The Air of This World
SO OFTEN WE’RE told that women’s stories are unimportant. After all, what does it matter what happens in the main room, in the kitchen, or in the bedroom? Who cares about the relationships between mother, daughter, and sister? A baby’s illness, the sorrows and pains of childbirth, keeping the family together during war, poverty, or even in the best of days are considered small and insignificant compared with the stories of men, who fight against nature to grow their crops, who wage battles to secure their homelands, who struggle to look inward in search of the perfect man. We’re told that men are strong and brave, but I think women know how to endure, accept defeat, and bear physical and mental agony much better than men. The men in my life—my father, Z.G., my husband, my father-in-law, my brother-in-law, and my son—faced, to one degree or another, those great male battles, but their hearts—so fragile—wilted, buckled, crippled, corrupted, broke, or shattered when confronted with the losses women face every day. As men, they have to put a brave face on tragedy and obstacles, but they are as easily bruised as flower petals.
If we hear that women’s stories are insignificant, then we’re also told that good things always come in pairs and bad things happen in threes. If two airplanes crash, we wait for a third to fall from the sky. If a motion-picture star dies, we know that another two will succumb. If we stub a toe and lose our car keys, we know that another bad thing must happen to complete the cycle. All we can hope is that it will be a bent fender, a leaky roof, or a lost job rather than a death, a divorce, or a new war.
The Louie family’s tragedies arrive in a long and devastating cascade like a waterfall, like a dam burst open, like a tidal wave that breaks, destroys, and then pulls the evidence back to sea. Our men try to act strong, but it is May, Yen-yen, Joy, and I who must steady them and help them bear their pain, anguish, and shame.
IT’S THE BEGINNING of summer 1949, and the June gloom is worse than usual, especially at night. Damp fog creeps in from the ocean and hangs over the city like a soggy blanket. The doctor tells me that the pains will start any day now, but maybe the weather has lulled my baby into inactivity or maybe he doesn’t want to come into a world so gray and cold when he is surrounded by warmth where he is. I don’t worry. I stay at home and wait.
Tonight Vern and Joy keep me company. Vern hasn’t been feeling well lately, so he’s asleep in his room. Joy has just one more week of fifth grade. From where I sit at the dining table, I can see her curled up on the couch and frowning. She doesn’t like practicing her times tables or seeing how fast she can complete the pages of long division her teacher has given her to increase her speed and accuracy.
I look back down at the newspaper. Today I’ve returned to it again and again, believing and then refusing to believe what I’ve read. Civil war is tearing apart my home country. Mao Tse-tung’s Red Army has been pushing across China as steadily and as relentless as the Japanese once did. In April, his troops seized control of Nanking. In May, he grabbed Shanghai. I remember the revolutionaries from the cafés I used to frequent with Z.G. and Betsy. I remember how Betsy used to get more riled up than they did, but for them to take over the country? Sam and I have talked a lot about this. His family were peasants. They had nothing. If they had lived, they would have had everything to gain from a Communist system, but I came from the bu-er-ch’iao-ya—bourgeois class. If my parents were still alive, they’d be suffering. Here, in Los Angeles, no one knows what will happen, but we hide our worries behind forced smiles, no-meaning words, and a constant false face presented to Occidentals, who are far more terrified of the Communists than we are.
I go to the kitchen to make tea. I’m standing in front of the sink, filling the teakettle, when I feel a rush of wetness down my legs. This is it! My water’s finally broken. Grinning, I look down, but what I see running down my legs and pooling on the floor is not water but blood. The fear that grips me starts somewhere in that down-below area and comes all the way up to my heart, which pounds in my chest. But this is like a small tremor compared with what happens next. A contraction wraps from my back to my belly button and pushes down with such ferocity that I think the baby will fall out in one fast whoosh. That doesn’t happen. I don’t even know if that could happen. But when I reach under my belly and pull up, more liquid gushes down my legs. Squeezing my thighs together, I shuffle to the kitchen door and call to my daughter.
“Joy, go find your auntie.” I hope May’s in her office and not out with the studio people she entertains to keep her business connections strong. “If she’s not in her office, go to the Chinese Junk. She likes to meet people there for dinner.”
“Ah, Mom—”
“Now! Go now.”
She looks at me. She can see only my head peeking out of the kitchen. For this I’m thankful. Still, my face must betray something, because she doesn’t try to fight me as she usually does. As soon as she leaves the apartment, I grab dish towels and press them between my legs. I sit back in my chair and grip the armrests to keep from screaming every time another contraction hits. I know they’re coming too fast. I know something is terribly wrong.
When Joy returns with May, my sister takes one look at me, grabs my daughter before she can see anything, and pulls her out of sight.
“Go to the café. Find your father. Tell him to meet us at the hospital.”
Joy leaves, and my sister comes to my side. Creamy red lipstick has turned her mouth into an undulating sea flower. Eyeliner widens her eyes. She wears an off-the-shoulder dress of periwinkle satin that hugs her body as closely as a cheongsam. I smell gin and steak on her breath. She looks in my face for a moment, then lifts my skirt. She tries not to reveal anything that will be less than a comfort, but I know her too well. Her head tilts as she takes in the blood-soaked towels. She sucks a tiny bit of her lip into her mouth and holds it between her right front tooth and the tip of her tongue. She smoothes my skirt carefully back over my knees.
“Can you walk to my car, or do you want me to call an ambulance?” she asks, her voice as calm as if she’s asking if I prefer her pink hat or the blue one with the ermine trim.
I don’t want to be any trouble, and I don’t like to waste money. “Let’s go in your car, so long as you don’t mind the mess.”
“Vern,” May calls. “Vern, I need you.” He doesn’t answer, and May goes down the hall to get him. They come back a minute or so later. The boy-husband’s hair is tousled and his clothes wrinkled from sleep. When he sees me, he starts to whimper.
“You take one side,” May instructs, “I’ll take the other.”
Together they help me up, and we walk downstairs. My sister’s grip is strong, but Vern feels like he’s crumbling under my weight. There’s some kind of fiesta on the Plaza tonight, and people pull away when they see me with my hand pressing something between my legs and my sister and Vern holding me up. No one likes to see a pregnant woman; no one likes to see such private business made public. May and Vern put me in the backseat of her car, and then she drives me the few blocks to the French Hospital. She parks in the porte cochere and runs inside for help. I stare out the window at the lights that illuminate the parking area. I breathe slowly, methodically. My stomach sits on my hands. It feels heavy and still. I remind myself that my baby is an Ox, just like his father. Even as a child, the Ox has willpower and inner stamina. I tell myself that my son is following his nature right now, but I’m very afraid.
Another contraction, the worst one yet.
May returns to the car with a nurse and a man, both dressed in white. They shout orders, put me on a gurney and wheel me into the hospital as fast as they can. May stays by my side, staring down at me, talking to me. “Don’t worry. Everything will be fine. Having a baby is painful in order to show how serious a thing life is.”
I grasp the metal bars on the sides of the gurney and grind my teeth. Sweat drenches my forehead, my back, my chest, and I shiver from cold.
The last thing my sister says as I’m wheeled into the delivery room is “Fight for me, Pearl. Fight to live like you did before.”
My baby son comes out, but he never breathes the air of this world. The nurse wraps him in a blanket and brings him to me. He has long lashes, a high nose, and a tiny mouth. While I hold my son, staring into his lonely face, the doctor works on me. Finally, he stands up and says, “We need to perform surgery, Mrs. Louie. We’re going to put you under.” When the nurse takes the baby away, I know I’ll never see him again. Tears run down my face as a mask is put over my nose and mouth. I’m grateful for the blackness that comes.