The Exact Same Moon

by Jeanne Marie Laskas

  This is not at all how I imagined it to be.

  Soon we are seated around a grand round table elegantly set with fine china. Before the delicacies are presented, Mr. Chen stands to speak. He speaks for a long time, while Sophie bows her head. Finally, she translates:

  “It is a privilege for us at this orphanage to treat you all from far away in America. We are very happy now all the babies have a family. Before they were adopted, we treated them like our own children here at this orphanage. Now it is your responsibility to take care of them. We hope that when you go back, you will always offer us information and pictures of the baby. And we also hope your families will stay in contact with each other. Let us make a net, a net of love to make the baby grow up happily and healthily. It’s not only the friendship between your family and this orphanage, but it is also the friendship between China and the American government. Thank you.”

  We sit for a moment in silence. We smile politely at Mr. Chen, bowing our heads in thanks.

  It is getting harder and harder to make sense of all of this. This is not at all how I imagined it to be. Somehow when you think orphanage in China, you just don’t think of yourself being welcomed, really welcomed, into a family. No, it’s fair to say the only way you might imagine it is quite the other way around.

  I didn’t know about the net. I didn’t know about the net of love being woven.

  Alex nudges me. “Shouldn’t one of us say something in response?” he whispers.

  “Um …” But of course we aren’t prepared. And looking around this table at all of the blank stares, it would seem that none of us is really the speech type. None of us except … Alex? All eyes on him now.

  He stands. He clears his throat.

  “We have come very far to collect our children,” he says slowly, deliberately. “We are so grateful to you for the excellent care and love and attention they have received for so long. And we hold you and this orphanage and the people of China in the highest regard. We feel an enormous gratitude that we will teach to our children as they grow into young adults. Thank you very much.”

  Well, good for him! And good for us! And come on, family, let’s eat!

  We heap our plates with delicacies of fish and chicken and rice and noodles. And as we eat, Mr. Chen offers us one last gift. He would like to escort us to the places where our babies were found. Perhaps it would interest us, he says.

  And so when the meal is over, we pile back into our rickety white van. And Mr. Chen climbs into a red van parked in front. We follow him out the gate and onward into the heart of Kunshan city. As we drive, I look out my window, and it is hard not to look at the faces, especially the women, it is hard not to think: Is that her? Or maybe that one over there. I see familiar cheekbones in that one, and a chin over there. Perhaps that one, perhaps she is Anna’s birth-mother? It is hard not to wonder how she’s doing. It is hard not to imagine her sobbing. It is so very hard to curb my imagination. It feels like my imagination has never been so invasive. And so I close my eyes and pray. I pray that she’ll somehow know that Anna is doing beautifully, that this cheerful child is on her way to a good life with loving parents, not to mention a mule wearing an orange scarf and some horses and more pets than a kid could ever dream of, and a sheep farm next door, and a community of characters to sing songs about, and half of suburban Philadelphia sitting there with bated breath waiting for her, and a large fan club in Pittsburgh that, no doubt, is planning a party at the airport for her arrival—a family so giant, a net of love that extends from here to there and back again.

  I sit here praying that somehow she’ll know. I put in a request for an angel, her own Sparky or her own Chihuahua or whatever her equivalent may be.

  I sit here full of wishes and prayers and special orders, and I sit here with a perfect baby on my lap, humbled.

  The van stops. Mr. Chen comes running toward us, pops his head in the door. This, he says, must be quick. I don’t understand why this must be quick. Perhaps we are double-parked? He’s full of urgency. I get the sense that this is not a government-approved activity, that it’s some kind of dangerous favor.

  Through Sophie, he tells us this is the place, yes, this is the gate of the hospital where Anna was found. It doesn’t look like a hospital, except there is a sign with a red cross outside of it. It could be a storefront. There is a bicycle leaning against it. I think, Now wait a second. How could someone have left a bicycle here, at this sacred spot? “We must hurry,” Sophie says. We are afraid of getting in some sort of trouble? Alex grabs the camera, hops out to take a picture.

  “Um,” I say to Anna, holding her face to the window. “Say bye-bye.” I pick up her little hand and wave to the spot, the bicycle, the red cross. “Say thank you.” And: “Say I love you.”

  But now I am starting to feel like a ventriloquist. And I think if there is one thing a mom shouldn’t be, it’s a ventriloquist. But I am new at this.

  Our driver revs the engine as if to provide the hint, and Alex pops back into the van with the camera, and we are whisked away from that spot, whisked away forever.

  Or not. Maybe Anna will want to come back here someday. I wouldn’t mind bringing her back. She’ll be a genius, she’ll be an astronaut, she’ll be the first woman to walk on the moon. And I’ll be a tired old lady with fulfilled if ancient dreams, and Alex will be a very old man learning all-new burp tricks. We could eat Cheerios in a van that doesn’t take bumps too well. We could stare together at this spot, we could be cheerful or we could cry. We could sit together in a mystery in which we’ve long since learned we belong.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  This earth is so dry. You would think the spading fork would work better, but no. I have to use the shovel. I place it about eight inches from the base of the plant. Ready. Aim. I hop and then, stomp!

  Anna erupts with laughter. She is with me in the garden, sitting on a large ripe pumpkin. Over her windbreaker she’s wearing a tutu. A white tutu. And she has her tap shoes on. Indoors, outdoors, this is what she likes to wear.

  It’s November. We’ve been back home here at Sweetwater Farm for nine months. Anna is not quite two years old yet, but the thing is, she’s already such a … person. A person with interests and words and laughter and everything.

  Strange how that happens. My baby is a person. I don’t know why this is taking me so long to get used to. Then again, I’m the one who almost tried to burp a beagle. Maybe, like a lot of people who come late to parenting—and who spend so many years accumulating pets to fill the void—well, maybe we just get confused.

  Sometimes in the morning I’ll find myself saying, “Anna, do you need to go out?” or, “Come on, Betty, time for your bottle.”

  I am still new at this.

  And so, for that matter, is Betty. My poor little mutt went through quite the grieving period, hiding under the bed, apparently quite depressed to have lost her alpha status to a goo-coated kid. She’s doing better now, thanks in no small part to the bits of cheese dropping like glorious presents from a sky commanded by Anna.

  The pumpkin Anna is sitting on should probably be picked. But really, what do we need with yet one more pumpkin? We had quite a harvest this year, and we’ve now got jack-o’-lanterns everywhere, up the steps, on the picnic tables, atop fenceposts. The place has never looked so festive. And it’s funny; Alex and I never bothered carving pumpkins when it was just the two of us. But with Anna it’s, Hey, let’s make jack-o’-lanterns! This is one of the things kids do: They give you your youth back. No one told me about that part. What a spectacular bonus.

  Anna’s hair is wispy and chocolate brown, and it’s almost down to her shoulders already. Well, her neck is short, so … Her cheeks aren’t as giant as they once were, but there’s a fullness to her face that is welcoming and, in its own way, thrilling. I often find that I can’t stop looking at her. She is, I’m quite sure, the prettiest girl on Earth.

  And joyful. Her personality is easy, braced by a backbone of curiosity, and loade
d with laughter. She laughs with her mouth wide open, a crackling AH, AH, AH! I love that laugh.

  Ready, aim, hop, stomp!

  AH, AH, AH!

  She really seems to get a kick out of the sight of her mother jumping up, then down, on the blade of a shovel. I can’t say I get the joke, but hey, entertainment is entertainment.

  I am taking to motherhood. Taking to it with a mixture of ease and enthusiasm. In the end I find myself glad I waited as long as I did to become a mom; I don’t think I would have been any good at this in my twenties or my thirties. One of the first things you learn about motherhood is that motherhood means never, ever getting any of your own stuff done. All the things you used to do for yourself—out the window. Hobbies, interests, personal grooming, the nightly news—out the window. The child is the center of your universe, as she should be. She is all that matters.

  And so the you that you took so long to become is, for at least a time, irrelevant.

  I would have resented this, in my twenties and in my thirties. I don’t think my maturing me, me, me could have taken the competition. I would have been a terrible mother.

  And now? Well, I think I’ve at least got the capacity to get good at this. Capacity, I say. I am, you know, making some notable motherhood mistakes.

  Take yesterday, for example. Okay, that was a doozy.

  I was frying up some pork chops, feeling a little cocky, like maybe I had this motherhood thing all worked out—oh, I was a regular old mom in a Stove Top Stuffing commercial. Anna, dressed in a tutu (pink) and tap shoes, was in her high chair enjoying a cheese-and-peas appetizer. “Cheeeze!” she was saying, because cheeeze is about her favorite word.

  I heard something behind me. A swooping sound. I turned, and there was nothing there. Nothing except Stevie, the cat, sitting on the piano with his head ducked low. Okay, he knew something I didn’t know …

  I heard a scratching sound, then a fluttering. It was coming from the pot rack. Swoop. Swoop. A bird? A little bird! A sparrow?

  No, not a bird. No, not a sparrow.

  “A BAT! A BAT! A BAT!”

  I said this many times, running in circles on my tiptoes, as if somehow I was safer up there. “A BAT! A BAT!” I ducked for cover and went charging out the door.

  See, you never know how you’re going to react when you see an actual bat in your house. It isn’t like seeing a little field mouse. It isn’t even like seeing a slithering snake. It is, okay, A BAT.

  Out on the porch, breathing in, breathing out, I realized: Wait a second. I just ran out of my house, leaving my child alone in there.

  I just left my child in the house with a bat swooping around her.

  Mother of the Year.

  I dashed back in. Which was no small psychological feat, let me assure you. Every bad bat movie I ever saw was racing through my mind.

  Anna was mashing a pea with her right index finger. She was oblivious to the bat, which struck me instantly as kind of unfair. But the bat. The bat was hanging, yes, upside down off a pot on the pot rack.

  Slowly, stealthily, I scooped Anna up. “We are going outside,” I whispered. “We are-going-to-very-quickly-and-quietly-go-outside so Mommy has a chance to THINK.”

  We dashed out to the porch. “Whew,” I said. “I’m fine.” It was imperative that she not see my fear. Because motherhood is at least in part about image. Of course! You present a certain portrait of control, of proficiency, like that Stove Top Stuffing lady.

  Speaking of which. “Pork chops,” I said to Anna. The pork chops were still on the stove. Sizzling. Smoking. Soon to be burning. I had to go back in that house and turn the stove off.

  Back in that house where the bat was.

  I put Anna down. I took a giant deep breath. In one hasty motion I flung open the door and darted toward the stove. The bat came swooping as the cat went flying after it and the bat landed on the stove, right next to the sizzling pork chops. “A BAT! A BAT! A BAT!” I yelled yet again, from a place inside my gut that seemed connected to hell itself. I grabbed the pan and flung it into the sink and ran outside and grabbed Anna, all the while yelling “A BAT! A BAT! A BAT!” and together we charged this way down the driveway. Well, that went well.

  And why was Anna looking at me in the way she was looking at me? She was looking at me in such a way as to say “Who are you?”

  See, this was bad. My daughter had just discovered that I was not, in fact, the Stove Top Stuffing lady. Not even close.

  “A bat, honey,” I said to her. “A bat.” I wanted her to forgive me. I wanted her to know that some situations are extreme and that a mother should be given some slack.

  Just then, I heard a car coming up Wilson Road. Oh, thank the Lord in Heaven.

  Alex pulled up, saw us, came leaping out of that car. And I could tell by the look on his face that he thought we were out there to greet him. Like Samantha and Tabitha on Bewitched. Oh, he seemed consumed with sweet, mushy thoughts about how nice it was of us to do that. Fatherhood has its own expectations of motherhood.

  “A BAT!” I howled at him. “BAT IN HOUSE!”

  He said, “Oh.” Like his feelings were hurt. Like he was feeling used or something. He trudged inside, got a big empty coffee can. He put it over the bat. He slid the lid on, came outside, let the bat go. No big deal whatsoever.

  “Wow!” I said. “Our hero!” I told him how amazed I was. Oh, I pumped him up nice and high to compensate for the part where we weren’t really out on the driveway to greet him like Samantha and Tabitha. “Daddy saved the day!” I said to Anna. “Daddy saved us from the bat!” Her mother’s reputation may have been shattered, but her father’s was intact.

  Or was it? She was looking at us. First him, then me. She was looking at us with all the wisdom of the world in her eyes. (So these are my parents?) It appeared she was about to render her verdict.

  “Peeeas!” she said. It is, well, her second most favorite word.

  So this basically brings us up to date. I am, as you may have noted, no longer craving family noise. I barely remember aching for it in that way that once made my teeth hurt. I have no idea what sound my kitchen clock makes. No idea on this earth.

  As for the other folks around here, let’s see. George and Pat are doing well. Pat has not been stuck on the Food Network for months now. George continues to show Alex the ways of the country. They’ve been going to a lot of tractor auctions lately. After the last one Alex came home with an ancient, rickety manure spreader George talked him into bidding on. You could tell Alex was trying to look really happy about winning it. Also, George went with Alex to this year’s Equine Clinic. Alex told me that the partitions are still the same at the Ramada, but this time he sat up front.

  As for the old lady who lives down the road, she broke her hip. She slipped on the ice on her way to the mailbox and nearly froze to death. A guy in a township truck driving by spotted her, saved her; she’s doing fine now. We were down at her house recently (no, we still haven’t asked her about buying that piece of land), and the township guy stopped in to see how she was doing—and lo and behold, it turned out to be the same road crew guy who found Sparky way back when. We had a nice reunion. I told him everything. I asked him to please keep an eye out for Sparky. He knew I was serious, and he promised he would.

  The Scenery Hill Post Office finally moved. Oh, it seemed to take forever for that to happen. You know, the sign finally came in from that company in Canada. Well, it had gotten lost for a while. Lost in the mail. Caroline got a real kick out of that one. But then the U.S. Post Office sent out the request for bids to install the sign, and by the time they accepted a bid, the company they had accepted it from had gone out of business. Caroline said, “Isn’t this getting fun?” The bid finally went, for reasons never to be explained, to an undertaker.

  “When I told my husband about the undertaker,” Caroline said to me, “he said, ‘Oh, don’t tell me any more. Because now I don’t believe you.’ ”

  But the sign went up and moving
day came, and opening day was a pretty gala one here in the 15360 ZIP Code area. Everyone went up to see. “Can you believe this!” Caroline was saying, laughing. “I feel like I work in a shopping mall!” The place is huge, shiny, and clean. There are big bright signs everywhere announcing Express Mail services and inviting you to use your debit card. For opening day Caroline kept the door to the walled-off area open, so we could all see Debbie and Kathy back there with all that room to sort mail. And light! And climate control! It was surprising to see how joyful everyone was. It was as if they’d all just won the lottery. In that moment it really did seem about as good as happily-ever-after gets, for a post office.

  As for Sammy, the mentally retarded man who had come to depend on Caroline to do his laundry, he’s bought his own washer and dryer.

  So this is all that’s left. Just me and Anna, a pumpkin, and a shovel.

  My foot. My aim. Hop. And: stomp!

  “AH, AH, AH!”

  “Oh, Anna, I’m so glad you’re enjoying the show.”

  The earth opens with its satisfied crunch. A little air in those joints. I’m able to free the roots of the plant with a gentle rocking motion, and soon I’m able to lift it. A daylily. Whew, one whopper of a daylily. It could be the Hyperion variety, or maybe Happy Returns, or Uncommon Love. See, my mother would be able to tell you. She would be able to tell you the botanical name, and what height to expect it to reach, and when.

  These are the daylilies I dug up at her house at Springton Lake. These are my mother’s daylilies.

  When I first brought them to the farm, I didn’t know where to put them. Things were, you know, a bit complicated that horrible, paralyzing spring. So in my haste and confusion, I plunked the daylilies into a temporary spot, here in the corner of the vegetable garden.

  “Just—stay alive,” I said to them. “Do you hear me? That’s all you have to do.”