The Ends of Kinship. Sienna R. Craig
daughter, Tsering, was tame by comparison. She’d done well in school and hoped that, after some years as a babysitter in New York, once her papers came through, she would enroll in nursing school. Dolkar’s phone vibrated again. Tsering Chori lit up the screen in crisp Helvetica.
“Ama, are you sleeping?”
“No, chori. Watching television.” Although Tsering could understand Logé, she and her mother had slipped into the habit long ago of speaking to each other in Nepali. They exchanged simple words, about weather in Kathmandu and weather in New York, about tourists in the guest house and the two young American children Tsering nannied for a living, Aiden and Lucy. A-den, Lu-chi, as Dolkar called them. Through her daughter, Dolkar had learned about strollers and sleep training, monkey bars and peanut allergies. Tsering seemed enamored by the lists of dos and don’ts her American boss posted on the refrigerator, the well-oiled management of it all. In hearing Tsering describe these children’s lives in America, Dolkar marveled at the amount of attention they received but wondered how they would learn to manage pain and disappointment when it came for them. She kept these thoughts to herself.
“Ama, there is something to tell you,” said Tsering. Dolkar’s stomach tightened. “Ama, my period stopped two months ago. The baby will come in summer.”
Dolkar breathed out. A baby. No illness or injury. No immigration officers knocking on the door. Across the world from her own baby, she smiled. This was good news.
“Are you eating well? Do you feel sick? What did the doctor say? Do you get to see a picture? Have you told Jamyang?” Dolkar was not usually effusive, but the questions tumbled out. Tsering, whose name meant “long life,” was twenty-six and engaged to her cross-cousin, Jamyang, a taxi driver who worked nights. The arrangement had been secured several years ago, but the couple had grown up together and had been friends before their families bound them to each other. Affection evolved. This child would cement their bond. As was becoming common these days in New York, Dolkar thought the couple might combine a formal marriage ceremony with the child’s first birthday. Dolkar could imagine the envelopes of cash and piles of kathag, the buffet line and pale orange walls inside that Punjabi banquet hall near Roosevelt Island. She had never been there, but she’d seen videos.
“I want to eat everything and then nothing at all, but the doctor says the baby is healthy. She’s nice. Born here in New Jersey, but her parents are from Himachal Pradesh,” answered Tsering. “We speak Hindi plus English together, mix and match. And, yes, Jamyang knows. He is so happy. We haven’t found out boy or girl, but it doesn’t matter. We only want good health.”
“Don’t tell many people,” Dolkar advised. She had not planned on saying this. “You don’t want gossip to cause harm.”
“Ama, you believe that?”
“Believe that gossip is powerful? Certainly!” Dolkar flushed. Her daughter sensed this passion through the phone.
“But how could just saying something cause problems? The doctor says it is important to take vitamins, eat well, not get too much tension.”
“Yes. That is important. And go to the doctor for checkup,” responded Dolkar. “But what people say matters. Just take care yourself.” Dolkar spoke little English but she used what she knew to reach her daughter. Just as the power of people’s talk was real, so was the need for checkup.
Tsering’s next question surprised her. “Ama, how was it, when I was born?” Dolkar did not answer right away. “I know the story of Tsepten,” Tsering continued. “Everyone knows that story! But what was it like with me?”
Dolkar took a deep breath. Tsepten’s birth, so dramatic, so public, had allowed Dolkar to set aside her fear. With Tsering it was different. She had been in Mustang, no longer in her natal village but in the unfamiliar hamlet of her husband’s family. She had been terrified.
“You were born at home, in the same house where your father was born,” answered Dolkar.
“I know that Ama, but what was it like? Did you go to the doctor when you were pregnant? Did you feel sick and then hungry? Did you have strange dreams? Who helped you?” Now it was Tsering’s turn for questions.
“No, no doctor. It was summer. Hot, out in the wheat field. They told me stay home, but I made snacks. Carried them to the workers. Then pains started. Aunt Karsang brought me back to the house. She took good care. Cousin Sonam too. Massaged my back. Gave dried fish from Mapham Yumtso. They say it helps to make the baby come quickly. You came quickly. You were good on the breast. Father cut your cord and put medicine butter on the roof of your mouth to make you cry well. Lama Tharchen made the kyekar,” Dolkar said, recalling the natal horoscope that augured long life, suggesting the name Tsering. “He made incense offerings too,” said Dolkar, “to purify.”
Dolkar remembered the smell of juniper, the sense of accomplished exhaustion at the sight of her daughter. She remembered the taste of bone broth and of falling in and out of sleep with her newborn. Dolkar was happy when the Nepali health workers arrived with vaccinations because many children had died of fever and pox in previous years. She shared some of these memories with her daughter.
But Dolkar did not tell Tsering about the miscarriage she had about a year before Tsepten’s birth. She did not tell her daughter about the blood on the walls of the district hospital where she’d gone that time, after she began to bleed, or about the cold metal cot, the clumsy doctor, the frigid speculum. She did not tell her daughter about the injections she began to receive once they moved to Kathmandu, to stop the possibility of another pregnancy. She did not tell her daughter about the arguments with Tsering’s father about this decision, how he called such medicine a sin. She did not tell her daughter that she longed to be present in America when her first grandchild came into this world. Part of Dolkar wanted to share all of this with Tsering, but she felt there was too much space between them.
“Don’t worry, chori,” said Dolkar. She wrapped her free hand around her abdomen, held her phone to her ear with the other. “Everything will be fine.”
DAUGHTER
“This won’t hurt, but it will be cold.” The ultrasound technician held a bottle of lubricant above Tsering’s belly and squirted. Tsering grimaced. Jamyang stood beside her, holding her hand and staring at the monitor.
“I am going to move this around a little bit,” the technician continued, working the sonogram probe. “There’s the little face! Are you sure you don’t want to know if you are having a little princess or a big boy? Oh, I just love this part of my job!”
The technician, who seemed younger than Tsering, looked vaguely Asian but spoke with a decidedly American accent. Her words ran together. Although Tsering had been in New York for a few years now, she struggled with the pace of American speech, the assumptions. If she ever became a nurse, she would remember to speak slowly, with clear precision.
“No, we want surprise,” Jamyang answered.
Tsering was into her third trimester. She could no longer tie her shoes with ease, but her days with Aiden and Lucy passed smoothly and brought comfort. She felt, more than ever, like these American children were helping to prepare her for her own imminent motherhood. She was beyond the hormonal waves that had left her irritable, and she was so visibly pregnant that people gave up their seats for her on the subway.
Tsering was also grateful that she worked for a kind American couple. Many of her friends had not been as fortunate, sharing stories of verbal abuse, withheld pay, even outright sexual harassment as fathers cornered them in bathrooms, groped them in garages. Tsering dealt with none of this. Instead, she had a beautiful woman for a boss who ran an art gallery in Chelsea. The husband taught at Columbia. They were generous.
The family she worked for had promised a crib, baby clothes, even a party. Tsering wanted to accept these things, but she heard her mother in her head when she told her boss that, while she appreciated