End of East, The (15 page)
Authors: Jen Sookfong Lee
A baby. A son. The reason she is here. And she keeps on feeding it.
She creeps into the kitchen after breakfast for a snack and finds that all the cookies, pastries and cakes have disappeared. She stands, dumbfounded. Her mother-in-law pokes her head around the corner and says, “Missing something?”
Later, her husband smuggles in a tin of biscuits, which she hides in her chest of drawers. Soft biscuits, the kind that crumble in her mouth like cake and call out for coffee. The kind that coat her belly with pillowy fluffiness.
As Siu Sang is licking cookie crumbs from her swollen fingers, Shew Lin appears in her bedroom door holding a tray with a bowl of steaming soup. Siu Sang throws a blanket over the biscuit tin and swallows quickly. “Something medicinal, to help my grandson grow strong,” Shew Lin says.
As Siu Sang holds the hot bowl (her fingertips feel as if they might burn clean off, but no one cares about that), she feels like a fugitive and a bad, deceitful person for hating her mother-in-law as she does, but what else is left for her? It is either silence or fighting.
I can eat only when she says I can. She makes fun of how fat I am. I heard her say yesterday to Pon Man that I would be a useless wife without her. She wants me to be a bad daughter so that she can say, “Aha—I told you so!”
She finishes her soup and lies down, moving her biscuits to the back of the drawer. She touches her belly through her dress (like an enormous umbrella, patterned with English roses and violets, all the better to make Siu Sang look even more like a hilly pasture), feels the baby pushing against her ribs. She
shifts, and the baby shifts with her, a movement at once both dependent and independent. If she could, she would reach into her uterus right now and rip this baby out, pass it to her mother-in-law and never look at it again.
After all,
she thinks,
she’s the one who wants it the most anyway.
shifts, and the baby shifts with her, a movement at once both dependent and independent. If she could, she would reach into her uterus right now and rip this baby out, pass it to her mother-in-law and never look at it again.
After all,
she thinks,
she’s the one who wants it the most anyway.
Angry, she pushes herself off the bed, fits her fat feet into her quilted slippers.
I cannot stay here. This place will kill me.
She imagines herself dying of cruelty after giving birth to a stillborn baby, lying wanly on a white bed with white mosquito netting as Shew Lin weeps wildly in remorse. Siu Sang smiles.
At least
, she thinks,
there is one scenario that might go my way
.
I cannot stay here. This place will kill me.
She imagines herself dying of cruelty after giving birth to a stillborn baby, lying wanly on a white bed with white mosquito netting as Shew Lin weeps wildly in remorse. Siu Sang smiles.
At least
, she thinks,
there is one scenario that might go my way
.
She leaves her bedroom, stands at the top of the stairs, her feet balanced on the edge and her hands placed protectively on her belly. Her eyes close and she feels the weight of her body tilting downward. The danger hits her like an odour and her eyes snap open, wide.
She lives in a house with thirty-two steps.
She walks down slowly, her right hand holding the banister, her left hand on her belly. Her head spins; she sees her hands, the stairs, the pictures on the walls swirling around her, her own pregnant stomach the centre of it all. She is nauseated.
This baby feels like a lead weight tied to her body. She has had dreams in which it is born with her mother-in-law’s head, complete with knitted cap and yellowing teeth. Yet she is never surprised, only mildly annoyed that she should have such an ugly child. By the time she wakes up, she has torn the head off the baby and no one but her seems to notice.
This may be your house, old woman, but this is my child.
The sun is beginning to set outside and the hospital room has turned golden. Siu Sang looks at her daughter sleeping and
watches the breath move in and out of her, her little chest rising and her fists clenched. In the fading light, the shadows are sharp and half of the baby’s face is dark, a line dividing it neatly in half.
watches the breath move in and out of her, her little chest rising and her fists clenched. In the fading light, the shadows are sharp and half of the baby’s face is dark, a line dividing it neatly in half.
The flowers her husband brought from the garden are on the side table in a blue plastic jug, hanging over the edge, top-heavy, like women with their heads down. Yen Mei visited this morning, dragging along her eighteen-month-old son, a bug-eyed toddler who sucked his thumb and stared at Siu Sang unblinkingly. She left the baby a stuffed koala bear with a pink ribbon around its neck. It sits, bug-eyed as well, on the windowsill.
The hospital is quiet at this time in the evenings. She can hear the soft-soled steps of the nurses pushing the dinner carts, the muffled cries of other babies in other rooms, the sick ones in the nursery. The rooms and hallway are all painted pink, and both she and the baby are wrapped in soft flannels that smell like bleach and talcum powder. An older nurse who speaks Chinese has been helping her, teaching her how to change diapers, feed the baby without choking her. Last night, just before her shift was over, she tucked Siu Sang into her bed.
“Are you warm enough, my dear?”
Siu Sang hardly remembers how long she’s been here.
She walks into the washroom to take a bath and stays in the big tub for a half-hour. She watches the steam rise from the water and swirl upward, disappearing into a vent in the ceiling. Her body appears pale and deflated under the water, lifeless. Tiny wrinkles run up and down her stomach. She traces the white stretch marks with her finger, the dark brown line that runs from her breasts to her pelvis.
I look used up,
she thinks.
I look used up,
she thinks.
When she steps into her room again, her face flushed and pink, her hair dripping water on the floor, her husband and his parents are waiting for her. Shew Lin has the baby in her arms.
“Mother and I talked last night,” says Pon Man, “and we agree that we should give the baby a Western name so there won’t be any confusion when she grows up. If I had a nickel for every time someone called me Pat or Paul, I’d be a rich man. What do you think of the name Wendy, like in the Peter Pan story?”
“Wendy?” asks Siu Sang, wrapping her bathrobe tighter around her body. “Peter Pan?”
“Right. How would you know that story? Well, I think it’s going to be Wendy—easy to say for the old folks.”
“Wendy,” Seid Quan repeats, nodding.
“The doctor told us you can leave tonight,” Pon Man says. “Isn’t that great?”
Seid Quan nods again in agreement, his hands behind his back.
Pon Man continues, “I packed all your things while we were waiting, so all you have to do is get dressed.”
Shew Lin looks up and takes in Siu Sang’s wet hair, bare feet and damp robe. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you that you shouldn’t wash your hair for a month after the baby’s born? You’ll have dampness in your bones when you get old if you’re not careful.” She turns away and holds the baby to the fading light. Siu Sang stares, thinks,
Wendy for such a wrinkled, wormy thing?
Wendy for such a wrinkled, wormy thing?
In the new car (purchased exactly one month ago so that the baby would have some way of moving through the city besides a taxi), Shew Lin holds the baby all the way home. Siu Sang’s hair sticks to the back of the vinyl car seat. Her wool skirt scratches the backs of her thighs. The smell of gasoline drifts in through the open windows and she breathes it in, letting the burn spread through her lungs.
Shew Lin sits in the living room, knitting something bright safety orange. Seid Quan listens to the radio and chuckles. The baby is asleep, and Pon Man skims over the evening newspaper in his bedroom while Siu Sang naps. All is quiet.
It begins as a slight wailing—a quiet, high-pitched buzzing. Pon Man turns around, searches the room with his eyes. He stands up to go to the door. Siu Sang cries out louder, and he looks back and sees that the noise is coming from her.
She is curled up in a ball on the bed, whimpering, her hands tucked between her legs as if she is trying to make herself as small as possible to minimize her pain.
“Do you have a fever? Is it because we just had a baby? Tell me.” He stares into her wild eyes, but she says nothing, looks through him as if he is a window into another, evil, painful place. He places his hands on her shoulders and shakes her.
She knows he is looking at her, that she is confusing and frightening. She can sense her mother-in-law in her knitted cap crouching outside the closed bedroom door, her ear pressed up against the wood. But she doesn’t care. If she did not cry, wail like a lost child, she would explode, and pieces of her would be everywhere, ruining the furniture, staining the walls.
It’s like a splinter, this feeling that she hates the baby so much that she would rather reach into its face and pull out its brains than take care of it for one more day. This hatred started days ago, and she thought she could hide it, control it by ignoring it and letting it fade on its own. But then it grew, attracting all the other evil feelings she has ever had about this house, this family, this country, even her own husband. Tonight, as she rocked the baby to sleep (its hands like talons,
nothing like the chubby baby hands she had expected and heard about), she could feel the bitterness like a tornado in her belly. The swirling, mad mass forced its way up through her esophagus, exploded into her lungs and, finally, spilled out of her mouth. She couldn’t stop it and didn’t want to, for as painful as it was now, it would hurt much, much more to keep it in.
nothing like the chubby baby hands she had expected and heard about), she could feel the bitterness like a tornado in her belly. The swirling, mad mass forced its way up through her esophagus, exploded into her lungs and, finally, spilled out of her mouth. She couldn’t stop it and didn’t want to, for as painful as it was now, it would hurt much, much more to keep it in.
She can see it in his face, the little thought that is now taking shape:
My wife is insane.
My wife is insane.
He won’t want to believe it
, she thinks loudly, trying to form thoughts above the roaring in her ears.
But he will soon enough.
She opens her mouth, intending to remind him of all the nights they spent whispering and giggling and touching, but instead, she wails even louder, and Pon Man sits back from the force of it all. He reaches out to touch her, and Siu Sang thinks that if he makes contact with her skin (her raw, raw skin, like a body turned inside out), she will have to kill him. She rolls away.
, she thinks loudly, trying to form thoughts above the roaring in her ears.
But he will soon enough.
She opens her mouth, intending to remind him of all the nights they spent whispering and giggling and touching, but instead, she wails even louder, and Pon Man sits back from the force of it all. He reaches out to touch her, and Siu Sang thinks that if he makes contact with her skin (her raw, raw skin, like a body turned inside out), she will have to kill him. She rolls away.
“You’re going to wake the baby if you keep this up.”
She stares at it, at the wrinkled face, the tiny pursed lips.
It
sleeps so peacefully,
she thinks.
This is hardly fair
. If the baby wakes up, she will have to tend to it, feed its smacking mouth, change its shitty diaper. She would rather plunge her hand into boiling water than feed it one more time, so she closes her mouth and swallows.
It
sleeps so peacefully,
she thinks.
This is hardly fair
. If the baby wakes up, she will have to tend to it, feed its smacking mouth, change its shitty diaper. She would rather plunge her hand into boiling water than feed it one more time, so she closes her mouth and swallows.
Siu Sang quiets down to a whimper, a high-pitched whisper of a scream like the squeak of wet fingers on glass. She lets Pon Man cover her with a blanket before he sits down in the armchair by the window. After an hour and a half, Siu Sang is fast asleep—dried tears dotting the line of her eyelashes—and the baby starts to cry.
Yen Mei stands by the window in Siu Sang’s bedroom and looks out at the schoolyard across the street. “Well, it’s not so bad, is it? The house is pretty nice, much bigger than the one we bought.”
Siu Sang wants to laugh. “That’s because Ken’s parents don’t live with you. If we had a house that was any smaller, I’d have to share a room with my mother-in-law.” They giggle, but quietly, their hands covering their mouths.
Yen Mei sits down and rests her hands on her pregnant belly. “I don’t believe how big I am already. The second one sure shows a lot faster.”
The second one. Siu Sang swallows her fear and looks at the blanket on the floor where Wendy is shaking a rattle. “I can’t take it anymore.”
“Take what?” asks Yen Mei.
“Take this. I don’t love the baby. I think I might be going insane.”
Yen Mei laughs. “That’s funny.”
“No, really. Didn’t you ever feel like you wanted to just run away, leave everything behind?”
“I don’t know.” Yen Mei looks confused. “I didn’t love the baby at first either. I mean, I was just so tired, and he wouldn’t let me sleep. But by the time he was Wendy’s age, that had all passed.”
Siu Sang wonders if she should press on, if she should tell her sister what she has really been thinking (about the glorious
crunch
the baby would make on the sidewalk if Siu Sang were to drop her out a window, about how she wants to pour boiling water on her mother-in-law’s head as she sleeps,
about the silence she longs for and wants to find, perhaps somewhere in the mountains, where she could sleep and dream and never come back) or if she should forget it, knowing that Yen Mei, chatty, gossiping Yen Mei, has never helped anyone.
crunch
the baby would make on the sidewalk if Siu Sang were to drop her out a window, about how she wants to pour boiling water on her mother-in-law’s head as she sleeps,
about the silence she longs for and wants to find, perhaps somewhere in the mountains, where she could sleep and dream and never come back) or if she should forget it, knowing that Yen Mei, chatty, gossiping Yen Mei, has never helped anyone.
After Yen Mei leaves, Siu Sang sits down at the desk in her room and pulls a blank piece of paper toward her. She wants to write to her mother, tell her everything, but her pen will not move. In the end, Siu Sang knows, her mother will only urge her to stay.
Instead, she writes a letter to Susie, filling the paper with densely packed words, back and front. When she is finished, she reads it over and then realizes that she has no idea where Susie lives. She holds the letter in her hands for one more moment, then tears it into little pieces.
She tries to cry, but the sobs die in her throat and she chokes. Mucus collects in the back of her mouth until she cannot make any more noise.
Siu Sang wakes up, her whole body jerking like a marionette. She looks at the clock beside her bed. Five thirty and she hasn’t even helped with dinner yet. She stares at the baby in her crib—wide awake and trying to shove her fist into her mouth. She takes her into the living room and props her up with pillows on the couch, where she can see her from the kitchen. Siu Sang ties on her flowered apron and stands by the stove, waiting for Shew Lin to tell her what to do.
Her mind is still sluggish from the nap, and she has been feeling slow all week. Her feet feel like lead. Every morning, her daughter cries at seven and Siu Sang is forced to get up, her eyelids heavy with sleep. By the time Pon Man returns home,
Siu Sang has just finished changing out of her pyjamas and combing her hair.
Siu Sang has just finished changing out of her pyjamas and combing her hair.
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