The Girl Who Wrote in Silk (19 page)

“How did you know?” she asked her husband, only realizing she was crying because his image was blurred as she tried to look at him.

He shook his head. “I didn’t. I knew you were good with a needle after I saw the mailbag you made for me, and I see the way you pull at your gowns like you aren’t comfortable in them—”

“I’m uncomfortable because of the baby,” she interrupted. “My gowns are fine.” She didn’t want him to know she just couldn’t get used to them. How she felt smaller every day that she dressed in white women’s confining, drab clothing. How she felt she was losing herself and her history.

He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “And then I saw you looking at the silks in Port Townsend when we were there buying your herbs. I wanted to buy them for you then, but that was right after Preacher Gray stopped by and guilted me into donating to the new church.”

“I still think you should have told him no.”

“I wish I had.” They both knew they’d never set foot in the new Episcopal church in Eastsound. “Especially after I saw you with those silks.” He ran a finger over the blue cloth. “You really like it?”

“I do. I love it.”

“Will you make yourself a dress or something you can be proud to wear?”

She looked at him closely. He avoided meeting her gaze and kept his eyes downcast to where the fabric and floss lay spread before them. He must know, she realized. Despite her best pretense, he’d known how she hated dressing like a white woman.

“Yes,” she answered finally. “A gown for myself and something for the baby as well.” She turned now and stepped into his arms. Her belly kept them from getting as close as she’d like, but by turning sideways she was able to lay her cheek against his heart. The familiar thump she heard made her own heart squeeze painfully. This wasn’t a man she would have chosen for herself if life had turned out differently, but she loved him with every fiber of her being. One day she might be brave enough to tell him so.

A pain stabbed at her back, then shot into her belly and down her thighs. She caught her breath and pulled away from Joseph to bend over, hands on her knees.

“May?” Joseph’s hand rested on her back; a tremble betrayed his fear.

As the pain eased, she forced a laugh to reassure him and smooth the crevasses around his eyes and mouth. “It was nothing. Just a matter of having to lean over this great belly to hug you. I’m sure it won’t be the last time this baby stops us from showing affection.”

He laughed with her.

The ache had settled low in her belly and the baby chose that moment to roll over, jamming a foot or elbow into the very spot that was tender. She hid her grimace of pain by turning to the table to carefully fold the silk and threads into the paper again. “I’m going to put these away in my sewing chest and then I’d better get to work. You too, Mr. McElroy.”

Her teasing had its intended effect. He laughed as he gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, then headed back outside. Once she was alone, she carefully lowered herself into a chair and rubbed her belly. “Are you coming today, little one?” she said quietly to the empty room. “Is that what’s happening?”

Each time she thought of facing childbirth without a midwife to guide her, she felt the air being sucked out of her lungs, as it was now. Her throat burned. She would be alone with no one but Joseph to bring their child into the world. At best, they would welcome a healthy child. At worst, this day would be her last.

She’d been praying to the ancestors for months that her child would not be left here without her. A slant-eyed, black-haired child needed his mother to help him through this pale world.

• • •

The pains came and went all day. After dinner, when Mei Lien hadn’t felt one for several hours, she left Joseph in the sitting room with the farm ledgers while she went down to the water for her nightly visit with her family’s spirits.

It was still full light out. At least another hour would pass before the sun set into the sea on the other side of the island. She loved nights like this, when the warmth of the day still lingered in the leaves and berries, filling the air with sweet scents that made her draw deeply into her lungs with her eyes closed, savoring every nuance to pull forth from her memory on cold winter nights.

The nearer she came to the water, the more the smells changed. Near the house she smelled the dry, sunshine scents of grass and baking soil, but beside the water everything smelled more alive. Here she detected the damp, pungent odors of mushrooms growing on the forest floor where the sun rarely reached, and the briny seaweed and algae strewn like paint on the beach rocks.

The bay at this hour before sunset almost always turned glassy, as though an invisible hand had switched off the wind and directed the animals and currents to rest, leaving a mirrorlike surface to reflect the blue sky above streaked with orange and pink. It made her wish she could open her arms and soak it all into the tiniest of pores in her skin.

Mei Lien eased her sore body onto her favorite boulder and thought of Father and Grandmother. Their faces were losing definition in her mind. Time was smoothing their rough edges just as the invisible hand smoothed the water. She’d lived the past year and a half with only white faces to look upon. Occasionally in Port Townsend or Victoria she would see another Asian face, but they almost always turned away from her upon seeing Joseph beside her.

If not for the silvered mirror Joseph had bought for her, she would not remember the slant of her eyes, the slash of black eyebrows under black hair, her smooth round face. She was forgetting. She was becoming one of them. But in her own reflection she saw Father and Grandmother. Soon she would be able to look at her child and see her family and remember.

Maybe then she could stop searching the water every night, trying to feel whole but always returning home fractured.

“Shouldn’t you be scrubbing something?”

Mei Lien jerked at the sound of the voice. Not ten feet offshore sat the devil Campbell in his rowboat filled with what looked like crates of nails, tools, and seed packets. She’d been too lost in her thoughts and hadn’t heard him coming. She should have been more alert.

She’d been so stupid! So stupid to put herself and her child in danger like this.

Fear filled her mouth and kept her from replying to his question. As fast as she could, she pushed up off the rock to make her way to the path at the far end of the beach that would lead to home and Joseph. Safety.

Faster, Mei Lien!
She picked her way carefully over the rocks. If only she could run. But the belly, the pains, the aches in her hips and legs—the best she could do was shuffle at a pace akin to walking. If he had a mind to hurt her, now would be his opportunity.

Go!
Her mind urged.
Ignore
the
ache. Ignore the pains.
She was halfway to the forest path when her foot slipped on an unsteady rock and jammed hard into another sharp rock covered in dried barnacles. The pain shot up her leg and curled itself into her belly like a snake about to spring.

That was when her belly clamped tight and sent the pain right back down her legs with such intensity she had to stop and bend over, her hands cradling her stomach. She could not move until it eased.

“You shouldn’t be down here all alone, Mrs. McElroy,” Campbell taunted, coming closer, though she didn’t have the strength to turn and look at him.

All she could do was focus on filling her lungs with air and sending the pain out with her exhaled breath.

“Come now, is that any way to treat your neighbor? By ignoring him?”

She heard splashing now and knew he’d rowed to shore and was coming toward her. She pushed through her pain to force her feet to move forward. One agonizing step at a time she headed toward the trail.

But Campbell caught up to her. It was his boots she saw first, standing on the rocks beside her.

“Are you ill?” Revulsion filled his voice and she knew then he wasn’t going to touch her. She thanked her swollen body for that.

“What do you want?” she managed as the iron fist clamping onto her insides eased enough for her to get the words out.

“I want your land.” His boot kicked at a rock, sending it rolling to hit her foot. “I don’t know how you did it, but you poisoned Joseph against me so he won’t talk to me. Get your husband ta take my offer. Settle elsewhere. Somewhere your kind is wanted.”

She moaned through the pain gripping her body, only half listening to him.

He backed up so that she no longer saw his boots. “Ye tell Joseph I made a fair offer. Tell him to take it before it’s too late.”

“Tell him yourself,” she managed between pants.

“Oh, I would, if you hadn’t turned him against me.”

The fist inside clamped tighter and twisted, bringing her to her knees with a shameful cry. Her whole body, including the muscles in her face, tightened. She breathed through the pain, focusing on the moment she hoped was coming when it would ease and she could find her way home to Joseph. Just then a gush of warm liquid ran down her thighs. She hated that Campbell witnessed something so private, but she could do nothing about it. She could only breathe through the pain.

She didn’t hear Campbell’s boots crunch over the shells and barnacles or splash back to his boat. She didn’t hear his oars row away. But when the pain lessened and she could look up and focus on her surroundings, he was gone. No trace of his visit remained and she wondered if she’d imagined him there at all. Or maybe it was his devil spirit preying on her.

“May!”

She turned to see Joseph running across the beach to her. Only then did she realize she was on her hands and knees on the rocks, tears soaking her face.

Before Joseph reached her, another pain grabbed her. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to focus on her breath again, but the pain was too demanding and all she could do was suffer and hope she survived.

“Let me get you to the house,” she heard Joseph say as if from a long distance.

She felt his hands on her back, trying to shift her and lift her.

“Don’t touch me!” she hissed, knowing if he moved her right now she might tear completely apart. “Wait.”
Breathe. Breathe.

Finally the pain lessened and she looked up at her husband. “I can move now, but I don’t think I can walk.”

Immediately the fear she’d seen on his face vanished. His eyes narrowed and his jaw hardened, then he nodded. He looked ready to face anything at that moment and his enemy was her pain. For the first time Mei Lien felt her own fear lessen. She wasn’t alone. Joseph would fight through this with her. He would help her.

As he lifted her against his chest, she wrapped her arms around his neck. “I’m sorry I’m so heavy.”

“Sweetheart, you’re tiny even with the babe in your belly. Don’t worry; we’ll be home in no time.”

She closed her eyes and let her head rest against her husband’s shoulder, dreading the next pain she knew would come soon.

It came just as they left the cool of the forest and entered the field where shadows were creeping toward the house over tall sunbaked grasses. She cried out as the pain gripped her.

“What do I do?” Joseph asked, jostling her roughly as he quickened his steps.

“Stop. Don’t move,” she managed between her teeth. He immediately froze and she turned her focus inward. Breathing. Breathing. Imagining the baby moving into place, ready to be born.

“All right, go,” she said as soon as the pain lessened several minutes later. She wanted to lie down right there, but she gritted her teeth and urged Joseph on. She would not lie down until she was in her own home, in her own bed. Her child would not be born in a dirty field like the animal the islanders thought her to be.

Joseph did as she said, moving quickly, each bounce and jostle sending agony through her internally bruised body. But she didn’t complain. The sooner they got to the house, the sooner she could get to the business of bringing her child into the world.

As they entered through the back door into the kitchen, she heard the door slam shut behind them and then they were climbing the narrow stairs to the bedroom. She felt Joseph’s arms trembling under her, but she knew she’d never make it up the stairs herself, so she let him continue while she held on tight to his neck.

Her belly started to tighten. “The pain’s coming,” she told her husband as she closed her eyes and prepared for it. He laid her on the bed and she rolled to her side, wrapping her arms around her belly and feeling it harden beneath her hands. Again she breathed and waited until the torture ended.

“Boil water,” she said as soon as she could talk. “Linens.”

As she lay there feeling bruised and battered and terrified, she unbuttoned her gown and kicked off her boots. Then she waited for Joseph to return to help her with the rest.

Soon he was by her side again and helping her undress and settle into the bed with pillows behind her and extra linens under her.

“Have you ever seen a woman give birth?” Joseph asked as he removed the quilt from the bed and left it on the chest of drawers under the window. “Do you know what to expect?”

She shook her head. “I only know what the herbalist from Port Townsend told me.” She paused as she remembered. “Oh, get the packet labeled ‘before’ and make a tea of it for me to drink.”

He nodded and was gone again.

But the tea wasn’t needed after all. The minute Joseph left the room, another pain gripped her, but this one was different. This one made her feel like she should push. “Joseph!” she called as soon as she could draw a breath.

He ran into the room and immediately the color drained from his face. “Oh my God,” he said as he rushed to her. “I see the head.”

“Help me. I don’t know what do to!” Despite everything the herbalist told her, actually feeling her body ripped apart from the inside scared her more than anything she’d ever experienced.

“I’m here, sweetheart. I’ll help. It can’t be much different from a cow or sheep, right?”

She didn’t appreciate the comparison but didn’t have the strength to respond. Cow or not, she was glad for Joseph’s help. He grabbed a towel from the stack next to the bed and talked her through as she pushed their child from her body.