... and Baby Makes Two (33 page)

James was sweet and kind with us at the Beijing airport. He gave us detailed instructions about how to board a flight, as if we were idiot children. We had a lovely short flight from Beijing to Guangzhou, on Shamian Island. This was the spot where the Chinese used to stash all the foreign traders, pirates, and other suspicious

international characters. Parts of it looked like New Orleans to me. Maybe I'm crazy.

When we checked into the hotel, the White Swan, everyone was looking left, looking right, looking for a room full of babies. I was relieved that we didn't find one. But then I was upset to be relieved, so I'd look for more babies. And then I'd be relieved. And then I'd be upset. And that is the worst kind of vicious cycle.

While we unpacked, I turned on the TV, and can you believe it? They were showing
Bringing Up Baby.
Ray was worried about me when I got all weepy at the scene where Katharine Hepburn climbs the dinosaur and Cary Grant kisses her at last. He doesn't think people should cry at screwball comedies. Critics …

The Chinamoms gathered for dinner, and it felt like the condemned eating a hearty meal. No one said anything about being scared out of their wits. Am I the only one? Teresa said that she almost pushed Mr. Annoying Video Guy off the Great Wall. So we gossiped about our fellow travelers for a while. We argued about life in the courtyards of Beijing, and we were pretty much our same, original selves. This could have been a Melting Pot dinner, but we were on the other side of the world. Was this the last time we would be our old selves? Ever? I think so. You can count it down in hours, but I don't want to.

Tomorrow, we go get our babies.

When Jane woke up, Ray was still asleep in the next bed. The sun was almost up. She should sleep while she can. She turned over and saw the crib. She turned back.

After the Last Supper, she and Ray had giggled their way back to their room. But then the hotel staff wheeled in the crib, and there was a lot of general gulping from the Americans in the room. It was small, but it vacuumed the air right out of the room. Jane and Ray both reached for the minibar.

But now, she wanted to fall back asleep.

…

Ray was making her late. Again! He wanted to go back to the room and make sure that he had his camera. Oh, and extra rolls of film. Oh, and the toy he wanted to give to little Beth. Oh, and Jane was inches away from spontaneous combustion.

They were inches away from the breakfast bar when one of the mothers-to-be in the group found them and announced her need for a group hug and Jane broke away in an obvious break-away style.

“Oh,” she said. “Somebody gets cranky without a little breakfast, huh?”

Bitch. Evil bitch. Jane raced to gather some food that she didn't want. Why were there pigs in a blanket in the breakfast buffet? It was upsetting in every way. She wrapped banana bread in a paper napkin and stashed it in the diaper bag. Already, she was a selfish mother. They raced to catch the orphanage bus. James waved them on.

“It's Christmas!”
Karen shouted, and a handful of people looked like they were wishing for guns. “We're getting our girls!
It's like Christmas!”

Is it? Christmas wouldn't be so hot and so sweaty and so damn scary. Christmas wouldn't be so polluted and gray and wouldn't start so early and wouldn't happen on a bus and wouldn't include Jane wanting to strangle Karen with her hands if she said “Christmas” again.

Karen started singing, “Did you know we're riding on ba-a-by express?”

It was so much worse in person. Karen had her video camera at hand to capture every precious moment. She taped the gray scenery through the dirty bus window. Jane watched as Karen put the camera in her bag while it was still recording, capturing lengthy stretches of the interior life of a camera bag.

Ray bounced a toy bunny, but with no musical accompaniment. Maybe he was starting to figure out that Jane was just a bit tense. Jane caught him watching her sideways. She worried about being the object of his worry.

The ride was ugly. Teresa and Beverly sat far from Jane and Karen, and Jane was jealous. They were quiet and exuded a kind of calm that could only come from people who actually knew what the hell they were doing. Or were hungover. Jane wanted to throw up. The scenery was so damn ugly. Haozhou seemed to consist only of tire shops. How could that be? Was this a town where you stopped only if you had a flat?

The ride took two hours. It was too short. Jane wanted to drive the length of the Great Wall and wave to John Glenn. She smiled
weakly at Karen whenever she held up the potentially blackmailing video camera. Ray was quiet, dancing the toy bunny in a rhythmic, comforting way.

“Here we are,” announced James.

It was a big wall. Wooden and dirty. They walked into a small parking lot/courtyard/open space.

“Does anyone need to go to the bathroom?” James asked.

Oh, God, yes. They needed to go. A pride of women followed an orphanage worker up several flights of stairs to a bathroom.

“Oh! No! Oh, ick! I can't do this!” squealed the first woman. This was a traditional, Eastern, squat bathroom. No toilets here, not like she was expecting. This was essentially a hole in the floor where one had to squat and go.

Jane decided to remain upstairs and accompany a mother who was openly nervous about the day.

“I bet they brought out the babies,” said Jane as they found the stairs again.

“No!” said Nervous Mother. “They wouldn't do that!”

“They would.”

They descended the stairs and found bedlam in the small courtyard. There were babies, parents, and every kind of noise.

“I held your baby already!” Teresa shouted. “I held her! Where have you been?”

While they were upstairs, a parade of nannies had brought the babies to all the waiting parents. This was the result.

Jane scanned the crowd and saw Ray holding the doe-eyed beauty whom Jane had studied for months in a tiny photo with a red background. Beth. That was Beth. Jane would know her anywhere. Jane's chest felt like a door that was opening, rusty and old. It was Beth, and she loved her.

“Hi, baby girl. Hi. Hi. Hi.” She said that a lot. And she said, “Oh, you're so beautiful. You're so sweet. Look at you. Hi.”

The baby clung to Ray. Jane wanted to snatch her and run. She
wanted to pull her away and shout, “This is
my
baby!” but that would be unwise. Right? Better to wait. Take it easy. Take it slow. She waited. Finally Ray couldn't justify holding the girl anymore.

“Hi, sweetheart. Hi. Are you okay?” Jane said to the fifteen pounds of panic and fear in her arms. The baby didn't cry, but she dug her fingers into Jane's arm and held on. Jane read “whoever you are, don't let go” in her body language. There was an ocean of eleven babies and who knows how many grown-ups cavorting about this tiny courtyard where Jane and Beth held on to each other. Jane was having a Tony and Maria experience: Everyone else was a gauzy soft focus as these two danced and discovered how much they loved each other. It would be a while before the Jets and the Sharks came into focus. There was no noise in their misty world, only quiet colors and soft textures.

Years might have passed before Jane looked up from the baby. When she finally did, she saw that the grown-ups were the ones crying. Most of the babies were quiet. One was wailing enough for the whole zoo of infants. It was Karen's baby Ariel. She was frantic to comfort the baby. Nothing was working.

James held Karen's crying baby, and the crying stopped instantly. He whispered to her in Cantonese, and the baby even managed a smile. But she screamed and cried when she was handed back to her new mother. Karen's face was red, she was sweaty, she was an inch away from crying herself. How could a baby reject her so quickly and so completely?

“It's okay,” James reassured her. “Baby has strong ties here. This means that she knows how to love. She will love you just as much. You will see.”

The whole crowd was summoned into a large room. Jane found a seat far from the madding crowd and sat Beth on her lap to get a look at her child, beyond the wisps of hair and the cherubic face. Despite the heat, Beth was wearing a long-sleeved terry cloth sleeper. It was blue and had some stains on it. It may have been a
little small; she seemed to be working hard to straighten her legs and push her feet through the terry cloth footsies. She felt substantial and real. She looked good.

The room had two old couches and some large folding tables, now covered in diaper bags and other goods. Everyone had brought a clothing donation for the unseen children who would remain in the orphanage. There were bottles everywhere, filled with a heavy, lumpy knd of formula. Jane took one. It was very hot, and the bottle's nipple had been widened to accommodate the thick meal inside. Beth grabbed it and chowed down.

Ray was crying. He had taken dozens of photos and hoped that they were in focus. He couldn't see.

Teresa's face had changed. She looked softer, more available. A set of muscles around her mouth unclenched. She was bouncing her girl, Grace, on her lap and singing to her. Karen was pale. She was rocking Ariel, who maintained a steady cry until she had her bottle.

Mrs. Wu, the orphanage director, stepped forward. She was warm but very serious looking. She had a lot of information for the new families, and she launched into it. She described sleep schedules and eating schedules and described general living conditions for the girls during their time here at the Haozhou Social Welfare Institute. She was on the other side of the room, and Jane missed every word of it. Ray was trying to take notes, but he still couldn't see very well.

Beth finished her bottle and smacked her lips a few times. Her eyes were at half-mast. Jane didn't know whether or not the child needed a burp, but she opted to try. Beth was starting to drowse, and sleep made her heavier. That would become a significant law of physics in the days to come. Sleep Makes Children Heavier. Beth nodded out, and Jane was complete. She had everything she wanted. Peter didn't exist in this gossamer world.

“What's that?” asked Ray. He was pointing to a large red scab on
the back of Beth's head. It was the size of a poker chip and looked like a recent injury.

Each family stepped forward to give their clothing donation to the orphanage. They took pictures with Mrs. Wu. They said thank you in English and Cantonese. She smiled and nodded graciously.

“Can we go in and see the other babies?” a father asked.

“No. I'm sorry, no.” Mrs. Wu never allowed anyone inside the orphanage. Years before, a Canadian filmmaker had brought a hidden camera into an orphanage, and the subsequent documentary had rattled China and the adoption world. It would not happen again.

When Jane stepped up, she pointed to the wound on her daughter's head and asked Mrs. Wu, “What's this? What happened?”

“It's getting better,” Mrs. Wu replied. And she moved on to the next family.

Karen's baby was finally starting to calm down. Jane floated over to them.

“Beth, this is Karen and her baby Ariel. When you wake up, you guys can have a playdate,” Jane offered.

Ariel didn't like the sound of that and threw her head back for another cry. Karen was losing more color.

“Can I help?” Jane asked.

“You can back off,” Karen answered in a voice Jane had never heard before. She backed off.

James announced that all the parents should change their baby's diapers before they boarded the bus. Jane bit her lip and wished that she had practiced this move at least once before she had to do it for real. Why had she never put that on a list?

The large folding table became a diaper changing world. Most of the babies were awake now and screaming at the prospect of a clean diaper. Jane settled her sleeping girl on the couch and opened the terry cloth sleeper. Beth was hot and sweaty, so her dutiful mother would change her into a cool, clean new outfit.

There were three large red rings on Beth's stomach. They almost looked like welts. The red skin flaked. Jane stared in disbelief. She couldn't remember any of Dr. Val's Polaroids looking like this. What was it?

“Hurry, please! The bus must go!” James shouted.

Beth woke up and screamed. Tears rolled around her head. Her tongue wavered in her mouth, and she looked a lot like the killer plant in
Little Shop of Horrors.
Jane snapped out of her haze and grabbed Ray.

“I need a diaper! I need a wipe! Stat! What are those red things on her belly?”

Jane's hands were shaking, and Beth knew she was in the hands of an amateur. She screamed even louder. She could belt. Jane lifted her legs and slipped the diaper underneath. She almost looked like she knew what was doing, until she realized that the diaper was backward. Or was it? Did it matter? She switched it. She switched it back. Beth had no patience for this indecision. Jane closed the diaper, closed the too-hot sleeper, and clutched the baby to her chest.

“There. That wasn't easy at all, was it?” she said to the sniffly kid.

Jane, Beth, and Ray were the last ones out of the orphanage. They scrambled to catch up with the crowd ahead of them. They exited the courtyard into the bustling streets of Haozhou. It was noisy and busy and in full motion, except for the young Chinese woman across the street. She stood still and was impeccably dressed, watching the Americans toting the babies, and she was weeping. Jane froze and held Beth a little too tightly. Beth wriggled as they went to the bus.

…

Karen took Ariel to the back of the bus, where she screamed for the entire ride. Teresa bounced little Grace recklessly but happily. Grace squealed with joy.

“I got her to laugh! She actually laughed. Did you hear that?” Teresa was now about twelve years younger.

It took nearly three hours to drive back to the hotel, as they were trapped in a traffic debacle. Beth stayed awake but didn't cry again. She studied. Her eyes were impossibly large. Jane smiled without stopping. Beth clutched her mother.