. “You could switch them, and it seems like no one would know.”
She’d been half joking, but half serious—gauging which way the other woman took her. All of their various attendants and nursemaids had been dismissed from the room.
“You might be right. Could you take care of him, please?” her mother-in-law said, picking up Ah-Duo’s child. She removed his swaddling clothes, preparing to change his diaper. Meanwhile, Ah-Duo accepted her brother-in-law and did the same, replacing his diaper with the one she’d brought along.
Each of them had just given birth, and each of them felt like she was missing a piece of her heart. There was nothing in Anshi’s eyes as she looked at her own child. Nobody seemed to notice because Anshi constantly kept a smile on her face. But she looked at Ah-Duo’s baby with genuine warmth. Perhaps she found her son’s child lovable even as her husband’s seemed hateful to her. Perhaps that was why she said nothing, even when Ah-Duo left and went back to her pavilion with Anshi’s child still in her arms. They exchanged the healthy, bouncing babies as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Later, the child that Ah-Duo was raising died. Perhaps, without that switch, it would have lived. Ah-Duo mourned the loss, for she had come to love the child—but she was also glad to know that her own offspring was still alive. Anshi’s child had died unloved by its own mother, with its rightful place usurped by its nephew, and all before it could even bewail its own fate.
The death appeared to shake both Ah-Duo and Anshi. The naughty little troublemaker who had always given the serving women such headaches was now enough of a grown-up to sense it—but he was also young enough that he had to lash out somehow