英语书籍：Lucky Girl（节选四）

英语书籍：Lucky Girl（节选四） ZT

=====Lucky Girl=====================

LUCKY GIRL
by Mei-Ling Hopgood (nonfiction)
Published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
ISBN: 9781565126008
Copyright (c) 2009 by Mei-Ling Hopgood
LUCKY (Part 4 of 5)
======================================

The picture was a few years old. In it, the bride wears a red and
gold dress, a jade pendant, and sparkly, dangling earrings. Her hair
is pinned up, and a few tight spirals frame her face. She is pale,
heavily made up, and her lips are parted in a demure smile. Almost
twenty relatives, sisters in dresses, brothers-in-law in suits,
aunts, uncles, and cousins, press in close, standing on tiptoes,
contorting their necks and backs, trying to fit in the frame. I
noted that many of the women, presumably my sisters, wore the same
bright red shade of lipstick. My tiny grandmother, my father's
mother, sits serenely front and center wearing a shiny blue silk
shirt. Her hands rest on her knees and a cane is propped beneath her
right armpit. She has what looks like a receding white hairline and
reminded me of some character out of an old Kung Fu movie, an old
and wise prophet about to bestow a secret to a worthy disciple. My
mother sits to her right, wearing a pink and white checkered suit,
white hose, heels, and a corsage with a red ribbon pinned to her
chest. Her hair is permed and bobbed, and her bangs are teased into
a perfect curl on her forehead. Her mouth, too, is painted in the
same bright red, and she is grinning, but she is caught with her
eyes shut. To her right is my only slightly smiling father, stern
and straight, handsomely dressed in a Western suit with a colorful
tie held in place with a tie pin. He also wears a flower with a red
ribbon imprinted with gold Chinese characters. On the back of the
photo is written, "The grandma is dead (21 May 1996), 86 years old.
The picture is taken in the occasion of the 4th daughter's
marriage."

At the time, I didn't know who was who in this family portrait, save
the bride, my parents, and grandmother. The group seemed a joyful
jumble of chaos. It was odd knowing that these strangers were
directly related to me, but what struck me most was the realization
that my siblings were not merely the children of a poor farming
family, as I had believed. If I had an image of my birth family at
all in my head, it had been in black and white and dismal. They
would be gaunt, wearing ragged clothes and probably standing in some
barren field with a shabby, straw-roofed but at their backs, a
stereotypical portrait of third-world poverty. I mean, that was why
they had given me up for adoption, right?

Yet that was not who they were. Perhaps they were before, but not
now. They were a middle-class family. My sisters were attractive,
educated, and successful. What few assumptions I had were wrong.

"They all look like they love each other very much," I wrote in my
journal.

I had never cared about them before or even thought of them as real
people. I never had--nor did I seek--enough information to feel a
connection with my biological origins. My mom and dad told me what
they knew, and I never sought to know more. This was probably both a
conscious and unconscious decision. You are less likely to mourn
those you do not realize you have lost--or those who have lost you.
You do not yearn for a life that you don't know exists. Now I not
only knew what I had gained from being adopted, but I suddenly was
beginning to see what I had missed, and I wanted to know more.

I hurriedly dug up a few pictures of my own. I sent one of my
family, one of my dog and me, and another taken in Hawaii of me with
some friends. In the latter, I'm tan, wearing a sarong and a red and
white checkered shirt and sitting on a couch with my friend Monica
and her pals the week before her wedding in Honolulu. I chose that
picture because of my smile, which was wide, and my eyes--they
didn't look squinty or crooked as they occasionally did in pictures.
These would be the first images of the modern-day me that they would
see, and I wanted to look good. I sent the letters global priority
mail to Taiwan, one to my sister and one to my parents.

"Dear Mother and Father," I wrote. "I received your letter and I'm
overjoyed to find you. I'm very sorry I cannot come to Taiwan for
Chinese New Year, but I want to come soon. How have you been through
these years?"

In a short and polite note, I went on to describe in brief my life
as a young journalist. Nothing too revealing or complicated. Nothing
they couldn't understand. Then I signed off, "Love, your daughter,
Mei-Ling."


The next Friday I left for Mardi Gras in New Orleans in a rented
van with friends from the newspaper. We marauded all weekend in
the French Quarter before driving back to St. Louis on Monday,
exhausted. After dropping off the rental, I drove my Saturn home. My
ugly little apartment complex, a nonde blob of brick buildings
that had managed to skirt the neighborhood's zoning laws, was
surrounded by magnificent early twentieth-century stone homes and
Victorian mansions. I lugged my bags upstairs, ready to collapse in
bed. The door opened to the living room, which still had that
mismatched college look--a white couch, a green futon, and an on-
again, off-again peace lily wilting by the window.

This time, I found several messages on my answering machine. At
first I thought they were pranks because the callers did not say
anything, although there were loud, unintelligible voices in the
background.

Then in a later message, a timid, rather high voice said, "I'm your
younger sister Taiwan." Click.

In another, a woman's voice in English, presumably a nun from St.
Mary's hospital, said, "Mei-Ling. Your mother and father want to
talk to you. They tried to call you several times."

'They tried to call me.'

I couldn't think about it. I was too tired to process what was
happening. It seemed like some bizarre dream. 'Try to relax,' I
thought. I had to try to go on with my normal life, which meant work
early the next day. I went to bed.

In the morning, two faxes in perfect English that had arrived over
the weekend were delivered to my desk at work. They were letters
from my "mother" and "father," though obviously someone else had
written on their behalf.

"We all miss you very much," they said. "We hope we can hear you as
soon as possible."

Even a nun from an order in St. Louis left a message on my work
voice mail. This woman I did not know told me my family was trying
to get ahold of me and that I should try to call them. I shook my
head in amazement.

'Jeez. The whole world is trying to find me.'


They reached me at about eleven thirty that night. "Wang Mei-Ling?"
a woman asked.

Um. No one had ever called me that, but obviously they were
referring to me.

"Um," I said.

"Wang Mei-Ling?" Hollering in the background.

"Yes?" I said.

"YES?" I repeated loudly, for they seemed neither to hear nor
understand me for all the background noise.

"This is your family Taiwan. I am Joanna Wang, your elder sister."

"How are you?" I asked, not sure what else to say.

"You speak Chinese?"

"No, I'm sorry."