China Ghosts

by Jeff Gammage

  Anything.

  She’d give anything.

  I SEARCHED for a map of Xiangtan, and then, after finding one, searched for a street called Guangxin Alley. It wasn’t there. Either Guangxin Alley is too small and insignificant, or the map too broad and approximate.

  In my mind, I am forever trying to envision this place, this alley beyond detection.

  Sometimes, Guangxin Alley is bright and clean, a walkway that leads to a lively outdoor food market, a place where couples stroll and shop and children playfully dart between the stalls. Other times, it stands at the edge of a busy pearl market, where vendors shout out the prices of their wares. I tell myself that, as Jin Yu lay there, newly alone and perplexed by her mother’s absence, she could glimpse the translucent shimmer of the pearls, and it made her smile. Sometimes, in my mind, Guangxin Alley is dark and forlorn, a scary place, a dirty concrete path where few people venture.

  Wherever it may be, whatever it may look like, Guangxin Alley was important to this woman. That I know. She didn’t pick it at random. Not for the defining act of her life. She chose it for a reason. She ran options through her mind, adding or discounting possibilities according to her own rationale. She chose Guangxin Alley because it was close. Or because it was far. Because she knew someone who lived there or because she knew no one there at all. Perhaps it was the place where she first met the man who would become her husband. Or the spot where their love affair came to a hurtful end. Of the multitude of public places in China, of the scores or dozens within her reach, she chose this site to lay her child down.

  Again and again I take that journey with her.

  I walk beside her as she heads to the bus stop, take the seat behind for the ride to Xiangtan. I see her holding the child close, whispering prayers and promises to remember. I see her examining Jin Yu’s hands, noting for the last time, as two years later I would note for the first, the delicate fold across the center of her palm.

  I sense her fear of discovery as she walks toward the alley, her child in her arms. I see her trembling as she sets the baby on the bench, feel her legs go weak as she turns to walk away. I see the torment distorting her face, marking and changing her.

  She is devastated. She will never recover.

  From now on, whatever she does, wherever she goes, she will carry the pain and the guilt as an internal, invisible scar on her heart.

  Today, at this moment, the child she left in that faraway alley is upstairs, asleep in her bed, nestled under a down comforter and attended by enough stuffed animals to fill a forest. Jin Yu is not yet old enough to ask about the events of that day. I wonder if she dreams of it. If in her dreams she feels the splash of her mother’s tears against her cheeks. I know that day inhabits the dreams and nightmares of a woman across the sea. I wonder if she saw the newspaper ad, the lone line of type that said her baby had been found and was under the guardianship of the authorities. Perhaps a friend pointed it out.

  I wonder if somehow she knows that her baby was adopted. I wonder, does she imagine me, the way I imagine her? To her, am I a wealthy Spanish building contractor? Do I live in a mansion with a heated pool, snapping my fingers to summon servants? Am I a Canadian magazine magnate, commanding a staff of hundreds from a palatial office high within a glass skyscraper? Or are her hopes more modest? Merely that someone, somewhere, is doing what they can for her daughter?

  Before I became a father, before Jin Yu appeared, I found reassurance in the anonymity of Chinese adoption. I took comfort in the cold fact that my child’s birth mother and birth father would never be able to locate her, never even be able to try, not without endangering themselves. They would be way over there, blocked by distance and law and language, and I would be way over here, untouchable, hoarding my riches.

  Jin Yu would have one set of parents. One mother. And one father. Me.

  But now it is so plain—I was wrong. As wrong as I could be.

  Now I know that her birth parents’ physical absence has nothing to do with their ability to be present in her mind and in her heart. Now I know that this secrecy comes at high price, and worse, that it is my daughter who will be asked to pay the brunt of that cost. Now I see that this barrier will not settle questions, only raise them. That it can do nothing to help my child figure out who she is, who she hopes to be, and where she might find her place in this world.

  Now, I wish for the opposite. Now I wish that Jin Yu could meet her birth mother and her birth father, that each of them could say what they might want to say, have at least one chance in this life to ask their questions and get their answers.

  Sometimes, I can almost see this woman. I glimpse her face in my child’s expression, hear her voice when my daughter speaks. I worry that now, a little older, a little stronger, she wishes she’d made a different decision. That now, removed from the fear and fatigue, she would surrender all she owns and loves for the chance to take back that day, that moment in Guangxin Alley. I worry she lives her life in mourning.

  Today a woman I’ve never met moves through my life like a ghost, her presence as obvious as it is unseen. Sometimes, as I watch Jin Yu chase after a friend, laughing as she runs, I can sense this woman standing beside me. In the evening, when I bend to kiss Jin Yu good night, I feel her eyes upon us.

  Sometimes, in quiet moments, after Jin Yu has been put down for the night and the house is still, I wonder if I could possibly locate her in China. Maybe find a way to take out an advertisement in a Xiangtan newspaper, or in several Hunan Province papers, telling her where we are and how to contact us. I don’t know if she has money to buy a newspaper. Or if she can read. And what if I were to hit those odds, and she happened to see that ad on that page of that paper on that day? If she were to reveal herself by responding, she could be severely punished. It might be wrong for me even to tempt her.

  I don’t want to add to her trouble or her pain. She already has enough of both. I want to tell her: Your child is alive. Your child is well. Your child is loved. She is healthy and strong and smart and beautiful. She is all that anyone could want in a daughter. You would be so proud. I want to tell her: I know you suffer for the loss of your baby. That you will suffer always for her absence. I can’t change that. But you mustn’t torment yourself about your daughter’s welfare. On that you must let your heart rest. You have done your part for Jin Yu. I promise that I will do mine.

  That’s what I would say to her. Not that it matters. The reality is there is nothing I can say to this woman, nothing I can do, that would ease her burden or lessen her sorrow. She made her choice. And now she lives with it. I know that for the rest of her life she will wonder about the fate of her child. And I expect that for the rest of mine I will wonder about her.

  Jin Yu (center) among friends at the first Hunan reunion in Texas

  10 CHASING THE PAST

  THE FIRST thing that strikes you is the heat.

  Already, at mid-morning, the temperature is deep in the 80s. In a few hours it will hit 100.

  And that’s nothing.

  Two days ago it was 108, the day before that 106.

  The warmth rises off the ground in great shimmering waves, like a scene from a western movie, the humidity as close and dense as a wool jacket.

  This place is different from others. It looks different and smells different, and when the summer wind kicks the grit and sand off the ground and into your face, it tastes different too. The grass is dry and hard and sharp, the rocks a singed and dusty brown. Even the hardwood trees look parched, as if they haven’t had a drink of rain in ages.

  But then, that’s Texas for you.

  The heat leaves me panting as I hustle to catch up to the rest of the group.

  I’ve been to Texas only a few times, and to its guitar-twanging capital of Austin only once, two decades ago. I was in my twenties then, and my eagerness to explore the city’s arts and culture extended only as far as the bars and music halls of Sixth Street. Today I’m heading in the opposite direction, away from downtown
, toward a patch of pampered property on the city’s southeast edge.

  Zilker Park is often described as the Austin equivalent of New York’s Central Park, a vast collection of tended plants and sculpted waterways bordered by blocks and blocks of expensive homes. Stephen F. Austin Drive marks the northern boundary, Robert E. Lee Road the south. The park’s northeast edge is bounded by the placid waters of Town Lake, which actually isn’t a lake at all, but a narrow stretch of Texas’s Colorado River, dammed half a century ago as part of a flood control project.

  The park is named for Andrew Jackson Zilker, a transplanted Indianan who earned a fortune manufacturing a product that was as desirable a century ago as it is on this hot day: ice. Known as “Colonel” Zilker—though as near as anyone can tell he never suffered a day of military service—he started buying up the land between the Colorado River and Barton Creek in 1901, attracted to its abundance of local springs and its reliable supply of clear, clean water. The biggest of the springs fed a rock-encrusted pool, the water a constant, chilly 68 degrees. In 1917 Zilker donated Barton Springs to the city, and fifteen years later he threw in the land around it.

  Today Zilker Park covers 347 acres, roughly twice the size of Disneyland. On weekends it’s crowded with thousands of swimmers, soccer players, joggers, and cyclists. I’m headed for its showpiece—the Zilker Botanical Garden. The garden is actually a group of gardens, featuring specialized areas for herbs, cacti, and butterflies, for plants grown using the organic methods of early pioneers and for the preservation of what might be called dinosaur habitat.

  In 1992, park volunteers discovered fossilized tracks that turned out to be about 100 million years old, most likely made by a beaky-looking creature called Ornithomimus, a distant cousin to the deadly Velociraptor. Today the area around the footprints has been turned into a grassy, watery stroll, marked by limestone cliffs and low, gar-stocked moats, to mimic the terrain that existed here during the Cretaceous period.

  I follow an intricate stone pathway past a grove of ornamental bamboo, beyond small stone pagodas that guard ponds stocked with flashy orange and silver koi, arriving at the most popular spot in the park’s most popular section. The Oriental Garden is the creation of a California bonsai farmer named Isamu Taniguchi, who carved a peaceful refuge out of rugged caliche hillside. He gave the garden to the people of Austin in gratitude, though these many years later it’s hard to fathom why Taniguchi felt especially grateful. Perhaps he was thankful for the free room and board provided to him and his family during World War II, when the Taniguchis were among three thousand Japanese imprisoned at the Crystal City Internment Camp. Maybe he was just grateful they let him out at war’s end.

  After being freed, Taniguchi settled his family in the Rio Grande Valley, where he grew cotton and flowers. He sent his two sons to the University of Texas at Austin, and when he retired in the late 1960s he moved to Austin himself. Taniguchi toiled on his garden for eighteen months, aided only by the occasional laborer, working without equipment, blueprints, or pay.

  I walk past a pond designed as a floral ship, its sail a large wisteria, its chain and anchor a series of stepping-stones. The ponds here are all different shapes and sizes. From above, they spell out A-U-ST-I-N. The path leads to a short, humpbacked bridge, its log floor and rails spanning a shallow stream, set against a backdrop of dense green foliage. It’s a replica of the bridge in the famous Monet painting, The Japanese Bridge at Giverny. The Austin bridge has a formal name too: the Togetsu-kyo Bridge, or “the Bridge to Walk over the Moon.” Taniguchi positioned his span so that on nights when the moon is high and full, the lunar reflection follows as you walk across the water.

  Today there is only the withering sun. And the bridge is anything but tranquil.

  Nine little girls bounce on its narrow bulge, dressed in outfits sewn from the luminous silks of their homeland. All share the same dark hair and dark eyes. All but one share the same hometown, and, for a time at least, shared the same surname. A couple look so alike that they could be sisters.

  A year ago, these girls posed for a different picture at a different place, a place where silk dresses were reserved for others. Where the kindest assistance their caretakers could offer was to help to propel them out and into the unknown. A year ago, on a different continent, these girls posed in similar drenching heat and humidity, surrounded by this same small group of adults.

  Now, at the one-year reunion, the girls on the bridge seem to recognize one another, but vaguely. They remember one another the way you might remember a childhood friend glimpsed in a dream. After a while, you’re not sure whether it was the dream or the memory that was real. These girls spent their first two years—for some it was almost three—on the same small patch of land within the same stone walls. Now they live with new families in homes across the United States. They have gone from getting whatever attention could be spared to getting all the attention they can take.

  “Stand still!” one of the grown-ups calls.

  The girls pay no attention.

  Two are elbowing each other. One is crying. Three are belting out a loud, off-key chorus of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Most of them are facing in different directions, and all seem to believe that the particular direction they happen to be facing is the correct one.

  The formal group reunion picture—the purpose of coming to this place in this park, the full-color proof of all that these girls have accomplished in a year—is fast becoming a shambles. The kids have lost interest in posing. They want to play and chase.

  One girl, dressed in a weave of pink and red, waits until most of the other children have pushed to the front of the bridge. Then she makes her escape at the back, using the crowd as camouflage. She moves quickly yet cautiously, her legs still not fully trustworthy, traversing log after log until she reaches the bottom of the bridge and steps onto the dirt-and-stone path. Then she pads forward in white sandals, the hitch in her step at once familiar. She approaches me with the confident stride of someone who is headed for known territory, who takes my constant presence and undivided attention for granted.

  She stops half a step in front of me. She is sweating, her coal-black hair wet at the bangs, revealing underlying streaks of hard-to-spot mahogany. She lifts her arms without a word, and I reach down and pull her up into mine.

  People say she looks like me.

  TODAY, AT three, Jin Yu is no longer the thin, impassive child we met in Changsha, but a girl who is steadily gaining strength and stamina.

  Her arms and legs are pudgy, and if anything her cheeks have grown more round and full. She’s not fat, but carries the padded body of a child a year younger. Her hair, once a few rough locks mostly confined to the top of her head, now falls over her ears.

  Her transformation includes not only her looks but her tastes and interests.

  Jin Yu loves Apple Jacks. The furry blue creature she calls “Cookie Monsher.” And frozen vegetables eaten cold and hard from the bag. She loves when we read stories to her, particularly If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, and watching endless replays of Big Bird in China. She likes to try to walk backward. To Jin Yu, Christine’s lap is a comfortable easy chair, and a picnic on the living room floor a favorite outing. She’s a tease—grabbing my car keys and running away through the house, laughing as if she had just pulled off the Brinks bank job. If she can manage to find the button that sets off the car alarm, so much the better. During the day she tolerates her father’s musical preference for the singer she calls “Bringsteen,” and at night she lies down to the ethereal tones of Enya, who paints the sky with stars.

  She is strikingly attractive, so much so that other people, parents met at a playground or supermarket, will comment on it to me.

  “I know,” I answer, then quickly add, “not that I had anything to do with it.”

  Jin Yu no longer babbles in Chinese. She doesn’t babble at all. Every day her language grows more sophisticated.

  She says “Hole you” when she wants to be pic
ked up, “Wadder peese” when she’s thirsty, and “May toe” when she wants a taste of the bright red fruit on my plate. When she thinks it’s time for us to jump up and down to music, she shouts, “Dans, dans!”

  For a long time she called me “Da-ding,” as if to pronounce my name in Chinese. Later on, when I would come downstairs in the morning—Christine and Jin Yu finishing breakfast and me freshly dressed to go to work—Jin Yu would say, “Hi,” or maybe, “Daddy,” but not dare to see how the two words might fit together. Now when I appear she says, “Morning, Daddy,” without stumble or lag, as if she’d been saying it all her life.

  She is a girl who keeps her guard up, even after a year, still learning to trust her environs, still learning to trust us, her parents. Week by week I watch her uncoil, become accustomed to her life. When I think she can relax no further, that her level of trust and confidence is at its final level, she relaxes a little more, revealing the previous point as a plateau. For a long time, whenever I held her, she would keep one hand poised against my chest, at the ready, it seemed, to push me away. Now she loops her arms around my shoulders, content to ride where I take her.

  Jin Yu is sturdy, inside and out. Her will is unyielding. I think that’s why she survived. Some people are too tough to die, and my daughter is one of them.

  One night as we snuggled on the couch, I quietly asked Jin Yu if she remembered that night in Changsha. The night we returned from visiting the orphanage, when she broke down, weeping until she could weep no more.