Half a World Away

by Cynthia Kadohata

  In the bonding room, Jaden plunked himself down next to Penni and Steve on the floor. A minute later he went to sit on the couch. He felt more worried than he’d ever felt since the day he got to America. Why had Dimash been outside on his own? And why was he crying? He felt his extremities tingling, and he wiggled his fingers and feet. He popped out of his seat and rushed down the steps outside, then picked up speed and threw himself on the ground right in front of Sam’s car. He was lying there, enjoying the rain, when he felt Sam’s hand on his back.

  “What is it? Why were you running? What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Jaden said. “I don’t know. I had to.”

  “Had to what? Let me see your hands! You’re bleeding. Come. Get in car. It is too cold out here.”

  Jaden examined the blood on his hands and wiped it on his face. When he’d lived in Romania, he’d been told that he would be put out on the streets at age twelve. Even if Dimash never aged out of being institutionalized, he would not have a good life. No, it was impossible for that to happen unless he was adopted. So what if his hands were bleeding? He had more important issues to think about.

  Sam helped Jaden to his feet, and they both got into the car. At first they sat quietly. Finally Sam said, “Did you fall on purpose? It did not look like you tripped.”

  “Yeah, sometimes I do that. I just, I don’t know. I wish I could fly, but I can’t. It makes me mad.”

  Sam nodded wisely. “Yes, it makes me mad too, but that is no reason to wipe blood on your face. We cannot all be the eagle. We must find our own way. That is what the eagle has tried to teach you.”

  Jaden wondered why he’d never rammed his face on the ground when he did his aggressive running. Maybe one day he would try that. But then he immediately rejected that thought, because he didn’t want to harm his handsome face. He laid his head back against the headrest. “It doesn’t hurt when I do it,” Jaden said. “One of my doctors said I can’t feel pain.”

  “Believe me, you can feel pain. You will learn that you can feel pain. It is a lesson we all must learn. You feel the pain and then you move on.”

  “Are you bitter?” Jaden asked. He loved the word “bitter.” There were so many instances when it was the perfect word to use.

  “Yes, I am bitter man. I am happy man, but bitter, too.”

  “You can’t be both at the same time. It’s impos­sible.”

  “You are telling me that it is impossible for me to be me?” Sam chuckled. “Believe me, I am me. I am quite possible.”

  “There’s a boy here named Dimash,” Jaden abruptly told Sam. “Akerke says he can’t talk, think, or move well. There’s something wrong with his brains and nerves and his stomach. I can’t get my mind off him.”

  “Yes, I have seen him. Someone gave his mother the evil eye while she was pregnant.”

  “Is that what happened? Really?”

  “I know it is so. The same thing happened to my nephew. A woman gave my sister the evil eye when she was pregnant, and her baby was born with very weak legs, as I mentioned to your parents.” Sam paused. “Now let me see your hands.”

  Jaden held out his hands. There were a lot of scars on his palms, but the blood hid them at the moment. Sam took his hands and studied them. “You are lucky. It is mostly scraped. This cut here is not so good, but not so bad, either. You must promise me you will not do this again.”

  “I promise,” said Jaden easily. Promises were nothing but a form of lying. The problem was, he knew he’d told the truth when he’d basically promised to take care of Dimash. But because of all his lying, Penni might not believe him.

  A while later when Penni and Steve got to the car, Penni exclaimed, “Oh, Jaden! What now?” She spoke as if exhausted. She opened the car door and studied Jaden’s face. “Did you do your aggressive running?” As an answer, Jaden turned his palms upward for her. She wrapped his hands in the blood-clotting gauze that she carried for just these occasions. “We’ll need to clean this when we get back to the apartment. Sit in back with us. Akerke can sit in front.”

  Jaden sat between Steve and Penni. Even though he was bloody and he knew that bothered them, he could also somehow feel that Steve and Penni were getting more and more relaxed about Ramazan. This would make it harder for him to make a case for Dimash. But he wouldn’t give up.

  Back in the apartment, Penni tenderly washed his hands with soap, then took out the alcohol wipes she’d also brought for an occasion like this. She was crying, as she sometimes did when she tended to his injuries. But her tears left him cold.

  Later, at dinner in a small restaurant, Penni and Steve talked obsessively about their court date, which was in a few days. They worried that the judge might not like them, that the prosecutor would ask them questions they didn’t have answers for, and that the final decision would be put off until another day.

  That night Jaden stayed up for hours, staring at the dark ceiling.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  And then, after many days and weeks of not bonding with the baby, their court date arrived. In the courtroom Jaden sat behind Penni and Steve. The prosecutor asked them quite a few questions, but Jaden couldn’t make out Akerke’s softly spoken translations. It had been quite a scene that morning when Penni had found out that Jaden hadn’t brought his suit. She’d screamed at him. It wasn’t the first time she’d screamed at him, but she hardly ever did it. Still, he knew there would be times in the future that she would scream again. He’d made her and Steve’s lives torture. If the judge knew what he was like, he wouldn’t let Steve and Penni adopt a baby. No way would he. Jaden even considered shouting at the judge. That would stop the adoption right then and there. But the judge awarded them Ramazan, and Jaden had a brother . . . almost.

  For the next fifteen days after the court date, by Kazakh law, the relatives of the baby would have the opportunity to claim the child if any of them wanted, or the prosecutor could decide to appeal the judge’s decision. This was called the “waiting” or “appeal period.” If a relative claimed Ramazan, the adoption might be off. Jaden wondered why the waiting period wasn’t before the court date. That would make a lot more sense. But whatever—it was their country, so they should do whatever they wanted. Penni said that as far as she knew, such a claim or an appeal had never been made, so it was just an exercise. They would continue the bonding during these two weeks, after which they would take custody of Ramazan, but still not be able to bring him home. They would need to fly to the city of Almaty, Kazakhstan, and do paperwork for about ten days. Then they could fly home, a family of four.

  Jaden got to see Dimash several days in a row. When Dimash first saw him on any particular day, he would flap his arms—he was that excited to see Jaden. Sometimes they just sat together on the steps. On a couple of days Dimash had a hacking cough. Now the caretakers didn’t bother them because they realized how happy the boy was to see Jaden. Sometimes Dimash just held on to Jaden’s arm and leaned against him as they sat. Dimash would smile to himself as he leaned. The last day Jaden was to see him was the momentous day they would take custody of Ramazan. Jaden brought Dimash choco­late that day. When he gave Dimash a piece, the kid went bonkers. He shook his head, almost like trembling. Then he smiled hugely. Jaden smiled back, and Dimash reached out with both hands to feel Jaden’s smile.

  “Come on!” Jaden giddily shouted. He broke into a run, pausing to make sure Dimash was following. In a second someone started yelling almost hysterically in back of them. He heard the flip-flop of shoes behind him, from Dimash, and farther back, from the caretaker who was chasing them and shouting.

  When they reached the street, Jaden didn’t stop. At some point he didn’t hear yelling anymore. He laughed as they ran. In fact, Jaden thought he had never felt so happy.

  He slowed down to a jog so that Dimash could keep up. They were both laughing. When Dimash got tired, they sat down in an alley next to a
garbage bin. They leaned back against the bin to catch their breath. A man in camouflage with a rifle was sitting on a bench next to a door. He stared at them, and for a moment Jaden was scared. Then the man looked away.

  Jaden folded Dimash’s hand into a fist, then made his own fist and tapped Dimash’s curled hand. Dimash’s eyes grew serious. Jaden smiled and ruffled the boy’s hair. “Great hair, dude.”

  “Kak dyela,” Dimash said.

  Jaden stared down the alley, and when he next looked, Dimash was playing with a big beetle. The beetle buzzed, and Dimash let out a heartrending scream. Jaden stomped on the beetle with his foot. “It’s gone now,” he said.

  Dimash grabbed him and grunted, “Unh. Unh. Unh.”

  It was getting dark. Time to get back. Or something. Jaden briefly considered running away. But he knew he couldn’t take care of Dimash, couldn’t get him food, couldn’t get him clothes, couldn’t get him shelter.

  So they went back. When they reached the baby house, the director, Penni, Steve, Akerke, and two caretakers were standing out there, yelling at one another. Penni was holding Ramazan. She noticed Jaden and Dimash and cried out, “There they are!”

  The grown-ups all rushed up as the boys stopped in their tracks. One of the caretakers grabbed Dimash and pulled him away firmly but not cruelly as he screamed. Then, as he was pulled, he twisted around to see Jaden and desperately reached out. The caretaker was crying for some reason.

  Everybody was scolding Jaden at once, in Russian, in Kazakh, in English. Ramazan’s eyes were wide open and he looked terrified of all the angry voices. The part of Jaden that could think at that moment took note of the fact that Ramazan was actually showing an emotion.

  Jaden bit back tears seeing Dimash pulled away, screaming. This would be his last image of that boy. Jaden’s whole body felt limp. In fact, he needed to sit down. So he sat right where he was, listening to Dimash’s screams. Somehow Dimash seemed to know that this would be the end of their friendship. Jaden snapped a picture of his last view of Dimash.

  “Ohhh,” Penni said. She closed her eyes and pressed her fingers to her temples. Then she opened her eyes. “What will become of him?”

  “He will be fine,” Akerke said. “This is very good baby house. But now we must leave. Your baby is unhappy.”

  As Penni watched Dimash being pulled away, she put her fingers over her mouth, as if she wanted to say something but didn’t know what.

  Steve made Jaden stand up. They all got into the car, Jaden in front with Sam. He felt like he hated Penni and Steve and their whole existence—selling crappy food to schools, answering phones with a smile in their voices.

  He closed his eyes as tightly as he could and held his breath, as if he might be able to suffocate himself. Nobody would ever adopt Dimash. Ever.

  When Penni, Steve, Akerke, and Ramazan were all in the car, Steve said, his voice low and angry, “I don’t need to tell you that you almost ruined this adoption.” The baby cried in the background. “The director was threatening to take Ramazan away from us.”

  Jaden stared out the window. He hated this world.

  Miracle of miracles, Sam drove slowly. In fact, he drove much more slowly than he needed to. The car in back of them honked, then whizzed around them, driving directly into opposing traffic to pass them. That was so insane.

  “You’re going a little slow,” Jaden said listlessly.

  “There is baby in car. I must drive the way my deep conscience tells me, for if nothing else I am a deep man. My wife has said it many times. ‘Sam, you are a deep man.’ ”

  “Well, it’s just that—I don’t know, never mind. I’m in no hurry.”

  Cars continued to pass them, but first the other vehicles would speed up close to their car, then brake hard, then honk repeatedly, and only then whiz around, often right into oncoming traffic.

  “A deep man knows right from wrong!” Sam exclaimed.

  The baby cried in the car, cried as they climbed up the stairs to their apartment, cried inside their apartment, cried as Penni tried to feed him, and cried off and on all night. All the noise drove Jaden crazy, but at the same time he guessed it was probably a good thing for Ramazan to be emotional.

  Jaden lay on the bed for hours, thinking about Dimash and listening to the cries and to the tired voices of Steve and Penni. He wanted to roll into a ball and spin away into a closet and never come out. He didn’t want to deal with the world at all. Not. At. All. Or else he’d like being a shepherd, wandering around forever, sleeping beneath the stars. Or he could be an eagle and have total clarity of purpose. “Clarity of purpose” was a Steve phrase. He said you needed “clarity of purpose” to get anywhere in life—in his case, to be a better salesman.

  In the morning Jaden lay there listening to the baby’s cries. He hadn’t known it was possible to cry for so long. Where did all those salty tears come from? He felt sorry for this adopted baby—and he got up and went to the other bedroom, where Penni and Steve were trying futilely to make Ramazan stop crying. “I can hold him for a while,” he told them. It surprised even himself when he said that. But it was just that he thought he understood the baby. Penni and Steve looked at him doubtfully but also hopefully. Their hair and clothes were disheveled, and Penni had a dirt streak across her face. She handed Ramazan to him, and Jaden held tight as the baby arched his back to get away. Jaden squeezed him and walked into the living room. Then he circled the border of the living room, his bedroom, and the kitchen. After thirty minutes, he switched directions, just for a change. He made figure eights. He walked. And walked. Hours passed. Penni and Steve were sleeping. His arms were exhausted and his back hurt, and Ramazan didn’t stop crying. But Jaden kept going because he understood the baby and knew he was the only one who did.

  He tried not to think about Dimash, but he kept thinking about him and about seeing him for the last time. He felt a bitter, cutting love for that kid—and abruptly he stopped in midthought. Is love what he felt? Why, then, would anyone want to feel it?

  Jaden began to cry. He cried and cried, but not just for Dimash. He cried also because he suddenly realized how important and powerful he himself was. He was so important that he could ruin his new brother’s life. He could ruin Ramazan’s life by hating Penni and Steve, and by hating Ramazan. So he cried as he paced the apartment. Because Jaden knew the only way to make sure that this baby had a good life was for him to love the baby, and, more complicatedly, to love Penni and Steve. He could not stop crying—it became full-on sobbing. At some point he could feel Penni behind him, and he turned around. She was there, as he’d known, and so was Steve.

  Jaden walked off to his room with the baby, without saying anything to them. He was sorry they’d seen him cry. He hated that.

  Another hour passed, and the baby finally fell asleep. Jaden could hear Penni and Steve talking and talking. He laid Ramazan on the pillow and sat on the floor, leaning his back against the bed, tears streaming down his face. He was exhausted. Penni and Steve came into his room. They sat on the floor next to Jaden. Penni said, “We’ve decided something.”

  “What?” Jaden asked moodily.

  “We’ve decided we’re going to adopt Dimash as well as Ramazan.” Then all in a rush she said, “I made a phone call to a social worker back home who I went to school with. We need to go back to America and prepare for Dimash, things like finding a therapist to work with him and joining a support group and reading some books, and after that we need to get our home study updated to indicate that we’re prepared for a special-needs child. Then we’ll apply to US Immigration for another child. It’ll all take a month or two or three, and then we’ll come back for him.”

  Jaden’s whole body froze. He was sure he couldn’t possibly be hearing correctly. He stopped crying. He was stunned. “What? Adopt Dimash?” he finally asked.

  “Yes,” Penni answered firmly.

  Jaden began cry
ing even harder than he had been before. He threw his arms around Penni. “Thank you, Mom. I mean . . . thank you.” And, just like that, a light switched on in his head, and he knew something. For the first time, he realized he loved her. And once he realized this, he realized that he had—a little bit, at least—for a while.

  “I’ve already called Akerke,” Penni explained. “She’s going to arrange it. For more money, of course. We’ll have to find a way. And I need to prepare my family, to hold my head high and say to people like my sister, ‘This is going to be our family dynamic, love it or leave it.’”

  “I can sell my motorcycle,” Steve said.

  “Honey, really? Are you sure?” Penni asked.

  “Yes, with no reservations—well, maybe some, but I need to do this for our family.”

  Jaden could have thrown his arms around Steve, but he’d never done it before, even to manipulate him, so it would have felt strange. “Thanks, Dad,” he said instead. But what the heck. He hugged Steve. It felt weird, so he started to pull away, but Steve held him tight. Finally Steve loosened his grip, and Jaden was able to pull away.

  Jaden suddenly knew the reason why his biologi­cal mother had abandoned him. The reason was so that he could end up right here, right now, saving Dimash.

  He couldn’t sleep at first that night, just sat up and cried from the sheer hugeness of all this adoption stuff. But when he finally opened his eyes, he knew that he had fallen asleep at some point. The first thing he thought was, Dimash is going to be my brother! He could hear Ramazan crying and hopped out of bed to get the baby from Penni and Steve.

  He knew something: He was truly this baby’s brother, the same as he would be Dimash’s brother. He took the baby in his arms, and they cried together. Snot dripped down his face as he cried and the baby screamed. He paced up and down the apartment, over and over and over and over, holding tightly the whole time, thinking that somehow by this holding and squeezing, their electricity was becoming enmeshed. Then, after several hours of ferocious crying, Ramazan fell asleep.