Lucky Girl Read online

  I ARRIVED HOME FROM a business trip in Kansas City a few days later. My Chinese Shar-Pei, Delilah, greeted me with her customary dance of twists and turns and tail wags. I stretched one hand down to pat her wrinkles, still wearing my coat. I shuffled absent-mindedly through the mail and then reached over and pushed the button on the answering machine sitting on the edge of the kitchen counter.

  Beep.

  It was Maureen, breathless with news again. She had another letter, this time from one of my sisters. She read it to my machine:

  Dear Mei-Ling,

  How are you for these years? We are missing you. When we know your news we are very glad. And especially Father and Mother. I’m your elder sister. Father and Mother want to see you in a hurry. They hope you can come back Taiwan in New Year ’97. Father say he want to buy the ticket for you if you want to come Taiwan so if you receive my letter please reply as soon as to me. We expect your good news.

  Your elder sister, Joanna

  This was all happening so fast. These people were threatening to jump off of the page and into my life.

  Maureen sent me the original letter from Joanna, my second-oldest sister, whose actual name is Jin-Qiong. My sister had written on rice paper that crinkled to touch, delicate and exotic. The envelope was written in Chinese, except for the words Taitung, Taiwan.

  About a week later, I received another letter from another sister. In that envelope were tucked a few photographs. I pulled them out and examined them closely, holding the photos not far from my nose to get a good look at each person. I scrutinized eyes, faces, lips, and bodies. Who was taller? Who was prettier? Who looked the most like me, my mother or father? Which sister? Some of the pictures were old, dating back to my last days in Taiwan, variations of those I had seen at the home of Sister Maureen almost two years earlier. Those baby photos did not surprise or move me this time, but the more recent photos did—especially a family portrait taken at the wedding of one my sisters.

  The picture was a few years old. In it, the bride wears a red and gold dress, a jade pendant, and sparkly, dangling earrings. Her hair is pinned up, and a few tight spirals frame her face. She is pale, heavily made up, and her lips are parted in a demure smile. Almost twenty relatives, sisters in dresses, brothers-in-law in suits, aunts, uncles, and cousins, press in close, standing on tiptoes, contorting their necks and backs, trying to fit in the frame. I noted that many of the women, presumably my sisters, wore the same bright red shade of lipstick. My tiny grandmother, my father’s mother, sits serenely front and center wearing a shiny blue silk shirt. Her hands rest on her knees and a cane is propped beneath her right armpit. She has what looks like a receding white hairline and reminded me of some character out of an old Kung Fu movie, an old and wise prophet about to bestow a secret to a worthy disciple. My mother sits to her right, wearing a pink and white checkered suit, white hose, heels, and a corsage with a red ribbon pinned to her chest. Her hair is permed and bobbed, and her bangs are teased into a perfect curl on her forehead. Her mouth, too, is painted in the same bright red, and she is grinning, but she is caught with her eyes shut. To her right is my only slightly smiling father, stern and straight, handsomely dressed in a Western suit with a colorful tie held in place with a tie pin. He also wears a flower with a red ribbon imprinted with gold Chinese characters. On the back of the photo is written, “The grandma is dead (21 May 1996), 86 years old. The picture is taken in the occasion of the 4th daughter’s marriage.”

  At the time, I didn’t know who was who in this family portrait, save the bride, my parents, and grandmother. The group seemed a joyful jumble of chaos. It was odd knowing that these strangers were directly related to me, but what struck me most was the realization that my siblings were not merely the children of a poor farming family, as I had believed. If I had an image of my birth family at all in my head, it had been in black and white and dismal. They would be gaunt, wearing ragged clothes and probably standing in some barren field with a shabby, straw-roofed hut at their backs, a stereotypical portrait of third-world poverty. I mean, that was why they had given me up for adoption, right?

  Yet that was not who they were. Perhaps they were before, but not now. They were a middle-class family. My sisters were attractive, educated, and successful. What few assumptions I had were wrong.

  “They all look like they love each other very much,” I wrote in my journal.

  I had never cared about them before or even thought of them as real people. I never had—nor did I seek—enough information to feel a connection with my biological origins. My mom and dad told me what they knew, and I never sought to know more. This was probably both a conscious and unconscious decision. You are less likely to mourn those you do not realize you have lost—or those who have lost you. You do not yearn for a life that you don’t know exists. Now I not only knew what I had gained from being adopted, but I suddenly was beginning to see what I had missed, and I wanted to know more.

  I hurriedly dug up a few pictures of my own. I sent one of my family, one of my dog and me, and another taken in Hawaii of me with some friends. In the latter, I’m tan, wearing a sarong and a red and white checkered shirt and sitting on a couch with my friend Monica and her pals the week before her wedding in Honolulu. I chose that picture because of my smile, which was wide, and my eyes—they didn’t look squinty or crooked as they occasionally did in pictures. These would be the first images of the modern-day me that they would see, and I wanted to look good. I sent the letters global priority mail to Taiwan, one to my sister and one to my parents.

  “Dear Mother and Father,” I wrote. “I received your letter and I’m overjoyed to find you. I’m very sorry I cannot come to Taiwan for Chinese New Year, but I want to come soon. How have you been through these years?”

  In a short and polite note, I went on to describe in brief my life as a young journalist. Nothing too revealing or complicated. Nothing they couldn’t understand. Then I signed off, “Love, your daughter, Mei-Ling.”

  • • •

  THE NEXT FRIDAY I left for Mardi Gras in New Orleans in a rented van with friends from the newspaper. We marauded all weekend in the French Quarter before driving back to St. Louis on Monday, exhausted. After dropping off the rental, I drove my Saturn home. My ugly little apartment complex, a nondescript blob of brick buildings that had managed to skirt the neighborhood’s zoning laws, was surrounded by magnificent early twentieth-century stone homes and Victorian mansions. I lugged my bags upstairs, ready to collapse in bed. The door opened to the living room, which still had that mismatched college look—a white couch, a green futon, and an on-again, off-again peace lily wilting by the window.

  This time, I found several messages on my answering machine. At first I thought they were pranks because the callers did not say anything, although there were loud, unintelligible voices in the background.

  Then in a later message, a timid, rather high voice said, “I’m your younger sister Taiwan.” Click.

  In another, a woman’s voice in English, presumably a nun from St. Mary’s hospital, said, “Mei-Ling. Your mother and father want to talk to you. They tried to call you several times.”

  They tried to call me.

  I couldn’t think about it. I was too tired to process what was happening. It seemed like some bizarre dream. Try to relax, I thought. I had to try to go on with my normal life, which meant work early the next day. I went to bed.

  In the morning, two faxes in perfect English that had arrived over the weekend were delivered to my desk at work. They were letters from my “mother” and “father,” though obviously someone else had written on their behalf.

  “We all miss you very much,” they said. “We hope we can hear you as soon as possible.”

  Even a nun from an order in St. Louis left a message on my work voice mail. This woman I did not know told me my family was trying to get ahold of me and that I should try to call them. I shook my head in amazement.

  Jeez. The whole world is trying to find me.r />
  THEY REACHED ME at about eleven thirty that night.

  “Wang Mei-Ling?” a woman asked.

  Um. No one had ever called me that, but obviously they were referring to me.

  “Um,” I said.

  “Wang Mei-Ling?” Hollering in the background.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “YES?” I repeated loudly, for they seemed neither to hear nor understand me for all the background noise.

  “This is your family Taiwan. I am Joanna Wang, your elder sister.”

  “How are you?” I asked, not sure what else to say.

  “You speak Chinese?”

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  The conversation was chaotic. I tried to extract as much information as I could even though we could barely understand each other. Sisters and brothers-in-law passed the phone to each other, one after another. I could not keep track of whom I was talking to, even though I tried to take notes. In the end, the conversation went something like this:

  “So many your sisters want talk to you,” a man said. “We got your pictures. They are very pretty. You are beautiful.”

  “You all are, too!”

  Change of callers. “I am your sister.”

  “Hello,” I said, laughing nervously.

  “You look like me,” she said. “Do you receive our fax?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Where are you?”

  “Taitung. All of us sister go home to visit Chinese New Year. Tomorrow we must go to work. Do you work today?”

  “Yes, it’s not a holiday here,” I said.

  “Do you want to hear Papa’s voice? He cannot speak English.”

  “Okay …” I started to say, but the phone was already changing hands.

  A man said, “Ni hao,” which means “hello.”

  “Ni hao,” I said. At least I could say that much, because my parents had named my childhood cat Ni Hao (pronounced nee-how).

  He said something else, but I did not understand. Shocked and dazed, I laughed again, not knowing what else to do. My father… another sister grabbed the phone.

  “He want to see your visit,” she said. “Do you heard of Taipei?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “There is also Hsinchu, where I live. I live near airport in Taipei. I am elder sis-tah. I am thirty-five,” said Jin-Feng, my oldest sister. “Mama want to hear your voice. You want to talk Mama?”

  “Okay …”

  Mumbling, rustling, laughing in the background.

  “Mei-Ling-ah! Wo shi nida mama.”

  “Ni hao!” I said, giggling again. I heard the frantic excitement in her voice and felt a catch, a longing in my chest. I wanted to savor the moment—one that I never expected to happen—but it was pushed aside by the next sister. “She say she is your mother. She is happy! Mama can’t speak English … Papa want to see a recent picture. That picture you send was two years ago. “

  “Okay,” I said.

  More shrieking laughter in the background.

  “You want come Taiwan? We hope you can come Taiwan. You want come Taiwan? We want to see you now. We plan together in April … To memory our past grandmother … You do the best to come. We can all be together.”

  “Sure,” I said, caught up in the moment.

  “You fax a letter with your travel plans,” she said. “It’s very nice hearing our news and hear your voice. We see you soon. We are missing you. Bye!”

  “Okay, bye.” Click.

  I hung up and shook my head as if I had just been bonked with a big dodgeball. I just heard the voices of my birth parents, my sisters, and who-knows-who-else for the first time. It had happened so quickly, in such a blur. I was breathless and giddy, unsure of what I was feeling. What an odd thing to be treated with such familiarity. We had giggled out of excitement, nervousness, and frustration over the language barrier.

  Wild. They called me Wang Mei-Ling. I had just told them I would try to visit them in Taiwan, didn’t I?

  What was I getting myself into?

  THE LETTERS, E-MAIL, and faxes continued. I could tell the Wangs wanted desperately to meet me, to be reassured that they had done the right thing so long ago.

  “I have to tell you that we all love you very much. Father send you to your adopted parents for some reasons. I think you do not blame him, do you?” wrote Jin-Zhi, another older sister. I didn’t, but I had hoped to take my time getting to know them, to advance slowly into these uncharted waters.

  However, my Chinese family had only one speed: kuai. Fast.

  “Come home,” they pleaded.

  My American parents were nothing but supportive. In fact, they encouraged me to pursue the relationship. My dad later told me, “We knew this was not the end of our chapter in your life; it was just the beginning of a new one.”

  Yet I had misgivings. Taiwan was not my home. My biological parents and I were joined by blood and I willingly called them Mother and Father, and myself their daughter, but we did not know each other. I did not speak Taiwanese or Mandarin, their native languages. We may share genes, but we came from different cultures, different worlds. Sure, a reunion might be joyous, therapeutic, and moving.

  But there was always the chance that I would return to the place of my birth and see my face in their faces, but we would make no connection. Or even worse, the blissful slumber would have been broken, the Pandora’s box of the House of Wang would fly open and the ghosts of regret and sorrow would spew forth. As a reporter, I understood how tragic family secrets could be once unleashed. I knew that asking questions could open wounds and disrupt the course of once-peaceful lives. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss. Sometimes there are puzzles better left unsolved, so that life can be allowed to heal and move on. Yet my own mystery seemed to be unraveling at breakneck speed—no matter what I had to say about it.

  Some people spend their whole lives trying to uncover, understand, or escape from their pasts. Mine rose up like a dragon, fast and furious. And I was blissfully ignorant, a sleeping ox about to be discovered—and devoured.

  2

  THE BIRTH OF A FAMILY

  Kinmen Island, August 1958

  Wang Xi stood in the courtyard of his family home in the village of Xi Yuan (West Garden) making tofu, following the ritual he knew by heart.

  During the hot summer months, the teenager woke up early, well before sunrise. He soaked fresh soybeans for four to five hours and then boiled them. He pulverized the swollen bean casings and separated the curds of soy milk. He strained the goopy mixture through a piece of cheesecloth, stirred in a thickener called shigaofen and covered it with a lid. An hour or two later, he poured the beans into a mold where the mixture would harden.

  Tofu was the lifeblood of the Wang family; they made their living selling it to villagers and soldiers. Their customers ate it raw, dried, or deep-fried. They liked to eat boiled bean curd in the morning, with bits of scallions and soy sauce, or sprinkle tofu cubes in fish soup. Some liked to snack on pressed tofu or strips boiled in special sauces, such as a strong tea or a mixture of cinnamon, cumin, and cloves. Others liked tofu soaked in the fermented brine of vegetables or seafood, served with a spicy sauce. A good bowl smelled not unlike garbage rotting in the sun.

  Standing over an old wooden table, the mundane task seemed custom-made for daydreaming. A teenager like Xi could easily get lost in his thoughts, in fantasies, like one day starting a business that would earn lots of money and end his family’s need to walk in flimsy sandals from village to village hawking tofu, cucumbers, onions, and peanuts. Perhaps he would even build a grand house and own an automobile. He’d choose a good wife who would take care of him and his parents during the days and heat his bed during the nights. She would have many children, and most certainly boys. The first son would be thick and healthy, with a voice of steel, crying like an emperor on the day he is born. They would be brilliant parents, and unlike himself, his children would finish school, maybe even college, and go on to work in jobs that earned in one month, a hundred,
even a thousand times what he earned in a year. They would be smart, ambitious, and passionate like him, but above all obedient. One day the young man hoped he would be a worthy father.

  But daydreams could not last long, not with the bombs.

  It started as a whisper, a slight whistle like that of a distant bird, but it quickly mushroomed into an ear-piercing screech—Shooo!—and then a deafening roar. Next came the shaking earth and the falling trees or walls or roofs, and all the smoke and dust, and screams and sometimes blood and carnage.

  There was always that pause between the sound and the fury, the seconds before the shells found their marks, when the air congealed and time contracted. Those were the most exasperating, thrilling, terrifying moments—those seconds that the gods took to decide their fate.

  China began a forty-four-day bombardment of Kinmen, an almost constant barrage of shells and artillery. Xi did not run. It was far too late; his fate was upon him.

  Two bombs struck, blowing rock and dirt high into the air. Walls and parts of ceilings collapsed in piles of cement and dust. The earth trembled for what seemed like hours, days, weeks after, and despite endless efforts to repair it, his neighborhood would be scarred forever, with burns in the walls and holes in the ground.

  The shells landed in the front and back of Xi’s house, but somehow he lived. In fact, he was unhurt. He stood among the pulsing, smoking, shifting rubble, dazed but untouched.

  Guanyin, the Divine Mother of Buddhism, giant and benevolent, had smiled upon him. It was an unforgettable brush with immortality, a taste of the kind he hoped to sustain one day, when his loyal sons worshipped at his graveside. But for now, he had escaped death, and he thanked the gods for that.

  A very special place you have to visit is your ancestors’ homeland, Kinmen Island.—Fax from my birth father, February 24, 1997

  I always thought I knew where I had come from: The daughter of a poor farming family in Taiwan. The fact that my birth parents, Wang Xi and Yang Shu, were actually from Kinmen—wherever that was—was the first of many revelations, big and small, that began to debunk the history I had thought was mine. After reading that first mention of Kinmen in the first letter I ever received from my family, I combed the Internet, encyclopedias, and atlases for more information and found very little. I did discover that Kinmen, also known as Quemoy, was actually a spray of about a dozen islets nestled in the Taiwan Strait barely a mile and a half off the coast of southern China. About fifty thousand people lived there.