by Gish Jen
CARNEGIE / This was parenting, a mighty campaign.
BLONDIE / — Why did you keep going to the hospital for a baby then? Lizzy asked.
— We thought it would be more convenient to get a baby there, I said.
CARNEGIE / The spinmeisters, a-spinning.
— How come it didn’t work? Lizzy asked.
Earnestly, creatively Blondie explained.
— But I saw lots of babies in the hospital, Lizzy said.
And: — Why did yours keep dying?
And: — I don’t want to go to China.
BLONDIE / Lizzy was in on the adoption from the moment we knew we had a child. Uruguay was closed, Romania was closed, but China was open! Our first choice anyway—we’d heard such stories about those Eastern European orphanages. And how nice to have the children match.
CARNEGIE / A year later we would have had to take a child with a handicap, this being our second child. But in the pioneer days, before adopting from China became an industry, things were looser. Everything was case by case, practically do-it-yourself.
BLONDIE / We showed Lizzy the paperwork. The maps. An adoption video. We talked about the birth mother, and why she might have had to give the baby up. Was that why Lizzy’s biological mother had given her up? We told her what the adoption guide said to tell her, that her biological mother gave her up out of love, that she might have the best life possible.
Not that we knew that, really. And of course later she would ask us why we said that, if we didn’t know. But how could I tell her that I’d imagined her birth mother a thousand times; and that some of the thousand women were loving and heartbroken and desperate, but some of them were callous and uninterested in her. Some were career women; some were criminals. Some were raped; some surprised to find themselves in a family way. And how could I have told her that some of them, some of them, one day returned—to claim their children, or just watch them? Could I have, should I have told her that? Could I have told her—even worse, perhaps—that some did not?
CARNEGIE / No one thought much about that cad, the birth father, except Mama Wong.
BLONDIE / At least with babies from China, you knew the mother wanted to have the child. You could say that. For how very much easier for Chinese women to have an abortion than to go on with the pregnancy. You had to fight to go on with the pregnancy.
Lizzy and I talked about the difference between birthing and parenting—between having a baby and bringing it up. We talked about what it was going to be like, having a baby sister.
— What’s so great about two children instead of one? she said. What’s so great about company?
Were we adopting another child so that Lizzy would have a sibling? And what if we did not love the new baby as much as we loved Lizzy? Not that we wouldn’t love her—we assumed it would be a her. We would love her. But as much as Lizzy? Our walls were covered with pictures of Lizzy splashing, swinging, running. Watering plants, hanging upside down, mummifying stuffed animals. Where was there space for more pictures?
Everyone worried about making a mistake. That’s what the counselors said. It was normal.
CARNEGIE / When our phone call came, we jumped on a plane post-haste. In those days you didn’t even get a picture, or a name, or a medical history.
BLONDIE / It was a new thing even for adoptive parents to stop in Beijing on the way to wherever—in our case, Wuji. The Forbidden Palace, the Temple of Heaven, the Great Wall! Fantastic places, hard to absorb—so enormous with history, so inconceivably ancient.
CARNEGIE / We had never been so jet-lagged.
BLONDIE / In an alleyway we bought a cage full of pigeons and released them, Buddhist-style, with a wish.
— I wish for health, I said. For all four of us.
CARNEGIE / That was code. Actually she hoped for a healthy baby but didn’t want Lizzy to feel excluded from the proceedings.
— To health, I agreed reasonably. And to no surprises.
Blondie, I noticed, had an antiseptic hand wipe at the ready. Ever since we got off the plane she had been wiping Lizzy’s hands several times an hour.
— I wish we would get to Wuji soon, said Lizzy.
Hear, hear!
BLONDIE / The birds crowded out of their bamboo-cage door—flapping, frantic, but then turning, in a wink, unutterably graceful—immediately forgetful, it seemed, of having ever been caged up. At once they separated from one other; at once they began to soar with joy—each beating its own strong way to heaven.
CARNEGIE / Or at least to the closest perch. Only one flapped about a bit, circling once or twice as if enjoying the use of its wings. The others were content with a hop of no great altitude. Freedom! we wanted to shout at them. You have your freedom! But they longed only, apparently, to roost.
Pigeons.
We knew what a pigeon was. And yet being, like them, irremediably ourselves, we stood there anyway, watching. Hoping. Cage full of pigeon feathers in one hand; hand wipes at the ready.
How enormous the specific gravity of Beijing! The center of the world, indeed, the middle of the Middle Kingdom. How insubstantial we felt there, with our plastic cameras. Three ephemera, under the spell of our autofocus.
We were headed, every moment, for Wuji.
It was hot.
It was noisy.
Everyone, everyone smoked.
Our hair smelled of smoke. Our clothes smelled of smoke. We worried about the baby in Wuji. Was she inhaling smoke?
BLONDIE / We saw what relatives of Carnegie’s we could see. Carnegie had managed to contact a cousin of his father’s, now living in Toronto, before we left; through him we were able to reach three other relatives, all male and living in Beijing.
CARNEGIE / One was a Party member interested in refrigerators.
BLONDIE / One was a student interested in Gandhi, and in talking about the Cultural Revolution. In remarkable English he told us how he had grown up in a building full of children and old people—with his parents, like the other parents, simply gone. As seemed normal enough, at the time. The only strange thing, he said—the thing that he still remembered—was that during lightning storms, when he could see down into the dark courtyard, there were often people being put into burlap bags. He remembered too that—their building being relatively tall—people jumped from the roof all the time.
Had not the people at the next table seemed to be openly listening, he might have said more. As it was, though, we never did discuss Gandhi. Instead we praised the Beijing duck, which was served with mini-mantou in place of the pancakes we were used to in the States. Was that typical?
Neither relative had ever met Carnegie’s father or grandparents, though one did know Carnegie’s grandfather’s brother, and the other Carnegie’s grandfather’s stepson.
CARNEGIE / Both went through the ritual of trying to explain which generation they were, and what their generation names were, and who their fathers were, et cetera, all of which information glommed together in such a mass that if someone had scanned my brain after dinner, it would no doubt have appeared a mystery lumpen mash such as could be used to stuff mooncakes.
The third relative we met was a bourgeois intellectual who had spent twelve years in a labor camp either for translating William Burroughs or for practicing Catholicism; we could not ascertain which. A tiny man with a long wispy beard, he had an asymmetry to his neck motion such that he continually addressed his right. An old injury, he said, something to do with being hit with a shovel by a Red Guard. Happier to relate was how he had once met my grandparents. My grandfather, he said, in careful English, had been a scholar, and my grandmother a great beauty.
— In United States, you maybe call her Miss Sichuan, he said. But also she is smart. Your grandfather taught her to read and write many things.
— Was she a lot younger than him? I asked.
— Eh? Your grandmother can also sing and play instrument.
— What kind of instrument?
— Eh? She has just one child, tha
t is your father. Unfortunately, then she die. But people say, at least she had a boy, she is good wife. Only your grandfather say he wish she had a girl, maybe a girl can look like her. Remind him of your grandma, he love her so much. That is true story. After that your grandfather have a couple more wives, but none of them he ever love so much. Every one of them has something wrong.
BLONDIE / Carnegie cried.
We vowed to come back another time.
The relatives were all amazed that Carnegie did not speak Chinese, and that I did, a little, though this seemed to explain his marrying a da bizi—a big nose. They all volunteered too that our children would be smart, because mixed children were smart. When we explained that Lizzy was adopted, and that we were about to adopt a second child, they laughed uncomfortably and asked if Lizzy was Japanese.
— What is Japanese? she asked. Why do people keep saying that?
— It’s a compliment, we told her. Because they can see how well dressed you are. They think you must be rich.
But though that might have been true for an older person, we were not actually sure how to take it in this case.
Two of the relatives liked our gifts, but the Party member seemed disappointed we didn’t bring something bigger. All three hinted that they wouldn’t mind being sponsored to come to the United States for study. Or how about their son?
CARNEGIE / We took rolls and rolls of pictures, as if making images of ourselves meeting was the point of meeting. Which perhaps it was. Certainly the picture taking was the most natural part of our interaction, the ritual with the smoothest choreography. Everyone knew his part. It was like playing in a chamber group.
There was supposed to be one more relative, on my mother’s side, a woman living in Shandong. My mother’s father-in-law’s sister-in-law’s great-niece. We did not contact her, not knowing quite how. Also our Beijing window was so small; there simply wasn’t time.
In the meanwhile, how omnivorous our Blondie! Always she had claimed herself a timorous creature, full of trepidation, compared to that fearless friend with whom she had trekked around Hong Kong in her student days. But now: move over, Linda!
BLONDIE / People said there were two types of visitors, forks and chopsticks. In college, I had proved a fork—truly. I wasn’t as bad as the Clarks, who produced PB&J at every meal. But I was, unmistakably, a fork.
Now, though—how I hoped to prove better. How I hoped to prove, finally, truly, chopsticks.
CARNEGIE / She closed her eyes and bravely ate and only later discovered that she had eaten snake, or eel, or rabbit’s ears. Things, intruth, that I myself was not wild about. Were her efforts misguided?
Anyway, I applauded them.
How we all loved our adventure! Even if it was hot. How we all adored China, dammit.
BLONDIE / We were still in Wuji, still in Wuji, we had been there for weeks. We all had diarrhea. We were all on Lomotil, even Lizzy, from time to time; she cried so from the cramps. She was beginning to refuse tea. Dehydration, we explained. You have to drink. If only we were not out of Pedialyte! But we were; and we had stopped accepting the occasional precious ice cube, for who knew if it had been made with boiled water. That left only verifiably boiled water, which could be cooled but was never cold. And of course tea; and soda, also warm.
Should we have taken prophylactic Pepto-Bismol, even if it made your tongue turn black? Anyway, it was too late. We stayed close to the hotel; the public squat toilets just made us feel sicker.
Making the best of our situation, I found two Chinese tutors—one to work with me, one with Carnegie and Lizzy. Both came for a few hours each afternoon, giving us something to do.
We made surprising progress.
CARNEGIE / And their rates; such a bargain.
BLONDIE / What was happening with the baby? Nothing was clear except why the rich Chinese of old used to build their compounds behind walls.
CARNEGIE / People, people, people. Dust, heat, dirt, heat. There was a reason the natives did their strolling at night. They squatted in the alleys in their underclothes, fanning themselves.
BLONDIE / Everything needed cleaning.
CARNEGIE / We had seen all the sights.
BLONDIE / I dreamed of Independence Island—that cool pond water. I used to swim right out to its middle, and float there—tilting my head back until I could see the upside-down mountains. Now in the afternoons I rested with my head back too, a cold compress on my forehead—my upside-down view of the barred windows.
Carnegie and Lizzy did not overheat the way I did. They were bothered instead by the mosquitoes.
The mosquitoes left me alone—too tough, apparently.
I translated more and more when we were out. My translating was two parts guessing to every one part knowledge. Still it felt good.
— Never before, said Carnegie, have I so completely understood the word ‘respite.’
— Do you mean you hate it here? asked Lizzy.
CARNEGIE / Such a charming walk we were on, at the time. The path was broken concrete; the air, muggy and fetid. The lakewater beside us shone opaque as one-coat-covers-all paint.
BLONDIE / But at least there was shade. At least there were trees, and a trickle of slow-pedaled bicycles, as opposed to a sea.
CARNEGIE / — You hate it, said Lizzy.
— Please do not put words in my mouth, I said. They don’t taste good.
BLONDIE / He opened and shut his lips like a fish.
— But you hate a lot of it, said Lizzy.
— I don’t hate any of it, he said. It’s just nice to have a break. One needs a break from everything, after a while. From work. From friends. From family.
I gave him a warning look.
— In this family, we take a dim view of complaining, I observed. You know how some people do nothing but complain?
CARNEGIE / — It’s hot, Lizzy complained.
— We have an air-conditioned room and an air-conditioned car, young lady, said Blondie, strolling on. —Those are great luxuries around here.
— Yeah, but it doesn’t get cold.
— It does, I said; supporting Blondie, she would say, for once.
— I am, like, hot hot, Lizzy said. I’m burning. I hate China.
She stopped short. A bicyclist brrring!ed and swerved by, so close his handlebar caught a strand of Lizzy’s hair and sent it flying. She nonchalantly caught it back.
— Didn’t you like the Great Wall? asked Blondie.
— The Great Wall was cool. But everything else is boring.
— Boring! I said.
— Boring! she shouted. Boring!
On the lake, the rowboaters looked up.
— Waiting like this is hard, said Blondie then, stopping.
A familiar small bewilderment came over me, as I tried to fathom why she had changed tacks.
— I’m hot hot, said Lizzy, sticking her tongue out at the rowboaters. — I’m like a volcano that can melt everything in the whole wide world.
Said Blondie: — I’m hot too.
— Didn’t you like anything besides the Great Wall? I asked stupidly. There must have been something else.
— It’s lonely here, said Lizzy.
— Even with us here, it’s lonely? said Blondie.
— And hot.
— Of course it’s hot, it’s China, I said. Also you need to learn how to deal with boredom, if you are bored, which you shouldn’t be. Ever to be bored means you have no inner resources; remember that. You’re lucky to be here.
— Why, because you adopted me?
— Not just that, but you are definitely lucky. As are we.
— If you’re so lucky, how come you had to come here to get another kid? If you’re so lucky, how come I do nothing but complain?
— You do things besides complain, said Blondie.
— No I don’t! shouted Lizzy, stomping off. — I’m hot and all I do is complain! She started to cry. — And I mean it!
BLONDIE / The baby was sick; that wa
s our guess. Why else the unexplained delay? At the welcoming banquet Director Wu had looked at two other couples in our group and said, Your baby looks like you. Only to us had she said, Your baby is waiting.
What did that mean?
— Don’t fret, she is thinking of you already, said Director Wu.
CARNEGIE / Director Wu was a dedicated woman shaped like a haystack. She had short hair and glasses, and referred to her charges as sprogs.
BLONDIE / The Clarks, short and round, were matched with the fattest baby imaginable. The Fonarovs, tall and thin, were matched with a red wiry thing.
Everyone cried. The enormity of the moment! Whole lives joined together by luck, and fate. What faith to have taken this step, to have allowed—to have willed—lives to change, just like that. Such were the enormities that Carnegie and Lizzy and I cried too, overwhelmed for our friends—reliving what it was to take Lizzy into our lives.
How frustrating to still be waiting!
CARNEGIE / Unlike the Clarks and the Fonarovs, who had been put in a local university, we had been inexplicably parked, first in an Overseas Chinese Hotel (an experience), and then, thankfully, in a foreigners’ hotel with private baths and sit-down toilets and cleaning personnel. All along we had listened with envy to our friends’ Belgian-professor stories, the university being for some reason popular with Belgian professors. And how friendly the Chinese on campus too! Knocking on the doors of the Americans at all hours, to practice English and to bring gifts. The Clarks and Fonarovs had made rafts of friends. They had never known such goodwill.
But when we inquired as to whether we might move to the campus now that our friends had left, the answer was a decided, We’ll see. As for the reason: Not convenient.
BLONDIE / Everywhere people gawked at me. Even in Beijing, I had aroused interest. In Wuji, I had to keep moving if I didn’t want to find myself mobbed. Carnegie and Lizzy had to walk on ahead, pretending not to know me.
