Reclaiming Lily Read online

  Oh, Lily! Chang Kaiping punished her bike pedals. Billowy grain stalks and the rutted road blurred into a canvas of golds and browns. Slowly, ever so slowly, Fourth Daughter Lily’s face appeared, as if a master artist had sketched Father’s cheekbones, Mother’s bow lips, and Lily’s own pearl-drop face into the China landscape. It was that image that had kept her poring over textbooks in her Boston flat, pushing through eighteen-hour shifts at Mass General. There, remembering Mother and Father, she had lavished compassion onto patients.

  Kai hunched over, her spine curving forward, her hands gripping the rusted bar. She pedaled even faster, pursuing that elusive wind called fate. It was tricky to capture, but oh, the rewards! In time she would restore the Chang family honor. Reclaim her sister Lily. Today, though, it would be enough to see her.

  All Kai had absorbed since 1988—America’s technology, Harvard Medical School’s biology—faded in the clatter of her rattling spokes as the hope of seeing Lily captured her. She was young. Free. Dr. Kai Chang vanished. In her stead was Second Daughter Kai, soaring on a dragon kite toward the orphanage. Toward Fourth Daughter Lily, who would lean close and whisper moy moy and flutter moth lashes in secret sister language. Dear Lily, who does not know I have returned from America. Dear Lily, who does not know Mother resides on the ancestral burial hill. Kai’s throat tightened like her handlebar grip. Dear Lily, who knows not her own flesh and blood except as volunteers who thrust Lucky Candies into cupped and grimy orphan hands . . . especially for the girl with Mother’s bow lips. Oh, sister Lily!

  Kai blinked away bitter tears and continued her flight. Blood rushed to her limbs, fluttering her strange bike-kite. Careful! Kai adjusted her handlebar grip lest the kite careen, like a drunken peasant, and crash, short of its destination.

  The oxidized red blur of the orphanage fence seeped onto the countryside canvas. Kai eased her feet off the pedals. The dragon kite fluttered its tails, squealed disappointment at leaving its sky home, and once again became a bicycle. Kai dragged her toe in the dust but lifted her head.

  There stood Lily. Precious Fourth Sister. To battle her racing pulse, her melting heart, and mask her love from prying eyes, Kai calibrated Lily’s height and weight. Twentieth percentile among ten-year-old females in America. Ninetieth percentile here in the land of “chinks and starving slant-eyes,” as David’s father described China. Kai dismissed thoughts of her boyfriend’s bigoted Boston father and instead noted with ancestral pride the sight of Father’s strong jaw, Mother’s porcelain skin. Here at the orphanage, Lily was a sweet honeysuckle vine amid scrawny grasses.

  A foot drag stopped her bicycle, and Kai plotted how best to see Lily. It was a delicate matter because of the orphanage director’s power.

  A shadow engulfed Lily.

  Gripping her bike for steadiness, Kai scuffed forward. Her eyes widened with horror.

  A blond-haired woman towered over Lily.

  Blood drained from Kai. Why would a foreigner stalk her sister? Kai sharpened her gaze but kept the mask over her emotions.

  Three lao wai trailed the woman, an American—her slouchy posture, expensive clothes, and heavy makeup screamed it. Kai’s palms became slick with sweat. These Americans, who strut in their finery past crumbling walls like they own everything and everyone. Kai’s mask slipped. A sneer took hold. Why were they here?

  A brown-haired man fixed love-sick eyes on the woman . . . and Lily. Kai darted a glance at the other couple and dismissed their importance. The predators were that blond woman and the man, invading precious mei mei’s feng shui by touching her head, her shoulder . . .

  An icy river of emotion rushed over Kai, obliterating her handlebar grip. The bike clattered onto the packed soil. Why would Fourth Sister be joined with lao wai?

  The woman fixed weak, water eyes on Kai. “Let go of Lily,” Kai snarled.

  The woman’s brows arched. Her mouth stretched into a curlicue apple peel, candied and sickly sweet. She took the man’s arm. So happy, this couple, as they guided Lily—my sister—into a van. Kai padlocked pleasant American memories—her boyfriend, David, her roommate, Cheryl, the Harvard staff. Her mouth yawned to breathe fire on the Americans. Then she spotted the orphanage director, bowing to the lao wai. A mouse squeak emerged.

  The other lao wai and what surely were officials hurried into the van, which chugged to life and disappeared.

  Kai flung out her arms, grasping only noxious fumes. Tears streaked her face.

  The orphanage director, so smug in her Party uniform, cast a wicked smile at Kai before walking up the orphanage steps. The steps where I left dear Fourth Sister, ten years ago. The steps that precipitated Mother’s slow but sure march to death.

  Despite the chance that her gesture would be noted, Kai shook a fist trembling with hate. Since the Revolution, the director had nursed her smoldering-coal revenge against the Changs. This was a conflagration.

  Stop! Stop! Stop! The words enflamed Kai’s throat, trapped. She opened her mouth . . . closed it. How dare she think only of herself? China had branded her and her sisters dangerous counterrevolutionaries. As an elite studying overseas, Kai might be awoken from her American dream and detained here in China if she humiliated this woman protected by a Mao jacket, a red scarf, a stiff cap. Determination set Kai’s mouth. She could withstand their abuse. Not so poor Father, mourning Mother’s departure. First and Third Daughters Ling and Mei—who had sacrificed in ways she could only imagine in the easy-come, easy-go USA—did not deserve such disgrace.

  Kai’s spine sagged like dying bamboo as she stared down the road. Nothing remained of Lily but van ruts and the memory of her perfect face. Kai swabbed tears, tears stanched even during Mother’s funeral procession.

  One remaining official hurried inside the orphanage where Lily lived no more. Kai stuffed her fist in her mouth to keep from crying, Little sister! Our jewel! But little sister, proof that the Changs had reclaimed fate, was gone.

  Second Daughter?

  Kai perked her ears to hear the masculine voice. Who called? No men presently worked at the orphanage, according to her sisters’ latest gossip.

  Little Dragon!

  Though she was a grown woman, a medical doctor, she whimpered like a child. Only Old Grandfather had called her Little Dragon, Father abandoning that nickname years ago, along with his belief in Confucius, Mao’s Red Book, even the zodiac.

  Shivers wracked Kai. She moved her lips but could not summon the strange words Grandfather had whispered a lifetime ago. Oh, but she heard them! Each syllable stirred a cooling breeze. She righted her bicycle. Kai, Second Daughter of the Chang family, Golden Dragon of China, graduate of the world’s greatest medical school, would battle the fates to honor Mother’s last wish, Grandfather’s first legacy. If it took her last breath, she would reclaim Lily. It was her fate.

  1

  FORT WORTH, TEXAS, APRIL 4, 1997

  SEVEN YEARS LATER

  How the fates torture me! Having dressed hours ago, Kai again checked the simple gold watch David had slipped around her wrist during a quiet birthday celebration. Would ten o’clock ever arrive? Kai clutched Lily’s medical file, sank into a cowhide love seat, and tried to relax. Others might bask in the luxury of Egyptian weave linens, silk pile carpet, and an unobstructed window view of what slow-talking, slow-walking Texans called Cowtown. Such extravagance mollified one from a remote village. Years ago, a two-hundred-fifty-dollar-a-night room at the Sundance Hotel would have obliterated her savings. But Kai, now a doctor with Massachusetts Renal Associates, could afford all of this . . . and more.

  She would trade it all for time with Lily. Oh, Lily . . .

  To prepare for her meeting, Kai opened the file labeled with the most precious name in the world. Since the fates transported Kai to America, she had begged them to reunite her with Lily. How else would a penniless peasant breach American privacy laws to find one in a land of over two hundred fifty million people? Harvard Medical School and her internship had demanded back-killing, mi
nd-numbing commitments that left little time to implement such a preposterous plan. Yet every framed diploma, every notarized paper, inched her toward what had caused Kai to span seas.

  Her mother’s last words: “Reclaim Lily.”

  Mother’s last wish had echoed down predawn hospital corridors. Shrieked with alley cats in Cambridge midnight alleys. Rode Boston sea breezes on crisp afternoons.

  “Reclaim Lily.”

  With ruthless pursuit, Kai achieved residency, then citizenship, to satisfy the burning drive within her to heal—a force so powerful it flowed to her hand in an undeniably tangible force. But also to reclaim Lily. She shared her secret with no one.

  Massachusetts Renal Associates’s generous job offer obliterated financial concern. Another step toward reclaiming Lily.

  Two years ago, student loan notes arrived stamped Paid in Full. Letters—and money—meandered to China and back . . . as did Mother’s file. Determined to understand the cause of her mother’s death, Kai finally deciphered the complex Chinese characters and spotty medical records the file contained. Translation? In any language, her mother had died from polycystic kidney disease.

  After a PKD self-test—found negative—Kai sent word to sisters Ling and Mei, who surely labored to unravel the knotty thread of obtaining sophisticated Western medical procedures for mere village women. Did they even receive my letter? Kai wondered. And what of precious Fourth Daughter? Had the fates declared it time to find Lily? Dare I upset the feng shui of a seventeen-year-old and her American family?

  Kai had barely slept, for thinking of Lily. Had barely eaten, for worrying about Lily. How peculiar that the passage of time had intensified her desire to reclaim the fourth Chang daughter as she’d better grasped the futility of penetrating adoption records and privacy acts to uncover the name of one leaving China in 1991.

  “What’s wrong?” her roommate Cheryl had asked.

  “Tell me,” David had demanded.

  Cheryl and David had become like family, so she shared with them the story of her heart. Her Lily.

  David had called “a friend of a friend,” that peculiar American phrase meaning everything and nothing. The former police lieutenant, now a private investigator, demanded an exorbitant fee . . . and promised an out-of-this-universe result.

  Kai stared at her image in a gaudy brass mirror. Only Mother’s final wish and Kai’s passion to conquer fate could have led Kai, a reserved individual, to hire a licensed snoop! But it had to be done. David insisted Lily could be reclaimed in no other way.

  Three weeks later, a manila envelope stamped Personal and Confidential had arrived at Kai’s office.

  Now her skin prickled as she unlocked her briefcase and withdrew fate’s final assurance that she must find Lily.

  3/30/1997. Paducchi & Associates Confidential Report Page 1 of 3

  The following is a summary of information re Joy Grace Powell, as requested pursuant to a contract signed by Chang Kai, M.D., a Boston resident.

  Joy Powell, a seventeen-year-old Paschal High School junior, resides with her adoptive parents, Reverend and Mrs. Andrew Powell—

  Papers rustled as Kai flipped the page.

  An unnamed source states that “when she’s not cutting class . . .” Miss Powell “. . . lives in the nurse’s office” and “tries to hang out with goths and potheads.” The same source labels Miss Powell “a pimple-faced nerd.”

  Kai had understood the implication of the nurse’s office reference but little else about that first paragraph on page 2. David and Cheryl had no such comprehension problem. After her boyfriend’s and roommate’s translation of the words goths and potheads, phone calls zipped between Kai and the phone number the PI had provided. A meeting was scheduled. On the night of March 30, Kai charged to her new credit card one round-trip ticket to Fort Worth, Texas.

  Minutes stretched to hours and agonized into five days of waiting for an airport voice to announce her flight.

  Kai checked her watch. The wait will soon end. Her stiff fingers slid the report into the file marked with that lovely name. Lily.

  Fate affirmed the validity of my quest, and I have answered. So why does anxiety gnaw my insides?

  As usual, Kai summoned science to calm her, digging through drug monographs and journal articles from her briefcase. This data not only graded the road ahead, but possessed enough signage to guide even the most emotional Americans to a logical conclusion. Yet to help Lily, the drawl-talking Texan and his wife, Gloria—believers in the Christian God like her boyfriend, David, her roommate, Cheryl—must trust an atheist. The lifeblood of the Changs, of Lily, might depend on it.

  Kai’s cell phone ring pierced the air, and she dropped Lily’s folder. Medical reports swished onto a carpet patterned with stars. Did the Powells think she would brainwash Lily? Whisk her to China? They would not cancel now, would they? Kai grabbed her phone and flipped it open.

  “Dr. Kai,” she snipped, then bit her tongue in exasperation. Despite her anxiety, she must not use a tone edged with a scalpel’s clinical coldness. A pastor and his wife would respond more favorably to humility.

  “Doctor. It’s Andrew Powell.”

  Hoarseness cloaked the voice Kai had analyzed in numerous phone conversations. Kai’s fingers tensed. The reverend sounded scared. Had something happened to Lily?

  “There’s been a change in plans.”

  Kai longed to rail at the whims of these Texans. Lily’s adoptive family, she reminded herself, whom you must woo. They have fed her, educated her, and loved her when you could not. “I see,” she replied, though she did not see at all.

  “My wife, Gloria, would like to meet . . . at a more neutral location.”

  Kai’s lips curled. So a Chinese woman was not welcome in the Powell home.

  “I mean . . .” His chuckle made Kai cringe. She did not like unexpected changes, and certainly did not think them humorous. “Gloria’s just worried . . . until we . . . work through things, it might be best if you and Joy don’t meet.”

  Best for Gloria or Joy? A lifetime of surviving fickle political winds sealed Kai’s lips, yet inwardly she fumed. Why would they keep Joy from family?

  “Could we meet at your hotel?”

  “Yes, of course, Reverend.”

  “Which one was it again?”

  She had faxed her itinerary and provided references for the man who’d acted as if she were a Communist agent. Her arrival was a sty in the eye for them, something to suffer through and get rid of as soon as possible. She sighed and expelled such thoughts. They did not know what her folder contained. They did not know. “The Sundance Hotel. Seventh and Main.”

  There was such a pause, Kai feared her lifeline to Lily had been disconnected. “I could check conference room availability. For privacy,” she added. “If everything’s booked, there is a sitting area off the lobby.”

  “Well, sure,” exploded in her ears. “That would be great.”

  “Very good.”

  “Could we stretch it a bit? Meet later?”

  I have traveled thousands of miles, labored hundreds of days for this moment. How can I wait longer? Do you hear me, Reverend Powell, or must I write what I have to tell you in the contrails of your so-called friendly skies? Kai clutched her stomach. The waiting, the lurking diagnosis, this call—it shredded any semblance of her composure. Yet she must not succumb to nerves, not when she was so close. “What is convenient for you?” she managed.

  “Give us an hour. Say eleven o’clock?”

  Kai agreed and said good-bye. She summoned the front-desk manager with the press of a button on her room phone and booked the Stampede Room at a price that would feed every comrade in her village for a month. She would gladly pay six, ten, a thousand times that cost for a chance to save the sister she had abandoned on the orphanage steps. She would max out her new Visa card, borrow from David—even beg money from his banker father, if necessary—to explain to the Powells why she must meet Lily, help Lily, reclaim Lily as a Chang . . . tho
ugh she’d never phrase it as such.

  She smoothed her tailored suit, double-checked that the briefcase contained the wrapped presents for each Powell, and collected the papers that catalogued and quantified the insidious things of her heritage. Documents that, if accepted and acted upon, could save the life of Fourth Chang Daughter. Could restore Chang loss of face. Could tame the fire-breathing dragon that had resided for years in the depths of Kai’s soul.

  Gloria rubbed her thumb against her palm, trying to erase another potential setback in Joy’s life. “I don’t think this is a good idea,” she told Andrew for the hundredth time since this doctor—this supposed sister—had called.

  Andrew tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “It’s her family.” The radio dial became the victim of Andrew’s nervous jiggles. “She claims we need to discuss Joy’s medical history.”

  “The National Weather Service has issued a tornado watch—just a watch, y’all—for Parker County, remaining in effect until one p.m.”

  For five days, the radio had squawked of storms. Her heart heavy, Gloria canvassed the freeway’s SUVs, Mercedes, and pickups. With a high-strung teenager—a troubled teenager—coloring their sky moody blue, they’d ducked from one temporary refuge—the nurse’s office, a counselor, their doctor—like the umbrella-toting folks scurrying along the pedestrian walkways. Had God now sent an Asian storm when health problems, school problems, and church problems already clouded Joy’s sky?

  Andrew kept fiddling with the dial. Reba McEntire sang of secrets, the Backstreet Boys told them to quit playing games, and a gospel soprano threatened to blow their one good speaker. Gloria half listened while recalling the smells and sights of China that she’d so carefully recorded in “My Baby’s Memory Book,” then secreted under sweaters in a hope chest and never shown to Joy. The memories birthed the fear that she’d never voiced, yet always felt near: Joy might be taken from them. The memories birthed other unsettling things. Things Gloria had never dared utter.