such guilt . . . ."
She sucked in her breath.
"This kind of baby is worse than anything you've seen. Not even nurses like these babies," he said.
HALF PAST MIDNIGHT. The delivery room was dark except for a small lamp in the corner. Julie's doctor—the new one, a specialist—stood bent over the baby and talked to the nurse. Julie couldn't hear what he was saying but when he approached the bed he told her, "I always encourage my patients to see the baby. I think it helps."
Now she and Michael were alone in the delivery room with the baby and nurse.
"Does the baby look human?" Julie asked.
The nurse said, "Yes."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. Let me show him to you."
There was nothing left to do now but to look. The nurse brought the baby close. She had wrapped him carefully, so that the back of the head was covered by the blanket. The baby had no forehead. He didn't look like a baby at all. "Please," Julie said, "take it away." But just as the nurse turned to go, Julie whispered, "No, please, wait."
"I see an old person," Michael said. Julie cried and looked away.
She reached out and touched the baby's feet. Cold, very cold, but the toes were perfect. Each had a tiny nail, and the skin at the joints was wrinkled.
Then the hands.
Cold, but again, perfectly formed.
Michael took the baby in his arms and held it out to her.
"No," she said, "I can't. I can't."
He turned away with the baby but the nurse said, "Are you sure?"
Michael cradled him in one hand while the other stroked his small feet. "Julie . . ." he said quietly, holding the child toward her.
THE NEXT MORNING the doctor told her she could go. It was over. Leaving the hospital, Michael took her hand and they walked the few short blocks to Queen Elizabeth Park. The sun was hot, the sky clear, and the world suddenly full of people.
"Remember when we first heard the baby's heartbeat in the doctor's office?" he asked.
She looked at him. Yes.
"And that time on the patio, when I put my hand on your belly and just at that moment he kicked?"
They stood at a rock wall looking out over the gardens. Below, amidst a profusion of colours, people walked, couples posed in front of flower beds. Young people, old people, men in tuxedos, women in bright wedding gowns.
A Small Ceremony
FOR A WHILE, THE BOX WAS KEPT in Michael's study, not because there wasn't room for it elsewhere but because he always felt it his role to see me through things. It was small, the size of a tea canister, wrapped in brown parcel paper. We sometimes speculated on the contents. We both felt we wanted to shake it, but didn't. Then Michael said he was finding it hard to go into his study with the box there.
"Can't you put it behind a cabinet drawer?" I asked. No, he'd already tried that.
"Behind some books on the shelf?" No, that didn't work. As long as the box stayed in his study he felt uncomfortable.
Eventually we moved the box to the closet in the spare room, which would have been the baby's. We talked about doing what we'd planned: climb a mountain and have a small ceremony, when we were healthy again, when it was summer, when it was all over.
It is summer now, but we still haven't done it. I've tried to bring up the subject. "It's a lovely day for a hike." Or, "What about climbing Elephant Mountain, going across the bridge?"
Michael is reluctant. And there are additional restrictions now. The mountain has to be further than five miles from where we live. It cannot be within sight, or be where people are likely to go. It must be a place that overlooks a lake, but if it's a very private spot, it can be on a lake and doesn't have to be a mountain top at all. Recently, Michael, who is an avid cross-country skier, has gone so far as to say we shouldn't climb a mountain at all, but rather wait until winter when we can ski up to a remote summit.
"But if we wait until winter," I protest, "Natsumi won't be able to come with us."
"Do you really think she should," he says, "after what she's been through?"
"But she'd want to be there. She's always loved me as her own child."
I was twelve when Natsumi came to New York to live with my family as a nanny. That year kids at school stretched the corners of their eyes and laughed about Japs eating "lice" and "Commies" taking over the world. The year of sirens and air-raid drills—duck and cover—lying on the floor with hands over our heads so we wouldn't get cut by flying glass when the bomb exploded. People were building bomb shelters and stock-piling powdered milk, canned soup, ammunition.
I remember being very curious. What was her family like? Did people really live in paper houses? Sleep on mats?
One day she showed me a photograph of three girls and pointed to the one in the middle. "Youngest sister, such a pretty one, isn't it?"
The girl she pointed to was the most slender of the three, with a smiling face like the others, but then, in their kimonos, all Japanese women looked alike to me.
"You have such a nice family," she said suddenly.
Confused, I asked, "Isn't yours nice too?"
"Yes, but this world too sad for the human being," she said.
Then she told me about the the loss of her parents and youngest sister. About Hiroshima. About her infant son, who would have been a few years older than I.
"Your family now my family," she said.
This didn't seem quite right to me. She talked differently, for one thing. For another, she was so small. And her sisters wore kimonos.
"No," I answered. "Your family is Japanese."
In my fourth month of pregnancy, during the nightmares, I phoned Natsumi in New York. I kept thinking something was going to happen to the baby. I dreamt I was about to give birth when I heard a loud explosion and everything around me went up in flames.
"We can only believe things turn out right," she told me. "Nobody can ever know." She said she was saving money to come out here, all the way to British Columbia, to see the baby. That she would not return to Japan until she had.
"Maybe you're right," Michael says. "Maybe she'd want to be here for the ceremony."
I'm not really sure, though, that either one of us is ready. It's almost a truce now, a warding off.
The box stays where it is.
