River Child

    River Child

    By Leah Yan Doherty, 1st Year ETA

    [Image by Victoria Thiem]

    I1

    They say I floated softly
    down the Yangtze, a ripple-like shimmer
    into their outstretched arms—
    “our little river child”

    Tears, freshly plucked
    from the deepened crease
    of patient smiles, crinkled around the edges
    tasting of hope and roasted coffee.

    At night
    I would listen to tales
    of shape-shifting monkey kings
    and Chinese cinderellas

    “… a bright child and lovely too,
    with skin as smooth as ivory and
    dark pools for eyes,” she only had one friend,
    a magical carp 魚 with golden scales.2

    then, as always, came gentle sleep

    Stories of my birthplace started and ended
    with long-winded lectures on ancient calligraphy
    and portraits of gray-bearded emperors
    sitting behind mighty walls of stone.

    To this faraway land, I was a stranger

    II

    We came from various orphanages
    but an invisible string tied our lives together
    like a red ribbon of fate, trailing after us
    as dutifully as a kite

    “Am I pretty?” asked one of my sisters3
    as she pursed her faintly cracked lips and
    lifted silver-studded brows—don’t tell my mom please—
    to a green mirror, covered in rust.

    She widened those almond eyes
    which reflected back
    a set of canoes
    looking for land to accept it

    “beautiful,” I thought.

    Then she hushed me,
    took me suddenly by the hand
    and we started running
    barely swallowing our grins

    up, up, up.

    Perhaps it is how memories paint the walls
    like intricate murals of wildflower
    and laughter stains the ceiling,
    or perhaps it’s something more?

    How effortless it is,
    my heart replies
    to remember those days

    III

    I look just like them

    Inside emanated sweetness and gochujang4
    as I made my way through a small door
    stepping over strands of leftover hair, black like mine,
    strewn across the marble floor.

    There sat a group of people, multiple generations
    a middle grandson whose jelly-filled cheeks
    duplicated in form down the wooden table
    “Ohhh 맵다,” he sighed5

    Outside my ears picked up
    a gentle pattering of tiny feet on pavement,
    and the lingering exhale of lush green peaks
    calming a school of restless trout.

    If you listen carefully
    to the 북한강 river6, a midnight shade of blue
    you might be able to hear its twinkling
    between the mountains’ heartbeat

    “From Korea?” my host aunt asked, mid-chew
    My cheeks flushed a deep pink
    as the few Korean words I knew took flight
    like a couple of traitorous birds.

    Looking down at the golden dust
    which painted my piano-curved fingers
    the way BHC chicken does, salty and sweet
    I managed to sputter “중국계 미국인7.”

    IV

    Forever a river child

    To this day, my head still spins
    whenever I catch glimpses of her
    an ‘olive skin’ girl with high cheekbones and
    matted hair from one too many dye jobs

    Did she have other brothers and sisters
    whose likeness was brought up,
    like clockwork, over a charcoal pot
    of simmering broth?

    It hurtled me back, her rattling cough
    from years of trekking in fine dust
    to tend to the soil and pick ripe mountain berries
    I looked at my host mom in wonder

    is this what it’s like?

    It started as severance,
    severance from my birth mother’s coos,
    the pleas of Mandarin speakers on the subway, “你会说中文吗?”8
    and secret talks between the Yangtze and its rolling peaks.

    As painful as it was
    I felt grateful for my imagination then
    and in that fleeting moment, pictured myself
    at a table several lives away…

    their lovely river child.

    From there, the smoky gray sky did
    what I had wanted to do but couldn’t
    it started to pour

    [Featured photo by Kierstin Conaway]

    1. Quoted from Yeh-Shen by Ai-Ling Louie.
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    2. In traditional Chinese culture, a fish represents wealth and prosperity because the Mandarin word for “fish,” yú 魚, is so close to the word for “abundance,” yù 裕.
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    3. My “China group” friend and fellow adoptee, one of twenty girls adopted from China’s Jiangxi Province in 1997. She and the other girls became my real sisters, in every sense of the word. ↩︎
    4. Gochujang (고추장) is a thick red chili paste often paired with Korean BBQ; a popular condiment in Korean cooking. ↩︎
    5. “Spicy” or “how spicy,” a common exclamation at meals.
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    6. In Hwacheon, surrounded by Ilsan, Byeongpungsan,Maebongsan, and Duryu, the Bukhangang River (북한강) flows southwest of the county.
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    7. “Chinese American.” ↩︎
    8.  “Can you speak Chinese?”
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