A SKETCH OF SIX FAMILIES, PART SIX

06.

There is a gentle tranquility to this final family. They live in an apartment with tall ceilings and lots of light, and the day follows the comfort of routine: the daughter goes to school, the mother and father go out and return, the daughter comes home and finishes her homework, they have dinner together. I’m not sure what the parents do for work; I think the mother is a singer, opera maybe. She sings as she walks around the house, sometimes just a melody, sometimes words.

The apartment feels a little impersonal, like many Chinese apartments do, but I’m American; I’m used to coziness and clutter and a livable degree of dirt. It only feels impersonal because it’s so clean, and as the week passes I notice the details that make it home—a minion poster on the wall, old school lanyards on a shelf, eggshells in the flowerpots outside, a set of green plastic cookware, stacks of paper and art on the desk in the back. They have an upstairs but that space is private, and I never go up. My room is off the main room, between the kitchen and the bathroom. It’s simple, with books in a cabinet and a hard mattress and a bamboo sleeping mat on the bed, to help with the heat. By far my favorite part is the broad windowsill, large enough that I can sit and look out at the lamp-lit road below. It’s not even a road, not really, but there’s no English word for these little spaces between apartment complexes that are both driveway and road, walkway and lot.

I found their apartment through AirBNB. Their eldest daughter listed the room, and it is she who I correspond with, though (ironically) she has just left to attend university in Guangzhou. When I arrive her father, after some confusion on my part about gates, picks me up. He is quiet and gentle and has crow’s feet at the corner of his eyes, and his movements are more thoughtful than slow. His wife is a little fiercer, with more purpose to her gestures, and they fit well together, complementary without being jarring. Their youngest daughter (still in high school or middle school) is quiet, too, but her English is practiced and clear, if a little unsure. We don’t talk much—she is usually at school, or studying.

In the mornings they provide me breakfast, a hot soy drink and a few stuffed buns. If I’m around for lunch and dinner they set a place for me, too, though this is not a part of their agreement and I think sometimes it inconveniences them. I try not to be around too much. I’m already keenly aware of imposing: they take me to meet the TV crew, let the TV crew into their home to film, drive me places, work their lives and schedules around the sudden upheaval that I have brought. I don’t have the vocabulary to show how grateful I am, and how sorry.

All I have met, really, are families with missing pieces, and so theirs stands out in its wholeness. It’s particularly clear in the evening after dinner, when the daughter has showered and is doing homework. As she works her father stands behind her and blow dries her hair, patiently combing out tangles until it falls, clean and straight, past her shoulders. Sometimes she’ll ask a question, sound out an English phrase, and her mother will answer her or comment from the couch, where she has her feet up and a newspaper open, Tom and Jerry cartoons playing silently on the TV. Other times the daughter will practice her accordion, a cheerful melody filling the house and drifting under the crack of my door. She’s still learning: every so often the music stutters and falters and she makes a noise of frustration, and then I hear her father, patient and practiced, walking her through until she starts up again and the music continues. Their love for one another is tangible and powerful, uncomplicated and unassuming. As a stranger looking in, it doesn’t demand to be noticed: it simply presents itself as is, and in doing so, cannot be missed.

Their intimacy is exclusionary but open-hearted. I do not want anything more. They give me a place to return to and a bed to sleep in and after a long day spent with the media and hopeful, grieving families, what they offer is comfort and familiarity and healing. They remind me of my own family, back in Portland, and it gives me the strength to keep on going. Sometimes I consider asking them how they have two children, or why do they have two daughters, but that’s too intrusive and—in all honesty—I don’t want to know. I need a place that remains separate from adoption, the One-Child Policy, politics. They support me but keep going with their own lives, and I hold onto that normalcy. I think they feel sorry for me, too, but I don't think they pity me.

I write them a letter before I leave. It’s in Mandarin, and I ask my translator to correct it before I give it to them. I think they’re embarrassed by the gesture—I don’t know how this works, in China—but I don’t have time to research proper etiquette. They cook lunch before I go. “She wants to give you a meal,” my translator interprets for the mother. “For Autumn Festival.” And then, when I’m eating, laughter—“She says you always eat like everything is so delicious.” (In my defense, it is.) We exchange gifts—mooncakes from me, and two bags full of fruit from them (3 dragonfruits and 47 small apple-pear-things, which I eat myself sick on in Guangzhou)—and I wish I had been able to communicate with them more beyond this.

When I do leave it is hurried and a little frantic, rushing out of the door with my things to get in a car (driven by the mother’s brother and his wife) and then to the train station, where I say hasty thank you’s and skirt puddles through the rain. I didn’t get a chance to say a proper goodbye, except for what I’d written. I think it was enough. I hope it was enough. Their family kept me sane that long week; they went above and beyond, even when it inconvenienced them. But their greatest assistance was unspoken.

In all that grief they offered a counterbalance of love, as vast and deep as some infinite pool.