The Year of the Baby (An Anna Wang novel)

by Andrea Cheng

  “That cat and Kaylee are two peas in a pod,” Grandma says. “They both like mice, they both eat very little, and they’re both stubborn.”

  Kaylee comes to me and holds up her arms until I pick her up. “There is one difference,” I say.

  “What’s that?”

  “Kaylee wants me to hold her and the cat doesn’t.”

  “I had a cat once who wouldn’t come out of the basement for a year,” Grandma says.

  “And then what?”

  “One day I found her on the sofa in the living room, lounging in the sun.” Grandma washes Kaylee’s highchair and the floor around it. “Oh, Anna, I forgot to thank you for the lovely painting you gave me. Now, was that a map of China?”

  I tell Grandma about the book Ms. Sylvester lent me with the ancient maps. “She said it might help me get ideas for my science project. So far it hasn’t, though.” “But it gave you ideas for your painting.” Grandma smiles.

  I go up to my room. I don’t feel like doing my homework, so I start looking through a box of old pictures inside my desk. There is one of our family sitting on the sofa the day after Ken was born. He’s a little lump in Mom’s arms, and I’m trying to touch his bald head. Then there’s one of me when I’m about two, holding the hose and watering the grass. I start pinning them on the bulletin board like a collage. We don’t have any pictures of Kaylee when she was born, but we have the one Dad took on the day they left the hotel. Kaylee is holding the blanket in one hand and Mom’s hand in the other. I put that picture in the middle of the collage.

  I read through my list of random observations for the science fair project. I can’t think of anything else to add. I doodle on the paper, making curly designs around the border. Maow Maow jumps onto my desk and sits right on top of the ancient maps book. “Move,” I say, pulling the book out from underneath her. She settles back in the spot where the book was.

  Some of the old maps look nothing like the real thing. One has California like an island, and another one has India next to Africa. I wonder how they could even begin to figure stuff out without satellites and airplanes. Maybe they just guessed. That’s what a hypothesis is. You observe something, you guess about the reasons, and then you test it to see if it’s true. I hear Grandma downstairs washing dishes and singing to Kaylee.

  Suddenly I know what our experiment could be.

  I call Camille, and in fifteen minutes, she is at the front door.

  Eighteen

  Bananas and Hamburgers

  Problem: I write on the paper. Kaylee needs to gain weight.

  Observation: Kaylee does not want to eat enough. She throws food onto the floor. She spits food out after she chews it.

  Hypothesis: She eats more if we sing songs while she eats.

  Materials: Kaylee and her food.

  Camille reads the paper silently. Then her whole face turns into a smile. “It’s so real,” she says. “I mean, it’s not just a science fair project. How’d you think of that?”

  “It was your idea,” I say.

  “It was my idea to sing songs to your sister, but not for a science project.”

  “That was my part,” I say, grabbing her hand.

  Camille thinks we should test different songs. “Maybe Kaylee likes Chinese songs better than English ones.”

  “We could try two English songs and two Chinese songs,” I suggest.

  “But how are we going to know which ones she likes better?”

  “We can count how many slices of banana she eats.”

  “Maybe we should try other food too,” Camille says.

  “I think bananas are enough. Or it’ll get too complicated.”

  Camille considers. “I don’t think so. I mean, she might get tired of bananas and start hating them.”

  I like the way Camille says what she thinks, even if other people don’t agree. “We could cut up little pieces of my mom’s Chinese hamburgers. They’re so good, nobody could ever get tired of them.”

  “This science fair is making me hungry,” Camille says.

  We go down to the kitchen and Grandma steams us bean paste bao zi for a snack.

  “Let’s call Laura,” I say. “She loves bao zi.”

  “Mind reader,” Laura says when she hears my voice on the phone. “I was about to come over anyway.”

  Laura puts her jacket on the chair and takes a deep breath. “Your house always smells so good.”

  “Especially when my grandma is here,” I say.

  Grandma gives us small plates with two bao zi each. I take the first bite. “Perfect,” I say, tasting the sweetness of the hot bean paste.

  Camille tells Laura about Kaylee and our science fair idea. “Do you want to do it with us?”

  Laura finishes her first bao zi. “Allison didn’t exactly kick me out of the group, so I don’t know what to tell her.”

  Camille has her eyes closed like she does when she is thinking hard. “Just say that you can’t meet on Tuesdays because you’re at your dad’s, and their project is almost done.”

  Laura nods. “That’s the truth. I think they almost finished the whole thing already.” She looks at my notebook, open on the table, and reads our notes. “This is really cool. I mean, it’s not just for the science fair.”

  “It’s for Kaylee,” Camille says.

  “But there’s one thing,” Laura says. “How can we tell if she gained weight?”

  “We’ll just have to go with her to the doctor,” I say. “They have those baby scales that are really accurate.” “Do you think your mom will let all of us go?” Laura asks.

  I ask Grandma.

  “If it’s for the science fair,” she says, “I don’t think Mom will mind.”

  After Kaylee’s nap, we sit her in her highchair and slice a banana. Then we stand around her and sing the gumdrops song.

  Kaylee finishes one slice. “Ah aha ah aha ah,” she says.

  We sing the song again, and she eats two more slices. We want to see how much she’ll eat with the Chinese fruit song, but she is reaching for me to take her out of the chair. “She’s already full,” I say, wiping her mouth and her hands.

  We go up to my room to plan out our project. “Maybe we should try one song each day,” Laura says.

  I nod. “Because when a baby’s full, they won’t eat no matter what.”

  “How about ‘Twinkle Twinkle’ for one of the English songs,” Laura says.

  “And the gumdrops song,” I say.

  Camille makes a list:

  Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

  Gumdrops

  “We can ask Teacher Zhen which would be the best Chinese songs. She has two little kids, so she probably knows,” Camille says.

  For now she writes:

  Chinese song 1

  Chinese song 2

  “So for food, we could use bananas and my mom’s Chinese hamburgers,” I say.

  Camille writes that. “I think we should try each song on more than one day.”

  “Yeah. And maybe we should have one column with no songs at all,” Laura suggests. “So we can see if the songs really do make a difference.”

  Camille adds that to the list. “Do you have a big piece of paper so we can make a graph?”

  In my closet I find a poster that I made for Earth Day last year. The back is blank, so we use that. Laura and Camille are good at measuring out the columns, making everything look very neat.

  While they work on the columns, I write the introduction:

  In China there are many baby girls to adopt because some people like boys better. They can only have one child because the population is too big. My parents wanted to give a baby a home, so they went to China to adopt Kaylee. When she got to the United States, the doctor said she was too thin and that maybe she wasn’t thriving, so we were supposed to get her to eat more. The problem was, she’s stubborn and she wouldn’t eat. Then we noticed that she liked songs and poems, so we decided to see if she would eat more if we sang songs to her. We also want t
o see if she eats more with Chinese songs or English songs.

  Laura reads what I wrote. “I like it,” she says. “But Ms. Henry said we should make everything very clear.” “I think it is clear,” I say.

  Laura takes a piece of paper and writes Observation across the top. “I think we should list our observations about Kaylee.”

  We start listing everything we can think of:

  Kaylee walks.

  She says a few words but she doesn’t really talk.

  In her three months in the U.S., she lost a half of a pound.

  She has rosy cheeks and wrinkles on her thighs.

  She has dimples on her feet and hands.

  She loves her sock mouse.

  She follows the cat.

  “She’s the cutest baby in the world,” Laura says.

  “I don’t think we can put that as an observation,” I say.

  “Why not?” Laura asks. “It’s true.”

  “But some people wouldn’t agree. I mean, you can’t measure that.”

  “It’s still my observation,” Laura says.

  Camille is considering. “How about put something cute that she does.”

  “Okay. She hugs Anna around her legs,” Laura says. “And she fights with the cat.”

  Laura writes all that down.

  “Now we have to state the hypothesis,” I say. On another piece of paper I write:

  Kaylee eats more when she isn’t thinking about eating, so we will sing her songs to distract her, two in Chinese and two in English. Then we will see if she gains weight and we will see which songs she likes best and test two foods.

  “Now we just have to wait to collect the data,” Laura says.

  Camille shuts her eyes for a minute. “I hope that when the science fair is over, Kaylee will be the healthiest baby in the world.”

  When Mom comes home from work, Grandma is holding Kaylee in the rocking chair. Kaylee looks like she’s asleep, but every time Grandma stops rocking, she opens her eyes again.

  I tell Mom about our science fair project. She sits at the kitchen table and listen to all the details. “Do you think we can go with you to Kaylee’s next checkup?” I ask.

  “All three of you?”

  I nod. “It’s part of our project.”

  “I’ll call the office to make sure. But I don’t see why not.”

  Kaylee’s head flops forward.

  Grandma stands up very slowly, carries her over to the sofa, and lays her down. Kaylee stretches but she doesn’t wake up. Then she smiles in her sleep.

  “She’s dreaming again,” I say.

  “Maybe this time she’s dreaming about banana slices,” Grandma says.

  Nineteen

  Collecting Data

  When we go to Chinese class on Saturday, we ask Teacher Zhen about Chinese children’s songs.

  “The fruit song is very popular,” she says. Camille and I already know it because we learned it in class, but she teaches us two more verses. She says she will write out the words with the pronunciation in English letters so it will be easier for Laura to remember them. Then she teaches us a Chinese song about two tigers. “That one is my son’s favorite.”

  “Maybe Kaylee heard those songs in the orphanage,” Camille says.

  “That is very likely,” Teacher Zhen says.

  Camille can’t come over on Thursdays because she has tutoring. Laura can’t come on Tuesdays because she’s at her dad’s. I thought we could start our experiment over winter break, but Camille’s family goes to visit her aunt in North Carolina and Laura goes to Michigan. We spend Christmas at home, reading and playing games.

  At her checkup last week, Kaylee’s weight was only up three tenths of a pound. According to the doctor, such a small amount is not really significant.

  “What should we do?” Mom asked again.

  The doctor kept looking at the computer instead of at Kaylee or at Mom. “Just keep working on it,” she said finally, putting the weight into Kaylee’s record.

  Finally in January, Camille and Laura come over and we really get started on the experiment. I slice up a banana and put it on Kaylee’s tray. The three of us stand around her highchair and sing the gumdrops song. Kaylee smiles and waves her arms. Then she eats three banana slices in a row.

  “That’s pretty good,” Laura says.

  “For Kaylee, it’s great,” I say.

  Camille writes down the data: January 5: gumdrops song, 3 slices.

  We do the same thing for ten straight days, using banana slices and different songs. On the days that Laura or Camille can’t come over, two of us do the experiment, and each day one of us records the results:

  January 5: Gumdrops song, 3 banana slices

  January 6: Gumdrops song, 4 banana slices

  January 7: Fruit song, 4 banana slices

  January 8: Fruit song, 4 banana slices

  January 9: Tiger song, 6 banana slices

  January 10: Tiger song, 4 banana slices

  January 11: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, 2 banana slices

  January 12: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, 3 banana slices

  January 13: No song, no banana slices

  January 14: No song, no banana slices

  Then we do the same thing with pieces of Chinese hamburgers.

  January 15: Gumdrops song, 2 pieces of hamburger

  January 16: Gumdrops song, 4 pieces of hamburger

  January 17: Fruit song, 6 pieces of hamburger

  January 18: Fruit song, 2 pieces of hamburger

  January 19: Tiger song, 6 pieces of hamburger

  January 20: Tiger song, 4 pieces of hamburger

  January 21: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, 4 pieces of hamburger

  January 22: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, 2 pieces of hamburger

  January 23: No song, 2 pieces of hamburger

  January 24: No song, no pieces of hamburger

  Then we figure out the averages for each food and each song and make a bar graph to show our results.

  “The tiger song wins,” Camille says, “with both bananas and hamburgers.”

  “And ‘no song’ loses,” I say, “with both bananas and hamburgers.”

  We put the information on a big science fair board with pictures of Kaylee. I write Kaylee on top, and then I write Wang in Chinese characters.

  Kaylee sits on the floor, watching us. Then she points to the pictures of herself. “Bao Bao,” she says.

  I kiss her cheek. “Now you’re really talking.”

  Laura picks up the marker and writes “Bao Bao” next to Wang.

  Laura’s mom calls and says it’s time for her to go home.

  “We’re almost done,” she says. “Can I stay a little longer?”

  But her mom says they have to go to her brother’s basketball game.

  “I’ll write the conclusion,” Camille says, sitting at my desk.

  I know it will take her a long time, but that’s okay. We don’t have to take our boards to school until Monday.

  I sit on the floor and play with Kaylee and the family of sock mice while Camille writes.

  When she’s done, she hands me her paper.

  When I was in first grade, I could not learn to read. My parents were worried, so they asked my grandfather to come and help. He read stories to me that I liked, and then I learned to read when I forgot about how hard it was. I thought the same thing might be true for Anna’s baby sister, Kaylee, who was adopted from China. When she doesn’t think about eating she eats more. She seems to like Chinese songs best, maybe because she heard Chinese songs in the orphanage before she was adopted by the Wang family. Her favorite song is the one about tigers. Her least favorite time to eat is when she has no songs to listen to.

  I really like the simple way that Camille writes. She doesn’t try to change anything or hide anything. “It’s great,” I say.

  Camille looks down. “I’m not very good at writing with style.”

  “But everything you write is so true.”


  “There’s one thing I left out,” she says, pushing her bangs out of her eyes. “We can’t really finish our project until we go to the doctor with Kaylee. Then we can see what the scale shows.”

  “She has an appointment tomorrow at two,” I say. “And my mom said we can all go.”

  Twenty

  A Crowd at the Doctor’s Office

  Kaylee is not as fussy in the car as she usually is. Camille makes funny faces to distract her, and Laura brings a CD with little kids’ songs on it that we play pretty loud. But in the waiting room, she starts crying, and no matter what we do, she won’t stop.

  “She’s afraid of shots,” I tell Laura and Camille.

  “I still cry when I have to get a shot,” Laura says.

  “But she’s not getting any shots today, is she?” Camille asks.

  “I don’t think so. But she doesn’t know that. Plus she hates sitting on that freezing scale.”

  “Kaylee Wang,” the receptionist calls.

  We follow Mom into the exam room. “Wow, quite a crowd today,” the nurse says. “A Girl Scout troop?”