“But . . . ,” Penni said. Then she leaned over and touched the baby’s nose with her own before lifting her head again. “He is lovely. His eyes . . .”
“His eyes are very beautiful,” Akerke agreed eagerly.
Penni’s face was screwed into a frown. “Well—I don’t—I mean—I mean all right, this one then. He’s my favorite.” She kissed the baby’s head. Then she asked Akerke, “What will happen to the others?”
“Some will be adopted. Some will not.”
“It’s very hard to think about that,” Penni said.
“It’s so random,” Jaden blurted out. “You come into this rinky-dink office, and an hour later you have a whole different future.” That’s kind of what had happened to him.
“Yes!” Penni exclaimed. “It’s mind-boggling.” She rubbed her cheek on the baby’s, then said to him, “Your path is about to be altered, and ours, too.” Ramazan was staring at her lips again.
Akerke smiled happily. “Ramazan is one of best babies I have ever seen.” She nodded her head up and down. She reminded Jaden of a bobblehead doll.
Akerke and the director spoke to each other, the director’s voice growing angry. Akerke replied in a soothing voice, talking and talking. Finally the director smiled slightly, apparently appeased.
“The director has said you must not kiss the baby or breathe so close to him in case you have germs,” Akerke told Penni. “They had flu last month.” But she smiled happily. “Tomorrow you have appointment to see your baby at one thirty.” Akerke alone seemed ecstatic.
Chapter Thirteen
That night Jaden sat by his open bedroom window after Penni and Steve had fallen asleep. He thought about the day. For Akerke and the director, it was perhaps just another day. But for his family, it was one unlike any they’d ever had. The idea of accepting a baby after a single minute was plain nuts. He thought of Bahytzhan and his bug-bitten face. Now he would grow up German instead of American—his whole life changed because of a choice that took place in a single minute.
Jaden held some bread close to his chest without particularly feeling like eating it. Far away, he saw a shepherd and some sheep strolling in the steppe under the full moon. The wind was blowing hard, and even as high up as Jaden was, he could feel occasional pings on his face from the dust. Finally he had to close the window. Then tears fell down his face as he squeezed the bread to his chest. He didn’t know exactly why he was crying. What was he doing here, how did he get here? How? So he was born. So he lived with his mother. So he was brought to a group home. So he went to America. So now he was here.
He thought about what he’d felt earlier, when he had lost his way. He hadn’t expected to feel upset about being lost. Was feeling lost also in a way feeling that he belonged somewhere? That he belonged with Penni and Steve?
Unh, it was like torture to try to figure all this out. Instead he tried to think about electricity. Before anyone really understood electricity, there’d been entertainers who’d performed tricks with electricity for the amusement of the public. Like, they could make audience members hold hands and then discharge electricity to one person, which would make everyone in the chain jump at the same time.
Jaden knew that even today, there were many things about electricity that people didn’t know. He thought electricity held the secrets of the universe. The electricity in the bodies of the living was always moving and shifting. Every thought people had was electric. When humans understood electricity, they would be immortal.
But even that couldn’t distract him just now. Jaden thought of his mother and how he couldn’t remember what she looked like. He could only remember that he’d once remembered. And even if he could remember, so what? What good would it do him? Still, he felt that if he ever saw her again, he would have an attachment to her, such as he didn’t have with Penni.
If they took Ramazan home, he might possibly never ever know what his mother looked like. Was this fair to Ramazan? Was this right?
Chapter Fourteen
Late the next morning someone knocked on the door, and Jaden peered out the peephole to see Akerke. He opened the door.
“I have surprise!” Akerke said, as if talking to a young child. “We are going to Syr Darya. Is river that flows through Kyzylorda. Many Americans have enjoyed this river.”
Penni was still in her pajamas, but she got dressed, and they all walked down to the alley, where Sam was waiting. When they drove to the street, Jaden saw people everywhere sweeping. And there were a few piles of dead leaves on fire.
“Is cleanup day,” Akerke explained without being asked. She added, “It happens once a month. I am very proud of how clean is our city.”
***
The Syr Darya was not very wide and was pretty tame, flowing slowly. Dry grass and grayish-green foliage lined the area next to it. The wind blew as hard as it had the day before.
Jaden thought the river area was beautiful in a barren, dilapidated, run-down sort of way. The path alongside the river might have been nice years earlier. In some sections the tiles were intact and easy to walk on. In others, whole sections of tile were missing. There was broken glass all over. Many of the benches they first came across were missing their boards. But farther out the benches were in better shape. Lots of crows were picking at sunflower seed shells that people must have dropped while sitting here.
They continued on until the sidewalk ended and there was only a dirt path in front of them.
“Oh, there!” Akerke cried out. “A camel! They come near the river. This is my surprise for you.”
The camel was idly nosing through some grass but lifted his head as they moved toward it. As they got closer, the camel stared right at Jaden, and for a paranoid moment Jaden thought it might be the same camel who’d chased him the day before.
“I appreciate camels, but I do not love them,” Sam said glumly. “But Akerke has discovered that the Americans feel love for camels. So we bring you here.” His cell phone rang, and he took it out of his pocket. He said something in Russian, and then another phone rang from another pocket. He took out a second phone, saying only, “I am working” in English before hanging up. Then he said, “I am working” into the first phone and put both phones into his pockets.
Akerke was saying, “ ‘Camel’ comes from Arabic word for ‘beauty.’ ”
Sam added, “The Americans see camel’s thick eyelashes, and this they think is beautiful. I too see beauty in the camels, but only in how they are built to survive in desert. This is beautiful. Eyelashes are not what is beautiful.” He shrugged. “But I rarely say so to the Americans. They want to believe it is eyelashes which make camels beautiful, so this I let them think. I only tell you now because Jaden seems like boy who wants to know truth.”
“The eyelashes are beautiful,” Penni said.
Sam shrugged like, What did I tell you?
The camel made a spitting noise, and a big hunk of pink skin was extruded from its mouth, just hanging there. “Is that his tongue?” Jaden asked.
“Is the lining of his mouth!” Akerke said excitedly. “You are lucky. Most Americans do not get to see this. They can spit out lining of their mouth! And lining of mouth is so tough that they may eat thorns and do not feel pain.” She paused, then said, “The camel lives for forty years. Their humps store fat, not water as many believe.” She acted very pleased and proud, as if this camel were a personal pet she was showing off.
Then, just like the other camel Jaden had kind of met, this one became extremely interested in him. It walked forward, then pushed its nose at Jaden’s left ear. He stepped back, and it stepped forward and nosed him again, almost pushing him over. Then Jaden trotted a few steps away, but the camel didn’t follow and instead stood there watching him. “Camels don’t like me,” Jaden said a little worriedly.
“Or perhaps this camel likes you. It is hard to say which way it feels,” Sam said.
“Who are we to say what this camel does or does not like, eh?”
But it was time to head back so they could make it to their bonding session. Sam’s limping grew worse as they walked. Jaden slowed down a bit so that Sam wouldn’t be left behind so much. “Jaden, did you like the river?” asked Akerke.
“Yeah, it was kind of beat up,” Jaden answered. “But I liked that.”
“What is this?” Sam said.
“It was kind of old and falling apart,” Jaden explained.
“Ah, it is not new,” Sam said. “Americans are interested in what is new.”
“You have a lot of opinions about Americans,” Jaden replied.
“What is this? I have same number of opinions as anyone!”
Jaden decided to let it go.
When they arrived for bonding, the toddlers were outside. The boy from the day before recognized Jaden and chopped at the air with his arms, grinning. He clumsily loped to Jaden even as the caretaker called to him. It sounded like his name was Dimash.
“Mom, I’m going to stay outside for a while. I’ll be right there. This is the kid I was talking about. His name is Dimash.”
Steve and Penni looked at Dimash, then at each other. Steve said, “But, Jaden, you need to bond with our baby. He’s going to be your brother.”
“I know, Dad. I’ll be right in. I want to talk to Dimash here for one minute—no, two—maybe five.”
Steve and Penni looked at each other again, and Steve finally said, “Okay, but just for a minute. I expect to see you inside in a minute. As in one minute.”
When the adults went inside, Dimash grunted. “Unh, unh!” Then he stood very still, frowned a bit, and gazed into the air. “Kak dyela,” he cried out, then laughed. He twirled around, laughing and saying, “Kak dyela, kak dyela.”
Jaden knew that meant “How’re things?” He’d read that in a Russian phrase book. “Kak dyela,” he said back.
Dimash laughed and flapped his arms. He was probably around four years old, and Jaden knew that kids aged out of the baby house when they turned four or five. Penni had told him that in America.
Jaden said, “Whassup, dude?”
Dimash smiled.
“Hey, I got something for you.” Jaden reached into his pocket and pulled out a bag of M&M’s he’d brought from the States. He handed an M&M to Dimash.
Dimash studied it and smiled widely. “It’s candy,” Jaden said. “Candy.” He took out an M&M for himself and put it in his mouth. “Mmmmm, this is good. Go on, eat it.”
Dimash didn’t do anything, so Jaden took out another M&M and placed it right into the boy’s mouth.
Dimash opened his eyes wide and shook his head as if an electric jolt had passed through him. “Unh!”
“That’s called ‘candy.’ ”
Suddenly the other kids ran at Jaden and held out their hands. The caretaker rushed over and tried to grab Dimash, but he ran away. She chased after him and caught him, scolding him in Russian as he screamed. Then she started yelling at Jaden. When she didn’t stop, he put his hands in his pockets and decided to wander inside.
The place seemed deserted and smelled less strongly of bleach than it had the day before. He heard chirping from a bird. He checked the director’s office, but it was empty. “Kak dyela,” he said to himself. Then, very faintly, he heard singing, or imagined he did. He knew it was Penni because she was singing “What a Wonderful World.”
He leaned into a doorway and saw Penni, Steve, Ramazan, and two other couples with babies. He wondered where the toddlers met with their future parents. The walls were painted with two big, bright murals of forest scenes. There was a long couch in a big open space with a rug on the parquet floor. Someone—maybe an interpreter—was sitting idly on a bench at a piano. A big sky-blue Kazakh flag hung behind the piano.
Jaden stepped to the window and saw that the toddlers were still outside, playing in the courtyard. He turned back around and watched the parents and babies interacting. The other grown-ups were talking in what Jaden thought might be German. What was this place anyway? This place where parents converged and babies were taken from their homeland to live half a world away?
Steve called out, “Come on over here, Jaden. Let’s be a family.”
Jaden sauntered over to where Penni and Steve were sitting on the floor next to Ramazan. Ramazan stared into space. What was up with that? Jaden squatted on the floor next to the baby. “Whassup, buddy?” Ramazan didn’t respond. “Hey, I got something for you.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the bag of M&M’s.
“Don’t give him that,” Steve hissed, looking around like they’d get in trouble.
“I’m just going to rub it on his tongue,” Jaden replied. And before Steve could say another word, Jaden shook out a candy and rubbed it on Ramazan’s tongue. The baby didn’t respond at all. Jaden rubbed the candy on Ramazan’s tongue again, and again Ramazan didn’t respond.
“Let me try!” Penni said eagerly. She rubbed the candy on the baby’s tongue, and once again he didn’t respond.
Jaden leaned over Ramazan and said, “Sugar.” He held up the candy. “Shhhhhooooger.”
“The adoption agency said we’re only supposed to feed them baby food,” Steve said urgently.
Jaden flicked the same piece into the air, caught it in his mouth, and went to sit on a couch. He already understood that baby. That baby didn’t want anything, didn’t feel anything, didn’t even taste candy on his tongue. Jaden lifted up his M&M’s bag and poured all the rest of the candies into his own mouth. Should he chew or should he suck? He decided to chew, mashing his teeth into the chocolate. Oh man, oh man, oh man.
Chapter Fifteen
It was stifling in the bonding room. Though it was daytime, the sky was overcast and someone had switched on the overhead light. The equivalent of a seventy-five-watt lightbulb, Jaden guessed. In terms of electricity consumption, the United States was second in the world behind China. Kazakhstan was thirty-second, Romania forty-fifth. He’d looked it up.
He watched one couple holding up cards with pictures and then telling their baby what each picture was, trying to get her to repeat after them. The mother kept kind of studying Penni and Steve, and Jaden wondered if that was the couple who’d wanted to adopt Ramazan. Their baby was a frowner, and very small. Since babies supposedly didn’t go on the adoption register for six months, and then there was probably paperwork involved, he figured the youngest babies up for adoption were probably in the eight-month range. But the baby looked smaller than Jaden’s cousin had looked at that age.
Jaden finished his candy and plopped down on the floor cross-legged like Steve and Penni were. The baby lay in the middle, on his stomach now as Penni pushed over one of those toys that popped back up whenever you pushed it down. Ramazan was not interested.
Penni and Steve tried to get him to crawl by moving a few feet away and calling to him. He hardly noticed them. Instead he rolled over and over while Steve and Penni followed him. He rolled all the way across the floor and stopped at the wall. Steve and Penni were delighted. Even Jaden thought it was pretty cute.
Jaden thought he was going to cry then—at what, he didn’t know. Then he thought it might be jealousy. He was jealous of this baby. This baby wasn’t going to start fires. This baby wouldn’t need a thousand shrinks. Probably. Jaden got up and stomped out of the room. He slammed the door behind him, then kicked the wall twice.
Steve opened the door just as a baby house caretaker started running toward him. She paused, as if maybe she was scared. Steve grabbed Jaden by the upper arm. “I want you to stop this behavior right now. Come on, I’m taking you down to the car. You can remain there if you can’t participate.”
Jaden walked ahead of Steve, straight to the car, without a word spoken between them. He slipped into the seat next to Sam and slammed the door. Steve glared at him, then strode swiftly ba
ck to the baby house. Jaden leaned against the headrest and said, “I don’t even want a brother. I’m going to have some bad days when we get home.”
“How can you have bad days?” asked Sam. “How old are you? A child knows nothing about bad days. Let me tell you, I know bad days.”
That made Jaden curious about Sam. “You’re not a very happy man, are you?”
“Happy! Of course I am happy. Eh? What makes you say I am not happy?”
“ ’Cause you keep complaining.”
“You are hooligan, you try to make trouble.” Sam paused, then continued. “Ah ha ha ha, I am right, I see it in your eyes. A hooligan!”
“I don’t even know what a hooligan is.”
“What do you mean? How can you not know what you are? You make no sense. But never mind. Come now, let’s be friends. We will be spending many time together for next few weeks. Let’s not argue. You are hooligan, but I am open-minded man.”
Jaden assessed Sam. He wasn’t a bad sort. Maybe he was a little emotional, and maybe he complained a lot, but like he said, they would be spending a lot of time together in the coming weeks. Jaden nodded once at Sam, then held out his fist for Sam to bump.
“What is this, you want to punch me?”
Jaden laughed. He liked this man. “In America when two guys want to say ‘good job’ or ‘way to go’ or ‘okay, fine,’ they touch each other’s fists. It’s called a ‘fist bump.’ ”
“I see.” Sam solemnly put out his fist, which Jaden tapped with his own. Then they both put their fists down. Sam nodded his head. “It is good thing, this fist bump. Between two men. Yes, it is good.”