Best Friends Through Eternity

by Sylvia McNicoll

  When we arrive at our usual intersection, Jazz offers to walk me all the way to my doorstep, but I tell her it isn’t necessary. I limp home, grateful to have at least this pain that proves my loyalty to her.

  Nobody is at the house when I step in, and that aloneness decides it for me. I want to find out more about my birth family, and Mom doesn’t ever have to know. I don’t even take off my boots or coat, just hobble up the stairs, clutching the banister. I know where she keeps important documents. A metal box sits at the bottom of her walk-in closet in the bedroom. It has a latch on it but no lock. Their lives are contained in an open but flameproof box.

  Any time I want, Mom will take me to China to get in contact with my roots—hasn’t she said that a million times? So why do I rush for that box in the closet, limping as fast as I can? Is it so that I can look in it before I change my mind? All the hundreds of opportunities I had to search it before, I never bothered. Afraid of what I might find out. Or do I hurry so I won’t get caught by my mother?

  Both, I decide. I flick on the light and kneel down at the back among all the shoes, keeping the door open so I can hear if someone comes in. My mom keeps things in file folders, and I flip through them till I hit one that says “He Fuyi.”

  A Chinese name. My Chinese name? I quickly pull it out.

  Inside is a stack of papers. Of course, I never went to those Mandarin lessons Mom offered to send me to, so the characters don’t mean anything to me. The top paper appears to be a copy of a newspaper clipping from what looks like a classified section.

  Across it is a row of baby pictures, each with a column of notes underneath it in Chinese script. All babies look alike to me, and in this strip the younger infants appear round-cheeked with closed, puffy eyes and nearly bald heads. Straggly black bangs, tiny noses, upside-down half-moon mouths, the toddler faces also have a lot in common. Their eyes seem to question, maybe even implore. How did my mom choose the little girl with no eyebrows? She’d circled my photo. Underneath the row, someone had jotted notes:

  Finding Ad in the local newspaper. He Fuyi was found abandoned under the lamppost at the back door of the nursery of Hechuan SWI. She is in good health, nothing left on her when she was found.

  So He Fuyi has to be my name. Two babies to the right of me, another toddler is circled, same eyes and bangs; she doesn’t have any eyebrows to speak of, either, but her mouth opens into an O. One word is scrawled beneath her: Kim. It’s Mom’s handwriting. I didn’t know we’d been adopted from the same orphanage. We may even have played together back in China. If only she had lived, we could still have been friends. To have someone who had been through all the same experiences as I had might have made me a different person.

  There is a Certificate of Adoption, listing my parents’ names as adoptive parents and a date: July 14. My Gotcha Day, the closest thing to a birthday that I can celebrate. The next paper is a Children’s Medical Examination Record, but while the questions are listed in both languages, the answers are only in Chinese script, each character a little picture. I thumb through the pages and come to the final document. The header on this one squeezes at my heart: Certificate of Abandonment.

  I skim the information, which is basically the same as on the newspaper copy. The last sentence stays with me. “We have tried hard but can’t locate her natural parents up to now. This is to certify that she is an abandoned baby.” Underneath in bold are the words Chongqing Hechuan District Social Welfare Institute and a date.

  How many people can say they have been officially abandoned?

  My throat tightens and I squeeze my eyes closed. I hear a noise. What is that? No time to cry about any of this. I shove the papers back in the file folder and slip it back into the metal box, slamming the lid.

  I run out of my parents’ bedroom but know I won’t make it down the stairs in time.

  “Paige?” My mother stands on the landing. “What are you doing up here in your coat and boots?”

  “Just had to go to the bathroom, Mom,” I answer.

  “In such a big hurry?” She touches my forehead. “Do you still have diarrhea? Your dad was right. We should have gone to the hospital.”

  “Relax. I drank a lot of water after gym class today.”

  “But you look so … upset.” Mom stares at me intently. “Is something else going on?”

  “No, nothing, I swear.” I meet her eyes. “Going down to do my homework now.”

  “All right. I brought home some yogurt-covered raisins for you.”

  “Thanks.” I wait till she turns away to start down the stairs. I don’t want her to notice my limp. At the bottom, I hang up my coat and set my boots carefully on the tray beneath it. Then I go to the den and sit at the computer. He Fuyi, my real name. I might have been a different person had I grown up with it. What does it even mean?

  I open the Internet browser and type my Chinese name in, hoping for some glimpse of a family that could be mine. “He” had to be my surname and “Fuyi” my given name. But searching by “He” produces hits that refer to “He” as in the pronoun. Searching under “Fuyi” produces some Chinese restaurants and other sites in script. When I use the whole name, I find sites that mention “He” as a pronoun right beside some guy’s first name, “Fuyi.” I give up in frustration and go to Facebook just to relax.

  There is Max’s friendship request. I click “Confirm,” then “Message,” where I type, Hey, Max, do you know any Chinese?

  By that time, Mom calls me. “Paige, I could use your help with supper!”

  “Just a minute.”

  Max’s answer comes up quickly. He must have been on the computer. Nerd. I smile. Nerds are people I understand.

  Max Liu: I know some Mandarin. Parents made me take lessons.

  I type in, Do you know what the name Fuyi means?

  “Paige, I need these yams chopped now. Or supper won’t be done for hours,” Mom calls.

  “Coming.”

  Max Liu: Fu means luck or fortune. Yi could mean a lot of things. Do you have the Chinese symbols for Yi? My father could tell you.

  His dad is probably so Chinese he pronounces his Rs as Ws. Even so, I am jealous. I type back. I’ll bring them to you tomorrow. Gotta go.

  I head straight to the counter and start on the orange potatoes.

  “How was school today?” Mom asks in a stiff voice. Her back is to me as she stirs some onions in a frying pan.

  “Fine. Can you sign my permissions note for the trip to the science center? And do you have thirty dollars to pay for it?” I chop at the large hard yam. Just once couldn’t we have plain white potatoes?

  “Why do you need my thirty dollars? Don’t you have plenty of money yourself?”

  I squint at her. “You want me to pay for a field trip out of my allowance?”

  “No. I want you to pay with the money you took from me.” She turns from the stove to face me. “I kept a hundred-dollar bill in my jewelry box and now it’s gone.” She jabs a finger toward me. “You left tracks to my bedroom.”

  “What? I didn’t take any money.”

  “Then why are you acting so strange?” Her voice cracks. She sounds as if she’s about to cry. “Are you on drugs, Paige?” She grabs my face and stares into my eyes.

  “Stop! Of course not.” Abusing your body like that would be the supreme sin in our house. “Mom, there’s stuff going on in my life, yes. Nothing like that, though.”

  “Then what happened to the hundred-dollar bill?”

  “I dunno. Did it fall down into your underwear drawer?”

  “You can talk to me about anything, you know that, Paige.”

  I get hit by a train on Monday after school, and then I’ll be in a coma forever because you won’t let me die. “No, Mom. I can’t talk to you about everything. You like to think I can, but I can’t.”

  So Mom ends up not talking to me, which isn’t that bad. I don’t want to explain my tracks to her bedroom. In fact, I want to sneak back into her closet storage box and retri
eve something with my name in Chinese script. When Dad calls to say he’s at the mechanic’s with the truck—it needs a new alternator—he provides the perfect distraction. Mom drives over to pick him up.

  I head back to that metal box and pull the folder on He Fuyi. I look through the papers and remove the Certificate of Abandonment. There are three Chinese scripts below my name. My real name. Three scripts that might be code for something important about me.

  I fold up the certificate and tuck it into my jeans pocket. Then I shut the box and straighten the shoes in the back of the closet. I squint at the floor. It’s a varnished oak that Mom is pretty proud of. In a certain light, will my footprints show? Washing the wood might look suspicious. I grab a bath towel and swish it awkwardly with my foot, then I head back out and toss the towel in my hamper. That done, I sit in my room, reading Romeo and Juliet and making notes.

  The door bangs open downstairs. “Paige!” my mother bellows, her silent treatment obviously over.

  “Up here,” I say in a normal tone, hoping to delay her invasion by another moment.

  Mom arrives at the door of my room, breathless. “Paige! I’m so sorry. You didn’t take the money, after all.”

  “Duh! I know that.”

  “I should have known, too. I’m sorry. It’s just you had such a guilty expression on your face. And you looked like you’d been crying.”

  I don’t answer her.

  “Anyhow. Your father took the bill from my jewelry box.” She points behind her shoulder with her thumb to where Dad now stands, looking sheepish. “He needed money for the truck and thought the credit card might be maxed out.” She stops to hug me. “It wasn’t the money, Paige. I was just so worried you were into drugs.”

  The warmth of her arms around me, her worry, her guilt, I enjoy it all for a moment. Then I shrug away. Being abandoned, officially, has a strange effect on me. I should be hurt and angry with my bio family, but for some reason I’m upset with Mom. All that love and attention that I want to come from a different person or family. “Um, can you sign the form for the science center now? And give me thirty dollars?”

  Mom looks at Dad and then back at me. She wants to say something else. “Of course, dear. Do you have a pen?” She takes two twenties and a ten out. “Keep the extra money to buy lunch or a souvenir.” A second apology. “I love you very much.” A third.

  “I know, Mom.” I should tell her I love her back. “Thanks.” But I can’t because I really don’t feel anything at that moment.

  We eat a late supper of Moroccan stew. I take a second helping to prove, once again, that my stomach is fine and that I’m not taking drugs.

  Dad talks about the truck. Mom tells us about what the food network says about blueberry juice. I mention how I went out to lunch with Jazz, Cameron and Max.

  “Nothing fried, I hope,” Dad said.

  “Chinese food,” I answer evasively. “That’s mostly healthy, isn’t it?”

  “Chinese? I thought you hated anything to do with your homeland. Of course, some of it’s healthy. We trust you to make the right choices.”

  Not always. I don’t throw Mom’s earlier mistake back in her face. We can talk about everything, Mom says, but that’s only true as long as everything is just nothing.

  RETAKE:

  Wednesday Morning

  Next morning, the air warms just enough to turn the dampness into a thick fog. It’s like walking through wet cotton to get to school. The icy moisture seeps under my jacket, and I shrug my shoulders against it. I meet Jasmine at our usual corner, bumping into her before seeing her. “Hey, Jazz. Guess what? I found out what my Chinese name is.”

  “Yeah, what?” She hunches her own shoulders and shivers.

  “He Fuyi,” I answer. “My last name is He.”

  “Great. So now you can find your real parents,” she says.

  “My real parents are right here!” I snap, a knee-jerk reaction. But isn’t it what Kim and I used to dig in the sand for all the time? To reach China and find our other more “real” parents?

  “You know what I mean,” Jazz says. “Maybe you’re related to some emperor and got swapped at birth.”

  “It’s a possibility.” I pause. “Not.” Wealthy, titled parents are no longer in my faintest expectations. What I most want from my biological parents now is to know they feel regret. That if and when they see me, they will be astounded at how smart and beautiful I am and how well I am doing. And realize they should never have given me up. “What if they have no teeth, are cross-eyed and want money from me?”

  “Then you’ll run like crazy and never make contact again. It’s not like you owe them something.”

  “They abandoned me. I don’t owe them anything,” I repeat.

  “Just what I said.” Jazz stretches an arm out in front of her. “Geez, I can’t see my hand in front of my face. Are we almost at school?”

  “I think we passed it,” I answer. “At least, I hope we did.”

  “Did I tell you my mom wants me to start helping in the kitchen?”

  “Gawd, you do so much already.”

  “She wants me to learn the Punjabi staples.” She puts on her Indian accent. “Every good wife must know how to make paratha.”

  “Uh-oh. How does Cameron feel about Indian food?” I ask.

  “He loves it.” Jazz gets that dreamy look on her face.

  “Can’t he convert or something, then?” I ask.

  Jazz chuckles. “To Indian food?”

  “No, to the culture. How can he become suitable to your parents?”

  “For a starter, he’d have to commit to marriage. Not like either of us wants that yet.”

  “Neither of you wants that. You’ll have to make that plain to your mom. Stop! Wait!” I grab Jazz’s arm. Out there in the fog, there’s something or somebody. Suddenly, a large body jumps out at us.

  “Ah!” I shriek.

  “Just me!” Cameron smiles and bends down to kiss Jasmine’s face.

  My heart thumps back to its normal rate again.

  Meanwhile, the kiss lasts too long. Embarrassing. There’s nowhere else to look.

  “Paige!” another voice calls from directly behind us. Max! Great. It’s a relief to be rescued.

  “Do you want to come to my parents’ restaurant first break?” He joins me, and we continue walking while Jasmine and Cameron kiss.

  He’s asking me out for lunch. I panic. Max is way more fun than I expected. Still, lunch. “I can’t eat Chinese two days in a row.”

  “What are you talking about? You want your name translated.”

  I’m wrong. “Oh yeah, I just meant … well, you know … sure, first break would be good.”

  “Listen, then. Keep your coat with you and bring your afternoon books along. Save time. We’ll probably be late as it is.”

  The fog doesn’t lift by the time we reach the school. But that black sports car pulls up in the bus zone, and Vanessa jumps out. Has she spotted Jazz with Cameron? They’re walking behind me and Max, so I can’t see whether they’re hand in hand or cuddling. Or maybe even kissing.

  I can’t tell from Vanessa’s face, either. It never registers anything. She brushes past us and heads for the far edge of the football field.

  In first class, English, we’re back to Romeo and Juliet, which isn’t a new play to me. My parents took me and Jazz to see it in High Park last summer. Besides, doesn’t everyone know it doesn’t end well for the star-crossed lovers? Still, I remember watching the story unfold, and now it’s the same reading it. I can’t help hoping that, this time, Juliet’s parents will come around. This time Romeo will understand she’s only faking death. This time he won’t kill himself, and then Juliet won’t wake up and have to commit suicide herself.

  I guess that’s how I feel about my date with the train on Monday, too. Why listen and study and make notes if I don’t think the outcome can be different?

  First break comes and Max grabs my hand. I don’t even pull it away. “We have to
hurry. Dad said he’d have lunch ready.”

  I don’t tell him again that I don’t want to eat Chinese. I just rush along beside him, happy to get away from school and the volleyball team.

  We hop a bus to the downtown core and get off at the lake. There’s a Vietnamese takeout on one side and a sushi bar across the street. Next to it is an upscale pizza restaurant. That’s the one Max takes me to. Big shock. We walk through the door.

  “Hi, Max. And you must be Paige.” A tall smiling man holds out his hand to me and I shake it.

  “Hi.” I’m blown away. No Chinese accent, and Max’s dad is handsome. His blue-black hair is swept to one side, and he sports a nicely manicured beard. He wears a burgundy-colored apron over a matching shirt with a round collar.

  “Your pizza is cooling over at the table by the window.” He walks with us to our seats. “Do you have the script?”

  I hand him my Certificate of Abandonment, and he immediately begins studying it. Meanwhile, I check out the view of the park and lake across the street. Choppy gray waves stretch all the way to Hamilton. A lone dog walker guides four black Labs along the seawall.

  “Better eat right away or you’ll be late,” his dad says, not looking up.

  I turn my attention to the pizza, pick up a slice and bite in. Mmm. Bacon and eggs with some kind of cheese on a thin crust. Good to experience bacon before I die.

  “It’s interesting,” Mr. Liu says, stroking his beard, “that your parents even gave you a name.”

  “Do you think they maybe wanted me to look for them?” I ask.

  Mr. Liu tilts his head and purses his lips. Seems like an unspoken no. “I think they wanted you to have a better life than they could offer.”

  “They wanted to have a boy instead of a girl, so they had to dump me,” I grumble.

  He shakes his head. “You know they used to kill baby girls. Boys got them land, girls just cost them dowries.”