Wish You Happy Forever (12 page)

Now, there is some nervousness afoot about the possibility that someone traveling with Half the Sky will be smitten with a particular little one in the institutions and will feel compelled to move heaven and earth to try to adopt her. Or that someone will see the perfect child for a best friend or sister back home and suggest she call her agency to petition CCAA. It can't happen. It would jeopardize Half the Sky's programs and, indeed, the entire China foreign adoption program, if Half the Sky volunteers ever, intentionally or not, use our programs to pre-identify children.

This is only the beginning of a very long journey. We have a year to make this program work and to prove its worth. And then we have many miles and many orphanages before us. We are honored and privileged to have the doors opened to us. And we are grateful to you for helping us keep those doors open.

End of sermon. See you in China!

About now, I wasn't exactly sure how clean my own hands were on the topic of pre-identified adoption—officially forbidden in China at the time—but I could only imagine what would happen if our very first volunteer build disintegrated into an adoption shopping tour. Whether or not I had practiced what I preached, the warning had to be sent.

Changzhou, China
July 2000

“Do you think we've just ruined our lives?” I asked Dick.

“Do you?”

“She really hates us. Me anyway. Where does a two-year-old learn to spit like that?”

“I don't want to think about it,” Dick said.

“And she bit Maya in the bath.”

Dick groaned. I stuffed my face into the hotel pillow, shutting out what was left of the sweltering day. Our future daughter, Xinmei, soon to be Anya, was by the door, screaming to be let out of our room, where we were clearly torturing her. Maya looked shell-shocked. Dick too.

I reached out, rested my hand on his chest.

“She seems to like you, though.”

He went to the door, gathered the miserable little bundle up in his arms, and carried her to the bed. She stopped screaming but kept a wary eye on me. She snuffled pitifully.

Maya climbed up beside me, keeping a careful distance from her new sister. We were a pathetic-looking family.

When we had arrived from California that morning to prepare for our first crew of American volunteers, Small Cloud Zhang surprised us with our little daughter-to-be. Even though we didn't quite have approval to travel to adopt her yet, we were now officially “matched.” There was no reason she couldn't stay with us while we were in Changzhou.

“Great,” I said, just a bit on edge at the prospect.

In less than two months, Anya had gained two kilos. She was almost unrecognizable. Small Cloud Zhang beamed. “We've been taking her to KFC every day to get her used to eating Western food!”

I didn't think food was going to be our problem. Now I touched our baby's small scarred foot. She pulled it away.

Well. One day at a time, I guess.

“I'm sorry, sweetheart,” Dick said. I didn't know if he was talking to me or to Anya. He really was smitten with that child.

“WHY ARE WE
here in July?” Terri moaned. “Could there be a more unpleasant month in China?”

Our friends and volunteer crew leaders, Terri and Daniel, clustered with ZZ, Dick, and me in a tiny patch of shade in front of the orphanage. We were waiting for the volunteers to arrive from Shanghai. Our children were off somewhere with Feng
Ayi
(Auntie Feng), the nice lady who would be our official crew nanny. Despite the soggy heat, I was loving the quiet.

Ten Americans, most of them parents of Chinese children, climbed down from the bus. Small Cloud Zhang came outside to greet them. She was nervous. Everyone was nervous. It was the first day of school for us all. Our first official Half the Sky build.

“Welcome to China,” she said. “Welcome to the Changzhou Children's Welfare Institution!”

Small Cloud Zhang led us inside. We sat in the reception room, drank tea, and learned how many
mu
of land the institution covered. I thanked Small Cloud Zhang for the zillionth time. Then I asked if we could visit the children.

I WALKED INTO
the children's ward behind my little crew of eager parent volunteers, took a very deep breath, and watched. I knew what they would see. I'd prepared them as well as I could.
Just remember, we're here to make it better. Keep your cool.

Okay, I could exhale. Every one of those folks handled themselves better than I had back in Shijiazhuang. They were just happy to be there with those kids. They didn't seem angry. They didn't seem to take the conditions personally.

I wasn't sure why they weren't haunted and furious. I couldn't fathom how they'd be able to go back home and back to their lives—or why I never could. But I watched those good hearts blowing kisses and wiping runny noses and pouring love all over those babies, and I knew I was not alone in this. I would never be alone, for I was among family, doing exactly what I was meant to do. And one day, if the stars aligned and I didn't screw it up, all of China would be with us too.

Then,
whoosh
. . . someplace deep inside, I completely, absolutely knew for certain that that day would come. “We can do this,” I said to nobody in particular. I could already hear distant thunder.

I found a way to touch every child in every room that morning. I smoothed scratchy, wrinkly dry skin, tiny bird-boned fingers, and oddly coarse malnourished-orange hair. I whispered to the littlest who struggled, “Hang on. We can fix this. You're going to be okay.”

Calm now, anger safely stowed, I asked the
ayi
s to lift the babies and toddlers out of their cribs, then started doing it myself. The volunteers joined me at once. And nervously, the
ayi
s began to help, if only just until we were gone. But now, as I watched the volunteers, with tears in their eyes, lifting tots free, tickling and dancing and crooning, I saw how it would work.

Every day, we would come back. We would come back with reinforcements—nannies and teachers and foster mamas and babas, and before long this would be a place where babies were cuddled instead of trapped and tied, and every single vacant-eyed toddler and scrawny six-year-old would know what it feels like to be the apple of somebody's eye.

TERRI AND DANIEL
set about organizing the troops as Small Cloud Zhang watched their every move. There was something about seeing this group of large Americans scrubbing down orphanage walls that just about stopped her cold. When they began to wash away the giant fake Disney cartoon figures, I thought she'd pass out.
What in the name of Mao had she let happen?

Oblivious, the volunteers merrily cleaned and then painted the walls white, adding what would become our signature pastel stripes, leaving plenty of room for children's art and photo documentation of their projects.

Meanwhile, ZZ and I went shopping—not just once, but for the next three days.

We bought books and baskets and bikes and feathers and beads. Despite the dripping summer heat, we came to know every corner of Changzhou, a funky little town (little by China standards) laced with canals and bridges—and
most famous
for hand-painted wooden combs carved in whimsical shapes. We prowled every narrow street, every market, every dusty shop.

Here's how shopping went:

“How about a cozy reading nook for the preschool?” I suggested.

“Sure,” said ZZ. “What's that?”

“You know, a place to enjoy books together. Warm and homey—the opposite of institutional. We need a sofa to start with.”

So we set out to find a sofa. Most Chinese homes, especially in the steamy south, had wooden benches rather than plush upholstery. Finally, we came upon Furniture City, a multistory block of showrooms and warehouses all linked together. Everyone we asked pointed us in a different direction for sofas.

Soggy and exhausted, at last we made our way to the top floor of a metal-roofed building. The showroom was an oven. But we'd found the sofas!

“Wait.” ZZ clutched my arm. She didn't look so good.

“ZZ, are you okay?”

She dug into the backpack, which she wore backward because it was stuffed with our shopping money. She pulled out a little vial and deposited some tiny brown pellets into my hand and then her own.

“Chinese medicine,” she said as she gulped hers down. “Save-your-heart pills. Eat them.”

I obeyed. Thus fortified, we cruised the sofa department—rows of red, chartreuse, and hot-pink velveteen with swirly patterns and black-leather cushions and fish gargoyle feet, and then quite a few swan-shaped, phoenix-embellished fainting couches that looked like they came from New Orleans bordellos in 1895.

As we wandered, a small sales team began to form behind us. Just a couple at first, then—as word got out that a foreigner had reached this godforsaken outpost—more and more. I don't know where they came from; the place had looked empty when we got there.

At last we came upon a lone little blue-and-green, not-too-gaudy love seat. I could live with the tassels dangling here and there. “This one,” I whispered to ZZ, then kept on walking, as she'd taught me to do, pretending I hadn't even seen the thing. ZZ then began to bargain.

The first price, no matter what it was, was an outrage. ZZ bargained as if Chinese pride depended on it. The crowd grew. Everybody got involved. It was unclear who were the merchants and who were the bystanders. I stood a few rows away, my foreign face forgotten, and observed total mayhem. Everyone shouted at and argued with one another. Then a moment of quiet as ZZ held the room. She spoke from her heart. The crowd looked over at me. I smiled, waved a little.

Inevitably, ZZ cried. Then the merchants, crying a little themselves, threw their hands in the air. The matter was settled. And the price they gave us for the little love seat was very, very good.

“I just tell them about the orphans and about the love that you and the foreign friends are bringing into their lives,” ZZ explained.

SOMEHOW, WHILE WE
were away, the volunteers had managed to cajole Small Cloud Zhang into letting the children help. When we returned, little ones were wandering around underfoot as the crew happily sanded and painted. Even Small Cloud Zhang, in her spiky heels and minidress, was painting stripes. We set up our newly purchased boom box. Tina Turner was soon rattling the walls.

Changzhou was not yet accustomed to foreign faces. By the end of day one, the local media were on high alert. We were on TV and on the front page of the daily news. Curious neighbors came by to check out the situation. Some women from a nearby apartment block told me they'd had no idea there was an orphanage in their town. I saw the concern on their faces. If I'd had doubts before, our first build taught me that the problem is not that people in China don't care about children. Ignorance was our only enemy.

 

BY THE END
of our two-week stay in Changzhou, four new babies, in the arms of police officers, had arrived at the orphanage gate. Not one child had left for adoption. It didn't seem that the orphan problem would get better anytime soon. Still, there was reason to feel hope for the children. Surrounded by caring volunteers, nannies, and young teachers-in-training, they showed the first signs that they were beginning to wake from their orphanage slumber.

“What are the babies eating?” Wen asked two little girls who were feeding their new baby dolls with plastic spoons.

“Egg,” said one child.

“Do you know where the egg comes from?” Wen asked.

The girl didn't miss a beat.

“From
Ayi
.”

“But where does
Ayi
get the egg?”

No answers.

“This is your opportunity,” said Wen to her future preschool teachers. “When you see them begin to wonder, think about where you want to take it. The kitchen? The market? The farm? Learn about animals? How life begins? These are the moments you look for.”

THE YOUNG TEACHERS
were gathered listening to one another read from their training journals. They were beginning to feel at home on the mini-chairs at the mini-tables in the spanking-new, pastel-hued Half the Sky Little Sisters Preschool. Behind them stood an array of multicolored shelves stocked with art supplies, books, and developmental toys. Around the room were balance beams, a puppet theater, a mirrored triangle, tunnels and trikes, and baskets full of well-loved dress-up clothes from America. It could have been a high-priced private school on Manhattan's West Side.

“When I came to bring Tianyu to the classroom on the first day, she was so emotionless that I could not get any response from her,” read Liwei, one of the teachers. “When other kids grabbed toys from her, she just allowed it and never showed any anger or upset. Every day I spent time with her, I took her to explore the leaves and flowers. I constantly talked to her and asked her questions even though she made little response. But today, when I told her my training was finished here and I would go to train and then work at the new preschool in Hefei, she turned her head away from me with tears in her eyes. Then she ran and hid.”

“Why do you imagine she did that?” Wen asked. Liwei was silent. She looked at the floor. The room was quiet.

Liwei slowly raised her head. Her own eyes welled as she spoke, her small voice breaking. “I think . . . I think we were beginning to have a special bond. She was coming to trust me. I worked hard to be at her level, to understand what she needed. I was there for her. Now I see she's mad at me for leaving her. She's been abandoned before.”

Wen took Liwei's hands and looked around at the rest of her teary-eyed young converts.

“Now you see,” Wen told them, “we can be much, much more than we were taught at teachers' college . . . more than stern ladies at the front of the room who teach children to recite by rote. We can be, we
must
be, learning partners, champions, observers, explorers, friends—and, for these special, hurt children, we need to be family.”