My Year of Meats (38 page)

Meanwhile, inside, changes,

Akiko lay there, enthralled. It was a bloody business, full of

Holding her breath, Akiko watched it happen. And when her child-to-be was safely embedded, she let out her breath with a long sigh and fell sound asleep.

 

 

In the morning, Nurse Tomoko came to take her for the X-ray.

“I can’t,” Akiko said apologetically.

Nurse Tomoko looked surprised. “But yesterday it was fine....”

Akiko looked at her, and for the first time, she smiled. “I know. Yesterday I didn’t know. But last night, you see ...”

Nurse Tomoko waited.

Akiko wasn’t sure, but she decided to continue. “I don’t know if you can say this or not, seeing as he is my husband, but, well, about a week ago ... he sort of ... he raped me. He did it in the back and the front....”

Nurse Tomoko took Akiko’s hand and squeezed it hard. “That’s terrible.... I thought something like that might have—”

But Akiko interrupted her. “It’s not important. What I wanted to say was it fertilized the egg, you see, and last night I conceived ... so I can’t have the X-ray.”

“You what?”

“A baby. I’m pregnant.”

“How ... how do you know this?”

“I watched the whole thing.”

Nurse Tomoko frowned. She laid her hand on Akiko’s forehead, checking for a fever. She looked deep into Akiko’s eyes. Akiko looked up at her, met her gaze, and laughed.

“You think I’m a crazy woman,” she declared, suddenly bold. “A fool. That’s it, isn’t it?”

Nurse Tomoko nodded. “Yes,” she agreed. “You sound crazy. What exactly did you see?”

“It was so beautiful.” Akiko sighed. “Like one of those science documentaries on television. I could see it up close in my mind, from the fertilization right through the implantation, the little blastocyst burrowing deep into my uterine tissue. Well, it’s going to take a while longer to really settle in there, but to all intents and purposes, I’m pregnant....”

“How do you know about all this?” asked Nurse Tomoko, amazed. “These words: blastocyst, implantation ...”

Akiko lowered her eyes. “I used to write articles for maternity magazines,” she said modestly. “It was my specialty.”

Nurse Tomoko leaned her hip against the bed and folded her arms. “I don’t know what to say,” she said finally. “I’ll have to tell Doctor, of course, but if you do think you are pregnant, then you certainly shouldn’t have the X-rays. We could order a pregnancy test....”

Akiko shook her head. “Too early. The HCG won’t show up for another couple of days.”

This time Nurse Tomoko laughed. “Fine,” she said. “You’re the expert.”

 

 

“You can’t just go back there,” Tomoko said, sitting dolefully on the edge of the bed.

A week had passed. The doctor had told Akiko that if she refused the X-ray, she would have to stay longer in the hospital for observation, but Akiko suspected that Tomoko had talked him into it. Tomoko was worried about her state of mind and Akiko appreciated her concern, but she also knew that her state of mind had never been better. She was impatient to leave. She didn’t want to hurt Tomoko’s feelings, though. They had become friends.

“I have to,” said Akiko. “I can’t stay here. I’ve been here too long already.”

“Don’t you have any relatives you could stay with?”

“No, not really. I’ll be all right.”

“How long will he be gone?”

“At least another week.”

“Look,” said Tomoko, blushing. “I could take you back to your place and help you pack, and then you could come stay with me. For a while. Until you work things out ...”

Akiko didn’t know what to do. She’d never had a friend before and didn’t know if it would be rude to say no.

“Thank you, Tomoko. But I really must go home....”

Tomoko scowled. “You’re not going to stay with him when he comes back, are you? You’re not going to stick around so he can beat you up again ... ?”

“I don’t know....”

“Akiko, please,” said Tomoko, grabbing her arm and shaking it. “You must leave him immediately. Can you do this? Do you have someplace to go?”

The first step to a happy life ... ,
Akiko thought to herself, and she smiled at her new friend. “Yes,” she answered. “I have someplace to go.”

Ma could tell right away, just by looking. “You throw away your baby,” she said with disgust.

We were standing in the kitchen and I’d just barely taken off my coat and the accusation caught me off guard, so cruel and sudden. I’d spent a week in New York by myself, unable to edit, unable to do anything but cry, and I couldn’t bear it, so I’d come running home to Ma for comfort. Stupid. I stood in the middle of the kitchen, holding on to my coat, with the damn tears dripping down my face. Ma looked terrified. Now that I think about it, she probably hadn’t seen me cry since I was seven or eight and much smaller than her, a size that could still be comforted. Not that she ever did much of that. But in a small child, sorrow is manageable. Now she shuffled suspiciously over to me, looked up into my face, then took me by the wrist and led me to a chair. I held tight to the coat, but she pried it from my fingers and hung it carefully on a hook by the door. Then she turned and came back and stood next to me.

“Why you throw away baby if you gonna be so sad?” she asked, but her tone was softer and she placed her hand on the top of my head, not stroking, not patting or pulling me to her, but just resting it there firmly as though to keep my head from rolling away.

“I didn’t mean to ...,” I said in that normal voice I can use even when I’m weeping and my heart is breaking. “I didn’t mean to throw it away. It was a miscarriage. I lost the baby. It was a boy. I really wanted him, Ma.”

And then she did the last thing I expected, even from Ma. She laughed. She laughed and then patted my head briskly and withdrew her hand. The shock stopped my tears, and I stared at her. She went over to the stove and poured hot water into the teapot and brought it to the table. She sat down and poured us each a cup of green tea.

“Drink this. You feel better.”

“Ma, why did you
laugh?”
I could hear the childish whine and accusation pinch my voice. “You think it’s funny?”

“No,” she said, wrapping her hands around the teacup to warm them. “No funny. I lose four babies before you. You only one tough enough baby to last. But I keep trying, you know? Until success.”

“Ma, that’s terrible. I never knew that.”

“Why say? Not your business. Now it your business, so I say.”

“When did you lose them? How many months?”

Ma shrugged. “One, two, three ... I forget. All different.”

I took a deep breath. I had to ask again.

“And are you sure Doc Ingvortsen didn’t give you some pills to make your pregnancy last? With me, I mean?”

“Why you keep talking about some pill? I can’t remember. Sure, I try everything. Some vitamin, some Doctor Ing-san medicine. It don’t matter. Only one thing matter.” Ma’s face suddenly closed, and her expression turned furtive.

“What’s that?” I’ve been trained to know a secret when I see one.

She looked at me long and hard, then sighed and gave in. “After losing number four baby, I try new method....”

“Yes?” I prodded. “What was that?”

“You know Japanese
go-en?”
she asked.

“You mean the five-yen coin? With the hole in it?”

“Yes. You know what other meaning for
go-en?”

“What, like a connection? Like when you have a good connection or relationship with someone?”

Ma nodded grimly. “I think I need
go-en
with my number five baby, so I put it in my mouth when I sex with your father. But I not have real
go-en
from Japan, so I use American nickel instead. I think, This is America, so close enough.” She shrugged.

“You mean you had sex with Dad with a nickel in your mouth?!” I burst out laughing. “Ma, that’s crazy.”

She looked at me, distant and haughty, then suddenly she smiled. “Dad think so too. He wonder, ‘Why you don’t like kiss me anymore, Michi?’ ”

“Ma, how long did this go on?”

“Long time. Every time. And every time it not work. But I never give up, you know? I think, This is my good idea. And then one night was ... special night. And then you came!”

As an editor, I knew she had jumped ahead in her story and was forcing the conclusion. The note she ended on rang false. She was leaving something out. “Ma, what do you mean? What was special? What happened?”

She paused and took a long sip of tea. And then another. Then she poured another cup.

“Not your business,” she concluded, and looked at me out of the corner of her eye. But I was not going to give up on this one. I don’t know what I expected. Some clue to my own reproductive difficulties, perhaps. Or maybe it was just a prurient interest in my own conception.

“Forget it, Ma. It is totally my business. I need to know about this. You have to tell me.”

She sighed again. “Dad, he come home with bottle of France wine and say he going to make me romantic again. Make me want to kissing again. And he give me France wine, much too much. And then we get ready to bed, so I look all over house for nickel to put in my mouth, and finally I find one and go up to bedroom and lie down. And then we sex, and just at that time, he kiss me so hard I swallow my nickel just like that! And that was night you are made.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “I can’t believe this, Ma.”

“It is truth. I swallow nickel and you come. And stay with me for whole time. We have
go-en,
you see? Next time, you try with your husband. It work, you see.”

“Ma, you know I’m not married. And I’m sorry. I just don’t believe in these ancient Oriental superstitions.”

Ma stiffened. “What ancient?” she replied.

“You know what it means—like ‘old-fashioned.’ ”

“I know
meaning
of ‘ancient,’” she said, affronted. “Nickel in mouth is not
ancient
custom.”

“I thought you ...”

“No,” Ma answered. “I am modern woman. I just make it up.”

I don’t know why I got so annoyed. Maybe because she was so stubborn, so adamant, so sure she was right. Or maybe because she was so credulous, which is why she would have taken the DES in the first place. Or maybe it was her carelessness I blamed her for. Or maybe mine.

“Ma, I have something to tell you. You say the medicine that Dr. Ingvortsen gave you didn’t matter, but that’s not true. It did matter. It made me sick, when I was still inside you. That’s why it’s been so hard for me to get pregnant. That’s why I miscarried this baby.”

Ma just stared at me.

“The pills damaged my uterus and my cervix—inside me, all the parts you need to make a baby, Ma. They never developed properly. Do you remember the tumor I had operated on in Japan? That was part of it. I had
cancer.”

Ma shook her head. “Why Doc Ing-san give me bad medicine?”

“He didn’t know. Nobody knew then.”

She pursed her lips and shook her head. “No,” she concluded. “It is not possible.”

I lost it. “How can you sit there and be so sure?” I shouted. “You think you’re so smart, that you know everything. But you don’t. You just did whatever people told you to—Dad, Doc Ingvortsen, Grammy and Grampa.... The drug was a hormone. It fucked me up so I’ll probably never have a baby. And I could get cancer again. When I’m in my forties, the risk increases again. I could still die of this, Ma.”

Ma sat very still. “It is my fault?” she asked quietly. She looked so little all of a sudden, and crestfallen, but her spine was still ramrod straight and her hands were folded tightly in her lap. I couldn’t look at her.

“Jane-chan, I feel sorrow for you. But why you blame me? Only I try everything possible to make healthy baby—maybe take some pills, maybe swallow nickel. I try everything. Did you?”

I couldn’t answer.

“I am sorry for taking bad medicine that hurt you, Jane. I did not know it. But you are wrong for blaming me.” She reached over and held my wrist. “I never blaming you. I not blaming you for being too big baby that break me to pieces inside when you come out. Doc say I almost die. And bleeding and bleeding, so he take out my inside woman parts. No more chance for babies. All gone. But it’s okay, I think. Because I am so lucky to get my big, tough American baby like you.” She smiled at me and patted my hand proudly.

I put my head down on the linoleum tabletop and cried. Ma didn’t say anything, just kept patting my hand.

 

 

I stayed in Quam for two weeks. Ma and I didn’t talk too much about the sad stuff anymore, but we were gentle with each other and she made all my favorite Japanese foods, the ones she used to make when I was little and sick—savory egg custards, rice gruels, pickled plums. We ate quietly and talked about the past a lot, because the future had been taken away. But I couldn’t forget it. My breasts were swollen and painful and leaking a little, and I was still bleeding heavily. I drove to the county clinic where I’d first gone to get the pregnancy test, and remembering made me cry again, and I sat in the car in the parking lot until I was finished.

The doctor examined me and said the bleeding was normal, and he gave me a prescription that he said should ease the swelling in my breasts. I had it filled at the pharmacy and on the way home I stopped at the Quam Public Library.