The Girl Who Played Go

61

“I might be pregnant,” my sister whispers.

After supper she follows me to my bedroom and I feel I have to congratulate her. I ask her when she saw the doctor.

She hesitates for a moment and blushes as she admits, “I haven’t been to see him yet. I’m afraid…”

“Well, how do you know then?”

Her period is ten days late.

My heart leaps. My period is ten days late, too.

“Are you sure?”

Moon Pearl takes my hands in hers.

“Listen, I’m normally very regular. This time it’s for real! When I go to bed in the evening I feel dizzy. In the morning I feel sick. All I can eat is pickled vegetables. They say that if you want to eat acidic foods you’ll have a boy. Do you think I’ll have a boy?”

I am unmoved by my sister’s happiness. I tell her she should talk to a doctor.

“I’m frightened. I’m terrified they might tell me I’m not pregnant. I haven’t told anyone about this. It’s a secret I can share only with you. Oh, my sister, I’ve discovered again this morning what it is to be happy! I put my hands over my belly and I could almost sense the baby feeding within me. With him to give me strength, I can endure the infidelity, the abandonment and the lies. With him I can start a new life!”

I find my sister’s exuberance chilling. She may long for a child, but for me to be pregnant would be death.

After Moon Pearl has left, I sit down at my calligraphy table. With a fine paintbrush I sweep black strokes on the rice paper, counting the days since my last period over and over again. It should have come exactly nine days ago.

I flop down onto my bed, my head buzzing. I don’t know how long I lie there in that state, but when I come round, the clock is striking midnight. I get undressed and go to bed, but I can’t get to sleep. It is so strange to know that a new life is germinating inside another, that my body will produce fruit!

It will inherit Min’s slanting eyes. If it is a boy, he will be happy and full of seductive charm like Min, wise and serious like my father. If it is a girl, she will have my lips and my soft skin, she will be demanding and jealous like my sister, and she will have my mother’s majestic bearing. Jing will take the child for walks, proud but still bitter. On the Square of a Thousand Winds it will learn to play go and will eventually be able to beat me.

I stroke my belly and reality intrudes once more: Min is a prisoner of the Japanese; when will he be released? I don’t know his family. If I go to his house, they will drive me away. At school my name will be written in the roll of shame, and I will be expelled. The whole town will know. Even if I can accept the humiliation, my parents couldn’t bear the sneers and the whispers. Children in the street will throw stones at Moon Pearl, jeering, “Your sister is a whore!”

I switch the light on. My belly looks flat, below my navel a line of fine fluffy hair runs down to the denser growth below. When our nurse washed me as a child, this hair used to make her laugh: she said it meant I would have a boy.

I will go down on my knees before my parents, I will beat my head on the ground to beg their clemency. I must go live at the ends of the earth and have my child there while I wait for Min and Jing to be freed.

That happy day will come: two men making their way towards a little cottage lost in the open countryside. The door opens…