“How?” Alice asked as her husband picked up the laptop and began reading.
“She was on a trip like this with her parents. They were walking down the street when a total stranger came up and said, ‘You look like my sister’s daughter.’ And guess what. That woman turned out to be the girl’s aunt!”
“That’s a one-in-a-million occurrence.”
Amy leaned over her dad, hit a few keys, and pulled up a different story. “Then what about this one? Another family was on a trip, just like ours. Her family made a flyer to post. The first place they went in was a café. They asked if they could hang the flyer. The couple who ran the café looked at the flyer and burst into tears. It was their daughter! Now the two families spend every Christmas together.”
“Those sound like made-up stories,” Alice said. “There’s all sorts of nonsense on the Internet.”
Adam looked up from the laptop. “Actually, honey, what Amy’s telling you is from an article in The Boston Globe. The first one was in The New York Times.”
“But what are the odds?” Alice asked, repeating her earlier concern. “I don’t want Amy to be disappointed.”
“I promise not to be disappointed,” Amy said.
“Mom’s right, you know,” Adam said.
“Please, Dad, please,” Amy pled, turning all her focus on her father, because he rarely said no to her. “Will you let me do it? Please?”
But Alice gave in first. “There’s no harm in trying. Get some paper from the desk. Let’s figure out what you want to say.”
They spent the next hour working together, narrowing down the details and keeping the English simple:
My name is Amy Bowen. I was born on or about November 24, 1995. I am looking for my biological family. I was found in a cardboard box. I was wrapped in a blue blanket. There was a cake of tea in the box with me. I am short. My skin is dark compared to most Chinese.
In case you want to know more about me, I am good at science and math. I like to ski and ride horses. I also like to hang out with friends. I am very nice. I hope you would like to meet me.
To contact me, please e-mail my father at [email protected].
After breakfast, they went to the business center. They hadn’t brought the photo of Amy taken when she was first found or any of those that Alice and Adam took the day they got her. All they had was the fourth-grade school picture from Alice’s wallet and Amy’s current passport photo. She positioned them on the piece of paper with the note and pushed the button to make copies. Then they walked around the neighborhood where they were staying and tacked up the notices. By the time they were done, Amy knew that nothing would come of her plan: maybe her birth mother didn’t read English, maybe she didn’t have a computer to send an e-mail, maybe she didn’t know what a computer or e-mail were. And so many people lived here. What kind of coincidence could there be in the world for Amy’s birth mother to be walking down this particular street, see a picture of Amy in her school uniform, and think, Oh, there’s my baby!
Amy was very disappointed, and she felt herself spiraling into sadness. Her mom and dad worried about her, because she had a history of anxiety and depression. Her dad tried to distract her with jokes. Her mom offered to take her shopping for souvenirs to give to her friends. But Amy had a serious case of the blues. On the last night of the trip, Alice knocked on the door that connected the two rooms.
“May I come in?” she asked, opening the door a couple of inches.
“Sure, Mom.”
Alice sat on Amy’s bed. “I’m sorry this didn’t work out. I’m sorry we brought you here. I’m—”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Oh, honey, I wish I could make you understand . . .”
The way Alice’s voice trailed off forced Amy to ask, “Understand what?”
“How your dad and I felt when we got you. What you meant to us then. What you mean to us now. In the months leading up to the phone call that told us we could come and get you, I did everything I could to understand Chinese culture. I went on a walking tour of Chinatown, I devoured Amy Tan’s books, I watched Chinese movies. And we had all the practical stuff to do too. Our finances were critiqued and notarized; we were interviewed and authenticated. We traveled with six other family units. Three couples were married, two were gay, and there was a single woman with her mom. The way you cried—”
“I’ve seen the photo album,” Amy said. In those pictures, you could see the family-unit people weeping and laughing. All the babies were crying too, but her mouth had been a giant gaping hole, her eyes were squished shut, her legs and arms—her whole body actually—were as stiff as a board, and her cheeks were bright red because she was screaming her head off. “I cried, and I didn’t sleep.”
“The other babies cried, but you howled,” Alice agreed. “You howled and you wouldn’t sleep. I’m sure you understand the objective cause-and-effect reasons for that.”
“Objective cause-and-effect reasons? Can you for once speak to me from your heart and not like a scientist?”
“I’m trying.” Alice sighed. “I know I can be frustrating sometimes, but I only want the very, very, very best for you. I wish for you to feel smart and invincible.”
To Amy’s ears, her mother’s wishes sounded more like pressure to do more and achieve more, but she didn’t say that.
“You see,” Alice continued, “your crying was only natural. You were older than the other babies. You’d never seen a white person before. We don’t think you’d been picked up or held very much. You needed a lot of love. We gave you the love and you stopped crying, but, honey sweet, we’re still waiting for you to sleep.”
Ha, ha, ha, and blah, blah, blah.
“I know. Stupid humor. I’m sorry.”
“Would you please stop saying you’re sorry?”
“What I’m trying to tell you is that I’ve always wondered if you were crying because you missed your birth mother. I’ve thought about her every day since we got you. I couldn’t have a baby myself, so I’ve wondered if she was afraid when you were born. Was she in a hospital? Was she alone? Was your birth father at her side?”
“I’ve wondered the same things too,” Amy admitted.
“Not a day has gone by when I haven’t wondered if I hurt you more than helped you by wresting you away from your homeland and your culture. Even when you were a baby, I wondered when you would start to resent me for that. Maybe even hate me.”