“Sometimes I wonder how my life would’ve been different if I’d stayed there,” she says. “I’ve never felt like I belonged here, you know?”
“Is that why you want to meet your birth mother?” the voice off camera asks.
Paula nods.
Back to the Vietnamese mother, her face dry and her jaw set.
It’s time for my daughter to come home, the subtitles read. It’s time for her to come home and take care of her mother. It’s been so long since she’s been where she belongs.
Mindy rests her head on my shoulder and takes Linda’s hand.
I put my arm around her.
Back to Paula, sitting on her plush couch.
“I don’t know what to expect,” she says. “I’m kind of scared, really.”
“Why?” the interviewer asks.
“I don’t know.” She plasters that smile back on her face. “It could be good or bad. I won’t know until I get there. It’s scary.”
“Do you have anyone who can make the trip with you?” asks the interviewer.
Paula shakes her head.
That’s when she starts to cry.
“I’m sorry,” she says, hiding her eyes behind her hand. “Can y’all stop for a second?”
Mindy presses the palm of her hand into the center of her chest.
Mindy’s on the porch, sharing the bench with the scarecrow. I bring her a warmup on her tea. She thanks me and I lean back against the railing.
Paula’s story didn’t end well.
That’s not to say there weren’t good moments, hopeful moments. Boy, when Paula hugged her birth mother for the first time it unraveled me, and I was glad Linda had a box of tissues at the ready.
I would have cried through my hanky, I’m sure of it.
The woman held her long-lost daughter so tight, not wanting to let go even when Paula tried pulling away.
It was the pulling away that might have been a little clue as to how it would all go down.
And how it went down was fast and devastating.
“They keep expecting me to be this Chau,” Paula said, trying to form her mouth around the word. “I can’t even say the name of the little girl they want me to be.”
Three days after she landed in Vietnam, Paula found that she regretted it.
“I never should have come here,” Paula cried before pulling the microphone off her top.
She left on the next available flight, promising to never look back.
“I wish I hadn’t watched that,” Mindy says.
I nod in answer because I have no idea what to say.
“Maybe it’s better if I don’t try to find her.” She looks into her cup, the tea bag floating at the top of the water. “My life is really good. Maybe I should just be content with how it is.”
The space between my eyebrows tenses, and I think about the scenes from Vietnam. Paula’s birth family didn’t have a whole lot by way of material things and admitted to struggling to get by.
Even in our leanest years, Linda and I never knew poverty. We were always able to pay our bills on time.
It’s tempting to think that Mindy wouldn’t have had as good a life if she’d stayed with her birth mom. My ego wants to believe it’s true.
My heart, though, suspects it isn’t.
Having all you need and most of what you want does not a good life make. There’s a lot more to it.
“What do you think I should do?” Mindy asks before lifting the cup of tea to her lips.
I sigh, sorting my thoughts—which are coming at me fast—hoping to offer the very thing my daughter needs to hear.
“Well, if I went with my gut, I’d tell you to do the safe thing,” I say.
“Which is?”
“Not to look for her.” I rub my jaw, feeling two days of stubble poking out from my skin. “It’s a risk. Right? ’Cause you don’t know how it will go. You can’t predict it.”
“Yeah.”
“But my gut’s been wrong more than a couple of times.” I let my arms drop to my sides. “And I think it’s wrong today.”
She takes another sip of her tea, eyebrows flinching as she swallows.
“Honey, that Paula has a different story than you do,” I say. “For most of her life, she didn’t have anybody, not really. So when things got hard, she was on her own to deal with it.”
“I don’t think she knew how to be loved.” The corners of her mouth turn down. “It makes me sad for her and it makes me sad for her birth family.”
“Can you imagine living like that?”
Mindy shakes her head and wipes a piece of stray hay off the bench beside her.
“Let’s not quit yet,” I say. “All right?”
Linda peeks out the window behind Mindy’s head, catching my eye. She puts her thumb up with a questioning look on her face.
I give her a slight nod.
Yeah. We’re going to be okay.
CHAPTER
Twenty-Six
Linda, 1975
Noon came before we were ready for it, and Sonny’s ride home from school pulled into the driveway shortly after. I sent Bruce out to offer our thanks and collect whatever overnight stuff Sonny had shoved into her bag.
I just knew that if I’d gone out there I would have been stuck talking to Amelia’s mom and probably would have ended up having to invite her in to meet Minh when what I really wanted was a quiet afternoon to watch my two daughters become acquainted.
Well, perhaps quiet wasn’t the word for any afternoon spent with Sonny. Still, I wanted some time for just the four of us to get used to being a family.
Sonny, true to form, came tearing into the house, screen door slamming behind her.
“Where is she?” she asked, dropping her backpack on the floor.
“Over here,” I said, getting on my knees and reaching for Sonny. “Be gentle with her, okay?”
“Why?”
“Because this is all new and very confusing for her.”
Sonny did not approach her new sister gently. She came barreling in like a Mack truck, rushing forward and throwing her arms around Minh’s neck.
“Hi, Mindy,” she yelled with all the voice she had.
“It’s Minh, remember?” I said.
“She likes being called Mindy,” Sonny said, letting go. “Don’t you?”
Minh nodded, her eyes the biggest I’d seen them yet. The poor thing. She must not have known what to make of Sonny.
“Is she wearing my overalls?” Sonny asked, eyes boring into me with every bit of her kindergarten fierceness.
“Yes. They’re too small for you, don’t you remember?” I lifted my eyebrows. “Besides, you’re going to need to learn how to share.”
“For the rest of my life?” Her face went blank.
“Or until you leave for college.”
Sonny tilted her head back and sighed.
Minh took a step away from her.
“How’s it going?” Bruce asked when he came in through the front door.
I nodded in the direction of Sonny as she moaned and groaned about how it would be forever before she could move away to college and Minh stood by and watched, as if she’d never, ever seen anything like this creature before her.
“About how I expected,” he said.
Sonny talked Minh’s ear off all through lunch, and I had to remind her at least a dozen times to chew and swallow before yammering on. Minh, on the other hand, didn’t make a peep as she tried to navigate using a fork on her macaroni and cheese.
“Maybe a spoon would be easier?” I asked, getting up for one.
“Mindy, do you have forks where you’re from?” Sonny asked around a wad of pasta.
“For Pete’s sake, Sonny,” I said. “Stop talking with food in your mouth.”
I returned to the table with the spoon, feeling lousy for speaking harshly to Sonny and a little unsure of how to make it right.
But when Sonny swallowed her food and started right back, jabbering on again, I re
alized she remained unfazed by my tone of voice.
“Mindy, we have a sandbox in the backyard,” she said. “We can play in it. I only have one shovel, but I’ll let you use it first. Okay, Mindy?”
Minh didn’t react. She used the spoon to heave a big bite of macaroni into her mouth.
“Why doesn’t Mindy talk to me?” Sonny asked Bruce.
“Maybe because you keep calling her Mindy,” he answered. “Her name’s Minh.”
“And she doesn’t speak English yet,” I said. “She’ll need to learn.”
“It’s going to take forever, isn’t it?” Sonny slumped in her seat and stabbed a green bean with her fork, frowning at it.
“It’ll take a while.” I motioned with my hand to let her know she should sit up straight. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Uncle Chris told me how to say hi in Vietnam,” Sonny said. “Chào.”
I was certain her pronunciation was off—it sounded more like she said “chow” than anything. Still, Minh sat up straighter, her eyes becoming more alert. She looked at Sonny and swallowed before letting words fly, a hundred miles per hour, out of her mouth. Her tiny voice was high pitched and moved along like a song. The expression on her face as she spoke nearly broke my heart.
It was like a crack splintered its way through the dam and it finally shattered.
Then, she said one word over and over, her mouth turned down and her eyes pleading.
“Mà, mà, mà.”
It sounded almost like “may.”
It didn’t take a genius to know that she was asking for her mother.
Not me. Her first mother.
I thought in my mind, Her real mother. It stung.
My feelings weren’t the ones I needed to worry about in that moment, though. With a mighty shove, I moved them out of the way and tried to focus on Minh. I knelt beside her and put my hands on her upper arms.
“Minh,” I whispered. “Minh. It’s all right, honey.”
I’d never in my life seen a child so small with such a broken heart.
After getting the girls in bed that night, Bruce and I looked in the manila envelope the adoption agency left with us. We pulled the papers out, spreading them across the kitchen table.
On one was the information for the adoption agency—phone numbers and contact names and such. Another had a list of the immunizations she’d gotten when she arrived in California and when her boosters would come due. I moved my finger on the page, relieved that she was mostly up to date on the big ones at least.
Bruce held up a list of Vietnamese words and phrases, their pronunciations, and translations, and I could have just kicked myself for not having found it sooner.
“This might help a little,” he said, handing it to me.
“Oh, thank goodness,” I said.
I turned and put that page on the fridge using a handful of daisy magnets. We sounded a few of the words out according to the transliteration. We tried out the words for hungry and tired, sick and sad. Mother, father, sister, brother. I’m sorry. I love you. I’m okay.
“Ah, but look at this.” Bruce pointed to a separate sheet of paper, the sentence all in uppercase letters.
PLEASE SPEAK ENGLISH TO YOUR CHILD AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE! IT IS THE ONLY WAY HE WILL LEARN!
“Well, all right,” I said, tapping the vocabulary list. “But we’ll keep this here for now. Just in case.”
We sorted through the rest of the papers, pulling out what we could toss and holding on to what looked important.
“Do we have any ice cream?” Bruce asked before getting up and going to the fridge.
“I think so,” I answered, lifting my eyes from the paperwork. “Oh, look.”
I nodded toward the doorway.
Two little girls stood there, holding hands.
They were my little girls. My daughters. My very most precious ones.
“What are you two doing up?” Bruce asked, his face lighting up with that smile of his.
“We can’t sleep,” Sonny said, charging her way into the kitchen, pulling Minh along behind her. “We’re hungry.”
“Oh, you are?” I asked, fitting the papers back into their envelope. “And what would make you not hungry?”
“Um.” Sonny made her eyes dart from one side to the other. “Maybe a little bowl of ice cream?”
“You think so?”
“Mindy likes ice cream,” Sonny said.
I met eyes with my husband, who lifted both hands and gave me his why-not face.
I leaned forward, closer to Sonny. “Only because today is very special.”
Bruce wasn’t stingy with the scoops and I found a little jar of sprinkles in the back of the cupboard. I knew I might regret the late-night ice cream social if Sonny couldn’t fall asleep from the sugar rush or if Minh’s tummy couldn’t tolerate so much dairy.
But when Sonny looked at Minh, her jaw dropped in awe that her sneaky little plan had worked, my heart skipped a beat.
I grabbed the envelope off the table to keep it safe from any melty spills and noticed a smaller paper that we’d missed. Thinking it was just another note instructing on some particulars of food or behavior or whatnot, I turned it over.
“Oh,” I said. “Honey, look at this.”
Bruce set the dishes of ice cream in front of the girls first, forming Minh’s fingers around the handle of the spoon and helping her get a little of the vanilla into her mouth.
“That’s good, huh?” he said. “Go ahead.”
She made a tiny “mm” sound and I couldn’t help but tear up just a little bit.
I held in my hand a photograph of Minh standing against a concrete wall in white shorts and shirt, holding a sign that read “Pham-Quyen-Minh.”
The expression on her face in that picture made me want to weep. I’d never in my life seen a child so young so frightened and sad. It made me want to scoop her up and hold her close so that she’d know she was safe.
She wasn’t ready for me to do that, though. Maybe in time she’d trust me enough.
“What’s that?” Bruce asked, looking over my shoulder at the picture. “Where did you get it?”
“It was in the envelope,” I said.
“We’ll need to keep that in a safe place.” He wrapped his arms around my waist from behind, kissing my temple. “But for now, look at our girls.”
I did as he said to see the two of them enjoying their treat. Sonny, I noticed, held her spoon in her left hand, and I narrowed my eyes to watch her struggle to balance it. She wasn’t a lefty. I wondered what she was up to.
“What’s she doing?” I whispered.
“Look down a little,” he said.
Lowering my eyes I saw that, under the table, Sonny and Minh were still holding hands.
CHAPTER
Twenty-Seven
Sonny, 1988
It was Mom’s idea to invite Mike to Grammy and Grumpy’s for dinner that Friday night. Honestly, I was surprised that she brought it up, especially without asking Grammy if it was all right.
“We always have more than enough food,” Mom said. “Just call him. We can pick him up on the way there.”
“But he’s not even officially my boyfriend,” I said.
“Use the phone in my room if you want some privacy.” She went back to reading her magazine on the couch.
Going into my parents’ bedroom was like stepping back into my childhood. Everything was so totally seventies that it made my eyes hurt. My mom even had not one but two macramé plant holders hanging from the ceiling.
So gross.
I sat on Mom’s side of the bed and dialed Mike’s number, which, of course, I had memorized.
While it rang and I waited for somebody to pick up, I noticed that there was a stack of papers on the end of the bed. I picked through them to see if there was anything interesting. An old manila envelope caught my eye, “Minh” written at the top in black marker. I grabbed it just as Mrs. Huisman answered the phone.
“Hi,” I sai
d. “Is Mike there?”
“Well, no,” she said. “He’s out with a few of the guys. Can I tell him who called?”
“Oh. This is Sonny Matthews.” I dropped the envelope into my lap. “Do you happen to know when he’ll be home?”
“You know, I don’t. I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “I’ll call another time.”
When I messed with one of the metal clasps on the envelope, it broke off.
“I’m sure Michael will be happy to hear from you,” she said. “He certainly talks about you enough.”
I let my mouth drop open at that. First, he talked about me, which could only be a really, really good sign. Second, I was like so embarrassed that his mom was telling me that. Oh my gosh.
I was totally blushing.
Mrs. Huisman said she would tell Mike that I’d called, and I thanked her.
After I hung up, I threw the broken part of the metal clasp into the trash and turned to put the envelope back on the stack of papers, but then hesitated, running the tip of my finger over Mindy’s old name. Her real name.
Minh.
They’d never officially changed it to Mindy even though that’s what everybody called her. Mom told me that I refused to call her Minh from the moment I met her. That I insisted that her name was Mindy from the very start. I totally didn’t remember that.
I pulled up the remaining clasp of the envelope and looked inside.
It was mostly paperwork. Nothing interesting at all. When I went to slide everything back into place, I noticed something else in there. A picture of Mindy when she was little, holding a sign and totally not smiling for the camera.
The look in her eyes made me feel sad, so I shoved the photo into the envelope and dropped it back onto the bed.
It was blazing hot inside, so we set up a few card tables outside in the covered porch off the back of Grammy’s house. It wasn’t like they didn’t have air-conditioning. Grumpy was just too much of a penny pincher to run it until it reached ninety degrees.
“It’s only eighty-five,” he said, pointing to the thermometer on the side of his garage.
“But it’s hotter inside the house,” I said.
“When I was a kid, we were so poor we didn’t have a scrap of paper to make a fan out of,” he said.
The Nature of Small Birds Page 17