MISSING LEAVES

Where I come from, people’s family names come first. Family trees trace long ancestral lines back to a home village, and those who fall from their branches become missing leaves.

My father came into Hong Kong along with thousands of refugees from China’s mainland who were desperate to escape Mao’s regime. He could have been the first leaf to fall from an ancient family tree. I’ll never know.

My mother was an orphan, also from Guangdong Province. Right from the start, then, I was a missing leaf from two family trees.

My parents met at the restaurant where they worked, she as an amah (“hostess”) and he as a cook. Their names appear on a faded copy of my birth certificate. She is listed as “Fan Ching Mui,” which I am told means “quiet little sister.” But Chinese tones can mean so many things. I may be way off base.

My mother and the cook had an "affair," and she got pregnant. I hope it was consensual. I suspect it was unexpected. When she was about six months along, my father very kindly gave her fifty Hong Kong dollars and disappeared forever.

That’s all I know about that gentleman, half of whose DNA I carry. That’s all I care to know.

Where I come from, unwanted girls are aborted or drowned or dumped on the steps of police stations and stairwells. The lucky ones are taken to orphanages. Our lives are nearly worthless in a culture that favors boys, to put it mildly. When China instituted its one-child policy, it raised a generation of young princes who now have no one to marry. Even though parents are now allowed to have two children, it’ll take years to raise a crop of eligible young brides

I am lucky that I was born at all.

On 5^th May, 1958, my mother gave birth to me at the Eastern Maternity Hospital, which no longer exists. I’ll never know the story of my first hours and days in the world. Was her labor was long and difficult or were there complications that called for a C-section? Or was it "uneventful," the cold medical term for a woman who suffers every moment no matter what.

It's possible she had unsuccessfully sought to have an abortion. Or did she choose to carry me to term? I wouldn't be here if she hadn't. That's why I believe in a woman's right to choose either course.

I have one clue that she did choose to give birth to me. She kept me with her for six weeks. That tells me she gave motherhood a try. But I'm sure poverty made raising a child untenable, that she had been fired from her job or quit from shame. She made an arrangement to place me with a foster mother and make regular visits to provide me with milk. That didn't last, though. When I was six weeks old, she disappeared breaking my branch from the family tree forever.

 I see the child I used to be when I look into the glass

My mother’s eyes, the light of China.

Where is she now, so many years gone by?

Does she gaze into store windows, all alone with her dreams

And in her arms a child, or baskets of fish?

Home alone to crowded rooms, clinging to the weary wheel of life.

Did she weep at surrendering me? Did her womb feel empty and hollow with loss? Even now, if she has survived into her eighties, does she wonder what became of the girl she carried all those decades ago?

If I were with her now, what would I have become?

In her eyes, the light of China.

Would I have had my music, a gift of the soul?

Or gazed into store windows, all alone with my dreams?

And in my arms a child, or baskets of fish?

Home alone to crowded rooms, holding to the weary wheel of life.

The foster mother took me to the nearest police station. They promptly turned me over to the Po Leung Kuk Orphanage, which in those days was a dark pit of starving babies and overworked student nurses. Now it’s a bright, cheerful community center and school, but it doesn’t shy away from its past. Visitors can see photographs of the days when toddlers were tied all day to wooden seats in the sun, their only chance to get outdoors. They can read about the babies whose bottles were propped on pillows and fed as if on an assembly line.

I’ve recently learned that I would have been taken to the Fanling Baby Hospital first, which also no longer exists. In the late 1950s, British civil servants were recalled to England, leaving behind a shambles of a government.

When I was about three months, they moved me to the main orphanage where I joined the throngs tied to those wooden chairs, sitting for hours in an unchanged diaper. They say that when I was finally adopted by an American couple at age twenty months, I was so malnourished I was the size of a typical nine-month-old and unable to walk.

This is not a pity party. I flourished in my new home in the US. With a diet of good old cow’s milk, fresh vegetables, meat and potatoes, I caught up to American kids within a year. My adoptive family gave me all the food I could want, made sure I went to good schools, and even gave me piano lessons that have led to my lifelong career in music.

Sometimes on the street, I think I see your face.

Your eyes, the light of China

But you are far away, a stranger to me.

If you only could know how well I am,

You could see that I’m a woman now.

Just last month I took a DNA test to see if I could learn more about my ancestry, wanting to learn more about my family tree.

Blank. Blank. Blank. I have to go back to a second cousin once removed to find someone even remotely related to me. No grandparents or great-grandparents, no home village. I do know that I’m one hundred percent Chinese. That and five dollars will get me a latte at a freshly unionized Starbucks.

My DNA can be traced back through something called a " maternal Haplogroup." The line goes back to a single woman who lived 16,000 years ago. That's some family tree bare branches and all!

I’m amused to learn that I have 2 percent Neanderthal DNA, more than 96 percent of those who take the test. Maybe my original home town was Bedrock, and Fred Flintstone was my neighbor! Actually, the Neanderthal were surprisingly more advanced than their club-wielding, caveman stereotype. They had fire and tools, made jewelry and cave art, mourned their dead, and possibly could speak aloud. Their skulls were longer and flatter than those of modern humans but some had larger brains. Maybe they did invent the wheel, like Thag in the Gary Larsen comic.

In my exploration of the past, I've learned that I don't have to feel like a missing leaf anymore. My husband and I have planted a new tree with a son and daughter and two grandchildren. I am the matriarch of a family tree whose roots will grow deep and strong.