He was sitting at the foot of the bed, sliding a spoonful of yogurt into my mouth. The clock read 2:47 a.m. My skin was still damp with sweat when the cold plastic touched my lips, and he whispered, “Look—something that’s part you and part me.” He pointed at the white clump clinging to the spoon. The words had barely left his mouth before I closed my eyes. Darkness flooded in, and behind my lids flashed a pair of glassy, bloodless pupils. It was the gaze of a man who wanted a child. I was sure that if I turned my head, those eyes would be waiting for mine.
The Night He Vanished
In that gaze I saw not life, but ownership. I fastened each shirt button and thought: an infant is only an infant, yet he looks at it like a vessel to fill. Like pouring wine into an old earthen jar—my belly would be the jar.
“Five is enough.” I remembered his older brother’s words in the wedding-hall corridor last month. “Our family is complete at five.” My sister-in-law had smiled and nodded. That night, lying in bed, I closed my eyes and sketched those five silhouettes: him, me, two children—and who exactly is the fifth? My breath caught in my throat.
What Forces My Eyes Shut
Early this year, a junior from my company club texted me:
Unnie, your husband’s laptop is full of baby pictures—such a pretty little girl! The phone nearly slipped from my fingers. The child she described was four or five, neat bob, round eyes. I learned later it was our former coworker’s daughter. Every Sunday when he said he was “going for a jog,” he was actually circling playgrounds, taking hundreds of photos: the child’s back, her laugh, the sand on the backs of her hands. I closed the laptop and went to the bathroom. In the mirror my pupils were parchment-dry. I must not be the baby. I am merely the bowl that holds it.
Dissecting Desire
I realized that what he calls a longing for a child is not for the child itself. He feeds on this fantasy: a baby wrapped in a pink checkered blanket; me nursing at the front door at dawn; the moment the child flings out both arms and runs to him crying, “Daddy!”
But a real baby will shred the small hours with its wails, my nipples will tear like paper, and he will vanish into the office. I fear that gaze precisely because it already knows the fantasy will shatter. So I hold my breath.
As long as I stay alive, my body can devour the fantasy for him.
Pregnancy Is a Thief of Time
In my senior year of high school, my homeroom teacher asked, “So-jin, what do you want to be?” I didn’t hesitate: “A weather reporter.” I wanted to chase the eye of every typhoon across the globe. The first time I understood that dream was impossible was when two lines appeared on a home pregnancy test. My chest constricted. The prep course for the journalism exam started the next week. A month later, after a hospital appointment, the child was gone—without my husband ever knowing. Since that day, his gaze has grown more ravenous.
Fill the empty place. But the empty place is already occupied by my past, my future, my name.
The Sound No One Utters
Silently I ask:
Do I want to be loved first, before any baby? Or Does he want not the child, but the image of me fading as I give birth to it?
In the end we close the bedroom door and meet again. Under the quilt his hand skims my belly. I exhale.
“I’ll put it here.” My fingertips tremble. For the first time I want to ask him:
So, after I’ve given you that baby, what will you call me?