The Expatriates (30 page)

A
BABY
SLEEPS
in a hospital bassinet, swaddled in a pink blanket. Mercy, exhausted, lies in bed, watching her. She has not slept for three days, for fear that the baby will stop breathing, a fear that has no foundation in reality save her own realization that she will die if her baby dies, that there is no way she can exist without this little one next to her.

No one told her how excruciating everything would be: the white-hot exhaustion, the fear of expelling anything, anything at all, from her shredded private areas, the way she woke up this morning with rock-hard melons on her chest that felt like they might burst at the slightest touch. She nods off and wakes up, goes to the bathroom to look at her drawn face, says to herself, “I’m a mother.” She acknowledges her new self, tries to get used to it, all the while fighting the urge to run away, out of the room, to find her old world, her old self, which she knows is gone forever. Her belly is loose and flabby, missing its occupant. She has stared in the mirror at her naked body, lifted up the flesh of her abdomen, let it flop down, marveling at the difference.

Her mother is busy, pouring all her anxieties into cooking seaweed soup and bringing it to her in the hospital, insisting she have it fresh for every meal, so that means she is mostly alone, she and her baby, alone in a room that looks over the racetrack in Happy Valley. The baby is quiet, sleeping most of the time, so the room is eerily silent, save for some faint sucking sounds. So she spends a lot of time looking at all the windows in the apartment buildings and imagining the lives that are going on inside and marveling at the fact that every single one of those people was born, just like this baby.

The baby is such a scrap of a thing, with teeny hands and soft nails that are somehow also razor sharp. Her mouth purses into a rosebud, making Mercy’s heart stop with love. At the birth, the baby didn’t draw breath for a few beats, but then she inhaled and let out a good cry. Her Apgar scores were seven and eight, and Mercy was a bit indignant that already her daughter was being subjected to a standardized test.

This child is hers. When the baby stirs, moving her head a little, letting out a mewl, Mercy loosens her hospital robe so her chest is exposed, carefully unswaddles her baby, and sits down, leans back, and holds her baby, flesh to her flesh. Someone watching her might think it felt natural.

Sometimes she takes her sleeping baby in the rolling bassinet and perambulates through the halls, passes other mothers doing the same, all moving slowly, with their sore, weak gait, as if they are holding basketballs between their thighs. Most are accompanied by their partners or by their other children. They smile and nod, coo over one another’s babies. Mercy likes to go to the nursery and see all the other babies, most sleeping, some sucking on pacifiers, all terrifyingly similar, with their old baby faces. She has not put her baby in the nursery, preferring to keep her with her in her room.

She has had no visitors except her mother, although David has indicated that he will come in the next few days—after she has had a few days to adjust, is how he put it in the e-mail. It is more for him to adjust, she thinks, but without too much resentment.

She sits there a moment longer, and then the baby mewls again.

Mercy sits up, moves so the baby’s face is next to her giant breast. The baby’s mouth opens but cannot get a hold of the rock-hard breast, and Mercy winces from the slicing pain that comes from the avid mouth. Milk starts to spray out from her nipple, and the baby’s lips get wet and slippery, and suckling becomes even more impossible. Mercy closes her eyes in agony, the baby tries again, cannot latch, starts its thin, desperate cry. Mercy tears up in frustration.

A knock at the door. Usually it is a nurse to take her blood pressure
or to give her some pills for iron deficiency or a doctor to check the clipboard.

Mercy looks up and cannot reconcile who is there. The woman who should hate her the most in the world, who should be the last person to see her with her own baby, to see her with anything good.

She cannot talk, cannot say hello, just gapes, and then, as the baby tries again to get a hold and fails, and starts to wail in earnest, she starts to cry herself.

“Oh, lord,” says Margaret. “These are terrible days. I know. They say it’s the best time of your life, but it’s also the worst.”

And then, behind her, Mercy sees another woman. She knows who it is immediately, although she has not met her. Another woman who should not be here, who should not see her with this baby, a bastard child from her own husband. Yet here these women are, bearing what she can see are flowers and food and gifts. So they are not here to torture or demand retribution. But how can it be?

She doesn’t understand.

“She’s hungry,” Mercy says. “But my milk came in, and my boobs are so hard it’s like she’s trying to get on a flat surface. So she can’t latch on. They didn’t say anything about this in the books.”

Margaret immediately goes out and gets a nurse and tells her she needs a breast pump. When the nurse wheels one in a few minutes later, Margaret brings it over and says, “When your breasts get like that, you have to pump off some milk so the breast becomes softer, and then the baby can latch on. May I?”

She gently moves the robe aside so the breast is exposed. She puts the pump over the nipple and starts the machine. Soon milk is spraying out from multiple ducts and collecting in the bottle underneath.

“I always thought that was so cool,” Margaret says. “I used to love to watch the milk coming out when I was pumping.”

Mercy can feel her breast softening. Relief floods her body.

“Okay,” she says. “It seems pretty soft now.”

They remove the pump, and she wipes off the milk on her breast
and moves her baby toward her. The baby’s mouth opens, and she clamps on. Mercy arches her back in pain.

“Oh, no,” says Margaret. “You have to get her lower lip out, do you see? Otherwise, she’s sucking directly on the nipple and it will be unbearable. Do you want to try again?”

Mercy shakes her head. “I just want her to eat right now,” she says.

There is a silence.

“Do you have a name?” Hilary asks.

Mercy cannot look her in the eye. “Not yet,” she says. “It seems so impossible to name her, to give her that so soon.”

“I know,” Margaret says. “They’re kind of like strangers in the beginning, although it’s awful to say.”

Another silence.

“Thank you,” Mercy says. “I can’t believe you’re here. I can’t believe that you would come.”

“It seems like the right thing to do,” Margaret says. “Becoming a mother is the most life-changing event in a woman’s life.”

Hilary nods. She grins suddenly. “But don’t let your man know,” she says.

Mercy looks down. Her baby is sucking, eyes looking up at her fiercely, as if to claim her.

“I remember with my daughter,” Margaret says, “when she nursed, it scared me, because she was so primal about it. She looked at me, and it rattled me, because I realized she owned me absolutely and she was letting me know. It was life and death. It was real, and it was forever.”

That Margaret is echoing Mercy’s thoughts is unnerving.

“Has . . . David . . . come?” Hilary asks delicately.

Mercy shakes her head. The other women sigh, almost imperceptibly. They have all been disappointed in life, and this is just another instance.

“But he said he would,” she says lamely, although she doesn’t know why she feels the need. “I think in the next few days he will.”

“Good,” Hilary says.

They sit and listen to the baby suckle.

“Listen,” Margaret says, “I know you must be uncomfortable on so many different levels, but I just wanted to come, and so did Hilary. No agenda.”

Mercy nods. “Thank you,” she says. “Thank you.” She is overwhelmed with gratitude. Is this how new lives are born? she wonders. Is this how you make a new start? Not just her baby, not just her daughter. A new life for everyone, for herself maybe, where a simple but unimaginable act of kindness, of forgiveness, can hit the reset button, make everything seem possible, make hope reappear.

The women sit quietly in the sunlit room, each thinking her own impossibly complicated thoughts. The door opens. It is Mercy’s mother, carrying a thermos of newly made soup for her child. She looks at the scene with confusion. All three women turn toward her, their faces open and expectant. They are all of them women. They are all of them mothers. They know who she is.

Writing a book is, among other things, an exercise in how much time you can spend alone, so it’s crucial that when you emerge you are with people you like.

I like these people, for their friendship and advice: Mimi Brown, Ann Chen, Deborah Cincotta, Rachael Combe, Kate Gellert, Eunei Lee, Elaina Richardson, Katie Rosman, Gary Shteyngart, Pat Towers.

My agent, Theresa Park, is a marvel of efficiency and empathy, immediate with responses, soothing with assurances.

Abby Koons, Emily Sweet, Alex Greene, Andrea Mai, Peter Knapp, and Emily Owen are the dream team at the Park Literary Group who make my life better in so many different ways.

I thank the wonderful people at Viking Penguin for their unbelievable support of my work. They have made a dream home for me.

Kathryn Court is my wise and gracious editor; Lindsey Schwoeri, her able associate; Brian Tart and Andrea Schulz, crucial supporters; Kate Stark, Carolyn Coleburn, Lindsay Prevette, Lydia Hirt, Mary Stone, Meredith Burks, Emma Mohney, John Lawton, Christopher Dufault, Erin Reilly, Morgan Green, Phil Budnick, John Fagan, Kate Griggs, Candy Gianetti, Francesca Belanger, Paul Buckley, Nayon Cho, Victoria Savanh, Paul Slovak, and Clare Ferraro are all proof that publishing is full of people who love books and reading and live in a world inspired by these things. I sincerely apologize if I
have inadvertently left someone out as I know so many people worked so hard to produce this book.

In the UK, Julian Alexander and Clare Smith have been long-standing and ardent supporters.

My former teachers Chang-rae Lee and Abby Thomas continue to light the way with their inspiring work.

Katherine Olivetti and Alia Eyres shared professional insights on psychotherapy and local adoption in Hong Kong. Any errors in interpreting the knowledge they were kind enough to dispense are my own.

Gratitude to my parents, my brother’s family, and the extended Bae family.

And lastly and most, most importantly, BIG love and wonder for my family:

Joe, Owen, Daniel, Sarah, and James: Everything would be nothing without you.

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