The Year of the Fortune Cookie

by Andrea Cheng

  “Maybe someday.”

  Her brother comes over to see. “This is Anna,” Fan tells him. She turns to me. “He is naughty. He only wants to watch TV.”

  The boy goes back to his cartoons. Fan’s mother smooths my hair. “You speak Chinese very well,” she says.

  “Yi dian dian,” I say. A little bit.

  “Are your mother and your father from Beijing?”

  I shake my head. “My father is from America and my mother is from Shanghai.”

  “Shanghai is very beautiful,” Fan’s mother says. “I saw pictures, but it is too far to travel.”

  “I have a big family there,” I say. I want to tell her that we plan to visit in a couple of years, but I am getting really tired from speaking so much Chinese.

  Fan shows me more pictures of her friends and her cousins. Then we play a game of concentration with her brother, who beats us both. “He has a good memory,” she says.

  The boy laughs. “You forget too much.”

  She rubs his short hair. And then it is time to go.

  The bus is not as crowded now, and we sit together on a seat. “I think your home in America is not like mine,” she says.

  “My home is bigger,” I admit. “But my brother is like yours. He likes cartoons and he has big ears. He has a good memory too, but sometimes I can beat him in card games.”

  She smiles. “I hope we can go to America someday. My brother can be friends with your brother.”

  “I like your home,” I say. “Thank you for taking me.”

  We are quiet then, leaning against each other as the bus goes over potholes and gravel. I wish Fan and her family lived as close to me as Laura and her mom.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Alone

  In the morning, like she does every day, Ms. Sylvester asks our guide about visiting the orphanage.

  “We have to wait and see,” she says.

  “We only have three more days in China,” Ms. Sylvester reminds her.

  I open Fortune Cookie 9, which is red:

  She wrote the Chinese characters for “good luck” on the back.

  Finally, after so many days of sightseeing, we have a Sunday off, and the babies are coming on Monday. Ms. Sylvester checks the adoption forms over and over to make sure everything is in order.

  “They would have told us if they weren’t,” Mr. Sylvester says.

  “Not necessarily,” Ms. Sylvester says. “It never hurts to check.”

  I sit on my bed and open Fortune Cookie 10:

  Andee drew a little smiley face and the characters for “child,” xiao hai. What if Baby Jing cries all day and all night and there is nothing we can do? Mom said Kaylee was like that. But not all babies that come from China are fussy. I slip out the door and down the stairs. Fan is not in the lobby. I open the door of the hotel, and for the first time, I go out by myself in China.

  The smell of wood fires used to grill meat combined with car exhaust is familiar by now. I walk past the small park where I always see the same old man doing slow exercises. He smiles at me and I smile back. Here nobody stares at me. They assume that I live in one of these apartment buildings with my parents and that I go to the school down the street and buy lunch from the vendors in the square.

  I turn the corner and walk past the playground. A lady is there with her grandson. “Xiao xin,” she tells him, be careful, as she pushes his swing. He holds the chains with mittened hands and laughs. A man and his granddaughter are tossing a ball. She misses and it rolls toward me. I pick it up and gently toss it to her.

  I sit down on the bench. Here I am, an ordinary girl sitting on a bench at a playground in Beijing. More people are coming to exercise and walk in the park. A woman is leading a group of other women in tai chi. They move slowly with their knees bent. One of them is stocky with short hair. For a second I think she is Grandma and begin to imagine really living here. I would probably go to the elementary school at the end of the block and wear a blue skirt and a white blouse with a red kerchief around my neck like the two girls walking toward me. They look around my age. If I lived here, maybe they would be my friends.

  I realize that I didn’t tell the Sylvesters I was leaving the hotel. What if they are looking for me? I hurry out of the park, around the block, and back into the warmth of the lobby. Quickly I run up the stairs to our room.

  They did not even notice I was gone.

  In my journal I write:

  Who Am I?

  I am from a playground in China

  where a little boy swings

  and old people

  do tai chi

  under the trees

  in winter.

  I close the notebook and lean my head against the back of the sofa. I feel really tired for some reason. I wish I were home in our living room with Kaylee and Ken bickering the way they do, and Mom and Dad in the kitchen. I wish I could call Camille and Laura and Andee. I want to tell them about China, but then I’m not really sure what I would say.

  I look around at the hotel lobby with its smoke-stained walls and gold carpet. In some ways it feels so familiar to me now. Soon Fan will come and tell me about her little monkey brother and what her mom cooked for dinner. I will teach her new words in English and she will teach me new words in Chinese. We will laugh together. Maybe we can go out and buy some candy at the little corner store.

  It’s strange to think that I’ve been away for only ten days. I feel as if I’ve been here much longer. And I still have not been able to visit the orphanage. What if I don’t get permission and I have to bring all the hats back? Everyone in CAT will be so disappointed. But no matter what happens, I am really, really glad I decided to come to China.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Babies

  Each caregiver carries one baby. We watch as they make their way from the van into the hotel lobby, where we have been instructed to wait.

  The guide has a list of names and she calls the couples one at a time. “Victor and Susan Brown.”

  The couple goes to meet their baby.

  “Sylvan and Victoria Holiman,” “Nathalie Kamensky and Jason Lees,” “Suzanne and Roy Sylvester.”

  Mr. and Ms. Sylvester move toward a short lady who is holding a baby. I follow behind. The lady hands the baby to Ms. Sylvester. She has big dark eyes and a wide forehead. The baby stares at Ms. Sylvester’s face for a minute, then reaches for her necklace. Ms. Sylvester has tears running down her cheeks. Mr. Sylvester is still holding her around her shoulders. Baby Jing makes a cooing noise as she shakes the necklace. Ms. Sylvester kisses the baby’s cheek and then hands her to Mr. Sylvester. Jing stares at his face and grabs his nose.

  He laughs. “It’s a big one, isn’t it?”

  Then she wants the necklace again.

  The room is noisy with babies cooing and crying and people talking. Mom and Dad said Kaylee screamed for hours when they first got her, but most of these babies seem pretty calm. Now Jing is playing with the buttons on Mr. Sylvester’s sweater.

  The guide folds her list of names, and the caregivers are turning to leave in the van. “Say goodbye, Jing,” Ms. Sylvester says.

  The caregiver is patting Jing’s back. “Hen hao de bao bao,” she says. “Mei wen ti.”

  I translate. “A very good baby. No problem.”

  “I wish you could stay longer,” Ms. Sylvester says.

  “Deng yi deng, Can you wait?” I ask.

  The lady shakes her head. She pats Jing once more on her head, then turns to go.

  “Zai jian,” I say, holding Jing’s arm to help her wave.

  But Jing is too interested in the buttons on Mr. Sylvester’s sweater to say goodbye.

  The guide comes over to me. “Tomorrow we can go to the orphanage. I will be here at nine in the morning.”

  “We will be ready,” Ms. Sylvester says.

  “Only Anna,” the guide says. “That is the permission that I got.”

  Ms. Sylvester looks worried. “By herself?”

&nb
sp; “I’ll be fine,” I say.

  “Tomorrow, nine o’clock, in the lobby,” the guide repeats. “I wait for you.”

  “Xie xie,” I say, feeling excited and scared at the same time.

  We take Jing up to our hotel room and set her on the bed. She looks around at everything, and then reaches for Ms. Sylvester.

  “Mama,” Mr. Sylvester says.

  Jing watches his mouth like Kaylee used to.

  “Daddy,” Ms. Sylvester says, pointing to her husband.

  “Ba ba,” I say, in Chinese. Daddy.

  Mr. Sylvester looks at me. “Anna. Can you say Anna?”

  Jing is busy playing with the chain hanging on the lamp.

  “She seems to like shiny things,” Ms. Sylvester says.

  Mr. Sylvester drops his keys on the bed. Jing picks them up, shakes them, and smiles at the sound.

  When she gets fussy, Ms. Sylvester mixes up some formula and gives it to Baby Jing in a bottle. She sucks hard and soon the bottle is empty. Mr. Sylvester burps her and changes her wet diaper. Then Mr. Sylvester wants to take her for a walk, but Ms. Sylvester says it’s too soon, they should just get used to each other for now.

  “She is already used to us,” Mr. Sylvester says.

  It seems like he’s right. Jing smiles and coos and eats and burps just like she’s supposed to. Around seven thirty she starts rubbing her eyes and yawning. They lay her down in the collapsible baby bed, and she sucks her thumb quietly.

  “Easy,” Mr. Sylvester whispers.

  “Just wait,” Ms. Sylvester says. “Babies go through stages.”

  “Well, the first one is great!” he says.

  Mr. and Ms. Sylvester are sitting together, staring at Jing as she falls asleep.

  I go down to the lobby to look for Fan, but she’s not there. One of the couples is walking back and forth with their baby, who just won’t stop crying. The man keeps jiggling her up and down, but still she screams. They look exhausted.

  “When my parents first adopted my sister, she cried a lot too,” I say. “It helped if I sang to her.”

  The mom looks at me and I see the deep circles around her eyes. The baby is quiet for a moment. Then she lets out a scream even louder than Kaylee’s. “Do you want to try?” the lady asks, handing the baby to me.

  “What’s her name?” I ask.

  “Susan,” the lady says.

  I take Susan, sit on the sofa, and start singing the tiger song that Kaylee likes. As soon as I get to the end, I start over. At first Susan still screams, but then she takes longer between cries and I can tell that she is listening. “Liang zhi lao hu,” I sing again.

  I sing the fruit song and the gumdrops song and “Twinkle Twinkle.” As long as I sing, she doesn’t cry. The man joins in. “Twinkle, twinkle, little Susan,” he croons. We sing it three times, and then Susan is asleep.

  “You really know how to settle her down,” the lady says. “We can’t thank you enough.”

  I put Baby Susan in her stroller. She sticks her fist in her mouth and keeps on sleeping.

  “Do you think you can teach us the Chinese song?” the lady asks.

  I try to teach them the first verse of the tiger song. They don’t know any Chinese, so it sounds pretty funny, but maybe Susan will recognize the tune.

  When I go back up to my room, all three Sylvesters are sound asleep.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Lucky Family Orphanage

  The sun is just starting to rise. I get up quietly and fill my backpack with all the hats, along with my camera and the small photo album. I put the fortune cookie money in an inside zippered pocket. The Sylvesters are still asleep. Baby Jing is in her bed. Her eyes are halfway open and she is quietly sucking her thumb.

  I go down to the lobby and wait. When the guide comes, we run out to the curb and she hails a taxi. The traffic is terrible, and cars and bicycles and people are everywhere. The taxi driver keeps honking for people to move out of the way. The guide is arguing with him about the best way to get to the orphanage. I can understand some words like “left” and “right,” but they are talking really fast. The driver asks the lady if I was adopted from the Lucky Family Orphanage and she says yes.

  “My sister was adopted, not me,” I say in English.

  She doesn’t translate for the taxi driver. He swerves around a big hole in the street, honks, and takes off down the highway. On the shoulder there are threewheeled bicycles piled high with vegetables and bottles of water and cardboard boxes. We go over a big bump and I feel yesterday’s dinner in my throat.

  Finally we exit and drive down a gravel road for about twenty minutes. Then we turn the corner and I see it, just like on the website: a gray two-story building with a big sign in front that says LUCKY FAMILY ORPHANAGE in red characters. The taxi driver stops, the lady pays him, and we step out into a wind so cold, it takes my breath away.

  First we go into an office. The lady sitting behind the desk asks who we are, and our guide explains something very fast. I want to tell her that my sister was adopted from this orphanage, but she is busy with the forms and motions for us to sit down on two chairs.

  I put my head back against the wall and hear the sounds of voices and crying. The lady turns on a radio and it plays American pop music. She prints out more forms, which the guide fills out. Then the lady calls over a man, who points to various things on the form. Could there be a problem? They argue for a minute. Finally the lady says, “Come along,” in English.

  We follow her down a hallway and into a room she calls the baby room, with windows along one wall. The sun is shining right into my eyes and for a few moments I can’t see anything. Then there they are, rows of small cribs and ladies with white smocks going from one to another. Some babies are sitting, some are standing, others are sleeping. “Zao an,” a lady says. Good morning.

  “Zao an,” I reply.

  The orphanage lady talks to a person who is sitting at a desk in the back of the room. I think she is explaining that my baby sister was adopted from this orphanage two years ago. The two of them keep looking at me.

  I take the photo album out of my backpack and open it to a picture of Kaylee when she first arrived.

  The lady takes the album and calls to some of the other women. They crowd around the photo album. Suddenly they are all talking at once. “Of course, look at our Bao Bao, she is so big,” one says.

  “Hen piao liang,” says another. “Very pretty.” She calls more ladies over.

  “Look, come and see our Bao Bao.”

  “Does she still cry so much?”

  “Is she eating better now?”

  I smile. These ladies knew my sister very well. They held her and rocked her and tried to comfort her.

  “She eats now,” I say. The Chinese words are flowing easily. “She likes bananas and hamburgers. And she loves to play with our cat.” I show them the picture of Kaylee with Maow Maow.

  One of the ladies laughs. “Our Bao Bao is chasing a cat,” she says.

  They look through all the pictures and say that our house is so beautiful. I want to take pictures of the ladies and the babies, but the guide says I am not allowed, so I put the camera away. Some babies wave to me. Others are sleeping. One is crying and a lady is patting her on the back.

  Then one of the women who is younger than the others talks to me in English. “I remember your mei mei. A crying baby,” she says, and I see that her eyes are watery. “Bao Bao likes songs.”

  “Especially the one about the two tigers,” I say.

  “I used to sing to her.” She switches to Chinese. “Bao Bao is very stubborn.”

  “Yes,” I say, showing her the picture of Kaylee pulling her mouse away from the cat.

  “She has a strong personality,” she says.

  “That’s good,” another lady says. “Especially for a girl.”

  “Do you remember the day she came here?” I ask.

  The ladies look at each other. An older lady clears her throat and talks in
a mixture of Chinese and English. “It was raining that day, and cold, too. Windy, like today. A lady who works in that office there—see it out the window? That one there on the end of the road? She found a baby wrapped in a blanket right there on the steps. She said she almost stepped over it, but because the baby was crying, she stopped. Then she brought the baby to us before she went to her work.” She looks at the babies in the cribs. “Many of our babies are found like this.”

  “Do you know who that lady is?” I ask.

  “There are lots of ladies who work there. It is a big office. They are accountants, I think, for all these factories.” She makes a gesture with her arm.

  “Did she ever come again, I mean, to see Bao Bao?” I know my Chinese is full of mistakes, but they seem to understand.

  The lady shakes her head. “No. She didn’t come back.”

  “A crying baby is lucky,” the younger lady says. “If she didn’t cry, maybe the lady wouldn’t see her, and she would just step over that bundle on the steps.”

  The older lady smiles. “She is happy now, our Bao Bao.”

  “My parents said that a man brought Bao Bao to them at the hotel. Is he here?”

  The ladies look at each other. “We had a man who worked here before. But now he moved,” the older one says. “He went to his family.”

  “Can we find him?’

  She shakes her head. “It is far away. We cannot go there.”

  “I have something for the babies,” I say. “From my school.” I take my backpack off my back and empty it onto a table.