by Jennifer Juo
“Her spirit is still strong, but her earthly body is weak, non?” Patience said. “De babies, dey cross over from de spirit world to de earth. Every day, dey are less spirit and more earth. But sometimes de crossing is not easy.”
Sylvia feared the spirits were punishing her. She would have to use all the tools of modern medicine to fight them. She drove to the small clinic on the compound with Patience sitting in the backseat holding Lila. Her baby was barely moving or crying now.
At the clinic, the Nigerian nurse turned to Patience, “You go wait here, you hear?”
“She’s coming with me,” Sylvia said, grabbing Patience by the hand. They went together into the doctor’s office with the nurse following, annoyed at this infraction of an invisible rule.
“Sit down, love,” the doctor said to her, ignoring Patience. He was an older, English man who had worked in Nigeria for over twenty years, a relic from colonial times.
Sylvia explained Lila’s symptoms to the doctor.
“It’s probably malaria. I’ll do a blood test to confirm.” He checked Lila’s vital signs.
“Malaria?” Sylvia stood up suddenly. She and Winston took bitter white pills every Sunday to ward off this dangerous disease. But as a newborn, Lila was vulnerable to these bloodthirsty mosquitoes.
“Don’t worry, love. It’ll be alright. It’s early in the process.” The doctor put his hand on her shoulder as if forcing her to sit down. “The chloroquine should stave off the malaria, but she’s dehydrated from the fever and her inability to hold food down. I’m going to put her on an IV. She’ll need to stay here for a few nights.”
Sylvia knew dehydration could kill babies. Her own mouth felt dry and parched in this heat. She glanced over at Patience for some kind of reassurance. Patience nodded at her, as if to confirm the doctor’s words, but seemed uncomfortable speaking with the doctor in the room.
The nurse took them to another room. She laid Lila in a plastic crib and pierced her translucent skin with an IV needle, nourishing her with sugar water. Sylvia sat there, twisting her long locks into knots, falling back into this childhood habit. Ever since Lila’s birth, Sylvia’s hair had looked ragged and shorn haphazardly because of the knots, her once beautiful hair cannibalized by her anxiety.
“Madam, don’t worry. De doctor will help her, non?” Patience said.
“And the spirits?”
“Dey will have to fight de doctor. Dey will have to fight you.”
“Me?”
“You and God. I will pray. Pray to our almighty God and sweet Jesus to help her. I know dey will help.”
“I’m not Christian. I’m Chinese…Buddhist.”
“God go help everyone. He no care you be Chinese, Nigerian, Budd whateva. He help. I go pray.”
Patience got down on her knees and closed her eyes, muttering.
Sylvia wasn’t sure about this Western God, but she knew spirits existed. She wasn’t going to take any chances with them. She wondered if the spirits were trying to take her child because she had somehow incurred their wrath. She knew the circumstance of her marriage with Winston was not normal and it went against social taboo. Sylvia would learn later that she should have sacrificed a chicken to apologize to the local spirits at Lila’s birth. But she was at the mercy of what Patience told her or remembered. Patience never mentioned this chicken ritual, so the spirits reminded Sylvia of her spiritual debt by inflicting sickness and disease on her child.
Not fully understanding the spiritual origins of Lila’s illness, there were so many things Sylvia could have done. Trying to understand, Sylvia consulted anthropology books about Patience’s Beng culture many years later. She should have washed Lila after birth with the traditional black soap and lemon, used by Patience’s people only for newborns or corpses. The black soap, made by female elders, facilitated the transition between life and death. But Patience overlooked this detail, perhaps the black soap was too hard to make or find. Whatever the reason, Sylvia did not follow all of these rituals and Lila’s crossing from the afterlife to the earthly life was troubled from the start.
The blood test confirmed Lila had contracted malaria, and the nurse added chloroquine to her IV. She cried from the fever, and the nurse shook her head.
“I won’t let you take my baby away,” Sylvia said out loud to the spirits, to God, to whoever would listen. Her defiant voice reverberated across the bare tiles and white walls of the compound clinic. It was Sylvia’s affirmation, her oath as a mother. She needed to hear it herself.
When evening came, the nurse made up the bed next to Lila’s plastic cot for Sylvia. Patience lay a blanket on the floor and went to sleep, but Sylvia couldn’t sleep. Lila barely stirred, and Sylvia put her hand on Lila’s chest throughout the night to make sure she was still breathing.
Eventually, Sylvia drifted off to sleep. When she woke up, it was light, and the nurse was in the room, checking Lila’s vital signs. It was seven in the morning, and Patience was already sitting by Lila’s cot. Sylvia’s breasts felt hard, and her blouse was soaked with milk.
“Is she alright?” Sylvia said.
“Yes, she’s doing betta. Her fever is down,” the nurse said. “De medicine is working.”
Sylvia went over to Lila’s cot. Her baby started to cry as soon as she smelled the milk on her blouse.
“She go feed her de milk. It will be good for her. Can you take dis thing off?” Patience said, pointing at the IV.
The nurse ignored her, pretending she was not even in the room.
“Woman, I go speak to you, eh,” Patience repeated. “You go be deaf?”
“Can you ask the doctor?” Sylvia said, desperately. Lila was crying for her now, and her breasts were leaking.
“I go ask him,” the nurse said and quickly left the room.
The English doctor appeared and took Lila off the IV. The nurse was nowhere in sight.
“Looks like we’ve got a hungry baby. That’s a good sign, love,” the English doctor said, smiling at Sylvia.
Lila nursed hungrily. It was the first time in her young life that she had eaten so well.
The next day, Lila’s umbilical cord fell off, and her daughter began the difficult journey from the spirit to the earthly world. According to Patience, this process usually took a child seven years. But would Lila even make it to seven years?
Chapter 3
The black plantain birds feasted on the ripe bananas rotting in the late afternoon sun. Winston returned home that afternoon, after four weeks away.
“The baby was ill while you were gone,” Sylvia said.
“How is she?” Winston asked, flatly. The lack of emotion in his voice bothered her.
“She’s fine now, but it’s hard…you’re away so much.”
They sat at their dining table on the screened porch. Outside, the breeze scattered fragile, white frangipani blossoms, a deceptive beauty with poisonous white blood leaking from its stems.
“I’m sorry. I know I’ve been travelling quite a bit,” he acknowledged. “I have no choice.” But he didn’t look directly at her when he spoke. They had been married now for over a year, and he still couldn’t look in her eyes. Sylvia felt lonely even when her husband was sitting right next to her.
“I understand. You have important work to do. I don’t want to get in the way,” she said, but she felt something akin to resentment even though she admired him for his work.
“You should sign up for that nursing program at the university. Like you planned,” he said. “It will keep you busy. Give you something to do while I’m gone.”
“I can’t right now. I can’t leave Lila, it’s too dangerous. She needs me.”
“I think Patience can manage.”
“I can’t leave her right now. You don’t understand. The spirits are after her.”
“Spirits? You believe this nonsense?”
“It’s not nonsense, and you know it.”
“Why don’t you go to the wives’ coffee mornings? Richard’s wife, El
izabeth, goes to these things.” He spoke to her as if she were a child, making her feel their ten-year age difference. He was trying to help, but somehow he made her feel worse.
She ate her dinner in silence. Winston went over to the small altar with a framed photograph of his deceased mother in the corner of the living room. Patience put a bowl of fresh fruit on the altar every day at his request. He bowed three times, a daily ritual he performed without fail when he was home. Then he retreated to his study.
***
She had met Winston at a Chinese Student Association party at the University of Reading. She had just left her English boyfriend, even though she was pregnant. Sylvia hadn’t told anyone, not even her lover, who she knew would only propose marriage. She had spent the week in despair, twisting her hair into complicated knots that she had to trim with her nail scissors. Pregnancy had ruined her plans. She didn’t want to live an ordinary life; in fact, she craved the extraordinary, even though she knew it was silly of her. But now here she was, like any other girl, on the precipice of marriage and children. She feared being trapped in a tiny English village unfriendly to foreigners—an isolated, uneventful life. So instead, she spent the morning standing outside the abortion clinic in the rain. She stood there for hours until she was damp and cold, but still she couldn’t go in. Her hands shook with the memory of her cousin hemorrhaging from a botched abortion in Hong Kong.
That evening, she didn’t know why, but she let her roommate talk her into attending the Chinese Student Association party. Sylvia walked into the crumbling common room with tall, drafty windows and an ornate carpet patterned with downtrodden violet roses. It was the usual crowd of Hong Kong students, a tight-knit circle she had avoided because they reminded her too much of home, of her parents. The men talked only of how to make money or how to save it. The women, dressed in neat little Chanel or Dior suits, reeked of designer perfume. It made her feel nauseous, dizzy, and full of doubt about coming. Then she noticed Winston standing taller than most of the men around him.
“I just got a job in Africa,” Winston said in English. Most likely a Northerner, she assumed he didn’t speak Cantonese like the rest of the party. She moved in closer to listen.
“Why go backwards to somewhere worse off than where we just came from?” One Chinese student mocked him.
“You think here is better than where we came from?” Winston said.
“I think England is horrible,” Sylvia said suddenly. Everyone turned to stare at her, including Winston. She wasn’t sure why she spoke, but something compelled her, perhaps Winston himself, standing there awkwardly, the others not appreciating his uniqueness.
“Well, why don’t you go with him? He’ll be lonely out there without his people,” the same student joked. Then he turned to Winston. “Isn’t that the reason you’ve graced us with your presence at these parties. Looking for a wife?”
Everyone laughed, and Winston looked down at the floor.
***
An hour later, the party was in full swing, but she noticed Winston heading toward the door. She followed him. She didn’t know why, except that somehow she didn’t want to lose him. He intrigued her.
“You’re leaving too?” She called after him.
“I don’t like parties much,” he said, not looking up. The two of them walked down the campus path in the cold night. Around them were tall stone buildings with stained glass windows. The bare, thorny rose bushes cast dark shadows on the path.
“I hate those parties too. All their talk about the latest designer handbag or Rolex watch bores me,” she said, her breath blowing like smoke in the winter air.
He glanced at her. “Can I walk you home?”
She nodded.
“So I assume you didn’t study business or finance,” she said.
“Got a PhD in Soil Science. I’m going to work on an agricultural aid project in Africa. With new hybrid seeds, we can double harvests. No one should be starving anymore.”
“Why Africa?”
“Because I can’t go back to China. Where our own people are starving.”
She had never met anyone pursuing something so lofty. “I wanted to study nursing, but my father said no.”
In fact, her father had refused to let her see or touch naked, bloody bodies. In her father’s eyes, women were ornaments. It was obvious in the way he treated her mother, dressed in silk and jewels, his arm possessively around her. Her parents had attended endless parties in Hong Kong with her brothers in tow, but Sylvia had been left at home with the amah.
“My father forced me to study Home Economics,” she continued, embarrassed. Everyone knew it was the “get-married” degree.
“You should do nursing,” Winston said. “My father wanted me to study Chinese literature. I ignored him.”
“You did?” She laughed at the thought of doing something so rebellious. But he was right. She should have studied nursing and she hoped he wouldn’t think less of her. They stood awkwardly in the doorway of her dormitory now.
“You know you can still do nursing in Africa,” he said, suddenly.
“Even without a degree?”
“I’m sure they’ll take any volunteers they can get.”
She didn’t know if he was asking her to go with him or just giving her advice.
“Really?” she said, in disbelief that it could be that easy. She felt as if her conversation with him was already resetting her path or at least its possibilities. They were silent for a few minutes.
“I have…I have tickets,” he stumbled over his words. “To the Royal Albert Hall. In London next weekend. Do you want to go?” He seemed shy and looked to the side when he asked her.
“I’d love to.”
She smiled up at him in the dim light. She guessed he was in his early thirties. She was only twenty-one. He had a kind face, even though he seemed a bit distant. It was the first time in days she had felt something other than despair. She recognized it as hope.
***
That next weekend, he came to the women’s hall to pick her up. He was oddly dressed in a mismatched blazer and pair of trousers, probably borrowed, but she found it endearing, especially after the slick, tailored suits of her Hong Kong friends. They caught an afternoon train to London. As the lush, green English countryside glided by their window, they talked of their war-torn childhood.
“When did you leave China?” she said.
“During the war with the Japanese. Before the Communists.” He spoke reluctantly, staring out the window. “We fled our estate. Left everything behind. Some vases and paintings worth a fortune.”
“At least you got out alive.”
Suddenly, he looked as if he were in pain.
She should have been more careful with her words; she bit her lip for talking too much. After that, he clammed up, and they both stared out the window in silence. She wanted to tell him about her predicament. Winston seemed unconventional to her, not like a typical Chinese man, but would he understand? In her mind, she was ready to go to Africa with him. But was he ready to go with her?
During the symphony performance, Winston seemed captured by the music, and afterward, his mood lightened. They took the underground to Leicester Square and walked to London’s Soho Chinatown. With five-floors and greasy plastic seats, Wong Kei was famous for its noodles and won ton soup. The waiter put them at a large round table with a family full of noisy children. Like most Cantonese restaurants, Wong Kei was not known for its customer service or romantic ambience.
Surrounded by the clatter of chopsticks, slurping of soup and barking waiters, Sylvia looked sideways at her date. Winston was not conventionally handsome, but when he walked into a room, people noticed. He had the solid build and height that characterized the northern Chinese and their diet of steamed mantou buns and thick, wide noodles.
“When are you going to Africa?” she said.
“In a month.”
“Are you really looking for a wife to go with you?” she mustered up the cour
age to ask.
“Yes, but no Chinese girl wants to go to Africa. They all want to stay here. Or go to America.”
“I would go…except I have problems—” she said, looking down.
“You would go?” Winston interrupted. “You would marry me?”
“You don’t want to hear what my problem is?”
“I can guess,” he said, but he didn’t look at her.
***
Winston and Sylvia were married by the end of the month before any sign of her belly showed. It was a small wedding with a borrowed wedding dress, dry cake, and cheap champagne, nothing at all like a Chinese wedding with its twelve-course banquet, red envelopes, and multiple silk gowns worn by the bride throughout the evening. None of their parents travelled from Hong Kong or Taiwan for the wedding. That night Winston touched her, fumbling with her bra. Afterward, she held him like a child, stroking his hair. The next day, they boarded a flight to Nigeria.
Chapter 4
After her baby’s birth, three months went by with Winston travelling to countries Sylvia had never heard of—Ghana, Benin, Sierra Leone, and Cameroun. She felt the distance he was putting between them.
She found the nights in Africa were not silent. They were filled with the shrill chorus of nocturnal insects and the constant undertone of drumming coming from town. Alone in her white-tiled house in the middle of a vast garden, she felt the isolation of this place—a solitary figure in the savannah, invisible villages hiding in the darkness. She had grown up in crowded, garishly-lit, urban Asia, constantly jostled by sweating people. She missed that cramped life, people in small places.
While Winston was away, Sylvia woke up at all hours of the night, responding to Lila’s every whim. She was discovering that the soft, pastel love of her baby had a dark, hushed-up, twilight kind of underside. Lila was colicky and had bouts of unexplained crying, especially at night. Sylvia knew it was the spirits’ doing.
