The acid odor of the fruit mixes with the smell of the rain. She hardly seems to notice me, but I sit there anyway and watch her eat. "Won't you upset your stomach if you eat too much?" I murmur. Or "Haven't you had enough?" Still no response. My voice is drowned out by the sound of the jam dissolving on her tongue or the drumming of the rain.
But I think the reason I watch her so closely has less to do with how she eats than with the strange way she looks. Her belly has grown so large that it's thrown all the other parts of her body out of balance-her calves and her cheeks, her palms and her earlobes, her thumbnails and her eyelids. As she slurps down the jam, the fat on her neck wriggles back and forth, and the handle of the spoon disappears into her swollen fingers. I take my time, examining every part of her, one after another.
Finally, when she has licked the last spoonful clean, she glances up at me with a sweet, dreamy look.
"Is there any more?" she murmurs.
"I'll make more tomorrow," I say, my voice flat and expressionless. And then, when I've cooked every last grapefruit in the house, I buy a new bag at the supermarket where I go to work. I always make sure to ask the man in the fruit department whether they're imported from America.
It's almost the ninth month already. It seems as though the weeks have passed more quickly since the morning sickness ended. She spends nearly every waking hour eating now.
She came home from the M Clinic today looking a bit depressed. It seems that they warned her about gaining too much weight.
"I had no idea the birth canal could get fat," she said. "They said that women who put on too much weight can have difficult deliveries." She seemed irritated as she pulled out the notebook she'd been using to keep track of the pregnancy. I could see that someone had written "Weight restriction" in bright red letters on one page. "They told me that I should only gain about twenty-five pounds by the end of the pregnancy. No doubt about it, I'm in trouble." She ran her hand through her hair and sighed. She has already gained close to forty-five pounds.
"I don't suppose there's anything you can do about it," I muttered, glancing at her swollen fingers as I headed into the kitchen to make more jam. Because, without my really thinking about it, making grapefruit jam has become something of a habit. I make it and she eats it, as easily and naturally as you brush your hair when you get up in the morning. "Are you really afraid of having a difficult delivery?" I asked, without looking up from the counter.
"Of course," she said, her voice thin and faint. "These past few days I've been thinking a lot about pain- trying to imagine the worst pain I've ever felt, whether labor pains are more like terminal cancer or like having both legs amputated, that sort of thing. But it's pretty hard to visualize pain, and not much fun trying."
"I can imagine," I said, peeling fruit. She was clutching her notebook. The picture of a baby on the cover was warped, and the child seemed to be crying.
"But it's even more frightening to think about meeting the baby," she said. Her gaze dropped to her swollen belly. "I just can't believe that this thing in here is really my baby. It still seems so vague and abstract. But I know there's no way I can escape it. In the morning, when I'm just waking up, there's always a moment when I'm sure that it's all a dream-the morning sickness, the clinic, this belly, everything. It makes me feel wonderfully free. But then I look down at myself and I know it's real. I'm filled with sadness, and I realize that what scares me most is the thought of meeting my own baby."
I listened without turning to look at her. Lowering the heat on the stove, I stirred a big spoon through the pot. "It's nothing to be afraid of. A baby is just a baby. They're soft and cuddly, with little curled-up fingers, and they cry a lot. That's all." I stared down at the jam curling around the spoon.
"But it's not that simple. Once it's born, it's mine whether I want it or not. And there's nothing I can do about it, even if it has a birthmark covering half its face, or its fingers are stuck together, or it has no brain, or it's Siamese twins…" She went on for some time listing awful possibilities. The spoon made a dull sound scraping the bottom of the pan as the jam began to congeal.
I stared into the pot, wondering how much PWH it contained. Under the fluorescent light, the jam reminded me of a chemical, something in a clear bottle, perfect for dissolving chromosomes.
"It's done," I said. Gripping the handles of the pot, I turned to face her. "Here, have some." I held it out to her, and she looked at it for a moment. Then, without another word, she started to eat.
My summer vacation has started. I suppose it will be spent watching my sister's pregnancy. Still, a pregnancy doesn't last forever. It has to end sometime.
I've tried to think of the baby as something positive for my sister and her husband, and for me. But I never quite manage. I just can't imagine the look in my brother-in-law's eyes when he holds the baby in his arms, or the whiteness of my sister's breasts when she's nursing it. All I see is the photograph of chromosomes in the science magazine.
So we've reached the month for her delivery, and she could go into labor any day now. Her belly is about as large as it can get, and I find myself worrying whether her organs can function properly when they're so compressed.
The three of us wait quietly, though the house is terribly hot and humid. We say nothing about it, but we're all thinking of the approaching delivery. My sister's shoulders heave as she tries to catch her breath. My brother-in-law waters the yard with the hose. The only sound is the humming of the fan as it turns on its stand.
I'm usually anxious when I'm waiting for something-even when it's someone else's labor pains. It scares me to think how nervous my sister must be. I'd like this hot, uneventful afternoon to go on forever.
But even in this heat, she is still lapping up my grapefruit jam as soon as it's done. She swallows it so quickly I'm afraid she'll burn her mouth, and I don't see how she can taste it at all. Her face looks sad, almost as if she were weeping, as I see it in profile, bent over the pot. The spoon flits back and forth from the pot to her mouth, and she seems to be trying to hold back the tears welling up in her eyes. This afternoon, the yard beyond her was glowing brilliant green in the sunlight. The cries of the cicadas were deafening.
"I can't wait to see the baby," I murmured. The spoon stopped for a moment and she blinked at me. But then she went back to the jam, and my thoughts returned to the shape of the damaged chromosomes.
When I got back from work there was a note from my brother-in-law on the table: "The contractions have started. We've gone to the clinic." I read these few words over and over. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a spoon coated with jam lying on the table. I tossed it into the sink and thought about what I should do. Then I read the note one more time and left the house.
Everything was bathed in light. The windshields of the cars in the street seemed to glow, and the spray from the fountain in the park sparkled. I walked along, staring at the ground and mopping the sweat from my face. Two children in straw hats ran past. The gate to the elementary school was closed, and the playground was deserted. Farther on there was a small florist's, but I saw no sign of a salesperson or any customers. A tiny bunch of baby's breath lay in the glass case.