someone else's refrigerator door was like rummaging through a drawer—a further step in intrusion into their privacy.

The biggest difference between a refrigerator and a drawer is that a refrigerator is much larger and can hold larger items.

With a slight push, the refrigerator door opened. As soon as it was opened a crack, a strange smell wafted out.

I sniffed it, then suddenly felt nauseous and took a step back. The refrigerator door, propelled by inertia, slowly opened on its own.

There was no light on inside the opened refrigerator; it wasn't plugged in.

A bowl of white rice, a bowl of stir-fried eggplant, and two eggs. That's all there is.

In this heat, food will spoil if left to simmer for just a few hours. Judging from the smell, it's probably been sitting in this unpowered refrigerator for two or three days.

I pinched my nose, closed the refrigerator, and walked out of the kitchen.

I didn't think too much about why she would unplug the refrigerator while food was left inside, after all, Huang Zhi is mentally ill. But this at least proves one thing: Huang Zhi hasn't eaten at home for the past two days.

Where did he go? Nobody in the village knows!

The wooden stairs creaked beneath my feet as I climbed to the second floor.

The second floor had several bedrooms, and like the ground floor, it was completely empty. I even checked the closets and under the beds, but found nothing unusual. Over the years, one by one, the people who used to sleep in these bedrooms on the second floor had "disappeared." Thinking about this, regardless of whether I believed the old woman's story, I felt a chill run down my spine.

Just like all these rag dolls in front of her, Zhou Qianqian must miss them no matter where she is now.

I walked out of the bedroom, but suddenly froze. My eyes looked around, and my face and hands felt numb.

This is a suite of bedrooms, one inside and one outside. From the inner bedroom, there is another smaller bedroom outside. Further out is a corridor with stairs leading up and down the stairs.

I hadn't felt anything amiss when walking from the outer room to the inner room, but now, as I emerged from the bedroom filled with plush toys and saw the bed in the outer room, I immediately realized that both the inner and outer rooms were for sleeping.

Moreover, the bed in the outer room is a small bed.

There was a small pillow outside the crib. I rushed to a wooden box by the wall, opened the lid, and found clothes inside that were clearly for a little girl.

The room inside wasn't the one Zhou Qianqian shared with Huang Zhi; Zhou Qianqian slept alone in this room. A six or seven-year-old girl rarely dared to sleep alone, even if her mother slept in the inner room. That's right, the room full of stuffed animals was Huang Zhi's bedroom!

I slowly turned around and walked back to the puppet room.

There were stuffed animals everywhere—on the bed, on the table, on the chairs, on the windowsill. I opened the closet, and yes, there were more inside the closet.

I held one in my hand. These were all sewn by Huang Zhi herself. The body and limbs were made of gray cloth, and the head was made of white cloth, stuffed with cotton or scraps of cloth. The doll's face was painted, with black pen for the eyes and red pen for the wide-open mouth.

All the dolls had similar faces, with wide-open eyes and gaping mouths. I suddenly felt that these dozens of dolls in the room were staring at me from different corners, silently shouting.

My forehead was cold, and my palms were damp. I knew why Huang Zhi made so many dolls.

As I stepped away from the dolls, the scene of interviewing her in a ward of the First Maternity and Infant Hospital three years ago came to mind.

Huang Zhi lay on the bed, staring at me intently for a long time before finally taking my business card. Her movements were laborious and heavy.

Then she looked at my business card for a long time. It wasn't that the little piece of paper was fancy, but rather that her whole spirit was scattered, and it would be a painful process for her to regroup.

Finally, her expression changed. She held the business card in her hand, turned to look at me, and a glimmer of light returned to her eyes.

"Reporter teacher." That was her way of addressing me, both formal and simple.

"Reporter, please help me, please help me." She grabbed my wrist with such force that it felt like I was wearing an iron band.

I couldn't break free, so I smiled at her and said, "Don't call me teacher. If you'd like, I'd like to talk to you about what happened to you this time."

"Reporter, they took my child away! They took my child away!" Huang Zhi's voice rang out, making me a little embarrassed.

"No rush, let's talk about it slowly," I reassured her.

“I couldn’t possibly have given birth to such a thing.” A hint of fear flashed across Huang Zhi’s face as she spoke of that thing. “You…you know…”

I nodded: "I already know, and I've already seen the results."

“No, you don’t know.” She shook her head violently. “My child isn’t like that. He’s healthy, strong, and a bit active.” Her eyes became unfocused again, as if she were immersed in a scene she had imagined.