Lisa Ko - The Leavers

I want you to know that you were wanted. I decided: I wanted you.

Yi Ba thought that only men could do what they wanted, but he was wrong. I stood with my toes in the ocean, euphoric at how far I had come, and two months later, when I gave birth to you, I would feel accomplished, tougher than any man.

I NAMED YOU DEMING. My roommates let me stay, despite their complaints that your crying kept them up at night, and in return I kicked in a little extra rent. I tried to hand you over to a stranger at a day care but I couldn’t, not yet, and instead I quit my job, called the loan shark, and took out an additional loan, one that enabled me to not work for six months.

No one had told me I could have such love for another person. When I thought of anything harmful happening to you the love burned a little, like a rash, but when I held you and you were calm, the love was beaming, like sunlight through the leaves of a tree. I was in love! I’d look down at you and get goo-goo-eyed and think, This is a human being I made . I no longer watched crime shows with my roommates; they made the world seem too dangerous.

Didi worked in a nail salon and said she’d try to get me a job there. She gave us her mattress and took over the sleeping bag. I don’t know if you remember Didi, but she had a squeaky voice and fluffy bangs, and when you fussed, she would hold you and you would quiet down, discharging bubbles of drool that she blotted, nonchalantly, with the bottom of her shirt. After weeks of only sleeping an hour or two at a time, I responded to your screaming on autopilot. I’d hear your cries even when I was sleeping.

But it was grueling, how much a baby needed, how you would tug my hair and grab my shirt and latch onto my body because you owned, it, too. Look how he wants his mama, my roommates would say, and a couple of them also got goo-goo-eyed, and a sliver of fear would present itself: what if I would always be required to offer myself up, ready and willing, constantly available? What had I done? And then: what was wrong with me? Didi loved kids, had grown up caring for younger siblings and nieces and nephews, and though she found it strange that I sometimes wanted to take off and walk around the neighborhood for an hour, smoking a cigarette—“By yourself? And to nowhere in particular? But why?”—she always offered to watch you.

“When I get married,” Didi would begin her sentences, “when I have kids. ”

“How many kids do you want?” I asked, as we prepared dinner one evening.

“Two or three. Do you want more?”

“One’s enough for now.”

“Only one?”

I told Didi about Haifeng. “I guess I wanted more than just staying with him.” I poured oil into the pan and turned the knob that produced a gas flame.

“You’re a free spirit, but practical. Like my sister in Boston. She’ll marry this guy for a green card. Me, I’m more traditional. I’ll marry someone I love.”

It pleased me, being called a free spirit.

ONCE A MONTH, I called Yi Ba. “How’s New York?” he asked.

“Wonderful. How’s Minjiang?”

“The same.” Then he’d tell me about a neighbor’s new house with rugs that tickled his toes.

“I’ll try to make more money so I can send you some,” I said.

“You need your money more than I do. I can take care of myself.”

Two of my roommates had given birth to children in New York and sent them to stay with relatives in China. “They don’t remember anything when they’re babies,” said Hetty, a hairdresser with a shaggy bob. She was folding her clothes and stacking them into a box that she kept under her bunk. “They don’t miss us. What do you remember when you were his age? Nothing, I bet.” Hetty had a three-year-old son whom she hadn’t seen in two and a half years, living with her parents in her village, her husband working in a place called Illinois. “I’ll bring my son here when he’s old enough to go to school. Two more years.”

Ming, a chain-smoking waitress, hadn’t seen her daughters for five years. They were living with her family near Nanping. “You’ll try to keep him with you, but you won’t be able to,” she said in her raspy voice. “I wanted to keep my daughters, too, but it’s impossible. Who’s going to look after them? We’re all working. If you hire a babysitter you won’t be able to pay your debt. You’ve got to concentrate on that, or you’ll be screwed. Trust me.” She picked grapes out of a plastic bag, chewing as she spoke. “Grapes?”

She held out the bag and I took several. “I don’t want to send him to the village.” I sat on Didi’s bunk, holding you as you sucked on a bottle. “It’s only my father there, I don’t have a mother to help out.”

Ming said, “Grandparents treat them better than they treated you. They know the babies are going to leave again. Old age softens people.”

“Send him back,” said Hetty. “It’s the only way.”

“Free babysitting,” said Ming.

The two women laughed, but their laughter was the kind with no core, only loose edges.

In the tiniest spaces of time between naps and feedings, I explored the city with you bundled against me. We wandered to the bottom of Manhattan, where the sun warmed the river. There was a fence there, no way to walk directly into the water. That’s because the city was insecure and wanted to contain itself, sticking up borders to keep its residents close. I didn’t buy it. I believed we could leave whenever we wanted. Winter was coming, yet the sunlight heated my scalp, and I sang “Ma-ma-ma” and my voice was as clear and sharp as morning birds. You squirmed against me. Love spun up like feathers.

Some days I would clean you, change your poopy diaper, put on your shoes and socks and hat and little jacket, haul you in the stroller down three flights of stairs, only to have you start howling the moment we turned the corner. Time to go back up with the stroller, three flights of stairs, change your diaper and clean you and put your clothes back on, and by then I would have lost any desire to go out. You poked me, wanting to show me the same thing for the tenth time, a roommate’s pink shirt, a coin you’d found; you’d wail as you banged a spoon against the kitchen floor. I had only been Polly for such a short time, and Polly was already slipping away. There was so much of the world I would never see.

Weeks, months, drifted by in a haze, blending into one long, soupy day in which I never got enough sleep. Ice formed on the windowpanes and the sun refused to fully come up. It was too cold to go on walks now, too much hassle to ride the subway with a baby, so we stayed inside for days, moved between bedroom and kitchen and bathroom and bedroom, confined to our pen. I sang silly songs about chickens and goldfish and told you stories of fishing boats and banyan trees and Teacher Wu. I watched television when my roommates were at work. My closest friends were the actors on a Spanish show who fought and made up like clockwork, tiny lean women stuffed into high heels and short dresses and shiny men in collared shirts and pressed pants. I wanted a bedroom to myself like the actors had, to spread out in a bed big enough for four. The apartment got smaller and smaller.

Then it was spring, and then it was summer, and I’d been in New York for almost a year. You grew longer and heavier, energetic and curious, and once you were crawling I had to watch you all the time or else you’d be dipping your hands into the toilet and into your mouth, finding a rotten food dropping in a corner to eat, offering up a dead roach to me like a twenty-dollar bill. My money was gone. I didn’t want to take out another loan, but if I returned to work, I would have to pay someone to watch you. My roommates were right. There was too much debt, and I was behind. I had yet to send Yi Ba any money. Yet Didi’s nail salon salary fed her whole family in her village. Even Jing-John had bought his mother a house.