What Was Mine

by Helen Klein Ross

  I write Feng that our baby died in the hospital.

  Every day I take care of Mia, I think about my daughter and hope she gets a good life like her. When I come to New York, I see many Chinese girls are adopted and sometimes I wonder if Jin is near.

  If Jin knows I give her away, she thinks she has a bad mother. But really, she has a mother who loves her.

  Mia has a mother who loves her, too. Lucy did a bad thing. But this is one bad thing against twenty-one years of good things. Lucy must think of this. Mia, too.

  98

  lucy

  July 4. Independence Day. I have my own apartment. Wendy and Feng helped me find it. It isn’t fancy. It isn’t big. Just two rooms, furnished, each about the size of my kitchen in New York. It’s owned by Feng’s cousin who is working in Xian. He had to apply to rent to a foreigner. The floors and walls are cement and everything was covered with coal dust when I got here. I spent a cathartic few days on my hands and knees, scrubbing.

  The kitchen is stocked with spices, and the first day I attempted to cook, I mistook the sugar for salt and ruined the vegetables. The Chinese store their salt in big tins, their sugar in tiny jars. Everything is upside down here.

  I made dinner for Wendy and her family last night, to thank them. It was a simple meal, but here even a simple meal can be hard to prepare. My stove isn’t a real stove, it’s a tin box with two burners that sits, terrifyingly, on top of a wooden table. You open a flap on the box and light the gas and close the box quickly before the table catches fire. There is no oven.

  I wanted to serve something American, but not too American, which I feared might be off-putting to Feng and Lin, who have eaten Chinese food every day of their lives. I decided on spaghetti. It’s a dish that even I, with minimum cooking skills, could execute with a modicum of confidence. (For daily sustenance, I rely on local eateries, which abound.)

  Spaghetti isn’t technically an American dish, but it’s a menu item often found on American tables. I knew they’d like noodles. Noodles was a frequent dish at their table during the months I was living with them.

  The apartment came with a bike, a sturdy three-speed Flying Pigeon, and that morning I pedaled twenty blocks to Carrefour to purchase real butter and imported Parmesan cheese and Ronzoni No. 8, not Chinese noodles, which are thicker and have a wheatier taste. Then to the French quarter to buy a baguette to transform into buttery garlic bread. Then to the vegetable market for tomatoes. The tomatoes here are huge and bright red and the best I’ve ever tasted. I try not to think of the fertilizer that helps grow them: night soil, euphemism for waste collected at night from the public toilets.

  Finally, I went to the reliable meat market where I know, from Wendy, you can trust the ground beef. I knew to bring my own plastic bag. The first time I shopped there, I didn’t know any better and they gave me the bloody mass in a plastic bag fine as tissue, which ripped, of course, on the way home. A little white dog on the sidewalk lapped it up, horrifying its owner, a young woman in high heels shouldering a Louis Vuitton bag, who tugged on its leash, trying to pull it away. The dog wore pearls—some owners dress up their poodles here—and seeing the little mutt-matron go at raw meat with primal enthusiasm was a sight I’ll not soon forget.

  Wendy has visited my apartment since I moved in, but Feng and Lin hadn’t and they seemed to delight in seeing the cousin’s apartment “Americanized.”

  “So much light,” Lin said, apparently impressed by my lamps from IKEA.

  Yes, I went to IKEA. I made myself go. It’s the best place in Shanghai to buy Western furnishings at a good price. I’d thought the store would look different, but IKEA here is the same big box it is in New Jersey, painted the same bright blue and yellow, a startling contrast to the gray concrete buildings and beams supporting the highway behind it, so that when I got out of the cab, having peeled brown notes into the driver’s white-gloved hand, the site triggered a rush of memory and I didn’t think I could go in. But the turquoise car was already a dot in the distance.

  I stood on the sidewalk, trying to get control of my breath. Don’t be ridiculous, I told myself. I needed things for the apartment I could get only here, where signs were assured of being in English. Besides, it was hot. It wasn’t yet noon, but the sun was already bearing down on the back of my neck. The relief of industrial air-conditioning was just steps away.

  My heart started palpitating as soon as I walked through the doors and I was suddenly afraid that some sophisticated detector, some global, all-seeing robot was embedded in the ceiling, would train his infrared eyes on me, reach down and seize me. But after I’d walked a few aisles, my common sense prevailed and I proceeded to shop, untormented by paranoid apprehensions.

  The merchandise was the same as I remembered: colorful building blocks of furniture, open storage units, melamine closets, and chrome forests of lamps, but one thing was different. The room displays, the little stage sets of domestic tranquillity of which I’d once been so enamored, were occupied by customers sprawling all over the furniture. People sat at dining room tables, reading newspapers, or took naps on beds, getting under the covers. Whole families spread out on sectionals, watching films on their phones or letting kids bounce on coffee tables. Two middle-aged women dozed on opposite ends of a sofa, snoring loudly, heads resting comfortably on the pillowed backrest. A couple interested in the price of it had to gingerly move a hand to reveal the tag.

  I came upon a baby asleep on a daybed, atop a sheep-pattern quilt. She looked to be about six months old. Her fine black hair was gathered into two narrow tails that stood straight up at the top of her head and were secured by pink ribbons. Her cheeks had deepened to red the way babies’ cheeks do when they’re asleep for a while. She was on her back, arms and legs flung wide, and across her middle, an embroidered floral handkerchief rose and fell, which the mother must have improvised for a blanket.

  I lit with anger at the mother for recklessly trusting her baby to the mercy of strangers. I lingered by the bedside, compelled to keep discreet watch over her, pretending to focus on cube shelving and modular tables instead of the heartbreaking tenderness of that handkerchief rising and falling, showing me the monstrousness of what I had done. Now I would never be capable of it. Because I have a child. I know what the stakes are.

  Yet—I couldn’t wish I hadn’t done it either. I’d never regret my years of loving Mia, being loved by her.

  When a harried-looking woman in her thirties approached the bed and bent over the baby, I knew by the proprietary way she picked her up, still sleeping, and gently laid her against her shoulder, that she was the mother. It was as if they were two halves coming together, and I was queasy with the knowledge of what I had inflicted on a pair such as these, when I’d been oblivious to all but the ache of my own empty arms.

  I couldn’t shop that day. I made my way through living dioramas and out of the store and figured out how to shop IKEA by phone, pressing 3 for English, so it was weeks before lamps and chairs and wall-size framed prints were on their way to my apartment, teetering on the back of deliverymen’s bicycles.

  Dinner conversation was mainly between Wendy and me. Feng speaks no English and Lin’s English is wanting, though Wendy brags that he studied it and passed every test with superior grades.

  “We learn for test, not for talk,” Lin explained, shrugging.

  Lin glazed his noodles with a thin layer of meat sauce, until I urged him to take more. Chinese manners can make people too restrained.

  How much does Lin know about me? Has Wendy told him? Has she shared my story with Feng?

  I watch their faces, but there are no clues in their eyes as we talk about weather—hot!—and the food—delicious! Our topics are limited, without shared vocabulary. I find myself agreeing, at Wendy’s urging, to meet Lin on Sundays, his day off, for English conversation practice. I’m glad. I’m in need of company and grateful for the chance to glimpse through his native eyes the country where I may be exiled for the rest of my life.
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  99

  lin

  Dinner at the American Ayi’s house tonight. So many lights! What does one lady need so many lights for? I counted six lights in the apartment—table lights, wall lights, even a bed light. Such extravagance. At home, we have only one light in each room. I think Lucy must have regretted this scarcity while living with us.

  Unfortunately, her extravagance did not extend to our meal. Only three dishes, not the many dishes one expects to be set out for guests. One of the dishes was spoiled with the addition of cheese. How can Americans like cheese? How can they think old, curdled cow’s milk is a delicacy?

  But I am polite. Not only because she is my mother’s old boss, but because I feel sorry for her. She has lost face in her country, to which she is never allowed to return. My mother didn’t share this information with me. I found many interesting announcements in English on the Internet. She stole a baby who is now a woman and has returned to her place with her rightful mother. Her punishment—if she will be lucky—is permanent exile to our country, a place where she will always be lao wai: outside person.

  100

  lucy

  Hot, hot, hot. Over one hundred degrees. The portable air conditioner, which I paid a small fortune to have delivered and installed, rattles and groans, protesting as if it is a small animal trapped in the window. It is almost as useless. The air that wheedles from it is barely cooler than the air in the apartment. But I haven’t the language—or energy—to make the fuss required to return it.

  Instead, I try to cool myself with tea. I have learned Chinese wisdom: hot drinks—not icy ones—relieve heat in the body. Red Tea Bloom—Wendy gave it to me—comes in what looks like little balls of rubber bands. I drop one into a cup and pour in boiling water and wait a few minutes until the ball expands into what looks like a cactus plant with a pink flower on top.

  I’m sweating, but not only because of the heat. My special visa is good for a year, which seemed an interminable time when I got it last February. But already six months have gone by. My ticket to freedom is only good for six more. What will happen to me when it runs out? As I understand from a lawyer here, China won’t extend my visa. Without a visa, Wendy says, the Public Security Bureau (keeper of all manner of statistics, including my glove size and results of a lung test!) will come after me. The day after my visa expires, a security officer is apt to knock on my door. And what will he do? Pull me out by my hair? Toss my belongings out the window, onto the sidewalk five floors below? I picture my bras and panties flying through sooty air, landing on the moon roof of whatever luxury car is parked on the sidewalk below. Buying an expensive car in Shanghai seems to come with the right to park it wherever you please.

  Here, I have no connections to anyone with sway. In New York, I felt myself for years to be separated by only a few degrees from someone who could help me with any problem. A client’s brother-in-law, a colleague’s best friend, the parent of a school chum of Mia’s—all proved helpful in situations that at one time seemed dire: pull with the right dental surgeon, an investment question, a college recommendation letter. Of course, no connection, no matter how powerful, could be contacted to help me out of the problem that landed me here.

  I’ve never felt so alone, so disconnected from any seat of power, from any who have a say in what happens to me. Wendy and her family are my only “ins” here, and while they have been helpful to the extent that they can, her family—an academic family, her parents once taught at the prestigious Jiao Tong University—lost its cachet during the Cultural Revolution, and while with difficulty and persistence they managed to reclaim family real estate: the narrow house where they now live in a historic longtong district—they’ve never been able to reclaim the network of powerful connections they once enjoyed.

  What will become of me? Mia. My Mia. I can’t even be sure of what she looks like anymore. Is she fatter, thinner? Has she cut her hair? Is she tanned by the California sun? There was no photo of her in the Psychology Today magazine I found on a table in the lobby of a Hilton Hotel where I go to buy American toothpaste. The article referred to me as Mia’s “sociological mother.” I stared for a long time at those words on the page, reading them over and over, grateful to be recognized as any kind of mother at all.

  In my mind, Mia is all the ages she was: the three-year-old tottering around in my pumps, plastic bag slung over her shoulder, going to “work”; the little girl chatting merrily with every doorman; the ten-year-old, tall for her age, longing to be elfin; the thirteen-year-old who still sits on my lap, trying to distract me from the computer; the sullen fifteen-year-old blasting music from the CD player behind her locked door; the poised young woman at our dining room table, poring over practice law school admission tests.

  I envision her more and more at a distance, as if I am on one boat and she is on another, water rising between us, pushing us farther and farther apart. I get up to boil water and there is a heaviness in my stomach, so that I feel I must drag it after me across the room.

  101

  mia

  Grant is teaching me how to drive. He is patient and a much better teacher than I had for driver’s ed in New York. Quinton was a part-time bouncer at a bar, who was always bored or smoking or apologizing for not paying attention because he’d been up all night with his girlfriend who caught him hooking up with his other girlfriend again. Once, on Riverside, he made me pull over so he could steal rims off a parked car! He justified it by saying the size rims his car needed was really rare; he’d been looking for a long time. The funny thing was, he was the driving instructor all the private school moms requested. They had no idea. It was a good driving school and he must have charmed the first mom, who recommended him to everyone else’s. I never learned enough to pass the test.

  I didn’t care about driving then, but I do now, because if I stay here, I’ll need a job and all the good jobs are up in San Francisco. I could take the Caltrain to get up there, but as soon as the money from People comes in, I’ll buy a used car to get back and forth.

  I want to stop taking money from Lucy. My allowance is still automatically deposited. I thought her bank accounts would be frozen, but the detective said it’s not like Law & Order, DAs don’t hand out freeze orders like donuts. Lucy didn’t take a ransom. Her money isn’t related to illegal activity, so it’s hers.

  I want to start working, not only to earn money, but because I need to get out of the house. I can’t stay in the house all the time, even though Marilyn (she wants me to call her “Mom,” but I can’t) would like that. She’s happiest when we’re all under one roof, when we’re all holding hands around the table, saying grace before dinner, or playing “family band” in the living room—everybody in the family plays an instrument except me. Marilyn plays the piano, Chloe the flute, Connor and Thatch play guitar, Grant plays the harmonica. The only thing I know how to do is clap. I hated piano lessons. Lucy should have made me stick with them and not let me quit. She was the grown-up. She shouldn’t have listened to a kid.

  I know it sounds corny, but there is something really nice and warming about playing music with my new family because they do it sincerely. Irony can be tiresome when what you really need is a hug. But I wonder when I’ll get tired of it. It’s like a different planet here, from where I grew up. Manhattan is irony’s world headquarters.

  102

  lucy

  I met Lin at our usual spot for language exchange yesterday, our Sunday date at the Golden Palace Dumpling House, a local eatery, a hole-in-the-wall despite its grand name. Stout older women in white coats and caps serve steaming bowls of dumplings plump with pork or beef or greens or whatever one’s pleasure, dumplings so delectable that Lin says diners come from far districts for them. I’ve convinced him to stop calling me “Ayi.” I explained that American women like to be called by their names, not referred to, incorrectly, as somebody’s aunt.

  I am sure, now, that Lin knows my secret. He assiduously avoids asking me questions in the workbook ha
ving to do with whether or not I have children. What does he think of me? Am I a criminal in his eyes?

  Oh, for the language to explain myself to him. But what would I say?

  Instead, we do a module about the weather. I tell him no one in the United States really talks like his workbook. No one says, “Today precipitation exceeds the norm.” They say, I tell him, “It’s raining cats and dogs.” He smiles, trying to picture this and I picture it with him: a torrent of pets, meowing and yelping midair, paws out to brace themselves before hitting the ground.

  103

  mia

  Today is my 212th day with my birth family. I’ve kept track. It’s my new life and I keep track of how long I am living it.

  Last night, like we always do, we sat at the wooden kitchen table that Grant made. It’s a single piece of redwood; he is proud that it’s all one piece, instead of pieces that had to be fit together. Once he pointed out to me discoloration at its side, near the bevel, proud of that, too, because a flaw is proof that something is real.

  The table is covered every night by a cloth that protects it, but also obscures its beauty. The cloth is usually vintage and floral, from Marilyn’s collection of them from her mother, and it’s Chloe’s job to put it on every night, and sometimes, as roses or peonies or carnations come fluttering down on that table, I admire the quality of the cloth and the light that comes through it from the big kitchen window. It’s western light, which is a shade of light very different than you see back East. The light here at five o’clock is strong yellow, even in the fall, when light goes away in Vermont and is almost always too weak in Manhattan to exert itself beyond the front room of our apartment.

  Our apartment in Manhattan. I’ve received several calls from the managing agent asking about our plans for it, but I haven’t called back. I don’t know what to say.