Janice Lee: The Expatriates

Daisy was born after three hours of pushing, the hardest thing Margaret had ever done. She remembers thinking that it would never end, and the terrible feeling that this was something that had to be done and she was the only person who could do it. There was no way out. Then Daisy came, squawling, as red as a beet and about as attractive, and as the nurse put the naked baby on Margaret’s chest, she fell in love. In a desperate, intense, suffocating way. She couldn’t stop looking at her, afraid Daisy would stop breathing, or get smothered. She didn’t sleep more than ten hours total in the first week of Daisy’s life.

The first few months after giving birth, Margaret felt nauseated, as if she were still pregnant. Her breasts, big and alternately baggy or rock hard, leaky and messy. The soft, shifting flesh of her belly — she was not one of those women who sprang instantly back into prepregnancy fitness — being squished into her jeans and marked with angry red splotches where the buttons pressed. Her hair was incredibly greasy, and then it all fell out. She sweat and sweat.

And the baby! Daisy was not a hard baby, but not easy either. All those terrible women she met who expressed pure happiness in their new roles and ignorance of anything as awful as bleeding nipples, or hormonal fluctuations that left you homicidal. The most they would admit to was a slight nod to the fact that it might be a little hard, not sleeping for three months, becoming a new, completely different person, the sheer relentlessness of it, that you would never be able to change back, but then they always follow it immediately with a “It’s so worth it, though, isn’t it? I don’t even think about it when I look at Sadie’s adorable face.”

Margaret, who was used to being above average in most things, couldn’t understand the gap. This was the hardest thing she had ever done, and arguably the most important. And no one was acknowledging that it really, really sucked. A lot.

This metamorphosis into that other being, that mother, was excruciating. She noticed that it got better in quarters. Three months, six months, nine months. And then suddenly she woke up and she felt better. She was not back to normal — that baseline had shifted. But she could cope with her life.

Later, people would ask, “Why didn’t you see anyone?” And certainly, after the incident happened, she did — it was practically court-ordered. But at that time, with that first child, she never felt that desperation was a good reason to see someone. And where would she have found the time? She didn’t have time to shower, let alone see a therapist or have a leisurely cup of coffee with a friend. And then the others came, and they were different and easier, because she had already crossed over into that other country of motherhood.

She thinks about that a lot, how you get used to everything, that the first shift is difficult and horrible, and you live your life because what else can you do, and then one day you wake up and your life seems normal. You start to forget the bad times. You shift into your new self.

At least, that’s what she had thought about life and change.

The other pregnancies were less vivid, and she was certainly less careful. She drank coffee with Philip; in the last five weeks of her pregnancy with G, she had a glass of wine every few nights. Of course, there was not the luxury of movie watching and solitude. She had Daisy and then Philip and her whole blazing new life as a mother. Everything revolved around the children. And here she was, in Korea, traveling with them to her quarter home country and feeling blessed.

They spent a lovely day wandering the streets of Insa-dong, where they bought colorful stationery, browsed through secondhand bookstores, walked through art galleries and craft shops, and saw a cart vendor selling fried silkworms from a cast-iron vat — a nostalgic treat for those who remembered when Korea was so poor they couldn’t afford meat and insects were an important source of protein. They couldn’t bring themselves to try them but bought roasted chestnuts from the vendor next to him, cracking and peeling the soft shells and eating the warm meat of the nut. Margaret carried G when he got tired, and he nestled his head into her neck.

At three, Margaret shepherded the exhausted kids back to the hotel and found Mercy doing yoga on a towel on the floor. “Did you have a good day?” she asked.

“I just walked around here,” Mercy said, from down dog. “I’m going to try to meet up with some relatives if I get a chance.”

“Great.” She paused. “Well, the kids are hungry, since we’re an hour ahead. You might as well eat now. I guess you could order room service, or go down to the restaurant? What do you think?”

“It’s pretty small in here,” said Mercy. “I think we should probably go downstairs.”

“Okay, just don’t leave the hotel.” She felt absurd that she even had to say it but wanted to be sure. The kids were excited to see Mercy, and she took them, chattering, telling her all that they had done, down the hallway and into the elevator.

Margaret went back to her room and got into the shower. She was meeting Clarke in the lobby at five, and they were going to the company headquarters to meet some people and then out to dinner.

In the car, Clarke ruffled her hair and asked about her day.

“It was good,” she said. “Where we were was really charming. And I think we’re going to meet my great-uncle tomorrow. He had his son e-mail me back with a time and a restaurant. Very sweet e-mail. We’re going to have lunch.”

“Great,” he said. “I don’t think I can make it. Is that okay?”

They sat for a moment, quiet, happy, hands intertwined in the backseat. She remembered this moment later as one of the last times she felt totally content.

At the office, she met some people, who all bowed, so she bowed back, feeling her 75 percent Americanness very strongly, and when she went to the bathroom, she saw a strange glass cabinet full of toothbrushes.

“What’s that for?” she asked one of the ladies in the office.

“Koreans like to eat Korean food,” the woman replied, giggling and covering her mouth, “but it smell very strong. We always brush teeth after lunch. It is an ultraviolet light cleanser, so it sterilizes all the toothbrushes so it is hygienic.”

“Oh, wow,” Margaret said. She was six inches taller than any other woman in the room and felt incredibly large.

They went out to a barbecue restaurant and ate bulgogi and drank beer and came back to the hotel with smoky hair and pungent clothes, and when she peeked into the kids’ room, they were watching a movie, bathed and pj’d, and they swore they had brushed and flossed. Mercy winked at Margaret, and she softened. She was charming, in an odd sort of way. She felt sorry for Mercy, although she didn’t know why.

The next day, she met her extended family for lunch with the kids, having given Mercy the day off again. It was at a barbecue restaurant (the amount of meat you consumed in Korea was extraordinary) with an outdoor garden and ponds, and they all took a photograph in front of the fake waterfall. It reminded her of old-fashioned family portraits as they seated her great-uncle and his wife in the front center and radiated out, agewise. There was much exclaiming and smiling and broken English and broken Korean. They were about twenty in all, many second and third cousins, who had brought their children, who played with Daisy and Philip and G in the outdoor garden. Margaret showed them pictures of her father and his parents, and they showed her old photo albums of their side of the family. The relatives showered them with presents — a woman’s silk scarf for her, hair accessories for Daisy, a tie for Clarke and toys for the boys — and she was mortified that she hadn’t thought to bring anything. She snuck off to pay the bill, and when the waiter presented her with the credit card slip, there were stricken faces all around.