The Year She Left Us (14 page)

I didn't.

“It was in my e-mail, doofus.”

“Where are you calling from?” I asked.

WeiWei laughed before putting down the phone.

“Hollywood,” she said. “Where else would WeiWei be?”

T
he package arrived the next day. Inside was a picture of WeiWei in an unnamed Chinese city, surrounded by a jostling group of smiling Chinese kids. “It'll be fun,” she had scrawled on the back of the photo. “In their eyes, you're a hero.” Along with the picture were three rolls of film and a plastic camera. It was easy to operate, she wrote, and she wanted me to use it, especially on the day I visited the orphanage. “You won't lose face if you stick your face behind this.” Her words made no sense to me, but I put the camera in my backpack to carry with me on the plane.

Robyn had made the travel arrangements, planning the same kind of itinerary that she later used for her touring company: cultural sites first, to get us acclimated, and the orphanages at the end, when we were comfortable with the whole thing, as if comfort could be guaranteed after nine days in the country. We went to Beijing, Shanghai, and Guilin, and then we split up, Becca's family traveling to her orphanage in Guangzhou, and the rest of us to Kunming. There were local tour guides to take us around in each city. I was more relaxed once the trip was under way because A.J., Becca, and I got to share a hotel room. Who cared about the Forbidden City or the Great Hall of the People? We had control of our own TV set and electronic key cards that slid into a slot by the bathroom to make the lights go on. Only the Great Wall caught my imagination, sinuous and potent, like a dragon gliding across the land. I snapped my friends' pictures with Charlie's digital camera; the plastic camera WeiWei had sent me was bulky and it used film—I couldn't check after each shot the picture I had just taken. At night, when A.J. and Becca and I bounced from bed to bed and ate packets of Oreos we'd bought in the hotel shop, I told myself that our day at the orphanage would be just as easy: a quick walk around, lunch, and then shopping. I wondered if our Kunming hotel would be as nice as the one in Beijing.

The night before our orphanage visit, my fears came flooding back. Becca and her parents had departed, so to save money, I was stuck in a room with Charlie and Les. They were sick of each other after nine days on the road and squabbled over whose toothpaste was almost out and whose turn it was to ask housekeeping for a thermos of hot water. Les had brought a bag of freshly ground coffee and a bright yellow cone and paper filters and couldn't leave in the morning without making herself a cup of French roast, which she drank black and piping. Charlie didn't drink tea or coffee. Her stomach was wobbly, she said; she spent a lot of time in the bathroom.

“How are you feeling?” she asked me as we got ready for bed. Les was down in the business center, answering e-mail.

I shrugged. I didn't want to admit to myself or to Charlie how desperately I wanted to skip the whole orphanage visit.

“It must be hard for you, coming back to face it all.” She stroked my arm, watching for my expression. Her face looked drawn and tired; dark circles under her eyes showed up like thumbprints. Her voice dropped. She tried for a smile. “I'm a little sorry that I'm putting you through this. It seemed like a good idea, and everybody else was really excited for the trip, but now, I don't know. Is it okay that we're here? Are you okay with going tomorrow?”

This was our particular psychosis, our peculiar pattern that bent us both into unnatural shapes: my mother, unsure of herself, asking me for approval, and I, confused, feeling both old and young, trying to give her the answer she needed to hear. Even at twelve, I understood what she was asking:
Am I a good mother? Are you glad it was me who got you?

“A.J. and Becca think we'll be happy we saw it,” I said slowly, buying time as I tried to figure out how to save myself while protecting my mother's feelings. She wanted me to be as excited as my friends. A.J. had been counting down the hours. Becca had shown us a letter she'd written to her birth parents, which she planned to put in her orphanage file. Charlie, for once, hadn't asked the same of me.

“But how do you feel, honey? We don't have to go. We could wait in the hotel while the others visit, and Les can tell us all about it later. If that would be easier for you. Or we could go out sightseeing, just you and me. That way, you could still get a sense of your homeland”—the word sounded ridiculous; China was not my home—“your city of origin, but the orphanage part, we can skip.”

Pride flashed in me; I mistook it for anger. How could I stay back if everyone else was going? What would I say later to A.J. and Becca and WeiWei? And there was something more that I'd never detected before from Charlie. Not just a mother's love or distress or concern for my feelings, but the barest, faintest smell of a trace of pity.

I crossed my arms. I glared at my mother. “Why don't you make up your mind?” I said. “You brought us all the way here, so now we have to go. I don't see what the big deal is. It's just a bunch of kids who don't have any parents. There's lots of kids like that all over the world. I know that's where I came from, but, honestly, it doesn't mean anything to me. You guys are the ones making such a big deal out of it. I'll go, and you can take lots of pictures, and then, can we go home? Camp Haverim starts next week. If we sign up the first day, I can go on the camping trip.”

My arrow had struck. Charlie bit her lip and nodded. We went to bed, nobody happy.

T
he next morning, I couldn't eat a bite. The air was gray and sticky; it had rained hard in the night, and the puddles looked black and oily. A.J. was running a temperature; her cheeks, always pink, looked brightly painted. Robyn fussed but decided it was okay for A.J. to make the visit; she had only a little fever, and when would she get this chance of a lifetime again? A.J. had dressed for the occasion in a spangly tank top and skirt with a sequined belt and sparkly earrings. I had dressed quickly in the same blue capris and yellow shirt that I had worn the day before.

“Do you think they'll remember us?” A.J. asked while we were waiting for the van. Her voice sounded croaky. “Will any of the aunties remember who we are?”

“Maybe,” I said, to please her. I didn't want to dampen A.J.'s spirits, A.J., who was up for any adventure, whose eagerness gave me courage, but made me feel superior to her, too. It was better than feeling frightened.

“My mom brought this big photo collage to give them,” A.J. said. “It's got a picture of our whole group on Gotcha Day, and pictures of you and me with our forever families.” That was Whackadoodle-speak for our adoptive parents, though we hadn't used the phrase since we were little. In A.J.'s excitement, she was talking like a baby.

“That's messed up. What will it be like for the kids who live there, seeing happy pictures of the Ones Who Got Away?”

A.J. paused, tenderhearted. “Maybe it'll help them to hope for a better life.” She gave me one of her impulsive A.J. hugs. “Anyway, they'll be happy to see that we're friends.”

“They'll be happy when we get to the gift part,” I said. After endless debate and consultation, our families had decided they would tell Director Zhu they would buy the orphanage some useful thing it needed for three hundred dollars max. Our Kunming tour guide had scolded them for extravagance—“It's not necessary,” she'd insisted, “for visitors to make a big present. If you want to do something, buy three hundred RMB of formula for the babies.”

“That's less than forty dollars,” Les had objected. “It'll look really cheap if we spend less than two hundred dollars per family.” Robyn and Charlie had readily agreed, but David had protested at Les's amount, worried about being taken for fools. “It's a matter of face,” Les had informed him, suddenly getting into the whole cultural thing she usually disparaged. China was having an effect on everyone, even Les. David said it was more like a matter of liberal guilt or the foreign trade imbalance. “Then I'll pay two hundred, and you put in a hundred,” Les proposed, showing her keen grasp of how the game of face really worked. They settled on a hundred and fifty bucks apiece. I saw the tour guide's eyeballs roll.

“Here,” A.J. said, as we climbed into the van. She held out WeiWei's camera. “I loaded it with film.”

I didn't want it, but I had promised WeiWei. I took it reluctantly.

“I'm so excited,” A.J. said. “Do you think they'll remember us?” She stared out the window on the short drive there while I clutched at the big black camera.

A
banner hung above the door—
WELCOME DAUGHTERS HOME
—with our orphanage names written in Chinese characters. Three caregiver aunties greeted us in Chinese and pointed to the banner, laughing and saying our names. A.J. ran to stand under the banner, and Robyn and David snapped pictures. I plodded over to join her, obeying all the adults who commanded me to smile. It had been a bad idea to tell Charlie I wanted to come. I should have stayed at the hotel. I could have been eating French toast in the room and watching the Disney Channel. Charlie was telling me to stand next to the sign on the building that had a long description in English—
SOCIAL WELFARE INSTITUTE
, I read.
THIS BUILDING COST $13,000 USD.
The rest of the words swam before me.

In the entryway, a group of orphanage children awaited. “Hello, hello!” They waved exuberantly and called out their first names. A.J. answered in Mandarin, and the children and aunties squealed with pleasure. A man walked in, accompanied by a young woman in the same white coat as the aunties, though she was much younger, with briskness in place of their warmth.

“This is Director Zhu,” she introduced him. “I am Miss Peng. Director Zhu says welcome to the Social Welfare Institute Kunming. We are very happy you come to make this homeland visit.”

I strayed to the side while the adults clustered around. Through a doorway to the left, I saw a dim room with pictures on the walls and toys arranged neatly on shelves. Tables and chairs were lined up in the middle, and stuffed animals hung from the light fixtures, so high up that no kid could reach them. A fluffy yellow chicken peered down. A dingy white bear swung from its neck on a cord.

“Would you care for a tour?” Miss Peng asked. We followed her dutifully through the room I'd viewed, full of toys and books and furniture but no children. The welcoming committee came with us, seven or eight boys and girls in colorful shirts and dresses. I guessed their ages from about six to eight. Some of them looked different—a wandering eye, a cleft palate—but they were all smiling and pointing out pictures on the wall, one after another, of white parents and Chinese daughters:
TO THE WONDERFUL CAREGIVERS OF OUR DAUGHTER EMMA; TO DIRECTOR ZHU AND HIS AMAZING STAFF; THE BROWNING FAMILY THANKS YOU WITH ALL OUR HEART.
One little boy asked A.J. to stand for a picture in front of another banner all in Chinese, red with gold lettering, framed with the beaming faces of Mickey Mouse and Minnie.

“I don't feel so good,” I whispered to Charlie. She bent swiftly, put her hand to my forehead.

“You should have eaten something,” she said. She gave me a little packet of soda crackers, which I dropped as we walked, not caring who found it.

Down the hallway we were ushered by the straight back of Miss Peng. The walls were damp from the rain, the dankness no different from other Chinese buildings, but they seemed to me to be dripping. A woman knelt at the end of the passage, wiping the floor with rags. In the next room we entered, a dozen children wheeled merrily around in plastic walkers, their aunties holding them by lengths of cloth tied to the rims. Watching them circle and hearing them cheerily shout our names, I thought I might heave onto the tile floor. Instead, I found my arms stonily lifting the camera I held in my sweating hands.

Click.
I took a picture of a toothless baby.
Click.
An auntie cupping a little boy's head. I had found a use for my eyes and my body. I scanned the room, my face behind the camera. I felt my wet breath against its plastic shell.

An auntie separated herself from the group and went up to A.J. to pat her hair and her face.

“This auntie says she remembers you,” Miss Peng said. “You were a Monkey baby, very good, very happy.” Director Zhu nodded, adding something in Mandarin. A.J. smiled shyly and spoke to the woman, who teared up and stroked A.J.'s hair again and again. Robyn stepped forward, holding a bag open to A.J.

“No, no,” instructed the tour guide. “We give all the presents at one time, when you sit down for tea with the director.” But A.J. ignored her and reached into the bag and pulled out a little wrapped present that she placed in the old woman's hands. They hugged tightly while David shot video and Robyn snapped pictures.

Miss Peng turned to me. “Another auntie remembers you,” she said, but I raised my camera and started clicking away. Charlie murmured something to our tour guide, who called off Miss Peng, who retreated. As we left the room, I kept the camera to my face, able to take in everything I was seeing through the tiny little window that shrank the rooms, the aunties, and the children into unreal miniatures for me to look at, the way I might look at a slide under a microscope or a thumbnail shot on a screen.

I was ready, then, when we finally reached the nursery, to see the rows of babies in their powder blue cribs. With the camera between me and what I was looking at, I wasn't a participant, only an observer. A baby whose eyes followed a passing auntie.
Click.
A baby who smiled when A.J. clapped her hands.
Click.
A baby like me, with a rosebud mouth and a truculent expression. I clicked her twice and named her “Athena” under my breath. I stared at her bright black eyes through my camera, willing her to one day get up and enter her life.