Red Thread Sisters (9781101591857)

by Carol Antoinette Peacock

  “Potatoes done.” She slid the cutting board toward her mother.

  At dinner, Wen couldn’t eat.

  Finally it was time. “Seven!” Wen called. “Hey, it’s seven!”

  Wen’s mother showed Wen a piece of paper with many numbers. Her mother told her to use the landline, because it worked better, and to dial very slowly.

  Wen cradled the receiver to her chest. She could almost hear Shu Ling’s voice saying, “Mei mei, you called!”

  And then she’d say, How are you, Shu Ling? and I miss you so much and Who do you play with now? and Have you had any cat-ear dumplings yet? and Did any new babies come in?

  As she pushed the buttons on the phone, one by one, Wen’s fingers shook.

  The phone rang for a long time. Wasn’t anybody there?

  Finally she heard a click, followed by a loud “Ni hao. Hello.”

  “Auntie Lan Lan!” Wen shrieked. “It’s me, Wen!”

  “Ah, Wen!” Auntie Lan Lan answered. “How is America?”

  Auntie Lan Lan sounded very far away. Wen raised her voice. It felt good to be speaking her own language. “America is great, Auntie Lan Lan, and my English came back,” said Wen. “And the school has shiny floors, just like you said.”

  “I knew it!” said Auntie Lan Lan. “You are getting smarter every day. Soon you’ll be rich, too.”

  “Can I talk to Shu Ling?” asked Wen.

  After a moment, Wen heard the low voice she knew so well. “Mei mei?”

  “Shu Ling!” Wen shouted.

  Shu Ling whispered something.

  “Talk louder, Shu Ling!” Wen said.

  “How are you, mei mei?” she asked softly.

  “I miss you,” said Wen.

  Shu Ling got very quiet. Then Wen heard her begin to sob.

  “Shu Ling, please don’t.” Wen gripped the receiver.

  “Oh, mei mei,” Shu Ling choked.

  “What is it, Shu Ling? Are you still there?” Wen asked.

  Shu Ling didn’t speak.

  “Shu Ling, say something!” Wen begged.

  Finally Wen heard Shu Ling let out a long cry, almost a moan. The phone dropped with a thud.

  “Wen, it’s Auntie Lan Lan again. Shu Ling can’t talk anymore.”

  “Why not?” Wen fought back her tears.

  “She’s too upset, I think. She’s going back in her cot to lie down. She misses you too much right now. Maybe writing is better, Wen.”

  “But I miss her too, Auntie Lan Lan. Can’t you tell her to come back? I want to talk to her!”

  “She cannot, Wen. Try to understand. It is too much for her. I have to hang up now, the babies are waiting. Be sure to be a good girl, Wen. Good-bye.”

  Wen heard the line go dead. She kept the phone in her hand, hoping it would ring again and Auntie Lan Lan would say, She’s here again. Shu Ling can talk after all.

  But the phone stayed silent. Wen imagined Shu Ling in her cot back at the orphanage.

  Then, feeling as sad and as still as Shu Ling, she walked down the hall and climbed into her own bed, tucking her body into a curve, just the way Shu Ling did.

  nine

  “Dear Shu Ling . . .” On notebook paper, Wen slanted her calligraphy pen to form curving Chinese characters. She reminded herself to start her letter simply, the way she had when she’d taught Shu Ling how to read and write.

  One day in the fall after Wen had come to the orphanage, Auntie Lan Lan rang the gong and lined up the six-year-old boys and girls in the courtyard. If Director Feng tapped their heads, they would go to school in the classroom on the second floor. But the kids whose heads he didn’t tap would stay back and help with the babies.

  Director Feng walked up and down the row of six-year-olds. Pick me, Wen begged silently. Pick me! She felt a pat on her head. She’d been picked!

  “I wish you could go to school too,” Wen told Shu Ling that afternoon.

  “There would be no point. Director Feng says I’m ‘defective,’ mei mei,” Shu Ling said.

  “Stupid word.” Wen seethed. “Stupid.”

  Wen had stormed over to Director Feng’s office, raised her arm, and knocked. Director Feng came to the door and glared. “Why can’t Shu Ling go to school?” Wen asked, wishing her voice sounded bigger and braver.

  Director Feng told Wen that it was not her place to question him. Children with disabilities like Shu Ling had no future, and he couldn’t waste money educating them. He reminded her that children who questioned their elders did not get chosen for adoption. He slammed his door shut.

  Wen started school in the dark classroom upstairs while Shu Ling fed the babies, pulled weeds, and scrubbed the bathroom floors. Each afternoon, when school was over, Wen taught Shu Ling what she’d learned that day. On their hill, Wen used a stick to scratch Chinese characters in the dust. In a few months, Wen and Shu Ling were reading simple words together. They began writing secret notes for each other, hidden in the rim of a tire. Sometimes Shu Ling gave her drawings. Once, Shu Ling had left a picture of yellow chrysanthemums; another time, a sketch of a baby sleeping, the sun filtering across her gaunt cheeks. Wen folded the pictures under her mattress and considered them treasures.

  Now Wen had so much to tell Shu Ling.

  Dear Shu Ling,

  I am sorry that my phone call made you so sad. Maybe we should write letters instead.

  How are you? I miss you so much. How is everybody there? How are the babies doing? Who do you play with on the hill now? At recess, the girls all sit in groups together. They don’t pay much attention to me.

  We won’t have to write letters for too long, because I have a plan for getting you a family. My own family! Sometimes I get a little scared of them. They can still seem like strange Americans. Plus sometimes they speak English so fast I have no idea what they’re saying.

  But I have a plan. I’m going to be really good, not greedy, until I see a sign that my family has decided to keep me. Once I know that, I’ll ask them to adopt you! I even have another bed, right under mine. Give me a month or so. Then it will be your lucky day too!

  Please write back.

  Love from your mei mei,

  Wen

  P.S. The other day we went to McDonald’s. Do you remember when the Americans took us there and we got a prize with our Happy Meals? I remember how we both got sparkly rings with great big plastic diamonds and how we put those huge rings on our fingers and flicked our hands in the sunlight and made little rainbows all over the McDonald’s!

  “Hey, have small question for you,” Wen called down the hall to her mother. “How send letter to China?”

  “You’re writing to Shu Ling?” As her mother came into her bedroom, Wen was just sealing the envelope. She glanced at the portrait Wen had tacked over her desk. “This must be you and Shu Ling, right?” she asked.

  Pushing her chair back a little, Wen let her mother see.

  “She seems like a nice girl. Such kind eyes! And you two look like very good friends.”

  Wen felt tears coming. Quickly, she pulled her chair closer to the desk, to block her mother’s view. She’d seen Shu Ling enough.

  Maybe now was the time to ask. “Such a nice girl,” her mother had said. It would be so easy to say, “So nice, would you adopt her?”

  But there had been no hint that her parents would keep her forever. When would she see the sign Auntie Lan Lan had told her about?

  “Maybe you could send her a package, too. Package . . .” Her mother etched a box on a piece of paper. Wen noticed that her mother had stopped using the ring of cards and was acting things out or drawing the words instead. Sometimes Wen secretly smiled at her mother’s clumsy sketches. Still, the pictures were more fun than cards.

  “Maybe new clothes.” Wen�
��s mother sketched a T-shirt.

  “Oh, Shu Ling like new clothes!” Wen exclaimed.

  That afternoon, Wen’s mother drove Wen and Emily to the mall to shop for Shu Ling.

  “What mall is?” Wen stood between her mother and Emily as a door to the building opened all by itself.

  “You’ll see.” Emily grabbed Wen’s hand.

  They entered a magic place covered with a curved glass ceiling. Wen gazed all around her and gasped. Were these leafy trees growing beside the splashing fountain real? How could the water shoot upward so high, making little droplets that sparkled in the sun?

  And the stores! Wen had never seen so many stores, all with huge windows where pretend people with no faces posed in beautiful new clothes.

  “Let’s go to the toy store first,” Emily begged.

  In the first aisle, Wen saw rows of Barbie dolls, some dressed as princesses, brides, or doctors. At the orphanage, Auntie Mu Hong distributed the Barbie, the hula hoop, and the plastic dump truck so that everybody had a turn with a real toy. The others played tag among the shrubs or tossed pebbles in the courtyard.

  Whenever Wen and Shu Ling got the Barbie, they headed for their dusty space to play the choosing game. Walking the Barbie through the air, Shu Ling would say, “Which kid should I pick?” She’d stop right by Wen. “I choose you!” the Barbie would say, her little plastic hand tapping Wen on the head. Next, Wen got to grasp the Barbie and finally decide on Shu Ling.

  Now Wen felt a tug on her arm. “Wen-nie, what’s the matter?” she heard Emily’s little voice ask. “Do you want Mommy to buy you a Barbie?”

  Wen envisioned Shu Ling, eyes wide in delight, as she lifted her own Princess Barbie from the plastic wrapping. She’d take the Barbie by her skinny waist and stroke her glittery princess dress, billowing to her delicately curved feet. Then she’d comb Barbie’s long blonde hair with her fingers and caress Barbie’s jeweled crown.

  But whom would she play with? How could Shu Ling play the choosing game if there was nobody to pick her?

  “Wennie, what is it? You want Mommy to buy your friend a Barbie?” Emily tugged at Wen’s shirt.

  “Shu Ling not need Barbie,” said Wen.

  Wen followed her mother and Emily up the moving stairs to a big store where girls’ shirts were arranged in neat stacks.

  “Pick one?” Wen asked.

  “Three,” said her mother.

  Careful not to mess up the rows, Wen pored through the shirts. Finally she picked a bright red tunic. Red for good luck, she thought. Then she chose a fuzzy, deep-blue sweater and a long-sleeved jersey with sparkly swirls all over the front.

  On the way home, in the passenger seat by her mother, Wen held the bag of shirts, wrapped in tissue, in her lap. If Auntie Mu Hong, who was in charge of all the clothing, got to the shirts first, she’d cram them into the common wardrobe, to be shared with all the other girls. But if Auntie Lan Lan opened the shirts, she’d let Shu Ling have them, maybe hiding them under her blanket.

  Wen thought of Shu Ling wearing the sparkly jersey. Shu Ling would pivot slowly on her good leg and say, “Look at me, mei mei, in my new shirt. Don’t I look just like a princess?”

  Wen felt an unexpected warmth toward her mother. She wanted tell her mother how grateful she was, but she couldn’t.

  “Shu Ling says ‘thank you,’” Wen said instead. “You make Shu Ling much happy.”

  Back home, Wen spread out Shu Ling’s new clothes on the sofa to admire them side by side.

  “Hi, Mom!” Emily greeted her mother, who’d just come in carrying the last shopping bag.

  How easily Emily said it. Mom. Hi, Mom, Wen wished she could say. But whenever she opened her mouth to say Mom, the word stuck in her throat. The aunties taught kids picked for adoption to call their mothers Mama. But all Wen could do was call her mother Hey.

  “Let’s show Wennie our family album,” said Emily.

  “The photos! Great idea.” Wen’s mother pulled out a thick book from a shelf under a table. Carefully, they folded up Shu Ling’s shirts and sat on the sofa, Wen in the middle. Her mother set the heavy book on Wen’s lap.

  “Where should we start? How about with Grandma Jackson?” With her fingertips, Wen’s mother traced a tall slender woman with a gaunt face and bright blue eyes. “Here’s my mother, Wen. Your grandmother. She can’t wait to meet you.”

  Her mother had her own mother. Wen hadn’t thought of that.

  “Here you are, Wennie. This was the first picture we got of you.” Emily flipped toward the end of the book.

  Wen saw a tiny picture of her, in the common room, her hair pulled back in high pigtails, a little half-moon smile spread across her cheeks.

  Wen flipped back to the earlier pages. She came to a baby with jet-black hair, snuggled against her mother, her father beaming right beside them. “Emily!” she said.

  “Yes, that’s right at the orphanage, the day we adopted Emily,” her mother said.

  “You were baby!” Wen said. Of course. She should have known.

  “We loved having our baby, Emily. And then we wanted an older girl.” Her mother looked straight at Wen. “That’s why we picked you.”

  No wonder it was easy for Emily to call her mother Mom and let her hug her and kiss her good night. Emily had been here so long.

  Wen saw snapshots of Emily learning how to walk. She saw Emily in fuzzy PJs, fast asleep in her mother’s arms.

  What else did I miss? Wen wondered.

  “See, here’s me at my first birthday, Wennie.” Emily showed her a little girl sitting in front of a cake with one lit candle, frosting spread all over her face.

  “You could be a handful at that age, Em!” Her mother laughed.

  So they didn’t send Emily back when she wasn’t perfect.

  But Emily had been so little, Wen reminded herself. Things were different for her. Wen was older, so she had no excuse for behaving badly. She still had to be very, very good.

  When would she see the keeping sign? Until she did, she couldn’t ask about Shu Ling, who might get some new shirts but still needed a family more than anything else.

  ten

  After she sent Shu Ling her letter and the shirts, Wen began sorting the mail every day after school. Yet weeks passed and still no letter came from Shu Ling.

  Why wasn’t Shu Ling writing back? Had the phone call made Shu Ling so sad she couldn’t even get up, like the time with the new baby?

  Last year, Shu Ling had taken special care of a new baby girl who’d been found at a train station, wrapped in tissue paper. She swaddled the frail baby in a pale yellow blanket and named her Xiao Dan, which meant “Little Dawn.” When feeding time was over, Wen watched Shu Ling cooing soft lullabies as she rocked tiny Xiao Dan in her arms. The baby would lift her sunken dark eyes to Shu Ling and give her a tiny wisp of a smile.

  One day, Wen went with Shu Ling to Xiao Dan’s crib. It was empty. “Where’s the baby?” Shu Ling had screamed. Auntie Min said she’d died in the night. Sobbing, Shu Ling clung to the yellow blanket, all she had left of her Xiao Dan.

  Shu Ling stayed in bed for two weeks, too weak to move. Finally, Wen pulled her from her cot, angled her shoulder so Shu Ling’s arm would fit, and made her walk to breakfast.

  Was Shu Ling so sad now she was staying in bed all day long? Or had she gotten in trouble, like maybe for not doing her chores?

  Every day, Wen rifled through catalogues and envelopes. Every day there was no letter from Shu Ling.

  At school, Wen tried to concentrate, when she really wanted to run home to see if a letter from Shu Ling had arrived yet. One Tuesday, the kids made invitations for the parents’ breakfast, which was coming up at the end of October. Ms. Beckwith led the class into the computer lab and assigned everybody to groups. She put Wen with Hannah.

 
“Wen, do you know how to use a computer?” Hannah asked.

  “Little bit,” Wen said. At the orphanage school, the computer screen went blank one day. Teacher Jun shook and banged the monitor, but still the screen stayed dark. So Teacher Jun had lugged the computer to the gully. From the windows, the kids cheered as he hurled the old computer into the pit, where it landed on a rock and smashed into a spray of silvery splinters.

  Hannah taught Wen how to find alphabet letters on the keyboard until Wen had printed out a perfect invitation.

  PLEASE COME! BREAKFAST!

  FRIDAY, 29th Day of October

  7:30 MUCH FOOD

  When she got home from school that afternoon, Wen kept the invitation tucked in her backpack. Should she show her parents? Would they even want to come? Maybe they’d feel she was asking too much. She couldn’t risk that.

  Then she saw the mail, still on the floor. Wen knelt beside the letters and catalogs, her fingers frantic.

  A letter from Shu Ling! Wen tore open the front flap.

  Dear Mei Mei,

  Your letter made me so happy! Your plan is good, mei mei. Auntie Lan Lan reminds us about An Fei all the time. Mainly, I think you have to show your family how grateful you are that they chose you.

  I can’t believe we’ll really be together in the same family. I feel like I already know your father, Round Man, your mother with the sunshine hair, and cute Emily! When you ask, be sure to tell them I am good at chores and I could cook noodles every night.

  Oh, and thank you for the beautiful shirts. Auntie Mu Hong put them in the common wardrobe. There was nothing to be done. I liked the shirt with the sparkles best.

  Lu Li and Tai both got adopted yesterday. I helped Lu Li get ready. She was a little shy, so I said, just like Auntie Lan Lan, This is your lucky day, and then she even laughed. The aunties dressed Tai in the sparkly jersey you sent me, mei mei, so she would look her best for her new family. She was very beautiful in that shirt but I couldn’t watch her for too long.