Hungry Eyes

I don’t remember being adopted. It’s just a story, part of the family folklore to make me feel special and wanted. When I was a kid, I never got tired of hearing it.

Before I started school, I would buzz around my mother like a bee while she ironed our clothes. “Mom, where did I come from?”

“Jasmine, I’ve told you a hundred times.”

“Katie Cronker says you got me from a dumpster.”

“Katie is a silly goose! Dad and I adopted you from Hong Kong when you were almost two. We met your plane at Kennedy Airport and brought you home. Now you’re a Greene, just like the rest of us.”

But I knew I was different. In every family picture, I saw a chubby girl with brown skin and black bowl haircut, surrounded by large pale people with light yellow hair. “Tell me the whole story, Mom. From the very beginning.” I perched on the window seat. She set down the iron and brushed back wisps of wet hair from her sweating face.

“Oh, all right. One morning, a Hong Kong police station heard a baby crying on their steps. That baby was you, wrapped up in a red blanket. There was no name, no note. Except…” she always paused for effect. “…you had a little silk doll clutched in your hand. He wore a red silk Chinese jacket and a long black pigtail. You wouldn’t let go of him and cried when we tried to take him away. We let you keep him because we felt he was a link to your past.”

“That was ‘Bo!’” Why I chose that name, I don’t know. I took the doll everywhere and chatted to him in Chinese until I forgot the words. When Bo’s left arm fell off, I didn’t care. I liked his cheerful grin and laughing eyes. He slept under my pillow until Peter, my brother, pulled out all his stuffing and flattened him so he could fit into Peter’s Apollo lunar module. Poor Bo was never quite the same after his trip to the moon.

Mom made me throw him away. I cried again and begged for another doll. For my fifth birthday, she gave me a stuffed green frog with long legs and big white eyes that looked like Peter’s ping-pong balls. On his head he wore a yellow crown.

“Remember the Frog Prince from your fairytales, princess?” Dad smiled and winked. “If you kiss him, he might turn into a handsome prince.”

“Don’t give her any ideas, Robert. She’s just a baby.”

Mom didn’t need to worry. I didn’t like him at first. His big gaping mouth frightened me. I’ve always been bothered by strange faces. Maybe I saw too many as a baby. I threw the frog on the floor. “Why can’t I have a Pretty Princess doll? Katie’s got one!”

“Because you’re not Katie!” My mom picked up the frog and dumped him on my lap. “Those princess dolls cost way too much for us.”

With time, I grew to like my green friend. His round belly felt as soft as a pillow and his fuzzy green hands had sticky pads that could hug things like bedposts, chairs, and best of all, my arm. I named him “Freddie,” not knowing he was “Kermit the Frog” from “Sesame Street.” I still have my Freddie, a bit beat-up but as lovable as ever.

Mom’s voice yanked me back to the present. “When the police took you to a big orphanage that had sixty girls, from babies to teenagers. They didn’t have time to hold you for feeding, so they just propped a bottle of milk on a pillow and off they went. At least you got something. The older girls would fight over bowls of salty broth and stale rice. It was terrible!” She pressed my striped school dress with firm strokes and reached for one of Dad’s white shirts. Thump, hiss, thump. The iron gave off a steamy smell.

“When you first arrived, you were always hungry. You’d eat and eat, but after every meal, you tried to hide your food as if you were afraid you’d never eat again. I used to find rotten bread crusts and smashed bananas bits under your rear.”

She curled her nose. “So stinky!” We laughed. “You were almost two years old but barely the size of an American nine-month-old, and you couldn’t walk. That’s because in the orphanage, they just tied you little girls in chairs all day.”

That part of the story was hurtful, but I wanted to hear it anyway, like picking at a scab and never letting it heal.

Mom hung Dad’s shirt on a wooden hanger and started ironing another one. “But with us, you fattened right up and learned to walk in six months. Pretty soon you were running all over the yard and we couldn’t keep up with you!”

I couldn’t get enough of that part of my story. But now was the time to ask the big question. “Mom, how come you adopted me when you already had Peter?”

She frowned. “Jasmine, you know why.”

“Please tell me. Pretty please!”

Her voice trembled. “After your brother was born, the doctor told me I couldn’t have any more children. We wanted a little girl, so Dad’s dental hygienist recommended the Loving Arms Adoption Agency. A social worker showed us pictures of baby girls from your orphanage.”

As if I were a bike from a catalog. “Why did you pick me?” I always held my breath, wanting to hear the words: “Because you were the prettiest.”

But her answer was always the same. “You looked so sad with your big hungry eyes.”

Hungry eyes, like my hungry stomach. At that age, I didn’t understand you can be starved for more than food.

My mother reached for my pink-striped T-shirt. “So we signed your adoption papers, and the government sent you to a foster home to wait until you could come to America. It took months to cut all the red tape.”

“That’s so funny! You mean like Scotch tape?”

“No, silly. It means paperwork, like getting your passport.” Mom finished my shirt and gathered up all the folded clothes. As she headed for the stairs. I scrambled to follow. I couldn’t stand to be left behind.

“Mom, I was born a British subject, wasn’t I? Like Her Majesty the Queen and biscuits and tea?”

“They’re called ‘cookies,’ not ‘biscuits!’”

The British call them “biscuits,” but I didn’t argue with her then. Later on, though, I started picking on her as such as “draw” for “drawers,” and “gararge” for “garage.”

I followed her into Peter’s bedroom, and tripped over his model train set.

“Little Miss Clumsy, you’ve done it again! I hope you didn’t break it.” Mom hung my brother’s plaid shirts and Boy Scout uniform in his closet. He had the biggest closet in the house, even bigger than my parents’. Mine was the size of a cardboard box.

I crawled on my belly and pulled the locomotive from under the bed. “No, it’s okay.”

We went to my bedroom next, where I had once slept in a crib. Now my big-girl bed stood by the window. I could gaze down on the people and cars below and pretend I was in an airplane flying high to the sun.

Mom hung up my clothes and pushed me out of my room. “When you turned five, we had you naturalized to become an American citizen. Now you’re a Greene, just like the rest of us.”

Except I knew I wasn’t. I remember waking up in the middle of the night, crying and babbling in Chinese. Peter never did that. Dad would get up and carry me around outside under the cool stars until I calmed down. I would bury my face in his bathrobe. The soft fuzzy cloth and smell of his shower soap always made me fall asleep to the sound of his breathing.

In the morning, Mom would slam the cupboards and rattle the cups. “Stop getting up like that, Robert. You’re spoiling her.”

“After what she’s been through, I think she needs a little extra attention, Mary. Besides, you used to get up with Peter.”

“That was different and you know it. He needed to be fed.” She slopped milk and Cheerios into my Winnie the Pooh bowl and turned her back on me. No wonder Dad was my favorite parent.

One night at bedtime I asked, “Dad, why can’t you stay home all day like Mom?”

He took off his black-rimmed glasses and polished them on his shirt. “Hmm…I have to keep a roof over our heads, so I give people beautiful smiles. Remember the new bike I got you at Christmas, ducky? That’s how I paid for it.”

I bolted up from my pillow. “You said it came from Santa!”

The look on his face made me giggle. “You’re one smart cookie, Jaz. No boy will pull the wool over your eyes!” He ruffled my hair and turned out the light.

What boys? There weren’t any boys on my street, and Peter was just my brother. When he felt like being nice, he played checkers with me or gave me a stick of licorice, but mostly he ignored me. He was five years older and hardly ever home. After school he would hang out at the gym with his friends and shoot hoops, or play “Dungeons & Dragons” at Steve’s house. If he was stuck at home on a rainy day, though, he got bored and picked on me for fun.

Usually it was big brother stuff like making me trip over his big sneaker or putting ice cubes down my back.

If I complained to our mom, she would just shrug. “Don’t be a tattletale. Boys will be boys.”

But on my sixth birthday, Peter found a new way to hurt me. I had been begging for a princess costume, and when the big day arrived, I tore open the box as fast as I could.

I froze. Instead of a blue ball gown and sparkly tiara, this was a red robe with long sleeves and a high collar like butterfly wings. It did come with a shiny gold belt and pretty flowers on the front, but it wasn’t at all what I’d dreamed of. The words on the box read “Oriental Princess.”

“I wanted to be Cinderella!”

My mother blew out her breath. “You can’t be Cinderella, silly, you’re not White. You look like this girl.”

I tried not to cry the way I had with Freddie. Why did I have to be Chinese?

Mom thrust the box at me. “Go try it on.”

I dragged myself into the bathroom. The girl in the picture had brown eyes like mine and long black hair. She wore a happy smile, and I had to admit she was pretty. The costume was too long on me, but I did like the gold belt and shiny silky sleeves. I almost tripped on them when I shuffled back to the living room.

Dad put down his paper and whistled. “Well, well, look at you! You are as pretty as a princess!”

Peter snorted. “No she’s not. She looks like King Kong in a bathrobe.”

“Now Peter, don’t be mean. Come here, Jaz.” My dad reached out and smoothed down the front of my dress. His hands seemed to stop at the belt for a second before he let go and sat back. “You’re ready for the ball.”

That broke up my brother. “Ready for the ball?” He rolled around on the floor, cackling. “Baseball? Golf ball? Soccer ball?” He sat up and pulled his eyes into ugly slits. “I know! Ping-pong, ching-chong ball!”

“ENOUGH!” Dad swatted Peter’s head with his newspaper. “Act your age and leave your sister alone.”

Peter slouched from the room. Mom picked up my birthday cake and headed for the kitchen. I trailed after her. “We didn’t sing ‘Happy Birthday’ yet!’”

“You don’t deserve it. I went to all that trouble to get you a present and all you did was whine. Go to your room.”

I burst into tears and stumbled to my room. Freddie sat waiting for me on my bed, so I picked him up. “You’re my best friend, Freddie. You don’t call me names or make me feel like a monster.”

I hugged him. “I’m a princess now. If I kiss you, will you turn into a prince?” I raised him to my lips.

Just then Peter banged open my door. He stopped short and his mouth fell open. Then he shouted. “Don’t let her kiss you, man. She’s so ugly she’ll give you warts, and you’ll stay a frog.”

“Go away!” I tried to push him out the door, but he jammed his foot in the crack.

“Even if he’s a prince, he wouldn’t marry a chink like you.

“Stop calling me that!”

“Nobody’s ever gonna marry you!” Peter knocked Freddie to the floor. “King-Kong, ching-chong!” His lip curled. “I wish I had an American brother.” He slammed the door behind him.

I picked up Freddie and curled up with him on my pillow. “I don’t care if you’re just a frog. You don’t call me names and make me feel ugly.” The long silky sleeves of the costume washed over me like a soothing wave.

After that day I dressed up in my costume whenever I could. I didn’t like “Oriental Princess,” the name on the box, so I called myself “Princess Moon Rider.” Freddie and I would ride far away to his castle on the moon, where no one would make fun of my looks or call me hurtful names ever again.

I was a princess in disguise.