Wish You Happy Forever by Jenny Bowen Page B

said, and he’d been sent away. It had taken three years for a child to speak out.
    Now I stood in my driveway full of toys and dreams for the future and thought of the children waiting in China. The secrets. Xinmei, her scars. No one to speak for her. Not for any of them.
    I knew I couldn’t speak loudly in China. The doors would be closed again if I did. But we would find a way to be a quiet voice for those children. There is a Chinese saying, “Whispers on earth are thunder in heaven’s ears.”
    We would quietly make thunder.
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    To our first-ever Half the Sky volunteer crew—
    We can’t wait to welcome you to China! It’s hard for me to believe, but it’s been two long years since the idea of Half the Sky began. And, as you can imagine, it’s been an extremely delicate operation to get access to the children in China’s orphanages in order to help them. We don’t want anything to happen now to shake the trust that has been placed in us.
    So here comes a necessary little speech:
    I hope that when you are in the orphanage, you will think of yourselves as ambassadors of Half the Sky and of all foreign adoptive families. You are there to work—to give your loving energy to help the children. You are not there as sightseers. Please save your cameras for excursions outside the institution. Orphanage administrators are very protective of the children and their surroundings. Dying Rooms –type coverage has made them justifiably worried about the image of the care they give the children and how it is portrayed. They really are doing the best they can. The fact that they are allowing a bunch of foreigners in to revamp and reorganize the children’s lives is proof of their concern. So, rule number one—no cameras!
    Now, there is some nervousness afoot about the possibility that someone traveling with Half the Sky will be smitten with a particular little one in the institutions and will feel compelled to move heaven and earth to try to adopt her. Or that someone will see the perfect child for a best friend or sister back home and suggest she call her agency to petition CCAA. It can’t happen. It would jeopardize Half the Sky’s programs and, indeed, the entire China foreign adoption program, if Half the Sky volunteers ever, intentionally or not, use our programs to pre-identify children.
    This is only the beginning of a very long journey. We have a year to make this program work and to prove its worth. And then we have many miles and many orphanages before us. We are honored and privileged to have the doors opened to us. And we are grateful to you for helping us keep those doors open.
    End of sermon. See you in China!
    About now, I wasn’t exactly sure how clean my own hands were on the topic of pre-identified adoption—officially forbidden in China at the time—but I could only imagine what would happen if our very first volunteer build disintegrated into an adoption shopping tour. Whether or not I had practiced what I preached, the warning had to be sent.
    Changzhou, China
July 2000
    â€œDo you think we’ve just ruined our lives?” I asked Dick.
    â€œDo you?”
    â€œShe really hates us. Me anyway. Where does a two-year-old learn to spit like that?”
    â€œI don’t want to think about it,” Dick said.
    â€œAnd she bit Maya in the bath.”
    Dick groaned. I stuffed my face into the hotel pillow, shutting out what was left of the sweltering day. Our future daughter, Xinmei, soon to be Anya, was by the door, screaming to be let out of our room, where we were clearly torturing her. Maya looked shell-shocked. Dick too.
    I reached out, rested my hand on his chest.
    â€œShe seems to like you, though.”
    He went to the door, gathered the miserable little bundle up in his arms, and carried her to the bed. She stopped screaming but kept a wary eye on me. She snuffled pitifully.
    Maya climbed up beside me, keeping a