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Second Child
- University of Iowa Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
2 1 A child is missing, the only boy in the group, one white boy out of twenty-three children. Everyone else got back to the buses on time except for Sam, twelve years old and finger-bone skinny, as soft-faced as his sister and all the rest of the girls. He’ll be hard to spot among the milling tourists. His parents let him leave the gift shop while they were buying their panda T-shirts, panda hats and backpacks, counting out their money, trying to convert to dollars in their heads, and when they walked outside, he was gone. She offers cold water to the families on both buses and then walks back to the turnstile, speaks briefly to the guard, and stands by the gate to wait. The parents are scouring the park for him. If he shows up by himself, she will make sure he’s all Second Child 2 2 S e c o n d C h i l d right and send him to Bus A, where she sees his sister looking nervously through the window. She feels a pinch of worry, not for Sam’s safety but in case he’s scared or anxious, being lost in a foreign place and not knowing the language. It would panic her to be without the words to find her way home. But Sam isn’t truly lost, only a little misplaced, and the guards, when they find him, will bring him to the gate. She won’t frown at him the way she did the other day with two of the girls who wandered off and made the group late for lunch. Sam didn’t mean to cause trouble; he’s been eager to please her. He didn’t say a word for the first four days of the tour and then, in Xian, he started asking questions, speaking to her privately when the rest of the group walked away. She said it was okay, he could sit up front beside her, and gave him the window seat so he could look out at all the traffic. After that, he found her wherever they went. She glances at her watch. They are thirty minutes behind schedule, but there’s plenty of time before the farewell dinner. Tomorrow she’ll go home. She’ll fly home for a little rest. Her father’s birthday is at the end of the week; she’ll be home in time to bring him the carton of cigarettes she bought at the airport. The last day is always the longest. There’s a lot to organize and nerves to settle. She’ll send the families on and go alone to her gate. She checks her watch again and grimaces to the guard: these Americans, they have ideas of their own. On every tour, there are one or two who don’t like to stay with the group or who criticize the schedule or ask for special treatment. It isn’t the children who ask. Not the girls. But this time, there’s a boy, and even though she was starting to like him, now he has made them all wait. She walks to a bench and opens her umbrella to the sun. Her eyes empty out as she studies the paving stones. Go back and quit, that’s what she ought to do. The day she gets back, she should send an e-mail to Wisconsin and make up some excuse. With her English-speaking skills, she could easily find other work in the Beijing office of a big American corporation or as assistant to the boss in a Chinese company trying to attract foreign investment . The work would be easier, and if she didn’t feel like it, she wouldn’t have to smile, but it would be hard to give up the money. She glances down the path and thinks about the tips. Tomorrow the families will slip her fat envelopes full of cash, the long white S e c o n d C h i l d 23 ones that fold and crackle and sometimes a red one from a family proud that they researched local custom. Fifty dollars American, sometimes sixty, an envelope from every family grateful for her intercession, for her very good English and that she told them to call her “Daisy.” The narrow bills are sickly green and soft and thick, like cloth between her fingers. When they say good-bye...