In the inn I threw up. I emptied everything inside me, and still the excruciating pain sat like a fire in my stomach. I crawled onto the bed and hugged my shoulders. Everything was unbearable—the clothes Ernest had folded, the dent on the pillow he had left, the scent of him. I buried myself under the quilt. When morning came, I gathered all my things and checked out.
I had nowhere else to go other than home. So my head hung low, I slid through the gates my butler pushed open. Ying wasn’t home, and Sinmay had left for Hong Kong. Peiyu watched from the dining room, her eyes piercing. I went to my room as fast as I could. I had left home as a runaway and returned as a disgrace: a used woman, pregnant out of wedlock, and abandoned. If she found out, she would shame me.
I took short walks along the wall near my room. I prayed the life inside me would wilt and melt. I thought of using some herbs or jumping from the wall to eliminate the life that was a burden, the life no one cared for. But I was a Buddhist. It was a crime to destroy a life.
I thought of Ernest, too, of his loss, his grief, for which, even though I refused to admit it aloud, I was responsible. But he was weak. He had abandoned me. I didn’t even have a chance to tell him of my pregnancy.
Peiyu would have noticed my condition with her experience, but she had just learned of Sinmay’s departure and the closure of his business. When he’d said he was broke, Sinmay had meant it. He was not only penniless but also in debt. She was furious, handing out whatever she’d saved to the creditors, who charged hefty interest. I gave her the cash I’d saved in my wardrobe. But I didn’t know how bad inflation was, and in a matter of a few weeks, all my savings were gone, and she still had creditors pounding on the door.
To save the cost of running the house, she dismissed all the servants, including the only nanny for her youngest, and sold my Nash without my knowledge. My chauffeur was dismissed too. I was sad and angry. Although I knew little about my chauffeur, he had been with me for many years, and he was most loyal to me.
Peiyu’s temper flared at mealtimes. She frowned and yelled at her children for eating too much, her complaints loud enough for me to hear outside the dining room. Indeed, it was quite unsettling to see how ferociously these children ate. There were so many—six of them. The thirteen-year-old boy lunged toward the pot of rice as soon as it let out steam, followed by the eleven-year-old and the seven-year-old, and each filled their bowl to the rim. They wolfed everything down, licked their lips, and wanted more.
Two months passed. Peiyu began to sell the heirlooms: my grandfather’s paintings, his jade pendants bestowed by Empress Dowager Cixi, my mother’s favorite Qing dynasty vase, my father’s antique snuff bottles. Then more followed: the bulky rosewood furniture, the jade tree, the rare blue porcelain set fired and crafted in Jingdezhen, and the British silverware that was another family heirloom.
Each morning on the first day of the week, Peiyu sat at the round table holding a brush, negotiating with a pawnshop owner, who promised not to disclose her identity to the public to save her reputation and in turn received the objects at a low price. She cursed but agreed.
If I had told Ernest of my pregnancy, would he have changed his mind?
In bed, I asked myself that question again and again. At least he needed to know. Our lives were nothing but drifting leaves in a violent storm, but the seed of our love came from a tree rooted in my heart.
I went to his bakery again on an afternoon in August, dressed in a jacket that failed to cover my bump. The rare beauty Golda greeted me. He had just left, she said, her green eyes, two beams of hostility, fixed on my stomach.
“Would you tell him I’d like to see him?” I asked, and gave her my address.
He never came.
I grew bigger. I put on the voluminous tunics Cheng had made for me before the wedding, but then even those would not conceal the child I carried. With each flutter, each kick of the life inside me, I was pounded with pain and regret and fear. Desperation ballooned as my stomach grew rounder and simple activities such as walking and getting out of bed became a struggle. I wanted the baby to leave my body, to free me, yet I didn’t want it to be born either. Whether it was a boy or a girl, it would be the walking proof of my foolishness, the face of my shame.
Then one day I was napping when Peiyu came into my bedroom where my ornate wardrobes were slowly disappearing one by one.
“I didn’t believe what my children said, but look at you,” she said, her gaze full of contempt.
I turned sideways to sit up, heavy and clumsy like a sow. “I wanted to tell you.”