A SKETCH OF SIX FAMILIES, PART ONE

01.

I see the mother first. She is talking to the TV staff, her wide-brimmed straw hat, trimmed with lace, casting a shade across her rounded face. She carries a nice purse but her hands are rough, and her skin is tanned and sun-worn. She is wearing a dark pink shirt covered with light flowers and a long maroon skirt. There is a light pink scarf wrapped around the top of her hat, with its ends falling to protect her neck from the sun, and I am impressed—as I’m brought forward—that she is so color-coordinated, so put together for today. In the gathered crowd she stands out to me: she seems important, because of the way the reporters are flocked around her when I first arrive, and the way she is speaking to them, eager and loud.

She is with her husband. They cannot be more different. He is thin and slight; she is short and round. He, too, is tan, and more worn than she, with faint spots from the sun on his skin. The oversized blue button up he wears is too big for him and full of wrinkles, and he wears baggy dark blue pants, like a mechanic who has wandered into our crowd accidently and decided to stay. The cameras are on us as they come forward and we shake hands. Up close he is tired, and strong but frail, as if he could bend in the wind yet be pushed over by a child, but his eyes are bright with hope. It is hard to look at him. His smile is too hesitant, his face too sad, and in contrast his hope and kindness are palpable, overwhelming things. I move on and shake the wife’s hand. It is easier to look at her. She is more appraising, less emotional.

Their story is translated to me, in bits and pieces. It is mostly the mother speaking. The father stands a little away and stares at me, not creepily but unbearable nonetheless, like he is seeing the possibility of a whole different life unrolling before him. They had a son first, the mother explains, and then a daughter. They had to give up their daughter to the welfare center—the reasons are vague, but we all read between the lines. Several years later their son died from a heart illness. Ever since then they have been looking for their daughter, even talking to Jinhua TV in 2012. All they have is a birth certificate and a photograph of the family who adopted her, a white man with a mustache and his wife, with permed hair, and between them a dark-haired and wide-eyed baby girl. The photo is laminated. There are no creases or smudges, though it is slightly air-bubbled. The mother presses it into my hands. “‘Is this you? Are these your parents?’” she says, and my translator repeats.

I shake my head. “No,” I say. I try to give the photo back, to push the mother’s hand away.

She pushes back. Says something in Mandarin. Even though she must know, by now, that I do not speak Mandarin, she directs her words to me and not my translator. It is a small gesture, but it makes me feel a little more human. “She wants you to look harder,” my translator says. “She thinks maybe you don’t remember. Or that maybe you know who they are.”

“I don’t,” I say, but she still won’t let me give the picture back.

Later it comes out that their daughter was born in 1996. Maybe 1997. Either way, she is younger than I am. The photo I manage to produce of my parents clinches it, but still, they keep hanging around. Maybe they are holding out hope. Maybe they don’t know what to do, now. In one of the down times (or rather: when the newly arrived family has distracted the TV crew) I manage to take a photograph of their photo. I gesture my translator over. “I’ll show this to my friends,” I say to the mother—and the father has approached, too, like he does whenever I speak. “I’ll put it on Facebook. On social media. I’ll try to find your daughter for you.” I know the impossibility of the task, but I also know I have to try.

“谢谢,” they say. Again and again. “谢谢.” They take the photo back. Their gratefulness feels misplaced. I want to say that it is the least that I can do, for not being their daughter. That I am so sorry for not being their daughter.

Even later, when it is all over and the media crew has departed, they linger, moving indoors and sitting down at the empty eating area. I hesitate, then approach them. I type a question into my translator app—“Would you like a piece of my hair for DNA testing?”—and bring it to the father. He is even smaller and thinner and older sitting down than he is standing up, but he lights up when I near him, lights up even more when I show him my phone. He nods eagerly. “Okay,” I say. “Okay.”

I go into the kitchen and imitate cutting something until a cook understands what I’m saying and gives me a pair of scissors. She watches as I cut off an inch of hair. “Thank you,” I say, before catching myself. “谢谢.” I walk back out, give the strands to the father. He takes them and looks for a moment, then folds them up in a torn piece of paper, careful and slow. He puts it in his shirt pocket, patting it once and smiling at me. We both know what the result of any DNA test would be, but it doesn’t really matter. I gave him my hair to try and comfort him. I think in some unspoken way, he took it to try and comfort me.