The Unwinding of the Miracle - Julie Yip-Williams Page 0,25

who thought what she and her husband were about to do was wrong, people who would think that her mother-in-law was insane. She would be angry when they returned with me still alive, but at least my parents could say honestly that they had done everything they were supposed to do and it was the herbalist who had refused to cooperate.

My father grabbed me then, hugging me for the first time in my short life. He got up quickly and headed for the door, indicating to my mother to follow him. He wanted to leave before the herbalist had a chance to change his mind. My father thanked the man for his time and rushed out the door with my mother close behind him. The herbalist must have stared at the door long after we had gone, wondering what exactly had just happened with this odd couple who had said they wanted one thing but acted like they wanted something else entirely.

At home in Tam Ky, Grandmother was at the door to greet us as we approached long after the sun had set. “What happened?” she demanded.

“The herbalist wouldn’t do it,” my father said, pushing past her with me in his arms.

“Why not? Did you offer him all the gold I gave you?” Her tone was laden with accusation. My grandmother had given my father several ounces of solid gold bars that morning, precious gold she had taken from the hiding place in the gutter behind the house, enough to compel a poor herbalist to do anything, she believed.

“No, I never got a chance. It wouldn’t have mattered anyhow. The man was very firm.”

“Everyone has a price. I would have been able to figure it out!” my grandmother insisted.

“Then you should have gone yourself!” my father snapped back as he turned to glare at his mother. It had been a long and exhausting day, and he just wanted it to end.

The edge in my father’s voice was enough to make my grandmother back off, at least for the moment. She knew her children and when and how much to push them. But still, she could not help herself; she had to have the last word. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll find another way.”

My parents ignored her, walking up the stairs and away from my grandmother, leaving her threats for another day.

She would have found another way to kill me, too, but by then my great-grandmother had heard of her daughter-in-law’s dark machinations and commanded that I be left alone: How she was born is how she will be, Great-Grandmother declared. And because my great-grandmother was the ultimate matriarch, her word was law and no further attempts were made to end my life. Of course, that didn’t stop my grandmother from forbidding my mother to breast-feed me (which my mother tried to do in secret, but her milk soon dried up) or forbidding me from eating anything but rice gruel while my brother and sister had real sustenance (or as much sustenance as was available under the Communist regime). Because of my blindness, I was viewed as a curse on my family, doomed to a life of dependency, unmarriageability, and childlessness—and therefore worthlessness. No doubt my grandmother believed she was doing me a favor.

This secret had taken on the weight of shame, as secrets sometimes do. It was a burden that my mother could no longer bear, and so she was finally compelled to unburden herself to me. For the first twenty-eight years of my life, my attempted infanticide was an event known only to the parties involved. But on the last night of a visit home, as I sat recording my mother’s voice telling the story of our family, I had a sense of what she was about to tell me. I already knew. As she spoke, I could see the scenes play out in my mind; that’s why I believe that the soul remembers trauma long before the mind can retain actual memories.

It was after midnight; everyone else was long asleep, and I was to fly back to New York the next morning. My mother was spent as she came to the end of her story, and said she was telling me the truth of what had happened only because my grandmother was by then dead. She added that I was to tell no one—particularly my grandfather, father, and siblings—that I knew of the “matter.” In the ensuing years, I disobeyed my mother. I recently told my siblings;