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At a dinner party recently I mentioned taking Suki to her first movie, Pocahantas. Someone said, "Did you notice they really did up Pocahantas, push-up bra and tight skirt." I answered, "Actually, I found her girlfriend cuter, with her little bangs and all." Another friend lowered his voice and said, "Doug, it's just a cartoon." "Listen, you're not a single guy raising a four year-old daughter."
I was forty-six years old, decidedly single, and the details of my life were worked to near- perfection, weekends at a lake cabin, marathons, hopping planes to Paris or Buenos Aires. In a bizarre twist, the last thing I needed actually became my obsession--a child. I pursued adoption, was shocked I qualified, and dreadfully closed in on the ultimate commitment. I played out many of my concerns--would I give up my New Yorkers for Curious George, forgo running for coloring, tend to another's potty instead of my own quads, and put up with spittle on my shirt and spilled milk on my computer? I would, I thought. And was I willing to let a communist bureaucrat select my child from his orphanage?
A one-inch photocopy arrived from the other side of the earth, a puffy pouty face. For weeks I studied it, propped it up on the dinner table and over my speedometer, talked to it, and pretended I loved this girl named Hua Jun. I strained to imagine her smiling, one day pretty, and frolicking with me, splashing me with hugs and kisses. But lurking in my mind I could hear the future matter-of-fact voices of my friends detailing my near-breakdown in having to cope with a little ADD pyromaniac from China.
At Fuyang they handed over four year old Hua Jun, under-sized and floppy, with only the shirt and bug bites on her back. She was a peasant, abandoned at a train station. I called her Suki and handed her an apple. Ten minutes later she tapped my arm and returned the stem. One inch of stem, nothing more. Her first word was the one I thought I'd never hear, "Papa."
There's no mama at our address. And I'm no substitute. Instead of folding her dresses, we stash them and flap our arms to Madonna in the living room. Instead of watching Sesame Street, we paint her face with karan d'ache and ride the bike, waving and weaving through the neighborhood. I drop her off at pre-school draped in old-fashioned jewelry and a Boston Red Sox cap. I put a number seven on her cheek when Mantle dies. Instead of making sand cakes, we grit our teeth, shiver, and swim across the lake. We park the truck and jog through the woods--get home after dark, down a thick shake, and trade burps. We wear sweats to bed and one of her first words is "sweaty." All right, her buttons should be in front and my socks don't match--hey, you should have seen our soccer match in the backyard.
We'd love to have a mom, I could send her in my stead to some of the places I can't believe I go--Chuckie Cheese, Jennifer's birthday party, and showers. Showers, and I don't mean the ones where Suki pulls open the curtain on me. The baby kind. I've racked up five. I'm hanging with mommies, wiping snot with my finger, and talking about pull-ups, kindergartens, and spot-removers.
Mothers tell me there's more, take her to Discovery Zone, Dairy Queen. To the zoo, to the library. But I toss her a globe, point to Mynammar and Tegucigalpa, and tell her, anywhere, anytime. I pat the big ball and say, "Suki's." I've got four decades on her and a drawer full of maps. But I can't shake her off my thigh. I talk on the phone and she's got me in a Peking neck twirl. I wake in the morning because her foot is in my face. I go to the bathroom, the door cracks and I see an eye. Finally I see, she's got her world.
I talk to mothers. When I'm asked, "Where is the cutie today?" I slap my head and say, "Oh God, I left her in the car!" Or just today I was asked, "Have you decided on a school?" I said, "I'm thinking of Spring Glen, but I'm bugged by her walking the mile home alone in the dark." Just kidding, just kidding.
I talk to my new daughter: "Suki, get your hand out of there!" (urinal). "Don't pull that!" (fire alarm). "Don't turn that!" (ignition while we're on the George Washington). "Do you have Ultimate Fighter?" (us at Blockbuster). "Play hurt!" (she falls). Or: "Yukka!" (picks nose, wipes on Papa).
It's not the stuff of Spock.
But I'm not apologetic. When one mother gave her a plastic kitchen set-up, I told another that she only played with it for five minutes, mostly with the battery-operated faucet. She admonished me, "Oh no, you have to pretend you have company and sit down for tea time." I fired back, "Forget it." Bag the kitchen, let's shoot hoops, where's Big Wheel? Yeah you're right, her bangs are too long, she doesn't know Barney from Barbie. But one thing she does know--this is better than Fuyang.
Am I scared? I was at first, getting her--I feared I was going to China and returning with a She-Devil. Now--losing her. I'm afraid I'll slip up. Forget her typhoid shot. Leave her in Penny's. In the truck she chirps the alphabet, hits the wipers, unravels a cassette, yanks the steering wheel, points to every dog, "Doggie!" (Yes I know Suki, China has no dogs.) I'm afraid I can't lean across the seat to retrieve her barrette and keep us on the road, nine hundred times in a row. I'm never sure when I'm between the lines.
And I'm afraid I'm not enough for her. I’m not mama. My repeating to her I'm pa and ma has lost it's umph. How many women greet her for the first time and Suki dashes, arms windmilling, across the room. I shudder that quicker than she can say, xie xie, she'd be sweatless, ears scrubbed, hair pinned up, and in pink.
I'm afraid alone. That's new for me. When she's gone I see Suki's spoon, her dog-eared Mao book, the lost birdcaller under her bed, the red Z she made on my khakis, her yellow frog in the tub. I get a flash, if she were gone? What if? My blood stops--suddenly I can't believe I'm this close to devastation.
How's the old ex-champ doing? In the grocery store when I'm not looking she snatches something off the shelf--matzoh balls, rubber gloves, hemorrhoid cream, anything, and slips it in my basket. Two aisles later I discover it and hold it up like a dead fish, and she hurls her arms up. We howl, I'm a kid.
You can feel the eyes of other shoppers, mothers, peering eyes, envious eyes. "God, you are lucky." How many times have I heard that? In China it was, "Oh, she is a lucky girl." But little do they know. In my home study my social worker said, "Man, this guy did his homework!" And in Fuyang, Hua Jun was always the last to go in from the courtyard--she knew something was over those walls.
We knew what we were doing. It's not luck.
Do I miss the days of sushi and the Schubert? Do I resent the fact every single night at nine for how many more years you can find me holding her hand, whispering, waiting for her sleepy deep breaths?
The other night I left her for the very first time, after three months. A friend was to watch her while I went out, one simple cherished hour. I found her in the kitchen, singing away and scraping dishes (unassigned), and told her I was going swimming. She froze in the middle of the kitchen and wailed.
I slipped away and did my swim, sort of. In the middle of the second lap, I drifted to a stop. When I came home and opened the door, she jetted across the room into my arms. I hugged her as if it had been a light-year, as if we had been an ocean apart. As if both our orphanages sprang up at our feet. I squeezed her as if my life depended on it.