by Anne Tyler
Ziba said, It does look delicious, though. Did you bake it yourself, Bitsy?
Oh, my heavens, no! I've never been good at pastry.
Me neither, Ziba said. My mother's the pastry expert. She makes delicious baklava.
Is that right! Bitsy turned to Mrs. Hakimi. She knew it was laughable to think that a louder tone of voice would make her more easily understood, but somehow she couldn't stop herself. Isn't that wonderful! Baklava! she said, with more animation than she'd shown since high school.
Mrs. Hakimi said, I do not ever buy the. .. , and then she gazed helplessly at Ziba and dissolved in a stream of Farsi.
She doesn't buy the filo dough. She makes her dough from scratch, Ziba said. She rolls it out herself, thin enough to see daylight through.
Isn't that ... wonderful! Bitsy said again.
My wife is a very talented person, Mr. Hakimi announced. Mrs. Hakimi made a tsking sound and looked down into her teacup.
Well, next we're going to show a videotape, Bitsy said. She figured it would count for something if she faced the Hakimis as she spoke, even though her words were meant for Ziba. My brothers and one of Brad's uncles and, oh, just lots of people, some of our friends too, brought video cameras to the airport when we went to meet Jin-Ho. So we're going to show the tape, but I want to apologize right now for the fact that it's all Jin-Ho and no Susan. We didn't know back then that Susan would be there! Otherwise we'd have filmed her too.
Oh, that's okay, Ziba said. I have the memory in my head.
You do? Bitsy asked. Isn't it funny, the whole evening's such a blur to me. I remember when I first saw Jin-Ho's face; I remember reaching out for her. But then what? How did she react? It all seems like a dream now.
Mrs. Hakimi poked Ziba's arm. Tell about Susan, she ordered.
What about her, Mummy?
Tell about when we first met her.
Oh, Ziba said. She turned to Bitsy. My parents didn't come to the airport, remember. They had a prior engagement. She lowered her sweeping lashes a fraction of an inch. (Prior engagement. Right.) They visited later that week, and when they walked in, Susan was sitting in her high chair and she raised her eyebrows at them and said, 'Ho?' Only babbling, you understand. She didn't mean anything by it. But it sounded like a Farsi word, khob. The word for 'well.' 'Well?' she was saying. 'Do I pass inspection, or don't I?'
Mrs. Hakimi said, Khob? and doubled over with laughter, covering her mouth with one hand. Her husband said, Ha. Ha. He looked across the room toward Susan. A child of spirit, he said. We Hakimis are known for our spirit. We have, how do you say. We have backbone.
Bitsy smiled and followed his gaze. It was true that Susan generally showed a certain dauntlessness, puny though she was. At the moment she seemed to have decided that she had been toted around long enough, and she had planted herself in Jin-Ho's child-sized rocker and was gripping its arms so stubbornly that when one of the cousins tried to lift her, the rocker came along with her.
Mrs. Hakimi was still saying, Khob? and laughing behind her cupped palm, and Ziba was watching her fondly. Now they dote on her, she told Bitsy. She's their favorite grandchild.
Mr. Hakimi said, No, no, no, no, no. No favorites, and wagged a thick index finger at his daughter, but it didn't seem he really meant it.
Well, why don't we go watch the video, Bitsy told them. Everybody! she called, clapping her hands. Shall we move into the TV room for the video?
She threaded through the crowd, rounding up those who hung back to continue their conversations. Brad, are you coming? Laura? Jeannine? Somebody bring the girls in; they haven't seen this either.
She had straightened the TV room earlier that morning, but already the children had managed to wreck it. Various cushions were strewn on the rug, and a Teen People magazine lay in the seat of the armchair. (Stefanie's, no doubt the ten-year-old going on twenty.) Bitsy plucked it up between thumb and forefinger and dropped it on the windowsill. Sit here, she told her mother. Will this be comfortable? Somebody hand me a cushion for Mom.
Brad, meanwhile, was rummaging through the videotapes heaped on top of the TV. You kids took my tape out of the machine, he complained. I had it all ready to roll! Now, where ... ? Ah. Got it.
Some of the older people packed themselves in a row on the sofa the Hakimis and Brad's parents. Dave settled on one arm of Connie's chair and everyone else sat on the floor even Maryam, assuming almost a lotus position with her back very straight. Abe offered to bring her a chair from the dining room, but she said, I prefer this, thank you, and she drew Susan onto her lap and wrapped her arms around her.
A while ago, Sami and Ziba had gone away for the weekend and left Susan with Maryam. Bitsy was amazed when she heard about it. During her own brief absences never longer than a couple of hours, and only for unavoidable reasons such as doctor appointments she used a person from Sitters Central, a woman certified in infant CPR. Anyhow, her mother was too frail to babysit and her in-laws had made it plain that they had their own busy lives. But under no circumstances would she have considered leaving Jin-Ho overnight. She would have been frantic with worry! Children were so fragile. She realized that now. When you thought of all that could happen, the electrical sockets and the Venetian-blind cords and the salmonella chicken and the toxic furniture polish and the windpipe-sized morsels of food and the uncapped medicine bottles and the lethal two inches of bathtub water, it seemed miraculous that any child at all made it through to adulthood.
She reached for Jin-Ho and pulled her closer, even though it meant pulling her cousin Polly along with her.
Brad said, Here we go! and stepped back from the TV. On a dated-looking, pale blue watered-silk background, copperplate script spelled out The Arrival of Jin-Ho. Classy, someone murmured, and Mac called, This was a firm I found in the Yellow Pages. Very reasonably Ssh! everyone told him, because now a voice could be heard from the TV set Mac's own voice, but more public-sounding. Okay, folks, we're at the Baltimore/ Washington Airport. Friday evening, August fifteenth, nineteen ninety-seven. It is seven thirty-nine p. M. The weather is warm and humid. The plane is due to land in, let's see...
Brad closed the curtains, turning the watered silk a deeper blue, and then settled on the floor next to Bitsy. Watch, sweetheart, he told Jin-Ho. She was sucking her thumb and her eyes were at half-mast. (She hadn't slept during her nap today, perhaps sensing the excitement.)
A jumble of figures appeared: Dickinsons and Donaldsons, intermingled, wearing summer clothes. You could tell it must have been hot because people had a frazzled, sweaty look, even the most attractive of them not quite at their best. Well, except for Pat and Lou, as cool and chalky as two bisque figurines. (Although Pat was heard to say, from her place on the couch, Good heavens! I'm so old!) A girl cousin scampered across the screen, green plaid shirttails flying. That's me! That's my old shirt! little Deirdre shouted, and Jeannine said, Ssh.
I loved that shirt!
Straight ahead you see the proud parents, Mac's onscreen voice was announcing. Brad and Bitsy, both very happy. Bitsy got up at five this morning. This is an extremely important day in their lives.
Just hearing him say those words made Bitsy a little teary. To herself, though, she looked not so much happy as terrified. And so unformed! So tentative and shy, as if it would take motherhood to turn her into a grownup. She was clutching her tape recorder and speaking into it inaudibly, her chin tucked in an unbecoming way. Beside her, Brad held a car seat level in both arms as if he expected their daughter to drop into it from the heavens.
The scene broke off and then, confusingly, Mac himself appeared, filmed by someone else. He was squinting into his video camera, and just beyond him Uncle Oswald was squinting into his camera. Bitsy thought of the childhood Christmas when she and both of her brothers had been given Kodaks, and every photo from that day showed not faces but head-on cameras aimed glaringly at whoever happened to be taking the picture.
The onscreen voice Abe's voice, now said, I started counti
ng up who was here and lost track at thirty-four. So Jin-Ho, honey, if you're watching this from some point in the future, you can see how eager your new family was to meet you.
Everybody glanced at Jin-Ho, but she was sound asleep.
Connie appeared, looking healthier than she had in months, and Dave beside her and then Linwood, propped against a wall intently punching a Game Boy. Abe was introducing people as he filmed them. Now, here is your Aunt Jeannine. Here's Bridget, your cousin, and here's your cousin Polly. The camera careened past two strangers, rested briefly on Laura, and swooped back to Linwood. You could get carsick watching this. Bitsy closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them she found that whoever had spliced the tapes must have felt the same way, because now it was no longer Abe speaking but Mac again. All right, folks, it's quite a while later. Been a bit of a delay. But the plane has landed, finally, and we're watching the first passengers come in off the jetway. Big moment! Big, big moment.
Bitsy saw a very tall young man and realized that she'd seen him before. She saw two businessmen, a boy with a backpack, a woman dropping her briefcase to hug two children in pajamas. How odd: these people were so familiar, and yet she hadn't given them a thought since that night and had certainly not been aware that they were stored in her brain. It was something like rereading a book and coming across a passage where you can recall every word a split second before you see it, even though you could never have summoned it up on your own.
The woman from the agency, for instance. The Korean woman in the navy suit that resembled an airline uniform, with her broad cheekbones and her stern, official manner. Bitsy had mentally dismissed her the instant she and Brad took possession of their daughter she'd exorcized her, you could almost say and yet now the two fine creases below the woman's eyes were so well known to her that she wondered if she had dreamed about her every single night of this past year. And the diaper bag! Oh, look. Pink vinyl, cheap and poorly made, already beginning to peel along the edges of the strap. They had discarded it immediately in favor of the one that Bitsy had sewn from her own handwoven fabric, but here it was, back again, like a statesman's casket reappearing on the evening news after you have spent the day watching it being buried.
And Jin-Ho. Ah, there: the camera zoomed in on her face and held steady. She was so much smaller! Her features were so much closer together! Look at you, Jin-Ho, Brad murmured, but to Bitsy, the child asleep in Polly's lap bore almost no connection to the baby on the screen. The sudden ache she felt was very like grief, as if that first Jin-Ho had somehow passed out of existence.
The woman from the agency was handing the baby to Bitsy. Bitsy was hugging the baby close and her relatives were smiling and dabbing their eyes with tissues. Everybody, both onscreen and off, was making soft cooing sounds like a barnful of mourning doves.
Oh, wasn't adoption better than childbirth? More dramatic, more meaningful. Bitsy felt sorry for those poor women who had merely delivered.
Evidently someone else was filming now, because Mac could be seen making googly eyes at the infant Jin-Ho. Maybe it was Uncle Oswald who was sweeping his camera across the assemblage one last time and then drawing back, back to take in the jetway door and the final trickle of passengers, the man with the cane and the gray-haired couple and oh!
There was Susan.
We did get her in! We did! Bitsy cried. There she is in her carrier!
And there were Sami and Ziba, too. There was Maryam following behind with her faultless posture and her imperious, bugle-clear Here we are. Yazdan. All three were remarkably free of appurtenances. No cameras, video cameras, or tape recorders. They traveled light, these people. (I have the memory in my head wasn't that how Ziba had put it? All at once Bitsy felt envious.) The photographer tracked their progress toward the jetway and then focused again on Susan, or on what little could be seen of her, which was mostly a pink T-shirt and a tuft of scanty black hair. Bitsy leaned past Brad to search out Ziba in the audience. She found her sitting next to Sami on the floor near the bookcase. Doesn't this bring it all back? she called, and Ziba said, But she's tiny! without taking her eyes from the screen. She's like a whole other person! she said.
I know.
It makes me sad.
Oh, I know! Bitsy cried, and if she'd been nearer to Ziba she would have hugged her, and hugged Sami too with his sweet little glasses glittering like tears in the light from the TV.
Then she turned back to the movie and found it had ended without her. Credits were gliding across the watered silk. Special thanks to the Loving Hearts Korean-American Adoption Center. Brad clicked the remote control and rose to open the curtains, and light flooded the room. People blinked and stretched. Jin-Ho was still asleep, her head lolling against Polly's chest, but that was all right; she would have many more chances to watch this movie in years to come. Bitsy patted Jin-Ho's satin-draped leg and then struggled to her feet and made her way toward Sami and Ziba. Sami was holding a wide-awake, squirmy Susan and listening to Mac's advice on the best brand of video camera, but Ziba turned to Bitsy and threw her arms around her. Why do I feel so sad? she asked Bitsy. Isn't it silly? She collected herself and wiped her eyes. She'd left a damp spot on Bitsy's shoulder. It was the happiest day of my life! It's a day I'll never forget.
Me either, but would you want to go back to it? Bitsy asked her. Never!
They both laughed.
Come help me brew another pot of tea, Bitsy told her.
They made their way through the crowd, which wasn't easy. Other people were damp-eyed too; other people wanted to hug them. Bitsy's mother said, It broke my heart to see our Jin-Ho arriving all alone like that, and Bitsy's father said, Alone? She had that nice Korean woman.
Yes, but you know what I mean.
Maybe that's why we're sad, Bitsy told Ziba as they entered the kitchen. We're so used to having the girls by now; we forget they haven't always been with us. We see them coming off the plane and we say, 'Oh, no, they made that long trip without us! Where were we?'
And they lived those first months of their lives without us, Ziba said. All alone! Coping for themselves!
They fell into each other's arms again, crying and laughing both.
Oh, Ziba, who else understands how it feels? Bitsy asked as she leaned back against the sink and fished in her pocket for a tissue. I wish you lived closer. I hate that I have to get in my car to go see you. I'd like to have you next door. We could call to each other over the fence, and the girls could play together whenever they wanted without all these formal arrangements.
She could see it in her mind: the casual comings and goings, the screen doors slamming as the girls raced out to meet the first thing after breakfast. Maybe the Sansoms at 2410 could sell to the Yazdans. They were getting on in years, after all, and their Cape Cod was much, much nicer than any McMansion out in Hunt Valley. She blew her nose and said, We could babysit for each other. Soon the girls would hardly notice if one of us was gone.
When they got a little older they could have sleepovers, Ziba said.
Maryam had joined them by now. She was gently setting Bitsy to one side so she could fill the kettle. Being together so much, Bitsy said, they would think adoption was natural. I mean, they would know it was. They wouldn't have any self-doubts or sense of inferiority.
Does this stove need a match to light it? Maryam asked.
Oh, I'm sorry! No, just that one burner; the others are fine, Bitsy told her. You know, she said, turning back to Ziba, when I was in that poetry group, I read about these two women poets who had so much they wanted to share with each other, they installed a separate telephone line and left their receivers off the hook at all times so as to keep in constant contact. Not that I'd want to do that myself, but don't you sympathize with the urge?
They left them off night and day? Ziba asked. Wouldn't the telephone company send one of those beeping signals?
Well, I don't ... I may have some of the details a little wrong, Bitsy said. I'm just talking theoretically
here. I did wonder how they could hope to catch every last word. What if one of them happened to speak while the other was in a different room? They surely couldn't have heard from everywhere in the house.
From her place at the stove, Maryam said, How interesting that that's what you would worry about.
Pardon? Bitsy said.
Why wouldn't you worry too much would be heard, rather than too little? Private things, that families should keep separate.
Oh, Bitsy said. Well, of course. She glanced toward Ziba. Of course, that would be ... Well, maybe they didn't have the phones off the hook every single instant.
Ah, Maryam said. In that case, then.
I mean, it isn't something I would want to do myself. I said that. I said it was just the general urge that I understood.
Maryam didn't comment. She had a disconcerting way of letting a conversation drop, Bitsy had noticed. All she did was spoon tea leaves into the teapot. It was Ziba who spoke up next. Another thing about the video, she said. I kept thinking I could smell the smells. I remembered how Susan smelled when I first held her, like a spicier kind of vanilla, and now she doesn't smell that way at all. She's more like regular vanilla. Did you think of the smells, too?
Well, no ... I know what you mean, though, Bitsy said. But her heart was not in it. A sort of dullness fell over her, and all at once she felt out of place in her own kitchen. She was underfoot here. She had nothing to do. In a sense she had nothing to do with her life, if you didn't count Jin-Ho. She had never completed her education courses, never held a full-time job. She had busied herself with dribs and drabs like teaching yoga and attending poetry seminars and throwing pottery and weaving little made-up activities without steady pay or health-care benefits. Brad said her weaving was beautiful, but he would, of course. In fact she hadn't sat at her loom in months, and last week when she was wearing one of her old creations she had happened to notice herself in the full-length mirror upstairs and all at once she saw that she might as well be wearing a rug. The fabric was so coarse and so boldly striped, a board-stiff rectangle from which her bare arms and legs emerged all scraggy and ropy.
