Growing Girls by Jeanne Marie Laskas Read Free Book Online Page A

7
    LENGTH:
772 words
    HEADLINE:
Women: Do the foreigners who adopt our girls know how to feed and love them in their arms and hearts?
    BYLINE:
Xinran
    BODY:
    Recently I received an e-mail. Had I ever Interviewed any women who were forced to give up children because of the “one child” law, which China started in 1981? Yes, many
.
    One particularly painful memory stands out. On a cold winter morning in 1990, I passed a public toilet in Zhangzhou. A noisy crowd had formed around a little bag of clothes lying in the windy entrance. People were pointing and shouting: “Look, look, she is still alive!”
    “Alive? Was this another abandoned baby girl?” I pushed through the crowd and picked up that little bundle: It was a baby girl, barely a few days old. She was frozen blue, but her tiny nose was twitching. I begged for help: “We should save her, she is alive!”
    “Stupid woman, do you know what you are doing? How could you manage this poor thing?”
    I couldn’t wait for help. I took the baby to the nearest hospital
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I paid for first aid for her, but no one in the hospital seemed to be in a hurry to save this dying baby. I took a tape recorder from my backpack and started reporting what I saw. It worked: a doctor stopped and took the baby to the emergency room
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    As I waited outside, a nurse said: “Please forgive our cold minds. There are too many abandoned baby girls for us to handle. We have helped more than ten, but afterwards, no one has wanted to take responsibility for their future.”
    I broadcast this girl’s story on my radio show that night. The phone lines were filled with both angry and sympathetic callers
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    Ten days later, I got a letter from a childless couple; they wanted to adopt the baby girl. That same day on my answer machine, I heard a crying voice: “Xinran, I am the mother of the baby girl. She was born just four days before you saved her. Thank you so much for taking my daughter to hospital. I watched in the crowd with my heart broken. I followed you and sat outside your radio station all day. Many, many times I almost shouted out to you: ‘That is my baby!’
    “I know many people hate me; I hate myself even more. But you don’t know how hard life is for a girl in the countryside as the first child of a poor family. When I saw their little bodies bullied by hard work and cruel men, I promised I wouldn’t let my girl have such a hopeless life. Her father is a good man, but we can’t go against our family and the village. We have to have a boy for the family tree
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    “Oh, my money is running out, only two minutes left, it is so expensive
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    “We can’t read or write. But, if you can, please tell my girl in the future to remember that, no matter how her life turns out
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my love will live in her blood and my voice in her heart. (I could hear her crying at this point.) Please beg her new family to love her as if she were their own. I will pray for them every day and…”
    The message stopped. Three months later, I sent the baby girl to her new family—a schoolteacher and a lawyer—with her new name, “Better.” Better’s mother never called again
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    Afterwards, I started to search for other mothers who had abandoned their girls. This spring, I talked to some near the banks of the Yangtze River. Did they not want to find out where their babies were? “I would rather suffer this dark hole inside me if it means she can have a better life. I don’t want to disturb my girl’s life,” said one. “I am very pleased for a rich person to take my daughter; she has a right to live a good life,” said another
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    One of them asked me: “Do you believe those foreigners who adopt our girls know how to feed and love them in their arms and hearts?”
    I read this article over and over again. The first few times I felt like a spy finally finding the corner of the edge of the most critical piece of evidence that would mean the difference between war and peace. Actual words from the actual