The Other Mother

By Terra

How many women can say that a Sanzo priest suckled at their breast?

I was a simple farmer’s wife, only two years married. The winter season and the accompanying celebrations to fight the darkness were on the horizon but I could not share in it.

I had lost my first child. I had failed as a woman and as a wife.

The day after I lost my baby, a monk from Kinzan temple came to see me. He told how the great priest Koumyou Sanzo had found a newborn child in the river. The baby needed a wet nurse but every other woman in the village who was able to breast-feed had children of their own to take care of. I was only one who could nurse the foundling.

But it was left unsaid but heard loud and clear that I was not to raise the child. I nearly refused on those grounds but I respected the kind priest and I agreed.

I was parted from my husband and sent up to the temple to live among the monks. The messenger led me to the room where the child was being kept. I could hear his cries from several corridors away.

He left me at the door and I stood in the doorway, waiting for Master Sanzo to acknowledge my presence. He was sitting in a lotus position, staring kindly down at the squalling infant, who was kicking at what appeared to a woman’s underclothes. He was nude except for a string of red beads around his neck.

"Are you the woman from the village? The one who lost her child?" Koumyou Sanzo asked but not looking at me, keeping his eyes on the child.

"I am here to nurse the child."

"His name is Kouryuu."

I knelt on the other side of Kouryuu and suggested, "It would best if you left while I nurse the baby."

Without a word, he nodded and left the room. I opened my robes and, instinctively, Kouryuu suckled.

I will not deny that I considered abducting Kouryuu. I think any woman in my position, forced to nurse but denied parentage, would have similar thoughts. Within a week, I was forced to give up such notions. For my desire to possess the boy came not from affection but merely envy, like a girl who wishes for a doll only because her friend has it.

Oh, yes, I smiled down at him and stroked his hair while he fed but with no more emotion than one playing with a dog. And, yes, he cried out for me and was soothed by my milk but his desire for me was no different than another man’s desire for his rice bowl.

Once he was full, he would wail and squirm in my arms, his tiny hands clenched into fists, and would not stop until Koumyou Sanzo came into the room. If caught early enough, the sound of his voice was sufficient to comfort the child into sleep. But if the boy were very distressed, Koumyou Sanzo would have to pick him up and walk him around or bounce him in his arms until the child would relax.

When the infant was slightly bigger but my services were still needed, Kouryuu spent most of his hours with the Sanzo priest. It became commonplace to see Koumyou Sanzo lecturing students, sitting in a lotus position, the tiny Kouryuu fingering the sleeves of the priestly robes or sleeping contently or muttering monosyllabic noises in harmony with Kourmyou Sanzo’s smooth river of a voice while cradled in the man’s lap.

Multiple times, the other monks tried to convince Koumyou Sanzo to just give me the child and be done with it. A monastery was no place for a baby and a Sanzo priest was not meant to be a father. They never said anything of this nature to me (I was hardly spoken to at all) but I would overhear their stage whispers as they walked away from the sight of Kouryuu being fed.

When Kouryuu was fully weaned and I was no longer needed, Koumyou Sanzo asked me if I wanted the child. I could see in his eyes that he did not want me to take Kouryuu away. For a man whose main lesson was nonattachment, he was extremely close to the boy. And I knew deep in my soul that if I took Kouryuu away from Koumyou Sanzo, that tiny heart would break.

For the first and last time, I looked at a man other than my husband straight in the eyes and refused the offer. "I will not separate a child from his mother."

Koumyou Sanzo laughed. "I am not his father, much less his mother."

"Motherhood is more than giving birth. Fatherhood is more than giving a name. You are his mother and his father. I am neither."

"But you fed..."

"I am neither."

With a solemn nod and joyful eyes, he accepted my refusal and I was sent back home to my husband.

I said my farewells to Kouryuu and he babbled at me but there was little emotion behind the act. I felt no regret, no longing, nothing except a sense of peace, much like what a midwife feels when seeing a new mother holding her child for the first time.

How many women can say that they have seen a Sanzo priest be both mother and father?

The End