Reclaiming Lily (2 page)

She shrugged but kept her focus on those who thought they controlled her future. Prayer had reminded her that God was in charge.

“Can you read their lips?” Andrew blurted out.

“I can barely see their lips.”

Andrew forced a laugh.

Waving arms and shrill voices again drew her attention. A woman with choppy bobby-pinned hair thrust her hands on her hips, shook her head, pivoted, and disappeared into the orphanage building.

Though Gloria’s stomach heaved, peace battled . . . and prevailed. She breathed slowly
. More waiting. I’ve
majored
in waiting.

“Dear Father,” Andrew prayed as he massaged her neck, “give us your peace. Help us to accept your will, whatever it may be. . . .”

Calling on her lifelong technique for comfort, Gloria rubbed her thumb against her palm.
Your will. I can, I will accept it.

Jim strode back to them. Half-moons of sweat darkened his chest and underarms. A tic worked his jaw. “Andrew, could I talk to you? Alone?”

Gloria’s spine stiffened, and she dug her fingernail into the fleshy part of her thumb. “I need to hear this.” She met Andrew’s gaze. “Please.”

Jim heaved a sigh, took Gloria’s sweaty hand, and helped her from the van. Andrew untangled his long legs and climbed out after her.

Jim drew her and Andrew aside. “Something’s come up.”

Andrew’s brow rutted like the road. “What?”

Gloria locked her knees to keep them from buckling.
God can. God can.

“We’ll work this out.” Jim’s calm kept Gloria standing. “It just may take a while. Another trip.”

Waiting. Waiting. I’ve spent my whole life—

A white shape blurred in Gloria’s peripheral vision. She stole a sideways glance.

Orphanage doors framed Miss Bobby Pins. Next to her stood a girl—perhaps eight, perhaps ten—wearing a red blouse polka-dotted with white. Red. White. Red.

The air around Gloria shimmered and matched glittery sensations in her heart. She wobbled forward.

Andrew reached out . . . trying to rein her in? No one could rein in her wild, wild heart. She inched toward the child wearing the red-and-white clothes.

“There isn’t a baby available,” Jim mumbled. “Or so they say.”

“How can they do this?” Andrew hissed. “After all we’ve done, the money we’ve paid . . .”

Gloria’s heart pounded a message that these men didn’t yet know. Soon she would tell them. . . .

The girl stepped close.

Gloria clapped her hand over her heart, as if to stop the pounding that competed with the slapping sound of worn black shoes. The girl’s shoes. The girl wore precious black, worn shoes. The precious girl wore black, worn shoes.

“I’m sorry.” Jim leafed through the folder, as if searching for logic.
Poor man . . .

“
Sorry
doesn’t cut it. They promised. It’s all there, in black and white.” Andrew flailed at the papers and then groped for her hand, as if lost and desperate for a guide. She fought a giggle as elation filled her. Here in China, she’d be strong for Andrew! Why, God hadn’t yet told him that the girl in the black shoes was their daughter . . .

“We all thought that. It’s what they said. State-sponsored adoption’s a new frontier.” Jim leaned close. “Technically illegal. What they say and what they do isn’t always the same.”

Gloria locked eyes with Jim. “Who’s that woman?” Her voice jerked, as if her heart spasms had spread. “Who’s the woman by the girl in the black shoes?”

“The orphanage director.” Jim spoke through clenched teeth. “Who says the only child available is the, um, afterbirth—excuse me, y’all—of counterrevolutionaries.”

“So our baby . . .” Words died in homage to a perfect oval face with peach-blossom skin.

“Our baby is somewhere else in China.” Andrew tightened his grip on her hand. “Waiting for us to find her . . . or him.” His sandpaper voice battled for control.

The girl raised her head and showed eyes heavy with wisdom, sorrow . . . questions.

A million bubbles effervesced inside Gloria and threatened to lift her off the ground.
For once, Andrew, the pastor, doubts. It’s me with faith!
She fought an urge to throw back her head and laugh, to dash forward and fling her arms around this perfect child. Her age didn’t matter. Neither did her questionable heritage, if that were even true.
God! You’ve given me the child of my soul, my heart, my mind!

“Gloria? Gloria!” Andrew grabbed her shoulders, surely to silence the laughter she couldn’t contain.

The Bertolets froze, as did the Chinese. Not Gloria. Life had bubbled freedom to every cell. God had freed her from a lifetime of wanting a child, of waiting for a child! “That child, that precious child, is our daughter!”

“Gloria, she’s not a baby. I thought we . . . wanted a baby.”

“The agency guarantees her health.” Jim edged close, an odd light in his eyes. “It’s rumored that she has been secretly cared for by her family, former blacks.”

Andrew’s eyebrows shot toward the sky. “Blacks?”

“China’s elite and educated. What they also call ‘stinking ninths.’ ”

“Stinking ninths?”

“Andrew, it doesn’t matter.” Gloria planted her feet on the sidewalk to keep from floating toward heaven. “She’s the one we came for. She is our Joy.” Though the bubbles dizzied her, a surprising calm weighted her words.

Andrew seemed to study the child and then Gloria. Spidery lines creased his eyes and the corners of his mouth. “Are you sure, Gloria? Are you very sure?”

“I haven’t been this sure since I married you.”

He enveloped her into the refuge formed by his shoulders, his chin; the rangy body that the years had form-fitted to her own. She buried her head in his chest, heard that loving heart pound, felt his sweat-dampened shirt. A sob ravaged her throat with exquisite pain.
Oh, God. My man’s dedicated, baptized, married, and counseled other people’s children. You’ve given him—given us—our own!
A perfect girl named Joy.

They eased toward Joy, murmuring greetings. Careful not to startle her, they let their entwined fingers graze her shoulder.

The child’s eyes tracked wildly; otherwise she stood mannequin-like. “It’s okay. Yes. Yes, dear.” Gloria bathed each word in soothing tones, as she did with visitors’ children entrusted to their church nursery’s care.

Something niggled in Gloria’s peripheral vision. She risked a sideways glance.

In the road stood a young woman, her rusted bike sprawled on the ground. Her face was a study in circles—widened eyes, open mouth, flared nostrils. Surely another villager stunned at seeing pale-faced foreigners.

Exhaling a decade of frustration, Gloria refocused on the world’s most beautiful child and drew her close.
God! You dreamed bigger than I imagined! Bigger than Texas. Bigger than China! Bigger than the world!

Andrew’s breath tickled her ear. “You sure about calling her Joy?”

“It’s her name,” she whispered, relaying what the Spirit had told her—was it a moment ago? A decade ago?
God, have I known this, at some level, my entire life?

Oh, Lily!
Chang Kaiping punished her bike pedals. Billowy grain stalks and the rutted road blurred into a canvas of golds and browns. Slowly, ever so slowly, Fourth Daughter Lily’s face appeared, as if a master artist had sketched Father’s cheekbones, Mother’s bow lips, and Lily’s own pearl-drop face into the China landscape. It was that image that had kept her poring over textbooks in her Boston flat, pushing through eighteen-hour shifts at Mass General. There, remembering Mother and Father, she had lavished compassion onto patients.

Kai hunched over, her spine curving forward, her hands gripping the rusted bar. She pedaled even faster, pursuing that elusive wind called fate. It was tricky to capture, but oh, the rewards! In time she would restore the Chang family honor. Reclaim her sister Lily. Today, though, it would be enough to see her.

All Kai had absorbed since 1988—America’s technology, Harvard Medical School’s biology—faded in the clatter of her rattling spokes as the hope of seeing Lily captured her. She was young. Free. Dr. Kai Chang vanished. In her stead was Second Daughter Kai, soaring on a dragon kite toward the orphanage. Toward Fourth Daughter Lily, who would lean close and whisper
moy moy
and flutter moth lashes in secret sister language.
Dear Lily, who does not know I have returned from America. Dear Lily, who does not know Mother resides on the ancestral burial hill.
Kai’s throat tightened like her handlebar grip.
Dear Lily, who knows not her own flesh and blood except as volunteers who thrust Lucky Candies into cupped and grimy orphan hands . . . especially for the girl with Mother’s bow lips. Oh, sister Lily!

Kai blinked away bitter tears and continued her flight. Blood rushed to her limbs, fluttering her strange bike-kite.
Careful!
Kai adjusted her handlebar grip lest the kite careen, like a drunken peasant, and crash, short of its destination.

The oxidized red blur of the orphanage fence seeped onto the countryside canvas. Kai eased her feet off the pedals. The dragon kite fluttered its tails, squealed disappointment at leaving its sky home, and once again became a bicycle. Kai dragged her toe in the dust but lifted her head.

There stood Lily. Precious Fourth Sister. To battle her racing pulse, her melting heart, and mask her love from prying eyes, Kai calibrated Lily’s height and weight. Twentieth percentile among ten-year-old females in America. Ninetieth percentile here in the land of “chinks and starving slant-eyes,” as David’s father described China. Kai dismissed thoughts of her boyfriend’s bigoted Boston father and instead noted with ancestral pride the sight of Father’s strong jaw, Mother’s porcelain skin. Here at the orphanage, Lily was a sweet honeysuckle vine amid scrawny grasses.

A foot drag stopped her bicycle, and Kai plotted how best to see Lily. It was a delicate matter because of the orphanage director’s power.

A shadow engulfed Lily.

Gripping her bike for steadiness, Kai scuffed forward. Her eyes widened with horror.

A blond-haired woman towered over Lily.

Blood drained from Kai. Why would a foreigner stalk her sister? Kai sharpened her gaze but kept the mask over her emotions.

Three
lao wai
trailed the woman, an American—her slouchy posture, expensive clothes, and heavy makeup screamed it. Kai’s palms became slick with sweat.
These Americans, who strut in their finery past crumbling walls like they own everything and everyone.
Kai’s mask slipped. A sneer took hold. Why were they here?

A brown-haired man fixed love-sick eyes on the woman . . . and Lily. Kai darted a glance at the other couple and dismissed their importance. The predators were that blond woman and the man, invading precious
mei mei’s
feng shui
by touching her head, her shoulder . . .

An icy river of emotion rushed over Kai, obliterating her handlebar grip. The bike clattered onto the packed soil. Why would Fourth Sister be joined with lao wai?

The woman fixed weak, water eyes on Kai. “Let go of Lily,” Kai snarled.

The woman’s brows arched. Her mouth stretched into a curlicue apple peel, candied and sickly sweet. She took the man’s arm. So happy, this couple, as they guided Lily—
my
sister
—into a van. Kai padlocked pleasant American memories—her boyfriend, David, her roommate, Cheryl, the Harvard staff. Her mouth yawned to breathe fire on the Americans. Then she spotted the orphanage director, bowing to the lao wai. A mouse squeak emerged.

The other lao wai and what surely were officials hurried into the van, which chugged to life and disappeared.

Kai flung out her arms, grasping only noxious fumes. Tears streaked her face.

The orphanage director, so smug in her Party uniform, cast a wicked smile at Kai before walking up the orphanage steps.
The steps where I left dear Fourth Sister, ten years ago. The steps that precipitated Mother’s slow but sure march to death.

Despite the chance that her gesture would be noted, Kai shook a fist trembling with hate. Since the Revolution, the director had nursed her smoldering-coal revenge against the Changs. This was a conflagration.

Stop! Stop! Stop!
The words enflamed Kai’s throat, trapped. She opened her mouth . . . closed it. How dare she think only of herself? China had branded her and her sisters dangerous counterrevolutionaries. As an elite studying overseas, Kai might be awoken from her American dream and detained here in China if she humiliated this woman protected by a Mao jacket, a red scarf, a stiff cap. Determination set Kai’s mouth. She could withstand their abuse. Not so poor Father, mourning Mother’s departure. First and Third Daughters Ling and Mei—who had sacrificed in ways she could only imagine in the easy-come, easy-go USA—did not deserve such disgrace.

Kai’s spine sagged like dying bamboo as she stared down the road. Nothing remained of Lily but van ruts and the memory of her perfect face. Kai swabbed tears, tears stanched even during Mother’s funeral procession.

One remaining official hurried inside the orphanage where Lily lived no more. Kai stuffed her fist in her mouth to keep from crying,
Little sister! Our jewel!
But little sister, proof that the Changs had reclaimed fate, was gone.

Second Daughter?

Kai perked her ears to hear the masculine voice. Who called? No men presently worked at the orphanage, according to her sisters’ latest gossip.

Little Dragon!

Though she was a grown woman, a medical doctor, she whimpered like a child. Only Old Grandfather had called her Little Dragon, Father abandoning that nickname years ago, along with his belief in Confucius, Mao’s Red Book, even the zodiac.

Shivers wracked Kai. She moved her lips but could not summon the strange words Grandfather had whispered a lifetime ago. Oh, but she heard them! Each syllable stirred a cooling breeze. She righted her bicycle. Kai, Second Daughter of the Chang family, Golden Dragon of China, graduate of the world’s greatest medical school, would battle the fates to honor Mother’s last wish, Grandfather’s first legacy. If it took her last breath, she would reclaim Lily. It was her fate.