What Was Mine (29 page)

The pet store also sold little toys. Tamagotchis were a craze.

Tamagotchis were little plastic egg-shaped pets on a key chain. Everyone had them, including me. They were cyber-animals you
had to pay attention to 24/7: feeding them, playing with them, making them nap, and if you didn't care for them right, they beeped or played little electric melodies to remind you. Ayi had bought me the dinosaur in Chinatown. Lucy had given me the rabbit for Easter. I bought a frog with my allowance. Schools banned them because of the noises they made, so you had to keep them in your backpack and run to your locker to take care of them between classes.

“So many school rules.” Chloe shook her head.

The new Tamagotchi was Nano Baby. Nobody had one yet, except a classmate whose father had brought one back from Japan. But now here they were in our neighborhood pet store! I begged Lucy to buy one. “For your birthday,” she said, but April was months away.

As she was talking to Mrs. Kim at the counter, I unhooked a package from the display. Someone had already pried open the plastic bubble. The Nano Baby fell easily into my hands. It was so beautiful.

“Time to go,” called Lucy, waiting for me by the door.

“Good-bye for now,” I told the Nano Baby, and started to push it back into its bubble. It fell. I bent down to pick it up, but it wasn't on the floor. It wasn't anywhere! I got down on my knees and felt around and around the dirty linoleum but nothing was on it, even when I felt under the metal display case.

“Mia!” Lucy was getting impatient and not knowing what else to do, I stood up to join her, and as soon as I started walking I realized where the Tamagotchi was—in my rain boot! I felt it hanging on to my ankle. Should I take off my boot and give back the toy I hadn't paid for? Or should I keep walking as if nothing had happened?

I couldn't come to a decision. My feet just kept walking. My brain was jumping inside my head as I passed Mrs. Kim at the register. She invited me to reach into a jar of wrapped candies like she always did, but I didn't. I hurried past her and out of the store, worried that my boot might start pinging or dinging or singing a song
and give me away, which it did as soon as we walked into our apartment. Lucy saw me taking it out of my boot and made me put my coat on again and she walked me back to the store and made me return it to Mrs. Kim and apologize to her. I could never go to that store again. I told Ayi I didn't like the smell in there anymore. A few months later, they went out of business and I always worried I had something to do with it.

“You were Lucy's Tamagotchi,” Connor said, squirting pomegranate ketchup onto his notdog.

Why hadn't I made that connection before? It was obvious.

“Too bad you couldn't make Lucy return you,” Connor said.

But I was glad Lucy hadn't. Which made me feel sorry for Marilyn.

P
eople think a kidnapped baby comes home and that's the end of the story. Everyone gets to live happy. But that's not how it works.

I don't tell Marilyn this, but I worry about what Mia is doing to our family. Chloe's all right, but the boys are confused. Mia is smart, but she has no life skills. No one's taught her the basics of how to live in this world. She came to us not even knowing how to drive.

I took her to my workshop the other day, wanting to show her a few things, how to hold a hammer, how to steady a saw—things she'll need to know when she's on her own. It's not that she wasn't interested. She just didn't have any facility for it. Maybe too much time has gone by for her to pick up those skills.

Marilyn keeps reaching out to her, but you can't force a fit. Go slow, I say. Give her time. I tell her about the job I'm working out in Hillsborough now. It's an old house, built in 1853. Post and beam. Miter joints. You see how exacting master carpenters were back then. They didn't have laser levels, but their work is almost always perfectly plumb. Most of the house, the post and beams fit together, dead accurate. In the part of the house I'm working on, though, the posts and beams pulled away from each other. Earthquake, probably. We're using rope to pull them back together, but they'll never fit as snug as they originally did. They've been separated too long.

W
e talked to the prosecutors today. In the car on the way home, I explained to Mia why Lucy needs to go to jail. She needs time to think about all that she did.

“Jail isn't a monastery where she can sit and contemplate things!” Mia said. Her tone was more harsh than I expected. Clearly, she had thought about this.

“It's not just the law that says she deserves prison,” I continued. “It's the law of what's right in the universe. She needs to face the consequences of what she has done. Kidnapping a baby didn't just affect you. It affected other people.”

I turned from the wheel to look at her, but Mia kept her eyes straight ahead on the road.

“You can't imagine the terror of losing a child, wondering where you were, worrying about you constantly, for years.”

“If you cared about me so much, how come you left me alone in a shopping cart?” It was as if she had slapped me.

My eyes filled with tears. I couldn't blink them away. I thought about pulling over because I almost couldn't see to drive anymore. But it was the first real conversation I was having with Mia. Some people can't share their feelings unless they're not looking at you.

“Leaving you was a mistake,” I said quietly. “A mistake I paid for
every day for twenty-one years. Lucy has to pay for her mistake, too. That's what is fair.”

“Life isn't fair,” Mia murmured, still staring ahead.

“That's why laws have to be,” I said. “I understand you don't want the person who raised you to go to prison. But the law says that's what kidnappers deserve.”

“My mom isn't a kidnapper,” Mia said quietly.

“What?”

“I'm the only baby she ever took. It's not like she's planning to do it again.”

“That's not the point,” I said. Argument filled my brain, bigger and bigger, like an inflating balloon. “If Lucy doesn't serve time, that's like saying that taking a baby doesn't matter. Her kidnapping you was the worst thing that ever happened to me and your father. It changed our lives. It ripped us apart.”

“So you need to put her in jail to get your revenge?”

“Restitution!” I said as we passed a police car on the meridian and suddenly I put my foot on the brake, realizing I was going way over the speed limit.

A
s Lin and I were meeting for language exchange and dumplings yesterday, a friend of his came into the shop. Lin introduced me and shifted on the bench to make room for him at our table. His name—his American name—was Spock. He'd grown up reading
Star Trek
comic books in Chinese.

Spock's English was better, far better than Lin's, and we began talking in English and there came an odd brightness into his eyes as he asked where I was from, what I was doing here. Alarms went off in me, but when I looked to Lin, he was calmly spearing dumplings and so I assured myself that no harm could come of his friend's determination to practice his English. I told him I was in China on business, which is what I always say to people who ask.

Spock and I continued talking: about weather, American pop stars (Miley Cyrus), television shows—a favorite here is
Friends
, title translated as
Six People Walking Together
. At one point, Spock took up his iPhone and tapped into it, and almost as soon as he set it down, it began buzzing and beeping, moving itself across the table, and he caught it just before it fell to the floor slick with spilled broth and spit.

I was too nervous to finish my dumplings. I said I remembered something, I had to leave. But the bill took a long time, and when we exited the shop, I heard my name. “Lucy? Lucy Wakefield?” I turned
around and there was a woman flashing a press card, thrusting a phone in my face, asking me questions one after another. “What made you kidnap a baby? Will China send you back to the States?”

Spock slunk away and Lin took off his jacket and put it over my head, steering me toward the street and into a taxi. As we approached the car door, and I ducked under Lin's arm to get inside, his jacket slid off, exposing my face and the phone rose in front of it again.

“Do you have anything to say to the girl you held captive for twenty-one years?”

I stopped and turned suddenly. “Yes,” I said, leaning into the screen in her hand.

“Katcheratchma.”

And then Lin pulled me into the taxi and we drove away.

I
regret I told Wang Xueling about Lucy. Wang is son of my mother's friend. I think I can trust him. I did not know he would sell the informations to Dragon TV. But, I should know. Wang's wife is in Arizona. She went there so their baby can be a United States citizen. Their son was born, but she doesn't come home yet. Wang is always having to send her money.

I
saw Lucy for the first time since last February. On my phone. Connor forwarded a video he got from a kid at school. The footage was from some show in China. A reporter caught my mom coming out of a restaurant. Poor Lucy. Her face is drawn and she looked wild-eyed and scared. I felt sorry for her. The footage was subtitled in Chinese, and I wondered how they translated the only word she said, a word that nobody understands but me.

I was glad I was alone, which I hardly ever am in this house. Grant was at work, the boys were at school, and Marilyn had taken Chloe to harp lessons. I sat on the bed in the room I share with her, watching the clip over and over on my phone, hugging the big yellow bear Chloe keeps on her pillow, crying for my mom, as if I were ten years old, too.

I
called Ayi this morning. Her number was still in my phone. She'd written it on a postcard almost all covered by stamps. I'd always meant to call her.

I told Marilyn I needed the car to get something. But really, what I needed was privacy. I drove to the shopping center and sat in the parking lot. It was 8:30 in the morning, 11:30 at night in Shanghai. I knew Ayi would still be up unless her habits had changed. She didn't like to go to bed before midnight. I hoped she still had the same number. So many numbers to connect me to her! I let it ring and ring. The rings were strange. First, they were too long, then too short, and just as I was about to give up, I heard a man say
Wei?
The Chinese word for “hello.”

“Is this
Ba?
” I asked, thinking it was Ayi's husband.
Shi Mia!
I said. “It's Mia!”

I was amazed that Chinese words I hadn't spoken in years all came tumbling into my head.

There was a long silence and I thought we'd been cut off.

Then, “This is Lin, the son of Wanling,” a voice said, and I realized the man was the boy I hadn't talked to in years, not since Ayi put me on the phone to say hello to him once or twice when I was little.

Lin! Ni hao,
I said, meaning to start a conversation with him, hoping his English was better than my Chinese.

But no one was there. There was a clatter in the background, and conversation.

Ayi said,
Ren si le?
“Who died?” And I realized that Lin hadn't, for some reason, told his mother it was me, that she thought it was some faraway relative calling late at night with terrible news.

Suddenly Ayi's voice on the phone was so clear, it was as if she were standing beside me.

Wei? Wei? Wei?

My throat filled and I couldn't speak for a moment. When I said my name, she made a happy sound then began talking rapidly in Chinese. All those words I thought I had forgotten. We talked for an hour, until my battery was about to run out and we made a date to talk and I drove home and, pulling into the garage, I decided not to tell Marilyn, though I didn't know why.

I
've been doing research. The lawyers I interned with in January gave me the name of a criminal firm and lawyers there have been Skyping pro bono with me.

I do the calls on breaks at the zoo. I sit in the café, where cell service is best, at a window watching spider monkeys play in trees on an island made to look like a forest.

Today I talk to a lawyer named Adele. We talk about something called the Comprehensive Law Movement. She's Skyping from her office, and seeing the tops of skyscrapers in the window behind her makes me miss the city. To me “the city” is and will always be New York.

“There's a new way to deal with crime,” Adele is saying. She looks tired; there are bags under her eyes and I remember a funny thing Ms. Laniere once told us: because of earth's rotation, people on high floors travel a mile farther each day than people at sea level.

“Restorative Justice,” Adele says. I know a little about this already. We learned about it in Struggles for Change class.

Adele thinks she can get a written guarantee from the State of New Jersey that if Lucy comes back and surrenders herself, the state will convict, but she won't serve any time.

My stomach jumps when she says this. Do I want Lucy back?
Maybe I do. You can't love someone for twenty-one years and expect that love to just evaporate inside you. What she did was wrong. But she also raised me with her whole heart. She's a huge part of who I am. I don't want her to spend the rest of her life in a jail.

Adele is offscreen, getting another cup of coffee, but she is still talking.

“She'll have to meet face-to-face with the birth parents and you. She'll have to agree to do something to restore you and the community.”