Red Butterfly Read online

  The room is packed

  with people

  watching,

  elbowing.

  We’ll find you,

  Daddy calls

  after me.

  They won’t get away with this.

  Who are they?

  The police?

  The law?

  The policewoman

  pushes me

  ahead of her through

  the crowd.

  Jody’s wail

  follows us to the elevator

  and the door slides shut.

  New Place

  I slump in the back

  of the police car

  alone

  listening to the two officers

  discuss me

  through the glass divider.

  This is

  Er Tong Fu Li Yuan,

  says the woman

  as we drive past

  the guardhouse

  through a silver gate

  that folds back

  like a hand fan.

  I only recognize two words:

  “children”

  “garden”

  I wish I could feel

  something

  to remind me

  I’m alive,

  but the only ache

  remaining is a repeated memory:

  the moment

  when Daddy should have moved

  to reach for me, but

  didn’t.

  It’s all

  a slow-moving dream

  as the gate creaks

  shut

  behind us

  and I am

  locked

  in.

  Miss Li

  Miss Li

  works in the office

  on the second floor.

  She is pretty

  and young

  and wears

  tight pants

  with high heels.

  I sit in a wooden chair

  waiting,

  thinking

  something is missing.

  My foggy brain

  can’t remember what.

  There is a printer

  and three computers

  in this room.

  The desk

  at my elbow

  has photos under the glass

  of smiling babies,

  all of them

  with foreign parents.

  Miss Li

  nods at the pictures.

  We’ll find you a new family

  very soon,

  she says in Chinese.

  I already have a family,

  I say.

  Miss Li laughs

  like I’ve made a joke

  and goes back to

  tap

  tap

  tapping

  her keyboard.

  I just remembered

  what I forgot.

  My heart turns hard as stone.

  My backpack

  at the hospital.

  I have come here

  empty-handed.

  Chinese Name

  I curl and uncurl my fingers

  around my right hand.

  Do you have a Chinese name?

  Miss Li asks.

  I shake my head.

  Do you have an English name?

  I nod.

  You are fluent in English?

  Again I nod.

  Miss Li’s eyes widen.

  You will be easy to match.

  She pats my head,

  writes quickly on a

  pad of paper,

  swift Chinese characters,

  flowing and swaying.

  This is your new name.

  A gift for you.

  I take the paper

  although I can’t read

  Chinese.

  My Room

  Miss Li takes me

  down a long hallway

  and up two flights of stairs

  into a big room

  with fluorescent lights

  and red-and-blue squishy mats

  tiling the floor.

  We stand in the doorway.

  Miss Li removes her heels.

  I bend down

  to untie my sneakers.

  There are lots of kids here,

  big kids,

  and two older women who must be helpers

  because they wear blue aprons

  over their clothes.

  In Chinese they are called

  ayis—

  “auntie” in English.

  The two ayis stare at me

  and throw out comments

  to one another

  across the room.

  I can’t understand everything,

  but I understand this:

  I thought she was a foreigner.

  No, she’s a Chinese girl.

  I want to answer

  the way Mama

  always answered.

  I’m both.

  But Miss Li cuts in.

  She is Chinese,

  raised by foreigners,

  so her Chinese is bad.

  The ayis laugh at that.

  I speak a little,

  I say

  then wish I’d kept my mouth shut

  because they exchange

  amused glances.

  Even the kids

  sitting at a big table

  look back and forth at each other

  like I’m a joke.

  I don’t know where I am.

  I don’t want to stand in the

  doorway of this room

  and let everyone stare at me.

  Where do I go?

  I whisper to Miss Li.

  There are kids everywhere,

  but they all seem to have problems—

  they sit in wheelchairs

  or lie on the floor mats,

  their bodies twisted.

  The room is filled

  with the sound of funny breathing

  and the faint murmur

  of tinkling music

  from a small CD player

  plugged into the wall.

  There are whispers, too,

  always whispers

  from the kids who sit

  around the table.

  One girl taps her pencil

  in time to the music

  while she watches me.

  This is your room,

  Miss Li says.

  You sleep here

  and study here

  and go to the cafeteria

  for meals.

  I don’t see any beds,

  only brightly colored floor mats.

  Everyone watches

  and I begin to wonder

  if they’re waiting for me to cry.

  What’s wrong with you?

  one of the ayis asks,

  a wide-shouldered woman

  with large curls sprayed stiff.

  Her way of speaking slowly

  reminds me of Zhao Bin’s mother.

  I don’t know what she means,

  so I say,

  Nothing.

  Miss Li holds up my arm

  and tugs back the sleeve

  to reveal my

  stub

  hand.

  Then she explains

  my difference

  to the ayis

  using technical words.

  All I recognize is

  shou

  shou

  shou

  the Chinese word for “hand.”

  The ayis

  nod

  and say, Ah, ah, ah.

  Miss Li releases my arm.

  No problem,

  she says in English.

  The kindness in her smile

  takes me by surprise.

  Looking Around

  There are three other kids

  in my room

  who can walk besides me.

  One wears braces on his legs

  and
staggers,

  another is a gentle girl

  with a round face

  and constant smile,

  who traces

  simple characters

  on paper

  over and over,

  but doesn’t speak.

  There is also a boy

  who howls,

  breaks pencils,

  throws himself

  on the floor

  until one of the ayis

  agrees to take him outside

  to play.

  And there is me,

  taking all this in

  all this in

  all this in.

  Beds

  It’s not yet dark

  when the ayis

  pull out fifteen beds

  stacked five high

  against the wall.

  We have enough,

  the ayi with the stiff curls

  says.

  Don’t worry,

  you’ll sleep here.

  I wasn’t worried about sleeping mats,

  I was worried about sleeping

  in this one room

  with all these other kids,

  even boys,

  and all the noises.

  The beds are small frames

  low to the ground

  with thin mattresses

  covered in scratchy sheets.

  The pillow slumps

  hard and flat.

  I sleep in my clothes.

  The Same

  I spend the morning

  sitting at the table

  with the kids who are

  in wheelchairs

  and the boy in leg braces.

  The quiet girl with the round face

  is also here,

  and,

  when he’s in the mood,

  the boy who breaks pencils.

  They all work,

  writing characters

  in thin books with

  transparent

  pages.

  My hands

  twist in my lap.

  I don’t have a book

  or a pencil

  and I’m too afraid

  to ask

  if this is something

  I’m required to do too.

  The kids who lie on the mats

  have problems either with their brains

  or with their bodies so severe

  the ayis don’t try to sit them at the table.

  The kids at the table don’t speak to me,

  though they speak to the ayis

  and one another

  just fine.

  One of the ayis hands me a pencil

  and a blank sheet of white paper.

  She gives me no instructions,

  so I draw Mama’s face.

  Everyone must be watching

  my tears drip, smearing

  the gray pencil marks.

  I cry stubbornly

  refusing to look away

  from Mama’s face

  or up

  at any of them.

  This afternoon the foreigner comes,

  one of the ayis says.

  She might be talking to me.

  None of the other kids respond.

  I don’t know

  who the foreigner could be,

  so my stupid heart thumps hope:

  maybe Daddy,

  maybe Willard,

  coming to take me away?

  The Foreigner

  The foreigner is

  a man,

  not Daddy,

  not Willard,

  but I am too weary

  from the energy it took

  to hope all day

  to be disappointed.

  He speaks English

  and tells me his name is Toby.

  He comes here

  every afternoon.

  He is short for a foreigner,

  just a little taller than me

  even though

  he’s twenty-six years old.

  He’s from

  New Zealand,

  but I don’t know what that means.

  He talks a little funny,

  but I can understand him

  all right.

  I’m a physical therapist,

  he tells me,

  squatting next to my chair.

  I help with the CP kids in this room,

  make sure they’re getting their exercise.

  I like his voice,

  the smoothness of it.

  “CP” stands for

  “cerebral palsy,”

  he tells me,

  children who walk with a stagger

  and a jolt

  or not at all,

  who need help eating,

  whose brains

  were hurt somehow

  before they were born

  so they can’t move

  like they want to.

  Toby helps them learn

  to sit,

  walk,

  feed themselves.

  Toby speaks Chinese

  better than me

  even though he has

  seaweed-colored eyes,

  curly brown hair,

  and skin lighter than Mama’s.

  My New Name

  Toby reads the name

  Miss Li gave me,

  the one she wrote

  on the slip of paper.

  Liu Xiao Ling

  Nice name,

  means tinkling jade.

  It suits you.

  I shake my head.

  Am I green?

  Do I tinkle?

  How does that suit me?

  Toby laughs.

  I meant to be snotty,

  not funny,

  but Toby says,

  Hilarious kid,

  and ruffles my hair.

  Translation

  Toby tells me everything that’s happening,

  all the things he learned about me

  from Miss Li,

  while he stretches a boy’s

  curled feet

  forward and back.

  Since you’re an older child

  Miss Li will put you on a list

  to have you adopted quickly

  to an English-speaking country.

  Like Montana?

  I ask.

  Toby says,

  Is that part of America?

  It’s where my mama and daddy live,

  I say.

  My daddy’s

  coming to get me

  to take me there.

  He said he’d find me.

  Toby pauses.

  I’m not sure.

  He’s not looking at me.

  I know

  I’ve said something wrong, maybe

  too hopeful?

  I blurt out

  about my backpack

  with Jane Eyre

  and the Jane Austen box set

  left at the hospital.

  Toby says,

  That’s a shame,

  and wags his head.

  My eyes prickle,

  because it’s more than a shame.

  Those things,

  from my toothbrush

  to the books with Mama’s

  curled writing inside,

  were all I had left

  to call my own.

  Even today’s clothes came out of a bin

  labeled with my size,

  the character for “medium.”

  I don’t know what happened to the ones

  I wore here.

  I push down the wish

  I shouldn’t make—

  that I’ll get my stuff back

  somehow,

  some way.

  That unreasonable hope buoys

  like an empty plastic bottle

  floating on water.

  But why do I bother hoping

  when hoping never works?

  Pretending

  I lie flat on my bac
k

  during rest time.

  I haven’t had rest time

  without books

  since I was three, probably.

  My heart keeps me awake.

  (ba-bum)

  (ba-bum)

  (ba-bum)

  If I close my eyes,

  plug one ear with my finger,

  and the other ear with the pillow

  to block out the bellows of the boy who breaks pencils,

  I can pretend I’m home

  in my old bed

  in my old room

  before Jody

  before sickness

  before policemen

  before the world cracked open

  and took Mama away.

  Evening

  We eat dinner

  as a group

  in the cafeteria,

  except for the kids

  who are difficult to move.

  Cabbage,

  chunks of meat,

  and rice

  served on a silver tray.

  Soup from a huge pot,

  thin like water,

  in metal bowls.

  Toby arrives

  just as I’m helping to stack the trays

  at the end.

  Thought you might need this,

  he says

  and winks at me.

  There,

  hanging from his hooked finger,

  is my backpack.

  I grab hold of it,

  clutch it to my chest.

  Thank you!

  I met your sister,

  Toby continues.

  She’ll come visit

  as soon as she’s discharged.

  “Come visit”

  doesn’t sound much like

  taking me away.

  But if a backpack can appear

  when I least expect it,

  maybe a miracle can happen too.

  Tired

  I should be tired,

  but every time

  I drift asleep

  I’m falling

  falling

  falling.

  I wake

  with a jolt,

  this new place

  seeping again

  into consciousness.

  The smell here is similar to the hospital:

  sickness,

  medicine,

  porridge,

  disinfectant,

  pee.

  But the sounds are different,

  everything closer,

  more compacted:

  the gurgles,

  soft snufflings

  without the bleep

  of machinery,

  a snore,

  the far-away wail

  of a baby

  perhaps recently left

  outside the silver gate,

  still crying for its mama.

  No relatives gather.

  This is the home of lonely children.

  Holding Pattern

  Three more days

  of sitting

  while the kids at the table

  learn.

  Three days of drawing

  everything from my memory

  on loose pieces of paper