by You Jin
But I clearly overestimated my level of fitness this time. My pregnancy had made my legs swell badly, and the altitude aggravated the condition. I distinctly felt my feet swelling limitlessly in my tiny shoes, which soon became an instrument of torture. I was so miserable that, had I had a knife in hand, I would have been tempted to amputate my feet. They were swollen so badly, I had no choice but to go barefoot the whole time I was on the plane.
The seatbelt was another implement of torture. My stomach did not look big, but it was not, in fact, small. With the seatbelt pressing against my belly for such a long time, I felt like I could not breathe, and the small seat was so confining; I felt I could hardly change position in that miserable little space. Being trapped in the same sitting position over such a long time, I started to feel like a helpless, clumsy penguin, with my big belly and stiff, stubby legs.
I was really miserable and uncomfortable for the duration of the flight. But when my feet finally stepped on Californian soil, my energy returned, and all my discomfort vanished. The next day, I went to a department store and bought myself a pair of especially large shoes. I was once again able to run like the wind.
It was cherry season when we were in San Francisco. Everywhere we looked, there were blazing red cherries, making it seem the whole city was aglow. Having grown up in urban Singapore, where land was scarce, one of the things I enjoyed when I travelled was the chance to visit orchards. So we rented a car and drove to Napa Valley, America’s most famous wine valley. Vineyards overspread the place, and apricot, pear and orange orchards spread out like stars.
We drove and drove, then suddenly came across a large billboard with the words “Welcome Cherry Pickers” on it. We quickly pulled over. As soon as the orchard owner saw us, she said, with an expression of regret, “If you want to pick cherries you should come in April or May, during the rich season. I’m afraid there aren’t many cherries on the trees now.”
I explained that we came from an equatorial country and would really like to see the cherry trees. We had not really come in hopes of picking cherries for wholesale business.
She laughed heartily when she heard this, saying warmly, “You want to see cherry trees? That’s no problem. Of course that’s easy. I have over two hundred cherry trees in my orchard. That should be plenty for you to see!” She took a bamboo basket from a shelf and said, “Go ahead and pick some; when you’re done, bring them back here and I’ll weigh them.”
As soon as we walked into the orchard, I could not help but gasp. Every tree was a wonder, stunningly gorgeous. Each cherry was attached to a slender stalk, making it seem like they were holding onto the branches with delicate hands, twirling their little red dresses in the thick foliage, charming and cheerful.
We did not need to climb a ladder to pluck the cherries. The fruit was so full it made the branches droop, and all we had to do was reach out and yank and we had a handful of round, red cherries.
I ate as I picked, and picked as I ate. In that moment, I felt that my life was like the cherries in my palm: perfect, bright, rich and sweet.
We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly in San Francisco, then flew to Hawai‘i. In this tropical paradise, we soaked up the sea breeze, took in the sunshine and ate seafood, our days so leisurely it was as if the Earth forgot to move.
Our last stop on the holiday was South Korea. I was so rested after visiting Hawai‘i that I was full of energy. In Seoul, I could not sit still for a moment, practically forgetting all about my pregnancy.
The thing that made the greatest impression on me was our visit to Panmunjom, the Joint Security Area in the Korean Demilitarised Zone. At the time, it was a place where the two sides dialogued. There was a tunnel leading deep underground, where it was extremely dark and damp. A lot of tourists were too afraid to set foot in it. I was naïvely fearless as I stepped into the gaping hole, confidently gripping the staircase railing as I gradually made my descent. I was young then, and did not know the danger of my actions, or what the consequences might be if I missed my footing or lost hold with my hand. As we went deeper into the tunnel, it got harder to breathe. I realised the air was thin in the tunnel. As there was still a good portion of the journey to cover, I had to give up without completing the tour.
My favourite thing about Korea was the shockingly wide variety of hair-raising spicy pickles. It seemed that the Korean people had put all their rich imagination and unique creative energy into the production of pickles. Cabbage, cucumber, capsicum, white radish, vermicelli, bean sprouts, lotus, celery, eggplant, tofu—you name it, all were pickled with chilli powder until they were altered completely. At every meal, I had to have them, and ate them nonstop. As I ate, my tongue felt like it was on fire, the feeling spreading down my throat very rapidly, and then fiercely into my belly. I was afraid the flames would burn a cavern in the thin wall of my stomach. Sometimes as I ate, I felt wisps of steam rising from my scalp. I bought a whole lot of the stuff to take home with me, too.
It is hardly any surprise, then, that after my third child was born, it grew up with a spicy personality, with a heated response always on the tip of the tongue. I always referred to this child as “my little chilli”.
A Wish Fulfilled
The days flowed like a river, sweet and peaceful. Like I had done with my second pregnancy, I did not want to know the sex of the baby, even though ultrasounds were done. I was afraid the doctor might accidentally let the news slip, so every time I went for a check-up, I would remind her: “No matter what, don’t tell me if it is a boy or a girl.”
Later, whenever Dr Chen saw me, she would say on her own accord, “Don’t worry. I won’t tell you. I promise!”
My due date grew closer. In the middle of September, Dr Chen felt that the time was right, so she induced labour.
To me, inducing labour is an ideal way of going about the whole process, with everything being planned properly and the procedure moving along according to schedule, allowing for more peace of mind for the expecting mother. For a person of normal fitness, natural childbirth does not present a high risk, but situations that are unpredictable and difficult to control may still happen. Every time I read in the newspapers about pregnant women whose labour started suddenly, forcing them to give birth in taxis racing to the hospital or in crowded streets, I broke out in a cold sweat. I was too afraid to face such embarrassing situations. To use an analogy, natural childbirth is like letting a fruit ripen fully, and then wait for its dramatic drop from the tree. Inducing labour is more like calmly climbing a tree and plucking the fruit when you see that it is ripe.
We set the date to induce for 18 September 1984. The night before I was to give birth, our whole family went to a famous seafood restaurant at East Coast Park. I love crab, so that night we ordered one kilo of steamed crab, one kilo of black pepper crab, one kilo of baked crab, and one kilo of chilli crab. We feasted wildly and carelessly until I was too full to move.
The baked, fried and steamed crabs were so red, lovely and enticing, but crab meat is never within easy reach. It requires hard work and numerous twists and turns before you can dig, pick, poke or clip the extremely sumptuous meat from its hard shell to savour it slowly. Without sowing, would there be reaping? Even embedded in the small act of eating crab is a valuable philosophy of life.
With a belly full of good food, we went home and had a good night’s sleep. Early morning on the 18th, feeling like I was going on a vacation, I carried my suitcase full of books to Mt Elizabeth Hospital.
The baby was definitely very impatient. Shortly after they started the drip for the medication, I started to feel a dull pain in my belly. That kind of pain was not like the steady flow of a river. It grew tighter and closer with every wave, and while I was suffering this intense pain, I heard the nervous voice of the nurse, “Call Dr Chen to come quickly.”
From my prior experience, I knew that an induced labour would take at least four or five hours, but now, just two hours in, we had already entered the urgent mode of delivery. Eve
n the experienced Dr Chen felt it was unbelievably fast.
I have always been a person who likes to get things done quickly. I never imagined this would also apply to delivering a child.
Dr Chen, who already knew the secret but had kept quiet about it the whole time, said in a voice full of smiles, “It’s a girl! Congratulations! It’s a dream come true for you.”
I turned to look, and I saw the little crying face with pale skin and delicate features, an elegant face, a face that belonged to my girl.
At that moment I felt like I had flown to the top level of a tall building, and what held up the building was indescribable joy. That sort of joy was like brimming water, and I felt I would drown in it.
We named our daughter Lim Ke Jun, which was a pooling together of wisdom. My mother wanted her granddaughter to grow into an exquisite beauty, and my father hoped she would have great character. I hit on the idea of drawing these two wishes into one name, Ke Jun, with sincere wishes that this baby girl would grow up to possess both outer and inner beauty.
Through a friend’s introduction, I found a confinement nanny, around forty years old, slightly plump, with smiling face and a personality to match. She had been a confinement nanny for more than ten years. Infants were like clay in the palm of her hands, letting her mould them into whatever shapes she wanted. Sometimes the baby would cry nonstop, and there was nothing we could do to console her. But, oddly, as soon as the confinement nanny took the infant in her huge hands, it was like the surge was dammed up all at once. The face was restored to a calm state and the baby was content and well-behaved. Even stranger, it would not be long before the baby would smile and drift peacefully off to sleep.
This confinement nanny had excellent culinary skills. Everything she cooked for my confinement, like stir-fried pork liver and kidneys, vinegar pork trotters, red date chicken or wine chicken soup, was savoury and not oily. I could eat them over and over again, and not get tired of it. What was really pleasantly surprising was that she could also cook a lot of western food, like pork chops with mashed garlic, fried chicken chop and mushroom steak. These were big pieces of meat, but I could not detect any fatty meat taste. Instead, there was only a sort of exceptionally soft, rich taste that left me wanting more.
All three meals every day included something different. She even put her heart into making a variety of snacks. She prepared sesame cakes, longan soup, red date cakes and yellow milk crispy cakes, one after the other. I really enjoyed myself, replenishing both my emotional and physical strength.
My seven-pound daughter was absolutely beautiful. She had adorable double eyelids, bright big eyes, a sharp nose and a tiny mouth. When my friends came to visit, they always praised her to no end, saying, “Oh! She’s a little doll!” I smiled proudly and nodded in agreement.
James and I decided that, after the baby’s first full month, we would take two months to travel around the world, but we were not prepared for the nightmare that followed. What happened not only completely destroyed our beautiful holiday plans; it almost took my life.
CHAPTER 6
The Whirlpool of Life
Nightmare
ON 18 OCTOBER 1984, my precious daughter celebrated her first month. We held a banquet, and she wore a new silk dress, pearly white with little flowers hand-embroidered exquisitely at the collar and sleeves. Her rosy, soft face was so delicate, making her look like a life-sized doll from all angles.
Looking at the adorable little thing in my arms, my heart was a confused jumble of maternal feelings. On the one hand, I hoped she would quickly grow up, and sit shoulder to shoulder with me, chatting and pouring her heart out to me. On the other hand, I wanted her to grow slowly, so that our time together could drag on as long as possible.
After her first month, I gave the confinement nanny her pay, along with an extra-large ang pow. Following traditional customs, I also bought her a pair of red-coloured clogs, then reluctantly sent her back to her home in Chinatown.
According to our original plan, I would rest for a couple of weeks, then James and I would travel. My daughter was to stay with the nanny, and Fung Yee and Fung Teck would go with the standard operating procedure and spend their holiday with my mother-in-law in Ipoh. The event that I never want to relive occurred in the space of those two short weeks.
Books had always been my second life, but when things got very busy at work, I had to find cracks in my schedule to squeeze in my reading. Now, on this extended holiday, I could lose myself in the leisurely world of books. But after the confinement nanny left, I felt a sense of foreboding as my daughter and I were left alone together.
My daughter slept sweetly in the basinet beside my bed. A fruity, floral fragrance filled the room. Everything was tranquil and lovely. But for some reason, I was antsy and suspicious. Any small sound was enough to startle me half out of my wits. There were a number of stray cats outside the house and every time they wailed, it felt like someone was brutally stepping on my nerve endings, making my hair stand on end and my body break out in a cold sweat. Every single time a cat meowed, I jumped.
I knew there was something wrong with me, but I was not sure what the problem was. I could not enter the literary world I loved so much. As soon as I opened a book, the words on the pages turned into an army of creeping ants, so I switched to watching television.
Even when I was watching a soap opera filled with noise and gaiety, my face was as dark as a tropical rainforest covered in thick smoke, and I could not make myself smile or laugh. When I watched a tragic show, my emotions followed the story, and I would cry my heart out, bawling until my face was a tear-streaked mess; I felt as if my heart were being torn from my chest.
My emotions affected my appetite. No matter what delicacies were set before me, I could not be enticed. Sometimes, I only wanted a bit of bread and plain water for my meal.
What was even worse was that I could not sleep at night. I would count all the sheep I could, but my tired eyes still stared blankly at the ceiling, practically boring a hole into it. Sometimes, as soon as I managed to force myself to sleep, my daughter’s cries would wake me, and I would crawl out of bed in a daze. Seeing her crying in her bed, I felt helpless, and would just stand there crying as well. I did not know why I was crying, but I could not control myself. I felt like I had fallen miserably into a dark maze. No, that’s not right—it was more like a demonic hand had come out of nowhere and pushed me into a bottomless pit.
I have always generally enjoyed good health and cured the occasional illnesses with over-the-counter medicine. For that reason, I was not very inclined to call on my doctor, but on this occasion, I had no way to heal myself, so I went for a consultation.
There was a clinic not far from my house. The attending doctor was a young male doctor. Weeping, I listed my symptoms to him— heart palpitations, anxiety, insomnia, loss of appetite. After I had laid out the situation, the doctor explained gently that childbirth consumed a large amount of physical strength and vitality, and it was possible that my body lacked certain vitamins or nutrients, causing symptoms of functional disorder to appear. If I supplemented my diet with multivitamins, he said, my normal health would return in a short period of time.
He prescribed some vitamins and, at my request, added some sleeping pills. When I went home, I followed his directions and took the vitamins on schedule but, after a while, I still had not seen any effect.
My malady worsened with each passing day. The anxiety was so acute that I not only jumped at the slightest sound, but even when the baby cried, my heart began beating like I was entering a dark cavern. I loved my precious daughter but, to my utter sorrow and bewilderment, I did not dare carry her. Every time she cried, I wept even more intensely than she did.
A number of times in the middle of the quiet night, when I saw the sleeping pills beside my bed, I felt like snatching them and swallowing them all at once. I did not realise that I had actually walked into an extremely dangerous zone.
As time went on, it
was like one form of suffering added on top of another. My muscles were always tense, like a bow pulled taut, threatening to snap. At the same time, there was also a sharp pain, spreading out like a fountain in my back. It was like nails being drilled deeply, one after another, into every inch of my back. Often, the pain was so intense I could see nothing but blackness before my eyes, and my stomach would start cramping.
What was wrong with me? What was going on?
I went back to the same clinic and explained my situation to the same doctor. He suggested I go to the hospital for x-rays to see what was wrong with my back. I went right away, but everything was normal. They could not find anything wrong with my back.
Medically, there seemed to be nothing wrong with me, but everything was wrong with my body. It was like being thrown into a dark prison, living a life worse than death, but not knowing what crime I had committed. That sort of mental torture was even worse than the physical pain, and much harder to bear.
I could not eat or sleep, and gradually lost interest in everything. I could not read. I could not watch TV. I lay on the bed with my hands and legs spread out, while the evil God of Death hovered before my eyes. I just wanted to go to sleep and never wake up.
James observed all of this, but could not understand what was causing it; the anxiety he suffered was not any less than mine. One day, he placed a stack of travel material in front of me and faked excitement, “We’re about to go on a holiday, you better start reading up on the travel brochures.”
I said despondently, “I don’t want to go anywhere. Cancel the plane tickets.”
James looked at me with a pained expression, reflecting an even greater inner suffering. After a while he said, “You should see your gynaecologist and see what she has to say.”