Free The Calligrapher's Daughter by Eugenia Kim

her arm for the entire time it took to wash and help her to a bed freshly made by Kira. It was odd to see Kira treating my mother like a child, but her soothing clucks and instructions to lift an arm, turn the hips a little, and the sound of her rough hands coddling the quilts around my mother’s body helped restore us all.
    The midwife laid the infant against Mother’s breast. “Huh!” said the old woman. “He’s a smart one, eh? Look how hungrily he suckles!” They cooed over the perfectly formed infant while Kira and I soaked stained linens and washed the floor. The midwife gave me dried anise leaves and shavings of angelica root for Cook to make a tea that would promote milk production, relieve cramping and revive the uterus. As I left for the kitchen, I heard the midwife whisper admiringly to Kira that she had never before witnessed such refinement during a birth.
    By the time I returned, dignity had been fully restored in my mother’s room. I checked the corners, and no spirits were lingering. Mother showed me how quickly the baby took to each breast, and then her own breath and body quieted, and her eyes closed.
    “Let her rest, now,” the midwife said kindly. “You did very well,” she added, as if I had done anything at all. I bowed gratefully and thoughtthat she was a most amazing woman to come and work the arduous hours of birthing, to help bring order, and life, out of chaos and pain. She wrapped the baby in white silk bunting and took him to my father.
    I sat outside the door partially hidden by the linen chest when Father came, holding his son in upturned hands as if he held a sacred relic. Mother woke when he crouched beside her, and the smile they shared seemed so filled with light it made me breathless. In the dim room, Father’s features were as smoothly washed with wonder as Mother’s. He spoke with a voice as gentle as the sunset filtering through the high windows. “On the hundredth day, I will name him Ilsun, first son of Korea.”
    I knew it was wrong of me to think that, as the baby’s elder, I was then first daughter of Korea, and I remained a motionless shadow. But I admit that I was smiling inside.
    THE NEXT MORNING, the house still felt strange. I tiptoed into Mother’s room and, relieved, saw her sleeping peacefully. Wanting to be close to her, to be reassured after the previous day’s ordeal, I knelt by the bed and touched a finger to her forehead. A shiver coursed up my arm, and with it, a dream of tall palms bursting from an oasis of shimmering water. The dream desert’s clean light flooded my eyes, and the image nestled in my breast. I gasped with its sharpness, and my mother’s eyes opened, smiling at me, confirming the vision, and my heart swelled with this surprising bond between us. Cook entered with herb broth and a basket of towels and chased me away. Like hearing the last echo of a wonderfully read story, I wanted to keep the vision in my head as long as I could and went to my room to lie on the bare floor. Yes, two palm trees, like those in Bible pictures, two long straight legs reaching to heaven, and water that I knew was absolutely clear, as cool and sparkling as the stars in the night sky, water of a purity that only a dream could hold. I ached to ask my mother what it meant.
    She would stay in bed for five days cosseted by blankets and servants—postpregnancy being the only time in her life when she would allow herself to rest. As the day wore on, I felt lost without Mother on her feet. I didn’t feel like reading or helping Kira or Cook, which I knew I should be doing. I wandered through the courtyard and saw my father sitting on his inner porch. I approached to see the prize he caressed in hislap. He gazed at his son with such steadfastness that I wondered if he could see anything else. I was nearly upon him before he noticed me, startled. “Yah!” He turned and held the baby close. “Have you washed your hands?”
    “They’re clean, see?”
    “Don’t