Recently Nan had reorganized the service at the Gold Wok, which now offered a lunch buffet on weekdays and the regular menu at dinner. This change improved the business considerably. A lot of people working in the area would come in for lunch, which consisted of two soups, four appetizers, and ten dishes, all for $4.75. Nan and Pingping would arrive at work before eight a.m. and cook the food and get everything ready by eleven-thirty. After they closed up at night, he'd stay a little longer preparing the meats and vegetables for the following day. This made him busier, but the restaurant fetched ten percent more profit than before, and even Niyan got extra tips. The Wus were determined to pay off their mortgage in the near future.
PART FIVE
1
IN THE SPRING of 1994, the Mitchells were preparing to leave for Nanjing to bring back their daughter, Hailee. "Hailee" was a name they had given her, though they'd kept her original first name, Fan, as her middle name. Her family name was Zhang, which had actually been assigned to her by the orphanage. Dave arranged to take a ten-day leave from work; Janet's jewelry store would remain open when she was away. She told Susie, the salesgirl, to contact the Wus if anything turned up that she couldn't handle by herself.
The Mitchells had originally thought of stopping in Hong Kong for a day or two as a transition, because Dave had been to that city before and liked it very much. But they decided to go directly to mainland China together with two other couples living in Atlanta who were also adopting Chinese babies. Janet called them "our group," and indeed they often met to compare notes and share their anxiety, frustrations, and happiness. All of them would have to go to the U.S. embassy in Beijing to get visas for their babies, so the Mitchells decided to use the capital instead of Hong Kong as their base in China. Janet had bought a Mandarin phrase book, and both she and Dave had been learning to speak some words and simple sentences. She often went to ask Pingping how to say pleasantries and order things in Chinese. Despite her good memory, she had trouble with the four tones, speaking some words as if she had a blocked nose.
The Mitchells had recently decorated Hailee's nursery on the second floor of their home with a band of wallpaper, two feet wide and just high enough for a toddler to reach. The paper had frolicsome animals on it-dancing bulls, bears playing the violin, wobbling penguins, elephants rearing up, dogs blowing the saxophone. On the ceiling of the room were numerous phosphorescent stars that would shine in the darkness but were almost invisible when it was light. A new crib sat by the window that overlooked the back garden, fenced in by white palings. On the floor were stacks of baby clothing, some of which the Mitchells would take to Nanjing and donate to the orphanage. They'd also bring formula and diapers for their daughter to use. Pingping had seen the stuff they planned to take along. There were so many things that she wondered if the Mitchells could possibly carry them all. They were going to pack in two lap robes, a bunch of baseballs, a stack of hats with the Braves logo on them, granola bars, water crackers, fruit candies, laundry soap, clotheslines and clothespins, fanny packs, billfolds, batteries, painkillers, tubes of sunscreen and insect repellent, a shortwave radio, not to mention a luggage trolley and a dozen boxes of Polaroid film. They'd shoot a lot of photos as mementos of Hailee's native place. Pingping told them to take pictures of the people they wanted to thank and give them the photos on the spot, which would be a small present, appreciated by most Chinese.
The Wus talked between themselves about the Mitchells' preparations. In the past they had noticed that Dave was very frugal, almost stingy, and would always ask for a doggie bag after he dined at the Gold Wok, even if the leftovers were just a morsel. In the early days of their friendship, whenever Nan had offered him a beer or soft drink, Dave would beam but wouldn't indicate that he planned on paying for it. Nan and Pingping never minded that, amused to see Dave was easy to please. But now he and Janet must have spent thousands for the trip and would donate an extra $5,000 to the orphanage that had kept Hailee.
Four days before the Mitchells' scheduled departure, out of the blue the Chinese side informed them that they had to postpone their trip for two months. Why such a delay all of a sudden? The Mitchells called around and couldn't find a definitive answer. Their agent told them that the Chinese side wanted to ascertain that the girl was really an orphan. This threw the Mitchells into turmoil. What upset them more was that the other two adopting couples would leave for China as planned. Confused, Janet and Dave went to the Gold Wok and talked with the Wus, who couldn't figure out a reason either. Janet kept saying, "We've already bonded with Hailee. Now we feel like someone has snatched our child away from us. This is more than we can bear."
"It's awful!" Dave shook his head and blew his large nose into a tissue, his eyes moist and glistening.
Pingping said, "Officials in China don't care about your feeling, so you should make yourself happy. Maybe you can use this time to study Chinese or learn how to be parent."
"That's an interesting thought," said Janet. "Maybe I can attend a parenting class in the evenings. But we're afraid that if Hailee is not an orphan, we might lose her."
"Don't worry too much," Pingping said. "The delay is just excuse for officials. If she's not orphan, how can she stay in orphanage? Officials never care who is the girl. They just want to create trouble for you. Don't let them torture you. Remember, in China, officials' job is to make people suffer."
"Our agent didn't think this had anything to do with our baby's identity either. She said it was just bureaucracy."
"Zere will be a lawt of heartaches once you become parents," Nan put in, "so don't get distressed too easily."
"Well," Dave said, "I guess this is just the beginning."
They all smiled. Dave lifted the teapot in front of him and refilled his cup. A black woman holding a toddler stepped in and ordered two panfried noodles, so Nan went back into the kitchen after giving a lollipop to the baby girl, who clutched a nub of carrot.
A few days later, Janet enrolled in a parenting class and went to Atlanta to take the lessons two evenings a week. Whenever there was news about Hailee, she'd share it with Pingping.
2
"TURN your heel toward me," Pingping told Nan, holding a pair of large scissors in her hand, which was sheathed in a latex glove. She was scraping his feet for him. Both of them were sitting on low stools, a stainless-steel bowl between them. His left foot was steeped in the warm water while his right one rested on her lap covered with a khaki apron. It was early morning and their son had just left for school. A cuckoo cried from the depths of the woods across the lake and set the air throbbing. Between the pulsing calls surged a scatter of birdsong. A flock of mallards was quacking in the backyard, waddling around, and some flapped their wings so vigorously that they sent out a faint whistle. Two ducks had been hatching eggs in the monkey grass along the lakeside, so these days the Wus didn't go there for fear of disturbing them. On the dogwood tree near their deck two squirrels were chasing each other, shaking dewdrops off the branches in full flower.