Immediate Family

by Ashley Nelson Levy

  Back in the waiting room, our father pulled out the clothing we’d brought for you; he’d been told by the adoption agency that it was polite to ask if they’d like us to leave what you were wearing. They said yes, so our father began to change you while our mother took note of the holes in your shorts. Our mother continued to fill out the forms when suddenly you laughed—what a sound!—and the whole room stopped to look. Our father had tickled you while changing your shirt and you let out a giggle, so foreign from the expression you had given us in your photos, and over the course of the last hour. Our parents felt their hearts lighten. Our father gave you some crackers from the table while Khun Preeda answered our mother’s questions about your eating habits, sleep routine, history. She asked if there was any information on your first tooth, first step, first word. Khun Preeda shook her head. Our mother asked again about siblings and Khun Preeda answered no, then looked to you; you were busy devouring the snacks on her desk. You should take care to stop him when he eats, for there are only clean plates in the orphanage, she said. Soon you were on your third cookie.

  At this point it occurred to her that a copy of your schedule might be useful. She pulled a piece of paper from her desk, with writing in a combination of English and Thai, and slid it over to our mother. The English said:

  6.00—Get up, toileting

  7.00—Breakfast

  9.30—Snack

  11.00—Lunch

  11.30—Toileting, bath, take a nap

  2.00—Snack

  4.30—Dinner

  5.30—Toileting, bath

  6.00—Playtime, watch television

  7.00—Prayers, bedtime

  Then: the last of the signatures, thank-yous, pictures. I handed the social workers the gifts that had been suggested by the agency: soaps, boxes of cookies. A cab was called and, dressed in your new blue outfit with matching Barney hat, you stepped into the back seat, on our mother’s lap. I climbed in and examined you, trying to gauge signs of distress or remorse at leaving the third and most long-standing home you had known in your life. I discovered before Khun Preeda shut the door that this was only your second car ride. You held your little white bear and were the only one who did not raise a hand to wave goodbye to Khun Preeda as we pulled away, back down the dirt road.

  I feel like I’m dreaming, our mother said.

  You fell asleep almost instantly. None of us can actually recall how far we made it peacefully—likely thirty minutes, our father now says—before our mother looked down to see a small stream of fluid dripping from your mouth. This is the part of the story you loved growing up, one of the few details you asked about again and again. And what happened when she reached for the tissue? you’d say. She reached for a tissue but before she could get to it you began to heave; a white, warm vomit sprayed all down the front of your outfit and on our mother’s skirt. The driver’s eyes found our mother’s in the rearview mirror and, from the front seat, he handed us a plastic bag and roll of toilet paper without the cardboard tube in it. You heaved again. Now you and our mother were covered before she could get the plastic bag under your mouth.

  I screamed, a rancid smell filled the back seat, and the driver sighed and pulled over. Before we could get out, you’d started up again and our father held out his hands in front of your mouth, cupping them. You filled them with more liquid, a clearer consistency this time. You paused and we took the opportunity to leap out of the car: our father shook out the contents of his hands on the grass; our mother placed you on the ground and began to strip you back down; the driver popped the trunk and found an extra roll of paper towel while I batted off some of the spray that had landed on me.

  We piled back into the car; there was another emergency stop made before we reached the hotel. The staff at the curb greeted us kindly and helped with your soiled clothing. We were too frazzled to wonder what we must have looked like, all piling out of the car, outfits soaked, new child half naked, as if we’d just come off some terrible ride at a water park. You didn’t cry but you realized something was wrong; your face had gone sullen again.

  We brought you to our room and hoped you didn’t think it was home. Our mother turned on the bath and only then, when you’d been stuck in the tub, did you begin crying. It was an ugly sound, a wheezy, kazoo-pitched cry, and it scared me. Our mother noticed again how thin you were: twenty-four pounds at three years old. She took your picture, and when the flash went off you cried harder. She made a note to bring the photo to the doctor when we returned home.

  Our mother scrubbed you down. If you were going to cry anyway, she figured she might as well give you a good clean. She rubbed the bar along your skin, avoiding your genitals. She rubbed your dirty nails and shampooed your scalp and shielded the rinse from your eyes, and when the water turned off so did your tears. She wrapped the white hotel towel around you, rubbed your back cautiously. She wondered what your buzzed head would look like when your hair grew in. Again you frowned at her. Might you tell me where I am? the look seemed to inquire. She wished she could speak to you, but now every Thai word she’d memorized back at home fled from her memory. She dressed you in another pair of clean clothes that was also too large. Then she brought you into the room where I sat with our father, waiting quietly.

  I took out a toy truck we had brought and sat across from you on the floor. I rolled it toward you. You looked at it a moment and then stared at me with watery eyes. I pointed to it. I took the truck back and rolled it to you again.

  You pushed the truck, and it rolled to a stop halfway between us. Good! I cried. Our applause was met with another frown. I’d had a hard time envisioning what playing with you would be like, but I might have hoped then that in time you’d do a little better than this.

  Our father, meanwhile, sat at the little table next to where you were rolling the truck. He was noticing something, had been noticing it since we arrived at the orphanage this morning. You would not look at him. He had asked Khun Preeda about the male caretakers at the orphanage, and she said all the caretakers were women. In the chair, he tried to come to terms with the truth. You were afraid of him. After all they’d been through to get here, how much farther would he have to travel to reach you?

  At dinner that night in the hotel restaurant we ordered you a Caesar salad and plate of pasta. You chewed quickly and silently and finished everything. While watching you eat, we began to eat ravenously, too, bottomlessly. We pulled from one another’s plates except yours. We gulped our drinks, ignored our napkins. We licked our lips for traces of comfort. None of us had heard you speak.

  By the time the check came, I was tired in a way I hadn’t known about before. Back in the room, I went into the bathroom with our mother to get ready for bed, and, when left alone in the room with our father, you began to cry. He knelt on the floor and held his arms out to you, but you shrieked and backed away, an eruption that made the earlier tears seem amateur. Were they really beginning like this? our father thought. I had never looked at him with the dread that you did then. He took the truck and rolled it toward you as I had done, but you stared at it and wept some more. He moved toward you, which you answered with another kazoo cry, warning him not to come any closer. Our father wondered if he might cry, too, before I came in and scooped you up in my arms, and the tears died down.

  At nine o’clock, our mother brought you into the adjoining bedroom and laid you down on the twin bed. She tucked you in, and your eyes stared wide. Would you sleep through the night? I waited to hear you cry when she left the room, but you didn’t make a sound.

  Here you were, taken from the women who cared for you, your playmates, your bed. You were already three years on this earth and any people that could speak to those years had once again vanished. What were you thinking as you lay there alone? The room was cool and silent. Our mother left the door open a crack and went back to the family she knew, with the child who had lived with her for years, inside her for months, who she’d known as part of her before she’d met her. She kissed me
and said I could stay in our parents’ room as long as I liked. I was a little nervous; I’d never shared a room with a sibling before and didn’t know what you’d be like in the night, if you’d cry, or make strange sounds, or watch me in my sleep. I decided to give you a half hour before I went in. Our father stared at the TV on low volume, and our mother lay next to him and put a hand on his stomach.

  Then we took a long sip of quiet as the shock settled to the bottom of our stomachs. We drank in not having to speak to one another; we drank in mindless, familial ease. We refilled our cups with silence and drank some more. It wasn’t until our father turned off the TV that we heard the noise from the other room.

  We looked at one other, afraid to move.

  What is that? I mouthed. I tiptoed over to the door, our parents following behind. We pressed our ears to the opening.

  Our mother was the only one who felt relief at the noise. I pressed my body close to our mother and rather than listen to you, I listened to our mother breathe. And our father’s heart broke in a way that felt both familiar and completely new to him. It broke at the sound of his son singing, a boy who could croon himself to sleep in the dark but could not bear to be alone in a bright room with his father. He listened to you sing, a soprano sound, a self-lullaby, the words unknown to us all. Our father was, in his own way, the most sentimental of all of us, and would return to this memory years later, he told me, on a morning when he missed you.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING our mother took us to meet another social worker, Khun Sunan, while our father headed to the embassy. Following Khun Preeda’s instructions, we took a cab to the Children’s Hospital, a place that reminded our mother of Grand Central. Through the maze of children and parents and signs we couldn’t read, our mother finally spotted Khun Sunan by the area for blood work. When your name was called, we stepped into a small room and sat you on a chair. I braced myself for tears as the nurse pricked your finger, but all you did was furrow your brow. She took quite a bit of blood, I noticed, but you just continued to frown, looking up at me once, though I had no idea what to say to comfort you. I wanted to promise that our regular life would be much more fun than this, though I was impressed by how tough you were. This would follow you throughout your life—the one, comet-tailed tear when you fell off your bike and broke your thumb, the whimper I heard when you cut your forehead in the tub and needed stitches. Then the nurse pressed cotton on your wound and told you something in Thai. You lifted your other small hand and held the cotton there.

  Once outside, Khun Sunan told us it was time for the urine sample. I expected to make our way to another room for some privacy, but Khun Sunan grabbed a cup from the counter and led us to a corner of the main room. She knelt and said shishi and pointed to the cup, and then instructed our mother to help you. I looked around us, embarrassed; I was still getting used to having your body around. I looked away politely while our mother pulled down your shorts but in a second my eyes were back again, as you began obediently peeing in the cup, and peeing, and peeing, and peeing, until it began to spill over the top. Khun Sunan and our mother cried out similar pleas in both languages—Wait! Stop!—while our mother ran for another cup, but by then it had hit the floor and was still going. When she came back with the second cup, you filled that up, too. Khun Sunan wiped up the mess while I giggled. I thought I caught a hint of a smile as you looked up at me.

  We waited over an hour in the corner while tiny fans circulated the hot air. I remember nothing of the other families around us, only how disorienting the crowds were. Band-Aids and stained cotton balls collected in the corners of the floor and I might have noted this to our mother if Khun Sunan weren’t standing there, too. Finally, the nurse came back and we followed her to the next area to have your temperature and weight taken, and then to the doctor, who sat in an air-conditioned space behind a curtain with five other patients. We sat next to a boy of eleven or twelve, accompanied by his father, who was being examined. When it was our turn, the doctor let out a small laugh when he realized our mother didn’t speak Thai. Khun Sunan interpreted as our mother mentioned your chest congestion and how thin you were. The doctor laid you on a small table and again you submitted to probing, examining, a cold stethoscope pressed to your chest and back. The doctor said something to Khun Sunan and together they laughed. She looked at us and translated: He is so naughty, he says. We didn’t tell them that aside from the singing the night before, we still hadn’t heard you speak. We didn’t tell them that a protest would have been welcome, so we might finally know the sound of your voice.

  The doctor didn’t say much about the cut filled with pus on your elbow or the unnatural curve of your potbelly or your cough. Instead he wrote out three prescriptions but concluded that in general, your health was good. So we headed to the hospital pharmacy, vacillating between skepticism and relief. After the long lines, more waiting in the limp, wet heat of the room, it was our turn and we received what the doctor had prescribed: an antibiotic, cough medicine, and vitamins. Then Khun Sunan hailed us a cab back to the hotel.

  Our father, meanwhile, had spent the day on a chase for additional papers for the U.S. Embassy. We met him back in the hotel room and only our mother noticed how frazzled his face appeared. As he recounted the day, I sat with you and colored. You paused every few minutes to hand me a crayon, looking at me as if to let me know it was a gift.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING we were scheduled to stand before the Adoption Board. Our father retrieved coffee for our mother while she dressed you in your best outfit from the suitcase.

  We arrived late but found eighteen other white families in line waiting for approval; we were number seven. How strange the scene must have looked, the conveyor belt of white families in the middle of Thailand, circling in and out, the factory feeling of an experience that seemed, to all of us, so singular. Khun Sunan arrived and brought us to a waiting room with one large table, a basket of fruit, and a tissue box with a price tag from 7-Eleven. You kept yourself busy with your toy car, crayons, and a coloring book, and were quiet until you saw another family eating fruit. Then, for the first time, you pointed. Our mother peeled you an orange, which you ate quickly, before noticing a glass of pale soda. You pointed again and our mother let you drink. You pointed to an apple and ate the fruit along with its stem and core before our mother could stop you.

  Finally, it was our turn, and we were directed into a U-shaped room, with the four of us at the curve. There were microphones for us to respond to the sixteen people who sat before us on the Adoption Board. One woman did most of the talking, asking if you’d cried and if you’d eaten, the second question seeming very peculiar since we’d had you for forty-eight hours by now. Another woman asked me if I was happy with my new brother. Yes, I whispered. And how will you help your mother? the woman asked, and I looked with fear at our mother. She’s a big help already, our mother said. She added that I took great care to dress you and play with you.

  All right, the first woman said. Everything seems fine.

  We took that to mean we were approved.

  * * *

  AT THE BRITISH DISPENSARY for your official physical the next day, the doctor reviewed your pus-filled cuts, weight, and congestion with disinterest and signed the papers quickly. Afterward, our father picked you up and you started squealing and crying.

  You began to smile, though, with a few days’ history behind us. You followed our mother around the hotel room like the rattling tin cans on the back of a wedding car. Anything you could get your small hands on you’d pass on to her, as if weighted with the constant, self-inflicted pressure of having something to show for yourself. Each time food was placed in front of you, you’d look to her. If she said, It’s okay, then you’d smile, eat.

  It was incredible, actually, how quickly you were changing, right there in front of us. Your head seemed to sit more securely on your shoulders, you explored the hotel room with great fervor. You examined empty drawers, opened and closed
the minibar fridge, turned lights on and off until our pupils hurt. You began to insist on pouring your cough medicine yourself. You peeled oranges, bananas, threw them back like peanuts. You found the on/off button for the television, the volume for the channels.

  We did our best to keep up with you. While you groped for your independence, we dressed you and fed you when we could manage it, even though you were three years old and could do all these things yourself. You did shishi on command in the plastic wastebasket since your skinny legs weren’t long enough to hit the toilet bowl. We followed your lead by the direction of your finger: empty wastebasket into toilet, rinse with water from tub, flush, wash hands.

  By the fourth night, you cried when our mother put you to bed. She sensed you were starting to test her.

  * * *

  WE WOKE at 5:00 a.m. the next day, and by 7:30 we were back at the embassy, this time for our interview, which took place at the booth window. The man behind the glass asked if the boy had any special requirements for his care. Love, our father said. We stayed until late in the afternoon, when we could finally pick up your visa.