Picture Us In The Light(89)
I won’t ever forget the look that goes over her face—her features frozen sharply in place and the well of pure pain that pools in her eyes. “I don’t know who—”
“Joy Ballard is the one who bought my drawing.”
“She what?”
“She bought my drawing.”
My mom grips the edge of the blanket thrown across the couch/bed. Her hands are trembling. “You spoke to her?”
“No, the gallery told me.”
She presses a hand against her chest, hard, and holds it there. She takes a long, shaky breath, and then another one. She’s shaking still.
And I don’t know what makes her decide. Maybe it’s that I already know the rest of it; maybe it’s that you can only bury things for so long. Whatever it is, she finally drops her hand and says, “Come sit down, Daniel. I’ll tell you.”
Hu Yongyu is the name of the man who lives across the hall from where you and your parents and your grandfather all used to live together, your whole world contained in a single apartment. He is a factory worker who lives with his elderly parents, both of whom suffer health problems and are descending into dementia, and his life with them, stuffy and cramped, is filling him with rage and terror at the trajectory his own storyline seems to be hurtling toward—that this will be his own future, too, dying alone cooped up in a tenth-story apartment somewhere, only he’ll have no child to care for him or cook for him or bring him books and postcards and bootlegged DVDs from the outside world, no wife to meet his needs. Or, worse, he’ll work his factory job until he no longer can, and then he’ll probably be reduced to begging on the streets, taking his last gasping breaths ridiculed and alone.
There are dark villages in the internet, and Hu, who has never been able to feel all the pains and heartaches and graces of the outside world, travels toward and then through them, absorbing their languages and culture, their ideology. It’s easy to distill the universe into the imbalance he finds in their embrace—what exists in the world versus what of it he can personally claim, which is far from enough. And it’s in there that he learns about how much money the Americans will pay for babies, and in those faceless worlds Hu meets people—people who know someone, people who know someone who knows someone. He hears of the mindlessly easy fortunes amassed, the jobs quit, the fancy cars bought and cities visited and of course the women everywhere.
How lucky to change one’s entire life in a single move that way. People, he has learned, are useless; he is not skilled enough to extract from them the life he deserves, and absent that, they provide him nothing. His own parents, whose duty it is to provide him with all he is entitled to, have failed. But the things he read online fill him with hope and promise, and he files away the names and locations and details.
It’s a few months later that Hu comes home to the commotion inside his building. He is stunned at first, unable to believe what’s happened. But this is the opportunity he’s been waiting for—it is easier than he ever dreamed—and he brings you inside his apartment. (Later the investigator will find your DNA inside; Hu’s fast-deteriorating parents, who will let him look at Hu’s computer, will not register what this means.) His parents are delighted by you. His mother asks to hold you, but you thrash your way out of her arms, frantic. His mother coos over you, unreached by your screams, and pads to the kitchen to find you a snack. You are trying to open the door—you understand that your own home is outside it—but you’re too small, and his mother, smiling, holding a bowl, finds you and pulls you away.
Hu goes to his computer. It’s easy to go back and find that online village—always open, always populated—and track down all the information he needs, reach out to his contacts and make arrangements.
He takes you by taxi—multiple taxis, to make it harder to trace, as has been suggested to him. He has no car seat, so he has to hold you on his lap. You have never liked strangers, and you are afraid. You beg for your grandfather and your parents, ask for milk, for a snack, for the stuffed bird your grandfather gave you. Hu is irritated. He snaps at you to be quiet. You break down into sobs.
The orphanage whose location and details he’s siphoned from the internet is four hours away. You scream most of the way—he is furious—but finally fall asleep sprawled across the back seat. You stir as he pulls you out of the taxi.
“Hello,” he says to the woman who appears before him in the orphanage when he pushes open one of the doors. “I heard you might be able to help me.”
The adoption agency was on the second floor of a four-story building, above a pharmacy. The sign outside the door was in English. My parents arrived nearly a year after my grandfather died and the investigator they hired, who’d cost them their entire savings and drained the loan they’d managed to take at the bank, had finally pieced together what had happened to their daughter.
They’d retraced all her steps, spoken to the people he’d fingered as being involved, and so far they’d been met with denial, evasion, and stonewalling at nearly every turn. It had been impossible to pin down any one person. Hu had vanished—his parents, in the throes of dementia, were confused by his absence, sometimes forgetting he was gone at all and incoherent when my parents tried to speak to them—and no one from the factory knew where he’d gone. At the orphanage where Hu had brought my sister the staff had acted confused, claiming not to remember her, then claiming the baby had been dropped off by her destitute father and released to an aid worker. (It was all lies, probably, but what could they prove? According to the investigator, the orphanage was desperately poor and needed the money to care for its older children, who were unlikely to be adopted; it asked no questions about the money it was given in exchange for the babies dropped here for a few days and then taken again. One of the staff there remembered my sister only because of how she’d screamed and screamed when she was taken away.) At every step they’d hoped beyond hope the inspector had been wrong and that they’d find my sister waiting. They imagined over and over what it would feel like to burst in and scoop her up and have her melt into their arms, cling to their chests with her little fat hands, bury her face in their shirts, how she’d feel relieved and safe. She would know them, after all these months. They had gone multiple times to the police, who told them their daughter was probably long gone—that twenty thousand kids were abducted in China every year, most never to be heard from again. Stop looking, the police told them. You won’t find her. One of the officers, trying to be kind, had added, It’s better not to know.