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8 Chapter One Ten Days Earlier 11:30 a.m. When we board a plane for China carrying that picture of the Man, I know it’s unlikely that we’ll unearth much information about my daughter’s past. In fact, by the time we finally hand our boarding passes over to the agent and head down the tunnel, I’ve almost forgotten why it seemed so important to go back to China, why I saved and prepared for this trip for years. Events have ganged up over the last few months to suggest that perhaps this isn’t the best time for a homeland tour. My mother died, the economy tanked, prices soared in Beijing during the Olympics, and no one else signed up for the tour. Sophie has been mercurial and volatile the last few weeks, excited but easily frustrated, happy one moment, irrationally angry the next. My credit card was refused at Dulles, and I spent a four-hour layover on the phone straightening things out with the bank, who’d put a hold on the card after I’d used it in Buffalo this morning to buy food and magazines. I’d often used a credit card in Buffalo, but at 6:00 A.M.? Unheard of. I have to admire the alertness of the credit card company, even while I feel a weird dread that this whole trip might be a bad idea, even while I feel unmoored as I always do the first few days away from the house that anchors me. And now there is another problem: we have been ticketed to sit five seats apart, which might as well be on opposite sides of the moon, the jetliner is so vast, and Sophie has no intention of sitting down until we are given seats together. She fiercely clutches my jacket sleeve, both of us standing jammed behind the last row in the first-class cabin. Others pass in an orderly shuffle: a British guy in black dress shoes with no socks, cell phone glued to his ear; an Asian student turtled by a bulging backpack; white businessmen swinging weathered leather briefcases. They all stare straight ahead, flinching at the sobbing ten-year-old. They heave luggage into overhead bins and slide into seats. “Mommy!” Sophie cries, her voice ragged, edging toward hysteria. Crossing the Blue Willow Bridge 9 “Just ask someone to switch with you,” the ticket agent had told us earlier . But when I did, the elderly woman in the seat next to mine set her jaw and stared straight ahead, unbudging, not to be guilted from her aisle seat. I was equally reluctant to give up my window seat. It seemed important for Sophie and me to be able to look out together to see China come into focus. “Just sit down,” a flight attendant yelled at us. Sophie refused. I saw her point. Sitting down would be akin to giving in. We remained in the aisle. “Excuse me,” other passengers said politely, at first. “Get out of the way,” they finally started hissing. Which is how we’ve ended up the recipients of the glares of first-class passengers , reclining with their martinis while my child fists her hand around my wrist like a shackle and implores me not to leave her. Here we are, on the brink of our long-awaited, long-saved-for trip to my daughter’s birthplace, with no place to sit. At ten, Sophie has started sneaking eyeliner and polishing her nails black. She normally hides under skater caps and hoodies with grinning rows of toothless skulls. Strangers flinch at this child who labels herself like a box of poison, and I wish they would look closer at the skulls, some with hearts for eyes, some with bunny ears. I wish they would look closer, period. Even while I defend her, my daughter often peers at me through smoky eyes, cap pulled low, looking defiantly, prematurely adolescent. She is unpredictable , slipping in moments from argument to hug, cuddle to bristle, independent sophisticate to needy small child. Like now. Makeup free, skulls left at home lest the images be even more misunderstood in the culture of her birth, she resembles the sharp-eyed, chubby-cheeked baby I met in China almost ten years ago. All morning, I’ve been remembering that angry, cranky baby who never slept and dissolved abruptly into wails or giggles. All morning, since she rose at 4:30, Sophie has been...

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