The Year She Left Us by Kathryn Ma Page A

burlap sack. Now I had Ariadne on Naxos, a story I read over and over, imagining myself in her place. When she heard from Charlie what I was reading, Gran sent me a big box of books for Christmas. I got the d’Aulaires’ volume with its homemade-looking drawings, and Edith Hamilton—“a Bryn Mawr woman,” Gran declared—and a stack of arty picture books that played up when the gods were helpful and played down their sex romps. By the time I was nine, I had figured out that when Zeus “fell in love” with a nymph or a maiden, he was bound and determined to rape her. Everyone, it seemed, used sweetened language to talk about ugly subjects. One day, when Gran was visiting from Taipei, where she lived with Grandpa Herbert, I overheard her say to Charlie, “All these foreign adoptions are making the problem worse. There were five thousand children adopted by Americans last year. Five thousand! It makes me sick that they’re throwing away their daughters.”
    â€œThey’re poor and uneducated,” Charlie said. I was sitting on the staircase at Les’s house; Gran stayed there when she came to San Francisco, and they were in the living room waiting for Les to come downstairs. “They don’t see any other option.”
    â€œThat’s my point,” Gran said. “You’re giving them the option. They see all these rich Americans carting away the babies and think, ‘Maybe my baby will have a big American future.’ So then they abandon her and make her somebody else’s problem.”
    â€œWe don’t use that word,” Charlie said.
    â€œI didn’t mean problem,” Gran said. “Ari’s not a problem. I mean responsibility. A child that must be raised.”
    â€œI’m talking about the A word,” said Charlie.
    â€œA, what A? Be clear,” said her mother.
    â€œ ‘Abandon,’ ‘abandonment.’ It’s a scary word to a child.”
    â€œAha,” said Les, coming out of her bedroom. I smelled her jasmine-scented body lotion, which I helped myself to whenever we came over. One time, I snuck home a whole bottle, but Les never called me on it, though she must have known that I took it. “Are you spying on those two?” She leaned over and patted me down across my stomach and my back. “Wearing a wire I see,” she said. “I hope you got some good stuff.”
    If I had asked her to let me stay and eavesdrop, Les would have said yes. We had a little joke between us that we were the only sensible ones in the family. Charlie was full of nervous desire, and Gran was single-minded. As far as I could tell, all Gran ever talked about was getting an education. She lived too far away from us to know much about our daily lives, and I thought she was way too old to see things the way I did. Les and Charlie talked about her all the time and rushed around whenever she came to visit, but a lot of what they said had to do with Gran wanting things from them that they didn’t want to give. Husbands came up a lot, as in why it was unreasonable for Gran to demand they marry, and the words career and choices . I, taking my cue from Les and Charlie, hadn’t thought of Gran as somebody who could help me. But now here she was, saying out loud my secret feelings: that I had been abandoned and it was enough to make you sick.
    Les smiled at me and toed down the staircase, so she must have guessed that I wanted to hear more of their conversation. But Charlie came to the bottom of the stairs, surprised to see me there, and told me to come down; we were all going out for dim sum. When she brought me into the living room, I saw that Gran’s face was creased with disapproval. She had more to say on the subject, and I had a lot to ask her.
    T he next day I got my chance. Charlie dropped me off at Les’s house for a visit with Gran while Charlie ran Saturday errands. It was the first time I was left