This week was another butt-kicking seven-day marathon of mommydom. Manika got a small cough on Sunday that accelerated to a respiratory infection and led to a complete bodily shutdown on Wednesday. She woke up over ten times that night, and couldn’t fall back asleep over the fever and cough. So, after a night of no sleep, I took her out in the stroller to help her sleep. We walked to Thumb Plaza (about half a mile away) and I sat and had a coffee while she slept.
Unfortunately, she woke up midway through my moment of peace, and then proceeded to flip out like I was poking her skin with needles. She screamed at me in the restaurant for daring to take her out, screamed outside for trying to put her back in the stroller, and after I finally agreed to carry her home (balancing her on my twenty-week large pregnant stomach and pushing a not-small jogger stroller with the remainder of my energy), she screamed to every Chinese passerby how awful she felt and how useless her mother was because she was unable to make her feel better.
People stared, and I mean stared. I was in makeshift pajamas. My hair was sticking out above a grey sports headband. My glasses were lopsided from Manika pressing her head against my face. Manika had no pants on and was thrashing around like her legs were on fire. I missed New York where crazy people walk around reciting the Koran in loud speakers and no one even looks at them, and if someone does stare, you can respond back to them in English, glorious English!! So in an effort to conjure up some sense of power so I could to finish what fast became one of the longest walks of my life, I yelled back to every staring, well-meaning, trying to help me with my screaming child, morning walker / commuter / off-to-work-goer, “What the hell are you looking at!” Most didn’t understand me. One Italian man looked like he wanted to hug me. I wanted to cry louder than Manika.
Then I got home and my ayi, who is a truly lovely lady but not so smart, told me that maybe Manika had been watching too much Elmo on Sesame Street (who occasionally scares her with talking window shades and larger than life puppet bugs), and had some “heise de” stuff on her mind, which is the equivalent of saying some grey matter had possessed her little soul.
I went into hibernation. For the next two days, Manika and I slept off dueling coughs (she generously shared hers with me). We slept curled up together, we slept on opposite ends of the floor of her room, we slept in her small bed, we slept on a queen sized air mattress, we slept with my back to her and her hand lodged under my sweaty armpit, we slept on the couch in front of the television. Of course, at moments there was a certain motherly magic to the whole thing - two female spirits, suffering together, that sort of thing. But most of the time, I smelled like stale milk vomit and wanted to do nothing but check into a five star hotel room with room service and no one else.
On Friday, Manika and I finally went outside. Maybe we were just so starved for outside interaction, maybe we’d been shut-in for so long that we’d forgotten the world existed outside of us, but it was as if Shanghai was trying to cheer us up; it really felt that way. There was sunshine, a perfect breeze, people smiled at us, called Manika beautiful. A shopping trip to the mall actually went efficiently. We passed a group of old ladies practicing a part foxtrot, part tai chi dance routine to Jingle Bells outside (in the tail end of October). Saturday went even better. We went to a Halloween party, and in the evening my husband took me out to a lovely Thai restaurant in a beautiful old French style villa. Afterwards, he and I walked down this long street filled with clothing shops and I got to window shop, sans screaming baby, sans fever, sans cough. I felt almost normal, and like a prisoner who starts to fall for its captor, the rollercoaster experience almost made me love Shanghai – for once, I did not feel abused by it during a crisis and I was so grateful, I almost dared say to my husband, “Maybe I could learn to really like it here.
But I ultimately kept my mouth shut.
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