Not Knowing I Was Pregnant

I spent eight happy months at my mother-in-law’s house.

One day the unit notified us that a room in the dependents’ quarters had become vacant and we should move in—no rent. And so we moved for the third time.

The house was on Zhongzheng Road, near the Mazu temple. It belonged to the famous Shi family of four brothers in Lukang and was also a hospital, called Sifang Hospital.

Why was it called Sifang Hospital? Because the four Shi brothers were named according to birth order: Jiangdong, Jiangnan, Jiangxi, and Jiangbei. All four were doctors, and the three elder brothers were medical doctors who had studied in Japan.

After retrocession, the Shi brothers gradually left their hometown one after another to develop their careers in Taipei.

So after the radar fourth squadron came to Lukang in the thirty-eighth year of the Republic, they were assigned to live in Sifang Hospital.

It was a large three-storey house, with four connected buildings for the hospital and the family residence, so the whole squadron could be stationed there, and even the radar equipment was installed on the roof of the third floor.

In the thirty-ninth year of the Republic they found a plot of land by the sea and formed a larger radar fourth squadron; Sifang Hospital was then entirely allocated to the dependents.

Among the dependents’ wives, every one was from the mainland; I alone was a native of the province. When I talked with them I seemed to understand and yet did not; sometimes I answered wrongly and became a joke, so I reminded myself to study the many dialects of the mainland wives carefully, lest communication fail.

Moving into a new environment changed our way of life again. With nothing to do each day, I often went with Mrs Wang to watch Shaoxing opera to pass the time. My husband worked by the sea, far away and very hard; when he came home with nothing else to do, he played cards with his comrades to pass the time.

In the second month after we moved into Sifang Hospital, I felt something wrong with my body: I was always drowsy, and when I ate I wanted to vomit. The symptoms grew worse and worse. I did not know what to do, and finally plucked up courage to ask Mrs Wang. I regarded her as my own elder sister; I discussed everything with her.

When she heard my condition she laughed loudly and said, “You’re expecting! Does your husband know?” I shook my head. She said, “You must tell him! He’s about to be a father and still doesn’t know.”

From then on I took good care of myself and the little treasure to come.

I lost my mother when I was young, so after marriage everything—including pregnancy, childbirth, and raising children—I had to learn slowly on my own. When I saw others with mothers to care for them, I envied them deeply.