The 7^th Year of Qian Long

[September 1742]

The baby kicked inside her, making her feel sick. Xia Yu Her smiled tiredly as she ran her hand over her swollen belly. She winced as she was immediately rewarded with another kick. The baby’s movements had increased lately, to the point of rudely waking her at night. Obviously the little one was anxious to see the world.

Yu Her waddled towards the reclining chair in her room and leaned back in it gratefully. She rested her legs on a small stool to ease the aching in her swollen ankles. Yu Her groaned as her lower back still ached in spite of every remedy tried. But then the backaches and swollen ankles were the least of her problems.

Many a day, she had to endure the condescending looks of her relatives and the Ji Nan town’s folk. As they had no servants, Yu Her and her mother had to venture into town to buy groceries. That gave the local "San Gu Liu Po" (gossipmongers) more things to talk about and to rub the Xia family’s name into the mud even more. Yu Her’s eyes stung as she remembered the sneers, the snide remarks like "slut, whore" thrown at her. At one point, she had run home in tears.

Dad had died three months ago, a lingering, painful death. His health had never been good these last few years due to his occasional bouts of chest pain. Still, Dad had managed to lead a fairly active life; he tutored students sitting for their district-level, prefecture-level and national-level exams, he taught calligraphy, painting and the "qin" at the local school, and still found time to be chairman of the Ji Nan Calligraphy Society.

When she had started to "show" about six months ago, Yu Her had no choice but to tell her parents. Dad had taken the news badly, even worse than Mama had. That night, he suffered a severe chest pain that left him paralysed from the neck down one side. Yu Her did not know which was worst for him, the paralysis or the humiliation. Neighbours, friends and nearly all their relatives avoided them like the plague. Only Uncle and Aunty Liu, and a handful of Dad’s students had visited him.

When Dad died, Yu Her lost her only source of support and comfort. He had been the only one whom she could turn to these last three months. Dad had never blamed her for what had happened to them, to him. In fact he blamed himself for allowing this to happen. Mama never said anything however the looks Mama gave her spoke volumes about her feelings on this issue. Deep down, Yu Her knew that Mama blamed her for everything.

As expected, none of the relatives and family friends had attended the funeral, save Uncle and Aunty Liu. A handful of townsfolk and her father’s faithful students still had the courtesy to pay their final respects to him. Even then, Yu Her could not shake off the feeling that they had merely come to look at his "famous" daughter who had scandalised the family.

Yu Her shook off the train of depressing thoughts. She had heard somewhere that depressive thoughts during pregnancy would result in babies that always cried but never smiled. An old wives’ tale most likely but one could never be too sure. To keep from wallowing in self-pity, she tried to concentrate on the scenery outside her room window, trying to find some source of inspiration for that new poetry she was composing.

The heat was stifling, after all this was a typical Shan Dong summer. Yu Her gave up trying to compose and decided to take a nap. As she nodded off, Yu Her’s thoughts drifted back to that day, over a year ago, a day she had come to curse as well as rejoice in.