A Well-tempered Heart (16 page)

Later, when he entered her, she felt a stabbing pain in her abdomen, a pain that grew more intense with the ardor of his movement. Again she thought of asking him to stop, hesitated, and then let it happen.

To her.

When it was over, he lay panting beside her, and Nu Nu barely managed to suppress her tears. A part of him. But this time she did not want it. The thought of something growing inside her repulsed her from the very start.

She wanted more than anything to go outside and shove a finger down her throat, to vomit until she had expelled all foreign elements from her body.

She did not want a second child. Not now. Later. Perhaps.

Ko Gyi was enough for her. Ko Gyi and her husband. The distance they had felt during the last months of the pregnancy had gradually given way to their former intimacy. She was happy when he came home from the field, sweaty as he was. She needed his proximity. His calm. Nu Nu could not imagine loving a new child as much as those two. There was not room in her life for another person. Later. Perhaps. For now it would bring only sorrow.

During the early days she hoped she had been mistaken. Ko Gyi was still nursing, and she felt no great change in her body for some time.

Then came the morning sickness, the twinges in her abdomen.

Nu Nu pleaded with her body to cast away that little nothing. Seal up. Just stop nourishing it and then at some point wash it away in a gush of blood.

When that did not work she tried willpower. She would squat down several times a day, close her eyes, breathe deeply, and concentrate only on that foreign matter inside her. Go away. Away. Away. Out. Out. Out.

She sought support every morning from the spirit who lived in the fig tree, bringing him papayas and bananas as offerings. Perhaps he had the power to end the life growing within her.

Nu Nu recalled the words of the women in the field. During her first pregnancy they had advised against carrying anything too heavy lest she endanger her child. Now she threw caution to the wind. With her son on her back she would take on the heaviest work in the field and at home, so that Maung Sein exhorted his wife to be mindful of her condition. Ko Gyi needed a healthy mother.

She gave him no answer, but hoped that the physical exertions would eventually have the desired effect. Possessed by rage and doubt, she would drum her abdomen with both fists until her arms wearied. To no avail. Her belly swelled, and she took to ignoring her condition as best she could. As if through her indifference the child might cease to grow and vanish from her life.

One evening they were sitting in silence by the fire, Ko Gyi was asleep, and Maung Sein gazed for a long time at his wife. The arch of her belly was now impossible to miss.

“Aren’t you happy?” he asked, almost casually, scraping rice from a bowl with a tin spoon.

Nu Nu stared into the flames. She felt paralyzed. She was short of breath. She drew shallow drafts of air and exhaled them rapidly. Her heart raced. Fear had returned. The effortlessness of past months was nothing but a faint memory now. Why was her body ignoring her? Why had it not eliminated that something inside her weeks ago?

She summoned all her courage. “No, I am not happy.”

He nodded, as if he had expected this answer.

“Why not?”

She briefly considered asking him whether he did not feel the same way. Whether in his heart, too, there was no room to spare. Whether they might together find some solution. There were a number of young women in the village who could not conceive and who would be delighted to have a child.

“I don’t want a second child.”

“Why not?” he repeated without looking at her.

“It’s too soon.” Later. Maybe.

“Are you afraid of the delivery?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Of what then?”

If only she had an answer.

“How can I help you?”

“To be happy?”

He nodded, and she saw the sincerity in his eyes. If only it were that simple.

“And you?” she inquired hesitantly.

His laughter in the firelight.

“I am happy. Very, in fact. Nothing could be more wonderful.” After a short pause he added: “Not for me.”

“Aren’t you frightened?”

“No. Of what?” He looked at her intently. “Should I be?”

She pursed her lips and shook her head again, quickly. “I wonder if we should think about …” Nu Nu did not finish the sentence.

“Think about what?”

“There are women in the village …” She saw the happiness in his eyes. He would have no understanding for that train of thought.

“What’s troubling you?” he asked anxiously.

She shrugged. Helplessly. How could she explain something she did not herself understand?

Maung Sein edged over to his wife and put an arm around her shoulders.

“I love you,” he whispered tenderly in her ear.

Three words that otherwise never missed their mark.

“I love you,” she echoed softly.

A chill ran down her spine.

“Don’t worry. The second child is always easier. I asked the midwife.”

Nu Nu nodded. A moment later she felt a sharp kick that made her flinch.

This was no tentative wriggling as she had known it with Ko Gyi; this was a ferocious punching and lashing out.

Maung Sein lit a candle, set it with a bit of wax on a tin can, and lay down beside his nursing wife. He listened to the gurgling sounds of his son’s eager suckling. When Ko Gyi had fallen asleep exhausted, Nu Nu swaddled him in two cloths and laid him on the far side of her husband. For a while they rested wordlessly side by side.

“Do you think that a person can shed?” she asked suddenly.

He looked at Nu Nu in the flickering candlelight. Perplexed. She could tell by his eyes and lightly furrowed brow that he had not understood. “What do you mean, ‘shed’?”

“Shed. Like snakes. Or amphibians.”

Thinking his wife was joking, Maung Sein smiled. He pinched her arm and tugged softly at her skin. “Not you, anyway. Yours is on there pretty tight.”

Nu Nu eyed him gravely. “I don’t mean our bodies. I mean our souls.”

“Our souls?” he replied in surprise.

“I want to know if we can strip away a part of ourselves once something else has grown in to replace it. Like an old snakeskin. Can a troubled spirit transform into a serene one? A sorrowful spirit into a joyful one? A solitary spirit into a sociable one? Not just for an evening or a week. For eternity.”

Maung Sein crossed his arms under his head and looked at the ceiling. It was not a question he had ever considered. He pondered how the monks would have answered it. They might have said that the true essence of every individual
resides in the soul; that this essence is not static but dynamic. That each person is free and that no one but ourselves can harm, rescue, or change us. Of that much he was convinced. And if we possessed the power to change ourselves, if the essence in our souls was not set in stone, then a troubled spirit could also transform itself into a serene spirit.

“Or,” he heard her asking, “are we stuck with who we are?”

“No,” he answered confidently, “we are not.”

She laid her head on his chest and gazed pensively at her son as he lay sleeping beside his father. She hoped fervently that he was right.

THAR THAR WANTED
to live. He defied his mother’s every attempt to be rid of him. Obstinately he had implanted himself within her and started to grow. In spite of her exertions and punches.

After toughing it out for thirty-nine weeks and five days he could wait no longer: Thar Thar was anxious to come into the world.

The delivery lasted less than an hour and proceeded without complication. The amniotic sac broke near dawn; the sun had not yet risen over the mountains when the water flushed him out onto a few wet cloths in a little shack. Nu Nu never even really had to push.

She discovered quickly that Thar Thar was not one to depend on the help of others. He was heavier and taller than his brother. His first cries were so penetrating that even the farmers living on the other side of the valley would swear years later they had heard them clearly.

A strong and healthy boy, she heard the midwife say. And a handsome one, like his mother. Someone laid him on her belly. Nu Nu lifted her head. The resemblance escaped her. She saw nothing but a blood-smeared, pointy-headed creature howling in fury. With all his might. Shrill and piercing. Ko Gyi had never wailed like that. Not once.

The soothing voices of the women around her. Maung Sein wiped the sweat from her face with a moist cloth. They took her son, washed him, tried to calm him with rocking and patting. In vain.

He must be hungry, she ought to nurse him, said the midwife.

Nu Nu did not want to. She was too tired. Later.

Not be resisted, the midwife laid him at her breast.

It hurt from the very first. He did not drink. He guzzled. He sucked at her furiously, voraciously, as if hoping to drain his mother utterly, looking up at her with clenched fists all the while.

“An unusual child,” the birth attendants declared unanimously, congratulating her. She could be proud. She was now the mother of two healthy sons. Such good fortune! Every woman in the village should be so lucky!

Nu Nu did not want to hear it. She did not wish to feel thankful. She wanted only to be left alone.

His bawling woke her in the night. Maung Sein was already up, having lit a candle, kneeling beside his son and
watching him, full of concern. Thar Thar’s body was stiff like a dead animal’s, his mouth and eyes wide open, his lips quivering. He was belting out cries that shook his whole body, each one eerier than the last. What suffering could cause him to make such dreadful noises?

“Maybe a nightmare,” said her husband, looking at her helplessly.

Nu Nu wondered what a newborn might dream about.

“Or he’s hungry?”

She slid over to her son and tried to put him on the breast, but he turned away, screaming all the louder.

Her husband rubbed his head and belly but got no reaction. “Do you think he’s in pain?”

Nu Nu shrugged, confounded. To her ears his bellowing sounded less like suffering and more like an irate, desperate denunciation.

“Maybe he doesn’t want to be with us?” she muttered as if to herself.

“Where else would he want to be?” snapped her husband.

“I don’t know. Ko Gyi never cried like that.”

Maung Sein shook his head, daubed tiny droplets of sweat from Thar Thar’s brow, took him in his arms, and carried him around the shack. He sang. Whistled. Swayed, turned in circles.

No matter what they tried, their son remained beyond their reach. In the end he would fall silent from exhaustion. His little body would twitch a few more times, then his
eyes would close. Even in his sleep he would sob deeply a few more times.

The midwife examined him the next day but could find no reason for his complaints and recommended patience. Every child is different. Some babies cry more, some less. She mustn’t forget his long journey here. Her firstborn seemed so calm to her only because the two of them had hovered for weeks between life and death.

Within three days her breasts were so inflamed that she could feed neither Thar Thar nor his brother. Ko Gyi was old enough to eat rice porridge and vegetables, but Thar Thar was nursed by a young woman from the village who had recently delivered a child of her own. Nu Nu was happy every time Maung Sein took him away and for a while quiet prevailed in the hut once again.

Thar Thar would make his impending return known even from afar.

Nu Nu felt the tension in her body.

She marveled at her husband’s patience. Between carrying, rocking, and singing he was now almost always able to soothe his son. A calm that never lasted long.

When his wailing continued undiminished, the midwife examined him a second time. Pressing his stomach, she could feel a bit of gas. With a few deft movements she was able to entice it out of him in the form of a long, loud fart. Checked his mouth, ears, and nose; no sign of an infection. He could focus on her finger and follow its movements. His reflexes were in order; arms and legs, hands and feet were
as they should be. Thar Thar lay naked before her, looking with interest at the strange woman and tolerating her examination without protest.

“He is physically healthy,” she said, wrapping him back up.

“So why does he cry so much?”

The midwife shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Nu Nu thought back to the hours she had spent awake at night wishing that the life within her would cease to grow. Was it possible that he understood something of that?

Of the rice, the papayas, and the bananas she had offered, hoping for his death? Of her black tears? The desperate punches to her abdomen? Did he know of her wish to give him to some other family? Impossible. He was just a few weeks old. What an absurd idea.

All the same Nu Nu asked the midwife as casually as she could whether she thought that infants could remember things.

The woman gazed at her as if astonished by the question. “Of course,” she replied.

“Do you really think so? My parents died when I was two,” Nu Nu countered doubtfully. “I couldn’t even tell you now what they looked like.”