When you enter the room, she falls gratefully toward you. You ease her down on the ground and help her get onto her hands and knees. She rocks back and forth, sways, her damp hair hanging down, sweat rising from her like steam.
“The others didn’t hurt like this one,” she pants. “Something is different. He must be turned around. Get Old Lady Lee.” She clenches up her face as another wave seizes her.
You stick your head out the door and call out to the mother-in-law. “Has Madame Lee been sent for?”
“What for?” she asks. “She’s been giving birth practically every year. Doesn’t she know how it works by now?”
You want to slap her, but the centuries forbid it. You lie instead. “The baby’s feet are down. This isn’t going to be easy.”
Suyon’s mother-in-law makes a sour expression. Her youngest daughter, a young girl still in braids, pipes up, “I can go, Mother. I know where she lives.”
Suyon’s mother-in-law nods imperceptibly.
When you duck back inside, you see Suyon is up again. She’s walking unsteadily, a hand against the wall. Every few steps she stops and leans toward the wall, one arm cupping her belly. “I want to take off my clothes,” she says.
You help her undress, amazed at the sight of her nude. She glows like a spirit but is monstrously, grotesquely swollen. Her breasts are huge and hang down, the nipples as brown and flat as cow dung. She smells like sour milk and deep earth. While the room gets darker, you walk her around and around the dank room. You give her small sips of barley tea and tie a cool cloth around her forehead.
What seems like hours later, the girl in braids comes running back into the courtyard shouting that she could not find Madame Lee.
Suyon cries out, wraps her arms around the bottom of her tight belly and hunches forward. When it passes, she’s wet allover, and exhausted. You help her sit down. She grabs hold of your arm and leans close to your face. “Take my baby,” she says. “When it comes. I want you to.”
You are surprised, but more by the fact that it has never occurred to you. It makes perfect sense. She has a baby and you need one.
But just as quickly you reject it. “No,” you tell Suyon. “It would never work.” The entire village would know whose baby it was; your mother-in-law would never allow it. And you are too proud. But most of all, you still believe you can have your own.
The sisters-in-law bring food and sympathize with Suyon. After they finish their evening chores, they come and sit with her, lighting candles around the room and putting their hands on her belly. Around midnight, Suyon’s water breaks and everyone prepares themselves.
Suyon says she wants to be on her hands and knees again. You all gather around her as she rocks and tightens and shudders in some strange, isolated dance. But her knees start to hurt and her wrists can’t hold her weight and she just needs to get the baby out. She says she wants to do it the old-fashioned way. A couple of servants take a lantern and tie some cloth around the sturdy limbs of the oak tree in the courtyard that has shaded the house for many generations. Suyon’s mother-in-law insists she at least put on a shift if she’s going outside. She won’t suffer the indignity of having people know she let one of her daughters-in-law give birth naked and outdoors.
But once she has given in to Suyon’s whim, Suyon’s mother-in-law becomes a different person. She softens toward Suyon, leading her to the oak tree and letting her lean heavily on her. It is cold, so she whispers to the youngest girl to run and get more blankets. She tells Suyon to relax and positions her so she’s underneath the tree and places the cloths hanging down into her hands. She helps Suyon squat down, spreading herknees as wide apart as they’ll go. Then she holds out her hands and waits. “Buddha says put out your hands and life will fill them,” she says.
Suyon’s groans come from deeper and deeper inside her, the pain making her more animal than human.
“Let’s help her,” the mother-in-law says. “Encourage her.”
The sisters-in-law start singing “Arirang,” a song so old no one knows where it comes from. It’s about two lovers separated by a rising river. When the boy attempts to swim across to his love, he drowns.
You’re close to her head, helping to hold her up, and you whisper nonsense into her ear. You tell her she is beautiful and perfect. You tell her Buddha told you so. You tell her there is no one better to birth this baby, this baby who will be smarter and more handsome than his brother and sisters. You tell her to let the body do what it wants. You tell her to let the body do its job.
You can tell by the change in the mother-in-law’s voice that something is happening. She tells Suyon to slow down and take some deep breaths. She says the head is just there. Now she explains to Suyon that she has to push slowly so that she won’t tear herself, and the two work together instinctively. The mother-in-law speaks gently, telling Suyon everything is fine because she can feel the baby moving down a little bit every time. Without thinking, you lean down to see the head appear, which the mother-in-law turns in order to guide the shoulders out, and after that the infant comes quickly, suddenly there, like a fish in a bucket. It’s a girl. With an old crying face. A perfect specimen. The mother-in-law wraps her quickly in a blanket. Then she hands the baby to you.
You stare into that crying face. It is so small but so insistent. Suyon asks for the baby, but Suyon is not yet done. Her face starts to tense up again, and she puts her head down
