by Gish Jen
— I knew you were going to say that.
She messed up her arrangement.
— I’m sorry. You don’t have to. I mean it.
Wendy stared at the stones. In their shiny curved surfaces I could see her thin face reflected over and over.
I had not meant to push her. Yet I hadn’t wanted to reinforce her shyness, either. It was hard to follow my instincts with Wendy. For example, my instinct now was to hug her. Yet I did not, as she had never really liked hugging, just as she had not, when she first came to us, liked being held in our arms and gazed at. I had anticipated attachment problems—I had read that I should carry her all day in a Snugli, facing in. But I had also read that I should follow the baby’s lead; and she so strongly preferred to be laid down in her crib. Or better yet, to be strapped into her car seat, the molded part of which snapped out and rocked. This sort of seat was really designed for infants—I never intended for her to spend hours in it. But apparently it felt familiar to her. And gaining weight as slowly as she did, once she came to the States, she fit in it longer than most children.
Back in the Chinese orphanage, in an unsupervised moment, we had glimpsed a brown room full of green plastic chairs with straps. Could our Wendy really have been strapped into such a chair? We told ourselves that the children were probably strapped into the chairs to keep them from crawling on the floors, which were broken tile and concrete. Why would they have done that to our Wendy? Who, though supposedly ten months when we adopted her, was not yet crawling. We told ourselves, too, that though the foster mother worked in the orphanage, Wendy, theoretically, had not lived there. Our Wendy, theoretically, had lived in the foster mother’s home.
Yet Wendy loved the rocker seat, and plastic seats in general.
That changed once she was vertical. My third leg, I called her then. How she clung to me! And how happy we were about that—how relieved. So much so that I sometimes wondered if we didn’t in small ways encourage the clinging—wanting to fill her with the warmth we felt she had missed.
Did that make her shyer than she would have been anyway?
I gently touched, now, her knee.
— I mean it, I said again.
She took her knee back for herself—staring, still, at the stones. Her hair curtained her face. Her back curved, as if she was trying to make herself into a stone, too.
— I hate doing stuff in class, she said. I hate even raising my hand.
— I know, I said, resisting the impulse to draw aside the curtain. I talked through it instead, as if to a priest in a confessional. — If you’d like, I’d love to come into class and do something.
— And do what? she said. Talk about that car accident?
— How about Chinese New Year? I said. And how do you even know about the accident?
WENDY / — Lizzy told me, I say. Was it a secret? Lizzy says a lot of things are secret in this house.
— It is not a secret, says Mom. We just try not to dwell on unpleasant things.
— How come?
— We are trying to be happy, says Mom.
— Lizzy says you talk about all kinds of things behind our backs, I say. She says you talk about us.
— Of course we talk about you, says Mom. We talk about how you’re doing. What your teacher had to say and so on.
— But what do you say?
— Next time I’ll write it down, says Mom. Okay?
— You’re going to forget.
— You know I might, she sighs. I forget a lot of things these days, that’s why I take this herb, you know, this gingko? For my memory. Also I’m pretty busy. But I’ll try.
— That’s not why you’ll forget, I say.
BLONDIE / I heard Lizzy then, in Wendy. Second children were double-voiced that way.
— In the past, I said, I would have just said I won’t forget. I wouldn’t have burdened you with how hard it will be for me to remember. How many things I’m juggling. Whether I get enough sleep. That’s the kind of thing we keep from you. Do you understand?
She clicked her stones against one another while I tried to forget some of the things I was juggling. For example, her little brother’s ear infections—how many ear infections he had! And that interview with—what—some business magazine, in which I was asked three times whether our firm wasn’t first and foremost about profit. Could I deny that the social-responsibility angle was just a way of differentiating ourselves from other funds? Could I deny that it was just marketing?
Could I?
— It isn’t exactly being phony, I said.
— But there’s other stuff, too, right? That you don’t say?
It was chess, too, that taught her to lay traps.
— Yes, I said. I suppose there is.
— Hmm, she said. Here.
She dropped some stones then, still warm from her hand, into mine. I caught them with surprise. At closer range, by different light, I could see that the stones bore fingerprints—Wendy’s or my own, or both. How soft they felt, too, I was surprised how soft. Perhaps because they were warm?
WENDY / Mom rubs my knee the way she likes to for some reason, it’s like she’s polishing a doorknob.
— Thanks, she says. She tucks my hair around my ears so it’s out of my face, then says: — Do you want Lan to come to your class instead? Lan can come instead.
— No, I say.
That makes her look so relieved I feel sorry for her.
— Lanlan says nobody in China does the New Year’s plate like we do, I say. She says they don’t do hot pot either, or at least not like we do, where everything means something.
— Well, that’s what they did in Dad’s family.
— Lanlan says no one in China eats fortune cookies.
— We can forget about the whole thing if you like.
— Okay, I say.
— Fine, she says, playing with the stones I gave her.
— Okay, I say again.
But while Mom can forget about it, Elaine never will.
— We’re going to do a China unit! she says. Every time she sees me she says: — We’re going to do a China unit! Are you going to talk Chinese for everybody? Everybody’s waiting for you to talk Chinese!
I’m picking up Chinese like gangbusters just like Mom says, already I can speak better than Lizzy and Mom too, and of course Bailey, who can’t talk. Mom says half the time she can’t even understand what Lanlan and me are laughing about, she says it’s because I heard all that Chinese as a baby.
Now Lizzy’s jealous.
— No speaking Chinese! she yells sometimes, and grabs Lanlan’s arm and pulls her real close. — No private jokes! No speaking Chinese!
But when we don’t talk Chinese, Mom’s as upset as Lizzy. Because sometimes we hang around and don’t even have to talk. It’s like Lanlan knows what I’m thinking anyway, and like I can feel how she’s feeling too, especially if she’s feeling sad.
— What are you lovebugs doing? Mom asks if we’re hanging around like that. Like if I have my arm around Lanlan, or if I’m playing with her hair. Or if we’re just sitting doing nothing, letting the day come, or the night.
— Lovebugs, enough! she says. And I mean enough!
BLONDIE / I always thought the Chinese so industrious. And yet how lazy they could be—how many corners they could cut. For example, was it really necessary to pin a handkerchief to Bailey’s shirt to wipe his nose with? Was it really too much work to get a Kleenex? Did we really need to see this snotty cloth hanging from his shoulder?
WENDY / — How about making something with paper, says Mom. You haven’t done that in a while.
And so we do, while Bailey’s still napping. We make stuff for the millennium, poppers and hats and window decorations, and funny-looking glasses where you look out of the middle two 0’s of 2000. Lanlan tries to pronounce ‘millennium,’ and I try to explain why everybody’s storing up food and stuff.
— It’s because of the computers, I explain. Dad says a lot of the compu
ters go to 1999 and that’s it. They think after that comes nothing.
Lanlan shakes her head, and when I say ‘Y2K’ she repeats ‘Y2K.’ I’m not exactly sure what the Y means, or the K, but it’s computer talk, I tell her, for the whole mess.
— People are worried our lights are going to go out and nothing is going to work, and it will be like a disaster, I say.
Lanlan listens. Then she has to go get Bailey, who we can hear on the monitor is definitely awake, in fact jumping up and down in his crib like it’s a trampoline.
— It’s not fair, says Lizzy. It’s not fair that Wendy’s adopted from China and speaks Chinese, while nobody even knows what I am or where I came from. I hate being soup du jour.
And one day when she’s picking cookie crumbs out of the family-room rug, she suddenly looks up and says: — It’s probably how come my real mother abandoned me, don’t you think it’s how come?
— No, says Mom. I think she left you at the church because she loved you and knew she couldn’t parent you.
LIZZY / It was like some present she popped out of her pocket all wrapped up but that you know she didn’t wrap herself. It was like something she picked up prewrapped, like some bottle of perfume she was going to give to the school principal at Christmas.
— You’re just saying that! I said. How do you know? You’re just saying what it says in the adoption books you should say.
— You asked me what I thought, not what I knew.
— I could tell by the way you said ‘parent’ like that. That is like straight out of a book.
— And what should I have said?
— ‘Take care of.’ That’s what normal people say. My real mother knew she ‘couldn’t take care of me.’
— We try to say ‘birth mother.’ Because I’m your real mother too. Both your mothers are real mothers.
— That’s like out of a book too!
— It is not out of a book, said Dad, walking by. — It’s out of the adoption video.
Then he left.
— Carnegie Wong! said Mom. Please come back here!
But he had something to do in the basement. It was like the basement was his burrow, and he was a burrower, which he would actually admit if you asked him. I knew that because once I did, and he said he was by nature and long practice, like most men, shameless in this regard.
WENDY / Anyway, he’s calmed Lizzy down a little, Mom just wishes she could talk like Dad sometimes. But she can’t, it’s like her mouth just doesn’t move that way, I know because in that way I’m just like Mom. Even if she isn’t my birth mother, I’m like her anyway.
LIZZY / — And why should I learn Chinese when I might not even be Chinese? I said.
— You’re right, it’s not fair, Mom said, chopping up carrots for Bailey; she was always making these little containers of chopped vegetables and fruit and cheese. — You’re right, and you don’t have to learn Chinese if you don’t want to. Although it’s hard for a lot of people to say where they came from, they come from so many different places. Like me, I come from a lot of different countries. I don’t have a simple label, like German American or Scotch-Irish American. I’m soup du jour, too.
— Yeah, but it doesn’t matter as much because you’re white and not adopted. Nobody wonders where you’re from, nobody asks you.
— Well, I wonder myself.
— It’s different, I said. Because if you don’t want to wonder, you don’t have to.
— Do people ask you where you’re from?
WENDY / Mom means well when she says that, I can tell. She really does. Like she stops her chopping and looks at Lizzy and her whole face is so sorry, if I had any stones in my pocket, I would give her some.
But Lizzy doesn’t get whether people mean well, she just hears their words.
LIZZY / — What do you think! I said. I’m like the only kid in my class who’s soup du jour, do you realize that? The only one.
— Don’t let them get to you, Liz, Mom said. Do you see that you let them get to you? You just have to ignore them. And what about that Monique Watson? Isn’t she from someplace?
— Ignore them! I said. You have no idea what you’re talking about. And why do you have to talk like everything is my own fault? Plus Monique has nothing to do with it. I’m not, like, from someplace. I’m from America, remember? Whereas she is French or something. She has this accent.
— So she has an accent. You’re beautiful and articulate and courageous. Doesn’t that count for something?
I so hated these questions she asked, not one of which was ever a real question. Like every single one of them led somewhere she wanted to go.
— You completely don’t get anything, I said.
— I guess I don’t, said Mom, moving on to cheese chopping. —But I’m sorry that I don’t. Honestly.
— You are not sorry! You’re sick of me!
— I didn’t mean to upset you, she said, stopping again, but not until she had gotten to the end of that piece of cheese. Which was so typical of her—acting like she cared so much she couldn’t go on, while the cheese all sat there in these perfect cubes. As if I might not notice.
— If you were my real mother, you would understand! If you were my real mother, you wouldn’t be this brick wall! If you were my real mother, you’d be like Lanlan!
WENDY / That’s when I start to hear her in Chinese. Ni bu shi wode mama, ni bu shi zhende, ni shi jiade.
— I am your real mother, says Mom, sighing. — And you are my honest-to-god fifteen-year-old.
I can hear a lot of things in Chinese if I want, things Lizzy says and other people too, and sometimes I do that with Elaine and she doesn’t seem as scary. And sometimes I do that with Miss Tobey even though she is trying to be nice.
— She’s a sensitive young lady, and that’s wonderful, says Miss Tobey. We like to see that. And we respect everyone’s feelings and support diversity, but we can’t change the curriculum every time someone feels bad. We have to keep everybody on grade. And now there are state tests too, you can’t believe what we’re expected to do.
BLONDIE / Lizzy did have those outbursts. By the time the new millennium began, though, she was trying to learn Chinese anyway. And she was not blond anymore. Now she dyed her hair black, so she could look like Lan. Of course, because of the sort of dye she used, her hair came out flat black, like stove paint. It didn’t shine like Lan’s.
WENDY / Lanlan’s hair is shiny. Like mine, Lanlan says. Lanlan says my hair is naturally shiny too, I just can’t see it.
— I love China, Lizzy says now. China has issues, but America has issues too, and the Chinese economy is growing every day. It’s a shame you can’t say whatever you want in China, but in truth you can say a great deal and at least people don’t get shot on the streets the way they do here.
BLONDIE / — Oh, really, I said. And what about Tiananmen Square?
— Or at least when they do, they get shot by soldiers and not by just anybody. And at least not in high schools, Lizzy said. They don’t have, like, metal detectors. It happens seldomly.
She went on: — Someday the Chinese are going to stand up again, and then the whole world will shake. The Chinese have five thousand years of history, after all, compared to America, which is only two hundred years old but thinks it can bully everybody.
— Oh, really.
— That’s why America is afraid. Because it knows it is—wait, Lanlan told me. I forget the saying. But it means strong on the outside, while actually weak inside.
— Oh, really.
— On the other hand, there is no place like America, this is the second-greatest country in history. China is the oldest, but America is the most successful today. The CIA controls everything. Everybody has to do what America likes, because if you don’t, the CIA will bomb your embassy.
— Oh, really.
WENDY / Lanlan says America is very Chinese, really. The Chinese invented everything and now Americans invent everything, China used to be the Mi
ddle Kingdom, and now America is the Middle Kingdom, that’s why everyone has to learn English.
— Oh, really, says Mom.
LIZZY / Russell was thinking about becoming a Communist. In fact he got this Communist tattoo to express his total disgust with capitalism. But Lanlan said no no no, he definitely should not become Communist.
— Have you ever heard of the Cultural Revolution? she said. The Red Guards killed my father.
WENDY / She’s changing Bailey’s diaper while she talks, which she has to do with him standing up these days because he completely won’t lie down. Also she has to wrap tape around his diaper so he can’t just take it off. Because he loves to take it off.
LIZZY / — They sent me to the North to the countryside, do you know how cold it is there? said Lanlan. All day long you want to cry. Except you cannot cry, because someone will report you. You do not know who will make a report about you, practically a goat can decide whether you will go home someday or never go home.
LAN / How to convey the insanity of that era? The blind devotion of the Red Guards, and other people too. How they believed Mao was the sun, bringing us into the day. How people would work for days to buy a Mao badge, even if they had hundreds already. How they pinned them all over their army fatigues. One of my classmates pinned them to the skin of his chest. A neighbor in our courtyard was struggled against by his own daughter for putting a cup of tea down on a newspaper. Because the picture on the front page was a picture of Mao, she said. He failed to respect Mao.
Of course the badges were beautiful, everyone thought that. Even I thought that until the Red Guards killed my father.
It was crazy, and yet in some ways life was better then. People were more equal. You didn’t feel looked down on because you didn’t have a college degree. We had less, but we didn’t feel poor because no one was rich.
LIZZY / — Even China has market economy now, said Lanlan. Even China is Communist with Chinese characteristics.
— What does that mean? I asked.
— It means no one really believe in Communism anymore, said Lanlan.