The Leavers

by Lisa Ko

  As long as he didn’t think about his mother, Deming was not that unhappy in Ridgeborough. Yet there was always this nagging, icy swipe of fear, a reminder that he needed to stay alert. At times the fear was so far in retreat he forgot its existence; at other times it was so strong he could barely stop himself from shrieking. These people were strangers. He couldn’t trust them. Like when a Chinese maid had appeared on a TV show, a woman in a tight dress with garish eye makeup speaking a botched version of Mandarin, and Kay had stopped talking, the silence in the room was so loud it formed a dark red curtain, and Kay had flushed and quickly changed the channel, blabbing about winter and skiing as the TV played a commercial with a blonde lady putting a plate of fish sticks in a microwave. If Leon or Mama or Vivian had been there they would have all laughed at the Chinese maid together, made a joke about what province she was from, how could they get a job like that. Or the time Kay asked him to run into Food Lion and pick up a gallon of milk while she waited in the car, and Deming swore he’d heard someone make a noise like they did in kung-fu movies: hi-ya! When he told Kay about the sound, she had said, “Maybe you misheard? Maybe they were singing a song, or telling a friend about a movie?” Or eating shitty Chinese takeout at Roland’s house, gloppy chicken in nuclear red sauce, and Roland had poked at the meat lumps and asked what it was and his mother joked that it was cat or dog, was that a tail they saw there, and Deming felt chilled, implicated. Be careful. They’re not on your side. It’s important to be strong.

  “Next year, can I get a guitar?” They were driving home after dinner at Casa Margarita, after dropping Roland off. If he had a guitar, he and Roland could have a real band.

  “Let’s not carried away,” Peter said. “Music is fine to listen to as a hobby, but you need to focus on school.”

  “But what if my grades get better?”

  “You need to be more responsible, Daniel. Don’t ask for more when you can’t even be thankful for what you already have.”

  “I am thankful.”

  Kay turned around. “Enjoy your laptop first. Live in the moment.”

  THEY WERE TALKING IN bed again. “He’s getting C’s and D’s,” Peter said. “We should look into a tutor. A student from Carlough.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Kay said.

  “He needs to work harder.”

  “Oh, God, sometimes I look at him and think, what are we doing with this twelve-year-old Chinese boy? In Ridgeborough? Jim and Elaine, at least they’re in New York City. How could we have considered bringing a child from China here? The other day, Daniel told me he’d heard something, I don’t know, racist at the Food Lion. I was horrified. And now, whenever we go out, I’m suspicious. Are people looking at us because I have blonde hair and he has black hair? Or is it more nefarious? It’s making me paranoid.”

  “We’re learning, we’re learning.”

  “I mean, should we cook Chinese food? Or start Mandarin lessons again? I don’t want to be this, you know, this white lady—”

  “You’re not doing anything wrong. It’s not easy, caring for a foster child. This has been a big change for us, a big adjustment.”

  “Tell me about it. Some days I want to do one of those marathon writing days like I used to, but then there’s this boy here who needs us, and I need to make him meals and buy him clothes and make sure I’m loving and caring and patient so I don’t mess him up more than he already is. I’m afraid I’m too old to learn how to be the kind of mother who gives everything up to mom. Even foster mom. I’m using mom as a verb here, in case you can’t tell.”

  “Well, if you’re too old, then I’m too old, too,” Peter said. “You know, at a meeting the other day, Will Panov said Daniel was lucky to have us and we were brave to take in an older boy. I told him, we’re the ones who are lucky that he’s staying with us.”

  Kay sighed. “I know you’re trying to be nice, but it’s different for men. All those books and articles I read about the whole unrealistic American expectation regarding motherhood, the martyr-like aspect of it, the reality is so much worse than I’d even expected. You get to work all you want, but you never feel bad about it. You weren’t brought up that way.”

  “No? I think I know a little about familial expectations.”

  There was a lengthy silence.

  Peter finally said, “This might sound callous, but honestly, whatever we do is going to be better than what he experienced before. You remember what the agency said, how the mother and stepfather both went back to China. We’re the first stable home he’s ever had.”

  “I know, but I feel like I’m holding my breath. The aunt could still come back. I’ll feel so much better when it’s all finalized, one way or the other.”

  “We’ll know more next month at the hearing.”

  “I want to treat him like he’s my own son, not just a foster kid, but there’s this chance it won’t work out.”

  “Remember, Jamie said it’s unlikely there will be an appeal since there hasn’t been any communication from his family. And after six months we can start proceedings.”

  Back to China? Proceedings? Who were Jim and Elaine? If his mother had gone anywhere, it was Florida, not China. In his bedroom, in the dark, Deming held his breath, wondering if they would say more about her, if they knew things about her that he didn’t. They were hiding things from him. He’d been right not to trust them.

  “Did you read that article in the paper today?” Kay said. “An abandoned baby in a bus station in Buffalo? I’m sure his mother had her reasons, whatever they were, mental health, financial hardship.”

  “All that matters is that we’re taking care of Daniel right now,” Peter said. “Not whether we’re Asian or Chinese or whatever.”

  “But do you think we didn’t prepare enough? Even if we’d been planning for years.”

  “Oh, we could have read every single book out there and it still wouldn’t have prepared us.”

  “I think of his mother constantly, though I probably shouldn’t,” Kay said. “What did she look like? What was her name? It’s not like I can ask Daniel about her. He doesn’t say a peep. Sure, I know it’s cultural, but it’s also like he’s scared of us.”

  “He won’t always be.”

  “I hope so. We’ll love him so much we’ll make it all better.”

  “Killing them with kindness, that sort of thing?”

  “But no actual killing,” Kay said. “I’m a pacifist.”

  Deming waited for them to say more, but they had stopped talking.

  Kay was wrong. He wasn’t scared of her. He was scared of finding out what really happened to his mother.

  ROLAND ASKED OUTRIGHT, SAID the word that no one else had. “Is it weird being a foster kid? Are the Wilkinsons going to adopt you?” They were walking home from school, down Hillside Road, past the Ridgeborough Library and the Methodist church, the sidewalk bumpy with tree roots.

  Adopt. There was a similar term in Chinese, yet Deming hadn’t thought of his time with Peter and Kay to be anything but vaguely temporary, like the stay with Yi Gong had been vaguely temporary. Even the name Daniel Wilkinson seemed like an outfit he would put on for an unspecified period of time, until he returned to his real name and home planet. Where that real home was, however, was no longer certain.

  “It’s weird,” he said.

  “Do you miss your real mom?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I kind of miss my dad, even if I don’t remember him.” They stopped on the corner. “Are you coming over?”

  “I just remembered I have to help my mom with something.”

  Deming ran the three blocks back to Oak Street. He knew he had a good hour and a half before Kay and Peter came home. He brought his laptop to the study and pulled up an online dictionary.

  Foster child: A child looked after temporarily or brought up by people other than his or her natural or adoptive parents.

  Adoption: A process whereby a person assumes the parenting for another and, in so doing, p
ermanently transfers all rights and responsibilities from the original parent or parents. Adoption is intended to effect a permanent change in status, through legal sanction.

  It took a minute to parse through the language, but when he did, it seemed like the computer was expanding.

  Temporarily. Permanent.

  He pulled open the drawer of the file cabinet next to the desk, a long, metal arm crammed with folders for taxes, property-related documents, and research for Peter’s book on something called free trade. Sandwiched between KAY WORK and LIFE INSURANCE was a fat folder labeled ADOPTION/FOSTER. Deming tugged until the folder gave way and poured its contents onto the floor.

  It had to be a joke. He sat on the rug and picked up a color pamphlet titled Gift of Life: Your Child Is Waiting for You. Blurry pictures of children with large, liquid eyes were placed throughout, as well as pictures of adults holding babies with darker skin. The children, the captions said, came from Ethiopia, Romania, and China. The pamphlet talked about how international adoption gave an unwanted child a home and blessed adoptive parents with a child of their own.

  He dumped out the rest of the folder, listening for sounds downstairs, footsteps or the front door closing. He scanned a printout of an e-mail message, dated more than four years ago.

  Dear Sharon,

  I attended the Gift of Life informational seminar last Saturday with my husband Peter. After years of unresolved fertility issues, we are very interested in becoming parents, and soon! We’ve been married for over twenty years and are more than ready to make our family complete. Our loving home in Ridgeborough is ready for a child.

  We have good friends who are parents to a Chinese adoptee, so we are familiar with the process, and are interested in adopting from China as well. I know there are sending countries that look down on “older” first-time parents (Peter and I are each forty-six). We don’t mind adopting a Chinese child who is older, as we know they can also (like us “older” parents) be “harder to place.” Peter and I have traveled extensively and both teach at the college level, so we have experience working with young people. We think international adoption would be a good fit for us.

  I look forward to hearing from you.

  Sincerely,

  Kathryn S. Wilkinson

  He saw medical records, criminal clearances and background checks, documents stating the Wilkinsons’ home was safe for a child, and an e-mail from the Gift of Life director saying that with sending countries’ new restrictions on international adoption, Kay and Peter might want to consider domestic adoption, or foster-to-adoption. He flipped through reports from social workers stating that the Wilkinsons were well-established professionals who were financially and emotionally equipped to become loving parents, and papers that said they had completed mandatory training classes and were court-certified to foster and adopt. When he saw a packet of papers labeled INITIAL PERMANENCY HEARING REPORT: IN THE MATTER OF DEMING GUO, he stopped. The report was dated two months ago. He had to read a few sentences over twice, but at the end, he understood, even if he wished he didn’t.

  Birth mother and putative father abandoned child six months ago and returned to China. Caregiver V. Zheng signed Surrender Form.

  After interim care in Brooklyn, child was placed in foster care with the Wilkinsons due to K. Wilkinson’s indication of Mandarin-speaking skills.

  Foster parents plan to petition for termination of mother’s parental rights on grounds of abandonment.

  No current reunification plan with birth family.

  Anticipated Permanency Planning Goal: Placement for Adoption

  There were so many more e-mails and documents, bundles of legal papers and dense forms, but Deming couldn’t bear to read them, and Peter and Kay would be home any minute. He stuffed the papers back into the folder, then wedged the folder in the file cabinet and pushed the drawer shut.

  Termination. Permanency. His mother had abandoned him. She’d returned to China. He wanted to puke. He closed the browser window. The laptop seemed grotesque, too big and new.

  At dinner, he asked them if he was adopted.

  “Well, right now we’re your foster parents,” Kay said. “That means that you’re living with us, like any kid lives with his family, because you need a safe place to stay. And we would like to have you stay with us for as long as you want. We would like to adopt you. Would you like that?”

  Deming shrugged.

  “It wouldn’t happen right away,” Peter said. “It might take a long time.”

  “But what happened to my real family?” Deming asked.

  “We are your real family,” Peter said.

  Kay frowned. “Your mother wanted to take care of you, but she couldn’t.”

  The table grew blurry, the food tasted dry. “So she left me.” After he heard Peter and Kay talking in their room the other night, he had been waiting for them to say something to him about his mother. But they kept acting like everything was fine.

  “She loved you.” Kay refolded her napkin.

  “And we love you, too.” Peter exchanged a worried look with Kay.

  “I saw that,” Deming said.

  “Saw what?” Peter asked.

  “Never mind.”

  Mama had perminated him. Vivian had lied to him about coming for him soon. His skin burned and the kitchen lights were so bright, the floorboards so wide and wooden. The mix on DWLK was a single song on loop, a mash up of abandoned and permanent. He felt faint, pulled back to the ammoniac odor of the hallways in P.S. 33, the blue-gray floors and dented metal lockers.

  “Daniel, you look tired,” Kay said. “Are you okay? Do you want to rest upstairs?”

  Deming put one hand on the table to balance himself. Kay pressed her fingers to his forehead. “Peter, he’s really warm. It must be the flu or something. It’s been going around at Carlough, half my students are out sick.”

  Peter took another bite of his chicken. “Daniel, go upstairs and rest.”

  “He can barely stand up,” Kay said. “You carry him.”

  Peter put down his fork and knife. He stood and lifted Deming, one leg, then the other, and carried him up the stairs, grunting with the effort. Deming held his arms around Peter’s neck, his legs around Peter’s waist. Peter’s footsteps were slow and unsure, each step a quiet struggle.

  ELEVEN IN THE MORNING and they had been on the road for almost five hours. Peter slammed his hands on the steering wheel when the car came to an abrupt stop on the FDR, idling behind a potato chip truck and a yellow cab. In the backseat Deming counted exits. None of the highways they had taken from Ridgeborough were familiar, and he skimmed billboards for the furniture one he and Roland especially loved, a store called Sofa King.

  The Wilkinsons were on their first family road trip to New York City, to visit the Hennings family, who had a daughter’s Deming’s age. Kay said she’d be his friend. “This will be a good trip for your father,” Kay had told him, “he needs cheering up.” Valerie McClellan had been asked to take over as the chair of Carlough’s Department of Economics in the fall, after Will Panov retired. The day Peter found out, Deming had seen him wheeling the plastic garbage bin up from the curb, his face red. “God damn it!” he yelled when the bin’s wheels caught on a branch in the driveway.

  Deming tried to remember that first drive upstate with Kay and Peter, eleven months ago, when they were still strangers. First he had looked out the window, trying to memorize the roads so he could make his way back. Then he fell asleep. Now they were no longer strangers, they were Kay and Peter, Mom and Dad, and this was the last day he would see them. He had gotten used to having adults speak to him loudly and slowly, as if he was deaf, and it was less terrifying being the only one; the terror had become normal. He no longer fantasized that his mother would come for him, but as they drove deeper into the city he stared at the looming high-rises with a catch in his throat. Slick pavement, ferocious honking, spewing fire hydrants, fetid mystery puddles, wet steam expelled through sidewalk gratings as
if the Earth was panting, firm thwacks of rubber against concrete on handball courts. That precarious dip when you walked over a metal door atop a restaurant basement.

  It was July. Peter and Kay had filed an adoption petition, and when the judge approved it, they would all go to court to sign the papers. Last month, they had bought Deming a yellow dirt bike and matching helmet, and he and Roland had been biking around town, exploring little streets on the outskirts of Ridgeborough, still gravel, still unpaved, with names like Bajor Lane and Meeker Road, streets he would never see again. Deming had perfected a wheelie on his bicycle. He and Roland had created a stage out of a tree stump and taken turns jumping off of it into a crowd of invisible fans.

  He turned away from the window but when they drove past signs for the Cross Bronx Expressway, turned back. After Kay told him they were going to visit the Hennings, he had called his mother’s cell phone for the first time in over a month and got the same message. The call could not be completed. But he’d packed extra clothes.

  The potato chip truck nudged up. “Finally,” Peter said. Deming watched the brown buildings fade behind them, breathed a small circle onto the glass and wiped the moisture away with his finger.

  In front of a gray apartment building on East Twenty-First Street, the sounds and colors came back. The squawk of a lowering bus. The soundtracks of passing cars. House music, an old track with twisting keyboards and words about getting your back up off the wall, a song sung in Spanish with shiny horns and the fattest tuba bass. Bright pastel smudges rapidly filled the sky. It was hotter here than in Ridgeborough, and Deming turned in a slow, clockwise circle, stricken by the tinkling notes of a nearby ice cream truck, hesitant and plaintive, reminding him of the rainbow sherbet push-pops he would eat with Michael, the sweet liquid that made their tongues blue. He could hear Michael’s quaking laughter, Mama and Vivian snap-talking in Fuzhounese.