Maybe Americans suppress discussion of miscarriage because we don’t like unhappy endings. We recoil from death. Better to push on, not to dwell. Personally, I was hypersensitive about being blamed for my loss, judged as “waiting too long,” with the nasty implication that I got what I deserved. After all, I felt that way toward myself. But there was something else that held me back: my own pro-choice politics. I may have been able to distinguish psychological personhood from the biological or legal, yet that thread connecting me and my embryo had felt startlingly real, and at direct odds with everything I believed about when life begins. Nor had those beliefs—a complicated calculus of science, politics, and ethics—changed. I told myself that this hadn’t been a person. It hadn’t been a child. At the same time, I couldn’t deny that it was something. Voicing my confusion, admitting that the bundle of cells I so adamantly called a zygote had felt to me like some sort of life, seemed like playing into the hands of the enemy.
So there I was, guilty and confused over my sadness, neither able to allow nor ignore it. Then I remembered Jizo. Of course the Buddhists would have a ritual for pregnancy loss; they’re famously good at death. I phoned the mother of a Japanese friend to ask where I might make an offering. “I can’t tell you,” she responded. “You’ll have to find the temple that is your en.” That word was seriously beginning to bug me.
Eventually, a Japanese American friend back home suggested I try Zojo-ji, a fourteenth-century temple where the Tokugawa clan once worshiped that was legendary for its Jizo shrines. As it happened, the temple was a few blocks from Tokyo Tower, just a short walk from I-House. On my way there, I stopped at a toy store to buy an offering. What do you get for a child who will never be? I considered a plush Hello Kitty ball, then a rattle shaped like a tambourine, then a squeaky rubber An-pan Man—a popular superhero whose head is made of a sweet bean-filled pastry (which, when you think about it, is no more peculiar than a superhero who is a bat). This was no time to skimp, I decided, and scooped up all three.
“Present-o?” the salesclerk asked, reaching for some wrapping paper. I hesitated. Was it a gift? Not exactly.
“Is it for you?” she asked. I didn’t know what to say.
“It’s okay,” I finally said. “I’ll just take them like that.”
I chose the long route to the temple, keeping my eye on Tokyo Tower, a red-and-white copy of the Eiffel Tower, as I triangulated the winding streets. The neighborhood was unusually quiet, full of low-slung old-fashioned buildings. I caught glimpses of dark interiors: an elderly woman selling bamboo shoots, something that looked like a homemade still, a motorbike parked inside a murky restaurant.
Finally I came across a temple gate and, assuming I’d arrived, stepped into a courtyard. Down a garden path I could see a contemporary marble statue holding a baby in one arm, a staff in the other. Two naked infants, their tushies lovingly carved, clutched the robes at its feet, glancing over their shoulders. At the base of the statue, someone had left a Kewpie doll.
“Is this Zojo-ji?” I asked an old woman who was sweeping up leaves. My Japanese was good enough to ask the question but not to understand her response. She motioned for me to wait, then fetched a monk, silver-haired in black robes. I was in the wrong place, he explained politely in English, then offered directions. For a moment I thought, Why not just do it here? I felt a flash of my familiar indecisiveness, then figured I’d stick to the plan, press on to Zojo-ji. As I left, I felt the tug of missed opportunity.
Another thing I’d never noticed: there is no word in English for a miscarried or aborted fetus. How better to bury a topic than to make it quite literally unspeakable? In Japanese it is mizuko, which is usually translated as “water child.” Historically, Japanese Buddhists believed that existence flowed into a being slowly, like liquid. Children solidified only gradually over time and weren’t considered to be fully in the human realm until they reached the age of seven. Similarly, leaving this world—returning to the primordial waters—was a process beginning at sixty with the celebration of a symbolic second birth. A mizuko lay somewhere along the continuum, in that liminal space between life and death but belonging to neither. True to the Buddhist belief in reincarnation, it was expected (and still is today) that Jizo would eventually guide the mizuko down another pathway into being. The idea behind the offering was to bid the mizuko farewell and wish it luck in the life it would have to come.
Jizo rituals were originally developed and practiced by women. There is evidence of centuries-old roadside shrines marking miscarriages, abortions, stillbirths, and the deaths of young children (particularly by infanticide, which was once widespread in Japan). But it wasn’t until the late 1970s, when abortion rates peaked, that mizuko kuyo, the ritual of apology and remembrance, with its rows of Jizo statues, became commonplace. Abortion had been legalized in Japan after World War II, when food and resources were scarce; it was, then and now, viewed as a regrettable necessity— shikataganai. Rates remain high because of the Pill’s inaccessibility, driven by fears about its safety and impact on the environment; fear that it encourages promiscuity and the spread of disease; and, not incidentally, because of pressure from doctors for whom abortion is lucrative. Even so, the procedure itself has been neither particularly controversial nor politicized. There is no real equivalent in Japan to our “pro-life” movement. The Japanese tend to be more tolerant of moral ambiguity, accepting both the inevitability of abortion and the idea that the mizuko is a form of life. I wondered how they could reconcile what seem to me such mutually exclusive viewpoints. But maybe that’s the wrong question: maybe I should wonder why we can’t.
About half of Japanese women perform mizuko kuyo after aborting. They may participate in a formal service, with a priest officiating, or make an informal offering. A woman may light a candle and say a prayer at a local temple. She may leave a handwritten message of apology on a wooden tablet. She may make an offering of food, drink, flowers, incense, or toys. The ritual may be a one-time act or it may be repeated monthly or annually. She may purchase her own Jizo statue (costing an average of about $500) or toss a handful of coins into a box at a roadside shrine. Sometimes couples perform mizuko kuyo together. If they already have children, they may bring them along to honor what is considered, in some sense, a departed sibling. The occasion becomes as much a reunion as a time to grieve. It struck me that mizuko kuyo contained elements that would both satisfy and disturb Americans on either side of the abortion debate: there is public recognition and spiritual acknowledgment that a potential life has been lost, remorse is expressed, yet there is no shame over having performed the act.
There was no mistaking Zojo-ji. It was a huge complex of epic buildings with a football field-size courtyard. I walked among the rows of mizuko Jizos searching for a spot to place my toys. Some of the babies’ caps, which women crochet by hand, had rotted with age to just a few discolored strands. It was dank under the trees. A black cat eyed me from a ledge. It seemed a bad omen.
I wouldn’t find out until months later, when I returned home, that there is another, darker side to mizuko kuyo. Over the past few decades, temples dedicated solely to the ritual have sprung up all over Japan, luring disciples by stressing the malevolent potential of the fetus: whether miscarried or aborted, it could become angry over being sent back. If not properly placated, it could actually seek revenge. In the mid-eighties, when mizuko kuyo was at its height, some entrepreneurial temples placed ominous advertisements in magazines: Are your children doing poorly in school? Are you falling ill more often than before? Has your family suffered a financial setback? Are you having nightmares? You must’ve neglected your mizuko.
Given the price tag on a Jizo statue, preying on women’s fears is a profitable pursuit. At the Purple Cloud Mountain Temple, for instance, Japan’s most famous contemporary mizuko kuyo site, thousands of Jizos dot the hillside. That gave me pause. Could something so coercive truly offer consolation? Then again, could thousands of Japanese women be so easily manipu
lated? They had to be getting something out of this. Perhaps like the ritual itself, in which conflicting realities exist without contradiction, both readings are true.
Standing amid the scores of Jizos at Zojo-ji, I considered: maybe I had found that little temple earlier for a reason. In retrospect, the garden had been cozy, the monk had been kind. There were no rows of statues, no decomposing bonnets. It promised hope as well as comfort. I wanted to return but suddenly feared that the temple had been some kind of chimera, a Brigadoon that had already receded into the mists. More practically, I wasn’t sure if I could find my way back.
Somehow I did, through a vague hunch and a good deal of blundering. The monk was dusting off a late-model Mercedes with two ostrich feather dusters. So much for the mendicant’s life, I thought. For certain Buddhists, cleaning is enlightenment. I’d once read that polishing a wooden temple floor was like polishing the heart. I wondered if spiffing up a Mercedes counted.
He saw me and smiled. “Did you find it?”
“Yes,” I said, “but I liked it here better. Is it okay if I stay awhile?”
“Do as you wish,” he said. And I thought, I’m trying.
As it turned out, the statue at the temple was not Jizo; it was Kannon, goddess of compassion, to whom mizuko kuyo offerings are also sometimes made. Her androgynous face was tranquil but not warm. The expressions of the chubby stone babies at her feet were difficult to read. Had I surprised them? Distracted them? Was their backward glance a reminder that even as they played happily with the mother goddess, they would never forget the women whose bodies had been their hosts? Were they sad? Or was I projecting my own sorrow, now a gnawing presence in my stomach, onto them? I focused on the reassuring image of the Kewpie doll that had been placed there, the happy and dimpled Western baby. It seemed less ambiguous.
As I arranged my offering at Kannon’s feet, a distant bell tinkled, similar to the sound of the pinwheels. I looked up, startled. It stopped a second later and didn’t start again. I am a cynic by nature, with a journalist’s skeptical heart. But increasingly I was in the mood to believe.
My toys looked right surrounding Kewpie, the whole place a little cheerier. I liked them there. I liked the delicate lavender bushes surrounding me in the garden, the wild irises with their ruffled edges, the azaleas, the fleabane and camellias. They were the same plants as in my yard back in California. Crows cawed—the perpetual soundtrack of Tokyo—and traffic passed in a steady hum. Still, for that city it was a meditative spot. I relaxed, at last. Maybe my en was finally back on track.
Twilight was falling, and the garden turned cold. I clapped my hands three times, as one is supposed to at shrines, and backed away, gazing once more at the impassive marble face. Was there kindness there?
The temple grounds were empty. The monk in his Mercedes, the lady sweeping leaves were both gone. I rummaged in my purse for an envelope and five thousand yen—about forty dollars. “To the monk I met at 5 P.M. from the foreign woman looking for Zojo-ji,” I wrote. “Could you please chant a lotus sutra for me and my mizuko? Thank you.”
I slipped it under the door. I didn’t know whether it was appropriate or whether he would do it. But there were so many things I couldn’t know. Maybe learning to live with the question marks—recognizing that closure does not always occur—was all I could do, at least for now. I hadn’t expected, coming from a world that fights to see life’s beginnings in black and white, to be so comforted by a shade of gray. Yet the notion of the water child made sense to me. What I’d experienced had not been a full life, nor was it a full death, but it was a real loss. Maybe my mizuko would come back to me more fully another time, or maybe it would find someone else. Surprisingly, even that thought was solace. I wasn’t exactly at peace as I left the temple—grief is not so simply dispensed with—but I felt a little easier. I had done something to commemorate this event; I’d said good-bye. I was grateful to have had that chance.
As I headed back to I-House, the sky deepened from peach to salmon to lavender, and motorists switched on their headlights. The bittersweet smell of fish grilled with soy sauce—which had revolted me when I was pregnant—permeated the air. I breathed it in deeply. I decided to try a new route through the unnamed back streets, not sure of the direction, but trusting, for the first time since arriving here, that eventually I would find a way home.
9
PUT THE LIME IN THE COCONUT
Yu Wan Chang was unhappy with the state of my tongue. There was a crack running down its middle and it was coated in white. These are bad signs. In traditional Chinese medicine, each segment of the tongue corresponds to a part of the body—the tip to the lungs, the base to the bladder, and so forth. So you can understand Dr. Chang’s dismay: my tongue was telling her that I was a mess.
This was not news to me. In the month since returning from Japan, I’d become so tightly wrapped I fairly vibrated, my sadness and anger surfacing in unpredictable bursts. I began avoiding social situations, afraid that if someone asked me a personal question like, say, “How are you?” I’d actually tell her. Before, I could channel my energy into fertility treatments. Plus, I could always comfort myself with worst-case scenarios: I didn’t get pregnant on Clomid, but neither did my sister-in-law, and she went on to have three children; I didn’t produce many follicles during IVF, but neither did Kristin, and she went on to have twins; I had a miscarriage, sure, but so did a friend who was now the mother of four. But I had run out of Cinderella stories.
“It feels so unfair,” I complained to Steven. “Everyone else has a baby. I’ve been through so much—I should get to have one, too.”
“You’re wrong,” he said. “It’s not unfair. Unfair is when my friend Lynn died at forty-two. Unfair is that her daughter was only three at the time. This is unfortunate, but it’s not unfair. You’d never say that you deserve to have a writing project go well because the last one went badly. It’s the same thing. Life is not quid pro quo.”
“It’s not the same to me,” I sulked. “I’m starting to feel like a chronically unlucky person.”
“That’s too bad,” he replied, his face hard. “It really is.”
A few minutes later, he apologized. “I’m sorry to be so harsh. Sometimes I snap at you when I’m mad at myself. All of a sudden I feel like everywhere I go, all I notice is children. I resent it. I’m embarrassed by how easily I’m affected by that feeling of Why can’t I have what everyone else has? It feels pathetic.”
Then I talked to my friend Susannah in Los Angeles. She’d had trouble conceiving, too, but after a few miserable months on the devil Clomid she’d switched to acupuncture and herbs. Four weeks later she was pregnant. Her daughter, Olivia, was born the same month my first baby had been due. I had taped a picture of her to my refrigerator dressed as Dorothy in blue gingham for Halloween, clutching a plastic pumpkin, her gleeful smile a carbon copy of her mother’s. Susannah was pregnant again—this time with a boy—and again due the same month I would have been. I gritted my teeth and congratulated her.
“It was the acupuncturist,” she confided. This time she hadn’t messed around; she’d gone to him right away. “I think Western medicine is great for trauma, like a car wreck or a broken leg, but for something systemic, I’d try Chinese medicine first.”
Susannah is from old New England stock; her family name graces foundations, museums, a university. She’s the product of three generations of physicians. I have never known her to wear patchouli or attend Burning Man. If she said pins got her pregnant, I was inclined to believe her.
“At least it might help you relax,” Steven said when I brought up the idea. “Besides, it’s cheaper than therapy. If you keep running at this level of stress, you’re going to have a breakdown—that’s going to cost a lot more.”
Dr. Chang had a loving, almost yielding presence. A woman of indeterminate age—I’d put her anywhere between forty and seventy—she had a shy smile and hair pulled into a flyaway bun. She’d taught gynecology at a Chinese me
dical school before coming to Texas in the 1980s to do research on IVF. Now she was an instructor at the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in San Francisco. With that pedigree, she had to know what she was doing, even if the walls of her waiting room were covered in plastic philodendron vines, even if the questions she asked seemed arbitrary. Was I perpetually thirsty? Did I have headaches? Were my feet cold? She probed for details about my bowel movements and urination. Did I bruise easily? (Yes.) Was my skin dry? Were my nails brittle? Was I an insomniac? (Yes, yes, yes—but what the heck did all that have to do with fertility?)
“How is your sexual energy?” she asked.
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