Throwaway Daughter Read online

  I’ve never had trouble because I’m not white. It’s not a racial thing. I’ve never felt like a victim of society. Sure, I’ve heard “Chink” behind my back, and in grade eight one guy called me “Rice-head” a few times. But he was a loser and everybody but him knew it. The people on the show Dad was watching were, as far as I was concerned, full of shit.

  My parents and sister, even when we fight, have always treated me as if I came out of my mother’s womb in Milford’s Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital just like Megan did. I’ve always known I was adopted, but I always knew I was a Parker, too.

  Maybe it’s all connected to Mom’s constant campaign to keep me in touch with my roots. I always hated that. Maybe my parents should have told me they knew nothing about my birth mother. Maybe they should have made up a story that they had picked me up at an adoption agency in Beijing or somewhere and left it at that. I wish they had.

  You can’t be two people at the same time—not without ending up in a mental institution. I’m not just Grace Parker. I’ve accepted that. I wasn’t born at Soldiers’ Memorial. I was unwanted by my so-called real parents. That’s the hard part, like a toothache that won’t go away. They got rid of me. When I was little I fantasized that there was some romantic, adventurous, tragic reason why they couldn’t raise me themselves and I was torn from their loving arms as woeful music played in the background. But, seeing girls I know get pregnant and give up their babies, hearing stories on the news about mothers and fathers who beat up their kids or neglect them so badly they’re taken away by Children’s Aid—all that taught me that kids are sometimes not wanted, or even hated. Some parents would gladly get rid of their kid if they could. Mine had.

  Low self-esteem is my problem, according to my guidance counsellor in grade ten. She seemed to think that by hanging a label on the issue she had solved it. We had quite a few sessions for a while when I was failing tests and skipping classes and mouthing off at my teachers. I have low self-esteem, she said, so I was “acting out.” She had to go to university and get a degree to discover that? I thought I was just being a bitch. How high would her self-esteem be, I wanted to ask, if she knew her mother didn’t want her and had got rid of her after she was born?

  It’s something I’ve never been able to shake. All the good will and kind words can’t change anything, so they just make me angry. I sometimes wonder if I wasn’t Asian, would I still have this feeling of not belonging, this sense that everybody is only pretending I’m a Parker? My hair, skin, and eyes are banners flagging my status as a drop-in visitor. I’m supposed to be proud I’m Chinese, like Mom says? Glad to be a person of colour?

  I don’t remember when I began to fantasize about going to China. Would that help? Maybe, I’d think sometimes. Probably not, I’d tell myself at other times. But I couldn’t stop seeing my life as a jigsaw puzzle with one piece missing. I often imagined myself tracking down the two people who left me on the steps of the orphanage, knocking on their door.

  “Thanks for the baggage,” I’d say.

  I tried to sound calm but my heart raced up to my throat and I almost choked on a mouthful of apple pie. “I think I’ve decided what I’d like for my graduation present.”

  I paused for a few seconds, waiting for my parents to pay attention.

  “And my birthday is six months away, so this will be a two-in-one deal.”

  “Good,” my father joked. “I’ll save a bundle.”

  My eyes met Megan’s. She looked a bit uneasy, but gave me a thumbs-up that my parents didn’t see. “You know what Mom and Dad are like,” she had reminded me three times that week. “They always ask us way ahead of time what gift we’d like for an occasion. Your graduation is coming up, so you need to let them know our plan. They have to be prepared. We can’t drop it on them like a nuclear bomb.”

  “You might be surprised,” I told Dad, pausing again, hoping to build the suspense. Megan isn’t the only dramatic daughter in this family, I thought.

  My mother merely nodded, avoiding my eyes. Dad gazed at me expectantly. The whistling kettle brought Megan to her feet. She rushed into the kitchen, which was completely unlike her.

  “Now I am curious,” Dad said.

  “Wait ‘til Meagan comes back,” I said.

  “Tea is ready, ladies and gentleman,” Megan announced cheerfully. Holding the blue and white teapot in her mittened palms, she looked like the most awkward waitress in the world. “Did you tell them?” she asked.

  “No, I waited for you. You’re in on this, too.”

  “Come on, Grace, what’s the big surprise?” Mom asked.

  I pulled a pamphlet out of my back pocket and held it up in front of me like a prize. “Huang-pu Summer Institute” it said in bold, flowing letters across a photo showing a river in the foreground and a cityscape in the background. “Shanghai, China, 1999.” I put the pamphlet down in front of my plate.

  My parents looked at it as if a crow had just flown over and left a deposit.

  “For my combined birthday/graduation present I would like an airline ticket to China,” I announced.

  You’d have thought I had said “I’m pregnant” or “I’m running away with a fifty-five-year-old plumber.” Silence fell like a bag of wet sand. Mom poked a bit of pie crust around on her plate with her fork. Dad swallowed and looked at my mother, waiting for her reaction.

  I wondered if she was surprised. After all, it was she who had pushed me all my life to get to know China, to learn Chinese, to continue with private lessons to this day. And it was Mom, not Dad, who had insisted that she was Number Two Mama and Chun-mei was Number One.

  Mother finally said something. “It’s a big step, Grace, going to school in another country. On your own.”

  “Mom, it’s a great opportunity. Frank told me all about it and gave me the application forms last week. Huang-pu Business College runs an intensive Mandarin course for three weeks. Frank says I can easily qualify for the intermediate level. It’s part of their international business program. And since I want to do business studies at university, it’s perfect. The China-Canada Co-operation Society is promoting it. They also have a graduate program at Huang-pu. So if I like it there, I can—”

  “Whoa, slow down!” Dad said, picking up the pamphlet and opening it.

  “And the best part,” Megan put in, “is that there’s a two-week guided cultural tour of five cities in China when the course is finished. Can I tell them, Grace?”

  I nodded.

  “Here’s the second part of the news. Cheers, everybody,” Megan gushed, holding up her teacup. “I’m going to join Grace for the cultural tour.”

  My parents looked at each other, exactly as they had when I was nine and my sister and I had brought a stray cat home to the house, announcing that we had adopted her.

  “Hey, all of you,” Megan put in, “take it easy, will you? It’s about time you saw your investment pay off—the Chinese lessons for me and Grace, the gas consumed to take us there week after week, not to mention our putting up with Frank, listening to his endless stories—well, in my case, until I quit.” She raised her teacup again. “Everyone, gan-bei! Cheers!”

  My father followed her lead. “I think it’s a great idea,” he said.

  My mother said nothing.

  That night, Mom came into my room, closed the door behind her, and sat on the edge of my bed. I was sitting up against the headboard, reading a travel book on China.

  Mom gathered her housecoat tighter at the throat. She looked tense and sad at the same time. “When you go there,” she began, “are you planning to look for Chun-mei?”

  I lowered my book. I’d thought about this a lot. “I don’t know, Mom. One minute I want to, another I don’t. Maybe I’ll chicken out and just be a tourist.”

  She nodded without saying anything.

  “Mom, when I was growing up, you and Dad, particularly you, always made a big thing about my Chinese roots, and the so-called Number One Mama. I hated you for it then, you know. I di
dn’t want two mothers. Now I think I understand what you were trying to do.”

  Mom began to cry quietly. “I wanted you to know about your birth mother because it’s the right thing to do. But now that maybe you’ll meet her, I feel jealous. I don’t want to share you with anyone.”

  She leaned close and I put my arms around her. “Mom,” I said. “You’re my mother and this is my family. China is where I came from. This is what I am.”

  JANE

  (1999)

  Oh, wasn’t I the open-minded one! Insisting that Dong-mei stay connected to her roots, even calling myself “Mama Number Two,” until doing so upset her so much I backed off. Taking her to Chinatown, pushing her to take Chinese lessons. Wasn’t I the great liberal, unselfish and tolerant! Easy to do when the possibility of her ever wanting to find her birth mother was so remote, never mind actually tracking Chun-mei down. Now I feel like a hypocrite and a fool.

  Kevin was skeptical from the start, but he went along with me, the teacher who knew all about children, who had taken all those psychology courses at university, the woman who, as it turned out, didn’t know a damn thing. It was all theory, all talk. My daughter had had no interest in China or her original family. Why should she? All she knew was Kevin and me and Megan, our house in Milford, her school, her friends. What did she care about a country far away, even if she was born there?

  But no one could tell me that. I had to insist, had to push. As she matured into a young woman, I hardly noticed her gradual change in attitude, her growing interest in China. Kevin had always wanted Dong-mei to take a business degree at university, and once I overheard him talking about what a great asset her knowledge of the Chinese language would be in the future. She didn’t fly into a rage the way she would have when she was a child. But none of that sank in.

  When she made her birthday request at the dinner table, it struck me like a punch in the stomach. I could hardly speak. No, I wanted to say to her, you can’t go! You’re my daughter. I raised you. Insanely, I thought about my lost baby. I recalled the time I walked Megan to kindergarten on her first day of school, then years later took the same route with Dong-mei. I relived the aching sense of loss that only a mother can understand.

  Of course Dong-mei has a right to know, to search out her birth parents, find closure—a word I hate. She’s entitled to have a relationship with them if she wants to. It’s up to her. I know all that. Haven’t I said it enough times? But it’s different when it happens to you. I don’t want to share her with a stranger. She’s ours.

  GRACE

  (1999)

  Dawn broke in unmoving air, threatening yet another hot and sticky day. As I helped Dad load my luggage into the van after breakfast, our street was already filled with the tuneless buzz of air conditioners.

  I said goodbye to Megan in the driveway. She stood in her pyjamas and slippers, hair in a tangle, half asleep. “See you in a few weeks,” she said. She’d be joining me after my classes for the cultural tour.

  I half expected to see Frank when we walked into the departure terminal, even though we had said our goodbyes the night before. He had left our house near midnight after going through my travel plans with me for the third time. Inside my backpack was a piece of paper listing four contacts in China that he had set up for me. Dad had made two extra copies, one in each suitcase, “just in case.” In the past few weeks, Frank and I had spent hours bent over the map of China spread across our dining-room table. He had come up with a plan.

  Ms. Song, a classmate of Frank’s from his university years, would meet me at the airport.

  “Don’t worry,” he repeated endlessly. “She knows who you are.”

  He had sent Song my graduation photo. A little anxious about getting lost in an airport in a strange city, I was grateful for Frank’s help, but I had always known that with him everything was complicated.

  “If Ms. Song isn’t there when you arrive,” Frank urged, “don’t wait for her. Take a taxi to the Dragon Gate Hotel downtown. Your room is booked.”

  I would be staying there for a few days until the college dorms were available.

  “But I should wait for her. What if she gets caught in traffic? She’ll arrive expecting to find me and I’ll be gone.”

  “No, no, that’s not in the plan. Go to the hotel right away. If she doesn’t show up by eleven o’clock the next morning, phone Mr. Kang, the second name on the list.”

  “Shouldn’t I call Ms. Song first? It would be rude to ignore—”

  “No, you can’t. Song didn’t give me her phone number. Kang gave me his.”

  Mr. Kang was the brother-in-law of Frank’s cousin.

  My stomach leapt when Dad said, “Well, Grace, I think it’s time.” Mom, who had been silent since we had pulled out of our driveway, seemed to wake from a dream.

  “Now, remember, Grace, you’re to call us every Saturday night.”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “That’s Sunday morning our time.”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “Frank says you can buy long-distance cards in China.”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “If not, call collect.”

  “Mom, we’ve been through this.”

  She pointed with her chin towards the security gate and gave me a tearful smile. “The longest journey begins with the first step,” she said with a lame attempt at light-heartedness. It was an old Chinese proverb.

  I hugged my parents, feeling an unexpected lump in my throat and a sudden twinge of anxiety. If the flight had been cancelled at that moment I would have sighed with relief and gone home.

  Through the window of the departure lounge I watched airplanes come and go. I thought about a classical Chinese novel, Journey to the West, a four-volume set in English that my parents had bought for my birthday. I laughed at the cover, which showed a shabbily dressed priest on a horse, accompanied by a monkey, a guy with a pig’s face, and a bearded friar, all on foot. And I don’t mean the guy had a face like a pig; it was a pig face. This is a five-hundred-year-old classic? I had thought. I had plowed through all four volumes, though, skimming along and skipping over bits. The book is about a quest to find the place where a sacred Buddhist book is located. Although there were no guns or explosions, I half expected Indiana Jones to pop up at any moment.

  I wasn’t looking for hidden treasure or sacred writings. All I wanted were a few answers, and the older I got, the stronger was my desire to know. Whatever happened, at least I’d be able to tell myself, and my kids if I had any, that I had tried.

  Frank had a boyhood friend in Yangzhou named Xu who had recently been laid off by the textile factory where he had worked for more than twenty years. Xu may have been unlucky in his job but he was a terrific detective. He had hunted down Mrs. Xia, the woman from the orphanage whom my parents had met. She was retired, in her seventies, Xu had written. He had also said Miss Canada—me—had better come soon before Xia was “summoned by the clouds.” I had her address among the other contacts Frank had provided.

  I had read lots of articles about ordinary people—as well as celebrities—who had reunited with their birth parents. The reunions seemed to make them all famous. I had no illusions about a Disney-style ending for myself, though. I wanted to see Chun-mei’s face, and her husband’s too. If she refused to answer my questions, I would walk away.

  Journey to the West, I said to myself as my plane taxied down the runway. I would be entering China from their east. But I would be referred to as a Westerner. Although there were no mountains of knives for me to climb, as described in the novel, no burning sea to sail across, knowing that didn’t make me feel any better.

  The roller-coaster landing at Hongqiao Airport in Shanghai left me nauseated even after I had cleared the passport check and collected my luggage, so when I heard a voice asking in Mandarin, “Are you Grace? From Canada?” it didn’t register at first. I stopped, and the rushing stream of travellers flowed around me as people hurried for the exits, calling out and getting i
n each other’s way.

  “Grace?”

  A small middle-aged woman smiled as she opened a wallet and held it up. The scene reminded me of the old spy movies my dad loved so much. Inside the clear plastic pocket a fresh-faced girl in a borrowed gown smiled at me. It was my graduation photo.

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  Hot and sweaty, no doubt smelly, in a crumpled shirt and shorts, I didn’t remotely resemble the girl in the picture. I had been on the road for more than twenty-four hours by then, and I was jet-lagged and exhausted.

  Ms. Song tried to wave off a cluster of porters who offered to carry my luggage even though I had already piled it on a cart.

  “Two U.S. dollar,” one said, holding up two fingers and grabbing at my backpack with his other hand.

  “One dollar only!” another shouted.

  “Gun-kai!” Song said brusquely. “Go away! We don’t need you.”

  “We are not talking to you, woman,” the younger one snapped. “She’s rich. What do you care if we make a little money?”

  “Xiang-xia-ren!” Song shot back, leading me and my cart through the crowd.

  Xiang-xia-ren meant country folk, I knew from my Mandarin lessons, but it obviously suggested more than that, judging from the men’s reaction and the way Song spat out the words.

  Outside, the air was sticky and oppressive. Song hailed a taxi and chatted away to the driver in Shanghai dialect, which I couldn’t follow. It was near midnight by the time I checked into the Dragon Gate Hotel. Although my body felt like a limp rope, my mind was racing with excitement, and I knew I wouldn’t sleep for a while. Song went to a table near the window and made tea from a large thermos.