The Leavers(54)

“Looking at the clock instead of doing work,” my neighbor sang, firing off another shirt.

“Mind your own business,” I sang back. I did three shirts successfully, but the detours had thrown off my game. Again I looked at the clock. The woman next to me picked up a fresh pile of shirts, my first pile unfinished. Your sobs had sputtered out into hyperventilating hiccups.

I crouched down. When you saw me, you held your arms up.

“Little Deming,” I said. “Mama’s right here.”

It was hot down there. Dusty. Beneath the table, I saw feet pressing their machine pedals. One woman wore mismatched socks, another a sneaker with a hole in the side. I kissed you. “Mama’s busy now,” I said, in a soothing tone I hoped matched Didi’s. “Be quiet for a moment, and I’ll feed you soon.”

I put you down and sat back in my chair. Finally, you were quiet. The woman next to me was already on her third pile of shirts, but at least I’d finished one.

Fold, press, sew. Fold, press, sew. You were crying again. I raced the serger to the end of the fabric and threw the shirt into the finished stack. “Hold on,” I said, but you were screaming. I fumbled for a bottle, struggling to lift you while keeping you obscured inside the box, one hand behind your neck, the bottle in my right armpit. You tugged at the bottle. My knees hurt from squatting. You yanked, I lost my balance, and as I fell backwards my head hit the underside of the table. Ass to the floor, the bottle slipped from my hands and fell into the box, landing on your legs. You wailed. I rubbed my head. That was how the forelady found me, under the table with a crying baby and a box of fabric stained with spilled formula.

THAT’S WHEN I WALKED out. Down the block, past Grand, Pitt, Madison, Pike. Clinton, Henry, Essex, Cherry. Cars honked as I zigzagged in the middle of the street with you strapped to my chest. Montgomery, Jackson, Water.

I didn’t know where I was going. I paused at the chain-link fence of a playground, no children outside on this late September day, just crooked basketball hoops, a flag flapping in front of an elementary school and a row of tall buildings in the background. The forelady had given me the rest of my shift off without pay, said I could keep my job as long as I showed up tomorrow without a baby.

My brain returned to calculating how little I would make this month. Even if I worked fourteen-hour shifts there wouldn’t be enough to pay rent and the loan shark and a babysitter. Didi’s mother was sick.

To the water, then, with its choppy gray waves, the muffled thumping of cars on the bridge above. The row of benches deserted on a weekday afternoon. Barges floated along the river.

I was so tired. All I wanted was to be by myself in a silent, dark room.

Send him back. It’s the only way.

You kicked me like you wanted to be freed. I don’t want to tell you what I did.

Fast now, before I could change my mind, looking around to make sure no one could see me, I set the bag on the pavement under the bench and lowered you inside. The bag was taller than you, its sides a stiff, insulated plastic. When I got up I was lighter, relieved.

I ran.

“I’M SORRY, I’M SORRY!”

You sobbed. I squeezed your body against mine.

I’d gone almost two blocks before coming to a crosswalk. The light was moving from yellow to red, but a bus was slowly making its way through the intersection. If the light had remained yellow a moment longer, if there’d been no bus, would I have kept running?

But I did return, and the bag was there, and you were still inside.

I stroked your hair. “Mama,” you said again. “Ma-ma!”

I called Yi Ba and told him I had a son I was sending to the village until I paid down my debt and until you were old enough to go to school in New York.

Yi Ba made a sound like he was clearing mucus. “Hrm. Going all the way to America to end up pregnant.” He said he would take you, he’d accept any money I sent home. “But to take care of your son. He needs the money, not me.”

Didi’s sister, who’d married her American-born boyfriend in Boston, wanted to visit their mother in China. I took out another loan and offered to pay for the sister’s flight if she brought you to Yi Ba.

I packed a bag with your clothes, pillow, and a photo of the two of us taken in a tourist booth at the South Street Seaport. In the photo my face was shadowed by sun and you looked cranky and hot. The background was a cartoon Statue of Liberty, a checkered yellow cab, and the Empire State Building all on the same block.

The night before you left, I stayed up and memorized your face. We fell asleep curled together. In the morning, my eyes pink and crusty from crying, I gave you to Didi’s sister. You stayed asleep. Didi walked with you and her sister to the airport bus on East Broadway, but I didn’t go with them. I couldn’t bear to watch you carried off in another woman’s arms and trust that you’d be okay, that I would see you again.

After you left I lay with my face against the spot on the pillow where you had slept. The spot, which had been so warm only minutes ago, was now cold.

Ming tapped my shoulder. “Polly. Hey.” She shook my arm. “You did the right thing.”

I didn’t believe it, at the time.





Eight



In the end, he hadn’t expected it to be this easy. Leon answered on the second ring, and hearing his voice felt like being petted by a pair of giant hands. “Deming! You sound like a grown-up! I was waiting for your call. Vivian said she was going to see you.”