by Ann Hood
Almost immediately, she craved something she could not name. It was as if she wanted to swallow him up. No. As if she needed to. Her hunger for everything was enormous: food and heat, certain music played loud, fresh air, and sex. Chen Chen gobbled and sweat and danced and inhaled and made love. Her mother-in-law told her that anything she craved must be hers. If she craved string beans in spicy sauce and did not get it, her son would be too skinny and dull. If she craved loud music and did not hear it, her son would be noisy and distracted.
When her husband complained one night that their sex life was frightening him, the way her eyes rolled back during her newly discovered orgasms, the way she clutched at him, leaving small bruises, Chen Chen had narrowed her eyes. “If you do not give me what I crave, our son will be a homosexual.” Her husband revered his mother more than anything, a trait Chen Chen despised. But now she used this to her advantage. Her husband sighed, and let her once again straddle him. “How many more months of this before we can return to normal?” he whispered afterward. Chen Chen patted his hand. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that she couldn’t imagine returning to her life as a sexual ledger book. Check. Check. Check.
But last week, something changed. Until then, Chen Chen’s stomach had been a beautiful bump, hard and round like a ball. “A boy,” her mother-in-law told her, “is always carried like this. All up front.” She’d smiled and tapped Chen Chen lightly on her stomach. Her mother-in-law’s familiarity disturbed Chen Chen. She was always touching her stomach now that she was pregnant, and poking at her ankles, her cheeks, her arms.
On Tuesday, though, as she walked home from work chewing a pork dumpling, Chen Chen realized she was short of breath. Worse, she was full. Not just so full that she had to put the dumpling in her pocket, but full in a way that made her organs feel crowded. It was difficult to walk. Chen Chen waddled slightly, her hips thrust out oddly and her legs bowed. That night at dinner, she refused her mother-in-law’s beef with five peppers, the long-roasted pork, the hot broccoli. Instead, she sipped some soup. But that seemed to crowd her even more. Her mother-in-law frowned at her. “What is wrong with you?” she asked. Before the pregnancy, she always spoke to Chen Chen in a dismissive tone, as if she were a fly buzzing around the house. That tone returned now.
Chen Chen shrugged. She too was puzzled by this change. “I am full,” she said.
Beside her, her husband chewed his food noisily. For the first time, she noticed that he had grown a small potbelly of his own.
“Third trimester,” her mother-in-law said. “This is when the baby grows big.”
Even the words crushed Chen Chen. She felt a foot or hand in her ribs, another pressing beneath her belly button. Squirming uncomfortably, she pushed gently on her belly as if to readjust the baby.
“This is the golden time,” her mother-in-law said. She smiled broadly. “Even if you do not feel hungry, you must eat and make your son strong.”
“But if I eat when I am not hungry, won’t my baby be fat?” Chen Chen said.
“Why?”
“You told me that I need to satisfy my cravings. If I want string beans and don’t get them—”
For the first time all evening her husband seemed to notice she was there. “Stop this talk!” he said. He held his chopsticks midair. “My mother says to eat. We want our son to be strong.”
“I’m just pointing out the contradiction,” Chen Chen said. She tried to make her voice gentle, contrite. But her mother-in-law glared at her.
“A few sips of soup are enough for mother,” she said. “Not enough for baby.”
So Chen Chen ate. Each bite seemed to lie in her chest, unable to move past the baby. By the end of the meal, she folded her arms across her belly, realizing that it extended much farther than it had just a few days earlier. She was getting huge.
As if her mother-in-law noticed this too, she caressed Chen Chen’s stomach. “Nice big baby,” she said. “Maybe you’re a little bit wrong on dates. Maybe this baby coming a little bit sooner.”
Chen Chen nodded even though she knew exactly when this baby was conceived. Her husband, overworked, had the flu, a thick cough and high fever. On the morning he woke recovered, he had touched Chen Chen like a starved man, his hands yanking on her breasts and his fingers roughly poking at her. He finished faster than usual, and Chen Chen remembered how sallow his skin looked in the early morning light, how sharp his cheekbones appeared hovering above her. With his eyes squeezed shut and his back arched, her husband had looked like a skinny stranger.
When Chen Chen realized she was pregnant, she had worried at first. Their lovemaking was so predictable, something she could count on. The one time it had changed ever so slightly, after ten days of no contact, her husband hacking and feverish beside her, she got pregnant. Could this possibly be a good sign?
“I am sure you are right,” Chen Chen told her mother-in-law. “I must be closer than I thought.”
The older woman patted her hand. “Rest. You will need it to give birth. That is hard work, let me tell you.”
Chen Chen stood awkwardly. Walking was definitely difficult, she decided.
Later, when her husband came to bed, the heat from his body still made her hungry for sex. Lying on her back, she marveled at the size of her belly now. What had been a round, small bulge now rose majestically. Chen Chen rubbed it, enjoying the way it felt beneath her hands.
She rolled toward her husband, her hands reaching for him.
“My mother cautioned me,” he said. “We must be careful of the baby now.”
“Uh-huh,” Chen Chen said as she climbed on top of him.
“We can’t do this,” he was saying.
Chen Chen began to move as she had these past six months, sitting upright on her husband, leaning back ever so slightly. But tonight she felt there was too much in there. She was so full. Too full. Her orgasm came, but almost painfully. Somehow unsatisfied, she grunted and rolled off him. Her husband grabbed her wrist.
“I am the husband,” he said harshly. “I will say when I am finished.”
He pressed her down on the bed, but when he tried to mount her, her stomach was in the way. Chen Chen tried to help him, but it was impossible for him to enter her. His breathing grew heavier. His need for her excited her. She tried to remember when he had wanted her this much, but she couldn’t think of another time.
Now he was rolling her over, but she couldn’t lie on her stomach. Instinctively, Chen Chen got to her knees. Her husband, panting like a dog, entered her from behind. His movements were frenzied, and this new position and his excitement made Chen Chen also grow excited. They were moving against each other in a way she had never imagined, his hands clutching at her full, heavy breasts, his moans growing louder, until they climaxed, her husband right before her, then Chen Chen.
What was it about this pregnancy, she would later wonder, that brought them to this sexual awakening after these six years together? After this night, her husband seemed to come alive. He turned Chen Chen this way and that, he entered her from every direction. He kissed and sucked and stroked. Her belly, stretched big, both kept them apart and brought them together. After dinner, they could not wait to get to bed. “So tired,” Chen Chen would say, yawning. “The baby so close.” When her husband joined her moments later, he whispered, “My mother said not to do this.” Then he would begin again.
They had glorious intimate moments on these nights, Chen Chen and her husband, filled with sex. Until the morning when she found it almost impossible to get out of bed.
“Too full,” she told him. “Or something.”
They both stared down at her naked belly. It stretched oddly, to the left and to the right, but also straight out in front.
Chen Chen touched the foot under her ribs, the foot in her side. She could see another foot pushing out, and another lower, kicking her groin.
“I’d better get my mother,” he said.
Chen Chen nodded. She slipped a pale blue nightgown ove
r her head, but still kept her hands on her stomach, counting.
When her mother-in-law came in, she yanked the blanket down and the nightgown up brusquely. Her cool hands pressed Chen Chen’s stomach too hard.
Finally, she said, “This is bad luck.”
And all the pleasure Chen Chen had found these past months left her, just like that.
“HOW CAN THIS BE?” Chen Chen’s mother-in-law said later that day.
She sat on a small chair near the bed, sipping tea and frowning. Her face, surprisingly young-looking, was wrinkled in worry, giving her a dried-apple appearance.
With help from her husband, Chen Chen had gotten out of bed and dressed that morning. She had made her slow, awkward way to work. But once she was there, it seemed as if a damp, thick gauze had been dropped over her. Her movements grew dull, her brain remained cloudy. Struggling to be more alert, Chen Chen tried to focus her thoughts on lively things: the crowded streets and busy markets of the city, the lovemaking she and her husband had enjoyed this past week, the intense pleasures of food and spice.
But all of it seemed to belong to another person, another time. These pleasures blurred, overtaken by a sense of fullness. Like a watermelon, Chen Chen thought as she peered over her enormous stomach. Like a water lily about to burst into bloom.
By afternoon, her ankles and feet grew too swollen to stand. A company doctor came to Chen Chen and pressed on them, the woman’s finger disappearing into Chen Chen’s too-pink flesh as if she were testing dough.
The doctor shook her head. “No more work until this baby comes.”
She scribbled on a pad, she wrote in Chen Chen’s file. “Go home until baby comes.”
She told Chen Chen to drink a particular tea throughout the day and to have bed rest.
“It must be a problem in your family,” her mother-in-law was saying now. “This never happened in our family.”
Chen Chen stared at the sunlight coming through the small bedroom window. She realized she had never been in bed in the afternoon in her life, and it felt strange and wrong.
“I think your family hid this from us,” her mother-in-law said.
The mention of her family brought Chen Chen inexplicably to tears. She thought of her own mother, smaller and gentler than her husband’s. Once, as a child, Chen Chen got very ill. Her fever stayed high for days, and her mother got into bed with her and held her, forcing her to drink tea and placing cool cloths on her head.
“Perhaps we could call for my mother,” Chen Chen said.
“I already did. She must explain this.” Her mother-in-law stared in disgust at Chen Chen’s stomach. “Twins are always bad luck for a family. Always.”
Chen Chen’s mother arrived the next day. She brought a basket filled with Chen Chen’s favorite foods, the delicate squash blossoms she liked so much, the pork buns made slightly sweet with hoisin sauce. Unlike her mother-in-law, Chen Chen’s mother was not upset. She grinned at her daughter, pleased, and placed both of her small hands on Chen Chen’s enormous belly.
“Such abundance!” she said softly. “My daughter, you are beautiful.”
For an instant, Chen Chen imagined going home. She imagined leaving here with her mother, taking her babies to her own small town, and eating sweetened pork buns by the river.
“It’s bad luck,” Chen Chen said.
Her mother chewed her bottom lip, a habit that now endeared her even more to Chen Chen. Her mother always had chapped lips from this habit.
“You need to not think of luck right now. Childbirth is a very difficult thing. You need good thoughts and great strength to get these babies born.” She offered a dish of food to Chen Chen. “Eat and stay strong. After the babies are here, we can talk.”
Relieved, Chen Chen ate the squash blossoms, the pork buns, the pickled plums and fried rice with tiny shrimp. Outside the bedroom, the voices of the two mothers rose and fell. They were arguing, Chen Chen knew. But her mother had come to protect her and her children, to feed her and keep her strong. Safe now, her mother’s food filling her, Chen Chen slept.
FROM HER BED, Chen Chen listened. She heard the voices of the mothers arguing in the kitchen. They argued about how much garlic to add to a dish, how much pepper. They argued about whether it was good luck to sweep dirt out the door, whether it was bad luck to place an empty teacup upside down.
They argued too about the babies.
“Your fault,” Chen Chen’s mother would say. “This could be considered a breach of contract. We could throw your daughter and her bad-luck babies out if we wanted.”
“My job,” her mother replied in an even tone, “is to help Chen Chen give birth to healthy babies. To give her strength.”
“Those babies will bring us bad luck!” her mother-in-law insisted.
Chen Chen’s mother screeched, high-pitched and continuous. Although she couldn’t see her, Chen Chen pictured her mother with her hands over both ears, her tongue wagging, her eyes squeezed shut. She screeched until the other mother stopped talking. Then Chen Chen listened to the angry silence.
Her stomach rose and stretched, like the clay she used to play with as a child. It grew whorls, giant swirling fingerprints on her skin. The shape was no longer round, but oblong at the sides, pointed in the middle.
When her husband came in to change his clothes, he hardly looked at her. But she looked at him. His own stomach kept growing too. His little potbelly now swelled and hung over his pants. His shirt buttons pulled across it. She was pregnant with twins, but her husband was fat, Chen Chen realized. Like a penguin, she thought.
“Don’t you even speak to your wife anymore?” she asked him one morning. This was a month after her mother had arrived.
Without looking at her, he said softly, “You don’t even resemble my wife. Your face is as round as a cabbage.”
Hurt, Chen Chen said, “But soon I will have our babies, and then we can be together. Remember the things we did? Remember how it felt to come from behind me?”
His head jerked toward her angrily. “Ssshhh!” he said. “Our mothers are in the next room.”
“Remember when you pulled me onto your lap and—”
“Pigs!” her husband said, his voice harsh. He stood in just trousers, barefoot, his own fat stomach jiggling slightly as he spoke. “We were animals and we have brought this bad luck on my family.”
“No,” Chen Chen said. “We were humans. Finally, we were alive.”
She had to gasp for air as she spoke. The babies took up so much room now that her lungs were compressed and she became short of breath easily.
“You disgust me,” her husband said so quietly she thought perhaps she heard him wrong. “You put a spell on me and turned me into an animal. Weren’t you born in the Year of the Pig?”
Heartburn caused painful heat to rise in her, to fill her chest and throat. She wanted to say something to him, something about love and desire. But what were the words to express these things?
In the kitchen, the mothers argued.
“Don’t we have enough bad luck?” her mother-in-law shouted. “Now you place your teacup upside down, trapping our luck?”
“You are fat,” Chen Chen said to her husband.
His face clouded.
“You have grown fat and unattractive,” she said. Then she added matter-of-factly, “I hate you.”
His mouth opened and closed a few times, like a dying fish. Then he put on his shirt, slowly buttoning each tiny button. He picked up his ledgers and walked out of the room.
“I don’t hate you,” Chen Chen said to the empty door. “I love you. You woke me up.”
“You are cooking too much food,” she heard her husband say to the mothers. “Do you want us all to grow as fat as my wife?”
“Your wife is having babies!” Chen Chen’s mother said. “She is growing with life!”
“She is bringing us bad luck!” her mother-in-law shouted.
Chen Chen closed her eyes. She put her hands over her ears. She bega
n to screech, loud and without stopping.
CHEN CHEN WOKE with one thought: Get up and move around.
Her heart raced and she could not catch her breath.
Get up and move around! her mind told her.
She put her hands on the mattress and forced momentum so that she could roll to one side. Hadn’t her mother told her to sleep on her left side so that she could pump more blood to her babies? But her mother-in-law had said sleeping on her side would flatten their heads. So here was Chen Chen on her back, trying to roll over like a turtle turned upside down on its shell. After several exhausting tries, she managed to get on her side.
Get up! a voice in her head said. Move around!
One leg stretched off the bed, her foot searching for the floor. When she felt it beneath her, Chen Chen hoisted her huge self upward. Two feet on the floor now, her breath coming in rapid pants.
Someone was moaning. The moaning filled the stuffy air. But Chen Chen could only think about moving. She held on to the wall for support, and circled the small room, over and over. Those moans were terrifying, so loud and filled with such pain.
Squat! her mind told her.
Chen Chen dropped to a squat and moved awkwardly to the middle of the room, where she could do nothing but bounce slightly. The metallic smell of blood enveloped her. Perhaps her mother-in-law had killed her mother. Perhaps her husband had killed them both.
The moaning!