Great Call of China (S.A.S.S.) (2 page)

“Sure,” Al replied. “I want you to find what you’re looking for just as much as you do, but don’t make me lie too much. If your mom asks me point-blank, ‘Is Cece visiting the orphanage in Beijing?’ I don’t think I can pull it off. I like your mom. She’s sweet.”

Cece slung the jeans over her arm. “I know, I know.” She prayed her mother wouldn’t have the guts to ask Alison something like that. She grabbed her purse. “Any last words of wisdom?”

Alison got up. “As a matter of fact, there are. Do something
fun
while you’re there, okay?” She opened the door.

“I’ll try.” Cece said, following Alison out. “That’s the other reason I’m going. I haven’t forgotten.”

They headed for the registers.

“By fun, I don’t mean studying, Cece.”

“I know that.”

“Then there’s only one more thing.”
The Great Call of China

Cece let out a breath. “What now?”

“Make sure you give yourself something extra special for your birthday. You know, because it’ll be the first time since forever that I won’t be there to celebrate.”

Cece paused. She hadn’t even thought about that. Her seventeenth birthday would fall just before the program ended. It wouldn’t be the same without her best friend. She sighed. “Something special, huh? Like what?”

“Oh. . . I don’t know. . . .” Al stopped by an accessory counter and browsed through one of the racks. “Since you’re sure to meet some guys over there, you should be totally open to all the possibilities.” She stopped to smile at Cece. “You should give yourself
the gift of love.
”

Cece rolled her eyes. “Which talk show did you get that from?”

“I didn’t get it from a show,” Al said. She spun the rack. “I read it in a book. It’s great advice. This summer is the perfect opportunity to break the man drought you’re in.”

“Man drought?” Cece said in surprise. “I’d hardly call it that. I attract plenty of men. Just not the right ones.” Last month, it had been some high school dropout from work. A couple of months before, a guy on her academic team who had a bad case of halitosis. And before that? One of her mother’s friend’s sons—his idea of a date was going to the library.

“All I’m saying is to keep an eye out,” Al said. “Someone there just might be worthy.” She pulled a pair of earrings off the rack.

“Look, Al, if the right guy comes along, you know I’m all over that.”

“You mean
him,
right?”

Cece laughed. “No comment.”

“Well, maybe you’ll want to get these.” Al passed a pair of red rose-shaped earrings to Cece. “If any earrings say romance, these are it.”

Cece held the jewelry up to her ear and looked at herself in the mirror. The earrings brought out the pink in her cheeks and lips. “Sold.”

After Cece made her purchases, she and Alison walked out of the store. Cece glanced at her watch and took in a huge breath. She had only twelve hours left before she’d be on a plane to China. “This is it. You parked on the other side of the mall, right?”

“Yeah,” Al said. “I guess it’s time to say good-bye.”

“Yup.”

“Time to leave your friend thousands and thousands of miles behind.”

“Yup.”

“Time to—”

“Al, stop. You can always e-mail me. It’ll be like I never left.”

“All right, chica.” Alison gave Cece a hug. “I’ll try not to
The Great Call of China
get too sad while I rot at Six Flags, with Eugene, in one hundred-degree weather. . . ”

“Oh, shut up!” Cece laughed as she broke apart from Al. “You’ll be fine. Now go.”

“Okay,” Alison said grudgingly. She started to walk away, then gave Cece one last wave. “Bye!”

Cece waved back. “Bye.”

She smiled before she turned for the exit. She’d really miss Alison.

When Cece got home, she went to her room to finish packing. She took her new jeans from the bag and put them on top of the rest of the clothes in her suitcase. Then she picked up some frames from her nightstand and slipped out the photos—one of her parents taken on their twentieth anniversary and one of Al and her on a roller coaster, arms up, screaming. That was when they’d thought working at an amusement park would be fun.

Someone knocked at the door.

“Yeah?” Cece said.

Cece’s mother, Sheryl, poked her head in. “I thought I heard you come home. I almost forgot to give you this.” She stepped in and dangled a shiny cell phone from her fingertips. “The cell phone company says it’ll work in China. But it’s two dollars a minute, so emergencies only?” She held out a bright yellow bag. “I got the travel charger, too.”

Cece took the bag from her mother. “But you already gave me a calling card.”

Her mother crossed her arms. “A calling card won’t do any good if you’re trapped in a pit somewhere, will it?”

Cece smiled.
She had a point; you never know when you’re going to be trapped in a pit.
She put the phone and the charger into her backpack. “Thanks. Anything else?”

“No, I think that’s it.” But her mother didn’t move from her spot. Instead, she looked at her daughter like she was doing a mental inventory of every inch of her face—right down to the tiny birthmark on her cheek.

“Um. . . Mom. . . you’re staring.”

“Sorry, honey. I just wonder what this summer will be like without you.”

Oh, man.
Maybe her mother and Alison could form a support group together.

“Don’t forget what I said the other night, okay? Xi’an isn’t like our quiet little neighborhood. Don’t walk alone, watch for pickpockets, and keep that cell with you—”

“
Mom,
I’ll be fine,” Cece said, giving her a hug.

“You sure?”

“Yes.” Cece rested her chin on her mother’s shoulder, and she could practically feel her mom’s worry. Cece filled with guilt when she thought of her plans for visiting the orphanage, but she wouldn’t change her mind now. She had to know more about her birth parents; China was calling to her.

Her mother held her tighter.

Just then, her father walked in. “Sheryl, the girl is leav ing no matter how hard you hug her.”

Sheryl finally let Cece go. “I know, Ed.”

“C, I’ll be taking you to the airport,” her dad said. “Your mother has to work at the hospital in the morning.”

“I really wish I could go along,” Sheryl added.

“That’s okay,” Cece said. “I’ll say good-bye to you before I go.”

“Okay, honey.”

“Now try to get some sleep,” Ed said. “Let’s go, Sheryl.” He steered her toward the door. “Cece’s got a big day tomorrow.”

After her parents left, Cece closed her door and leaned against it for a moment. Then she went to her bed. There was one more thing she needed to pack. She lifted the dust ruffle and retrieved a sweater box that contained her old school papers. She dug to the bottom and pulled out another picture. This one was small, a little aged at the edges. It had been taken on the day Cece’s parents came to China to adopt her.

Cece looked at the two-year-old toddler in the photograph, standing between her new parents on a cobblestone walk. Her hair was stick straight and bowl cut, and she wore a light jacket with a mandarin collar, and cloth shoes. With one hand, she held her mother’s hand and in the other, an ice-cream pop that looked like a Dove bar. Behind them, Asian people crowded the streets.

It was hard for Cece to believe that innocent-looking child in a foreign land was the same jeans-wearing, pop-music-loving, American teen she was today. Only a couple of things remained the same; she still had the heart-shaped face and the beauty mark on her cheek. But gone was the chubbiness of her toddler arms and legs. In their place was a thin girl, with side-swept bangs and long, smooth hair, who wondered if she had her mother’s lanky stature or her father’s piercing brown eyes.

And there was one more thing that hadn’t change. She still loved ice-cream pops. Her father had joked it took only an ice-cream treat to get Cece to leave the country quietly with two strangers. Cece grinned, then flipped the photo over to where she had copied the address of the orphanage. Only a few days before, she had met her dad for coffee at a diner near their house. Over the years, the diner had become their place for serious father-daughter talks, since it was hard to have any real privacy at home with Mom around. When Cece had walked in, she had mentally prepared for a lecture—on what, she wasn’t sure. But as she sat down, he reached into his shirt pocket and scooted a piece of paper across the table. “C, I’d rather you go to the right place than poke your nose in all the wrong ones,” he’d said.

Cece looked at the paper. He had written an address on it. “Dad—”

He put his hand up.

“Don’t say a word, Cece. I know Mom would never agree with what I’m doing, but I think you ought to see the orphanage where you spent your first two years.”

As Cece stared at the address, guilt washed over her. She didn’t want to admit she’d already raided the family safe weeks ago and had found the address on her adoption papers. She quickly tucked the note into her purse. She knew she’d have to keep this between the two of them. Since Cece could remember, her mother had never been comfortable with questions about Cece’s adoption and her birth parents. “Cece,” she would say, “can it just be okay to know that we’re your family?”

Cece believed her mother must have felt threatened by the possibility of Cece finding her biological parents. Maybe she didn’t want to share the bond they had with someone else. Or maybe she worried Cece might replace her altogether. Of course, that last one was ridiculous. Cece couldn’t imagine having anyone else as her mom, but she didn’t blame her for feeling insecure. She only wished her mother understood how much she loved her.

Cece’s father, on the other hand, had always been more sympathetic, and he actually had been able to convince her mother to open up once about the adoption. When Cece was twelve, they both sat down with her and stated plainly they didn’t know anything about her birth parents, but they’d tell her everything they knew. They described the orphanage, told her what her name used to be before her adoption—Bei Ma Hua—and they showed her some photos, including the one Cece now kept with her.

After her parents had finished, Cece had only one question, and it was big. “Why do you think my birth parents let me go?”

Her parents had looked uncomfortable, and an awkward silence fell over the room. Finally, her father spoke. “Cece, I can’t speak for your birth parents, but I can make some guesses. . . . ” He said her mother could have gotten pregnant out of wedlock and been unable to raise her alone. Or maybe her parents were poor and couldn’t afford to keep her. Or... “China also has something called a one-child policy,” her father had said. He went on to explain that the policy was created to prevent overpopulation—a law that allowed each couple to have only one child. As a result, many families wanted a boy so he could carry on the family name. So if a couple had a girl first, sometimes that girl would be abandoned, allowing the couple to try again for a son.

It took a few seconds for the information to soak in. What was her dad saying?
My parents left me because I’m a girl?

“Mom,” Cece had said, “do you believe that’s what happened?”

She nodded reluctantly. “It’s certainly possible.”

That night, Cece went to bed a different person. Older, somehow, completely wrapped up in a tangled ball of
The Great Call of China
emotions. A part of her was confused, disappointed, even angry. And a very small part, from deep within her heart, refused to believe it. Could her birth parents leave her sim ply because she was a girl? She didn’t think so. Or at least she didn’t
want
to think so. It was this part of her that got her to sleep that night as she held the picture of herself in China. And it was this part of her that had gotten her to sleep every night for a long time.

After her father had handed Cece the note, he leaned back in the booth. It was as though he wasn’t sure of what he’d just done. At last, he said, “If you contact the orphanage, have no expectations, all right?”

Cece nodded, and her father looked satisfied.

Now Cece stared at the address on the back of the photo, as if it held the answer to all her questions. “No expectations,” she whispered.

But as she slipped the photo into her wallet, she couldn’t help but feel a tiny bit of hope.

The next morning, Cece’s journey to China began on a plane from Dallas to Chicago, where it would connect to Shanghai. From there, she would take a flight to Xi’an—her final destination. Her first flight went well. Cece spent some of her time rereading her information packet about the S.A.S.S. anthropology program. A brochure touted the program as one of a kind. Few opportunities allowed high school students to study at the college level in a field like anthropology. In fact, most teens she knew didn’t even understand what anthro was, but having Ed Charles—a paleontologist and professor at SMU—as a father had had
The Great Call of China
some influence on her. Whenever he could, he made plans to take her to the most prominent natural history museums in the country. But while her dad loved to talk dinosaurs, Cece found herself more interested in the displays of the various tribes of Native Americans, the models of early hominids, and the artifacts used by ancient civilizations. Sure T. rex was cool in its own way, but it was the notion that the world contained so many cultures that intrigued her most.