Daughters for a Time (20 page)

I stared at the statues of Buddha. I thought of Sam, a child I hadn’t known existed until recently, hadn’t touched until eleven days ago, and now who occupied my every thought. I squeezed my eyes shut, and at first I saw Sam, but then I saw Mom. I smiled to myself because seeing her was always a rare treat, like slipping into an old-fashioned diner on a rainy day to find a chocolate cake frosted with boiled icing, the kind Mom made for every one of my childhood birthdays. But I also felt a tug of sadness, imagining how she would love being here, her pride in my adopting Sam, her head pulled forward from the weight of her 35 mm camera hanging around her neck, documenting every step of our journey.

Locals and tourists came and went, prayed and offered. I, too, was preparing to leave when I noticed that there was a group of ladies near the front of the temple. I had been watching
them bowing and chanting, and now they were lighting incense. They appeared to be in a group and when they kneeled down, they spoke together, reciting the same prayer. They reminded me of Mom. She had been part of a group called the Legion of Mary; it meant that she would say the complete rosary every day. Once a week, she said it aloud with her group, in the front pews of St. Mary’s.

With a thumping heart, I inched my way up toward the women, kneeling behind them and putting my hands into prayer position. For the next twenty minutes, while they chanted their prayers in Chinese, I whispered my prayers in English, a metronome of pleases and thank-yous and never-agains and forevers. When the Chinese women finished, they rose quietly, but stirred enough to knock me from my own meditations. One, a kind elderly lady, looked me square in the eyes, reached for my hand, and squeezed it.

She said something to me in Chinese that sounded a lot like, “It was nice having you here, dear.”

“Thank you,” I said, and a shiver tingled throughout my body.

Afterward, I lit some prayer candles and then went outside into the garden, where I sat on a concrete bench and stared at a statue of Buddha.

I took a deep breath, looked to the sky, and knew that it was time to have a conversation with my mother, my dear sweet mother, whom I hadn’t addressed directly in twenty-two years.

“Mom,” I said, testing my voice, my ability to actually say her name. “I’m here in China. Are you watching? Do you see that I have a daughter now? Isn’t she adorable?” I reached into my purse and rooted around for a tissue but only came up with one of Sam’s socks. I remembered how Claire used to stick her hand in a jacket pocket and come up with a binky. This sock
made me feel like my sister, like a legitimate mom. I dabbed my eyes with it and swiped it across my nose.

“Mom,” I said. “I’ve thought this a million times and I’ve felt the shame and regret of it every day of my life, but I’ve never said it. So I’m going to say it now:
I’m sorry
, Mom. I’m sorry that I wasn’t the daughter you needed me to be when you were sick. I’m sure, knowing you, that you’d say, ‘Oh, honey, you were sad. It’s okay. You did your best.’ All that’s true, but if there were a way that I could go back, I would have been exactly what you needed. I would have loved you with such honesty there wouldn’t have been any doubt in your mind as you left this world. Your heart would have been overflowing. That’s what I wish. I’m sorry that I wasn’t that way. I’d do anything to hug you and tell you how much I loved you. How much I still love you. I love you, Mom. I really, really love you. And I’m sorry.”

By the time I got back to the hospital, Tim was holding Sam, who was cheerful and rested. When she saw me, she smiled and reached in my direction. A sense of pride and propriety filled me. Our red thread seemed to be reinforcing itself with a material that could not be breached.

After seventeen long days, we said good-bye to Max, our fellow adoptive parents, their beautiful new daughters, and the region of China that bore Sam. Amy and I promised to e-mail each other often. The husbands took photos of us holding Sam and Maria, little Angela between us. Then Amy took one last picture of Tim and me with Sam, and we did the same for her family. When Amy hugged me, I cried because I couldn’t have made it through these last weeks without her. She was my surrogate for Claire, a version of my older sister, seven thousand miles from home.

We boarded the Boeing 747, bounced Sam on our laps, and gave her a cookie to chew on during takeoff. When she shrieked from the noise and air pressure of the plane, I pushed her piece of satin blanket top into her little hand, held her tightly against my chest, and promised her that soon we’d be home.

“Do you hurt, baby?” I whispered to her, rubbing the outsides of her ears.

Sam looked up at me, made the briefest eye contact, before looking away, as if to say,
Not as much as I used to.

When finally we arrived home, the bubble of emotion exited me: I emitted an embarrassingly loud squeak that turned the heads of passersby. Tears poured down my face. The glorious sign read,
The U.S. Customs Service Welcomes You to the United States
. When we cleared customs and made our way down to baggage claim, the tears gushed again at the sight of Claire, my sister who was usually so well composed, crying in anticipation of our arrival. With Maura on her hip and Sam on mine, we clustered in a hug that smeared mascara and lipstick, a huddle of happy, happy tears.

“Look at us,” Claire said, wiping her eyes.

“Yeah,” I said. “Finally.”

Two days later, on Christmas Eve, we gathered at Claire’s. Her house was decorated exquisitely, as if Martha Stewart herself had waved a crafty wand. A ten-foot Fraser fir was wrapped in tiny yellow lights, garlands spiraled around the staircase banister, and piney wreaths welcomed our arrival. Bowls of candy adorned each table. Eggnog was chilled. Stockings were hung, especially a new one, freshly embroidered with the name
Samantha
.

Davis and Delia were there, and Martha, Ross’s mother, was there, too. Maura was buzzing around with the energy of a kid who had eaten a pound of candy. I sat in front of the tree with Sam. By the way she marveled at the lights, I figured that she’d be happy staring at them for a while. Claire had pulled out packed-away gear from Maura: a bouncing chair, a walker, a Johnny Jump Up. I inserted Sam into the walker and she hung from the harness, mesmerized, reaching for the ornaments.

“What do you think, sweetheart?” I asked, tracing my finger across her cheek. “Do you like the tree?”

I thought of my friend, Amy DePalma, and how she warned me against overstimulating Sam. “These kids need to be eased in to everything!” she told me. “When you get her home, don’t let her have a trunk full of toys or her choice of food to eat. I’m serious, Helen,” she said. “Strip her room to nothing but the crib. It’s what she’s used to. Anything more will freak her out.”

I nodded and agreed, because if anyone knew, Amy did. But how could we avoid the excess of Christmas? I looked at the tree. It seemed to be buoyed by an island of presents, many of which I knew were for Sam, my daughter from rural China who came with one possession—a strip of satin blanket top.

Though we were at Claire and Ross’s, Tim offered to cook. He had picked up a beef tenderloin, which he planned to sear on all sides, warm in the oven, and serve pink and juicy—thick slices of filet mignon. While Sam admired the ornaments and her new cousin, Maura, dancing around her, I went into the kitchen and whipped up a few batches of rosemary biscuits and a piecrust. Tim roasted red peppers for the soup. Claire skinned potatoes.

The night wrapped around me like a warm blanket. The emotion that now bubbled out of me was pure gratitude. To be with Tim, home with Sam, bonded tightly with my sister, nearly filled a hole in me that had existed since Mom died. I thought of Larry, wondered what he was doing at this exact moment. I wondered if he was home alone in his recliner, sipping eggnog, listening to Bing Crosby. He was what was left. The one missing piece. The last inch of the hole to be filled. Maybe by this time next year, we’d have adopted him, too.

Later, we dressed Maura and Sam in matching flannel Christmas pajamas and situated them on the sofa for a photo shoot. Maura took her big-cousin job seriously, holding tightly to her little cousin. Christmas lights twinkled, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” played, cameras winked and whined, all while Sam looked up curiously, offering the occasional smile when Maura tickled her.

Fifty shots later, I finally had the photo that summed up my emotional state, the photo that would stand iconic for this first Christmas with my new daughter: Sam staring dreamily into
Maura’s eyes, astonished and amazed, wondering (not unhappily so) how the heck she had ended up here.

When we said good night, I pulled Claire aside. “These last few years…” I stumbled to put into words an apology for my half-decade depression.

“Forget about it,” Claire said, waving away my concern.

“I’m happy now,” I said. “I’m really happy now.”

“Same,” Claire said. “And I’m wild about my new niece. She is the cutest thing in history.”

“What about Larry?” I asked.

“What about him?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Just thinking.”

“You keep thinking,” she smiled. “I’m going to bed.”

The next morning, Delia helped me bathe Sam. Once she was dry and powdered and creamed, we wrestled her into a pair of ruffled-bottom tights and a ruby taffeta Christmas dress. We clutched our sides laughing at the sight of her, her little head, with tufts of black hair sprung in every direction, bobbling above the too-puffy dress. The more we laughed, the more Sam laughed, our little sidekick, solidly in cahoots.

On our way to church, I thought back to the last time I’d been at St. Mary’s. It must have been a Christmas or two ago, when Claire had dragged me along with one of her “Christmas and Easter is the least you can do” guilt trips. I had sat in the pew next to Claire and watched the families stroll in. Pregnant mothers in their bulging maternity dresses, holding babies on their hips, others by the hands. Hordes of families with strings of children: three, five, seven, ten. I remember a ladder of girls sitting in front of me in their red-and-green smocked hand-me-down dresses. The littlest was probably three, the oldest in
her teens. One of the middle girls looked back at me, shrugged her shoulders as if to ask,
Where’s yours?
I swirled my finger at her, indicating that she should turn around. I didn’t need a slice from the fertile-Myrtle pie mocking me, too. Today, though, I was one of them. I was finally a member of the one group I had always wanted to join. My empty arms were now full.