Missing Leaves

Bettina Brentano said to Joanna, “ I know of an author you might enjoy hearing. She’s an adoptee like you.”

At first Joanna rolled her eyes. Everyone seemed quick to remind her of her origins. Born in Hong Kong to an unmarried waitress, Joanna had been given up for adoption at six weeks and left on the doorsteps of a police station. They had turned her over to one of the royal government’s orphanages. The Poh Leung Kuk had a mere two nurses to take of sixty babies. Their bottles were propped on pillows, and during the day they were tied to chairs outside.

Luckily, Joanna didn’t remember those awful days. At eighteen months she’d been adopted by an American minister and his wife living in Vermont. But she remembered all too well the white schoolchildren who pulled her black hair and tried to rub the tan off her face. They called her the “n” word and made machine gun noises at her in the schoolyard. But at Open House Night they saw her parents were white. Embarrassed and confused, they tried to apologize, but it was too late. Joanna retreated into world of books and piano, barely speaking to anyone. She sat alone at lunchtime and in high school, never went a date.

In college her social life had improved, and she found her first boyfriend. Now she was curious to hear another adoptee’s story.

On the evening of November 10th, Joanna drove to Bettina’s bookshop to hear the visiting author. The women she had met last month were there, along with as many friends as they’d been able to muster. Some students from nearby colleges showed up, crowding into the aisles and eagerly straining to hear every word.

Lily Chen Lang was a round figure in a plain dark dress, with graying hair framing her round face, but her voice was clear and musical as she read passages from her book ‘Missing Leaves.’ Ms. Lang described what she knew of her origins. Unlike Joanna, she had no birth certificate, no given birth name. At two days old, she had been found in a basket on the steps of a Hong Kong orphanage. In those days, refugees of the Communist regime were pouring in from the mainland, crowding the already congested city, taking the most menial jobs or begging in the streets. Unwanted babies, especially girls, ended up in the crowded orphanages where a few hapless attendants struggled to feed and care for them.

“I still remember life in the orphanage,” said Lily Lang. “At mealtimes we ate from a single large bowl of rice. We older ones played in the streets once we had learned to walk. But most of the time we had to take care of the babies, taking them outside one by one so they could at least see the sun. I remember always being hungry and covered with sores and mosquito bites. And always at the back of my mind was a different kind of hunger. Something was missing. Only when I experienced love did I understand what I had been lacking.”

A cardiologist and his wife from San Francisco had adopted Ms. Lang when she was six years old. They had two other children, a boy from Pakistan and a blonde daughter of their own. From the slums of Hong Kong, Lily now found herself in the posh, quiet neighborhood of Pacific Heights, sharing a frilly pink bedroom with her new American sister.

“I was like a little animal at first, all sharp teeth and distrustful eyes. I hoarded handfuls of bread from supper because I didn’t know where my next meal would come from. Because of the time change, I slept all day and was wide awake at night, crying and talking to the moon in Chinese.’ It took months before I could sleep under the sheets and blankets without feeling suffocated.”

Her new parents had gone through a fairly smooth adjustment when they’d adopted her brother Paul. They weren’t prepared for Lily’s fierce tantrums when they tried to bathe her every night and dress her for school in the same kind of jumpers and shiny black shoes that her American sister Marie adored. Lily clung to the tattered clothes she’d arrived in and fought back in terror whenever Mrs. Lang tried to comb her hair.

“My father was used to his two obedient, clean-cut children who studied dutifully and never antagonized anyone. He was baffled and angry that I didn’t seem to appreciate my new comforts and freedom.”

Joanna thought at once of Bettina’s comment at that dinner—”We Americans don’t understand what freedom is until we’ve had to live without it.” Perhaps the reverse was true as well. Someone who had never known freedom didn’t know what to do with it.

“‘It took years of soul-searching and therapy, but eventually I came to love my family,” Ms. Lang was saying. “My American mother offered me unconditional love, and yet it wasn’t enough just to love. I had such a consuming need to feel I belonged somewhere, blood and bone. The Langs had given me the finest life had to offer, except life itself. But we adoptees are like missing leaves. Some of us can search for our family tree, but some of us can’t. Only when I became a mother did I begin to feel I truly belonged to the human race. I was no longer a missing leaf.

She closed her book.

After a moment of silence, the audience burst into applause. Joanna brushed tears from her eyes. Their circumstances were different, but at the core, were the same. Once again, she felt a burning desire to know the truth about her origins.

She stood in line to buy a copy of the book. The author smiled up at her and asked, “By any chance are you adopted?”

“How did you know?”

“Just a guess. I was watching your face when I was reading.” She poised her pen over the cover leaf.

“What’s your name?”

“Joanna Fan.”

Lily Lang swiftly wrote a message, signed her name with a flourish, and handed back the book. “Good luck, Joanna. And thanks for buying my book.”

Out of superstition, Joanna refrained from reading the message until she had driven back to Plumfield. She carefully parked in the driveway, and let herself into her little room. Under the glow of her bedside lamp, she peered at the page.

The author had written, “‘We are the missing leaves on our family tree. Search for the truth and don’t give up.

Yours, Lily Chen Lan