An excerpt from a novel by Molly Patterson ’04
One winter night when Freddie was a baby, Addie woke suddenly and went to his cradle. Her son lay on his stomach, arms bent at his sides, hands squeezed into fists by his ears as if blocking out sound. She rarely had to nurse him more than once in the night anymore, but she’d still awaken three to four times between bedtime and morning, and each time she passed from sleep to consciousness it was as abrupt as opening a door. Eyes suddenly open to the dark, she’d listen for her son’s breathing, and it was only when she heard it that she could go back to sleep.
Freddie’s face was heavy with sleep now, something deeper than peacefulness dragging the cheeks downward. And yet, rather than feeling assured by the evidence that all was as it should be, Addie felt panic like an ammoniac burn. If her sense that something was amiss always turned out to be based on nothing, then what would happen if there actually were some danger? What if Freddie, one night in his bed, stopped breathing and she lay a few feet away, her own chest rising and falling in a dumb, even rhythm?
She stood looking down at her son. The light coming in through the window silvered his shape so he looked like a photograph of himself. People photographed their dead children, propped them up in a chair or laid them flat in a coffin tilted to the eye of the camera. The image came to her quickly — where had she seen it, and when? Years ago, in some neighbor’s home; she might have been six or seven years old. She remembered a smell of camphor and the vanilla scent of cake. A breeze stirring curtains, swirling the shadows on a green rug so that it looked like pond water. On a table by the window was a photograph in a frame that showed a young girl crouched behind a tiny sofa, where her brother lay. They were both wearing lacy bonnets, both grasping dolls. The girl gazed at a point somewhere past the camera, but the boy’s eyes were closed and his body was arranged as if he had fallen onto the sofa to sleep. Arms curled around the doll, he wore on his face a slight smile. Not a normal smile — Addie had known that even then. She’d turned away, heard her mother telling the neighbor that the road down the hill had been dry, and if Addie hadn’t been wearing her new boots, she would have let her run down it. But you can’t let them, always, be thoughtless. That boy, Addie had thought suddenly, will never again go running down a hill.
But here Addie was looking down at her son, and couldn’t she see the edge of the blanket in the moonlight moving softly with his breath, and wasn’t that his face registering the flash of something she couldn’t see? She should go back to bed, crawl under the covers, but the devil was in her now. She couldn’t sleep. She would only lie awake staring at shades of silver and gray, the shadows on the wall so terribly still, it was as if they had been pasted there.
Taking up her dressing gown, she wove her arms through the sleeves and quietly opened the door. Outside, the courtyard was glossed with moonlight. She shivered in the cold and considered going back inside to get her coat, but something stopped her. The cold felt bracing and clean. For once, the air seemed clear of the dust that often needled her lungs. Of course, it was probably only the dark that kept her from seeing it, but that didn’t matter. If she could fool herself, all the better.
Along the opposite side of the courtyard, in front of the covered walkway that circled the perimeter, were the two benches the carpenter was carving for the sitting room. He had told Owen today that he would be done before the end of the week. If the carpenter was honest, that meant that soon they could have as many as fifteen or sixteen women gather altogether for Bible lessons. The thought made her nervous; she pictured her neighbor Hsiu Taitai’s face multiplied several times, each one squinting at her without either understanding or belief.
Addie shook her head. It was late — past midnight — but she was wide awake. The moon was bright enough to make every shape in the courtyard visible: the almost-completed benches; the pillars holding up the roof; the four small trees and the potted flowering bushes; the stone urns filled with rainwater, used for mopping the floors. But the nighttime shadows were deep. Perched atop the eaves, the faces on the stone creatures could have been those of owls. Addie stared at one, almost daring it to move.
Everything was still — so still it made her restless, and suddenly she found herself lifting the heavy bar from the front gates and pushing open one side. She paused to see whether Wei-p’eng would come out from his room a few yards away. But no sound came to warn her, and, stepping over the threshold, she stood looking down the empty street. It was a long corridor, bleeding into darkness. She pulled the door most of the way closed, leaving an inch-wide gap, and then set off. On either side, the walls of other houses rose. She touched the soft wood of a door and trailed her fingers along its surface. She could have been a ghost, her presence felt but unknown. On the other side of the door were rooms filled with people soundly sleeping, though she couldn’t picture them. Did Chinese children have dolls that they hugged close as they slept? Did the women let down their hair or keep it coiled in a bun? Addie had been invited into various houses in town, but there were places you couldn’t go, couldn’t even imagine.
At the end of the street she turned left and then right, making her way along the wider street that led to the market. When she arrived at the square, she barely recognized it. The empty streets were one thing, but the square, stripped of all occupants, gave her another feeling she couldn’t name. She had the awful thought that this was what the first few moments after death might be like: a wandering through deserted streets that were almost recognizable, but made strange by their emptiness.
The square was still and quiet, but gradually she became aware of a soft clicking sound: a dog was trotting along the perimeter, close to the wall. It was mangy and dirty, as all the dogs in town were. Not large, but not small, either, and Addie suddenly felt that she was an intruder. At night the town’s streets belonged to other creatures, and she had no business claiming the empty market for herself. The dog swung out toward the middle of the square and then stopped, considering her with its head lowered, as if she had been its object for some time and yet it didn’t know what to do with her now that she was found.
For a long moment, she and the dog looked at each other. Then it growled, and Addie took a step backward. She felt a sharp wind at her back, sweeping down the street she’d just taken. All at once the dog leaped forward, crossing the space between them, and sank its teeth into her leg.
She yelped and took a few stumbling steps, but the dog held on. She didn’t feel pain. There was the sensation of a foreign creature latched on to her body, but this was oddly familiar: for months she had been teaching her body to allow such an act whenever she brought her son to her breast. Nursing Freddie was uncomfortable in a way that was worse than pain, in a way that made her want to bat away her son’s head, to force a separation between her body and his. She never did; she had been continually reminding herself not to fight. Now she looked down at the dog and saw its blurred head joined to her leg and the tangle of her nightgown caught up around its neck and she kicked the leg it was attached to, and still it held on even as it growled again.
Originally published by Harper (HarperCollins). Copyright 2017. Used by permission.