after searching for firewood one unusually warm autumn morning high up in the hills. I cut her navel string with my knife and carried her home in my arms . We gave birth in a tent in Livingston with the help of a Japanese midwife who had traveled twenty miles on horseback to see us from the next town. We gave birth in towns where no doctor would see us, and we washed out the afterbirth ourselves. I watched my mother do it many times . We gave birth in towns with only one doctor, whose prices we could not afford. We gave birth with the assistance of Dr. Ringwalt, who refused to let us pay him his fee. “You keep it,” he said. We gave birth among our own, at the Takahashi Clinic of Midwifery on Clement Street in San Francisco. We gave birth at the Kuwabara Hospital on North Fifth Street in San Jose. We gave birth on a bumpy country road in Castroville in the back of our husband’s Dodge truck. The baby came too fast . We gave birth on a dirt floor covered with newspapers in a bunkhouse in French Camp to the biggest baby the midwife had ever seen in her life. Twelve and a half pounds . We gave birth with the help of the fish seller’s wife, Mrs. Kondo, who had known our mother back home in Japan. She was the second prettiest girl in the village . We gave birth behind a lace curtain at Adachi’s Barbershop in Gardena while our husband was giving Mr. Ota his weekly shave. We gave birth quickly, after hours, in the apartment above Higo Ten Cent. We gave birth while gripping the bedpost and cursing our husband— You did this! —and he swore he would never touch us again. We gave birth at five in the morning in the pressing room at the Eagle Hand Laundry and that night our husband began kissing us in bed. I said to him, “Can’t you wait?” We gave birth quietly, like our mothers, who never cried out or complained. She worked in the rice paddies until the day she felt her first pangs . We gave birth weeping, like Nogiku, who came down with fever and could not get out of bed for three months. We gave birth easily, in two hours, and then got a headache that stayed with us for five years. We gave birth six weeks after our husband had left us to a child we now wish we had never given away. After her I was never able to conceive another . We gave birth secretly, in the woods, to a child our husband knew was not his. We gave birth on top of a faded floral bedspread in a brothel in Oakland while listening to the grunts coming through the wall from the next room. We gave birth in a boardinghouse in Petaluma, two weeks after moving out of Judge Carmichael’s place up on Russian Hill. We gave birth after saying good-bye to our mistress, Mrs. Lippincott, who did not want a pregnant maid greeting guests at her door. It just wouldn’t look right . We gave birth with the help of the foreman’s wife, Señora Santos, who grabbed our thighs and told us to push. Empuje! Empuje! Empuje! We gave birth while our husband was out gambling in Chinatown and when he came home drunk the next morning we did not speak to him for five days. He lost our entire season’s earnings in one night . We gave birth during the Year of the Monkey. We gave birth during the Year of the Rooster. We gave birth during the Year of the Dog and the Dragon and the Rat. We gave birth, like Urako, on the day of the full moon. We gave birth on a Sunday, in a shed in Encinitas, and the next day we tied the baby onto our back and went out to pick berries in the fields. We gave birth to so many children we quickly lost track of the years. We gave birth to Nobuo and Shojiro and Ayako. We gave birth to Tameji, who looked just like our brother, and stared into his face with joy. Oh, it’s you! We gave birth to Eikichi, who looked just like our neighbor, and after that our husband would not look us in the eye. We gave birth to Misuzu, who came out with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck like a rosary, and we knew she would one day be a priestess. It’s a sign from the
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