When I told Youyu I couldn’t make it back to Singapore today, that my flight would be postponed, she replied, off-topic, “I just used a test strip. Ovulating soon.”
Though I hadn’t spoken to her about this, I could tell she was unhappy bringing it up. Ovulation was a serious matter to her—solemn, even—transcending the realm of biology. This egg would be shining, soft and snow-white as a princess, entering the fallopian tube like a bride awaiting her champion suitor, gentle but not patient in the least. Her uterus, too, would have made its bed, ready to receive the winning guest. If the one it awaited never showed, it would have no choice but to end its life, together with the fragments of that bed—like falling crimson petals—to follow the current into the gutter, making way for the new egg.
Normally, if we missed this train, we could always catch the next one, or the one after that. But our baby-making project had already been underway for two years. For the past two years, we’d been like astronomers tracking a comet, turning gray waiting for its next visit to Earth. We were also like patient, seasoned police officers—skipping meals, always on the road—lying in ambush for an elusive suspect. We were out to bring that egg, or an egg, to justice. We endured near-deathly silence, still as maidens (the doctor had said that too-frequent intercourse would also affect sperm quality), only to act swift as rabbits each time the suspect appeared. Of course, we’d often find out afterwards that the fish had already slipped the net. To this day, “hitting the jackpot” was still nowhere in sight.
And so, from last month, Youyu had abandoned the go-with-the-flow strategy and turned to science, using ovulation test strips to monitor her peak fertility window. Whenever she saw two lines on the strip, she would report it to me immediately, tirelessly explaining what a strong positive meant: within 24 hours, or at most 48, she would ovulate. In other words, that night or the next, or the third day at the latest, our chances of “hitting the jackpot” were highest.
That was assuming I could show up in time to serve as the sperm provider.
Yet here I was in the Philippines, working like a dog for my boss at the Manila office. The company had acquired a firm here last month, and I’d been sent over to write some officialese to steady the troops—nothing of real substance. Under the original plan, I’d catch the 9 p.m. flight out and reach Singapore at 1 a.m.
The problem was my workaholic boss. He took pleasure in working hard, and shame in having a personal life. His favourite catchphrase was that everyone in the company, top to bottom, should have a sense of ownership, an entrepreneurial spirit, and a total dedication to the job. His idols were Tim Cook, Jack Dorsey, and Tom Ford—a few of us (chronically sleep-deprived) subordinates had brainstormed and concluded that what these men had in common wasn’t their tremendous success, but that each slept only four hours a night. Evidently, though, our boss’s interpretation was that one person sleeping four hours wasn’t enough; achieving success required the whole team to uphold the noble entrepreneurial virtue of working in defiance of sleep and hunger.
The boss said that the firm we’d just acquired had a confusing, convoluted shareholding structure. There were more enemies than friends on the board, and plenty were local heavyweights—folks from the telecom company, the retail giant, not to be trifled with. I nodded. But what could I actually do at this stage? The people to be removed couldn’t be dealt with in a day or two; the people to be brought in had to wait for instructions from headquarters. The boss said: stay a bit longer, at least through the weekend, have a meal with these people. I told him these were all big shots; even if I called now, we’d have to wait at least a week for that meal. He said, just stay to boost morale then—come to the office on the weekend, let the staff working overtime feel that the new management is with them through weal and woe. In short, after all that talk, the boss meant for me to stay to prove my loyalty, and to set an unwritten rule for this firm (and for me) that weekends were for work, too.
But going through weal and woe with the new employees meant I couldn’t do that with Youyu. That precious, pearly egg would pass me by.
“Now, now, if we miss this train, we can always catch the next one, or the one after that.” I couldn’t reason with the boss, so I called Youyu to negotiate instead. She fought back immediately over the phone, clearly having decided to defend her own reproductive rights to the end. “This is the weekend, the weekend! What right does Johnson have to take away your weekend?”
I laughed bitterly. “Johnson’s always been like this. It’s not just the weekends, even time spent taking a shit belongs to him.”
“Bingfeng,” she said, small, “I really don’t have much time left.”
After thirty-five, pregnancy is considered geriatric.
After thirty-five, pregnancy is much harder.
After thirty-five, miscarriage rates increase.
After thirty-five, children’s odds of developing various syndromes are several times higher.
…I knew all of this. She would be thirty-five in two months. Her unmarried friends had all recently started pressuring their boyfriends into marriage. To avoid stressing Youyu into early menopause, I had to cut her some slack.
I forced a smile into my voice. “Yes, yes, haven’t we been trying all this while? This time, it really can’t be helped, what with the new acquisition, the boss insisted I change my ticket—”
“Can’t you just explain to him?” That was no longer indignation in Youyu’s voice, but a command.
How? Say I was in a rush to deliver sperm home?
I told her I’d tried, but the boss wouldn’t listen.
That last line was equally applicable to my conversation with Youyu—she wasn’t listening, either.
“Just say there’s a life-or-death emergency at home. Figure it out,” she said. “Either way, I need to see you in the next 48 hours. Alive.”
◆
The busy tone from the other end of the phone echoed through the empty boardroom.
I spun the leather seat to face the wide glass windows, and the bustling nighttime streets beyond.
I drummed on the chair, then rolled myself back to the desk. The computer screen read: Friday, 9:30 p.m.
Over the years, I’d become battle-hardened from fighting with my peers at the company, later with my subordinates, and then with clients outside. Surely I couldn’t just admit total defeat when it came to the boss and the wife. There had to be a way—some surefire solution where I could show up at the office over the next two days to “share weal and woe” with the staff, and still be home by 9:30 p.m. on Sunday. I checked: two flights on Sunday afternoon, one at 12:30, another at 4:30. If I took the 4:30, I’d reach Singapore at 8:15, be home at 8:45, take a shower, and have barely half an hour left. It was a little tight, but the 12:30 was too early, and I wouldn’t make it to the office Sunday morning. After careful consideration, I decided to risk it—Youyu’s egg couldn’t possibly be so punctual as to expire over ten minutes, could it?
I couldn’t help congratulating myself on my own wit and cunning. I even started whistling.
I then sent Johnson a carefully worded email, saying I had an important client meeting in Singapore on Monday, throwing in a little boast about the good progress I’d made with said client of late. After hitting “send,” I rubbed my hands together, stood up in better spirits, and stretched my lower back. Time to get something to eat before my 11 p.m. conference call—and change my flight.
◆
On Saturday, I donned a casual yet chic polo tee, tucked my laptop bag under my arm and headed to the new firm’s office. It was in a new development zone, still surrounded almost entirely by farmland. Other than several incongruous tower blocks rising from the earth, there were only a few fenced-off plots waiting to be developed. I idly snapped some photos along the way, later even posing for a group shot with the handful of staff who’d come in to work overtime, which I sent to Johnson as proof of mission accomplished. Whether or not I’d actually “boosted morale,” not one of those employees dared leave before I did.
On Sunday, I checked out of the hotel and dragged my luggage to the office. Would anyone really come in on a Sunday? Doubtful. 9 a.m.—no one. 10 a.m.—no one. At 12:30 p.m., right as I was about to leave, a young man and woman arrived together. What was this, a date? When the pair saw me sitting in the executive office, they froze like deer in headlights, exchanged a glance, and left.
I smiled, resigned, and started booking a taxi. The driver called me three times before I picked up. One good thing about the Philippines was that most people spoke English well, so communication wasn’t an issue. Unfortunately, he kept asking me for directions, and I was completely unfamiliar with the area. After a long exchange with us talking circles around each other, I told him to cancel, and I’d find a driver who knew the way.
After the third switch, I finally gave up. I dragged my luggage downstairs to try my luck, walking a good long while to get out of this zone and onto a main road. Whether it was lunchtime, or because this place was just too desolate, taxis were few and far between, and all were occupied. In my growing panic, an unlicensed car pulled up beside me. “Hey, boss, where you going? I’ll take you.”
I knew this was an illegal taxi, but with time running out, I couldn’t afford to be picky.
The driver wore amber-tinted sunglasses, with thick lips and a round face that looked friendly and trustworthy enough. I negotiated a price, told him to head for the airport as fast as possible, then settled into the backseat without another word.
“Catching a flight?” He looked at me through the rearview mirror.
I nodded, managing a smile. “Time’s tight, please hurry.”
“Alright, hold on, buckle up!” As though to rev himself and the car up at once, he turned up the stereo volume, the beat thumping through the soles of my feet.
1:20 p.m. I needed to be at the airport by 3:40 p.m., latest. Google Maps showed an ETA in two hours. Should be fine, I thought—Manila traffic wasn’t so terrible on weekends, and we weren’t going through the city center.
“Bro, you work in Singapore?” He hollered over the noise.
I said no, I was going home. He said, “Oh, so you’ve got a girl in the Philippines?”
Shit, he thought I was spending the weekend with a mistress here.
I shouted back, “My f—king boss is a workaholic! Working me to death on the weekend!”
He gave me a thumbs up while swaying to the music. I couldn’t tell if he was commending my boss or if he thought the insult was cool.
I leaned over to check the dashboard. 180 km/hr. Was that allowed? We wouldn’t get pulled over, would we? Just then, the car suddenly slowed and stopped on the highway shoulder. I asked what was wrong. He waited until the car was fully parked then yelled for me to come sit up front. Almost simultaneously, he killed the engine. The music cut out. His voice nearly blew my eardrums out.
If police ask, just say you’re a friend. So that was it—he was worried about getting pulled over, too.
I agreed. We drove on. He didn’t restart the music, and instead asked if I smoked; I declined. Since starting the baby-making project two years ago, I’d quit (half voluntarily, half under pressure from Youyu). He rolled down the window, and a wave of nicotine drifted in.
I peered around. The window had a small color image of the Virgin Mary. The dashboard held a photograph of a baby boy. “Your son?” I asked. This father looked about twenty at most.
“My third.” He held up three fingers.
“Really? You don’t look like a father of three.”
He quirked his eyebrows smugly. “Can’t help it. One shot, one kill. The first two were with another girl; I didn’t marry her. How many do you have?”
“Me? None yet.” I thought of my mission on this trip and felt the immense irony of it all. Back in university, my girlfriend and I most feared getting a “surprise.” And then, near graduation, we did get one. We talked it over for a long time—neither of us wanted a shotgun wedding, if only because we didn’t have jobs lined up yet. Especially for her, since no company would hire a pregnant woman. Eventually, with much heartache, she got the procedure done. Our relationship never fully recovered, and we drifted further and further apart. If we hadn’t gotten that “surprise,” maybe we would’ve gone the distance. Or, if we’d just gritted our teeth and kept the child, would I have had to suffer the past two years treating myself like a stud pig?
The driver said, with a world-weariness that didn’t match his years, “Lucky I don’t have to support those two. Just this one is hard already. I’m on the road all day and still can’t make enough for milk powder. My wife and I had agreed—once the kid’s older, she can go to Singapore to earn money, or Taiwan, or Hong Kong. But guess what she said yesterday? She’s pregnant again!”
I laughed. “If only you were in Singapore, then. There’s a baby bonus. If it’s born around National Day, you get even more perks.” Part of why Youyu was so fixated on this cycle was that if we conceived now, in November, we’d be right on track for a National Day baby next year.
He burst out laughing. “Really?” He extended his hand and shook mine vigorously, leaving my palm slick with sweat. The car lurched.
“How much longer?” It felt like a long time since I’d seen a sign for the airport.
“One hour, maybe.”
“That far?”
“Ah, sorry about that. This car can’t use the other highway, I got caught at a checkpoint there once.”
“Come on, you’re holding me up here.”
“Sorry, sorry, I’ll drive faster. You’ll be on time, promise.”
I said nothing. What was there to say? I couldn’t tell him I was hurrying to fulfil my sperm provider duties. He’d already said he was “one shot, one kill.” Was I supposed to admit my own hit rate wasn’t up to par? That I couldn’t bring myself to confess. Year in, year out, constantly away on business trips—forget creating a life, just getting the two of us in the same room was a whole ordeal.
Only when the airport signs came into view did my heart settle. Then I checked the time, and it leapt right back into my throat. Fifty-five minutes to takeoff. Seeing the crowds swarming at the gate, I had to call on my wit and cunning once more: I asked to use the diplomatic channel. But once there, the female officer wearing an epaulette took my passport and turned it over and over, not letting me through for ages.
It turned out that the dates on my business visa didn’t line up—according to the expiry date, I should’ve left long ago, yet it was still within the validity period. I argued my case: if there was a mistake, it was their embassy’s when they issued the visa, and not my fault.
I told her there were only forty minutes to take-off. The name they kept calling for in the announcements was mine.
She glanced at me over the top of her glasses, unmoved, and picked up the phone to call a colleague—one with a few more epaulettes, I guess. I stood there on tenterhooks. My phone buzzed once in my pocket. Must be a text from Youyu. I wanted, so much, to tell her: my millions of troops, my seeds of life, were ready to meet her egg, but immigration wouldn’t stamp their papers and let them through the gates of life. Whose fault could that be?
Thirty-five minutes. The announcements were still calling for me. The boarding gates were closing.
The stamp came down on my passport—no, on my seeds. I felt then that I had returned to that most primordial state of life—my father’s single valiant sperm, surmounting obstacle after obstacle, crossing mountains and rivers, soldiering ever onward, winning a chance of survival at last.
◆
“Youyu, babe, I’m home!” I called out as I walked through our door. The house was dark. Empty. I watched as five messages appeared on my phone screen, probably delayed by poor signal when I landed.
Dear, something came up at work, I’m going in.
Did you get that?
No reply, you must be on the plane already.
Have you landed?
Also, my boss told me informally that I’m getting promoted. I’m thinking, let’s put the baby plans on hold for two more years. Love you!—Youyu
