Half a World Away (3 page)

Chapter Six

A
t the airport the security lady frisked Jaden because he was wearing a baggy hoodie and baggy pants. She made him empty his pockets, which were filled with bread. “Bread?” the lady said. “Why is there bread in your pockets?”

“Uhhh.” Jaden thought a second while the woman glared at him. “In case I get hungry. . . .” He felt his face redden.

“He's not going to hijack a plane with bread,” Steve said impatiently.

The lady gave Steve a withering look. “I'm just doing my job,” she snapped at him.

When they were walking away, Jaden heard Steve mumble, “Nitwit.” If there was one thing that Steve didn't like, it was nitwits.

As they sat waiting for the flight to Frankfurt, Penni and Steve kept giving each other meaningful gazes, sometimes smiling and sometimes not. Once in a while Penni would give Jaden a smile, and even kiss his hand.

And he felt it again, that thing that wasn't love. It was more just that he felt safe. But it wasn't unlimited. If he had really succeeded in burning down the house, even Penni probably would have been willing to send him away to wherever adopted kids like him got sent to. There were special homes.

They alternately wandered and sat for the next couple of hours. Once, after they'd been sitting in the same place for an hour, Steve pulled Penni up and they started waltzing through the rows of chairs. Jaden felt curious about—just really interested in—their happiness right then. They were bright, very bright, their electricity on full blast.

When boarding finally started, Steve stuck both his hands behind him, and Penni let him pull her forward. “You too, Jaden,” Steve said.

Jaden took the hand stuck out at him as Steve pulled. Penni took Jaden's other hand and held it. He kept almost tripping, and he was glad when they all needed to let go as they entered the plane.

“I'll arm-wrestle you for the aisle,” Steve said to Jaden.

“Me?” Jaden asked. “I want the window.”

“Good, because I want to sit between my two favorite people in the world,” Penni said happily.

They sat in the back row of the plane. They'd bought the tickets from a travel agency that specialized in international adoption, so the tickets were discounted and quite possibly the cheapest on the plane. After they got situated, Steve leaned over and kissed Penni with a big
mmmmm
noise. Yesterday that would have embarrassed Jaden, but now he watched curiously. Here, now, on this plane, what would have embarrassed him yesterday didn't matter. He was entering a new world, the way he'd entered a new world when he came to America.

The plane began shaking hard almost as soon as it took off, and Jaden worried that maybe they were doomed to die while on their way to adopt this baby. Occasionally the shakes were violent, bouncing Jaden hard against his seat belt. His heart sank, and it must have shown because Steve said, “Take big breaths and breathe out slowly. Don't worry, if there was a problem, the pilot would land. It's just normal turbulence.”

“I can't stand it!” Jaden cried out, surprising himself. A couple of people twisted around to look at him, but he didn't care. He felt trapped in this plane. He wanted out—
now
.

“It's a bit much,” Penni said. “I've never felt this much turbulence before.” Her forehead wrinkled with worry. “Maybe we should ask a flight attendant about it.”

“They're probably all buckled in,” Steve said. “Don't worry. The pilot wouldn't do anything unsafe. He wants to live.”

“How do you know?” Jaden asked, but Steve didn't answer.

Jaden closed his eyes and tried taking big breaths and exhaling slowly. There. That worked a little. A big jolt shook the plane, and he squeezed his eyes tight. He opened his eyes and wrinkled his forehead at Penni, who put her arm around him.

“Don't worry,” Penni said. “It's—uh—”

Another big jolt stopped her from talking. Jaden wished there were a way to take a photo of turbulence. He saw Penni's eyes grow scared. That worried him a lot. Then he heard another passenger crying. Jaden thought they were all going to die.

“Mom?” he said.

“Yes?”

“I stole the thirty-dollar tip Dad left on the table at the restaurant last night.”

She blinked at him, and for a second he thought she was going to be angry.

“Oh, Jaden,” was all she said at first. Then she squeezed his hand. “Thank you for your honesty. Now is not the time for me to be mad.”

Steve said, “For crying out loud, you two, stop acting like somebody's on their deathbed.”

Jaden said, “Dad?”

“What is it?”

But he couldn't think of anything he wanted to confess to Steve. “Never mind,” he said.

“Read—my—lips, you two,” Steve said loudly. “Everything—is—fine.”

The PA crackled, and then a man started speaking. “This is your pilot, Captain Mattson. As you all can tell, we've encountered a bit of turbulence. As we reach altitude, the turbulence will settle down. In the meanwhile you all keep your seat belts fastened, and the flight attendants will begin serving drinks before you know it.”

He sounded almost amused. Jaden tried to let that calm him down. He didn't want to die, because he wanted to see his biological mother again, just to ask her,
Why? Why did you give me away and keep your other son?
He couldn't think of a single explanation, not one, but maybe she had an explanation he hadn't thought of.

The plane rose through some clouds, so that Jaden couldn't see any city lights or anything down below, like they were suspended in nothingness. He stared out at the nothingness for hours, “turning off,” as Dr. Wilder used to call it. At one point he could hear Penni say—as if from far away—“He's turned off.” He stared outside. Once in a while he turned off for days. There was no predicting how long it might last.

Chapter Seven

H
e must have fallen asleep, because the flight attendant was announcing that they would be landing in Frankfurt and that everyone should raise their trays and bring their seat backs up. Relief flooded over Jaden, even though the shaking had resumed. When the pilot said, “Flight attendants, prepare for landing,” a few people applauded.

Jaden smiled at Penni. He felt giddy that they were still alive. When the plane touched down, there was more applause. He briefly regretted telling Penni about the thirty dollars, but oh well.

Jaden never wanted to get on another plane again, but he knew that in a few hours they would have to catch their flight to Almaty, Kazakhstan. He wondered if it would be possible for him to stay in Frankfurt for a few weeks. “Hey, Mom, do I have to go to Kazakhstan? Can I stay here?”

“Jaden, of course you have to go to Kazakhstan. You can't stay in Germany by yourself. Plus, you need to bond with the baby before we come home. The bonding period is not just for the parents but the whole family.”

“I hate flying, Mom.”

“How can you hate flying? You've only flown twice.”

“Both times were awful.”

“That's it,” Steve said. “No more talk about flying. Let's talk about the beautiful future. That's what matters now.” Then Jaden knew what Steve was going to say before he said it. “A positive attitude equals a positive outcome.”

“You're absolutely right,” Penni declared, as if that were the first time Steve had ever said that.

“But, Mom,” Jaden said.

“Enough,” Penni answered firmly.

The thought of more turbulence made Jaden feel like he was going to lose his mind. He gagged, but Steve and Penni didn't notice. He hoped it happened again while they were watching. Then maybe they would understand how upset he was about flying.

They strolled around the sprawling airport. On a whim Steve bought caviar and crackers at a food shop. Then they sat down, and Steve handed Penni a cracker topped with caviar. Penni said, “Mmmmmm,” and closed her eyes. Jaden felt his mouth water, but when he stuck the whole cracker with caviar into his mouth, he almost immediately spit it out, right onto the ground.

But Penni was ready with a couple of napkins. She always came to the rescue. Still, he could feel that her mind was more on the new baby than on him. He was surprised to find he felt jealous. He wouldn't have thought he cared, and he would never admit that he cared, but the fact was he did care at that moment. He'd gotten used to being her first priority.

Finally the airline announced boarding. This flight was to be the longest of the trip—nine and a half hours. The flight attendants were tall, beautiful German girls.

Penni's face had grown radiant. Jaden had never seen her so pretty. He wondered if she'd been that way before he'd been brought home. They hadn't gone to Romania themselves—they'd hired a Romanian man to bring him to America. The first time Jaden had heard Penni crying in bed was when he'd cut up several sweaters she'd bought for him. After that she'd cried a lot. She about had a nervous breakdown when he burned his teddy bear's face. It had been the first thing they'd given him when they met him at the airport. He'd taken some charcoal lighter fluid and poured it on the teddy bear's face, and then put the bear into a pot in the sink. Apparently, he put on too much lighter fluid, because when he dropped a match on the teddy bear, it half exploded—
whoosh!
The whole event left soot marks on the kitchen ceiling. Penni and Steve had been in bed already, and Jaden had gotten up only because he'd suddenly wanted to burn something.

He took the scorched teddy bear to bed with him. It was weird, and kind of embarrassing, but he liked stuffed animals. Penni and Steve didn't know that, though, so after he was ten, they never got him any again. He kept his stuffed animals in the back of his closet.

When Penni had seen the soot marks, she'd scolded him but also told him to never forget that she would always love him more than she loved anybody else in the world. Jaden knew that that was out the window now.

As the plane sped down the runway, Jaden crossed his arms and fingers and put on his sunglasses so nobody could tell how scared he was. The liftoff was smooth, and even as the plane reached flying altitude, there was no turbulence. Jaden uncrossed himself.

Steve leaned over Penni to ask him, “When are you going to take those sunglasses off?”

“When our last plane lands in Kyzylorda.”

“What is it, some sort of lucky charm?”

“Yes,” Jaden admitted.

He noticed three free seats in the middle section. He moved to there and lay down, feeling really happy that there was no turbulence. He played with his handheld Nintendo while lying on his back. He knew turbulence could happen at any time, but for the moment everything was fine. Then there was a touch of turbulence, but it went away. Maybe the sunglasses really were lucky. That is, he knew it didn't make sense to think so, but he couldn't bring himself to take them off. He did not want to die in an airplane.

Chapter Eight

T
he story was, Penni had seen his face on a waiting children list on the Internet, and she'd known immediately that she had to adopt him. She'd been married to someone else at the time. Jaden had been one year old in the picture but five in real life. Someone from his group home had lied and told the adoption agency that Jaden was still a baby. Then there was the divorce, and then Penni married Steve. So it had ended up taking three years to complete the adoption. That's why he'd been eight when he came to the United States and why Penni and Steve had thought he would be four. Jaden could tell that the Kazakh baby would belong to both Penni and Steve, while he mostly belonged to Penni. At least, that was the way he saw it. It was weird because before he came here, he'd been thrilled to be moving to America. He'd had all sorts of fantasies about how much he would love his new country. But somehow that wasn't the case. And that made him mad.

Anyway, inside every living organism were these holes called “ion channels,” which allowed only certain atoms and molecules to pass through. Scientists had found electrical current associated with these channels. It was Jaden's belief that these mysterious ion channels controlled every part of life. Made your heart beat, made your kidneys clean your blood, made you breathe. Everything.

He would like to go to France someday to see
La Fée Électricité
, a painting about the history of electricity. It was huge, 624 square meters. If he were a painter, he would like to extend the painting to include the present. Currently it went up to 1937, and a lot had happened since then. He would add pictures of ion channels. His biggest and most important life goal was to learn the difference between life and death. Like, in a thing called “pulseless electrical activity,” the body showed electrical activity even after the heart stopped beating. So were you alive or dead?

He stared up at the flimsy-looking plastic that contained the oxygen masks that would supposedly fall down if the cabin lost oxygen. He wondered how often maintenance workers checked to make sure those masks worked.

He felt somebody jiggle his feet and sat up to see Steve frowning at him. “What is it?” Jaden asked. He didn't like it when someone distracted him when he was thinking about something important, like oxygen.

“This adoption is something we're doing together, so let's do it together.”

Huh? Jaden didn't get it. It's something they were doing together, so they should do it together? Steve stared at him, then gestured his head like,
Come on.
Oh. They didn't like him being alone. Jaden climbed over the seats and went back to his window.

“Oh, honey, it didn't feel right without you here,” Penni told him.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Jaden said, though he knew no such thing.

“Ooh, I'm so worried about, well, it might be bad luck to say it. But you know.”

Yeah, Jaden knew. Even he felt a little worried because of their adoption agency going out of business. And they were adopting from Kyzylorda, where Penni had told him few Americans had adopted. So basically, it was only hope that made them believe that their agency's in-country personnel would pick them up in Kyzylorda.

***

Their first stop in Kazakhstan was Almaty, the biggest city in the country. Jaden took off his sunglasses as they went through customs and headed for the waiting room. After the long flight, he wanted to move his legs, but there was nowhere much to go. The waiting area for all flights was a big room with a shiny white floor and row after row of connected seats. Most of the seats were filled. Jaden immediately noticed a group of women with babies.

“Mom, look, they must have just adopted.”

“Let's go have a chat!” Penni said excitedly.

Jaden followed along. As soon as they reached the women, Steve stuck out his hand to shake with one of them. “I'm Steve Kincaid. Are you by some chance American? We're here to adopt and couldn't help noticing that you all have babies.”

One of the ladies shook his hand and said, “Yes, we're all American. I'm Clara. What agency are you with?”

“One World Adoptions.”

“Oh, I almost signed with them. I'm with Open Heart International.” She gently jostled the baby in her arms, beaming down at him. “And this is Michael.”

“I haven't heard of Open Heart,” Penni said.

“They're a small agency but very good.” Clara motioned to her baby. “The whole process took only a year.”

“Really?” Penni exclaimed. “I'm jealous. We've been at it for longer.”

“But for the moment we've put all negativity out of our thinking process,” Steve added quickly.

“That's what you have to do when you're adopting,” Clara agreed. “This is Nika, and her adoption took four years. She's suing her agency when she gets home.”

“Four years!” Steve and Penni said simultaneously, shifting their attention to the woman beside Clara.

Jaden tuned out the talking and studied the babies. Three were Asian and two were not. He'd read up on it: Most babies adopted from Kazakhstan were Central Asian, Russian, or a mix. There were other ethnicities, but those were the main categories. Only one of the babies was asleep, one was awake and a little fussy, one was awake and staring blankly into space from his stroller, and two were crying despite their new mothers' attempts to calm them. He knelt in front of the one staring blankly.

“Hi,” he said, as if he were talking to another twelve-year-old. The baby didn't even seem to notice him. “Baby, hi, adopted baby.” Then the baby gazed at him, but blankly. “Are you a sleepy baby? It's very late.”

One of the women knelt beside him. “Hi, I'm his mother. He isn't that demonstrative yet. He never laughs or cries.”

“Can I touch him?”

“Sure.”

Jaden poked gently at the baby's little face; it felt soft and doughy. He had never talked to or touched a baby before. Marty and Catherine had tried to get him to carry their baby, but he'd refused. Babies didn't seem quite human; plus, what if he broke a baby somehow? He glanced at the crying babies. The sound was already starting to annoy him. He hoped they didn't end up with a crier.

The blank-faced baby's mother tried tickling him under the chin, but he didn't respond. “I hope he's okay,” the mother said. “His medical report said he was healthy. But I'm not sure he's bonded with me at all.” She wrinkled her forehead and worriedly studied her new son, patting him softly on the chest.

“He does look healthy,” Jaden said. He squeezed the baby's leg. “Ah, he feels strong. Maybe a wrestler someday.”

“Can I ask you something that's none of my business?” the mother asked.

“What?”

“Are you adopted? I mean, I know it's none of my business.”

“Yes, I am. I am. I'm Romanian. Romanian-American, I guess.” He was surprised: He always thought he was incognito, since he was white and so were Penni and Steve.

“Oh, that's wonderful! Adoption is the most beautiful thing.”

Jaden held her eyes briefly, then shifted his attention to the baby.

The baby was staring at Jaden as if Jaden were a statue or even a painting on a wall. It was like there was a slight glimmer of awareness, but nothing more.

Jaden stood up. The ladies with the crying babies already seemed stressed, and they hadn't even started their journey home yet. He felt bad for them, but he also felt bad for the poor babies. The babies probably didn't know what was going on, although who can say what someone that young knows? He hated how pompous doctors sounded when they assumed they knew what was going on in somebody else's head. They didn't know, and Jaden wished he could tell every adopted kid who had to talk to a doctor that the doctor didn't know. Only
you
know, and you don't have to tell them.

Jaden gazed around the big room. He couldn't see any other kids. He thought he could feel the air of fatigue around just about everybody. It was like the whole room was filled with it, as if it were smoke or something. The chairs didn't appear very comfortable, but he sat in one anyway and tried to nap while Penni and Steve continued trading information with the women. Steve seemed merely curious, but Penni acted ravenous for information, her body leaning slightly forward and her face hyperalert. Jaden couldn't fall all the way asleep, but he did feel pleasantly half-asleep, the crying fading into the background. After a while he heard everyone saying good-bye, and he stood up groggily.

“Nice to meet you all,” Penni was saying. “Good luck.”

“Good luck,” a couple of the women said back.

Jaden gave a small wave and watched the women push their strollers toward their gate to their new lives. He hoped the babies would grow up happy. He wondered what would become of the blank-faced baby and felt a sudden surge of protectiveness toward him, then a sudden surge of rage toward Penni and Steve for adopting him, even though they had nothing to do with those babies. But why hadn't they just given money to his mother so that she could raise him herself? He cried out, “Hey,” and ran after the Americans.

They all stopped. He approached the woman with the blank-faced baby and said, “Let me give you my e-mail address. I want to know how your baby does.”

“Oh,” she said. She took out a pen, and he wrote down
[email protected]
.

“Thank you,” he told her.

“No problem.” But as Jaden watched her leave, he knew she would never e-mail him.

Penni and Steve decided to walk around the room for some exercise, but Jaden leaned back in a chair and gnawed vigorously on a straw he'd brought to chew on.

The woman next to him silently eyed the straw he was chewing, then said something sharply in another language.

The man on the other side of him said, “Excuse me.” His accent was so thick, it took Jaden a moment to realize he was speaking English. “You are American? I might practice my English?”

“Yes,” Jaden said, taking the straw out of his mouth.

“New York?”

“No, Illinois,” Jaden answered. “Near Chicago.”

The man nodded uncertainly. “You have seen Astana, our capital?”

“No.”

“You should go. Astana is a symbol of the national idea statement.”

This time it was for Jaden to nod uncertainly. The man was Central Asian, with dark, earnest eyes. He paused and his eyes went out of focus for a moment, as if he were thinking. “Los Angeles?” the man said. “Near where you live?”

“No, Chicago is the closest big city.”

“I have not heard of this. Ahhhh, Americans have a sporty character, do they not?”

“Well.” Jaden thought about that. “They do like sports.”

“Good, good, all be well, isn't it?”

“Yes, well.”

The woman next to him stood up, and the man smiled politely and opened out his palms. “My flight. I wish you pleasantries on your trip.”

“You too. Nice to meet you.”

“You're welcome. Good-bye.”

“Bye.”

The man got up and strode crisply off. Jaden chuckled to himself, then felt immediately surprised. He didn't laugh much, so it was always like he had to stop and take notice whenever he did.

When Penni and Steve sat back down, an hour had passed, with Jaden doing nothing but shaking his leg up and down and watching his feet as he shuffled them inside and out. Penni brushed hair out of his eyes. “Honey, why don't you get some sleep?” She put her arm around him and pulled him in. With her as a pillow, Jaden closed his eyes, but his mind was alert.

The sounds of announcements and the discomfort of the chair and the discomfort of Penni's shoulder kept him from falling asleep. And he couldn't stop thinking about the blank-faced baby. He hoped that child would be okay. He opened his eyes and stared at the reflections of tired people in the white floor. He imagined them all as babies, the whole room filled with babies.