The Year of the Baby (An Anna Wang novel)

by Andrea Cheng

  Mom is holding Kaylee again. The nurse rubs her thigh with alcohol and sticks the needle in. Kaylee screams so long, she can hardly breathe.

  “It’s okay,” I say, patting her head over and over. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.” I hold Mom’s keys in front of her face. “Look, Kaylee.” I jingle them.

  Kaylee stares for a minute.

  “If all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops,” I sing.

  Kaylee is listening.

  “Seems you have the magic,” the nurse says. He hands me the paper with the check marks. “Can you give this to the person at the front desk?”

  I help Mom pull Kaylee’s undershirt over her head. “We have to get her to eat more,” Mom says.

  “Look,” I say, touching a wrinkle on Kaylee’s thigh. “She’s not that skinny. And look here.” I point to the dimples on her feet, one for each toe.

  “You heard what the doctor said.” Mom pulls on Kaylee’s pants and hands her to me.

  “You’re just fine, baby girl,” I whisper into her cheek, which is wet with tears. I want to hurry and leave this office.

  Kaylee falls asleep in her car seat.

  “I don’t like this doctor. Why can’t we take Kaylee to my doctor?”

  “She doesn’t see babies under three anymore,” Mom says.

  “This doctor isn’t very nice.”

  “She is trying to help us,” Mom says, slowing down when she sees a yellow light.

  “I really don’t think Kaylee’s that skinny. I mean, look at her cheeks.”

  “The doctor reads the numbers on the scale,” Mom says.

  “The scale doesn’t show the wrinkles.” I look over at Kaylee. Her head is leaning against the side of the car seat. She smiles in her sleep. “I think she’s dreaming about China.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Do you think Kaylee has sisters and brothers in China?”

  “It’s possible,” Mom says.

  Thinking about Kaylee’s first family makes me feel weird. I’m Kaylee’s sister and Ken is her brother. We live at 2543 South Meadow Street in a brick house with four bedrooms. Her last name is Wang, just like ours. “What was Kaylee’s name before we got her?” I ask.

  “The man who brought her to us in the hotel called her Bao Bao. But the adoption papers just say nv hai, baby girl.”

  “No last name?”

  Mom shakes her head.

  “Was she in a box or something?”

  “I’m not sure. I know she was wrapped in a blanket.”

  Suddenly I wish we still had that blanket instead of all the new pink ones. Kaylee would like it if we wrapped her in that blanket. Maybe then she would eat more and we wouldn’t have to bring her to the doctor’s office all the time.

  Kaylee doesn’t wake up when Mom puts her in her crib.

  “I think we all need a nap,” Mom says, pushing her hair back behind her ear. She has dark shadows underneath her eyes.

  “I’m not tired,” I say.

  “Why don’t you see if Laura is home?”

  “She’s at her dad’s today.” I follow Mom into her room. No matter how many questions I ask about Kaylee, I always think of new ones. “Did you pick Kaylee off of a list of babies, or did they assign her to you?”

  Mom lies down on her bed. “When we applied to adopt a baby, the government agency assigned her to us and told us the name of her orphanage.”

  “How did you decide to name her Kaylee?”

  “Dad saw it in a baby name book. We thought it sounded so cute.”

  “You could have named her Bao Bao.”

  “That is a nickname for any baby, like Doll Baby. It is not a real name.”

  “You could have picked a Chinese name.”

  “Chinese is too hard for people to pronounce.” Mom yawns. “Kaylee is easy to say.”

  Mom closes her eyes and I tiptoe out of the room.

  Four

  Naptime

  I go into my room, sit down at my desk, and look at the homework listed in my planner. I already did the math problems and I finished Because of Winn Dixie, which I liked pretty much. The only thing left to figure out is what I’m going to do for the science fair. Ms. Henry, our science teacher, said they used to do the science fair only in sixth grade, but now they’re extending it to fifth so we can get an early start on the scientific method.

  We’re supposed to start by making observations. Then we’ll form a hypothesis, which is like a sort of prediction. We have to test our hypothesis and change it if we want. Finally we have to come up with some sort of conclusion.

  I look out the window. The sun is shining behind dark gray clouds. That’s an observation, but what would my hypothesis be? It looks like rain, but that’s an obvious prediction. Besides, what would I test?

  Our house is so quiet when Kaylee is asleep. I can’t believe it used to be like this all the time. She’s been with us for less than three months, but it seems much longer to me. I still remember the exact minute when Mom and Dad told us that we were going to adopt a baby from China. We were sitting around the table after dinner, and Dad said he had some good news. Ken and I looked at each other. Ken thought maybe we were getting a trampoline, but Dad shook his head. I thought they’d finally agreed to let us get a kitten, but that wasn’t it either. Then Mom said, “Dad and I are going to go to China.” And Dad said, “To adopt a baby.”

  He explained how they’d always wanted more children, and been reading about orphanages in China that are overflowing with baby girls. He and Mom thought they should help. Ken got real quiet, but I asked a million questions, like what her name was and when she was arriving. Dad said they didn’t have all the details yet, but our family had been approved relatively quickly.

  That night, when I couldn’t sleep, I kept trying to imagine our baby. Would she have big eyes like me or smaller ones like Ken? Would her hair be smooth and soft or sort of coarse like mine? Everyone says I look more like Dad and Ken looks more like Mom. But our new baby wouldn’t look like any of us.

  The next morning, I had run up the hill to Laura’s. “You won’t believe what my parents told us last night,” I said as soon as she opened the door.

  “Good or bad?”

  “Great!”

  “You’re going to Disney World.”

  “Better.”

  “You’re getting a trampoline.”

  I shook my head. “We’re adopting a baby girl from China!”

  Laura couldn’t believe it. “Chinese babies are the cutest in the world,” she said. “You are so lucky.” We made plans to take the baby to the playground and fix her hair in ponytails and sew her little outfits.

  Maow Maow comes in, stares at me, and jumps onto my bed. She flexes her claws in my bedspread and curls up for her afternoon nap. I could do my science fair about our cat. Observation: She flexes her claws before she goes to sleep. But what sort of a hypothesis would I come up with? I have no idea why cats do that.

  I go over to the bed and pet her soft fur. We weren’t planning to get a cat, but while Mom and Dad were in China getting Kaylee, Ms. Watkins up the street found a cat in her garage. She couldn’t keep it because her grandson is allergic. Grandma had come from California to stay with us, so she called my parents and they said that if there was absolutely nobody else who could take the cat, we could keep her for a while. Ms. Watkins brought her over, and she’s been here ever since. Grandma called her Maow Maow, which sounds like “cat” in Chinese, and it stuck.

  Maow Maow puts her head back so I can scratch underneath her chin. She purrs so loud, her whole body is shaking. I could try to find out why cats purr, but I only have Maow Maow and that wouldn’t be enough for an experiment.

  I look at all the books on my shelf. Ken used to be obsessed with dinosaurs, so we have Dinosaurs Roamed the Earth, Dinosaur Alphabet, and Prehistoric Animals. Then there are a bunch of picture books like Little Blue and Little Yellow and The Little Engine That Could. On the bottom shelf is my whole set of Laura Ingalls W
ilder. When Dad read them to me at night, I dreamed of living on the prairie and doing everything ourselves, like hanging a door on its hinges and cutting wood for the stove. But I don’t really feel like reading any of these little-kid books anymore.

  If only Kaylee would hurry and wake up. Finally I hear a whimper coming from her room. I open the door, and as soon as she sees me, she stands up in her crib and holds out her arms. “Hi, Bao Bao,” I say. I pick up my sister and smell her baby smell. She rubs her eyes with her fists the way she always does when she’s sleepy. Then she opens her mouth and puts it on my cheek.

  “Was that a kiss?” I ask.

  Five

  Worrying

  When Ken comes home from Alan’s, he says he wants pizza for dinner, not stir-fried chicken and green pepper with rice.

  “We will have pizza another day,” Mom says.

  “Alan’s allowed to eat whatever he wants for dinner,” Ken says, pushing back his plate.

  I glare at Ken to try to get him to stop complaining. Mom has enough to worry about with Kaylee not eating.

  “Anyway, I’m not hungry,” he says.

  Kaylee keeps pointing to things on the table, but when we give them to her, she either bats them away or mashes them on her tray.

  “She’s still eating some,” Dad says.

  “Not enough,” Mom says.

  “We can’t force her.” Dad picks up a piece of chicken up off the floor and puts it into his napkin.

  I don’t really like chicken and green pepper either, but I eat everything on my plate.

  After dinner, I help Mom give Kaylee her bath. While Mom goes to get Kaylee’s towel and soap, I get her undressed. “Boo,” I say when I pull off her shirt.

  Kaylee stares at my face.

  I cover my face with her shirt. “Boo,” I say again.

  Kaylee pulls at the shirt.

  Mom runs the water, but when we put Kaylee into the tub, she starts crying.

  “It’s just water,” I say, dripping some onto her stomach.

  She reaches for me.

  “Wait. You just got in.” I wind up a plastic goldfish that flaps its tail and propels itself through the water.

  “Look, Bao Bao.”

  Kaylee watches the fish.

  “Look, I caught a fish,” I say, holding the goldfish, which is still flapping.

  Meanwhile, Mom rubs soap all over Kaylee and wets her hair. “Anna, put a little shampoo into my hand,” she says.

  I squeeze some out and Mom starts lathering Kaylee’s hair. A little water drips into her eyes and she whimpers, but when I wind up the goldfish, she forgets all about it.

  “Did I like baths when I was a baby?” I ask.

  “You liked water from the minute you were born,” Mom says. “But Ken didn’t, remember? Unless I gave you two a bath together. Then he was okay.”

  I can’t remember Ken being that little, but I do remember that he threw a fit every time we had to go to swimming lessons. I had to bribe him with promises to make paper airplanes for him when we got home just to get him into the car. I hear his voice downstairs, arguing with Dad.

  “Ken is spoiled,” I say.

  “He was used to being the youngest,” Mom says. I squeeze more shampoo into her hand and she lathers Kaylee’s hair a second time. “It’s not easy to be in the middle all of a sudden.”

  It’s not easy to be the oldest either, I think. Before we got Kaylee, Mom said we would repaint my room and change the wallpaper border, but now there’s no time.

  “I was in the middle,” Mom says. “My older brothers bossed me a lot. And my youngest sister was the spoiled one. I think the middle is the hardest.”

  “The oldest one is supposed to be perfect all the time,” I say, thinking about the way I cleaned my plate at dinner while Ken whined about wanting pizza. “And the oldest one has to take care of the rest of the kids.”

  Mom rinses Kaylee’s hair. She looks worried, but she doesn’t cry. “You can be the boss,” Mom says. “Ken can’t.”

  “Ken only listens when he feels like it.”

  That’s how my brother has always been. He does what I tell him to when he wants to, but when he doesn’t, he ignores me. Like yesterday, when I told him not to leave his socks all over the place and he walked right past them. And today, when I asked him to take Kaylee’s smelly diaper out to the trash, he held his nose and ran outside, so of course I had to do it.

  I wind the goldfish up again. “Still, the oldest one has more privileges,” Mom says. “I used to be jealous because my older brothers were allowed to go out with their friends by themselves, but I had to stay at home.”

  Kaylee reaches for the fish.

  “You’ll see when you are older,” Mom says. “You will be allowed to do things before Ken or Kaylee. Anyway, you are all three lucky not to be the only child. Your cousins in China have no brothers or sisters.”

  We went to China once when I was little, so I met Mom’s family, but the only one I really remember is Wai Po. I know that each of Mom’s siblings has one child because now that’s all you’re allowed to have in China. Even if Ken is spoiled, it would be boring to be the only kid in the family.

  Mom takes Kaylee out of the water and wraps her in the towel. Then we lay her on Mom and Dad’s bed to get her pajamas on. I pick up one of Mom’s nursing magazines that’s on the nightstand. The first article is about breastfeeding.

  I skim the first paragraph. “It says you should breastfeed for a year.”

  “Breast milk is very nutritious,” Mom says.

  “Was Kaylee breastfed?”

  “We don’t know.” Mom is rubbing Kaylee’s skin with baby lotion and she is trying to grab the bottle.

  “We can call the orphanage and ask.”

  “Ask what?”

  “If they have any more information about her.”

  “How can they find out?” Mom says. “A baby wrapped in a blanket ... there is nothing to find out.”

  Mom puts Kaylee into her pajamas and I fasten the snaps down the front. She tries to grab my hands.

  “Maybe the nurse weighed her wrong,” I say.

  “Doctors’ scales are very accurate,” Mom says.

  “Maybe we should just stop worrying about it,” I say.

  Mom shakes her head. “No, Anna.” The lines in Mom’s forehead seem to be there all the time now. “Stop worrying and our baby will not eat.”

  Six

  November Storm

  Mom is holding Kaylee on her lap and reading her Goodnight Moon. Kaylee’s eyes close for a minute, but as soon as Mom stops reading, she opens them again. Mom is getting so tired that she is almost asleep herself.

  “I can read to her,” I say, sitting in the rocking chair. Mom hands Kaylee to me and I smell the baby shampoo in her hair as she leans back against my chest. I open the book. “In the great green room there was a telephone and a red balloon.” I turn the page. “And a picture of the cow jumping over the moon.” Finally, when I get to “Goodnight nobody” and “goodnight mush,” Kaylee’s head flops down and she is asleep.

  I wish I could just sit with her on my lap all night, but I know I would get too sleepy. I carry her over to the crib, lay her on the mattress, cover her with her pink blanket, and tiptoe out of the room.

  I sit down at my desk and rummage around in the top desk drawer. There is my old drawstring bag from last year with a few old acorns inside, and a couple of markers and pencils. I close the drawer and look around my room. For my sixth birthday, Mom and Dad surprised me with the balloon wallpaper border. I loved to count the balloons as I fell asleep at night, but now it looks so babyish. And I’d like to paint the walls a pale green instead of this baby blue. Mom has every other weekend off from her nursing job at University Hospital, but she’s exhausted by the time Kaylee’s asleep. Dad has no time at all between his job and his night classes.

  At least I can change my bulletin board. Last year, I covered it with pictures of kittens, but now that I have a real c
at, I want something else. I take off all the old pictures.

  I leave the bulletin board empty and get into bed.

  The heater is hissing and I can hear the wind blowing the mulberry tree outside my window. Maybe I should read some, but Mom and Dad don’t like me to stay up late. I close my eyes and see swirls of colors. I wonder if everyone sees colors like that behind their eyelids, or if some people see only black. I could do my science project about that. Observation: Some people see swirls of colors when their eyes are closed. But what would my hypothesis be?

  A flash of lightning fills my room. If I were blind I couldn’t see the light but I would still hear the thunder. Weather interests me, so I could do my science project about storms. But that’s the kind of thing that needs all sorts of instruments, and Ms. Henry said we should do something that we can actually show. I turn onto my stomach and press my face into the pillow. It’s strange to have a thunderstorm in November. Maybe Kaylee is scared all alone in her crib. I wish she’d snuggle here with me. We could make a tent out of the blanket with a little flap to peek out into the dark.

  In the middle of the night, the thunder wakes Kaylee up. Mom and Dad take turns walking back and forth with her in the hallway. Dad sings the gumdrops song.

  “If all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops

  Oh, how glad I’d be.

  I’d sit outside with my mouth open wide

  Ah aha ah aha ah aha ah —”

  Then I hear something—Kaylee is trying to repeat Ah aha ah, but it sounds more like Ahhhhhhh.

  I go into the hallway. “Ah aha ah aha ah aha ah,” I say.

  “Ah ha,” she repeats.