by Jeff Gammage
But that doesn’t explain the staff’s skill in creating cohesive families.
Jin Yu’s home province of Hunan is but one of China’s thirty-four provinces, autonomous regions, and administrative zones. An estimated ninety-some orphanages operate in Hunan, though probably fewer than one-third participate in international adoption. Among those orphanages that participate, only a percentage of children are adopted. Among those children who are adopted, only some go to the same country. Among those who go to the same country, only a few go at the same time.
And among those few going to the same country at the same time, only one would come to me.
From the outside, the bureaucracy of Chinese adoption can seem a perfect mechanism of arbitrariness. Yet this bureaucratized, seemingly random procedure produced a perfect match. The odds against Jin Yu coming to us were infinite. Yet somehow she found her way to Christine and me, weaving her way across time and distance.
Many adoptive parents credit the red thread, a fable repeated so often that it has almost become an axiom in the community. It’s the belief that when a baby is born, invisible red threads stretch out to connect the child to everyone who will be important in her life, be they down the block or around the world. The thread can bend and twist but never break. It’s a belief in destiny, in foreknown fate, in providence. Many parents believe the match between them and their child was meant to be, predetermined by the full and infinite power of the universe or even by the hand of God himself.
Me, I don’t believe in invisible red threads.
And actually, in China, the red thread is less a legend than a custom. The tying together of marriage goblets with a single red cord is a means of symbolically binding a wife to her husband. Which is not exactly a concept I want to encourage. Moreover, if God, or a god, is floating in His heaven, I would hope that He spends His time worrying about the big problems—war, famine, disease—and not about me.
I think the matching process is not as mystical as it might appear.
I think the nannies and administrators at the orphanages pay closer attention to their charges than people in America might imagine. That these staffers come to know the moods and behaviors of the girls they tend, particularly those who end up spending significant parts of their early lives in an institution, as did my Jin Yu. I believe the orphanage staffs effectively communicate that information to the China Center of Adoption Affairs. And that the people at the CCAA are really good at their jobs.
I think the workers there, having matched a thousand children with a thousand sets of parents, based strictly on photos and short biographies, get a feel for which child might fit best in which household, that they become adept at building families out of paper and pictures.
They did it for me.
Among the people I long to meet is the woman or man who matched me with my daughter, because I want to tell them of the importance of their work, of the difference they made in my life, in the lives of thousands of others. Because I want to tell them of all I learned in China. How, in China, I learned it’s okay to be a foreigner. That people who start out as strangers can become friends.
I learned it’s good to have faith—in people, in governments, in gods unknown and unseen. That faith doesn’t have to be blind or even total. That it’s okay to ask. For medical help. For permission to keep your pocketknife. For heaven’s fortune.
In China, I learned you can find yourself in debt to people you have never even met.
8 HOME
JIN YU is unhappy with her father.
I can tell by her expression. Her eyebrows are pinched, her lips pressed forward in a pout.
She is sitting in her high chair, mostly done with breakfast, toying with a sippy cup that’s half full of warm strawberry Nesquik. She doesn’t like the chocolate flavor. And she refuses to drink her milk plain. Or cold. Her Nesquik has been heated in the microwave oven for precisely forty-five seconds, which is exactly how she likes it. But this morning she wants something else, something different.
“What?” I ask. “What is it?”
“Ah Dai,” she says.
“What? I don’t speak Chinese, sweetie.”
Jin Yu stares at me across the table, like an exasperated judge looking down at a lawyer. I lean forward, moving my face closer to hers, and Jin Yu repeats herself, carefully enunciating each word, as if she were speaking to a child.
“Ah. Dai.”
Jin Yu exploring her new home in Pennsylvania
I still don’t get it.
“I’m sorry, baby, Daddy doesn’t know what you’re saying.”
Jin Yu looks away, disgusted, as if she’s wondering, How in the world did I get stuck with this dummy?
Maybe she’s right. Maybe I am a dummy. Definitely I’m a novice, new to this idea of being a parent, to this job of being a father.
We are home. Back in the country. Back in our house.
Christine and I are elated, madly, giddily in love with our new daughter, still not quite believing she is ours. We are exhausted, our internal clocks unwound, our bodies unsure whether it’s time to get up or go to bed. We are groggily, foggily trying to comprehend the external experience of traveling in China, and connect that to the transforming internal passage of becoming parents.
Christine sits to Jin Yu’s right, a bagel on her plate. My wife looks different. Tired, for sure. Perhaps with a couple more gray hairs than when we left this house for China, though those are mostly hidden within her tresses of brown and gold. She looks—it’s hard to describe. Not satisfied. Not exactly fulfilled. She looks somehow whole. She looks finally, unexpectedly content. As if the addition of a second being has somehow converted her into a complete entity of one.
She could live this day forever, the three of us together, safe and content.
Looking at my daughter, watching her play with her sippy cup, I feel like I have pulled off the biggest caper of my life. Against all logic and likelihood, I have flown into China, convinced a totalitarian government that I am capable of raising a child, and gotten the three of us out of the country and home in one piece.
Twirls of pink crepe paper hang from the dining room chandelier next to dangling cardboard cutouts of grinning Powerpuff Girls, the trimmings the handiwork of friends who held our house key. The foyer is draped floor to ceiling in ribbons and streamers and Chinese lanterns, topped by a banner that says, WELCOME HOME. Outside the front door is a pink paper rocking horse, and just beyond that, stuck in a cement planter, is a sturdy plastic sign that announces, IT’S A GIRL!
It’s 9:00 A.M., the start of Jin Yu’s third day in America. Copies of today’s Philadelphia Inquirer and New York Times lie in the driveway. The morning rush hour has come and gone without us. On the tracks behind our house, a SEPTA commuter train rolls toward the Elkins Park station, its rumble drowning the throaty calls of song-birds.
Jin Yu seems small in her high chair, her head not reaching the top of the seat. Her insistence on feeding herself has left a streak of strawberry yogurt across her eyebrow and a smudge on her nose. A handful of Cheerios is scattered across her tray. She picks at the oats, finally placing one between her lips, then pushing it out with her tongue. The Cheerio stays stuck to her upper lip.
“Sorry, Jin Yu,” I say. “This isn’t the White Swan breakfast buffet.”
She frowns, as if to agree, It sure isn’t.
Given the pace and movement of our time together, Jin Yu must think all we do is fly from hotel to hotel, each one grander than the next. But here, in this newest destination, the stacks of steaming waffles, pitchers of fresh juice, and slices of fried ham have all disappeared. There are no maids to pick up after us, and each day is not a whirl of outings and activities.
Still, she seems happy. Or at least, happy enough, given the revolution in her world.
Jin Yu tests the operation of her voice box, emitting a high-pitched coo. Then she puts her lips together and blows, producing the high-rev sound of an airplane readying for takeoff.
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“Ma-ma-ma-ma,” Jin Yu says, offering a big smile to the video camera.
She is at once small and gigantic, weak and dominant. Her presence fills the house. Three weeks ago, before her arrival, I’d have spent this morning sprawled on the couch, folding the sports page, concerned only with whether the Phillies won or lost and if there might be a last cup of coffee in the carafe. I’d be thinking about checking the movie listings for matinees and waging an internal debate over whether to put off mowing the lawn for another week.
No more.
Jin Yu dictates the day’s agenda, her welfare—whether she needs a nap or a snack or a hug—the consuming focus of the minute and the hour.
Watching her, I realize I know something new and different, something I didn’t know the last time I sat in this seat: I know what it’s like to love a child. I know what it means to place the happiness of a little girl far above your own. It’s liberating, in a way. I don’t have to worry about myself anymore. What happens with me is unimportant. I only have to worry about her.
At the same time, it’s disorienting to discover that the thing I never wanted—a child—is actually what makes me happiest. That realization makes me question all the others. Maybe I was wrong about those too. Maybe I really do like France. Or cauliflower. Or even the Mets.
Jin Yu is finished eating. Even after such a short time together, I know when she’s ready to get down from her seat. She makes no sound or announcement, doesn’t shake her head at a last, proffered spoonful, or turn her body away. Instead she raises her arms over her head, palms forward, like a movie bad guy cornered by the cops.
Jin Yu pauses there, in stick-’em-up repose. I can picture children sitting on either side of her, a vision of a dozen girls in a row at the Xiangtan orphanage, waiting for the nannies to wash their hands.
I grab a damp paper towel from the table, then wipe Jin Yu’s hands and face. I slide her tray out of its locks, put it down, and unsnap the clasps of her safety harness. Our dog, an elderly chocolate Lab, watches attentively, hoping a stray Cheerio may fall. Jin Yu has shown no fear of Mersey, though the dog is three times her size. And Mersey has quickly ascertained that it’s wise to stay close to this new, two-footed arrival, as she will freely distribute her leftovers. Jin Yu would like to get to know the cats—Bela, Binkey, and Tuxedo—but they are far more circumspect. When Jin Yu steps toward them they vanish, and when they move from one place to another they travel up high, from bookcase to table to hutch.
The only animals Jin Yu doesn’t seem to like belong to the pack that has invaded our house during our absence: dust bunnies. As I lift Jin Yu down from her high chair, she spots one lurking in a dining room corner. She squats down and points at it, shouting, “Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!”
“It’s just a dust bunny, Jin Yu,” I say, a little defensive.
She turns her gaze and looks at me, as if to say, It sure is. A big one.
Then she totters off.
THE WAITING room is decorated in muted tones of blue, its tables stacked not with months-old magazines but with plastic tow trucks and wooden puzzles.
We made an appointment before we left for China, wanting to be sure that our daughter would be seen quickly if she came home sick. We’ve been seated only a few minutes when a nurse opens the door at the head of a long hallway.
“Gammage?” she says.
We’re the only ones here.
She leads us to an examination room. A minute later, Dr. Sude knocks twice and walks in.
In the Philadelphia area, Leslie Sude is one of a very few go-to docs for adopted Chinese children and their parents. She is young and smart, knowledgeable not just about the broad issues of international adoption but also its minutiae, of the specific illnesses that can attach to children who live in China’s orphanages. Most encouraging to parents, Dr. Sude has a Chinese daughter of her own, so she has been there and done that, knows from personal experience what the girls—and their mothers and fathers—are facing.
It’s the second time we’ve seen her. The first time we were childless. Christine and I came here shortly before our departure to China to learn what medical supplies we should carry, and how to administer certain medicines if our child became ill.
“Hi, everybody,” Dr. Sude says warmly, then turns to our daughter. “Hello, Jin Yu.”
Jin Yu, sitting on her mom’s lap, doesn’t answer. I’m not surprised. Faced with new people or situations, her first reaction is to go silent and still, moving halfway into the void that enveloped her in China. And so far in this country, new people and new situations are pretty much all she’s had.
Dr. Sude asks about our trip, our jet lag, our adjustment as a family. After three minutes of gathering background information, she looks to Jin Yu, appraising my daughter not with the eyes of a mother but with those of a scientist.
Without taking her eyes off my child, she asks, “What do you know about Jin Yu’s health?”
The answer is the same as it was when our daughter was nudged forward and into our arms: Nothing. Nothing really.
Nothing beyond a few checked boxes on an orphanage form, telling us that in health she was “normal” and in personality “obstinate sometimes.” That she could put blocks into a cup, take them out, and bang two of them together. That she liked toys and music, as if other children did not. That at night she slept deeply, and during the day she could be restless. That she preferred the company of her caretakers to that of the other children.
The absence of information about Jin Yu’s health is more than an intellectual loss, more than a reminder of all she had to give up to come here. It’s a concrete loss, with potentially lasting repercussions. I wonder if Jin Yu is predisposed to diabetes or high blood pressure, or even to cancer or Alzheimer’s disease. Knowing her family background would give her—and us—some sense of what to expect.
When I was a boy, my grandmother had to have her gallbladder removed. One of her sons eventually underwent the same surgery, as did one of her daughters, my mother. Knowing that, I expect that someday it will be my turn. Jin Yu won’t have that advantage, that early-warning system of family history.
Christine lifts Jin Yu up and onto the examining table. Dr. Sude looks in our daughter’s ears, in her eyes, down her throat, listens to her heart through a stethoscope. Jin Yu offers neither resistance nor encouragement, enduring this poking and prodding with stoicism, as if it were happening to somebody else. Dr. Sude says that once the physical exam is complete, she’ll need to take a sample of Jin Yu’s blood, to mark the levels as a baseline and to recheck the results of tests done in China.
Watching her examine my child, I wonder if Dr. Sude will discover the scar on Jin Yu’s head and what she will make of it if she does. I don’t want to prejudice her examination by mentioning it at the start.
Yet I feel as if I’m keeping some terrible secret, saving the worst for last. I believe my daughter is healthy. But still I hope that here, back on the Western side of the globe, in the office of an expert American doctor, I can get an explanation of what is likely to have happened to her.
Christine and I wait for our turn to speak, for the moment when the doctor, having concluded her examination, will turn to us and say, “Do you have any questions?” And we will say, “Yes. Yes we do.”
Dr. Sude runs Jin Yu through a series of developmental tests, all triangles and blocks and squares. She hands our daughter a plastic baby doll and an equally tiny bottle filled with imitation milk. Jin Yu is supposed to pick up the bottle and put it to the baby’s mouth, to reflexively offer nourishment and display a life-sustaining maternal impulse.
Our daughter ignores both doll and bottle, holding them absently. I don’t think she recognizes what they are. The doctor might as well have handed her a chess set.
I can tell that Dr. Sude is a little disconcerted. But to me, this represents another small window onto Jin Yu’s past. I figure my daughter spent all but the last few weeks of her life in an orphanage. I don’t know if she e
ver saw a doll before she arrived in America. And if she did, pretending to feed fake milk to a fake baby couldn’t have ranked high on her list of priorities.
Finally it is our turn to speak, to ask questions instead of trying to supply answers.
“There’s one thing,” I begin.
Dr. Sude listens to our tale, then turns back to Jin Yu. She parts Jin Yu’s hair with her hands. The scar is not hard to find. Dr. Sude uses her thumbs to manipulate its edges.
She frowns.
“What did they say caused it?” she asks.
We tell her—how the orphanage officials said it was nothing, a scratch, how one nanny tried to tell us it had been there from the moment Jin Yu arrived at the institution at three days of age. We explain how a Chinese doctor thought this wound could have started as a bug bite and bloomed into a ruinous infection.
I ask, Could that be right? Is that the most likely explanation?
Dr. Sude returns to the scar, taking another long look. Her fingers probe and knead the side of Jin Yu’s skull. After another minute, she steps away from our daughter and looks at Christine and me.
“Whatever it was,” she says, “it’s healed.”
The words linger for a moment.
That’s it?
She must not have understood.
I tell her our story again, repeating the details—louder, and more urgently, as if that will change the quality of the information. I tell her about our terrifying discovery of the damage to our child’s head, of our fears for Jin Yu’s life and health, our inability to get a straight answer from the people in charge.
Dr. Sude doesn’t interrupt. She lets me go on, describing and recounting and clarifying, until I have run out of words. When I finally stop talking, sure that now she will understand, Dr. Sude looks at me with an expression I take for sympathy.