Shanghai Girls (Shanghai Girls #1)(46)

Lately, she’s had as much trouble sleeping as I do. “Your son likes to kick me as soon as I lie down and there’s no room inside me anymore for him and me. I need to go to the toilet all the time,” she confided a week ago with such tenderness—as if peeing is such a precious gift—that I couldn’t help but love her and the infant she carried for me. Still, we’ve promised each other that we won’t go alone to the toilets. I reach for my clothes and my pillow baby. Even this late at night, I can’t risk being seen not looking pregnant. I button my jacket over my fake belly and get up.

She isn’t in the toilets, so I move on to the showers. When I enter, my chest freezes and my stomach clenches. The room couldn’t look more different from the one in my dreams, but there on the floor is my sister with her pants off, her face white with pain, and her private parts … exposed, bulging, frightening.

May reaches an arm out to me. “Pearl—”

I run to her side, slipping on the watery tiles.

“Your son is coming,” she says.

“You were supposed to wake me up—”

“I didn’t realize things had gone so far.”

Many times late at night or when we could separate ourselves just a bit when the missionary ladies took us for our weekly walks around the property, we’ve discussed what we’d need when the time came. We’ve made plan after plan and gone over detail after detail. In my mind I tick off the things the women we quizzed had said: you experience pains until pretty soon you feel like you’re going to fart a winter melon, you go to a corner, squat, the baby falls out, you clean it, wrap it, and then rejoin your husband in the paddies with your baby tied to you by a long cloth. Of course, all this is very different from how things were done in Shanghai, where for months women retreated from parties, shopping, and dancing before going to a Western-style hospital, where they were put to sleep. When they woke up, they’d be handed their babies. Then, for the next two or three weeks, they’d stay in the hospital, entertaining visitors and being cherished for bringing a son to the family. Finally, they’d go home in time for the one-month party to introduce the baby to the world and receive praise from family, neighbors, and friends. The Shanghai way isn’t possible here, but as May has said so many times these past few weeks, “Country women have been having babies by themselves forever. If they can do it, I can too. And we’ve been through a lot. I haven’t had a lot to eat, and what I’ve eaten, I’ve thrown up. The baby won’t be big. It will come out easily.”

We’d talked about where the baby could be born and had settled on the showers as the one place where the other women were most afraid to venture. Even so, women sometimes took showers during the day. “I won’t let the baby come out then,” May had promised.

Now, thinking back on it, I realize that May has probably been in labor most of the day, resting on her bunk, her knees up, her legs crossed, keeping the baby inside.

“When did the pains start? How long between them?” I ask, remembering that these are clues to how much longer it will be until the baby breathes air.

“They started this morning. They weren’t so bad, and I knew I had to wait. Suddenly, I started feeling like I needed to use the toilet. The water came out when I came in here.”

That has to be the water soaking my feet and knees.

She clutches my hand when a contraction grips her. Her eyes shut and her face reddens as she swallows her agony. She squeezes my hand, digging her nails into my palm so deeply that I’m the one who wants to scream. When the contraction ends, she takes a breath and her hand relaxes in mine. An hour later, I see the top of the baby’s head.

“Do you think you can squat?” I ask.

May whimpers in response. I get behind her and pull her to a wall so she can prop herself against it. I get between her legs. I clasp my hands before me and close my eyes to gather my courage. I open my eyes, look into my sister’s pained face, and try to put as much conviction as I can into my voice as I repeat to her what she’s said to me so many times these past weeks. “We can do this, May. I know we can.”

When the baby slips out, it isn’t the son that we talked about. It’s a wet, mucus-covered girl—my daughter. She’s tiny, even smaller than I expected. She doesn’t cry. Instead, she makes little sounds like the plaintive calls of a baby bird.

“Let me see.”

I blink and look at my sister. Her hair hangs in wet strings, but all traces of pain have faded from her face. I hand her the baby and stand.

“I’ll be right back,” I say, but May isn’t listening to me. She’s wrapped her arms around the baby, protecting it from the shock of cold air and wiping away the goo from its face with her sleeve. I stare at them for a moment. This is all the time they’ll have together before I take the baby for my own.

As quickly and quietly as I can, I scurry back to the dormitory. I pull out one of the outfits May and I made, a ball of yarn, a small pair of scissors the missionary ladies gave us to help with our handiwork projects, some sanitary supplies, and two towels we bought from the concession stand. I grab the teapot from atop the radiator and hurry back to the showers. By the time I get there, May has expelled the afterbirth. I tie yarn around the umbilical cord and cut it. Then I dampen one end of the clean towel with hot water from the teapot and hand it to May to clean the baby. I use some of the water and the other towel to clean May. The baby was small, so the tearing isn’t all that bad compared with what happened to me down in that area. I hope she’ll heal without stitches. But in truth, what else can I do? I barely know how to sew a seam. How can I stitch my sister’s private parts?