Bad Bad Girl, page 14
The Yankees! The Yankees! And yet just as the Yankees were about to go to the World Series to try for a fifth title, she was paying no attention whatsoever, having been put into a twilight sleep. She woke up with a large egg roll in her arms.
“Today is the biggest day of your life,” said the nurse brightly. “Congratulations! Meet your son.”
Could this little stranger have lived inside her not long ago? He had an improbably full head of downy black hair and, active as he had been in the womb, he now held very still, as if hoping to be put back. Chao-pe and she oohed and aahed, amazed and awed, though the baby was red and wrinkly and ugly. His legs were scrawny, and his arms were short. His tiny fingernails were perfect, it was true. And his eyelashes were like the finest of brushstrokes in a Chinese ink drawing. But it was his helplessness that touched her most—his helplessness and his eyes, which, when he opened them, shone as bright and disinterested as the moon.
“A boy!” said Chao-pe. “A boy!”
“He looks like you,” she said.
“He does,” Chao-pe agreed. “Handsome and fat!”
She laughed.
How lucky that she had grown up with younger brothers and sisters! Otherwise, she might have been afraid to touch the baby, like Chao-pe. But still, to take care of a baby yourself—with no nursemaid—there was nothing natural about it. The nurses showed her how to swaddle the baby. They showed her how to tell when he was hungry, and how to feed and burp him. They showed her how to pin on a new diaper so that it would stay on and not leak. And most important, they showed her how to support his head, explaining there was a spot on it that had not closed up.
“We should not be alarmed that it pulses,” she told Chao-pe. “It’s just where the bones of the head are still growing so his brain can grow.”
But Chao-pe was not reassured. He was fascinated by the baby’s entrancingly aimless motions—by the way he opened his mouth and puckered it; by the way he curled his tongue and stuck it out. And the way the baby could drop so suddenly into sleep he seemed to have left for another world—amazing! Chao-pe was too terrified, though, to hold the baby for more than a moment or two, even as he wrote to his mother:
We have great news. A son! Born during the Mid-Autumn Festival. He looks like a Jen. Someday you will meet him, and you will know right away, That is my grandson. We named him Qìngrú as we hope he will indeed prove a scholar. In English, his name is Reuben, which not only sounds like rú but means “Behold, a son!”—an appropriate name, I think you will agree. Shu-hsin is in good health. She is recovering fast and learning fast, a real mother.
We think of you often. Though we are far away on the other side of the world, when we look up, we know that we see the same moon you see. That is a comfort.
He needed some help with the saying about the moon, well-known as it was; luckily, even in her exhausted state, my mother still knew it went Hǎi shàng shēng míng yuè, tiān yá gòng cǐ shí.
“I hope we will be able to bring our son home soon,” he said.
“We’ll bring him,” she told him. “Your mother will have a chance to see him. Don’t worry.”
My mother was afraid that her father would not get to meet his grandchild, either. But even more terrible was the fear that her mother would not much care one way or the other, especially since her brother had married and could soon have a child far more important than hers—a child who would, if it were a boy, carry on the Loo name.
In the meanwhile, what would they have done if Marnie Mulligan had not continued to visit, her hair messier than ever? Marnie herself had no desire for children. But she knew from her four sisters what new mothers needed, and produced all sorts of presents from her Lord & Taylor shopping bag: bibs and pacifiers, bags of candy, flowers she’d filched from the gardens at school, and, best of all, dinner. Tuna noodle casserole, macaroni and cheese, spaghetti with meatballs, meatloaf, and my mother’s favorite: green beans with fried onion rings. What a magic ingredient, this cream of mushroom soup! And how happy my mother was to hear, as she ate, about Marnie’s progress on her dissertation, though it seemed that Marnie might just head back to Ohio once she got her degree. Her mother, it seemed, was having more and more trouble walking. She couldn’t manage without a daughter, and Marnie’s sisters were all married and raising kids. Marnie wasn’t complaining, but still my mother nodded sympathetically. What did this mean for Marnie’s career? As for what my mother was going to do if Marnie really did leave, she couldn’t begin to imagine.
* * *
—
She had begun taking short walks in the park and now recognized two or three other mothers. She thought, too, that she would start going to church again once she could leave Reuben with Chao-pe. But until then, she didn’t like exposing such a little baby to germs and so mostly stayed home, where it was lonely, yes, but less lonely than it was before Reuben was born. She clapped when he smiled; she clapped when he rolled over. She clapped when he discovered his toes, and when he sat up, and when he started to pick things up, and when he drank from a cup. And of course, she clapped when he clapped. He liked her hair and, as soon as he could, pulled at it and put it in his mouth.
“Naughty boy!” she said, but it was always with a smile.
They watched baseball together and played; she fed him and played; she changed him and played.
“You know, your mommy can stay up all night, but your daddy needs to sleep,” she would tell him. She blew on his face, making him laugh. “Your mommy is busy with you, but your daddy has a job.”
She bought a secondhand stroller and started taking him for walks, showing him the city. “This is a swing. When you are older, you will swing in it,” she told him, speaking in English, so he would learn English. “This is an ice cream store. When you are older, you will eat ice cream. This is a school. When you are older, you will study books and become illustrious. This is a high school. When you go there, your mommy will go back to school and study, too, if she is not too old.”
Laundry, laundry, laundry. What she would have done for a washing machine! The diapers alone were a part-time job. She swished them in the toilet; then they had to be washed and bleached and hung up to dry. Reuben’s clothes, too, were always dirty from when he leaked and spat up, as were her clothes. Everything smelled.
“In China, the servants do the wash,” she told him. “Or at least they used to.” She tried to imagine her mother doing her own wash. Probably her sisters were doing it. Did her sister-in-law help?
Reuben began to rock on all fours, and then to crawl using one foot and one knee, fast.
“He is going to be an athlete,” she told Chao-pe.
“No, no, he is going to be a scholar,” he said.
She researched nursery schools. Their cost shocked her.
“We will find a way,” Chao-pe promised. He was like a person with a concrete wall behind him; he never had to turn around and check what might be there. Neither did he ever waver. Every day, he was full of purpose; every day, he was on his way. She once asked him if he knew what desperation was.
“What?” he said.
She was embarrassed to have asked. And who had she become that she had thought to ask such a question?
Sometimes I did not recognize myself, she says now.
Babies change everything, I say.
She hoped that Chao-pe’s concrete wall would become hers, because if she had ever had one of her own, she didn’t anymore. Though to raise little Reuben—wasn’t that a worthy goal? To help Chao-pe build a family—weren’t they a team?
* * *
—
When she became pregnant again, Reuben started throwing fits. Was it because she was pregnant? Or was it something else? Dr. Rock, the pediatrician—a white-haired white man in a white coat—gave her a book that said tantrums at a year and a half were to be expected. Still, it was a shock when Reuben hit her, and once even bit her. Was that normal?
“He needs a nursemaid,” she told Chao-pe. “He needs grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. Brothers and sisters. Here he wants my attention all day long. If I turn away for even a moment, he gets upset.”
Another day, she told Chao-pe, “Reuben is hard to control.”
“His problem is that he is not afraid of anyone,” he said.
“Mother Greenough used to say there is no fear in love. It’s in the Bible.”
“Mother Greenough never had a child. In Yixing, we say, If you do not beat and scold the child, this is not your child.”
My mother laughed and admitted, “We said that in Shanghai, too.”
“That is how Chinese people think, that’s why. You have to teach your child. It is your duty.”
Teach him or train him? I say now. Sometimes I wonder if for you and Dad, they were the same thing.
I don’t know what you talking, she says.
So much of what you taught was not math or science but what we were and were not allowed to do. For example, leave the family.
Bad bad girl! You are not allowed to leave!
That’s what I mean, I say.
Though she wasn’t as sick as she had been during her first pregnancy, this time she was more depleted. If only she had some of the nourishing soups she would have had in China! Without them, her body felt so weak and heavy that, though it was right there in the same room, Reuben’s crib sometimes seemed far away. I’m coming! she would say. I’m coming! But it was as if she had furniture to move before she could get anywhere—a bookcase, a bureau, a desk—and sometimes by the time she had gotten it all out of the way and picked him up, he was kicking so hard she worried for the baby inside her. Babies were well insulated, she knew. Still, they heard everything and sensed everything. It was important for the mother to be calm if they were to be calm, and how could she be calm? When she—they—were under attack.
Much of the day, she and Reuben watched television until he napped. If she turned off the television, he threw a fit. Even if they were going outside, which he liked, he would throw a fit about having to put a jacket on first. She would try to make a game of it. “What does a dog need to go out? Fur!” she would tell him. “What does a turtle need to go out? A shell! What do little boys need to go out? A jacket!” And sometimes that would work. Other times, she had to scare him. “Do you know what happens to little boys who go out without a jacket?” she would say. “They freeze like an ice cube.” Or, “Do you know what a snowman is? He is a little boy who went out without a jacket.” Sometimes, too, she would hide his jacket. “Where’s your jacket? Someone stole it! Now you have no more jacket! No more going to the playground!” It wasn’t clear how much he understood, but one very cold day, having run out of patience, she brought him outside, let him feel how cold it was, and waited until he was sobbing before she allowed him back in. “Oh! There’s your jacket!” she said. “The thief must have given it back.”
Outside, thankfully, he would usually calm down. If only after the playground he did not beg to go see what was in the toy store window. Sometimes they would go in, but then he would want to play with the toys, and when all she could tell him was no, he couldn’t have them, he would throw another fit. At home, she fashioned many entertaining things out of paper. She could make a turtle and a crane and a swan and a box and even a jumping frog—Nai-ma had taught her how. But he liked the plastic toys in the toy store.
“He needs more toys,” she told Chao-pe.
Chao-pe did not believe in buying toys. “You know what those things are? A lot of junk,” he said.
My mother bought Reuben some toys anyway, only to witness herself how, yes, he would play with a car for a morning but lose interest in it by the afternoon. Then Chao-pe criticized her.
“We did not have such toys when we were growing up,” he said. “They are unnecessary.”
But he had had brothers and cousins, she pointed out. He had had a horse down the road to go visit. His family had had chickens and goats in the garden. And the servants! The servants knew all sorts of games and songs and tricks.
“Reuben spends all day in a city apartment with his mommy and a television,” she said. “He is bored.”
“The television is boring?”
“It’s not boring.” She did not want to say something so expensive was boring. “But it’s limited. It’s not alive.”
“You should make some friends.”
She agreed. What with no one to babysit they went less and less often to International House, and while there were family picnics with other Chinese engineers, those were held twice a year at the most. Faithful Marnie Mulligan still came to visit sometimes; when my mother learned the word “godsend,” she thought, I know a godsend. Marnie is a godsend. But most days she and Reuben were all alone. Her main entertainment besides the television was the newspaper.
So, yes, she needed friends.
Sitting in the park, she tried to look friendly, not exhausted. And other mothers did stop sometimes, and once she got to talking with someone she thought could be a friend. A Spanish woman—or at least that was what my mother thought she was; she wasn’t entirely sure where the woman was from. But she wore a bright coat and a bright smile, and her son was not only active like Reuben but had almost the same name.
“Reuben, Rubén!” the woman laughed. “Yours is Reuben! Mine is Rubén! Reuben, Rubén! Reuben, Rubén!”
The boys started playing together—the first time Reuben had ever played with another child. Rubén tried to teach him to play tag, which Reuben didn’t seem to get, although he did understand that it meant that he should chase Rubén, and that Rubén would chase him. With the help of their mothers, they rode the seesaw up and down. The next day, my mother brought Reuben to the park with hope.
“Maybe we will see Rubén!” she said.
But Rubén and his mother were not there. My mother checked again the next day, and many days after that. No luck.
“I wish we could go back to China,” she told Chao-pe.
Even if the U.S. government weren’t blocking their return, though, the China they knew was gone. A letter arrived from my mother’s family—once again in her brother’s handwriting:
Do you remember that rental building we had? Thank heavens we had it. Otherwise, where would we have moved once we left our big house? Of course, we are happy that so many other families are now able to live in the rental building with us. Really, it was a shame that so many people had to live on the street while buildings like this were occupied by just a few families. Now there are twelve families here. We all share the downstairs kitchen. Your sisters do the cooking and bring water up in buckets for drinking and bathing. We have three rooms for the seven of us. Three rooms is more than anyone else has, and some people grouse about that. But others feel sorry for us since the whole building was originally ours. We tell them we don’t need their sympathy.
The Communists have accomplished many good things. For example, they have gotten rid of all kinds of vice. Gambling and prostitution, drugs, and petty theft have been eliminated. There are no more gangs, no more mahjong, even. The fashion is for plain blue cotton clothes, which saves everyone a lot of time. Also, everyone is studying Russian. We are not surprised. Every war brings a new language. First it was English and then Japanese. Now Russian. We are too old to make such sounds, but we can hear young people practicing in the other apartments. “Tovarish!” they say. That means “comrade.” Your sister says that from what she’s seen, Russian grammar is even harder than English grammar, and a lot of the words are long. Still, the young people study diligently. So many of them signed up to join the People’s Liberation Army that many had to be turned away. They seem to sincerely believe we are going to catch up to Britain and surpass Japan, and are working hard to accomplish that goal.
Of course, our family has had some adjustments to make. Don’t worry too much, but if you have any spare Chinese funds, could you think about repatriating them? We also need needles for our phonograph, but I’m afraid no one can help us with that, not even an American relative. Luckily, we have radios, thanks to your brother who can build them himself. He is very talented.
Baba stays home every day now. It is good for him to rest. His work was always so much pressure, as you know, and teaching others to take over his job was not easy at his age. When we moved, we found a large trunk full of IOUs written to him by people to whom he had lent money. He always intended for us to burn the slips when he dies, and only accepted them to help the people save face. But now he worries. We tell him that the IOUs do not mean he exploited anyone but rather that he helped people. Everyone knows he is a good man. Did you know that not one of his employees ever wrote a letter to criticize him? Still, his health suffers.
Please send pictures of your son. We think he must be strong and eat very well. Is he lively and naughty? How is his Chinese? You should pay attention to his pronunciation so that when he comes back, people do not think he is a foreigner.
Her father no longer working. Her family forced out of their home. All seven of them squeezed into three rooms of a former rental building. My mother tried to picture the building but couldn’t remember it. And what did that mean, that her father’s health was suffering? Was that why he didn’t write? What did he do all day? It was hard to imagine him cooped up with the rest of the family. Did he have a desk? She hoped he had a desk by a window—he’d always liked his desk near a window—even as she knew, of course, that he did not. How galling that he should have to worry that his good deeds would be used against him! And was her mother really asking for money?
How could she expect me to help her? After she left me to fend for myself in a strange country? she says now.
Something you could not write, I say.
