The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane

Adam bought bottles of water. The Bowens drank and sweat, drank and sweat some more. Adam took Amy’s picture about a thousand times. She saw more people from around the world in the first hour than she had in her entire life. And then there were the Chinese. They were everywhere.

Since the weather was so gross, Amy ended up changing her clothes three times every day. Even her bra and panties. The Bowens visited more tourist spots: the Summer Palace, the Great Wall of China, the tomb soldiers in Xian, the Bund in Shanghai. China was strange, though. It didn’t have much connection to what she’d learned about it in Families with Children from China or even from going to her friends Jasmine’s and Jade’s houses. It was big, polluted, and crowded. If Amy had once daydreamed about meeting her birth mother, she now understood it would be impossible to find her—one woman out of the proverbial 1.3 billion people.

Finally, they flew to Kunming in Yunnan, where it was much cooler. They stayed at another fancy hotel, which prompted Adam to ask Alice, “Can you believe how much everything’s changed since the last time we were here? You’ve got to hand it to Deng Xiaoping. To get rich is glorious . . .”

When they were out with their new guide, Amy heard sounds that were vaguely familiar, yet had no meaning. She saw people with skin like hers—darker—who turned out to be members of hill tribes. Sometimes people nodded to her on the street or pointed at her, but what did that mean? Did they recognize her in some way or did they simply think she looked peculiar with her white parents? A couple of times, people came up to her and spoke to her in Chinese. “I don’t speak Chinese,” Amy always answered, in English. Then those same people would turn to her parents and ask, in perfect English, “Is she your tour guide?” But how could Amy have possibly been their tour guide?

The Bowens spent the next two days hiking up mountains to take in this or that scenic spot. Amy’s opinion? One view was just like another, even if these had a temple or a big statue on them. Still, something about the air and the panoramas got to her—like she had something in her eye, or pollen up her nose, or a memory she could sense but couldn’t capture. Then one day, during one of their sightseeing hikes, she was standing and looking at yet another view. The pattern of the hills, a stream running through them, a path winding up through the terraces . . .

“Mom! Look!”

“What is it, honey?”

“Do you see it?” She pointed, buzzing with excitement. “It’s just like my tea cake!”

“What do you mean?” Alice asked.

“We’ve always looked at the V’s as V’s, like simple bird drawings. But don’t you see? They’re the canyons between the mountains! The wavy lines are terraces. The design that meanders”—she traced what she could remember from the tea cake in the air with her index finger—“is a river or creek or something like that. The design on my tea cake is a map!”

“Oh my God!” Adam exclaimed. “You’re right!”

But Alice, ever practical, asked, “But a map to what?”

“To where I was born!” Amy was so energized by her discovery that she was practically jumping up and down. “So I can meet my birth family!”

Adam and Alice exchanged glances. Amy thought, Don’t ruin this for me. Her father looped an arm over her shoulder, pulled her close, and stared at the view with her.

“It is a map. And it’s amazing you figured that out. Truly amazing. But, honey—”

“Remember how there’s that design in the middle of the tea cake?” Amy interrupted. “I’ve always thought it looked like a tree, but it’s got to be my real mom.”

Alice edged away.

“Your mom is your real mom,” Adam said softly.

“I didn’t mean it that way.” Amy didn’t either. “But think about it! X marks the spot! It’s got to be her.”

“Maybe you’re right.” He still had that gentle tone, trying to manage his wife, who was all upset that Amy didn’t consider Alice to be her real mother, and his daughter, who was as excited as she’d ever been. “But with any map you need a starting point. The V’s—the canyons and mountains—could be anywhere. We don’t even know which direction is north.”

What felt like a bomb going off obliterated Amy’s elation. Her father was right, and it was a huge disappointment. But then she realized . . . I always thought my birth mom was trying to send me a message. I was right. Goose bumps rippled along her arms.

“I’m sorry, honey,” Alice said, extending her hand.

Amy took it, because she didn’t want to hurt her mother’s feelings any more than she already had when what she felt inside was a buoyant thrill. Her birth mom was real to her in a way she’d never been before.

That night Amy dreamed about her birth mother and the map. In the morning, she tiptoed into the adjoining room and stood at the foot of the bed, waiting for one of her parents to wake up. Alice’s eyes flickered open first, and she startled when she saw her daughter staring down at her.

“What is it? Are you okay?”

“My real mom . . . I mean my birth mom, wants me to find her.”

Adam blinked awake. “What’s going on?”

“Let’s put up a flyer,” Amy announced. “Like for a lost dog.”

“Where would you put it?” Alice asked, doubtful.

“On telephone poles. In restaurants. Like what people do at home. Please.”

“What do you think, Adam?” Alice asked.

He sat all the way up and propped some pillows behind his back. He had the same grave look on his face as he’d had yesterday when he told Amy she needed a starting point for the map.

“We picked you up in Kunming, but you aren’t from here,” he said. “You were brought from another orphanage.”

“I know, but what if she’s visiting?” Amy wasn’t going to let this go. “We’re visiting. What if she’s visiting too? What if she moved here? What if she’s outside right this minute?”

“What if,” Alice echoed, shaking her head sadly.

“Please,” Amy begged.

“If we do this, we don’t want you to have false hope,” Adam said.

“We don’t want you to be disappointed,” Alice added. “You have to consider the odds.”

Amy went back to her room, opened her laptop, and signed in to the hotel’s Internet service. Numbers came easily to her so she expected to find a quick set of figures to noodle with. Except true numbers didn’t exist. The first 61 adoptees came to the U.S. in 1991. That number continued to rise—to close to 63,000 between 1991and 2005. After that, the stats were harder to find, with a steady decline in adoptions from China. But if there were something like 100,000 Chinese adoptees, and approximately 650,000,000 females in China, then Amy had a one in 6,500 chance in finding her mother. The chances got a lot better if you considered only women in their childbearing years.

“If the numbers on the Internet are accurate,” Alice said after Amy presented her findings.

Amy pulled up a story she’d once found and bookmarked on the laptop’s screen. “Look at this, Mom. Here’s an article about someone who found her mother! It says here that twenty families have been reunited!”