Breathless

(Xisha bridge)

Juana and I are in a zone. We hail a cab and hop in clutching scribbled notes that are meant to lead us to an address where we are told that the head of the Foster mothers from Makena's orphanage lives. My torn and almost illegible piece of paper feels like a promise of gold. I am a pirate in a strange sea of chaos seeking to dig up a treasure. I feel like I could be a candidate for the Amazing Race show right now. Come to think of it, I may audition.

Juana is arguing with my driver. He doesn't recognize the address. We panic. I call Cherrie in Beijing, and miraculously, she answers. I have Cherrie in my ear giving me loose instructions that she is recalling from memory, I shout them out to Juana who then relays them in Chinese to our driver. He argues with her, we are driving in the wrong direction and u-turns are in order. He is extremely annoyed. Apparently, Chinese men do not like to be told what to do. This is a universal dilemma. What to do, what to do...

We tell him to head for the main bridge, Xisha (the finding place for a friend of mine's daughter), and make a left. We have to drive 3 kilometers along a road that follows a river and stop when we get to a fruit market. Ok! We get to the road and about 400 yards down we come upon a market but no fruit is being sold. The driver tells us that we have reached our destination. We argue and he basically kicks us out of the cab like we are a bunch of crazy ass ladies. We are. Slightly freaked out, we head through the market praying he was right and that this is the only market on this road. Yes, people stare so our search for foster lady is not discreet. We are on the hunt for an alley that is barely wide enough for two people to walk through. We will have to follow it until it zigzags left, then right and then come upon a courtyard. We have to enter the courtyard with four buildings and more alleys spidering out, face left and then we will be at the building we are looking for. The apartment is either on the first, second or third floor...

(Firecracker exhaust.)

We have an hour left to find this address and then, hopefully, talk to this mystery woman. No panic, just sheer internal hysteria. We can't find the alley and some pyromaniac is blowing up the neighborhood with an insane fireworks display.

(Talking to strangers.)

We end up weaving our way in and out of buildings, walking along narrow paths with one or two story drops into other courtyards. We accidentally stumble into people's private courtyards, walk past their open doors staring into dark living rooms, avoid buckets of wash water being emptied above our heads, not to mention flying projectiles of spit. People stare at this white person and her interpreter seeking a woman they do not know. Orphans? Foster children? What the heck? Juana is extremely out of her comfort zone asking strangers for information. She whispers that this little adventure is making her braver. She is my action hero. Time means nothing anymore. I am the dog chasing the bone. Tunnel vision. Do not give up. I can't. I won't. We won't.

We have run out of street and practically come to a dead end. We have to backtrack. How could we have missed it. Ugh, I want to scream. We retrace our footsteps and stop and ask anyone and everyone along the way. Until we get back to the now extinguished fire cracking hell spot and notice an alley we never saw because of the choking smoke. Yes it is narrow. Yes, it zigzags claustrophobically left and right and yes it abuts into a smaller than imagined courtyard, if it can in fact be called that. Juana, emboldened from thirty minutes of battle starts screaming out foster lady's name... Once, twice and third time is the charm. A man pokes his head out a third floor balcony and yells down asking why we are looking for his sister. Juana quickly explains and we are suddenly ushered up three flights of steps and now find ourselves in his cavernous living room. A couple of boys are huddled behind a sheeted room divider playing a computer game. Tween life is universal.

(View from the Foster mother's front door.)

(View from the living room.)

We sit in the darkened room. The air is cold. The windows are open. No heat to feel as we all keep our coats on, even our host is dressed warmly. His sister is out running errands but he quickly calls her to tell her that some white lady from the West is sitting in her arm chair and wants to talk to her about a baby she adopted five years ago.  He offers us tea (translation: boiled water that has cooled down to become potable). Juana converses with him but I am not sure what they talk about. Twenty minutes go by...  and the woman walks in the door.  I instantly recognize her, albeit slightly older and more disheveled, as a woman who was sitting in the back of the room when we were handed Makena at the Civil Affairs Bureau in Chongqing. I thrust one of the dozen photographs I have brought with me in her face and quickly explain that I am hoping that she can give me the name of the woman seen holding Makena in one of the photographs we received after our instant cameras were returned to us on adoption day. She takes the image and studies it then says that she was an orphanage worker. An Ai but that she can't remember her name. However, she recognizes Makena because she looked after her, here, in this building.  I am stunned speechless. I know that I am not breathing. I turn and look at Juana trying to make sense of what is being translated. Juana is equally shocked. She peppers the woman with questions. Yes, Li Han was here. One of among a dozen girls she looked after in 2006. 

(Foster Mother.)

Seriously folks, I cam all this way to get the name of the woman in the photograph, never expecting that she was not her main care-giver and that I would be standing face to face with her actual Foster mother.  Juana grabs her phone and calls our minders to tell them that we are going to blow off lunch and meet them back at the hotel in an hour so that she can catch her train. My eyes are welled with tears, I am trying to come up with questions. I should have had a list. I just wanted a name and I have hit the mother-load. More firecrackers errupt in the distance and I suddenly realize how jolting this particular sound must have been for the babies. Sudden sharp noises, doorbells, toilets flushing have always sent Makena into a freakout and I wonder if this is the ground zero of why?

I catch my breath as the woman disappears for a second and then returns hauling two trash bags filled with baby clothes. She explains that these are the clothes that some of the children were found in. She goes on to say that a lot of the babies left at the finding spots in baskets they would have been carried in. Sadly, she did not catalog which clothes belonged to which baby. She shows us cute satiny jackets, explaining that most of the Qianjiang children are from the Tujia minority. A tribe that originated in Northern Thailand (based on my research) and then migrated to the hills above and around Qianjiang and beyond. More than likely, Makena has older siblings since there is no limit on the number of children the Tujia can have.  Abject poverty being an explanation for abandonment and how this might explain (to me) why she was found in old clothes, according to her report.

(Makena, pictured among the clothes.)

We move into the bedroom and she shows me an album. It belongs to friends of mine from our adoption group. She shows me toys. She then explains that the building was used as an annex to the orphanage and that an apartment on the ground floor housed most of the babies, a dozen or so, and that nannies would be sent from the orphanage to help her care for them. Not the warm and fuzzy answer I was hopping for. I get the impression that Makena was housed on the first floor and not one of the two or three babies she personally cared for in this apartment. Nevertheless, a piece of the puzzle has been filled in. I still wish that I knew the Ai's name or how to gain access to the orphanage records in the future. I grab my camera and shoot everything that I can of this place to have a record of it for later. Time is a luxury we can no longer afford and we have to say goodbye. I hand Foster mom a box of chocolates and hug her with heartfelt gratitude. I already know that this is not the last time that I will be seeing her (I hope) and that I will be returning with Makena at some point in the future.

Frustratingly, we can't poke our head in the ground floor apartment as it is now rented to a family so I just stand in the courtyard and try to absorb every detail, the sounds, the smells, the firecracker infused air and slowly walk away thanking the universe for this experience magnificent gift I won't soon forget.

(First floor where girls were housed.)

(Outside the building.)

 Is - humbled and grateful.