The Red Thread

by Ann Hood

  “Then, yes,” Maya said, “it’s your turn.”

  “I’m Charlie Foster—” the man began, but he was immediately interrupted.

  “I knew it!” Mr. Nell Walker-Adams said, leaning to shake Charlie’s hand. “I was there. The grand slam in the playoffs. Holy shit. Charlie Foster.”

  Others nodded and grinned, also reaching across each other to shake his hand.

  “Aha!” Maya said. “That’s why you want that knuckleball.”

  “It was a long time ago,” Charlie said.

  “Not that long ago,” his wife said. “I was there, and I’m not that old.”

  Charlie shrugged, but it was clear that he liked the attention.

  “I’m the great one’s wife, Brooke,” she continued. “I keep him modest.”

  “Charlie Foster,” Nell Walker-Adams’s husband said, shaking his head. “Holy shit.”

  Nell glared at him, and he quickly apologized.

  “A famous man,” Maya said. “Perhaps some lucky baby in China will be the daughter of this famous man.”

  The smile faded from Charlie’s face, Maya noticed, just the tiniest bit. So it was the wife who wanted to do this, she thought. Not the famous baseball player.

  “I’m Susannah,” the woman with the pale blond hair said. “Carter and I have a daughter Clara who’s six. She…” Susannah paused. “She’s six,” she said again.

  “We’re looking into adoption,” Carter said, “because she has some issues, some problems.”

  Maya nodded. “Yes, of course. Many families do this. You’ll see. It’s very typical.”

  She let her eyes settle on the next couple. And they told a little of their story. Then the next couple spoke, and the next. One woman was single and had come with her sister. One woman was alone because her husband was not yet ready to adopt. To Maya, the stories were both familiar and unique. The older man who had grown children from an earlier marriage, who’d had a vasectomy and now found himself with a young wife ready for her own babies. The weary couples who’d tried IVF and failed. The confused ones who still couldn’t believe they were unable to get pregnant. The family that, after three boys, wanted a daughter. What they all had in common was this lust, this inexplicable need for a baby. Their desires were palpable in the warm room, as if these people had carried something real inside—hopelessness and hope, love and desperation—and offered it to Maya.

  Maya looked out at her families and her heart leaped. She could help them. Every one of them.

  “I guess that leaves you,” Maya said to Emily. She smiled warmly at her friend, wanting her to relax. “Full disclosure,” Maya told the group. “Emily and Michael are friends of mine. I’ve been trying to get them to come to an orientation for some time now. And here they are.”

  “I’m so happy to be here,” Emily said. “I have been ready to have a baby for such a long time. We’ve had problems having our own.”

  “Well, we do have one daughter,” Michael said. “Chloe. She’s fourteen.”

  Maya saw Emily swallow hard.

  “Wonderful,” Maya said. “So here we all are.”

  “It’s his daughter,” Emily said quietly. “From a previous marriage.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Maya said, hating that she had used that word twice in a row. She looked at these families, taking them in. Their names. Their stories.

  “Let me tell you the Chinese legend of the red thread,” Maya said.

  AFTER THEY HAD all gone home and Maya and Samantha had cleaned up, Maya went into her office and reached into the bottom drawer. From it, she took the soft pink yarn that hung from two long knitting needles.

  She had begun this ritual back in Honolulu, on that awful night almost ten years ago, the night that began with a hailstorm and ended by almost ruining her. That night was why her marriage broke up, why she went to China with her parents and decided to start an adoption agency. On that awful night, Maya had retrieved yarn and needles from her purse and she knit until she became exhausted. When she woke up the next morning, that night was at least behind her. Somehow, knitting became her talisman. She never made anything. Not scarves or hats or mittens. She never learned to purl or to read a pattern. She just knit.

  After her first orientation, when the families had left and Maya was alone in her office, she felt suddenly burdened. Not just by their futures, but by the futures of those babies waiting in China. The weight made her literally so heavy that she could not stand. She dropped into a chair and tried to calm herself. But all she could think was that a baby’s life was her responsibility. No! Not one baby. Many babies. Almost frantic, Maya picked up her knitting and knit row after row until her heart calmed.

  All of those families got beautiful happy babies. But the weight remained. So Maya knit after each orientation, a ritual that she hoped would bring babies to these people. A ritual that let her believe, even briefly, that she could have the life of a child in her hands, and do everything exactly right.

  Hunan, China

  LI GUAN

  “Ssshhh,” Li Guan whispered to her daughter. “The mayor is poking his nose where it doesn’t belong.”

  Li Guan and the baby stayed hidden in the small room off the kitchen where the pickles and potatoes were kept for the winter. In the kitchen, Li Guan heard the murmur of voices. Her husband’s and the mayor’s. She tried to make out their words, but couldn’t. The baby whimpered and Li Guan pressed her closer.

  “Ssshhh,” she whispered again.

  Just yesterday, Sheng, the nosy old woman who raised pigs and sold them for too much money, had come to Li Guan in the market.

  “The last time I saw you,” the old woman said, “you were with child. Where is that child?”

  Li Guan had forced a laugh. “Me? With child? My daughter is almost nine years old now. Surely I’ve seen you in nine years.”

  The old woman frowned. “I saw you in the spring and you were round and your cheeks glowed.”

  “Thank you,” Li Guan said, bowing her head slightly as she backed away from the woman. “You compliment me.”

  When this daughter was born, she had looked her husband in the eye and said one word: “No.”

  That small word held more meaning than Li Guan could begin to express. No, I will not give this child away. No, I will not let you do it. No, no, no. She is mine.

  “How long do you think you can keep a child a secret?” her husband had asked her. “A baby, perhaps. But a toddler? A five-year-old?”

  “No,” Li Guan said.

  She did not have a plan, except that she would have this daughter and keep her and love her, just like she did her first child.

  Now Li Guan heard the door open and close. The mayor had left. Still, she waited in the pantry with her baby.

  Her husband walked in, stooping so as not to hit his head on the doorframe.

  “There is suspicion,” he said.

  When she didn’t respond, he said, “If we are caught, we cannot pay such a large fine. My mother is not well. We can’t afford to lose health care.”

  Still Li Guan remained silent.

  “A daughter is not worth losing everything,” her husband said.

  “This daughter is,” Li Guan said. “Why is she so special?”

  “Because she is my child,” Li Guan answered.

  HER FATHER-IN-LAW glared at her as he ate. Li Guan stood at his elbow, ready to refill his bowl. She hated the old man. She was sorry his wife was so ill, but she hated her too. Li Guan had friends who had kind in-laws and friends who had tedious ones. But hers were cruel. Ever since she came to live with them, they mocked her. They thought she was too skinny, her voice too shrill. “Why did my son choose such a wife?” her mother-in-law asked every day.

  When her first daughter was born, they shook their heads in disgust. “Of course you could not give us a grandson. You are worthless.”

  Li Guan’s friend had a book that said it was the man who determined the sex of a baby. The friend’s cousin was a doct
or who had studied in Beijing. In his medical book, many complicated things were explained. Li Guan and her friend read the book the way some women read cheap romance stories. They could not wait for the next chapter. They read about how food was digested, how blood flowed, how babies were made. True, they giggled at many of the descriptions. Sometimes they found what they read hard to believe. A man really produced millions of sperm at a time? And those sperm swam up a woman? They had a private joke: If one of their husbands wanted sex, they would tell the other she had to go fishing. “I am so tired,” her friend might say. “I had to go fishing all night last night.”

  Before her mother-in-law got sick, Li Guan fought with her, as usual. They fought about everything: how Li Guan cooked. Li Guan’s daughter—spoiled! her mother-in-law said. Lazy! Li Guan’s disrespect.

  “What a worthless daughter-in-law I have,” her mother-in-law said.

  “Ha!” Li Guan said. “It is your son who is worthless. It’s the man who decides the sex of a baby. He makes millions of sperm and they carry a special code—”

  “Shut your mouth! Are you the devil? Is this nonsense witchcraft?”

  “Yes, I’m a witch,” Li Guan said.

  The next day, her mother-in-law complained of a pain in her stomach. She could not get out of bed. Over the next few weeks, her symptoms worsened. Li Guan and her friend studied the thick medical book of the friend’s cousin.

  “Ovarian cancer,” Li Guan decided.

  “Or pancreatic cancer,” her friend said.

  Neither had a good prognosis.

  “You need to see a doctor,” Li Guan told her mother-in-law. The woman’s skin was a sickly gray and her face seemed to have aged years in a matter of weeks.

  “You put a spell on me,” the woman said. “Only you can cure me.”

  Li Guan’s husband tried to talk sense to his parents. “Li Guan has been reading a medical book. That’s where she gets her information.”

  His mother winced in pain. “Make her take the spell off me. I know I made her suffer, but I will do whatever she wants if she will make me better.”

  As the mother grew worse, Li Guan’s father-in-law grew more desperate. Until finally he agreed to take his wife to the hospital in Loudi, two hours away. Li Guan’s husband arranged for a car to come and get them, and they carried his mother to it and laid her across the backseat. She had never ridden in a car, and even in her pain she grew frightened.

  “The doctor will help you,” Li Guan said, kneeling by the open door. Her mother-in-law had started to smell like rotten peaches, and Li Guan turned her face away from her slightly so as not to show her disgust.

  “I curse you,” the woman said, suddenly sitting upright and pointing at Li Guan. “You will suffer for the rest of your life for what you’ve done to me.”

  Despite the warm air, Li Guan shivered. “I swear to you, I’ve done nothing.”

  Her mother-in-law seemed frozen for a moment, her bony body stiff, her finger pointing and trembling. Then, just as quickly, she crumpled into a small heap, moaning.

  Li Guan watched her husband and father-in-law squeeze into the front seat with the driver. She watched the small boxy car disappear in a puff of stinking black exhaust.

  THEY RETURNED FOUR days later with her mother-in-law and a cardboard box of pills.

  “If this medicine doesn’t work…” her husband said. He shrugged, but didn’t finish his sentence.

  “Is it ovarian cancer?” Li Guan asked him.

  “You are not a doctor,” he said. “You are just a person who read a book.”

  That night in bed, Li Guan whispered to him. “One of your millions of sperm has found its way to my egg and fertilized it.”

  “What egg?” he asked gruffly. “Li Guan, I am tired from the days at the hospital.”

  “Women have eggs in their fallopian tubes—”

  Her husband sighed and rolled away from her.

  “In other words,” Li Guan said, “I’m pregnant.”

  “How can this be?” he asked her.

  “Fishing without a net,” she said, giggling.

  “What now?”

  “Your sperm look like tiny fish. They swim up my cervix—”

  “Enough,” he said wearily.

  Li Guan said, “Reproduction is an amazing thing.”

  HER MOTHER-IN-LAW refused to die. Every month her husband hired a car and driver and took her to the hospital, returning with another box full of pills. She grew thinner and thinner as Li Guan grew heavier with the new baby. She ate less while Li Guan ate more. She stayed awake, moaning and writhing in pain, while Li Guan slept happily and solidly all night.

  When Li Guan gave birth, quickly in the kitchen as she cleaned long beans, her mother-in-law looked at the baby girl and smiled.

  “Here is the suffering I wished on you,” she said.

  Again, like that warm day when her mother-in-law had cursed her, Li Guan went cold.

  “Your mother is the witch,” she told her husband. “Not me.”

  She would prove her mother-in-law wrong. She would keep this baby and give her more love than any baby had ever had before. She would teach her things, and one day perhaps her daughter would go to Beijing and become a doctor, like her friend’s cousin.

  Every night, Li Guan slept with her baby tucked beside her. During the day, she kept her close in the sling, pressed against her. She saw her father-in-law always watching her with his beady eyes.

  “Make him stop,” she told her husband.

  “If we get found out, we will lose everything.”

  “No,” Li Guan said. “If I lose her, I will lose everything.”

  One day a neighbor knocked on the door. “I heard a baby crying,” she said, peering inside.

  “It is my mother-in-law,” Li Guan lied. “Poor thing. The pain is too much to bear.”

  Then the old woman in the market made accusations. And the mayor showed up.

  “I can’t keep this secret any longer,” Li Guan’s husband said that night in bed. “Perhaps I can make a case to the mayor.”

  “A case to break the law?” Li Guan said. “After you already lied to him today?”

  Her husband sighed. Li Guan realized he sighed a lot. She hugged the baby close, and listened to the baby sounds she made.

  LI GUAN’S MOTHER-IN-LAW began to shrivel until she resembled a shrimp, bent and curved.

  A woman appeared at the garden fence and said, “How is your mother-in-law?”

  Li Guan was on her hands and knees in the dirt, planting carrots. She pulled her jacket around her, to better hide the baby.

  “She is very sick,” Li Guan said.

  “What do you have under your jacket?” the woman said.

  “A bag of vegetables.”

  Li Guan did not look up, but she could feel the woman watching her.

  “How old is your daughter?” the woman asked.

  Li Guan swallowed hard. “She is nine.”

  After a few moments of quiet, Li Guan glanced at the fence. The woman was gone.

  That night, as she slept holding her baby close, her father-in-law pounded on the bedroom door.

  “Come quickly! Help!” he shouted.

  Li Guan moved to nudge her husband awake, but her hands landed on empty space where he should be.

  “Help!” her father in law yelled, pounding on the door.

  Slowly, Li Guan got out of bed. She opened the door a crack.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  Her father-in-law yanked the door open all the way and pulled her out of the room.

  “Hurry!” he said.

  Li Guan glanced back at the baby, asleep in bed.

  “Wait,” she said, pushing him away. “I need to get the baby.”

  Her father-in-law grabbed her arm hard. “Hurry!” he said.

  At the door to his room, he shoved her inside. The room was dark and smelled foul, like feces and sickness. On the bed, her mother-in-law lay curled like a shrimp, a strange sou
nd escaping her throat.

  “What is it?” Li Guan asked. But her father-in-law had disappeared.

  Li Guan went to the bed, the smell worsening as she neared.

  “Can you hear me?” she whispered.

  No answer except that guttural sound.

  Closer now, Li Guan saw that her mother-in-law had soiled the bed. Her head was arched back at a strange angle and her eyes appeared to be half opened.

  Li Guan took a deep breath and rolled her mother-in-law off the sheet. Hastily, she removed the linens, lifting the woman to pull them off. With a cloth, she cleaned the woman as best she could. Strange how cleaning a baby was almost a sweet thing and cleaning a sick person was so awful. Still, Li Guan did it, murmuring assurances to her mother-in-law the whole time.

  Finally, there were clean linens on the bed, and a clean nightgown on her mother-in-law. Li Guan opened the window to let some fresh air in. She leaned on the sill, exhausted, and took deep breaths of the cool night air. Under the full moon, she watched a man walking quickly down the road with a bundle. Where could he be going in the middle of the night? Li Guan wondered. Something about his duck-like walk seemed familiar. Li Guan watched a moment longer.

  “Stop!” she yelled suddenly.

  She ran from the window and out of the room to her own room. When she flung open the door, she saw immediately that the bed was empty. Still, she climbed on it, her hands searching the blankets for what she already knew was gone. Just like that, her secret was gone.

  HOME STUDY

  A BIT OF FRAGRANCE CLINGS TO THE HAND

  THAT GIVES FLOWERS.

  4

  MAYA

  The couple standing before Maya in her office doorway had a problem. She could see that by the way the woman’s shoulders slumped forward, as if she were folding herself into a cocoon. The man’s jaw was set, his eyes bloodshot. He hadn’t shaved either, which made Maya wonder if he’d been up all night.

  “We were at the orientation last week?” the man said. “We wondered if we could have a minute of your time?”