Read An-Ya and Her Diary Online
Authors: Diane René Christian
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Dear Penny,
Wanna says we are the same. Not on the outside but on the inside. She says children are like a map. Sometimes their map looks like their biological parents. Sometimes their map looks like their adoptive parents. She says our maps are different on the outside, but inside there are some things that are the same. Wanna told me she understands the pain, and the pain telling me to do bad things. She has pain from the past too. She told me it is not exactly the same, but if you look at our inside maps they are very similar. I don’t know.
Dear Penny,
I think Jazz is having problems. I heard her talking to a girlfriend in the parlor today. Jazz seemed upset and she looked like she had been crying. It was hard to hear exactly what they were saying because they were whispering and Ellie was singing and slurping her ice cream.
Something about Jazz’s parents fighting and her mom leaving.
I understand how she feels. Daddy and Wanna had a big fight the other night. I could hear them yelling downstairs. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but their voices were loud and angry. Even if I couldn’t hear the words, I already know that they were fighting about me. I am sure they wish they didn’t adopt me. I am sure things were perfect before I got here. Wanna hates me because I cause so many problems. Wanna will probably be leaving soon too.
Dear Penny,
Do you like sleeping in the bed? It is huge. Wanna told me it was called a full size bed. I am starting to like it. When I first came home, I thought it was too soft and too big. It felt much better to sleep on the floor. Now I am starting to like the softness of the bed. What do you think? It’s like sleeping on a cloud. I like this pink blanket with the flowers. But it would be much prettier if the flowers were blue. That is my favorite color—blue. I really like the blue that is a little lighter than the sky. When I have my own house, I will paint the whole house that color. Wanna says she hopes that I will never have my own house and that I will stay with her forever.
Dear Penny,
There was a Nanny in the orphanage who was like an angel. Her hair flowed down her back like a black waterfall. I loved her. She was beautiful and kind to me. Nap time was hard, and she always patted me on the head and sang a Chinese children’s song. She would sing until I slept. Her voice helped me rest. I didn’t see her very much. I don’t know why she didn’t come more. I thought that maybe she loved me. One day, after thinking about it for a long time, I asked her to adopt me. She laughed at me and it hurt a lot. I didn’t tell her it hurt. I told her it was no big deal. But it was a big deal. She said that she wasn’t old enough and she wasn’t married. So what? It would have been much easier if she would have taken me. I would have brushed her hair for her. She would have let my hair grow long like hers. I would have been good to her and helped her clean. Nobody would ask us if we were mother and daughter because we would look the same. It hurt me that she laughed.
Dear Penny,
Today was a bad day. Wanna ordered me a surprise present on the computer. It came today. It was a Chinese super hero movie. Wanna knows that I like super heroes. I was excited about it, but I didn’t tell Wanna. We opened the box and Wanna put it in the player. Then she left to go do the dishes or something.