The First Excellence: Fa-Ling's Map (43 page)

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Authors: Donna Carrick

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For the first five years after Min-xi’s death he used to visit the nearby orphanage every Friday morning when he was in town picking up supplies. He would sit outside the playground, torturing himself with ‘whys’ and ‘what ifs’.

He considered marching into the Sunshine Rooster Home for Orphaned Children and demanding his girls be returned to him, but Min-xi’s death had battered his spirit. He convinced himself he would be a poor father to the children, and they would be better off without him.

By the time he regained his manhood enough to take action, the moment had passed. Ling would no longer recognise him. Surely the girls would be better off being adopted by a proper family, a mother and father who both wanted girls. He had no desire to bring his daughters home to be abused by Good Mother.

As the years passed, he could not understand why his girls were still at the orphanage. Surely there must be parents who would choose two such lovely daughters. Maybe it was more difficult to find a home for siblings than for a single child.

He was proud of the way his dear Ling protected her sister. He was also pleased to see his daughters were well fed, not emaciated like the other girls in the orphanage. No doubt Ling was as resourceful as her mother had been and would find a way to take care of herself and her sister.

Jong did worry, though, that he never saw Ling smile. The little one laughed often, clamouring around her older sister for attention, which was always given without hesitation. Ling, though, was another matter, entirely too serious in nature. His beloved eldest seemed to have lost the ability to be happy.

What did he expect? He had caused this sorrow in his child, and he was unable to correct the situation. Abandonment of girls was a common occurrence but no one in his right mind would ever admit to having done it. To confess was to sentence oneself to years in a Chinese prison.

Every week for five years Jong made the visit, watching the girls grow stronger and more beautiful in the sunlight. Near the end of that time he noticed they were losing weight. Somehow, their food supply must have diminished. At around the same time the little one lost some of her exuberance, clinging to Ling rather than running and playing.

One day, though, the girls were no longer to be seen in the dirty playground. He still went faithfully every Friday for a year, until one day a suspicious town person demanded to know why he was loitering and staring at the young girls. Finally he had to admit to himself his own Ling was gone for good. She must have found a home at last. He would never see her or the little one again.

He still looked for her, though, in the eyes of any female he encountered who was between the age of four and twenty-four. Often he would imagine he saw her, that he could recognise a familiar somewhat sad turn of the head or the sound of a gentle voice that reminded him of Min-xi. Although he knew it was unreasonable, he was still disappointed when he had to admit each girl he encountered was just one more stranger in a world full of strangers.

Every morning he rose with the same prayer in his heart: that Min-xi should know happiness in her new life and his daughters should drink daily from a river of joy. A devout Buddhist, Jong believed in reincarnation. He had no doubt Min-xi would have found her way back to earth by now. Her journey was not yet over. She had her own mistakes to put to rights, just as he had his.

He never re-married, despite having had several opportunities. He would not expose another woman to the poison of his mother’s voice.

The white woman with the new daughter sat down on Jong’s right and drank from a bottle of purified water. She smiled at him. A Chinese man, probably a Beijing local, stopped in front of the mother and scowled at the baby, his face smothered in hatred.

Jong was stunned by the man’s open display of hostility toward the child. He understood there was a layer of Chinese society, mostly comprised of middle-aged men, who regarded these ‘orphans’ to be unworthy, a product of poverty and ignorance, and therefore a blight on the nation’s pride. Through Communism, China had overtly rejected the darker aspects of a caste society, yet the trappings of class lived on in the people, who relied on a profound sense of ‘order’ to govern the universe.

The white woman met the man’s angry glare with happy composure, smiling again at Jong and rolling her eyes as if to say ‘What’s with this guy?’ Jong laughed and made a
crazy
hand-sign by swirling his finger around his ear like he had seen someone do once in a movie. The woman laughed with him, and they sat together for a moment at peace in each other’s company. Then the woman got up, waved at Jong, and left with her baby. Jong was alone once again with his thoughts.

“
Hello,” the young woman on his left said in Mandarin, tapping Jong on the elbow.

“
Hello,” he answered in Cantonese. He hoped she would understand his greeting.

To his surprise she repeated her greeting in perfect Cantonese, although with a slight Western accent that put him in mind of a Chinese movie star he admired who had spent too long in England.

“
Come and sit in the shade, Sir,” the girl said, shifting to her left to make room for him.

Although the breeze was good, clearing away most of the pollution that covered the region like a blanket, the heat was unbearable. Jong did not wait to be invited twice.

“
Thank you,” he said. “Where are you from, Miss? You speak my language well.”

“
I was born in Gui,” she said. “I live now with my family in Toronto, Canada.”

“
I also am from Guangxi,” he said. “I am here with friends visiting the Capital.”

“
It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” the woman said, indicating the spectacular grounds with a sweep of her hand. Her smile was radiant, a rare gem that flashed under the sparkle of eyes marked with sadness. He studied the surrounding area, taking in the floral gardens and struggling to see the glorious Summer Palace through her eyes, the way the West would see it when they came for the Olympics. Soon the entire world would stand in awe of this, his golden country!

Jong smiled at the English signs that had been newly erected all over the place, offering a plethora of necessary instructions to the tourists, like
No Spitting Allowed
, and
Please Wait Your Turn
. The artfully crafted Chinese characters above the bold English translations made him beam with pride.

“
Yes, it is beautiful,” Jong agreed.

The End

About the author

Donna Carrick grew up in Canada’s military and now resides in Southern Ontario with her husband Alex and their three children. Along with their beloved family pets, the Carricks spend most of their free time in Ontario’s North Country. The First Excellence draws on their own experience in adopting a child from China.

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