I stalked off to the bedroom and turned off the light, ready to sleep without another word. Philip followed, sitting on the edge of our bed. He was quiet a long time.
“I know it hasn’t been easy for you here,” he said in the dark. “I heard you used to have a rich boyfriend, and you used to sing in nightclubs and model for calendars.”
“I never modeled for calendars.”
“I don’t care what you did,” Philip said. He finally lay on his pillow, facing me. “I know I’m not rich or good-looking. I know I’m sickly. My friends say you’ll run away once spring comes. They tell me I’d better pin you down with children or—”
“Keep me from learning English?” My jaw clenched. It made sense. If I couldn’t speak the language here, where could I go? “And you listened to them.”
“Life here hasn’t been easy for you. You’re unhappy.”
I couldn’t deny that. “Were you like this with your first wife?”
He tensed, and I didn’t think he’d answer. After a while, he replied, “I never told you, but my late wife... she... she made her living serving other men. It was during the war—she had no choice if she wanted to survive. She had a baby boy when I met her, and I raised him like my own. Three years later, they both got sick... There was nothing I could do.”
I heard pain in the rawness of his voice. “I didn’t think I’d marry again.”
I shifted so he couldn’t see my face. Philip had been abandoned once, by a wife whom it sounded like he’d loved. Obviously it wasn’t her fault—or his—but years later, the wound in his heart hadn’t healed. I knew what that pain was like. I still felt it every day from losing Lily and missing Mama.
Empathy was different from forgiveness, though. The latter had to be earned.
“I’m not going to leave you if I can speak English,” I said. “Iwillleave if you act like you own me.”
“I know,” said Philip.
The next day, he bought me a book calledGoodnight Moon,which he said many children used to learn English. It was an odd story, about saying good night to sundry things inside a room, including socks, a rabbit on a rocking chair, and the moon itself. I didn’t quite understand it. I wished he had bought a fairy tale like the ones Lily used to read.
Still, he was trying, so I dropped the fight and didn’t bring it up again. He wasn’t a perfect man, far from it. But I’d chosen him. I’d chosen this life.
I wouldn’t run away.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The weekend of the Fourth of July, I was frying shrimp lo mein for the only two customers in the restaurant. Business was slow since most people were barbequing in their backyards, so I worked in the kitchen while Philip and Francis hauled rice sacks into the storeroom.
It was blisteringly hot, and I was feeling faint. I held my breath, welcoming a brief interlude of cold before I let it go. After finishing this order of noodles, I would go to the front and sit next to the fan. Lately my legs ached after standing too long, and I rested one knee atop a stool for the scantest relief.
Philip and I had been married for over a year, and we’d started trying for a baby.
It’d been five weeks since I missed my last cycle, and the certainty that I was pregnant consumed me. Last night I’d hinted about the possibility to Philip, and I’d never forget how the weariness of his day instantly washed away from his face, replaced by a joy that I’d never seen there before. A joy that I felt, too.
A child. A reason to fight and stay in this world.
The noodles were done. I tilted the wok to give them one last singe over the fire—something I’d done a thousand times. Then I lifted the wok. I was weak from the heat, and as I wrapped both hands over the handle, I accidentally grazed my forearm over the blazing cast iron. I jumped with a cry of pain. Without thinking, I held my breath, and the shimmering cold swept over me.
I disappeared.
I don’t know how long I was gone, but when I returned, the wok was on the floor, the noodles still sizzling on the ceramic tiles.
Damn it,I cursed, reaching for a broom to clean up the mess. I’d have to tell the customers that their order was running late.
I didn’t make it out of the kitchen. Three steps from the door, a cramp pierced inside my gut. It knocked the breath out of me and next thing I knew, the world slid sideways from under my feet. The broom dropped from my hand, thumping onto the floor as I bowled over, holding in a scream. There came a warm gush into my underwear.
I froze, paralyzed by shock. I knew it was blood, I couldfeelit was blood, passing out of me in a slow mournful trickle. Yet I refused to believe it.
I sat there, enduring the pain alone and holding my stomach, as if I could will the baby back inside me—and keep it from spiriting away.
The customers grew impatient. They were looking for their noodles, then they were demanding their noodles. I could hear them, but I didn’t really hear them.
