Peter Davies - The Fortunes

They sit with Napoleon in her room, watching her make calls. She barks into the receiver but translates for them in a mild undertone. “Country folks,” she says, pursing her lips, though she’s told them the orphanage is only an hour away, on the outskirts of town. “Good with babies, though.” Someone at the other end of the line goes to fetch the orphanage administrator. Someone goes to fetch the doctor. Someone else is at lunch. Napoleon is dogged, indefatigable, and John feels a great love for her, wants to bring her a glass of water, make her sit down, ask about her own baby. Friends have told him about this, the deep gratitude to nurses and pediatricians, anyone who fights for your child.

At one point the phone rings and she speaks in unmistakably warm hushed tones that raise their hopes. When she hangs up she is smiling, and they lean forward. “So sorry. My husband,” she explains. “I told him call back later.”

She tries the orphanage again, and talks for what seems like a long time, angrily and then more softly, leaning into the phone, her hair curtaining her face. When she turns to face them she smiles weakly, holds up a finger.

“I arrange,” Napoleon finally tells them, hanging up. “This afternoon we go orphanage, collect her.” She nods. “Be resolute!”

This afternoon; they nod in turn. “ Still Gotcha Day,” Nola says weakly. Just another lag, John tells himself.

They’re out of Tylenol. They have plenty of baby Tylenol, but John isn’t sure it’ll do any good, and Nola doesn’t want to waste it on herself anyway. There’s so little he can do for her, so little to say ( Are you okay? he keeps asking, but when she said, Yes. What about you? he almost said, What about me? ) that John jumps at the chance to go out and find a drugstore, to enact his love for her. He can hardly stand to be in the hotel anyway. The building seems to hum with baby energy now. He pictures all the other couples in their rooms with their babies and he wants to get out. He tells her he thought he saw a pharmacy a couple of streets over, and she lies back and covers her eyes, without thinking to ask him when he saw the pharmacy.

In the little park old men play ping-pong on a cement table, across a metal net; old women stir mahjong tiles.

He amazes himself by finding the pharmacy again, but when he steps inside the shelves are lined with unfamiliar boxes with indecipherable labels. The jet lag is catching up with him again. He feels top-heavy with tiredness, brimming with exhaustion, as if he might spill into sleep. He studies the shelves for some clue, but the boxes, brightly colored and tightly packed, covered in Chinese writing, remind him of nothing so much as fireworks.

And how odd to celebrate July Fourth every year with Chinese-made fireworks with names like Golden Peony and Dragon Tail, Dancing Butterfly and Chrysanthemum Glory, Moon Willow and Blossoming Pearl (not to mention that old knee-slapper, Golden Shower). He used to announce them at Independence Day parties, making up a few along the way: Red-Haired Devil, Great Leap Forward, Laundry Bomb, Flying Lice, Wok-et to the Moon, Panda-moan-ium.

Now he stands at the counter, pointing at his head, crossing his eyes— Thunder Head, he thinks, Temple of Fire —until the shaggy-haired clerk says, “Ah, Ty-Le-Nol,” as if he’s trying to teach John the pronunciation. He takes a box off the shelf, turns it around to show the English on the reverse.

On the way back to the hotel John spots a Starbucks, hurries inside. Or rather a “Starlucks,” he notices as he stands in line, another one to add to the list of copycat names the group has been trading back and forth: Starcups, MukDonald’s (complete with a stylized graphic of Donald Trump in a clown suit), and, everyone’s favorite, Dulce and Banana. Is it any wonder none of them mentions communism? It’s just capitalism misspelled. But the signs, so glancingly familiar yet so deeply off, only add to his disorientation. It’s as if they’re all named by my mother, he has joked, joining in the general hilarity, albeit uneasily. None of the others would be seen dead in these Western knockoffs (even if John’s occasionally found himself salivating at the thought of a burger). Such places aren’t “real,” the group agrees. Not really American, of course (though there are KFCs on every other corner, real McDonald’s side-by-side with the fakes, Western food being as ubiquitous here as Chinese is at home). But also — and this is what they really mean — not Chinese either. Yet what if they’re filled, as they are, with real Chinese? What price authenticity, then? And what does that say about where they’re taking their new daughters to and from? The girls will grow up Chinese American, John knows, but what will that even mean if China continues to modernize, Westernize? How will it differ, how will it be better, if at all? Still, beyond the group opprobrium, something about these American imitations rankles with him, makes his skin crawl, and he ducks out as soon as he’s downed his double espresso (a vast improvement, to be fair, on the three-in-one mix sachets of Nescafé, whitener, and sugar back in the hotel room). His mother reckons China is turning into Singapore: Singapore on steroids. Never mind the regime, let’s shop! But that too sounds increasingly American to him.

Only… this isn’t the way back to the hotel. A block beyond the coffee shop he slows, pauses, works his way to one edge of the busy sidewalk, out of the flow of the crowd, and stands on tiptoe to see over their heads, looking for something he recognizes. How can it be? he wonders, aghast. He wandered these streets in the darkness and found his way back without difficulty, but now in full daylight he’s — he resists the dread word — lost. It must be the crowds, the traffic — a silver pedicab, looking like an armored scooter, bleats at him as it rushes past — but the explanation doesn’t tell him which way to go, and he feels a spasm of panic. He’s breaking out in prickling pinheads of sweat. He wants to run to the corner, to look up and down streets, but his path, his view, is impeded by bodies in every direction. He thinks of Nola at the hotel, her bad head. How long has he been gone? She’ll start to get worried. And the thought of giving her another worry makes him feel sick. When he should be there comforting her. He starts to push against the current of bodies, released by a traffic light; he starts to push and people shout at him. He should excuse himself, but he doesn’t have the words, and something, some fear of unmasking, makes him hesitate to speak English. And yet the terror is rising in him now, the sense of entrapment. The Walk signal overhead blinks hyperactively, the little white figure leaning forward, animated legs strobing. Only when he shoves and feels the body before him yield, looks down and finds it’s a child he’s stumbled into, knocked down, a small girl, now wailing, does he stop, try to lift her to her feet. Now he’s holding back the crowd, to shield her, bent down, his haunches burning, getting kneed in the head so that for a moment he fears he’ll sprawl underfoot, be trampled. But then he gets his balance, forces himself upright, the child in his arms, and a woman is tugging at his, pulling him aside into a doorway. She takes the child from him, sets her on her feet beside him, thanks him— xie-xie, a phrase he has memorized from the guidebook, practiced with drivers and guides and hotel maids — and now he’s saying it too— xie-xie, xie-xie —which seems to puzzle her, this exhausted-looking mother, and the child is still wailing, and the mother, casually, without even looking down, smacks her around the ear, and she stifles her cries, though John can still feel her trembling sobs where her bony shoulder is pressed up against his waist.