... and Baby Makes Two (34 page)

…

Jane was living in a pink bubble. And then, at the hotel, it popped. Ray Jane, and Beth rode the elevator and everything was so far, so good. But Jane couldn't find her hotel room key. She was holding the baby a purse, and a large diaper bag. She couldn't do something as simple as find her key. She couldn't even tell you where her key was. Not a clue. She fumbled for it in her bag and nearly strangled herself on her purse straps.

“It's okay. I've got it.” But Ray didn't get it. It wasn't about having the key. It wasn't that simple. Ray wouldn't always be by her side with a key. Duh! How would she ever accomplish the simple task of entering a room on her own? She wouldn't! Jane saw all the petty details of daily life in one big montage with loud music and crying and, just like that, she knew that
nothing would ever be simple again.

…

In the hotel room, Beth finally got to wear a cool, new outfit and relax. Jane laid down on a bed, because she had to. So Beth explored her, smushing Jane's mouth, drumming on her chest. She scratched at the polyester bedspread.

“Textures!” said Ray. “She likes textures.”

Beth's movements gained energy and speed, so the adults created a pillow fort around the bed. She could still fall, but they'd get a little more warning this way. Jane bent her legs, and Beth tried to climb over them.

“Climbing Mt. Mommy!” said Jane. They stayed this way until it was time to meet the larger group for lunch. This time, Jane planned her petty details a bit, in order to keep them simple. That was all she
wanted: simple. Simple sounded like a Mediterranean paradise. She got her keys, her money, the diaper bag, some lip balm, a toy, another toy, the camera, the teething biscuits, a bottle. Simple was not available at this time.

She must have been insane for thinking that she could do this motherhood thing alone. She wanted to fix this problem. Now. Should she propose to Ray?

“Let's eat!” Ray declared. Jane snapped out of her feverish planning and followed him to the restaurant. She must have been wearing blinders on her previous visits to the hotel restaurant. Virtually every table was populated by American or European parents with Chinese babies. This view certainly made the children look like an export. She didn't enjoy thinking that.

At lunch, she had no appetite. Beth, a highly perceptive child, picked up on the maternal anxiety and began to fuss.

“She has gas.”

“She's hungry.”

“She's having bonding issues.”

There was unlimited advice from people who had been parents for a handful of hours. Jane nodded quietly at it all. She handed Beth to Ray and excused herself to the restroom, where she let it all out. Locked in a little stall, Jane cried and sobbed as hard as she had at her own mother's funeral. It was done. She was a mother. A single mother. Forever. Her father was providing a deadly voice-over:
You have ruined your life. You have ruined her life, and she is an innocent.

By the time Jane returned to the table, everyone was gone except Ray and Beth. Perhaps young Beth had given him some pointers on handling maternal anxiety. He was careful and quiet.

…

There was an afternoon meeting with James, where he gave instructions and warnings about their activity for the next day.

“Tomorrow is the legal adoption. I need you all on the bus at
seven
A.M.
We will spend the morning at the Haozhou Notary Office. And then you are legal parents. It is done.” Someone shouted out, “Do we bring the babies?” James scowled. “Yes, of course you bring the babies.”

…

At bedtime, Jane read
Goodnight Moon
to her daughter, who kept trying to flip the pages to the end.

“Hey! Don't ruin the ending for me!” Jane was pushing hard to be more lighthearted. In the background, Ray played a CD of Tibetan children singing the chants of the Joyous Mantras. He reasoned that the sound of children would be comforting to a girl who had been in an orphanage, and he may have been right. Beth was drooping with fatigue, and when she finished her bottle, Jane lowered her into the crib. Peace.

Then Beth screamed. She did
not
want to go to sleep, she did
not
want to sleep in that crib, she did
not
like any of this. Jane rocked her without a rocking chair until Ray detected rapid eye movement from Beth. Jane lowered the baby into the crib so slowly she looked like she was posing for a camera.

Beth slept. Jane gasped. She had put the baby to sleep on her stomach, and everyone knows that babies need to sleep on their backs. SIDS. Ray didn't know that, but he warned Jane not to move this baby. Eventually Jane remembered that at ten months Beth really wasn't in much danger of SIDS. She let Beth sleep.

The room was dark and quiet. Ray waited a respectable interval and then said, “You can do this. You're going to be just fine.” And doesn't that sound helpful, encouraging, and sweet? Jane wanted to tell him to shut up. Jane wanted to hug him and kiss him. Instead, she started shaking.

“Is it cold in here?”

It wasn't cold. Not at all.

“I'm freezing. I'm really cold.”

Ray hugged her and kissed her. He drew her a bath, with special
scented oils that Burton had designed to counter a new mother's anxiety attacks. Burton was so smart. It would be wrong to steal his boyfriend. Jane took the phone with her to the bathroom.

…

“Hi, Peter. It's Jane. Listen, I'm a mother now, and I'm completely useless. But that's not why I'm calling. You know, you might not have told any technical lies, in a Bill Clinton it-depends-on-what-‘is'-is kind of way. But you made me think that we were going to be doing this together, and now we're not. So that was a continent-sized lie, and I see that now. But that's not why I'm calling. Beth is so amazing already, and she's been through so much more than I have. It's a shame she drew the short straw and got the incompetent mother. She deserves someone who knows how to cope. And I don't. But that's not why I'm calling. I'm calling because I miss you. I miss you so much. I'm still mad at you and I still love you, which proves that I'm permanently dumb. Because I have to live without you and, goddamn it, that's exactly what I'm going to do. This is my first day as a mother, and I'm going to get through it. And I'll get through the next one and the next one and the next one. I'm going to do it because I have to. I just wanted to hear your voice. This call is costing me my entire
401
(k). So. Sorry for the long message. Bye.”

The call helped. The bath helped even more. It wasn't a cure, but it helped. Jane went to bed, shivering under the covers. Exhaustion trumped fear, and she slept.

…

Beth was crying. It was
6
:
05 A.M.,
and this was some kind of victory, wasn't it? They had both slept through the night. Jane picked Beth up and brought her into her bed.

“Good morning. Hey we're late already. We better move.” The acid-fear wasn't leaving. She tried to hide it, but she was really bad at it. They arrived at the Notary Office and the whole squirmy group sat in a hot waiting room so that they could wait.

They weren't sure what they were waiting for. Jane was waiting for cool air, a breeze, anything. All this heat. Jane couldn't remember the last time she felt so sweaty and oppressed.

Teresa, Karen, and Jane all compared notes on their first night as mothers.

Teresa spoke: “Grace basically didn't sleep, or maybe she did, but it wasn't much. She ate. Oh, God, did she eat. That calmed her down whenever she thought we were trying to put her to bed. But sleep didn't really happen. And you?”

Grace looked peaceful and Buddha-like.

Karen spoke: “Ariel slept, but not in the crib. I tried putting her in there, and she got so mad. I'm not sure, but I think there was swearing in Cantonese. Anyway, the bed is kind of small and narrow, but we managed.”

Ariel looked alert and curious.

Jane spoke: “Beth slept through the night. She fought it, at first, but she slept until six.”

Beth looked worried.

“You're so lucky!” They seemed so genuine. Why didn't Jane feel lucky? Why didn't anyone else hear the paternal voice-over in the room? It was booming:
You've ruined your life. You've ruined her life, and she is an innocent. Ruined. Ruined. Ruined.

“You look sort of green. Are you okay?” Ray asked as Beth lunged for Jane.

“No.”

“Howe family?” the photographer called.

Jane held Beth on her lap, then had to bring her up higher, so that their faces were almost side by side.

“Smile, please!”

Sweat was stinging Jane's eyes and making her hands slippery. Beth still looked worried. They finished the photo, and James gathered the parents for a sort of swearing-in ceremony. An official from the Notary Office addressed the families. He spoke over the yelling, crying, and squealing. He spoke over Howard's booming voice-over.

It looked like a casual-dress, Moonie, mass-wedding when he asked for their vows:

“Do you wish to adopt this child?”

“Do you promise to care for her and give her all the benefits that you would give to biological children?”

“Do you promise never to abandon or abuse her?”

“I do,” said the delirious parents.

“I congratulate you, new Mommies and Daddies.”

And there was much rejoicing.

James distributed gifts on behalf of the Notary Office or the China Center of Adoption Affairs or Mao's illegitimate children. Jane had trouble hearing him over the babies' cries and her father's “Ruined Lives” aria.

When James reached Jane, he presented her with a stack of white booklets. Jane glanced at the first one, a birth certificate. The second one was an abandonment certificate. She sat Beth on her lap, opened it, and read. Beth—Wei Xian—was alone in the parking lot of the local train station. She was found by a policeman and brought to the Haozhou Social Welfare Institute. They guessed her age to be about six weeks old and assigned her a birthday. A search for her birth parents brought no results. Little Wei Xian was an orphan. Jane stopped reading. The image of six-week-old Beth alone in a parking lot was too painful. She held Beth a little closer.

James gave her a beautiful necklace with a small jade heart. It had Beth's name and birthday engraved on it. The heart was attached to a strong cord of red thread. There was a vinyl booklet. The official family photo was attached to a certificate enclosed inside the booklet. It was an adoption certificate.

James led a parade of new families to a medical office, where the children were to be examined. The waiting room looked like a corral of nervous rabbits. Jane wondered if she could get a diagnosis of the red circles on her daughter's tummy. And what about the scab on her head?

Picture babies being drafted into the military and undergoing the basic physical exam involved. Subtract the command to turn and cough, and that was mass physical exam of the day.

Jane pointed to the red circles on Beth's abdomen, and the doctors waved it away. It wouldn't stop her from serving her country. Jane became more insistent about the scab on Beth's head. What was it? Finally, through a translator, a doctor answered her, “It's getting better.” The nurse must have seen that Jane was pale and tense. Maybe she saw Jane's white knucklebones through the skin on her hands. Maybe she had seen this before. She handed Jane a package of herbs and instructed her to make tea from them. “To relax you,” she said through her cotton mask. Jane wanted to hug her.

Ray stepped in and showed the red circles on Beth's tummy to the nurse. She nodded her head and said, “Yes. Lingworm.” She thrust a tube of cream into his hand.

“Daddy put on tummy.” A diagnosis. A cure. All things were possible.

In the comfort of her room, Jane mixed the herbs with hot water and drank. The herbal tea tasted like tar. Jane did her best to consume an entire sip of tar tea.

…

Good news: They had only one task left to complete, and that was the Consulate appointment. There, the adoption would be approved, a visa issued, federal blessings bestowed.

Bad news: The Consulate appointment was ten long days away.

Pick up an atlas and you'll learn that Guangzhou is on the same parallel as Havana, Cuba. Jane began to appreciate how tropically hot Guangzhou was. And how smelly the city was when you walked by the Pearl River Canal. There were no restrictions on car or factory emissions. It showed, and it smelled.

…

The Chinamoms made an attempt at a playdate in Teresa's room. Jane was sitting, legs akimbo. She let the floor support her, and let the bed hold up her spine. She had nothing left. The three mothers compared travel partners.

Teresa was delighted with Bev “She watches the baby while I get a massage. This is the life.”

“Ray does everything any human being can do to help me. He's a world-class human being.”

Karen was not as happy as her friends. Charles refused to help with Karen's baby. He barely tolerated the baby. Karen was certain she had seen him coo at babies back when they were dating. Maybe those were sleeping babies. Ariel was not a sleeper. Ariel was a crier. He became angry when the crying got too loud, and that may be why little Ariel cried so often. He would not hold her and made Karen promise that she would never leave him alone with the baby for more than twenty minutes.

“He tracks how much time I spend in the shower,” Karen complained.

“What?” Teresa looked ready to call the cops or a talk-show host.

“Ariel cries the whole time. He doesn't know what to do with her. So he watches the clock. I come out of the shower, and she's in the crib. All red-faced and loud.”

Jane tried to picture it. It wasn't pretty. Karen kept talking.

“So now he's really mad because I was in the gift shop for almost forty-five minutes. He was all alone with her. See, she was asleep when I left, so I thought I could get a little extra time. But she woke up. When I came back she was howling.”