The Better Mother

by Jen Sookfong Lee

  She wanted him to stay and never go back to school, where he would soon see she could never attend a fraternity party or neck with him in the back seat of his car. If he stayed, she could curl into him every night and feel his weight when he threw his leg over the curve of her hip. She could teach him to dance, and his bulk would be hers.

  Stupid, she thought. Why would I think anything so stupid?

  Val took both of Carl’s hands in hers. “Just remember me,” she said.

  And by the fall of his eyes, she knew he understood what she meant.

  She danced, and the audience applauded and seemed satisfied, but at the end of every night, she sat in front of the dressing-room mirror and let her mind wander. It hadn’t occurred to her in a long time that she might want something besides the shimmy and lights and costumes. Could she be a secretary or cook or nanny? She didn’t know, and this was what frustrated her. There wasn’t anything else she was good at.

  One afternoon, before her first dance of the evening, she stood in the alley behind the Shanghai Junk and smoked a cigarette, blowing rings toward the blue sky, which was hot and liquid with the summertime sun. She stared at the grime on the buildings and ground around her, the scars on the door to the club that meant someone had tried to break in. She kicked at the gravel and watched the stones skitter and bounce, stopping to rest beside a pile of rotting onions left behind by the produce merchant next door.

  When she looked up again, she saw a little boy standing in a patch of sunshine, staring at her. Her stomach lurched. His bones had grown longer but were just as sharp, his eyes still too large for his face. If she touched him and ran her finger down his cheek, he would know it was her and recognize her smell; he might even smile as she held his thin body to hers. She thought she might cry.

  The sharp sound of squealing brakes at the end of the alley caused her to close her eyes against the whine. When she opened them again, she could see that he was a small Chinese boy with a grubby face and a stubborn cowlick at the back of his head. It was the eyes, she realized. The eyes had tricked her. Again.

  “Are those Sweet Caps?” he asked, inching toward her, his body tense with apprehension.

  She smiled and pulled out a full pack. By the time he ran off, she had given him the green silk sash off her robe. It was the way he held it in his hand, as if there was nothing more magical than this slip of fabric, coloured like grass but smooth. He was just as she remembered.

  —

  When she realized she was pregnant, she wept. In that white room with those bright lights and plastic blinds, Val sat hunched over in a bucket chair, the doctor’s hand on her shoulder, and cried—shaking, coughing, tears and snot in her mouth, a rippling sensation through her lungs like she was drowning. She had never cried like this, not when her parents died, not when she had let go of Joan’s baby so their father could bury him.

  The doctor smiled and said, “A surprise, is it?”

  Val wiped the tears off her cheeks with the back of her hand. “I always wanted this baby.”

  In her apartment, she moved her dresser to the opposite wall, stared at the empty space below the window and imagined the sunlight lingering across the face of her sleeping infant. Their life together would be quiet, punctuated by the smell of baking bread, neat piles of clean laundry, Val’s smile reflected in the face of her baby. She knew what kind of mother she would be: wise, patient, understanding. The mother everyone wished they had. This baby would right everything that had gone wrong. She felt full at the thought.

  She went to her agent and told him to stop booking shows. “That’s it, I’m done,” she announced in his smoky office. “Nobody wants my style of act anymore, and besides, there are other things I should be doing with my life.”

  He sat up straight and spat his cigarette into the ashtray on his desk. “What things? What’s more important than the Siamese Kitten, eh?”

  “I’m pregnant, all right? So I’d better quit, unless you think there’s a small group of weirdos out there who get off on that sort of thing.”

  Her agent said nothing then lit another cigarette, his eyebrows knotted together. “Well, that’s a kick in the nuts. Are you happy?”

  “You don’t even know how much.”

  He swiped a hand over his eyes. “Then good luck to you, Valerie Nealy. And if there’s ever a time when you want to come back, you know how to get a hold of me. There’ll always be a place for you, even if the circuit keeps changing.” Gently, he patted her arm. “It’ll be great, sweetheart, I know it.”

  When she returned home, she gathered up her costumes and props and packed them in boxes. She left her most special things for last, packing her first full costume—wig, fishnets, green satin robe—into a small suitcase and setting it on the pile. Outside, she could see the honey bees flying in and out of her neighbour’s flowers; she wondered how long it would take to plant a container garden on her balcony.

  In the taxi on the way to Joan’s house, Val thought about names, about the woman she wanted her daughter to become. She knew she was having a daughter; she pictured a tiny, floating baby, with skin like paper and blue, blue eyes ringed with pale gold eyelashes. Donna. Bree. Lisa. Michelle. She looked out the window at the tall trees bordering the highway, the tops that seemed to touch the flat grey clouds, the lower branches that swayed, dropping needles on the unpaved shoulder.

  Joan stepped into the front yard, wearing a baby-blue shirtdress tightly belted at the waist. She seemed no older, only pointier. Val saw that she was well-preserved, a woman who stared in the mirror every morning, coming up with ways to hide the barely perceptible lines feathering outward from her lips. Silently, Joan watched the driver struggle with the boxes up the walk and carry them into the foyer.

  “What’s all this, Val? Surely you’re not moving in.” Joan spoke crisply, waiting for this visit to be over.

  Val laughed and put her arms around Joan’s shoulders. Joan stiffened, but relaxed enough to collapse a little into Val’s embrace. “No, honey, nothing so horrible as that. I’ve given up dancing and need you to store my old costumes and things for me. My place is too small.”

  Joan looked eager, and she clapped her hands. “Really? Well, it’s about time! Come on in, and we’ll have a drink to celebrate.”

  “I really shouldn’t. I’m pregnant, Joanie.”

  Already on her way through the hall to the kitchen, Joan turned to look at Val. “Pregnant? Val, how did this happen?”

  The kitchen table was smooth and shiny. In the window, a small box was filled with fresh herbs. But still, with all this—the red-and-white checked placemats, the potted fern hanging from the ceiling—the house smelled of Joan and Joan alone. Her orange-scented shampoo, the lavender water ironed into her dress.

  “It just did. He’s a young man, too young, maybe. He doesn’t know about this, and that’s all right.”

  “Who is he?” Joan asked, rinsing out a tall glass.

  “His name isn’t important.”

  “Don’t tell me that you don’t even know his name,” she half whispered, half hissed.

  “I’m having a baby, Joanie. That’s all.”

  “Yes, but whose baby?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I need a change, a big one.” Val paused and leaned forward, her elbows on the table. “I need this baby, do you see?”

  Joan sipped at a gin and tonic, her face still. She said, “I know. I understand. I really do.”

  Together, they had survived shattered dreams and the unexpected. Joan looked at Val, both hands tightly wrapped around her glass.

  “What will you do for money if you’re not dancing?”

  “I have some money put away. It should last me a year, maybe two, if I’m careful.”

  “Peter and I will help out. I don’t want you skimping on food or anything like that, not now.”

  Surprised, Val sat back in her chair. “It’s not necessary, Joanie. I can get by.”

  “Well, we can help you in other ways too, you
know. You can use the extra car so you don’t have to take the trolleys everywhere. You should come over for dinner, you know, so I can fill you up.”

  “Honey, thanks a lot, but I’m not a charity case. I made good money.”

  Joan stood and walked to the glass-paned liquor cabinet. Her voice was strange, like a violin string on the verge of snapping. “Of course, I know that. Charity isn’t the point. I want to make sure my niece or nephew gets the very best, that’s all.”

  That night, Val stayed for dinner, leaving in Joan’s second car before Peter arrived home from work. As she drove away from the house, she could see Joan’s thin silhouette in the doorway, her long arm raised in a wave, the light of the hall pushing itself into the night through her legs, around her sides and over her head.

  —

  Val dreamed of the baby every night. She saw the baby’s pale face, her small, elf-like body, even her round toes. Sometimes the baby cried, a quiet, barely there plea that ceased as soon as Val picked her up and held her, her small chin resting on Val’s shoulder. Other times, she sat on a sheepskin rug on the floor, clapping her hands as Val danced in front of her, a goofy version of the strip she used to do in the clubs with a towel on her head for a wig and an old sheet wrapped around her body for a satin gown.

  When she woke up, she was warm and round and unworried. Through the window, she watched the birds flying between the downtown apartment buildings. She lay on her side until the sun rose past the railing on the balcony. She sometimes looked in the mirrors in shops, or in her own mirror at home, and was surprised by her bare, makeup-less face, which seemed, oddly, younger than it had in years. The flowers she planted on the balcony nodded at her through the window, and she nodded back. For once, she felt quiet, like an undisturbed, clear-as-glass lake.

  One afternoon, Joan appeared at her door, her tweed skirt peeping out the bottom of her tan trench coat. She held up a paper bag filled with groceries.

  “Fresh fruit and veggies for the baby,” she announced, walking straight into the kitchen where she began putting the food away in the fridge. “I bought you a nice steak too. You need to keep up your iron, you know.”

  After Val settled Joan on the balcony with a cup of tea, Joan smiled. “This is really nice, Val. You’ve done a good job of making this little apartment into a home. I can see you had some pansies over the summer.”

  Val nodded and waved her hand over the yellow and red trees lining the sidewalk. “The summer was really great, but it looks like the fall might turn out to be even nicer.”

  “You’re getting big.” Joan let her eyes linger on Val’s belly. “When’s the due date again?”

  “End of December.”

  “Like I said, the apartment looks very homey,” Joan said, her voice rising to a clear, precise pitch. “What are you doing to get ready for the baby?”

  “I’ve been looking at cribs, but I haven’t found the exact right thing yet. I wanted something in a natural wood, you know, and everything these days is covered in white laminate or some such thing. I’ve started a quilt, in all different colours.” Val laughed, rubbed her needle-pricked fingers together. “I’m not much of a seamstress, but I try.”

  “Are you prepared enough, do you think?”

  “I think so. No one is ever really prepared, you know.”

  “No, that’s true.” Joan paused. “What about afterward? What are you going to do for money?”

  Val twisted a finger in her hair. “I’ll figure it out. I always do. I could waitress, of course, or I was thinking I could be an agent for other girls. You know: make sure they’re treated fairly and all that.”

  Joan turned and looked into Val’s eyes so intently that Val had to look away. “Is that wise? If you waitress, who will look after the baby? And if you’re going to work with those girls again, aren’t you exposing the baby to that crowd? Do you want to do that?”

  Val put her hand up to her hair. Below, a car with a mattress tied to its roof drove slowly past. Val thought she could hear a polka drifting from a building across the street. “I never thought of it that way, I guess. I’ll do what I have to do. We’ll get by.”

  Joan tapped her fingers on her lap. “Don’t you think, Val, that the baby deserves more than just getting by? What about music lessons, or summer camp? Have you even thought about university?”

  “That’s thinking really far ahead.”

  “Yes, but that’s what mothers do. They plan. They make sure their children have everything they could possibly need.”

  “What are you saying? That I won’t be a good mother?”

  Joan leaned forward and gripped Val’s knee with a thin hand. Behind her, the sky seemed far too bright for morning, far too blue and sharp for the coming of fall. “No, of course not. But your baby deserves the best, that’s all. Now, Peter and I, we could give any number of children the best lives possible.”

  “You and Peter?”

  “You know how we’ve wanted children for years and years. It’s been the hardest thing, not being able to give him the family he’s always wanted.” Joan’s voice broke and her lips trembled. “When I told him about you and your pregnancy, his face went all hard and, that night, he didn’t even come home from work. Sometimes, I don’t even know where he is.”

  “Joanie, I didn’t know.”

  “It’s been so hard all these years, thinking about little Warren and what he might look like now. I’m going to love your baby, Val. I really will. If I had one of my own, he or she would have everything and grow up in a real family with a father and a house in a good neighbourhood with lots of other children. It would be so ideal.”

  Val stood up, pushing her chair with so much force that it crashed against the glass of the patio door. “My baby, Joan, not yours.” She could feel Joan’s eyes travelling over her swollen stomach. Empty eyes. Eyes that could bore through skin and blood.

  Joan grabbed Val’s sleeve. “No, that’s not what I meant. It’s just that I have everything, except a child. And you”—she choked and swallowed and deep frown lines creased her cheeks—“you have nothing, except this baby. Even you, without a husband, without even a real home, can have a baby while I sit by myself in the living room every day, staring at the goddamned lawn. Maybe I should have been a stripper too and fucked men whose names I don’t even know.”

  As briskly as her belly allowed her, Val hurried through the apartment and opened the door to the hallway. “Get out, Joan. I’m not listening to you anymore.”

  Slowly, Joan walked to the door, her eyes pink and wet. “I need to love your baby, Val.”

  Val remained silent and watched as Joan made her way down the hall and to the stairwell. After locking the door, she went straight to bed, pulling the covers over her face until the heat from her breath warmed the pocket of air around her head. Almost buried by blankets, she fell asleep, her fists clenched, ready for the fight that might come to her in a dream.

  —

  In the hospital, Val held her baby in her arms, smelled the fine fuzz on her head and stroked her cheeks with one finger. It was when the baby was coming out (she wondered how she could stay whole while her body was sundered, push by push, and she was almost blind with effort and throbbing) that she realized the perfect name.

  Dawn. For the morning and the transition from the dark dreams of night to the relief of day.

  There was no surprise. Dawn arrived exactly as she should, looking as Val had always imagined—pink and white and blond. Val held a finger on a pulsing blue vein in her tiny forehead.

  A nurse walked into the room, carrying a pile of diapers. “When is your husband coming, my dear?”

  Val looked up. “There’s no husband. Just me.”

  The nurse’s forehead wrinkled, and she looked away, peering into the closet. “Well then, you’ll need more washcloths,” she muttered as she hurried out the door.

  But Val barely heard her, only watched as Dawn put out one small hand and fluttered it in the air.

&nbs
p; “I promise you everything,” Val whispered. “All you need to do is ask.”

  THE DEBRIS

  1959 to 1980

  The baby would not stop screaming. Everywhere Val went in her little apartment, she could hear the echo from her cries bouncing off the walls until it sounded like a dozen babies were trapped in the bedroom, shrieking for help. Her milk wouldn’t come in, and she was tired, so tired, of pushing her nipple into Dawn’s mouth and watching her suck until Val started to bleed. No milk, just oozing scabs.

  She scorched the bottles, slept fitfully, her body tensed and anticipating the cries from the crib. Every sound, every change of light woke up the baby, until Val took the phone off the hook and kept the curtains drawn at all times. She was trapped in a stuffy cave, with nothing but this squalling child for company.

  In the mornings, when Val crept up to the crib to see if Dawn was sleeping, her heart rose and swelled as she gazed at the purse of her mouth, the flutter of her eyelids as she dreamed in her sleep. This was the best time.

  One evening, Dawn cried and cried, the wails consuming all of the air inside her small lungs. When she inhaled, she gulped and hiccupped and coughed. Her cries shuddered and skipped. Val walked with her from the kitchen to the living room and back again, whispering, “Shush now. Shhh. It’s all right.” But she knew that Dawn couldn’t even hear her over the screaming, or see her through those tightly closed eyes. She was afraid to leave, afraid that wherever she went, the baby’s cries would alarm passersby until someone tried to take her away. There was no place where the baby’s cries would be muffled by the encroaching bush or the crash of waves. There was this tiny apartment and the two of them, their voices circling and rebounding into their ears. How long before she couldn’t stand it anymore? Before she thrust the baby underneath the sofa cushions until her breath shuddered and stopped? Val wrapped the still-crying Dawn in her homemade quilt, lay her down in her crib and shut the bedroom door. She hurried through the living room, a glass of sherry in her hand, and out onto the balcony, sliding the patio door shut behind her.