Continued from post below...
Our solution was to delay the cupcakes a day, so I could come to school and help Jiejie present her life story. I frantically e-mailed a mom I had never met whose daughter had been the star of the classroom edition of "This Is Your Life" the day before. She kindly filled me in on the tradition, which had surprised her as well. I e-mailed the teacher for tips, too, thinking I could never be too prepared. The teacher explained that telling life stories was not a big deal; parents were not required to attend, and if they did not the teacher would interview the child, asking questions like how much hair did you have when you were born? How old where you when you learned to walk? These questions are potentially treacherous for an adopted child. I knew I had to be there.
When I got home that night, Jiejie and I made a plan that would appeal to my girl of few (public) words. A life in pictures. Jiejie went to her special photo album, in which she has preserved a collection of pictures of herself and others that were carefully selected and bound together by some logic that is beyond me. We flipped through and chose a few. Jiejie wanted baby pictures. I fetched the tiny album, a camo-covered Mickey Mouse knockoff that held a handful of pictures of Jiejie from the "babyhouse" in Laibin: the row of tiny metal cribs, the picture of her looking first bald, then Maolike, dressed in layer upon layer of puffy clothes and propped against a scruffy stuffed panda or slumping onto the tray of a wheeled walker seat.
"Is that all?" she said.
I bit my lip, wishing we had started that life book project long ago to give some shape and substance to the 14 months she lived without this family. I reached back into the drawer of keepsakes and pulled out that toy only found in families with children from China, Mattel's peculiar incarnation of a leggy Caucasian Barbie attached to a tiny Asian baby.
"We'll take 'Going Home Barbie.'" Since she rarely gets to see that boxed-up Barbie, she was delighted. Then her tummy began to hurt. And hurt. It kept hurting for hours, then rumbling.
"It hurts so much, Mama. Make it go away!"
"Oh, honey. If I could take the pain and put it in my tummy, I would."
"No, no you wouldn't because it would hurt you so much you would give it back to me."
***
By morning she was perky and hungry and decked out in a puffy pink plaid skirt and black lace-trimmed leggings,ready for school despite the downpour outside.
At 9:30 the phone rang. Jiejie had vomited in class. Could we come pick her up?
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