Sara
December 2000
At the thought of giving up Richie Sara’s throat tightened. “I was thinking he would come back when he’s old enough to start kindergarten. I could come for a couple of weeks then, to smooth the transition.”
“Kindergarten! That’s two more years,” Mark protested.
“Well, maybe the summer before kindergarten, then. And we’ll come back before then for visits of course.” She rushed on before Mark could interrupt. “He’s getting such a good experience in his Chinese school. He has lots of friends, he loves going, the teachers love him, and the cost is almost nothing since I help as an English resource.“
“Ok, so he’s got a good life with you. But I’m serious, Mom, about planning. What am I going to say on New Year’s Day when Richie and I get together with the Cavallos again and they ask when will be the next time? You’ve talked about building a bridge, but when I say he’s gone to China with you that’ll be like dropping a bomb on it. You got me to open the door, you can’t leave me with no answers. And he’s MY son. You remember that. He needs to know he has a father who hasn’t abandoned him.”
Abandoned.The word stopped Sara in mid-thought. For a moment she remembered Storm’s face as he talked about how his parents had left him locked in the root cellar, Ruth Cheng’s face as she explained why it had happened. She thought of her life with Storm and Richie, the apartment which had become a home. How would Storm feel when Richie left? How would he feel if she left him?
She wondered suddenly what life Mark had been building for himself since Rennie died – he hadn’t offered to introduce her to any friends; there was no hint of any new outside interest. Had he felt abandoned? Was he as angry as Storm had been? She pushed the thought away. Mark had wanted Richie in a safe place, he had said so. And she would bring Richie back. She would have to. But Storm – she would deal with that later. She would prepare him somehow.
“Mom, are you still with me?” Mark’s voice brought Sara back.
“No – I mean, yes, Mark. I’m with you.” She looked at Mark as if for the first time. He wasn’t her boy grown large. He was Richie’s father. He was her partner in ensuring Richie’s welfare. He was her rival for Richie’s love – but no, she pushed that thought away. He was still her child.
“I’m always with you, Mark. And of course you never would abandon Richie. You gave him to me for safe-keeping.” To her relief, Mark nodded. He trusted her. She resolved to make more space for him somehow in her Beijing life to keep that trust alive.
Storm
As Storm waited in the new terminal of the Beijing International Airport, he tried to reconstruct Sara’s face, her voice, in his mind, and the picture refused to come into focus. Almost a month, emails full only of the travel, the child, her son… would she have changed inside, where it counted? He scanned the travelers pushing or pulling their laden carts through the customs exit – a tailored businessman dragging his small carry-on behind, an anxious-looking older woman bundled in a thick scarf and hat, balancing a peevish child on top of a pile of baggage, a trim young woman equally bundled, click-clicking across the vinyl floor in her high heels…the flood slowed to a trickle, then stopped. But where were Sara and Riqi?
Had he missed them in the new terminal? Had they missed the flight? He turned to survey the airport lobby, festively decorated for the New Year, its broad space open to the chill outside. Most of the travelers had been met, or had hurried off to arrange their own transport back to the city center. The woman with the child had not been met; he watched as she set the child into the small seat on the cart and shrugged fatigue from her shoulders. Then she pulled the hood of her coat back from her head, with a gesture whose familiarity stabbed through him like a knife. She took off her woolen cap, the copper hair blazed in the light, the scales fell from his eyes and he recognized his love.
Spring 2001
Sara
Sara watched with mingled relief and concern how easily Richie returned to being Riqi. He seemed to have put aside the memories of looking for his mother through all the rambling rooms of Daddy’s house, and of the furry-faced man in the furry red suit, and of the big park with funny skinny trees with pompoms on the top. And so Sara put aside the memories of Ynez Cavallo and Mark’s questions about Richie’s return.
When Storm was traveling, Jerry Wang and Silver Wing would often invite Sara and Richie over to watch their television and VCR. Silver Wing would go out of the way to find a children’s movie that Richie could watch, or a Western movie with Chinese subtitles that they could all understand. In March she found a copy of “The Wizard of Oz” in a market stall. But after seeing it Richie woke up in the night crying. “Nai Nai! Nai Nai! The monkeys are coming!
Sara rushed to cuddle and reassure him. “It was only a movie on TV, Richie. The flying monkeys are only pretend.”
“But I saw them on TV. And I heard them coming to get me!” He clung to her.
“Richie, what is on the TV is not real, it’s just pretend, a made-up story”
Richie seemed to quiet, then his face crumpled again and he began to cry with even greater abandon.
“Now what’s the matter?”
“I want a real daddy,” he wailed,” not just made up on TV!”
“No, Richie,” Sara protested. How had this twist happened? “You know Daddy is real. We talk to him every week. He asks you about things and he answers your questions. He’s real. Don’t you remember?”
“But he’s only on TV. I want a real daddy!”
Sara didn’t know what to say. “Richie, the computer is not TV. The computer is like a phone. There is a real person on the other side. You can say things to Daddy and he will say something back. You can’t do that with a television. Remember when you showed Daddy a picture you drew and he told you how much he liked it – you can’t do that with a television.”
Richie still clung to her, his sobs gradually quieting. At last he slept again. The next morning he said nothing about the night’s disruption, and Sara thought it was forgotten as part of his dream until she called Richie to come for the weekly call.
“No. I don’t want a daddy on TV. I want a real daddy. Uncle Cheng can be my daddy.” He refused to come within camera range. Mark made no comment on Richie’s absence. Sara hoped he hadn’t heard.
###
Sara and Storm were relaxing in the cool of a late spring evening, together under a sheet, talking and stroking each other after love-making. Richie was visiting Auntie Silver Wing; they could be gloriously idle.
“I wonder,” Storm said, “after you are gone, how I will be able to love a Chinese woman. I think love for me will always be fiery-glowing hair, pale skin, soft curves. I do not think I will be able to love black hair, golden skin, bones and angles. I will have to become a monk.”
“A monk? Your parents won’t like that. Your mother would never forgive me.” Sara struggled to catch her breath, to keep a light tone. The words ‘after you are gone’ had chilled her. How could he speak so carelessly of her leaving, of loving another woman? When she had talked of it before he had rebelled at the thought. Had something changed?
Her answer had darkened, not lightened Storm’s mood. “I have no mother,” he said roughly, his eyebrows coming together under the shock of dark hair. “I was abandoned by my blood parents and my true mother, Hope Du, is long dead. I owe nothing to the woman I call Ma.”
Sara thought of Ruth Cheng’s face twisted with regret as she had told Sara how she had to protect Storm by pretending he wasn’t hers, of her fear of discovery, of her sorrow at having to leave him behind when the opportunity to go to Beijing was given her. But she had promised Ruth not to tell Storm they had met.
“Storm, I think maybe you wrong your mother. You haven’t heard her side of what happened. Maybe there were reasons.”
“She left me!” he interrupted, his voice harsh. “She and my father left me like unneeded baggage, to be picked up later when convenient! I can’t forgive them. How can you excuse this?
“All this talk of leaving,” Sara forced a smile, trying to move the conversation away from Storm’s parents. “I at least have no plan to leave you any time soon, no matter how many golden-skinned, dark-haired girls are eyeing you.” Her own words stabbed at her as she went on. “One day, perhaps, you will find a slim, small, graceful girl like a willow tree and lose yourself in her.” Sara hated that small, graceful girl, even as she forced a smile into her voice.
“But first I would have to find the self I have lost in you, my heart’s core. When you leave, will you promise to leave my soul behind?” He buried his face in her neck and held her. She could feel her heart beating against his, tried to match its beats with her breath. Leaving him was too difficult to speak of. Life without him was too hard to imagine. What had put it into his mind? What had made her give him such an answer? She pulled him closer, stroking the back of his neck.
“Still you talk of my leaving,” she murmured. “There’s nowhere else I want to be, no one else I want to be with. ‘After I am gone’ is a long time away, I promise you.” He muttered something she didn’t catch and turned to close her lips with a kiss.