12
Dear Penny,
Do you know why I carry you everywhere? It is to keep you safe. I do a good job keeping you safe. Do you remember the Nanny in the orphanage who told me she would throw you away if I didn’t behave? I hated her. I will always hold on to you so that nobody can throw you away. Ever. I carry you everywhere, and I don’t care if I look strange with a book under my arm or not.
13
Dear Penny,
Do you like going to the lake? I don’t know if I like it. I don’t like living in the middle of nowhere. There are trees and trees and trees on and on forever. And water. Wanna takes me and my sister, Ellie, to the lake to swim on hot days. There is sand on the lake shore, just like the ocean. Well, I guess it’s like the ocean because I have never been to a real beach. This is a lake beach and the water is still. I would like to swim in ocean waves someday.
In China I watched a movie that showed children playing in the ocean. They were on a vacation. The water was light blue. The children were happy. They jumped up and down in the ocean waves. I think that I would like to feel a big wave wash over me.
The lake here is like a gigantic bath tub. The water is too quiet. I don’t know what to do when it is so quiet. It makes me nervous. I think an ocean wave crashing over me would feel better. My sister Ellie likes the lake.
14
Dear Penny,
Ellie loves dresses. I don’t. She wears a different dress every day. She thinks that she is a princess. I know I am not a princess and I wear pants. Wanna does not know how to dress her children. In China I would never be able to go outside in just a dress. Well, I never had a dress, but if I did, then I would need to wear more things to keep me warm. Sometimes in the orphanage, I would wear two or three pairs of pants and two or three shirts. Plus a jacket and sometimes a hat.
Wanna is not keeping Ellie safe. My sister never says that she is cold, but I know that she needs to wear more clothes. I have a lot of clothes now. I also have dresses in my closet. Too many. Those dresses won’t keep me safe. Most of the time I wear the only clothes that the orphanage gave me. They feel the best against my skin. Not too soft and a little bit scratchy. In China I wore my clothes for many days before they were washed. Wanna wants to wash them every day.
15
Dear Penny,
The first place that I visited after we came home was the lake. The second was the market and ice cream parlor. If I walk one way from my house, I go to the lake. If I walk the other way, I end up at the market and parlor.
The market is small but has everything we need inside. It is where Wanna buys a lot of our food. A door inside the market opens into the ice cream parlor. There is a counter with red stools and three red benches on either side. I like to sit on the stools, and I place you on the counter next to my ice cream bowl. We get to choose the flavor and I always get vanilla. Ellie tries something different every time we go.
The girl who works in the ice cream parlor is really pretty. Her name is Jasmine, but her friends call her Jazz. She has a lot of girlfriends and even some boyfriends. Her hair is long and dark brown. Jazz never wears dresses. She has pants with little diamonds on the pockets.
I like to listen to Jazz and her friends talk. I spend the whole time in the parlor eating and listening. It is like they have a secret language, and they use words that Wanna and Daddy don’t use. Jazz and her friends talk in a special way.
16
Dear Penny,
Shhhhh. I woke up. It is very late. I had a bad dream. I heard the children calling for me. I heard the voices of the children in the orphanage. They were screaming for me. They were crying so hard. I couldn’t go back to them. I couldn’t find the door to get into the orphanage. There were no doors. They needed me. They needed to eat. They were hungry. They wanted me to sing to them. They wanted to play. I played with them, although sometimes I played in a mean way. They didn’t care. They wanted me back. I left them. How could I leave them? They needed me.
I can’t sleep anymore.
17
Dear Penny,
Don’t lose your Chinese. That is what the nannies told me. Why did they tell me that? Why did they care? They said don’t forget. I am forgetting.
18
Dear Penny,
Wanna asked me to draw a picture today. It was a picture of my head. She told me to put inside my head the colors and shapes that showed how my head was feeling right now. Ellie drew a picture of her head too. Inside my head drawing, I put black and red circles. I don’t know why. That is what I felt like doing. It didn’t mean anything. What I wanted to draw was a big fire inside my head because that is how it really feels. Ellie put pink and purple princess crowns inside her head. I should have told her that the crown goes on top of a head, not inside of it. I didn’t say anything.
19
Dear Penny,
American toilets are stupid. The first time I used one was in a hotel in China. Our adoption guide showed me how to use it. I told her—
Yes, yes, I got it, I got it.
But I didn’t really get it, and I was sure that I was going to fall in or fall off. I still don’t like American toilets. What is the point of a tall toilet anyway? Chinese toilets, with the hole in the ground, make much more sense.
20
Dear Penny,
Wanna is crazy and she is making me crazy too. She won’t stop asking me questions. She wants me to share how I am feeling.
I don’t want to talk to her about my feelings. I don’t even know how to talk about my feelings. How do I get her to stop? I stare at the wall and don’t answer, but she keeps talking. I don’t really hear what she says, but I know she keeps going on and on. Wanna’s voice is like a bee buzzing in my ear. I want to smack it away.
21
Dear Penny,
Ok. I will admit this to you and to nobody else…I was kind of excited when I found out that I was going to be adopted. I would have a family, and I wouldn’t be on my own anymore. Remember the TV in the orphanage? Well, I spent a lot of time watching it. I watched movies about Americans. They were always rich. They wore fancy clothes, swam in their house pools, and went to restaurants all the time. You know what? It is not like that here. I don’t have a pool and my parents don’t wear fancy clothes. Sometimes we do go to restaurants.
The thing is, I still feel like I don’t have a family.
22
Dear Penny,
Sometimes Wanna smells really good. She smells like sweet peaches and lemons. Don’t tell her I told you so.
23
Dear Penny,
I was just thinking about the food in the hotels in China. It was really good. When I was adopted, the first gigantic hotel we stayed in had the best food in the world. The hotel restaurant had table after table covered with food. There was so much food. I couldn’t believe it. I ate more than I ever ate in my whole life. I thought for sure that my new family was rich.
But there isn’t food like that here in America. It was only like that in hotels in China.
The last big hotel we stayed at in China gave me a gift. It was two dolls in a small box. Inside was an American mom doll with a Chinese baby doll. The mom had long yellow hair. The mom doll held in her arms a little Chinese baby.
I don’t know why the hotel would give me that gift. I was not like a baby doll.
I didn’t like the mom doll, and I definitely didn’t like the baby doll.
The hotel was filled with American parents adopting Chinese babies. The hotel food was very good and there was a lot of it. But I remember looking around the hotel restaurant, at all of the Chinese babies being held by American parents, and everything felt confusing. I felt like I wanted to start running.
But I didn’t run. I ate instead.
I know that I pushed the hotel gift dolls away when Wanna showed them to me. I never saw the dolls again. I don’t know what Wanna did with them, but I still remember how much I hated those dolls.
24
Dear Penny,
There is a fly in my room. It is dancing with the light above my bed. If it hits the light, will it burn? I hope it will hit the light. I hate bugs. In the summer bugs would come into the orphanage, and they would be everywhere. There were crawling bugs and flying bugs.
I don’t know where the bugs came from, but they came with the heat. Once there was a girl who was sleeping, and a bug crawled into her ear. She screamed and cried for hours as the nannies poked different things into her ear to try to kill the bug and get it out.
The nannies got the bug out, but her ear was bloody when they were finished.
The bugs would die all at the same time, and it took days for us to sweep their dead bodies into big piles and sweep them out.
25
Dear Penny,
It is hard to keep the sand off you and me. I go to the lake with Wanna and Ellie, and I get dirty sometimes. I try not to play, but Ellie keeps making me play in the sand. I don’t like to play in the sand because I am not under the beach umbrella when I play. I am in the sun. My sister Ellie has dark skin, and I want to keep my skin white. My skin is white like the pages of your paper. I don’t want my skin to get darker. In China, the most beautiful people have white skin like me. Ellie’s skin is too dark. Wanna puts sun lotion on Ellie, but she doesn’t care if her skin gets darker. Wanna puts lotion on me too, but I don’t trust the lotion. I don’t think that Wanna cares about Ellie’s skin. She says that my sister’s skin is beautiful. In China, the whiter the skin, the better. I am proud that I am whiter than my sister. I don’t want to be dark like Ellie.
26
Dear Penny,
I do like my sister Ellie’s hair. It is long and shines in the sun. My hair is short. The orphanage always cut my hair short. I remember when they would cut it. I remember the big scissors with the black handle. I would put my hands over my face so they didn’t see my tears. Who wants short hair like a boy? I didn’t. But the nannies kept cutting it. There were also bugs in the orphanage that lived in people’s hair. Everyone had their hair cut short so that the bugs didn’t get in and start eating at your head.
I like Ellie’s hair. I wish my hair were long and shiny. Wanna keeps cutting it, and I don’t know how to tell her to stop. I don’t cry about it anymore, but I wish I could tell her to stop.
27
Dear Penny,
My world has changed colors so fast and it scares me. The white walls in the orphanage to the bright rainbow colors in the cities of China. Now, in America, my life is filled with blue and green. The green trees are everywhere, and the blue lake looks at me every day.
28
Dear Penny,
I know you already know this about me. I steal things. You have seen me do it, but maybe you didn’t know it was called stealing. In China I stole little things. They were little things that nobody even cared about…except here Wanna cares. She cares and she needs me to talk about it. I wish she would just hit me and get it over with. But Wanna won’t hit me, even though I try hard to get her to. She keeps talking. Buzz, buzz. I am not talking to Wanna about why I steal things. I just like to do it. There is nothing to talk about.
29
Dear Penny,
Daddy is an architect. That is his job. It means that he designs houses. He doesn’t build the houses, he just draws them on his computer. The people who buy the houses that he draws must be rich. The houses are very big and many have pools.
I like to sit on the floor next to his desk chair and watch him work. It is amazing to see how he does it. I think he must be very smart. Ellie watches with me sometimes, but it is hard for her to sit still and be quiet. Daddy needs to concentrate, and Ellie is always asking a thousand questions.
It is strange that Daddy designs new houses, and we live in such an old one. We don’t have a pool either.
30
Dear Penny,
Jazz knows my name. When we go to the ice cream parlor, she says—
Hey, An-Ya, what’s up?
I say hi and that is how the conversation ends. Jazz is much older and prettier and has so many friends. It always surprises me that she knows my name.
31
Dear Penny,
Forget what I said about Wanna smelling good. Her feet smell like stinky fish.
Wanna pushed me today. It wasn’t hard, but it was definitely a push. I stole her special necklace and she wanted it back. I don’t usually steal big things, but I was so mad at her the other day. I knocked Ellie over because she was being annoying and I couldn’t stand it anymore. Ellie won’t get up like Abby used to. She stays on the ground and cries. Wanna told me to go to my room and stay there until she came up to talk. I could see the mad in Wanna’s eyes. Instead of going to my room, I went to Wanna’s room and took her necklace.
So today she figured out it was gone, and she pushed me and told me to go get it. I couldn’t go get it, because I threw it away yesterday and the trash man took it. So I held on to you and stared at my bedroom door. I’ll never tell her what happened to it.
32
Dear Penny,
I think Wanna is still mad about the necklace. She asked Daddy to take me and Ellie out for the day. Daddy is much more fun than Wanna. He doesn’t have so many rules and he doesn’t try to talk about my feelings. He is ok. Plus, he is really tall. At first I thought he was a little scary, but now I like standing next to him. I feel small next to Daddy. I like feeling small. When I stand next to Ellie, I feel too big.
The best part of being with Daddy is that nobody asks him if I am his daughter. His hair is mostly black like mine, and they don’t notice as much.
The playground that Daddy took us to is fun. There are places to hide and a lot of slides. The slides are my favorite. It is hard to play with the other stuff when I am holding onto you.
33
Dear Penny,
The orphanage walls were white. An ugly dirty white. Most walls were stained. The bathrooms were terrible. Do you remember the smell? It was a terrible smell. One bathroom door was always broken. A child was always sitting on every toilet. Sometimes they would sit for too long and start to cry. I tried to tell the nannies when the children were finished on the toilet. The nannies were too busy to hear me. There were too many children in the bathroom. They sat waiting for too long.
There was one wall in the orphanage that wasn’t white. It was painted with big animals. Usually I would sit in front of the painting. Abby would sit behind me, holding onto my shirt, and we would stare at the wall. I liked the paintings on the wall. I don’t know who put them there. The animals were the same size as me.
I miss the animals on the wall. I talked to them about things, and I think they heard me. There was the rabbit, the turtle, the monkey, the butterfly, and the mouse. I don’t know what they were all doing together. But they were happy animals and they were friends. I am sure about it. I looked at them for many days, and I know they were good friends. Abby liked the monkey. She would point to the monkey the most. I liked the butterfly because she would leave at night and visit the moon. I wanted to be the butterfly. I wanted to fly away.
34
Dear Penny,
It takes a long time to walk to the lake. We have to walk through the woods. The first time I walked through the woods, I was really scared. I didn’t know if there would be snakes or big bugs or something terrible like that. There is a trail that we walk on, and I stay as close to the middle as I can. I don’t like my legs to touch the leaves and plants on the sides. Birds fly from tree to tree and watch us walk. Squirrels run up and down the trees and make funny noises.
Half way to the lake we leave the trail, step onto a road, and walk across a bridge. The bridge is painted red. It has a top on it and goes over a little river. Wanna said it is called a covered bridge and that it is very old. She said it was built around the same time as our house. I wanted to ask why it has a roof, but I didn’t. I don’t mind the bridge, because on hot days it gives me a break from the sun.
&
nbsp; Walking to the lake wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t have to carry so much stuff. We take a big umbrella, lunch, inner tubes, buckets, and shovels and towels. I am always stuck with a lot to carry, plus I need to carry you. Ellie can barely carry one bucket without getting too tired.
35
Dear Penny,
I am not as hungry at night anymore. When I first came here, I thought I would die if I didn’t eat something after bedtime. I was starving. Remember how scary it was coming down the stairs in the dark? I took you to find food, and we would sneak upstairs with all kinds of things. When Wanna found the food wrappers under my bed, she asked me to stop. She gave me a box with food in it to keep in my room. I didn’t like the food in the box very much. So we kept coming downstairs in the dark. We needed to be brave, because this is a big old house and there might be ghosts. Anyway, I don’t feel so hungry at night anymore. I’m not sure why.
36
Dear Penny,
When it is hot, and we are not at the lake, I like to sit under the big willow tree outside my house. Most trees aren’t interesting, but the willow is different. Its branches reach down and touch the ground. I sit close to the tree’s big trunk and read or write inside of you. Sometimes sunshine will peek through, but mostly it is dark and cool. When the wind blows, the leaves sing and sway. I feel safe next to the willow with its giant arms surrounding me. I think the willow likes me too.
An-Ya and Her Diary Page 2