An-Ya and Her Diary (21 page)

We waited a few minutes and then a woman came out and introduced herself as the principal. She shook both of our hands. She was wearing a long black skirt and red jacket.

Her black hair matched her skirt and was cut short at her chin.

Her glasses were red and matched her jacket.

She looked Chinese.

213

Dear Penny,

I am getting ready for bed, but I wanted to tell you more about meeting the principal.

She wasn’t Chinese exactly, but she said that most people called her Chinese. She was born in Taiwan, which is very close to China. The principal told me that Taiwan’s relationship with China is complicated. She came to America with her family when she was still a baby.

I asked her if she was adopted and she said no. She came here with her Taiwan family.

Daddy asked her if she spoke Chinese. The principal looked Daddy in the eye and said—

Sir, with all due respect, Chinese is a people, not a language. There are many languages spoken in China. And to answer your question, I speak Mandarin.

Then the principal looked at me and smiled and said—

So, An-Ya, what language did you speak in China?

I didn’t know the answer. I looked at Daddy and asked him with my eyes for help.

Daddy answered for me—

An-Ya spoke a small amount of Mandarin. Our guide in China found it difficult to communicate with her because he was not fluent in her local dialect. An-Ya stopped speaking her native language immediately after she was adopted.

I wanted to shrink into my brown chair and disappear. The conversation made me feel like I failed at being Chinese.

This was America. I was at an English speaking school. It was my bad luck to have a Chinese principal.

Then the principal asked me—

An-Ya, do you remember your first language?

Again, I looked at Daddy to answer for me, but he didn’t look back at me.

I had no choice but to tell the principal—

I don’t remember. I try to remember but I can’t.

The principal nodded her head and looked down at my papers in front of her. She turned the pages over and studied them before she said anything. When she finally spoke, it was a surprise. She pushed her red glasses up on her nose and said—

An-Ya, welcome to our school. I will do my best to make this school a place that you feel happy to come to every day.

The principal gave Daddy some more papers to fill out and then we were finished.

Before we left, the principal said to Daddy—

You have a beautiful daughter. Of course, we will need to do some testing, but we will worry about that at a later time. If An-Ya is comfortable, I would be happy to help her find resources to relearn her Mandarin.

The principal handed Daddy some more papers to take home. He said thank you and we left. I held Daddy’s hand as we walked back to the car. His hand was wet but it didn’t bother me.

I was going to go to school.

214

Dear Penny,

Today Wanna took me to buy school supplies. The principal gave Daddy a list of all the things that I would need to bring on the first day.

Daddy said he could work from home and watch Ellie and Angel Bones.

Sitka came shopping with us. Her parents were dealing with an emergency at the hospital. Sitka’s parents gave her money to shop with.

Sitka and I had the same school list, since we were going to be in the same grade.

We read our lists in the car and I asked questions about what some of the things were that we needed to buy.

Like…

100 number 2 pencils

How many of those were we supposed to buy, one hundred or two? Or one hundred and two?

Wanna said that she thought the number 2 part was about how soft or hard the pencil was. She said we needed to look for pencils with a 2 written on the side and buy one hundred of them. How much writing was I going to need to do to use up one hundred pencils?

1 box of Kleenex

Why did we need that? Sitka said it was if you needed to sneeze at school. Do people at school sneeze that much?

5 packs of college ruled paper

I was going to middle school, not college?

8 glue sticks and 1 white glue

What would we be gluing that we needed that much glue?

Sitka said glue is used for a lot of things at school. I asked her what for and she said—school stuff
. (?)

5 pink erasers and 1 white eraser

Why the different colored erasers? Why do I need 5 pink ones and only 1 white one?

20 black pens, 10 red pens, 5 blue pens, and 3 highlighter pens

That seems like a lot of pens?

2 composition books 100 sheet college ruled 10 x 7 7/8

Again, why the college stuff?

10 Pee-Chee folders

What in the world are those?

My head already hurt before we arrived at the store.

215

Dear Penny,

Once we went into the store and started shopping, it was like we were in a race. We went into a huge store, but it seemed like everyone was circling around the school supplies.

Parents and children were walking up and down the store aisles and grabbing school supplies like they were in a shopping contest.

Wanna gave Sitka and me each a pen to mark off our supply list. I followed Sitka and picked things that she told me to pick and threw them into Wanna’s shopping cart.

Sometimes I would lose focus and Sitka would yell at me—

Over here, An-Ya! Pick out 10 Pee-Chee folders quick!

Or Sitka would find something that was almost gone and say—

An-Ya, hurry and grab the glue sticks and throw them in the cart!

Somehow Sitka found everything that we needed on our list. Wanna pushed the cart full of school supplies, and we stood in the checkout line.

Wanna said—

Are you girls still up for some school clothes shopping?

Sitka said she was ready, but I wanted to go home. If it was that hard getting ready for school, then how hard was it going to be when I actually went to school?

216

Dear Penny,

Sitka and I took our school supplies that we bought and put them in the trunk of Wanna’s car.

Next to the store where we bought our school supplies was a clothing store.

It was crowded and I didn’t know where to start. Sitka grabbed my hand and took me to the Young Adult clothing. It felt like my school supplies, and now my clothes, were all telling me that I needed to grow up and get ready to be an adult. What happened to being 12 years old and not having to buy college paper and young adult clothes? What happened to being a kid?

I don’t know what was wrong with me but I didn’t enjoy shopping at all. Sitka and Wanna picked out clothes for me to try on. I followed along like I did when I bought the school supplies.

Sitka pulled me into a dressing room and Wanna waited outside for us.

Sitka gave me the clothes in my size to try on. I hung them all on a hook. I didn’t feel comfortable sharing the same room as Sitka and taking my clothes off. Sitka didn’t seem to mind, and she started throwing her clothes off and trying on the store clothes.

Sitka tried on a purple shirt with small white stripes that wrapped around her body like Hula-Hoops.

She looked at herself in the mirror and said—

Do you think this makes my waist look big?

I said—

You are being crazy. Listen, I need to talk to about something important.

She said—

This isn’t about being worried that people are telling you the truth about Ellie, is it?

Sitka pulled on a pair of black pants with blue patches on the knees. She looked at the mirror and asked herself if the pants were weird or cute.

I said—

No. It’s not about that. Can you stop with the clothes for a minute? I need to tell you something and you need to be quiet about it.

Sitka looked at me and said—

Ok. I am listening.

I told her about Levi giving me the letter and what he wrote. I said that I needed to give him an answer, and I didn’t know what to say.

Sitka covered her mouth and then grabbed my shoulders and yelled—

Are you being serious with me right now? Oh my God!

I told her to be quiet or I wasn’t going to talk about it with her anymore. I didn’t know where Wanna was and if she heard Sitka. It felt like I made a big mess and shouldn’t have said anything. But Sitka was so angry with me when I didn’t say anything before. I wasn’t sure which reaction was worse.

Sitka whispered—

Ok. Ok. We will finish shopping and then we will go back to your house. I will call my parents and tell them that I want to sleep over at your house tonight to talk about our new clothes and school starting. It’s perfect. We will figure this out together.

It didn’t feel perfect to me.

Standing in that dressing room, I felt like I wanted to go back to the orphanage in China and be with Abby. At least things made sense there.

I feel bad writing that in your pages. I just mean life here is always so complicated.

217

Dear Penny,

I have new clothes to wear to school. Sitka and I tried our new things on in my room, and we picked out what we will wear on our first day.

We both bought a pair of jeans that have silver stars on the back pockets. On the first day, we will wear the same jeans but a different shirt.

I forgot to tell you—Sitka wears a bra now. I first saw it when we were trying on clothes at the store. I don’t have anything growing there yet to put in a bra. She didn’t mention anything about me not wearing a bra. But she did tell me she knew some girls who bought a bra and put toilet paper inside to make the bra puffy. I would never do that. What if someone hugged me and the toilet paper popped out?

I thought that I would be unhappy about Sitka spending the night, but I was wrong. She made me laugh and told me funny stories about some of the schools that she has been to before.

Sitka was nervous about going to a new school again. She said she was excited that we would be going to our new school together. Sometimes I forget that Sitka moved here right after I did. She seems comfortable here, like she has been in this town forever.

I was also happy that she took Levi’s letter seriously. I was worried that she would be too crazy about the whole thing, but she wasn’t.

She read the letter a couple of times and then asked me what I wanted to do. I told her that I didn’t know. She asked me why I wasn’t sure. I told her—

I am not sure why I am not sure.

Sitka said the only choice I had was to let Levi know that I needed some more time to think about my answer.

It seems like good advice. It was better than anything I could think of on my own.

Do you think I am going to be the only girl at school without a bra?

218

Dear Penny,

Today we went to the ice cream parlor. Wanna wanted to take Ellie and me because it closes at the end of the summer and won’t open again until the spring.

It was the first time that Ellie has been out of the house since she came home from the hospital. I asked Wanna many times if she was sure that it was safe for Ellie. After the last time I asked, she said—

An-Ya, please. I promise you that I wouldn’t do anything with either of my children if I thought it wasn’t safe. Ok?

Ellie wore one of the hats that Daddy and I bought her on the computer. She chose the blue hat with the purple feather because it matched her purple dress and shoes. She also wore the charm bracelet that I bought her for her birthday.

We drove to the parlor because it was too far for Ellie to be pushed in her bee chair. It was strange to drive somewhere that we always walked to.

I didn’t want to go, but I knew I needed to go for Ellie. I was worried about Levi being there. I was also worried about Lex being there because he helped Levi write the letter.

At first everything seemed ok. We took the bee chair with us and put Ellie in it when we got there. Wanna rolled her inside and Jazz was there.

Jazz came over to Ellie and kissed her on the cheek and told her how beautiful she was and how gorgeous Ellie looked in her fancy hat.

Then Jazz kissed me on my cheek too and told me what a great sister I was to Ellie. She smelled like vanilla ice cream.

Jazz asked Ellie how she was feeling, and Ellie said—

Hungry!

Wanna and Jazz laughed and then Jazz took our order.

Ellie wanted something big. Wanna ordered two scoops of strawberry and I chose chocolate with chocolate sprinkles.

I watched Jazz as she smiled and put together our ice cream treats. Her hair was beautiful. On each side of her head was a small braid that dipped and rose to join a larger braid that ran down her neck. The larger braid was tied together with a skinny silver ribbon.

When Jazz brought our ice cream on a tray, Ellie started to clap. Jazz made her an ice cream treat like I never saw before. It had vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry scoops with chocolate sauce and rainbow sprinkles. There was even a giant cherry on the top.

When Ellie started to clap, then Wanna started to clap, then Jazz started to clap, and then I started clapping too. It was a great feeling to see Ellie excited. I knew in that moment, all of her insides were happy and she wasn’t feeling any pain.

We started eating our ice cream and then things changed. Lex and Levi walked in.

219

Dear Penny,

When I saw Levi, I felt like spitting my ice cream back into my bowl.

Jazz hugged Lex. I think she whispered something about Ellie. Jazz and Lex stared at Ellie and smiled. At least they didn’t stare at me.

Levi smiled at Ellie too and said hello to Wanna. He didn’t look up at me. His blue eyes were hidden under his hair.

I pretended to keep eating, but I stopped putting ice cream on my spoon.