China Ghosts

by Jeff Gammage

  In these rooms, my child spent the first two years of her life. Unlike thousands of other adoptees, Jin Yu did not arrive in an orphanage as a newborn and depart eight or ten months later, with no memory of her surroundings or her caretakers. Here Jin Yu turned two. Here, in this place, she grew from a baby into a toddler. Here she took her first steps, spoke her first words. Did anyone notice? Did anyone hear? Did anyone care?

  A nanny in a brown-print shirt walks past, her eyes darting, her face ashen. She seems to be searching for someone. Later we will learn that she twice tried to adopt a girl in our group, a child she took into her home and into her life, a child now about to depart for America. When we leave this place, we will see this woman standing on the roadside, sobbing.

  A woman in a plum turtleneck has hold of Jin Yu’s forearm, patting and stroking the back of our daughter’s hand. She is older than the other nannies, maybe forty-five, with short black hair and rich brown skin. She talks to Jin Yu in a low voice, speaking words we don’t understand, glancing up to show us a smile, then returning her attention to our baby, as if imparting some final lesson, saying something she wants this child to remember.

  We want to say to her, “Please, can you tell us, what happened to our daughter? Was she hurt? Was she sick? Has she always been this way, still and silent?” But we speak no Chinese, and the nanny speaks no English. After a couple of minutes she gives Jin Yu a final pat on the arm and turns away, her eyes wet.

  A young nanny in a bright red shirt begins calling to our girl, “Jin Yu-ah, Jin Yu-ah.” Others pick up the chant, and now four of them are upon her, pinching her cheeks and patting her hands, poking her playfully. They pause only to fire questions at us, surprised by the empty stares that come back in answer. The way they treat Jin Yu, teasing her in the expectation of a response, makes me think that our girl has not always been so lifeless, that at least for some portion of her time here she moved and reacted normally.

  The director wants to show us the rest of the grounds. As we turn to walk back toward the courtyard, another nanny hurries up, a child in her arms. She has gone inside the dormitory to fetch this girl, a smallish child of indeterminate age, dressed in flannel pajamas. The nanny carries the girl—who possesses a big smile and a rice cracker—right up to Jin Yu, moving them so close together they nearly bump heads. At that, upon having this child’s face thrust into hers, Jin Yu reacts—the first deliberate movement she’s made in three days.

  She turns her head to look. To see. Perhaps to recognize.

  Jin Yu slowly lifts her arm toward this child, extending her hand and then her fingers. She grasps, grabbing only air, as if she were far, far out at sea, reaching back for a shore she cannot touch.

  Jin Yu knows this girl.

  Were they playmates, maybe even cribmates? And why is this child still in pajamas at midmorning when the other children are dressed for the day? I wonder if she’s ill, too ill even to walk, and if her health somehow connects her to my daughter. If maybe they spent time in the same ward or clinic, Jin Yu moving on after she had sufficiently healed.

  In the next second the nanny withdraws, carrying the girl away and back into the shadows of the orphanage. Jin Yu’s arm falls limp at her side. Whatever good-byes these children will be permitted to say have now been said.

  Someone hands Jin Yu a rice cracker. She robotically raises it to her mouth.

  We have been told that none of the children had a primary caretaker, that the shift schedule placed different nannies with different children at different times. That may be so. But the woman in the plum turtleneck is beside us again. She is no longer teary. She is crying. And she is insistent.

  She holds out her arms, motioning for us to hand over Jin Yu, to grant her a last hug from our little girl.

  Christine doesn’t move.

  The nanny pushes nearer.

  “Should I let her go?” Christine asks, her voice rising.

  “No,” I say, worried that doing so could sever whatever connection we’ve managed to forge with our child.

  The woman slides her arms around Jin Yu’s waist. Christine is holding our girl by the legs and shoulders, and I have my arm on Christine, the three of us engaged in an awkward tug of war, gingerly pulling this child in different directions.

  “Show her the card,” Christine says.

  I yank it out of my pocket and push it at the nanny, a laminated card containing a few lines that a friend has written in Chinese. It’s an explanation of who we are and what we’re doing here, a pledge that we will always love and care for the girl who is now our daughter. The woman lets go of Jin Yu and takes the card in her hand, her eyes roaming over the characters. Then she looks up as if some understanding has dawned. She puts both hands together, as if to beseech us in prayer.

  “Xie xie, xie xie,” we tell her. Thank you, thank you. Our words are generic, meaningless. We could be thanking her for anything—for escorting us along the walkway, for having us here to visit, for not pulling off Jin Yu’s shoes while struggling to hold her. We want to say more. We want to say: Thank you for caring about our child. Thank you for remembering her, for showing us that Jin Yu was known, individual, distinct. Thank you for showing us that you adored this girl. Thank you for showing us, through the pain of your own tears, that our daughter will be missed.

  No one else seems to have noticed our little drama, this quasi-public push-and-pull over the possession of our child. Other families are absorbed in their own uncertain interactions with the nannies and the staff, trying to break through barriers of language and culture to connect with the only people in China who truly know our children.

  Later on, back in the United States, when we parents fall to discussing the events of this morning, everyone will offer his or her own discrete memory, a personal recollection of a child met or a detail noticed. It will seem difficult to believe we were in the same place at the same time, and easy to understand how in moments of high tension, the worldview of the individual can narrow to a pinpoint.

  Christine and I are exhausted, wearied by the Hunan heat and our worry about Jin Yu’s health.

  We’ve spent nearly an hour here, plenty long enough to disturb the morning routine. It’s almost time to go. The walk to the bus seems long. Near the orphanage gate, a nanny in a purple shirt casually plants a kiss on Jin Yu’s forehead. The woman is young, perhaps twenty-five. She pats Jin Yu on the cheek, tousles her hair, then pulls a ball of soggy tissue from her pocket and wipes my daughter’s nose. She wraps her arm around Christine’s shoulder and turns mother and child toward my camera.

  “Gu loc, gu loc,” she says.

  We say good-bye and walk on.

  When we turn back to look, she is still standing there, watching. I realize she wasn’t speaking Chinese. She was speaking English, perhaps the only words she knows, the only blessing she could bestow upon us and our baby: good luck, good luck.

  THE TWO-LANE road from Xiangtan is clogged with traffic, the bus choking on its clutch, trailing a black cloud of exhaust in the stop-and-go shuffle. We roll past lots strewn with trash and store-fronts guarded by steel security screens. Street and sidewalk are coated in brown dust. Huge apartment buildings stand back from the road, the mirror image of the big public-housing projects in American cities. On the sidewalks, women carry baskets of vegetables on poles set across their shoulders.

  The bus is quiet, no one talking.

  We pass a market. A gas station. A makeshift car wash. Horns beep as we glide past a Bank of China office. The bus picks up speed, grinding toward Changsha, jockeying for space with motorcycles, bicycles, and cars.

  The roadside images rush past in a blur. A garden. Another bank. A restaurant. Another lot. An empty factory.

  It’s gone.

  We’re out of the city, onto the open highway and speeding toward the capital, leaving Xiangtan and its children behind. Christine and I stare out the window at the trees grown thick along the road, at the misty green mountains beyond.

 
; A couple of weeks from now, when we’re back in the United States, we will get e-mails from parents who had visited the orphanage years earlier. They write: Is the girl with one hand still there? Is the albino boy still there? Yes, yes, we answer, they’re there.

  Jin Yu is sitting in Christine’s lap, silent. Slowly, Jin Yu reaches one hand up, then the other, grabbing hold of the window frame and carefully pulling herself to standing. I glance at Christine, whose eyes are fixed on our daughter, watching this unexpected performance unfold.

  Jin Yu turns her head so she can look out the window. Then she begins to rock, back and forth, swaying to the rumbling beat of the bus.

  Our child is moving. On her own.

  Something else is different too. For the first time since I met her, Jin Yu has an expression on her face. She is wearing a small, faint smile, as if she is secretly pleased.

  5 “REMEMBER, THIS IS FOREVER”

  THE SUN is fading, a pale gold ball peeking between the buildings of the Changsha skyline, streaking the sky with red and orange. Jin Yu is asleep in her crib.

  We put her down shortly after dinner, and she dropped off in minutes. Christine and I are ready to follow her, worn out by the drama of our visit to the orphanage and by the relentless Hunan heat. The room is silent, the only sounds the ones in our heads, the voices of Xiangtan’s children, calling good-bye as we left them this morning.

  Christine moves around the room, putting some clothes into drawers and taking others out for tomorrow. She slips a camera into its case and then into our backpack, beside my journal. She’s zipping the backpack closed when Jin Yu starts to stir.

  The sound our daughter makes is not exactly a cry. It’s more of a moan, a half-whimper that freezes Christine and me in place. We wait, still as stone, hoping she will slip back into sleep.

  But Jin Yu does not settle. She turns in her bed, twisting her blanket around her. Her moaning continues, changing pitch and character, escalating to a throaty whine. It sounds like she’s in pain. Christine and I look at each other. Is she having a nightmare? Should we wake her?

  Jin Yu in our room at the Xiangquan Hotel in Changsha

  Jin Yu’s cry strengthens, her voice now loud and achy.

  I reach into the crib and pick her up, holding her close to my chest, her head against my shoulder.

  “It’s okay,” I whisper. “Daddy’s here.”

  The sound of my voice doesn’t help. If anything it has the opposite effect. Jin Yu begins to sob, big tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “Shh, shh, it’s all right,” I tell her.

  Jin Yu starts to wail.

  She sucks in big mouthfuls of air, then shouts them out.

  Inside of a minute, the child who refused to make a sound is shrieking. The child who refused to shed a tear is howling. We wondered what her voice would sound like when she finally spoke. This is not how we expected to find out.

  Jin Yu begins to thrash. She lets go of me and raises her arms above her head, then throws herself from one side to the other. I hold tight to her hips to keep her from spilling out of my arms. Christine tries to steady Jin Yu’s shoulders from behind, speaking to her softly. It does no good. Jin Yu is out of control. She screams as if she’s being tortured.

  We lay her on the bed, on her back. I hold her there, to keep her from rolling off, trying to avoid getting kicked in the face as she flails. Christine checks Jin Yu’s diaper. It’s dry. We inspect her pajamas, to see if she’s being scraped by a stray tag. She’s not. I press my hand to Jin Yu’s forehead. No temperature.

  Christine brings her a cup of water. Jin Yu tries to knock it away. I hold out a palmful of Cheerios. Jin Yu slaps them out of my hand, sending the cereal flying across the room.

  Christine picks up our daughter, patting her on the back, kissing her, hugging her, promising that we will always keep her safe. It does no good. We wonder if we should call Mary. But we wouldn’t know what to say. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with our baby—except that she is keening.

  YOU DON’T get to become a father little by little.

  It’s not like learning to swim. You don’t get to start in the shallow end. It’s not like learning to ride a two-wheeler, someone else running alongside, supporting the handlebars and shouting encouragement. It’s not even like being pregnant. You don’t get to feel the child develop in your belly for nine months, to sense its growth, become accustomed to its movement.

  Fatherhood comes suddenly, or rather, instantly. One minute you’re responsible only for yourself, or for yourself and your spouse, who would no doubt get along just fine without you. The next minute you’re a dad—with a small pair of eyes focused on you, in hope, in longing, maybe even in anger, but focused on you.

  In the hours and days after Jin Yu came to us, as Christine and I saw the life we’d planned and expected slipping away, I thought purposefully of the fathers in my life, fathers past and present, known and unknown. I wondered what they would have done if they had been in my shoes.

  My maternal grandfather was the son of Irish immigrants, a couple named McCaffrey. In this country they changed their surname to Caffrey, dropping the first two letters in hopes of seeming less Irish, the Irish of their era being only slightly less unwelcome than the Chinese. My grandfather died before I was born. What I know of him is he preferred drinking to fatherhood, that he abandoned his four children and his wife, making my grandmother a single mom long before it was fashionable.

  My paternal grandfather drank too. He didn’t leave his family, although he was distant from his children, or at least from his eldest son, my father. As a boy, I noticed that my dad would talk about his mother, sharing stories of things she said or did, but he never mentioned his father. Later, when I was in my twenties, old enough to discuss such matters, I asked him why that was, why his dad was omitted, not discussed.

  He answered: “I never liked him much.”

  That surprised me. Because I liked my father a great deal. And I assumed that everyone else liked their fathers too. Growing up, I had friends who had lost their fathers to war or accident or illness, who were left to sort out the norms of male-parenting behavior by observing uncles or older brothers. I had friends whose fathers were present in name only, too busy or too important to be involved in their children’s lives. None of those kids disliked their father. Just the opposite—they all longed for their father’s presence and attention.

  My father was involved in my life, always, and from the start. My earliest memory is of him walking me down the street to our church for Sunday school. As I grew, he was the commandant who insisted that homework get done, the coach who taught me how to play sports, the willing chauffeur to early-morning and late-night athletic contests and events.

  The thing I most remember about my father, that I find astounding, is he always showed me the same face. Of course there were times when he was angry with my behavior or frustrated by my performance. But on a personal, day-to-day basis, he treated me with an even temperament. He didn’t let the hardships he experienced in the world—long ago and every day—bleed into our relationship.

  When he was a young man, my dad wanted to be an accountant, but economic depression and world war interceded, leaving no time or money for college. After the war he worked as a salesman, selling typewriters and then steel, traveling by car across Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New Jersey.

  Like many men of his generation, he worked most of his life for a single company, Morrison Steel. I can remember when I was a boy, in the 1960s, hearing him tell friends that business was slow. By the time I reached high school in the mid-1970s, the steel industry was faltering. And by the turn of the decade, my college bills big and pressing, large chunks of the industry had ceased to exist. My father was out of a job when he needed one most. Few steel companies were hiring, and those that were had little interest in a sixty-year-old salesman.

  His hair began to fall out in patches. My father’s head looked as if he had started to shave himself bald,
then stopped with the job half-done. At the time, I thought it was just strange.

  Not until a physician diagnosed the cause—hammering, body-altering stress—did I connect my father’s health and appearance to his life’s responsibilities. Until then it never occurred to me that the fear of continued unemployment, of being unable to pay the mortgage or keep a son in college, was devouring him from the inside. Because on the outside he was the same. He never treated me differently.

  Years later, when I was grown and working, and the realities of jobs and money became apparent, I came to understand more about the nature of his behavior, about why he put up, not a brave front, obvious in its facade, but an even front. It wasn’t simply that he loved me and wanted to protect me from the meanness of the world. It was that he had made a decision about a strict assignment of roles: he was the father and I was the son. It was his job to shoulder the burden of parenthood, whatever trouble it might bring. And it was mine to attend to the joy of childhood, however long it might last. He believed it was his duty to stand guard for me even as I reached toward adulthood, just as he had from the moment of my birth.

  Many years later, long after he was gone, I would find a record of my first weeks of life, written in his hand, the careful, even script of someone who would have made a fine accountant. On a green ledger sheet he’d recorded the day and time of my every feeding. The length of time I slept. The hour and duration of each and every time I cried.

  SHORTLY BEFORE we visited the orphanage, Mary made good on her promise. And Christine and I nearly reneged on ours.

  The two of us had gone out for a walk, pushing Jin Yu around the block in a stroller, trying to clear our heads and think about our child and our future.

  You read accounts of Chinese adoptions, and it can seem that in every travel group there is a family singled out for heartache, for a baby whose uncertain smile signals Down’s syndrome, whose vacant stare reveals brain trauma. It can seem that amid the joyous creation of new families, there is always one couple fated for hardship.