Free We Are Not in Pakistan by Shauna Singh Baldwin Page A

continues. How’s next Friday?”
    â€œBad.”
    â€œNaina, I’m trying to help. We don’t know what effect your decision to allow nature to take its course may have on the baby. There could be brain damage after this long, there could be personality problems.”
    â€œI still say — why are you not listening? — I still say, when my baby is ready, she will come.”
    â€œAll right, let’s look at it your way — don’t you want to know, Naina? Don’t you want to know what she’s waiting for? Why she’s waiting so long? This Dr. Chi says she can help us understand that.”
    Naina said, “‘Maybe.”
    â€œNext Friday, then. Be here at ten.”
    Baby, talk to me. Only to me. Tell me where you come from. Say where I must deliver you.
    â€œHypnosis isn’t covered by the Ontario Health Insurance Plan. You’ll need to pay in advance — oh, we can worry about that later.” A well-kept petite woman of about forty-five, the doctor is jovial, not earnest; Stanford used to say all Chinese people are earnest.
    But then Stanford didn’t know very many Chinese people. Stanford didn’t know Dr. Chi.
    Dr. Chi is the first doctor Naina has ever talked to who has not made her repeat her entire medical history. It could be she read it before she met Naina, the simplest explanation but the least likely. It feels as if Dr. Chi just
knows;
she has not asked Naina a single stupid question. For instance, whether her decision not to allow a knife near her belly is occasioned by vanity or by — delicatepause — her Hindu religion? Dr. Chi has asked her to lie down, not on the vinyl-padded table with her heels in the stirrups, but on a couch in Dr. Johnson’s consulting room.
    â€œI think you must ask the baby why she refuses to be delivered.” Dr. Chi flicks a stray lock of straight black hair from her eyes; Naina catches a whiff of camphor. Tiger Balm.
    â€œShe does not come because she is not ready” — her standard explanation.
    â€œAnd we could ask her, if she were delivered by Caesarean section, would she die?”
    â€œWhy should she answer you?” Naina asks, a little jealous.
    â€œNo reason, no reason — quite right. No, she will speak through you.” Dr. Chi pauses, rubs her hands though the room is warm and the snow is outside, falling fast.
    â€œYou will use me to ask my baby to speak?”
    â€œYes, yes, of course. How else can it be done?” She pats Naina’s arm, gives her a buddhi-filled smile. “Lie still, now, lie still. Allow yourself to relax,” says Dr. Chi.
    Allow myself?
    The couch is soft beneath Naina’s shoulders. The baby’s weight settles above her. A cobweb hangs where walls and white ceiling meet. Naina holds her belly, rubs it soothingly, closes her eyes. Dr. Chi’s Tiger Balm scent grows stronger.
    â€œYou are back where you were born, far from Canada. There’s no snow outside … It’s warm, even hot. Getting hotter. The heat is so strong it sears your eyeballs, you remember that kind of heat? Yes … Allow yourself to feel your eyes become heavy … getting heavier. Smell the fragrance of dust. Can you feel a nice breeze cooling your skin?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAllow your limbs to feel heavier and heavier … You’re going deeper into yourself.” Dr. Chi’s voice flattens. “You are looking within your womb. There, in the dark … you see her yet? Yes?See if you can move toward her. Ah, you are there? Ask her the questions you have in your heart …”
    Naina can see her, very small, comma-shaped, brown-skinned, black-haired. She opens her arms.
    Do you know me, baby? I am your mother.
    I know you. I have known you a long time.
    Why do you wait within me? Wait so long? Make me carry you everywhere?
    I wait because you are not ready to receive me.
    I thought you waited because you were