Author: Mei Li Hart
Instagram: @meilihart
I sat on the bleachers typing on my computer, surrounded by my basketball teammates and primary sources for the history paper I was writing. It was my freshman year at Pingree, and we were fresh-faced and happy watching varsity play, cheering when they scored a basket. One of my coaches was chatting with some of my fellow teammates, and she said that some people have told her that she looks like her dad, which she didn’t agree with. She went around our circle asking each of us if we thought we look like our fathers, and her finger stopped at me. I hesitantly responded, “I’m adopted, so I’m not sure,” adding a quick chuckle to let her know I wasn’t offended. I watched the realization of what she just said slowly register and spread across her face, her words of apology immediately exclaimed. I responded with a well-rehearsed, “Oh no, it’s fine. It’s not a big deal to me, I love my parents! I don’t think about it that much.”
If I did think of it at all, I would imagine my birth-mother planning an escape ever since she found out, nine long months ago. The government did not allow families to grow like this, so as the months went by she wore baggier and baggier shirts to hide her growing belly. After a secret birth, she cares for me until I am strong enough, and knows I won’t catch an illness. Now it’s finally time, and with her hand gently pressed to my mouth to keep me from revealing us with a cry, and a hood draped over her head, she tiptoes out of her hut in a small village at three in the morning. I envision the sharp wind immediately piercing her threadbare shirt, and with each step her arms grow sore carrying my weight. She makes the journey to the city of Xianyang, in central China, about an hour from Xi’An, where she knows there will be a safe place to leave me without being recognized. Every step of the way she envisions a better life for me, one where I’m wanted, and am not a liability to my family. Just inside the city, she scans her surroundings, the light of dawn just creeping into view. Knowing she doesn’t have much time until the sleeping city awakes, she spots a suitable place - a government building. The gray cement frame towers over the other buildings, with four red pillars holding it up. In tears, she gently lowers me onto the side of the steps next to a pillar, whispering sweet wishes into the blankets. She gives me three last kisses on the face, wraps the blanket once more securely around my neck, and hurries off into the dawn. The people who work there will soon find me with only a worn gray blanket, the kisses already gone on a breeze.
This is a story stitched together from adoption tales, the one-child policy, and a view of the past that’s bearable. Is it a lie to create your own story when you don’t have one you can be sure of? When I was younger, I didn’t consciously notice the difference between my year-round golden skin and from that of the white children I played with at the park and in soccer games. I live in a majority white neighborhood, and that became the mirror in which I saw myself, a white girl. And yet, even then, my best friends were also adopted Asians, but I never saw that as a choice, always a coincidence. I didn’t use to think about my biological parents, because I believed my ability to love was a fixed amount. I thought that only people who were unhappy with their current situation would pursue another part of their identity. I worried that if I thought about my biological parents or met them one day, the love for them would take away from the love of my parents. Coming to Exeter means I have moved out of that little white world, and I know other Asian students who have Asian parents, speak Chinese, or are also adopted. This shift has made thinking about China and my biological family more normal.
Do they feel guilty for leaving me or wonder where I am now? Which parent do I take after more, and do I have siblings? Perhaps my sibling is the reason I am in America, which is both a blessing and a curse. I wonder how I would feel returning to China and seeing my orphanage and where I was left. Now, having the ability to see parts of my identity as more normal, I remember how I’ve answered questions about myself in the past, in ways I no longer would now. I’ve lied to others before realizing I’ve needed to contemplate more deeply what I view as the truth. I now see the possibility that happy, fulfilled people may also seek other parts of themselves. That the addition of a new world won’t threaten the old.