Hidden Flower

by Pearl S. Buck

  Today, however, she was taking the next step in duty. She had got up early, had bathed herself carefully, and had put on a dark-blue suit, newly bought, the jacket pleated full over her figure. The money which her father had left in the bank in San Francisco was quite enough for this and for the room in a cheap boardinghouse kept by a Mexican woman who spoke little English, and enough, too, for her food. For all else she must depend upon charity. Let charity do what love could not, let charity, too, allow what the law forbade She had inquired carefully of a stranger the way to a child welfare agency and now she approached the house on a side street where the rents were cheap. She went in, the door being open, and sat down in a waiting room. Two other women were there, not women, girls. One was perhaps fourteen, a colorless child, with tired eyes. She was pregnant, her body swollen, her lips pale. She had no charm, no prettiness, nothing at all, except the simple femaleness which she had traded to some boy for a little pleasure in exchange, perhaps a date to go to a movie, perhaps even only an ice cream soda. Who knew? Her miserable garments were rags. A bit of torn and dirty lace hung from under her rayon skirt.

  The other girl was weeping, a blonde girl, her hair dyed silver, her lipstick smeared by tears. She was thin and she coughed as she wept. Her legs in cheap nylon stockings were as thin as sticks, her hands were loaded with costume jewelry, and she wore no wedding ring.

  Josui sat down and folded her hands neatly and waited. The young girl was called into the office and after a while came out again, looking cheerful. The blonde girl went in and Josui heard her break into loud crying. After a long time she came out, pulled down her veil over her swollen face and she too went away. The office girl looked uncertainly at Josui.

  “Your name, please?”

  “Miss Sakai,” Josui said.

  “Come in,” the girl said.

  So she went into a little inner office and saw a mild-faced elderly woman sitting behind a shabby desk.

  “Miss Sakai.”

  “Yes, please.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I hear you take care of children,” Josui said uncertainly. For how did one begin to tell what she had to tell?

  “You are expecting a child?” The elderly woman was professional and kind.

  “Yes—not at once. But I must prepare.”

  “Have you no family?”

  “None,” Josui said.

  The woman was writing down what she said in a neat clear script.

  “You wish to keep the child?”

  “No,” Josui said. “I am alone. I cannot keep him.”

  She had practiced saying this and so the words came almost easily.

  Oh, Lennie, Lennie, whom she cradled in her innermost being, how still he lay, as though he knew what she had spoken!

  “My name is Miss Bray,” the woman said kindly. “Can you tell me something about yourself?”

  “I am alone,” Josui repeated. “There is nothing to tell.”

  “Will you tell me who the father is?” Miss Bray asked. “I only want to help you.”

  “He is American, white,” Josui said. “I am American-Japanese.”

  “I see,” Miss Bray said reluctantly. She took time to look at her visitor. A beautiful young woman, reserved almost to coldness, and how unfortunate it all was, for who wanted a child, half-white, half-Japanese? But it was getting to be a common story with these wars breaking out in so many ungodly places. Only two days before she had been compelled to accept a Korean baby, two months old. Who wanted a Korean baby? Even the boarding homes did not want them. Mrs. Kisch was one of their best boarding mothers, but she said the Korean baby had given her the creeps with those eyes. Miss Bray had put him into a Negro orphanage, and had been uncomfortable ever since, because a Korean was really not a Negro.

  “Will this man not assume some responsibility?” Miss Bray asked.

  “I do not wish him to know,” Josui said.

  Miss Bray remonstrated. “Oh, my dear, you know that’s not right, really! Men ought to know. They get off so easily and they ought not. Please! I could talk to him for you.”

  “No, thank you,” Josui said, with finality.

  Miss Bray lost patience. She had never in her life had a lover and she could not understand girls who did not want men to know what they had done. She put down her sharp pencil and straightened the eyeglasses on her thin nose. “Now, Miss—”

  “Sakai,” Josui said.

  “Oh, yes—foreign names are so hard to remember! Miss Sakai, I was about to say it will be very difficult to place your child in any home. Adoption, you know, is almost impossible. No one wants to adopt a child of mixed blood. I have tried it before, and it just cannot be done. Neither side wants the child.”

  “I know,” Josui said in a still voice.

  “You must have some family,” Miss Bray urged.

  “None,” Josui said faintly.

  “You mean they will not have him?”

  She could not answer, for she was determined not to cry and all her immense will knotted in her throat.

  Miss Bray sighed. “Well, we will see what to do. Perhaps he won’t look too queer, since he is partly white. I might find some boarding mother.”

  “Boarding mother?” Josui repeated.

  “Someone who will take him for pay,” Miss Bray explained. “Could you contribute toward his keep?”

  “Yes, I think,” Josui said.

  She felt dazed. She had not really considered what might happen to Lennie, except that she supposed somewhere there might be an orphanage where children played on the grass under big trees. She remembered seeing such a place once long ago, somewhere near Los Angeles. The children looked happy, but then she had not seen them close.

  “It would help if you could pay,” Miss Bray said.

  She took up the pencil and began writing again. “Where do you expect to have your confinement?” she asked.

  “I don’t know that,” Josui said. She had triumphed against tears and her throat eased. “Wherever you say, please.”

  “You had better go to a hospital—I’ll give you this address. Ask for Dr. Steiner—she’s a woman doctor, a refugee, but kind and good. We’ll take the baby from the hospital. I suppose you won’t want to see him—”

  “I do wish to see him,” Josui said,

  Miss Bray looked up from her writing. “If you are sure you don’t want to keep him, I advise you not to see him.”

  “I must see him,” Josui said.

  Miss Bray shrugged her shoulders. She finished her writing. “What is the probable date?”

  “I think in June,” Josui said.

  “Your address?”

  She gave the address.

  “Go to see Dr. Steiner now and then,” Miss Bray advised. “You had better be checked regularly. If you change your mind about anything let me know.”

  The interview she had dreaded was over. Lennie could be born and he would be taken care of somehow. Josui rose and bowed gracefully. “Thank you, Miss Bray,” she said.

  “Don’t mention it,” Miss Bray said politely, thinking about something else.

  Out in the waiting room three more women now waited, young, unhappy, not looking at each other. Josui stepped quickly past them and out into the mild morning. There remained now Dr. Steiner, whom she must see, but not today. She felt tired, and she was alarmed because Lennie lay so still. Did he know already that they must part?

  She went to a small park and sat down to rest. Two or three mothers were there with their children and she watched them. They were all white mothers, and their children were white and this was pleasant, for such mothers and children could stay together. She did not allow herself to think of Allen. Whenever the image of him came into her mind she shut it away, blotted it out. He knew by now that they would never meet again. She had left no note, nothing, she had simply gone away, taking her clothes, her trinkets, everything she had brought, the little that it was. By now he would have let the apartment, and he would be at hom
e with his parents. Only Kobori knew she was here, and she had forbidden him to come to see her until it was all over, until she knew what she should do.

  “I wish to live alone until I have seen my son’s face,” so she wrote him, but she gave him her address, asking that he not come.

  She reviewed again the desperate possibility that she might keep Lennie somehow. But how? Could she too live without home and family, only with a child? She understood very well how Allen had felt. She did not blame him. What he longed for was natural, and in itself it was good. Simply it could not include Lennie, even as her father’s house, too, could not include him. No one was to blame, except the law was there, it was the law that forbade and yet could not prevent Lennie’s birth because it had not been able to prevent the love that had compelled his conception. Law never considered love. She still loved Allen. She would always love him, as one loves the dead, whom the living cannot replace.

  Dr. Steiner regarded with curiosity the beautiful Japanese girl. The pale and youthful face was expressionless, a Noh mask, one could imagine the eyes were dark holes in the mask. It was a strong face in spite of delicate features and that delicate skin which Oriental peoples seem always to possess. The strength perhaps was in the determined calm of this young girl who had obviously prepared herself for tragedy. Miss Bray had told her to expect Josui Sakai, and she had anticipated the experience. She had never known a Japanese, even though her native Germany had during the war considered Japan her hope in the East.

  “And so you do not wish to tell me?” She now repeated for the fifth time.

  “Please no,” Josui said, without passion and without yielding.

  Dr. Steiner was short, fat, and quite aware of her own square and ugly face. She bore no resentment toward anyone for her appearance. Early in life she had accepted the course of her life. It was hardly to be expected that any man would want to marry a girl who looked like a primitive hewn from gray rock. She was therefore extremely grateful for her excellent brain and giving up all thought of romance she became a scientist, but warmhearted. The last fragment of wistfulness in her heart was betrayed only by the humility and admiration with which she looked at any beautiful human being, man, woman, or child. This look she now bestowed upon Josui.

  Josui, however, after many weeks, was far beyond reach either of admiration or of pity. She felt continually cold, spiritually and mentally, and this coldness penetrated so deeply into her being that she was chilled in her very blood. Actually her hands and feet were cold to touch and Dr. Steiner noticed this as she lumbered about the table upon which Josui lay under a sheet.

  “Why are you cold, my dear?” she exclaimed. “The day is quite hot, for me, at least.”

  “I am usually cold,” Josui replied.

  “Relax yourself, please,” Dr. Steiner commanded. “I cannot examine such stiff muscles.”

  But Josui could not relax. She continued to be as stiff as a marble statue, which indeed she resembled. She was in a tensity of waiting. She did not think, she did not feel, she would not remember. Every week she received a letter from Kobori, a kindly long writing, full of pleasant detail and steadfast goodness. He did not press her for decision, but she knew his expectation and put it aside. First she had this great task of birth. Until she was separated from Lennie she could not decide where she would go or what she would do with her life. As far as possible she waited without thought or feeling. Yet sometimes in the night when she could not sleep, when she lay upon her narrow bed, the mattress so thin and hard beneath her, and she dared not take a sleeping medicine because at least Lennie must have his full chance to live, then sometimes, very suddenly, she began to feel, not to think, only to feel, as though blood broke from a bandaged wound. Then all her feeling was agony not for what was past, but because she would never see Lennie, never live with him, never watch him grow, never hear him speak or see him smile, never bathe his active body, never know him as he was to be.

  For, after long searching feeling, she had come to believe that Miss Bray was right. She must not see Lennie or she would not be able to leave him. She knew, or she feared, that once having seen his face, it would be so. Then she mourned with a grief passing all other grief that women know, a broken heart indeed, but broken because it was her own doing, and mingled in the sorrow was the sense of wrong to Lennie. So small, so helpless, so innocent, so unprepared, she must leave him to make his way alone. For here it was—even if she kept him it would do him wrong. Here it was, that he had done no wrong. He had marched into life by all the laws of nature, love had performed its duty, the call had summoned him from the previous shade, and he had come joyously. For he was a joyous child, of that she was aware. The movements of his body within here assured her of his vivid happiness. He swam like a little fish at dawn, when the mountains first tremble with the light of day. He waked her from a night of weeping to assure her of his laughter, waiting to be loosed. This was the crisis of her pain, that she would never hear him laugh.

  “You are getting on nicely,” Dr. Steiner now told her. “Everything is normal. You are healthy. Your body is functioning in spite of all.”

  “Thank you,” Josui said. She got off the table and began to put on her clothes. Being modest she turned her back and Dr. Steiner gazed at the shapely form, the ivory-pure skin, the soft and dense black hair.

  “Please come to see me each month,” she said abruptly, her accent very strong and German. “At the time of delivery I shall be with you. There will be no trouble, I think.”

  “Thank you,” Josui said again in her gentle voice. She put on her last garments quickly, twisted her hair again, and went away.

  When she was gone Dr. Steiner telephoned Miss Bray. “I have examined the young Japanese girl,” she said in the loud voice she always felt it necessary to use on the telephone. “She is an extraordinary creature—very beautiful and very healthy. Surely someone will adopt this child. It is clear the girl is an aristocrat. Such a female does not choose a stupid male, therefore the child will be intelligent as well as hand-some and healthy. Is there not some one among your waiting parents who will understand this treasure?”

  “You would be surprised,” Miss Bray’s voice came over the wires nasal, dry, and pessimistic as ever. “We have a waiting list of three hundred and seventeen pairs of would-be parents, all clamoring for children who do not exist, all blaming me because I can’t produce children for them, but I can bet you a dollar that not one of them will want this baby.”

  Dr. Steiner shouted. “Hah! Such democracy makes me think about damned Hitler! I myself am one-eighth Jewish, but for Hitler I was a whole Jew.”

  Miss Bray did not answer this. She was prudent and long ago she had learned to believe the worst about every human being. She rather liked the oblong squat woman doctor, who said exactly what she thought, and she knew that Dr. Steiner liked her also in an abstract fashion. The two had often occasion to work together, Dr. Steiner always quarreling when Mexican and Negro babies were relegated ruthlessly to overcrowded orphanages.

  “Nobody wants them,” Miss Bray said patiently again and again. “White people wouldn’t think of taking them and the Mexicans and Negroes already have too many, don’t you see?”

  “I do not,” Dr. Steiner snorted. “A child is a child is a child, isn’t?” She made a grimace instead of a smile. But Miss Bray had never heard of Gertrude Stein and she imagined that Dr. Steiner was merely being German in some obscure way of her own.

  Seeing this Dr. Steiner had once demanded abruptly, “You never had a child did you, Bray?”

  Miss Bray had blushed and then turned white. “After all I’ve seen I wouldn’t think of bringing a child into the world, even if I could. I’d like to stop the whole business for a hundred years.”

  “Then start over?” Dr. Steiner said with interest.

  “Only with legal permission and documents to show that the child can be provided for,” Miss Bray said with more spirit than she had ever shown.

  Dr. Steiner ha
d chuckled. “Maybe there wouldn’t be any parents at the end of a hundred years.”

  “There’d be somebody who sneaked and had a baby,” Miss Bray had declared with habitual hostility to reproduction.

  “Well,” Dr. Steiner demanded sharply now over the telephone. “You don’t speak?”

  “I am thinking,” Miss Bray said rather feebly. “I can’t think of a thing. I guess he’ll just have to go into the west-end orphanage.”

  “They haven’t three feet to put another child in,” Dr. Steiner shouted.

  “Well, what shall I do?”

  “This is your business, Bray,” Dr. Steiner shouted in the same loud voice. “I bring the child out alive and good. That is my business only.”

  She slammed the receiver down and wiped her sleeve across her forehead. She always sweated when she was angry and she was often angry. She shouldn’t allow herself, because she was so fat. America was full of good things to eat and she did eat, after the starvation in the camps in Germany, Her shape was of no interest to anyone. Never mind—she had no wish to live long, even in America.

  She bellowed to her timid nurse. “Next case—quick!”

  The strange months slipped by. The days were empty and the nights were hollow shells of darkness. Josui wept less and less often as the moment of parting drew near. Her mind receded and her heart slept while her body made ready for its ordeal. Birth is a battle between woman and child. The child fights against the mother for its own freedom, and the woman hoards her own life. She shelters herself that she may live to bear again, or even merely to live. Her task is finished, the duty of the body to her generation is done, she withdraws, she lies back fainting.

  “Ah, ha!” Dr. Steiner gloated.

  She drew out the child for whom she had been waiting, a small plump little boy, perfectly formed, a few days late, all details complete. She had been waiting with astonishing interest and even impatience for this child. All during the spring she had noticed at first with amusement at herself and then with excitement, her absorption in this unwanted child. He would be extraordinary, this child, a world child she had begun to call him, an adventurer, born in spite of all laws and hatreds, a bold child, creator of a new world.