The Year of the Baby (An Anna Wang novel) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Illustration

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Pronunciation Guide

  Collecting Buckeyes

  Girls Are Better

  Kaylee’s Checkup

  Naptime

  Worrying

  November Storm

  Tug of War

  First Word

  Our Natural World

  An Accident

  Science Fair

  A Surprise

  Grandma Arrives

  Camille’s Idea

  Thanksgiving Dinner

  Groups of Girls

  Finally

  Bananas and Hamburgers

  Collecting Data

  A Crowd at the Doctor’s Office

  Science and Sewing

  Unexpected Visitors

  Steamed Red Bean Bao Zi

  First Look at THE YEAR OF THE FORTUNE COOKIES

  About the Author

  About the Illustrator

  Text copyright © 2013 by Andrea Cheng

  Illustrations copyright © 2013 by Patrice Barton

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  Houghton Mifflin is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

  www.hmhbooks.com

  The illustrations are drawn with pen and ink and digitally colored.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Cheng, Andrea.

  The year of the baby / written by Andrea Cheng ; illustrated by Patrice Barton.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Fifth-grader Anna is concerned that her baby sister Kaylee, adopted from China three months ago, is not thriving, so she and her best friends, Laura and Camille, create a science project that may save the day;

  ISBN 978-0-547-91067-3

  1. Chinese Americans—Juvenile fiction. [1. Chinese Americans—Fiction. 2. Babies—Fiction. 3. Science projects—Fiction. 4. Intercountry adoption— Fiction. 5. Adoption—Fiction. 6. Best friends—Fiction. 7. Friendship—Fiction. 8. Schools—Fiction.]

  I. Barton, Patrice, 1955— ill. II.Title.

  eISBN 978-0-544-03568-3

  v1.0513

  to Janis

  — A.C.

  to Meggie

  — P. B.

  Pronunciation Guide

  One —Yi (ee)

  Two —Er (are)

  Three —San (sun)

  Four —Si (she)

  Five —Wu (woo)

  Fifty —Wu shi (woo she)

  Goodbye —Zai jian (tsai jian)

  See you tomorrow! —Ming tian jian (ming tian jian)

  Cat — Mao (maow)

  Grandma (mom’s mom) — Wai Po (why po)

  Girl — Nv hai (new high)

  Hello / How are you? — Ni hao (nee how)

  Little sister —Xiao mei mei (sheow may may)

  Stuffed bun —Bao zi (bao dze)

  King, also a common last name — Wang (wong)

  Baby, also treasure —Bao Bao (bow bow)

  Fruit —Shui guo (shway hwo)

  Really good —Zhen hao (jun how)

  Very good —Hen how (hun how)

  Eat —Chi (che)

  Happy New Year —Xin nian kuai le (shin nien kwai le)

  One

  Collecting Buckeyes

  Teacher Zhen lets us out of Chinese class a few minutes early, and Camille and I head over to the buckeye tree to wait for Laura. I feel a big bump under my foot and bend down to pick up an unopened buckeye shell. Inside are three perfect buckeyes.

  “I never saw a triple before,” Camille says, smiling so wide that her gums show.

  “One for you, one for me, and one for Laura,” I say, watching Laura kick up the dry leaves as she heads toward us.

  I didn’t think Laura would really sign up for Chinese school. She’s the only one in the whole school who’s not at least half Chinese. Plus, most of the kids in level one are only six or seven, and Laura’s about to turn eleven. But she doesn’t seem to mind. After class she always tells me and Camille what she learned.

  “Yi, er, san,” Laura says, counting the buckeyes in the shell. “Hey, Anna, how do you say ‘buckeye’ in Chinese?”

  I look at Camille since she knows more words than I do. She shakes her head. “I don’t know if they even have buckeyes in China.”

  Laura finds two more buckeyes. “Si, wu, “she says, counting to five. Her words sound funny, but we can still tell what she means.

  We start counting all the buckeyes. Laura takes off her sweatshirt and ties the sleeves on the bottom so we can use them like bags. When we get past wu shi, fifty, we lose count.

  “What should we do with them?” Camille asks.

  “Too bad they’re not edible,” Laura says. “Unless you’re a squirrel.”

  “We could plant them,” I suggest.

  “Then someday we’ll have a whole forest of buckeye trees,” Laura says.

  “And our kids can collect thousands of buckeyes,” I say.

  “Because they’ll be best friends just like us!” Laura scoops up a handful of dry buckeye leaves and throws them above our heads.

  Mom pulls slowly up to the curb, gets out of the car, and heads toward Camille’s mom. All the other moms are talking and laughing. My brother, Ken, and his friends are burying themselves in the leaves.

  Laura’s dad turns in to the school parking lot and honks. “I’d better go,” she says.

  “Are you at your dad’s all day?” I ask. It’s hard to keep track of Laura’s schedule.

  “Yup” She picks up her sweatshirt. It’s so heavy with all the buckeyes that the sleeves drag on the ground. “Zai jian” She tries hard to get the tones right.

  “Zai jian” Camille waves.

  I hand Laura a bright red maple leaf. “Ming tian jian”

  “What’s that mean?” she asks.

  “See you tomorrow.”

  “Ming tian jian” Laura repeats, dragging her sweatshirt with the buckeyes into the car.

  Ken goes home with his friend Alan. I ask Camille if she can come over, but she has math tutoring after lunch. When we get into the car, Mom asks me if I want to help take Kaylee, my baby sister, to the doctor.

  “Again?” It seems as if Kaylee has to go to the doctor every other day.

  Mom starts the car. “The doctor said that it’s important to monitor her closely.”

  Mom looks both ways twice before pulling out of the parking space. She has only had her license for about half a year, so she’s still more careful than other drivers.

  “Kaylee hates going to that office,” I say, remembering how she clung to me as soon as we opened the door.

  “Most babies are fussy at the doctor’s.” Mom looks in the rearview mirror and changes lanes. “She does better when you’re there.”

  I don’t really feel like going to the doctor’s office, but I know Mom’s right. If I don’t go, Kaylee will scream the whole time. Last time I sang to her for so long that I got hoarse. It was the only thing that calmed her down.

  In September when Kaylee first came from China, I thought she was perfect. I loved her little nose, her dark eyes, her big cheeks. She followed our cat, Maow Maow, from the kitchen to the living room through the dining room and back to the kitchen again. Laura, Camille, and I played with her all day except for when she fell asleep on the rug by the sofa. Then we sat around her hoping she’d hurry up and open her eyes.

 
The next day, Mom and I had to take her to the doctor to get her shots. First they gave her the MMR so she won’t get measles, mumps, or rubella. The second shot was for meningitis, and the third one was some kind of booster. No wonder she was screaming. Then the doctor measured Kaylee’s head size, her length, and her weight. She didn’t say there was a problem. But when we took Kaylee back for her October checkup, her weight was exactly the same. That’s when the doctor got concerned.

  Mom pulls into our driveway. “If Kaylee gains this week, maybe we won’t have to go back so often.” The lines between her eyebrows are deep. “All we can do is keep trying.”

  Two

  Girls Are Better

  Kaylee is sitting in her highchair, banging on the tray, while Dad is trying to get her food ready. As soon as she sees me she holds out her arms.

  “It’s lunchtime,” I say, patting her head. “We can play later.”

  “How was Chinese?” Dad asks.

  “Fine.” I can tell he’s not listening, because Dad can’t do more than one thing at a time and he’s busy cutting a hamburger into small pieces.

  I take my seat by the window. Before Mom and Dad left for China to get Kaylee, Camille’s mom gave us a baby shower. We got a highchair and a car seat and sippy cups.

  Everything is pink because people know that when you go to China to adopt a baby, it’s a girl. Ken said he wanted a baby brother instead, but Mom said there are not many baby boys to adopt in China, unless they have health problems. When I asked why, Mom said that in China, some people favor boys.

  Kaylee is starting to fuss. Dad gives her a piece of bread. She plays with it but she doesn’t take a bite.

  “Rice is better,” Mom says, picking up the bowl of rice that Dad heated up. She puts the spoon close to Kaylee’s mouth.

  Kaylee opens her mouth like a baby bird. She chews for a minute, then makes a funny face and spits out the rice. It dribbles down her chin.

  “Maybe she’s not hungry now,” I say.

  “She’s not used to our food yet,” Mom says.

  “Don’t they eat a lot of rice in China?”

  “Rice here and rice there is not the same,” Mom says. “When I first came from China, I didn’t like this rice either.” Mom wipes Kaylee’s mouth with a washcloth.

  “How long did it take until you got used to it?”

  Mom tries to remember. “Two or three years, I think.”

  “We can’t wait that long,” I say. “Maybe we can get some Chinese rice at the Asian food store.”

  Kaylee takes her hand that has rice stuck to it and rubs her head so there is rice mashed in her hair. I put a slice of apple on her tray. She picks it up and turns it this way and that.

  “Mmmm, good,” I say, taking a slice myself and putting it into my mouth.

  “Mmmm,” Kaylee says. She sucks on the apple for a minute.

  “Do you want a hamburger?” Mom asks.

  Mom makes the best hamburgers in the world, with lots of Chinese spices in them. She calls them Chinese burgers. I put one on a piece of bread, add ketchup, and cover it with another slice of bread. “Look,” I say to Kaylee, taking a big bite.

  Kaylee watches.

  “Eat your Chinese burger,” I say, pointing to the meat on her tray.

  She picks up one of the pieces Dad cut for her, stares at it, and then tosses it onto the floor.

  Mom looks at Dad. “A baby cannot gain weight without eating,” she says.

  “Give it time,” Dad says. “She’ll figure things out.”

  Mom lays Kaylee on the changing table that we put in the living room.

  “Boo,” I say, trying to distract her while Mom takes off her diaper. Mom is fast at slipping a new diaper underneath her and fastening the tabs. “Why do some people like boys better in China?”

  “Boys can work on the farm and help their parents. Girls get married and leave the home.”

  I think about Mom’s sisters in China. One works in a bank and lives with Grandma Wai Po. The other teaches music in a nearby elementary school. “That’s not true about girls anymore,” I say.

  “But some people don’t change their thinking.”

  “Did your parents wish you were a boy?”

  Mom snaps Kaylee’s undershirt and pulls on her sweatpants. “Nai Nai was a very modern person,” Mom says. “She did not think like this.”

  “Anyway, I’m glad we adopted a girl.”

  “A boy is good too,” Mom says.

  “Laura and Camille and I are always talking about how lucky we are to be girls.” Mom sets Kaylee on her feet. She toddles over to me and hugs me around my legs. “Girls... They hug more, and they talk more too.”

  “Not always,” Mom says, handing me Kaylee’s jacket.

  “My father used to hug me more than my mother did. And Ken talks so much.”

  I stuff Kaylee’s arms into the sleeves, then pick her up and kiss her cheek. “I still think it’s a good thing you’re a girl.”

  Kaylee watches my mouth while I talk. Then she rubs her face in my sweater.

  As soon as Mom buckles Kaylee into her car seat, she starts crying. I sing her the gumdrops song a bunch of times. Then we have to wait at the first intersection because of a train, and she starts whimpering again. Mom keeps looking at the clock.

  “Look, Kaylee,” I say. “A train. Choo-choo”

  Kaylee stares out the window. Her cheeks look bigger than they used to, and she has a double chin. Maybe that means she gained weight.

  “Yi, er, san, si, wu” I say. “One, two, three, four, five trains.”

  Kaylee watches the train cars. Finally the caboose goes past and the wooden arm across the road goes up.

  Three

  Kaylee’s Checkup

  At the doctor’s office, the nurse asks us to take Kaylee’s clothes off and sit her on the scale. She screams as if we’re killing her, because it’s metal and freezing. Mom’s mouth is in a thin, straight line as she waits for the digital display. Nineteen point four.

  “Last time she was nineteen point two,” Mom says, scooping Kaylee up and holding her against her chest.

  The nurse puts a dot below the last line on the graph on the computer. “She is still below the fifth percentile for fifteen months.” He turns to us. “Sometimes when babies come from orphanages, it takes them a little while to adjust.” He stands up to leave. “The doctor will be in shortly.”

  “Shhh, Kaylee, it’s okay now,” Mom says. But Kaylee still cries.

  “If all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops, oh how glad I’d be,” I sing.

  Kaylee gets quiet.

  “Did they have a lot of food for the babies at the orphanage?” I ask.

  “I think so, but we can’t know for sure.” Mom kisses Kaylee’s cheek.

  A lump grows in my throat. We don’t know if Kaylee had sisters or brothers. We don’t know if the family had enough to eat. We don’t know what day she was born. We don’t know anything except that somebody left her in front of an office building wrapped in a blanket and a lady who worked there found her and took her to an orphanage.

  “Maybe she’s just skinny like me,” I say. “What percentile was I in?”

  “You and Ken were both in the twenty-fifth.”

  “What does percentile mean?”

  “That twenty-five percent of the babies your age were about the same weight as you,” Mom says.

  So that means that only five out of a hundred babies Kaylee’s age are nineteen point four pounds and the rest are heavier. But when I look at her face, she doesn’t look at all like the sickly babies I’ve seen in Mom’s nursing journals.

  We have to wait a long time for the doctor. Kaylee reaches for me. I walk her around the small room, singing to keep her quiet. When the doctor finally comes, Kaylee starts up again. The doctor looks in her ears and eyes and listens to her heart. I don’t know how she can hear anything with all that screaming.

  She reads the information on the computer and asks about th
e orphanage in China. “What were the conditions like?” she asks.

  “Everything seemed fine,” Mom says.

  The doctor is typing while Mom talks. “Did the babies look like they were well fed?”

  “Many of the other babies were chubby,” Mom says. “But we did not actually go to the orphanage.”

  “Does Kaylee say any words yet?”

  Mom looks at me. “I don’t think so.”

  “Can she understand when you talk to her?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  I feel as though the doctor is being kind of mean to Kaylee, like she’s supposed to be chubby and she’s not, and she’s supposed to talk but she can’t. “Sometimes she says ‘ah ah ah’ when we sing her the gumdrops song,” I say.

  The doctor doesn’t type that.

  “We have to keep working on Kaylee’s weight,” she says. “Bring her back in three weeks and we’ll see how she’s doing.” The doctor makes some check marks on a piece of paper. “We want to make sure that she gains.”

  “She did gain a little,” Mom says.

  The doctor nods. “And keep talking to her.” I don’t like the way the doctor makes it seem as if we aren’t taking care of Kaylee right.

  “What should we do?” Mom asks. Her voice is thin and worried. A baby is crying in the next room.

  “Try to get her to eat as much as possible.” The doctor stands up. “And we’ll see you back shortly.”

  Before we leave, the nurse comes in with a shot. I cringe because I hate shots, even the small allergy kind, and this one has a big fat needle.

  “Just a little bee sting,” he says to Kaylee.