The Scavenger's Daughters (Tales of the Scavenger's Daughters, Book One) (4 page)

Faster than most would think an old man could move, Benfu struggled out of his worn red overcoat and laid it on the ground in front of him. He then lifted the infant and set her on top of it. As he knelt down to wrap the material around her, he ignored the throbbing in his knees and rubbed her tiny feet and hands. He counted under his breath as he quickly massaged each petite toe and finger. While he worked to get the blood running in her body again, his eyes met hers and held.

With the surprise of being suddenly discovered, she had quieted and serenely stared up at Benfu, her dark eyes twinkling at him. She was beautiful, this one was, and he wondered what sort of ailment she might have that would have prompted her parents to relinquish her to a new fate.

“Hello,
nuer
. I’ve come to take you home. Just hold on and we’ll get you all fixed up. And we’ll add one more scavenger’s daughter to the world, yes we will.” He wrapped the coat all around her, making sure to double the sleeves around her icy feet. He gently laid her back in the box and after checking to make sure he had made a sufficient tunnel through the material for her to breathe through, he closed the flaps again. Looking around, he hoped the remaining cardboard would be there when he returned, but for now he needed to hurry.

Turning the bicycle around, he shivered from the sudden gust of wind that blew through his clothing. He climbed aboard and slowly began to pedal, willing the stiffness in his knees away. As he picked up the pace and began his journey home, he sighed and looked over his shoulder again at the box his newest treasure was nested in. He ignored the nervous fluttering in his stomach that reminded him how hard it would be to feed one more hungry mouth, and instead gave thanks to the gods that he had found the baby girl before it was too late.

F
ifty minutes later Benfu pulled his cart onto the sidewalk and around the low concrete wall to the lane of small buildings. Their house, like others along the row, opened up onto a small backstreet. The narrow
hutong
was only wide enough for pedestrians and bicycles to get through, creating a quieter sense of community that with the ever-increasing number of trucks and vehicles on the roads was getting harder to find in China these days. The downside was that the small homes were all very close together and most times that meant a lack of privacy.

He pedaled the bike much faster than the neighbors were used to and the sound of the squeaking wheel soon brought the people out. Like statues, they stood silently, watching him go by. They knew by the pace he kept that he carried something more than his usual trash. As he passed, they eyed the box lying on top of the pile in his cart.

“Calli!” he called, struggling to get his breath.
“Guo lai!”

Within seconds his wife popped out of a doorway ahead. Around her a few more heads of different heights began appearing. Peony was the first to burst out the door to meet Benfu, skipping as fast as she could—so fast her braids took turns dancing in the air.

“Ye Ye! Do we have a new sister?” She rushed to him and ran alongside the cart as he pedaled, trying to peek into the box.

“
Dui le,
Peony. You have another sister. But if we don’t warm her quickly, she won’t survive.”

Calli met him at the low gate to their tiny courtyard. He had caught her in the middle of wrapping up her long, wet hair and she struggled to pin the strands into a bun on the top of her head as she hurried to him. Benfu reached into the box and picked up the baby girl, then breathed a sigh of relief as he handed her over to his wife. He saw a flash of pain cross her face, pain from too many years of bending her body to pick up trash, but Benfu knew that if the baby could be saved, his Calli could do it.

“She’s very cold.” Benfu shook his head and shoved his hands into his pockets to warm them and stop the trembling.

“I’ve told you to take a blanket with you, crazy old man. Now look at you standing there shivering without a coat.” She tsked as she carried the baby into the house. “Peony, stoke the fire and get your Ye Ye his sweater. Ivy, get the can of flour and the milk powder, and plug in the kettle.”

Everyone hurried around the small house as Calli sat down in her chair and opened the bundle. Beside her, their youngest, Jasmine, stood and watched everything happening. At five years old, the little girl had never uttered a word since they had found her over a year before; she only stared at everyone with her big, knowing eyes. The infant stared up at Jasmine and when the cold air hit her skin, she gave a pitifully weak wail. Maggi, another daughter, strained to see the baby from her pallet on the bench lining the wall.

Benfu nodded his head. “That’s a stronger cry than the one that helped me find her. So we’ve got more of a chance than I thought to save her.”

He met his wife’s eyes over the bundle of the baby. Her expression told him what she was thinking. It was the same thing he was—about the first little baby girl he had brought home many years earlier. Benfu had found her wrapped in a thin sheet in front of the train station. He’d walked up to find a crowd standing around the white bundle, yet no one was doing anything other than staring. He had broken through them and picked up the baby and
brought her home. She was so cold that her tiny body was frozen stiff. They had wrapped her in a burlap sack and warmed her as best as they could, and she had responded for a while, even beginning to wiggle in Benfu’s oversized hands. A quick check by the doctor and he had released her to their care. She was a gift that had healed a hole in their hearts and they had named her Rose, but tragically she had died a few weeks later. The short time they had her made Benfu realize that they had been depriving themselves of the joy a young one could bring to one’s heart.

Since then, Benfu and Calli had made it their life’s mission to care for the castaways that fate brought into their lives. For Benfu, it was a self-imposed penance of a sin only one other knew. For his wife, the girls helped to fill an empty, sad void deep within her soul. In her younger years, she’d been called Mama by the girls she’d taken under her wing, just as he’d been Baba. But a decade or so ago their newer daughters instinctively called him Ye Ye and her Nai Nai—the affectionate nicknames used for grandparents in Chinese families.

Many of the children they had rescued were out in the world thriving now, but Benfu felt a small bit of relief that those who hadn’t made it had at least felt a bit of love as they passed through to the next world.

Calli unwrapped the baby and handed the coat to her nearest daughter. She pulled the quilt from the back of her chair and wrapped the infant inside the folds, exclaiming over the creamy hue of the child’s brown skin.

“Put your inside jacket on, Benfu. You’ll have pneumonia,” she scolded her husband. Their home, like others in their neighborhood, was still quite chilly inside, despite their best efforts to keep it warm.

The kettle began to bubble and shake. Benfu rushed over to supervise his daughter as she made the baby’s first meal.

“Only one spoon of powder, Ivy.” With his thumbs hooked through his suspenders to keep from interfering, he coached the girl as she measured the powder into the bottle. The milk powder was very expensive and he had taught her to ration it carefully. Ivy opened the bag of flour and added a heaping spoonful to the mixture. She poured the steaming water over it and put the nipple on and shook it.

“I already know that, Ye Ye. I made all of Mallow’s bottles before she died. And you don’t have to tell me how lucky we are to have milk powder, or the story of how when I came home, all you could give me was flour and water.” The girl grinned at Benfu and he winked back. Next to his little Jasmine, Ivy was one of his favorites, though he’d never let the others know. It amazed him how all of his daughters remembered those who had left this world and were able to fondly speak of them. He was getting so old he struggled to remember how many had died over the years, but he knew it was at least a half dozen.

“Hand it to me, Ivy.” Benfu took the bottle from her and opened it again. He didn’t mention that their first found baby wasn’t even lucky enough to have flour and water. That came with the second child but Rose was fed broth right from their supper pot. That was all that they had at the time and it was given with a spoon, a few drops at a time. Since then there had been many more children and they had learned to keep a small amount of milk powder locked away in the cupboard, ready for emergencies.

Benfu reached over and lifted the pitcher of cold water from the counter and added an inch or so to the bottle. He shook it, then hurried over to his wife.

Calli held the baby close to her body, rocking and humming to her. She had pulled her chair as near to the old coal stove as she could. She took the bottle from Benfu and as soon as it touched the baby’s cheek, the tiny girl frantically bobbed her head back and forth, instinctively rooting for the nipple. Calli slid it into the open mouth and everyone around breathed a sigh of relief when the baby successfully began to suckle. Calli and Benfu would take the baby to see the neighborhood doctor later in the day but she had learned over the years that the children had the best chance of survival if she worked to stabilize them at home first.

Peony, Ivy, and Jasmine crowded around their Nai Nai, watching the baby suck the lumpy mixture. Lily—Ivy’s twin sister—sat at the table, listening intently to what was going on around her. Even Maggi stretched herself as far as she could from her perch on the bench, trying to get a glimpse of the baby’s face.

“Nai Nai, do you think she misses her mother?” Peony asked pensively. She was the next to youngest in the group and usually the most vocal and probably the sassiest, too, Benfu would say. There was no doubt that Peony was of mixed blood and by the streaks of auburn in her hair and the slight rounding of her golden-colored eyes, Benfu suspected her father was Caucasian. At nine years old, Peony still remembered her own mother and even recalled the day only a few years ago that she was told good-bye and set on a bench outside the train station. Her mother told her to wait and someone would be along to take her to have the peach-sized lump removed from her head. She said they’d be together again when she recovered.

Lucky for her that someone was Benfu and he had begged and borrowed to get the money for her surgeries. To make things harder for the child, postcards had started to arrive for Peony soon after her first treatment. Obviously the woman had been watching to make sure her daughter was found and had followed them home to see where they lived, always staying elusive enough to avoid being discovered.

Before the end of the three freezing treatments and final procedure for Peony, two more postcards arrived. They were brief, only a line or two, and while there was never a return address, the sender claimed to be Peony’s mother and said she was watching the girl from afar and wanted her to know that when her circumstances changed, she’d be back for her daughter. He and Calli had agonized over whether to give the girl the postcards or not but in the end, Calli reminded him that they’d always been totally honest with their daughters. They hadn’t wanted to start keeping secrets. Since the first postcard, Peony had started acting quite ornery. However, Benfu was gentle on the girl because he knew she was hurting inside.

Benfu didn’t know if the woman would ever really come forward and claim her child, but he did know that the postcards were a thread of hope that Peony clung to with all her might. She even slept with them under her pillow, taking them out one by one and gazing at the scenery on the fronts as she probably tried to imagine where her mother was. He only wished he had a way to find the woman and reunite the two, even if it would be painful to
lose the girl. It never failed to sadden Benfu when Peony talked about the gentle kiss her mother had given her before walking away.

“
Bushi!
She doesn’t miss them. They are cruel for leaving her in the cold with barely any clothes on. If her parents had their way, she’d already be dead,” Ivy blurted out, and received a chastising look from her Nai Nai.

Benfu saw Peony visibly wince, then lower her head. “My mother didn’t mean for me to die. She wanted me to get help. She told me so,” she said, picking at the threads in the colorful rug she sat on.