by Ann Hood
She noticed things. Sophie was obviously pregnant now, her stomach round beneath a black maternity dress. She had had families who decided not to adopt if they got pregnant. But Sophie had reminded Maya that it was her dream to have many children, adopted ones and biological ones. A little space in between might have been nice, Sophie had said, laughing.
“‘This baby,’” Maya read, “‘was approximately six months old when she was found on the doorstep of the police station. She was dressed in pajamas. She was quite fat. However, she cried almost inconsolably for many days. However, we can state with confidence that she is now a happy baby. And still fat.’”
She noticed how Nell seemed softer. Her husband, suntanned from sailing in Sardinia, seemed softer too. He took his wife’s hand and held it tenderly as Maya read from the orphanage report.
“‘This baby was found with a sweet potato tucked beside her. To the very poor in rural Hunan, a sweet potato has great value. It is our opinion that her family are farmers. It is our opinion that they wished us to know she was considered valuable.’”
Samantha served red wine and passed the food while everyone shared the pictures of their babies. Parents for only twenty minutes or so, and already they were bragging. Maya smiled as she watched them.
Two folders still lay on the table. Charlie and Brooke. Susannah and Carter.
Had Charlie decided he could not go through with it after all? Maya wondered. Had guilt and fear won over Susannah?
Then she heard footsteps on the stairs, and the door opened.
Susannah and Carter burst in, but pushing past them was Clara. Her hair neatly braided and she was dressed as if for a party.
“We came for my sister!” she said to Maya.
Maya met Susannah’s eyes over her daughter’s blond head.
“Well here she is then,” Maya said, opening their folder. She handed the photograph directly to Clara.
Susannah kneeled down for her first look at her new daughter.
“She’s beautiful,” she managed to say before Clara shouted, “But this is a baby, not a sister!”
“Just wait,” Carter said.
“‘This baby was very small and skinny when found at the orphanage gate. Believed to be about six weeks old, we believe she was breastfed and well cared for.’”
Susannah looked up at Maya. “Then why?”
“So many possible reasons,” Maya said. She shrugged helplessly.
“We’re naming her Blossom because she’s a Powder Puff Girl,” Clara said.
Carter laughed. “It’s true. Last night we told Clara she could pick out her sister’s name and she wants Blossom.”
“Better than Elmo or Cookie Monster,” Susannah said.
Blossom. Now as they passed around the pictures they shared their daughters’ names with each other. Nell and Benjamin chose Jordan. Emily and Michael were naming their baby Beatrice, Sophie and Theo Ella.
That one folder still sat untouched.
When the phone rang, Maya went into her office to answer it. Closing the door against the joyous noise, she picked it up expecting to hear Brooke crying on the other end. But it wasn’t Brooke who was crying. It was Charlie.
“She won’t do it,” he said as soon as he heard Maya’s voice. “She’s changed her mind.”
Maya sat in her chair at her desk. “What happened?”
“She’s changed her mind,” he said again. “That’s all. She won’t talk to you. Hell, she won’t hardly talk to me.”
“Are you sure—”
“She wants nothing to do with it,” he said.
“I’m sorry, Charlie,” Maya began.
“I painted her room. I painted her name right above the door.”
“You know, you can take time with this. Go back in the queue.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Charlie said, his voice cracking. “Wait. She does want to talk to you.”
Brooke came on the phone. “Maya. He thinks I’ve gone crazy, but remember what I was afraid of? That Charlie wouldn’t be able to love me and a baby? Well, I was wrong. I’m the one who can’t make room. I saw all of the baby things, and how excited he was, and I tried to imagine our life with this third person in it, and I couldn’t picture it.”
“A lot of people—”
“This isn’t about a lot of people. It’s about me. And if I go through with it, and I’m right, I won’t be able to forgive him for talking me into it. But if we don’t do it, we can go back to how we’ve always been. Just us. And he’ll be mad at me for a while, but eventually he’ll forgive me. He will.”
When she hung up, Maya did not move. She listened to the sounds of laughter, of happiness.
Slowly, she unraveled the knitting on her desk. All that waiting, Maya thought. All for what?
Maya picked up the phone and carefully dialed a number. If no one answered, it was a sign that she should not do this.
But Mei did answer.
“I’m calling for a favor,” Maya said.
Mei listened. She told Maya to stay put, to wait for her to call back. While Maya waited, she picked up the needles and yarn and began to knit. One row, then another. She knit without thinking, without hoping. She simply knit until the phone rang again.
Mei’s voice on the other end was excited. “It’s done,” she said. “Congratulations.”
Maya rolled up all that yarn, all those years of despair. She almost put it back in the drawer, but she thought better of it and placed it in the garbage. Her waiting was over.
Back in the outer office, Maya opened the last folder.
The baby who looked back at her had a Mohawk of black hair, a rosebud mouth, startled eyes.
She read from the orphanage report.
This baby was about six months old when found at the orphanage door. A man, perhaps her father, was seen lurking around that day. He was obviously distraught.
Maya held the photograph to her chest. She took a glass of wine and joined the happy group.
“This group is unique in many ways,” she said. “One of those ways is that I am going to China with you. I will also bring home a baby.”
Emily did not wait for Maya to say more. She pulled her into a hug.
“Brave friend,” she whispered.
One by one, the group began to clap. They did not know her story. They didn’t have to. Each of them had their own, and Maya had hers.
“And what’s this baby’s name?” Susannah asked.
Maya lifted her glass in a toast. “To Blossom,” she said. “And Jordan, and Ella and Beatrice. And Honor Maile.” Maya’s voice broke when she said that middle name, a name she had not dared to say out loud in eight years.
“Maile?” Sophie asked.
“It’s Hawaiian for the flower used to make leis,” Maya said. “I loved a little girl named Maile.”
“It’s beautiful,” Emily said.
Maya clinked her glass against the others, careful not to miss any of them.
“To our daughters,” she said.
The others repeated her words. “Our daughters.”
CHINA
FOLLOW LOVE AND IT WILL FLEE;
FLEE LOVE AND IT WILL FOLLOW YOU.
16
MAYA
In Maya’s attic sat one box that she had not dared to open in eight years. But after the families left the Red Thread, after Maya and Samantha cleaned up, after she locked the office door and walked down Wickenden Street toward home, she stood in her own dark foyer, keys in her hand, the sound of her own breathing the only thing she heard. Maya turned on the light that led upstairs. At the top, she pushed open the attic door and climbed the short, narrow stairs that led up there.
She didn’t have to struggle to remember where the box was. Maya knew its exact location. Whenever she came up here to retrieve her winter sweaters, or add receipts or forms to her tax return files, she caught sight of it, neatly tucked into the farthest corner. On some of those days, she averted her eyes as soon as she s
aw it. Other times, she looked at it head on, daring it to bother her. Of course it always did.
Tonight, Maya would open it.
Without taking off her coat, Maya walked straight to that far corner and slid the box close to her. Such an innocuous thing. Cardboard, pale green with chipped corners and a slight dent on the lid, as if someone had stepped on it. A thin layer of dust covered it, and Maya wiped it off with her palm almost protectively.
When she lifted the lid, the jumble of items inside broke her heart. They reminded her of how hastily she had tossed them inside. How she had stood on a drizzly afternoon in her daughter’s room and tried to guess what items in it were the most important. How does a mother choose what to keep to best remember her dead child? The little leopard booties that she never even wore but that Maya had bought her for her two-month birthday? The cotton blanket that smelled slightly of spit-up, so ordinary in its appearance and usefulness? The brown stuffed dog that the baby had grown so attached to, its rubbed ear showing signs of her love?
Maya had been that woman, torn by grief, standing in the middle of the small, happy room, eyeing everything with a wild need. That room came to Maya now, so vividly she shut her eyes against the image. The lavender walls. The lamp that sent images of dancing horses across the ceiling when it was turned on. The violet pillow embroidered with her daughter’s name and birthday in white.
“Maile,” Maya said out loud, the beautiful name so painful to say.
There it was, that pillow. Maya lifted it from the box and traced the curving script, the elaborate M and the flourish of the final e.
“Maile,” she said again.
It was not easier to say the second time.
Maya placed the pillow on her lap. She took each item from the box and held it in front of her: footie pajamas decorated with pineapples, a fat butterfly that played a tune when a cord was pulled (and how could that tune still play so easily, so clearly, after all this time?), a teething ring marked from her baby’s gnawing, a tiny denim jacket, each item bringing back memories that caused her pain.
At the bottom of the box, she found a large envelope. Inside were all the cheerful cards of congratulations. IT’S A GIRL! Beneath them, two sonogram pictures, her daughter’s grainy face turned right toward her. She’s a friendly one, the technician had said. And finally, a handful of pictures.
Here was her younger, hopeful self, hugely pregnant in a bikini on the beach. Here were the first pictures of her baby, eyes shut and still bloody. The three of them, Maya in the hospital bed holding the baby and Adam leaning in beside them, a happy family, stunned at their good luck.
They’d had hundreds of pictures of their daughter, careful recorders of her every grin and milestone. Maya used to put them in albums, old-fashioned ones in which she tucked the corners of photographs into holders. Perhaps these were the ones that she had not yet put in an album. Perhaps in her panic she had grabbed them from a tabletop. The pictures were blurry, as if taken from a distance or by an unsteady hand.
On the bottom of each photograph there was a date. Two days before she died. Maya searched her memory for what they had done that day. But that day was gone, overtaken by the horror that followed it. She should have asked Adam for a picture. Or even one of the albums. But how could she take even those from him too?
Maya placed everything back in the box carefully. When she picked up the pillow from her lap, she lifted it to her nose, as if maybe after all this time she might still catch a whiff, no matter how faint, of her daughter. Maya placed the pillow on top of the other things. She once again traced her daughter’s name with her fingertip.
“Maile,” she said softly.
She closed the box, making sure the lid was on good and tight.
17
The Families
EMILY
The packing list was long and complicated. Two thousand dollars in clean hundred-dollar bills. Medication for scabies and lice. Baby clothes ranging in sizes from six months to toddler. Baby bottles with the tips of the nipples snipped off. Antibiotics. A diaper bag, diapers, wipes. Antibacterial soap. A list, five pages long, and Emily loved every task, every item, every odd request.
She stood in line at the main branch of her bank and asked for that money with its unbent corners, free of marks or creases.
“I’m on my way to China,” she said brightly to the frowning teller. “To adopt my daughter.”
Emily told everyone: the pharmacist who measured out powders and liquids. The cheerful saleswoman at baby Gap in Garden City.
“For my daughter,” Emily said, beaming.
After each item was secured, she put a small checkmark beside it. She would put this list in the scrapbook she had already started for Beatrice. Bea. Even thinking of her daughter’s name made Emily smile. She bought tiny fuzzy slippers, yellow-and-black-striped with small antennas at the toes. She bought bumblebee rain boots and bumblebee barrettes.
“My daughter Beatrice,” Emily explained. “We call her Bea.”
“Isn’t that adorable?” the saleswoman at baby Gap said. “You don’t hear that name so much.”
Emily nodded happily. Her daughter had an extraordinary name. An extraordinarily beautiful unique name.
Check. Check. Check. The pages slowly got completed. The visas arrived in the mail. Emily didn’t even mind that Chloe was coming to China with them. The chance of a lifetime, Michael had said. And it was. The Great Wall. The Forbidden City. Beatrice. Emily ordered a T-shirt, pink, with block letters that said: BIG SISTER. She would give it to Chloe in China. She got one for Beatrice too: LITTLE SISTER. They would wear them together and Emily would take pictures of them, Chloe holding Bea in their matching pink T-shirts.
She bought a new digital camera. Memory cards. A small video camera. Batteries. Check. Check. She called Maya and compared notes on Canon versus Nikon. She called Maya and told her what the woman in baby Gap had said. “You don’t hear that name so much,” Emily said. She sighed. Beatrice.
At the Travel Clinic, she and Michael got tetanus shots, hepatitis B, polio boosters. They sat beneath a map of the world. China sprawled across it. Emily found Hunan Province, its capital of Changsha, the smaller city of Loudi where Beatrice waited for them.
“When is Chloe getting hers?” Emily asked him.
“She missed the appointment,” Michael said. “Play rehearsal.”
The doctor came in with their inoculation records stamped. “Have a good trip,” he said. He had a Caribbean accent. “A safe trip.”
“We’re going to get our baby,” Emily said. How she loved those words. “Our daughter.”
“Well then,” the doctor said, “good luck to the three of you.”
Emily took the wallet-sized photo of Bea out of her purse. “This is her,” she said.
The doctor put on his glasses to inspect the picture. “Beautiful,” he said.
“I hope you don’t make everyone you pass look at that,” Michael said as they walked out of the office.
“Of course not,” Emily said.
“Good luck now!” the receptionist called to Emily. “She’s a real cutie!”
“Caught,” Emily said.
Michael laughed. “Come on, proud mama. I’ll buy you dinner.”
She was on the last page of the list. There was not much left to do but get on that plane.
“DO YOU THINK I’ve gone too far?” Emily said.
She stood in the doorway of the den, where Michael sat in the leather club chair, the phone in his lap.
Emily held up a bumblebee Halloween costume. “I know it’s months away. I know she will probably grow up to hate everything bee. But I couldn’t resist.”
Michael forced a smile. “Cute,” he said.
Emily looked around. “Why are you sitting here in the dark?” she said, and began to turn on lamps.
“The Internet is a dangerous place for first-time mothers,” she said as she moved around the room. “Where else can you buy a Halloween costume in Marc
h?”
He didn’t answer.
“Michael?” she said, moving toward him. She perched on the arm of the chair, the bee costume in her hand.
He held up the phone. “I just spoke with Rachel,” he said.
Emily waited.
She would not let Rachel ruin this for them. For years now, Rachel had managed to mess up Christmas dinners, weekend trips, anniversaries. She had managed to book a flight for Chloe to meet her and her new husband in St. Lucia that left in the middle of Christmas Day so that they spent Christmas at Logan Airport. She had found reasons for them to leave parties early to get Chloe, or miss them altogether. But Rachel would not ruin this.
“Chloe won’t come to China,” Michael said.
Emily didn’t care if Chloe went to China with them as long as she and Michael were on that plane. She studied her husband’s face.
“And?” she said, starting to worry.
“Apparently there’s no talking her into it. She doesn’t want to miss rehearsal—”
“It’s school vacation,” Emily reminded him.
“Well, there’s still rehearsal.”
“She doesn’t have a big part,” Emily said.
His jaw tightened. “She needs to learn all the songs.”
She stood. “So what are you saying?”
“If I leave her here to bring back our baby, Rachel suggested Chloe might feel abandoned. Again.”
“I don’t believe this,” Emily said.
“Look, nothing’s decided. But since Maya is going too, you would be okay. You’d be together.”
“It’s our baby!” Emily said.
“I know that. I just feel so torn, Em. No matter what I do it’s wrong.”
Emily tried to catch her breath. In the packet about what would happen in China, there were more pages of things to do: physical checkups, paperwork, more paperwork, interviews. We strongly suggest you travel as a pair since one person will likely tend the baby while the other handles the official business.