Red Thread Sisters (9781101591857) Read Free Page A

times before. Once when Wen had a rotting tooth, Auntie Bi Yu, the nurse-auntie, drove her to the dental clinic. Another time, the day Ying Ying got adopted, her new parents drove four of Ying Ying’s friends, including Wen and Shu Ling, to the McDonald’s in the city. Then, during the long drought last summer, she and some of the other kids had bounced in the back of the truck all the way to the village, where government officials were distributing buckets of water.
    Now, as Wen peered out the jeep window, she waited for the joy of release. She had often daydreamed about what it would be like to leave Tong Du for good. As she scoured the bathroom walls or stirred the infants’ cornmeal, she had imagined departing through the orphanage gate. She had planned to feel free, like the swallows soaring wherever they wanted over the courtyard trees.
    Instead, Wen pulled her thighs to her chest and hid her face against her knees. This was the beginning of her new life, and all she could think about was Shu Ling waving good-bye, getting farther and farther away. Wen curled up even smaller, shutting her eyes tight to hold back her tears.
    â€œ
Hao ba
, Wen? OK?” Over the rumble of the jeep, Wen heard her mother’s voice as she read from a ring of phrase cards Wen had seen other new parents use before. Each card had a Chinese word on one side, the English translation on the other. “Wen,
hao ba
?”
    Wen nodded, keeping her chin down. Beside her, she felt her mother pat a clump of her hair. Covering her head with both arms, Wen slunk toward the floor, beyond her mother’s reach.
    After a bumpy, two-hour jeep ride, Wen and her family stopped at a big city called Taiyuan. That afternoon, they took an overnight train ride to Beijing. Wen had never ridden on a train. Like a long snake spitting smoke, the train swerved and hissed. Out the window of their sleeper compartment, Wen saw big fields, the wheat already cut and drying along the sides of the roads.
    At bedtime, Wen lay on the top of the second bunk and listened to the whistle of the train as it sped through the night. When she finally fell asleep, Wen dreamed she was back at the orphanage, racing through the dark halls.
    â€œShu Ling, where are you?” she cried.
    She checked the infant room, the kitchen, and then the small-children’s activity room. But she didn’t find Shu Ling. She strode up the hill, where she figured Shu Ling must be drawing in the dirt. But Shu Ling wasn’t there. Wen tried to keep running but her feet turned heavy, like great stones, and she couldn’t move. She collapsed on the hill, still calling for Shu Ling.
    When she woke in the morning, Wen felt as paralyzed as she had in her bad dream, only worse, because she knew, for sure, that Shu Ling was really gone.
    They got off the train in Beijing, where the McGuires stayed at a big hotel at least ten stories high. Wen marveled at the hotel’s huge glass windows and moving stairs. Was this what the houses would be like in America?
    The next afternoon, Wen and her family boarded a plane for America. Auntie Lan Lan had prepared Wen for planes. “Airplanes are like great big birds. They fly in the sky but they don’t fall to the ground,” Auntie Lan Lan had explained. “The plane will bring you to America, the land of opportunity. . . . Ah, Wen, America! There are such big houses there and a McDonald’s on every corner.”
    On the plane, Wen sat beside her father, while her mother and Emily got the seats behind them. As they waited for the plane to take off, Wen’s mother put her hand on Wen’s arm and whispered, “
Bu yao jin
. It’s nothing to worry about.
Bu yao jin.
”
    Wen tried not to wince at her mother’s toneless Chinese. Instead, she studied her mother’s pale skin and round eyes. If she looked at her mother long enough, maybe she would get used to her.
    Beside her, her father got out the