PROLOGUE Wen Ming, April 2001
The woman of my earliest memory has no body. Just a round face with skin like a plum. Smooth and tight. Firm. A smiling plum with dimples. She is not my mama. I don’t remember my mama.
Many years later, now that I am nearly grown, there are other things I remember. They are only pieces, like torn bits of a blurred photo. Sometimes I don’t know what is real memory and what my mind has filled in for me, but I think most of our lives happen in our minds, so it doesn’t bother me.
I remember a misty rain that smelled like the ocean and dead earthworms; massive concrete steps and the ache in my legs as I climbed them; the fuzzy nubs of my blanket, and its unchanging odor of old sun-dried sheets, steamed rice, and sour water. The blanket corner caught a step and I tripped. The woman grabbed my hand tighter and told me, “You should be more careful. Now hurry.”
We did.
Not the hurry of going to the park for tai chi. Not the hurry of getting to the market before all the best fish were taken. Not the hurry of peeling off my many layers of clothing to squat over the toilet. Those normal sorts of hurry never turned my fingers into clammy, day-old rice noodles, never set an eel to swimming in my stomach. This hurry was the nightmare that chased me down dark alleys in my mind and swallowed me with its nothingness.
I was too small to fight it, but I did drag my feet. She tugged my arm. I shuffled after her. I had no choice.
Lots of hallways. Dim and musty, damp. The voices of a man and a woman—this woman with the perfect plum skin.
“You are not allowed to leave a child here. This is a police station, not an orphanage. She cannot stay. It’s against the law.”
“She isn’t my child.”
“She has been living with you?”
“I … took her in when her mother … actually, I don’t know her parents.”
“This was how long ago?”
“She’ll be three in July.”
“What sort of mother would give up her child after almost three years? She is that much trouble to you?” The man laughed and ruffled my hair, as if I were nothing more than a dog to be scratched behind the ears. Sharp teeth bared in my heart, and I pulled away from him with a silent growl. The woman jerked my hand and made me stand closer to her.
“I am not her mother!” Her anxiety flowed from her hand through mine, up my arm and to my heart, leaving a trail of numbing coldness. “It isn’t that I don’t care for the child. But she is not registered, she has no hukou. She is going blind …”
I felt the man’s hand under my chin. He lifted my face, his touch more gentle than before. He was a towering shadow of dull greens and grays. “You should have gotten a hukou for her. You should not have been so foolish.”
The woman said nothing. In my mind, now, I am sorry for this memory woman. It is a shameful thing to give up a child, even one who is not your own. She could not save face. Not when she’d taken me in illegally. Not when she was too poor to care for a child going blind.
“I could have left her in a restroom. She doesn’t talk yet. I brought her here because she would be safe. You think I’m a bad person?” Her voice sounded like the never-ending shrill of Shanghai traffic. “I’m not a bad person. My husband’s parents—they are the ones who went back on their word. Our parents think a girl with poor eyesight is not worth it. So how can I afford for her to go to a doctor? Am I to lose my job and do nothing but care for a blind child? Who will pay for that? Would you have us all end up on the streets? I’m a good person and a hard worker. My husband is also. We want a healthy child, just like anybody.”
Her words made me thin, translucent, a sheet of paper about to be crumpled and thrown in the trash. A sheet of paper scribbled with unwantedness.
The man did not speak right away. Maybe he did not agree with the woman. Maybe he did not find me unwanted. But if he disagreed, why did he not speak?
I held tightly to the woman’s hand. I do not know if I loved her, but if she let go, if she left me, I’d be alone in my world of shadows. Already, the dark seemed to creep under my skin, separating me from my own body. I wiggled my fingers and toes, but they didn’t seem to be mine to control.
“Please,” she whispered. “I was going to register her when we took her in, but we never had enough money. My husband’s parents promised to help pay for the hukou, until they found out she was a girl. Now they are angry because we have a girl who is going blind. And who else will take her? You can understand.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the man to be unmoved by her pleading. To be untouched by her humiliation. To not understand.
After many moments, when he tried to speak, his voice sounded choked and thick like old sesame oil. “On her papers, I will write that you found her and brought her here. I won’t say anything about the rest.”
For the first time, the woman’s hand slackened. She let go of me and opened her purse. “Thank you. I have her birth date too, for her papers.”
My breath came in tiny pulses, like the throb in a chicken’s neck the moment before it snaps.
Shadowed paper yuan traveled from her purse to his hand. He had shielded her not only from shame but also from legal trouble. That was worth a monetary gift, even from a woman who could not afford it. She knelt in front of me, a wide, forced smile stretching across her smooth skin.
“You’re going to a good place. Lots of other children. They’ll help your eyes there. It’s really the best thing for you.”
A tear on her cheek caught the light. I touched it and her smile wobbled. She laughed a little. “I wish I could go too! Lucky baby. You’ll have so much fun.”
I threw my arms around her and pressed my face against her neck, where her skin was softest and smelled like soap. She held me, and a sob ripped through her, through us both.
She tore herself from me. Disappeared into shadows. I heard the rapid squeaking of her rubber-soled shoes echoing down the corridor as she made her escape.
I lunged to follow. The man’s arms snapped around me and I screamed. I kicked and thrashed, but he was so much stronger than I. He told me not to be a naughty baby, to hush and be good. I don’t think he meant to be unkind. He held me against him, rubbing my back and bouncing me. His heart beat very fast. And his hands trembled. For his sake, I tried to stop crying. I wanted to be good.
The aunties who work at the Shanghai Children’s Welfare Home think I was too young to remember this. They say I made it up. A child of two and a half years could never have such a memory, they insist. But this I remember—I know it happened, not just in my mind. I know it was real.
Is this a thing a child could forget?
© 2010 Meredith Efken
ONE Meg Lindsay
I watch her sleep. The turbulent energy of day has given way to the Elysian simplicity of night. I brush her pink lips with my thumb and her still-childish cheeks with my fingers. Her skin is the softness of every gentle memory and warm sensation I have ever known. It’s all there, in touching her. She will never know how many nights I’ve done this—stolen into her room to watch her—hungrily, desperately trying to fill the hole inside myself with her. I can’t love enough, can’t want enough, can’t get enough of her. The little hands; the messy, sweaty hair; the delicate skin of her eyelids. I never asked for this love, never expected it to be such an unsatisfied pain inside. But now I crave it, no matter how it devours me, no matter if it destroys me, I need to love her. I want to love her.
I never wanted this.
I never wanted to be a mom. There’s the cold, hard truth of it. Lots of people thought it was because I’m self-centered and too career-focused. Lots of people thought it was because I didn’t like children. Lots of people thought it was because I must be infertile.
Lots of people were wrong.
From my earliest memories, “mother” has meant the woman who criticizes, who critiques my every move, who is never satisfied or totally pleased. A mother is someone who loves only if you do what she wants. With a mother, you’re always one step away from emotional abandonment, from becoming an orphan of the heart.
So why would I want to become that person? Why would I want to do that to an innocent child? I don’t dislike children. I dislike mothers.
Why would I ever choose to become what I dislike?
And yet, that’s exactly what I did. I’m not saying my motives were right. I know they were not. But every revolution, every paradigm shift has a catalyst. A shove. A compelling reason to risk everything to find a new path, to change.
My shove, my catalyst, was my mother.
March 2005
“Tell me again why we’re doing this.” My husband, Lewis, guided our car into my parents’ driveway and shut off the engine.
I stared out the window at the prosy March Sunday, pedestrian as a Schoenberg string quartet. “Because I haven’t seen my sister in two years?” She’d been in France and had only returned home two days ago.
Lewis lifted his eyebrows in an is-that-the-best-you-can-come-up-with expression.
“I know, I know.” I leaned my head against the back of the seat. “How about this one? We’re doing this because I still harbor the thoroughly unrealistic hope that my parents will change if I do the good-daughter thing long enough.”
He opened his door and ducked out of the car. “Give you points for honesty, anyway. Let’s...
