An-Ya and Her Diary (4 page)

It started to play the movie and I sat close to the TV. For a minute I was ok. I listened and listened, and I didn’t understand what they were saying. Then my head felt a sharp pain. It was like a pain that went straight from my heart to my brain. I started screaming. I couldn’t stand the pain. I screamed and Wanna came running. She held me. I think I kicked her. I think I kicked Wanna, but she didn’t stop holding me. She turned off the movie, and we sat for a long time as I screamed away the pain.

Now my plan is ruined. I was going to go back to China. How can I go back now? The language makes my head explode.

42

Dear Penny,

Wanna talked to me about why the Chinese movie made me so afraid. She said it was common for children, adopted from another country, to fear their birth language. Wanna said it was like I took the Chinese language and put it in the bad memory part of my brain. So when I hear Chinese, it might scare me and remind me of difficult things that happened to me in China. She said it wasn’t my fault and we would work on it together. I never imagined that being adopted was going to mean so much work. I wish my brain would have asked my permission before it started moving things around.

43

Dear Penny,

Wanna bought me a baby bottle. I told you that she was crazy. She said maybe I needed to take care of the hurt baby in my heart. It is a blue bottle. Somehow she figured out my favorite color. Anyway, she filled it with warm milk and I sat on the sofa. She turned on the TV and placed a blanket on my lap. She asked me if wanted to be held when I drank from the bottle. I told her I was fine. Ellie has a bottle too. Hers is pink. That is her favorite color. Ellie lies on the floor to drink hers.

I wasn’t so sure about the bottle. It felt strange when I put it in my mouth. I am glad nobody was looking. I never felt that kind of warm softness inside my mouth before. The feeling surprised me. At first it was hard to suck the milk out. After a few tries, I figured it out. The milk made me feel sleepy. It made me feel warm.

Maybe I will try it again. As long as nobody watches.

44

Dear Penny,

It is night. There is a storm and it is keeping me awake. The thunder sounds like a giant jumping on my house and the lightning makes my eyes hurt. The rain is heavy and hard. I am using my lamp, but I don’t know how long it will work. Every few minutes it will stop working and the dark comes.

I can’t stop thinking about the babies who disappeared from the orphanage. Sometimes there was a new baby who arrived in the orphanage, and I was always told not to touch them. Usually they were very small. They were so small that it was hard to tell that there was a baby under the blanket. Sometimes their heads were too big for their bodies and sometimes their top lip would be opened as big as the world.

I was told not to touch them because they were sick and they could make me sick too.

I wanted to touch them, but I was not brave enough. It didn’t seem ok for them to lay alone. I know they needed to be held, but I was too afraid. They would stay for one day, or two, or a week, and then they would be gone when I woke up.

I would ask the nannies what happened to them. They always said that they were adopted. I don’t think so. I think they left this world and were gone forever. They were too sick to be adopted. This much I know. Nobody would adopt a baby who was so small or so sick, and adoption didn’t happen that fast. The nannies lied to me.

So I started naming the babies. I had a little piece of paper that I kept under my pillow. I started giving them names and writing their names on my paper. It was an old piece of yellow paper. The babies were never given a name. At first I would ask the nannies what their name was. They told me that they were too young for a name. Soon I learned that they would not be given a name because they weren’t staying in this world long enough. It was my job to name them. I wrote their names on my old yellow paper so that they would be remembered. Names are important.

I left their names, written on my old paper, under my pillow in China. I forgot about the paper when my American family came. I left the paper behind. I don’t remember their names anymore, but I remember all their faces. I hope they can forgive me for leaving their names behind.

The thunder stopped. Now I just hear the rain.

45

Dear Penny,

Wanna never asks if she can read you. I take you everywhere, and she never says anything about it. Ellie used to ask me all of the time if she could look inside you. She doesn’t ask anymore. I told her
no
too many times. Ellie said that you were pretty. She asked Wanna if she could have a pretty book to carry too. Ellie said that she wanted to be just like me. Wanna bought her a pink diary with a lock on it. She scribbles in it and says that there are secrets inside. Ellie shows me her scribbles and makes up stories to go with the scribbled lines. Usually the stories are about mermaids. They are kind of funny, and she talks on and on like she really wrote something.

Sometimes Ellie doesn’t write stories in her book but says that she wrote a song. The song is always about me. She will sing to me—

An-Ya! An-Ya! You are the best big sister in the world! I love you An-Ya! I love you forever. An-Ya! I love you. I love you so much.

I don’t know why she sings those things because they aren’t true. I don’t talk to her very much, and I just sit and stare at her when she talks to me. Maybe she thinks I am listening? Maybe she thinks I care?

46

Dear Penny,

My sister is happy all of the time. I mean all of the time. It makes me angry. What is she so happy about? I guess I would be happy too if I had long shiny hair and everyone told me how cute I was.

I know how to make Ellie unhappy and sometimes I try. Once I told her that Wanna was going to give her away just like her first mommy did. I told her that Wanna would send her back to China. She cried so hard that she threw up. Ellie didn’t let go of Wanna for three days. Wanna had to carry Ellie everywhere, and when she wasn’t carrying her, Ellie was holding on tight to Wanna’s leg.

I felt bad after I said it, but I didn’t say so. Ellie’s brain doesn’t remember China but maybe her heart does.

47

Dear Penny,

Today Wanna made our family wear the same color clothes and go have our picture taken. Me, Daddy, Ellie, and Wanna all wore a dark blue shirt and tan pants and skirts. Me and Daddy wore the pants. Ellie and Wanna wore the skirts.

We drove to a place that Wanna called the studio. She made it sound like some special place where something exciting was going to happen. There wasn’t anything exciting about it, except for a man that was taking our picture and who talked with his hands more than with his mouth. It was hard to keep from laughing at him. The man, the photographer, was crazy, and he kept saying crazy things. He kept yelling—

Smile! Smile! Perfect! Wonderful! You all look like movie stars!

Ellie believed him and smiled like she was a real princess.

I hope I never have to do that again.

48

Dear Penny,

Wanna says that I have a gift with languages. She said that it is an incredible gift. She says that what I have learned, what I can write and speak in English, is amazing.

What Wanna doesn’t know is that my English teacher in China was not as excellent as he thought he was. When I first heard English spoken by my new family, it sounded strange. My English teacher didn’t say the words the same. When he said English words, they sounded different. It took some time for me to figure out the right way to say things in English. Maybe Wanna is right. It didn’t take me long to understand English. It was easy for me. I could read and write in English before I left China. I practiced all day, every day.

Maybe I have a language gift. If I have a gift for learning a language, then I must have a gift for forgetting a language too.

49

Dear Penny,

In the orphanage I used to sing. Not to anybody special. I would just sing because I wanted to. But the children thought I was singing to them. So they would stop their playing and come sit next to me. The orphanage would be quiet and filled with only my voice. Everyone said that my singing voice was pretty. Even the nannies.

I can’t sing in English. I don’t know how to try. Maybe my voice can only sing in one language, and now that language is gone? I miss singing. When I would sing, everything would be ok. I didn’t think about anything else. I sang for me and my voice would touch the sky.

50

Dear Penny,

It is night again. It is raining again. The rain is loud and heavy, and the streets are filled with rushing water. I have been thinking about running away. In my room is a large window. It is almost as big as me. The window is tall with many glass squares. The top is round. But I can’t open it. It doesn’t open and let the cool air in. There are other windows in my room, but they are high up and small. Daddy opens those when it is warm.

I placed my hands on the large window and I thought about how to get through. I could push. I could bang on the window. But how do I break the window without the window breaking me? I wanted to go somewhere else. Somewhere where they don’t ask about my past, somewhere where they don’t ask any questions. If I hit the window really hard, then I could get out. I am strong enough. Maybe I could jump out of the broken window without cutting myself too much. I’m not sure.

Even if I cut myself on the broken glass, would that be so bad? Maybe I would be free to run with my blood flowing like a river into the wet street. Maybe it would feel good. Maybe it might even feel great. I could run so fast, and my blood could leave a beautiful painting behind me. The rain would wash the pain away.

51

Dear Penny,

Last night I couldn’t break the window. I didn’t even try. I put my hands on the window and felt its coolness. When I took my hands away, it left a white shadow of my hands on the window. I sat under the window and cried until I couldn’t breathe. I started choking and Wanna heard me.

She came into my room and sat behind me. I felt her hand touch my head, and her fingers began to run through my hair. She spoke in a soft voice and told me how sorry she was. I stopped choking, but my eyes were blurry, and I couldn’t see through the tears that continued to fall. Wanna kept touching my hair. She pulled her fingers through each piece and worked out all the tiny knots. I couldn’t see her finger nails, but I knew they were painted a shade of pink.

I asked her to go away. I told her I hated her and to go away.

She didn’t leave. She kept working her fingers through my hair and whispered how much she loved me and how she wished she could take the pain and carry it for me. She asked me if I knew why I hated her so much.

I told her that I hated her for cutting my hair.

Can you believe that I said that?

She said we didn’t have to cut it anymore. We didn’t have to cut it ever again.

52

Dear Penny,

Tonight Wanna gave me her old robe. It is soft, thick, fuzzy, and white and smells like sweet peaches and lemons. She told me it was a lucky robe and to wrap myself in the robe if I feel scared. How can a robe be lucky? She said that whenever she felt sad or scared, she would wear the robe and it helped her feel better. I don’t know. I brought it to my room, but I probably won’t use it.

53

Dear Penny,

Do you think that I have brothers and other sisters in China? Do you think She kept them and just left me?

Wanna told me today about laws in China that say that most people can only have one child. There were too many people in China, so they started making laws to make sure that there would be enough food and jobs for everyone. Wanna said that the laws were written a long time before I was born and they are complicated. Families in China hope for a boy, because they will stay with the family and will take care of their parents when they get old. Girls will leave the family when they get married. If a family breaks the law and has another child, then they have to pay a lot of money to the government. Most families don’t have the money to pay.

So maybe She left me because I was a girl. How could She do that because She was a girl once too? I can do anything a boy can do, and I am smarter than all of the boys that I know. She didn’t give me a chance. She put me in the box without giving me a chance.

54

Dear Penny,

The bad dreams won’t stop. I am afraid to go to sleep. Abby has been coming to me in my dreams. In my dream I return to the orphanage and Abby is outside. She is not supposed to be outside because her skin will hurt. I run to her and she smiles when she sees me. She stands up, and some of her skin is sick from being outside. Somehow she wandered outside and nobody noticed. Her legs have black spots, and I am scared that her skin will fall off her body.

She is so happy to see me that she doesn’t care about her skin. Her smile is so big and her grey eyes sparkle with happy feelings. I am happy to see her too, and I let her grab onto my shirt and I walk with her to find the orphanage door.

But again, I can’t find the door. I don’t remember where it is.

When I turn around to check on Abby, I see that she is growing smaller. A little bit at a time, she is shrinking. I tell her not to worry, that I will find the door. I search and search. Every time I look at Abby, she is smaller.

And then she starts to disappear. She becomes like a cloud that I can’t touch but I know is there. She is so tiny that she begins to float away. As she starts to fly off, like a weak balloon, I reach for her and she reaches for me. Her tiny arms reach out and she whispers my name—
An-Ya
.

I can’t catch her. My hands go through her body and there is nothing to hold on to. I can’t bring her down. I watch her float away and there is nothing that I can do.