A dream is a wish your heart makes, part 2

Even before May could communicate in English she began to tell us about her life in China. She came originally from xiang xia -- the countryside. She remembers her first family; she is not entirely certain whether this was her birth family, but she thinks so. She was the middle of five children, four girls and one boy. Her mother was nursing a baby. Her mother didn't ever hug her or tell her she loved her. She remembers going to the outhouse and being afraid of the chickens chasing her. Once some bad people came to xiang xia and they all had to go upstairs in their house and hide. No one explained to her why.

At some point she was sent to live with another family. The mother there was nice; she let her play outside and made her rice balls. But her first mother came back to get her and sent her to live with a different family. The mother there was not nice. By this May means that she slapped her for misbehaving and punished her for refusing to eat rice with dirt in it. She was sent to live with another mother who was also not nice. One day this mother took her to the city. She told her to sit at a table and stay there. The mother then ran to catch the bus without saying goodbye. (May does a heartbreaking pantomime of the woman pointing to the chair and then turning and dashing to the bus.) May sat crying until some people took her to the police station. She had to spend the weekend at the jail, which she remembers vividly.

She was taken to the social welfare institute. They cut her hair off and stuck needles in her hands and neck. She is still far more indignant about the haircut than the needles. They estimated her to be 5 years old and assigned her a new name even after she insisted that she already had a name. She refused to acknowledge her orphanage name. (We'd planned to use it as one of her middle names, but after learning how she felt we switched to her original name. She is still uncomfortable when her orphanage name is mentioned.)

She spent a few months at the SWI. Sometimes the older kids bossed the younger kids around; if someone visited and gave them candy, the big kids would take it from them. If she couldn't get to sleep at night, the big kids would yell at her.

Then she went to live with a foster family. Living with the foster family expanded her horizons and enabled her to have experiences that she would not have had at the SWI. The family sent her to private school in town instead of the orphanage school. She had friends and could walk to the grocery store by herself. She was able to travel to Shanghai several times by boat when her foster father had work that took him there.

But this mother was also not nice. She slapped May and once grabbed her by the hair and knocked her head against the door when her grade on a test wasn't good enough. She made her scrub the floor and wash clothes. May did not like hanging the clothes out to dry on the balcony because they lived on the eighth floor and she was afraid to look down. The foster parents had a grown son who, from the sounds of it, was involved in drugs, and she witnessed fights and threats to call the police.

When she found out that she was going to go to America, she was happy. She had heard about the good lives people have in America. She had seen Americans come to the orphanage, but they were only interested in babies. Now it was her turn.

We have photos of May with her foster mother, but she does not like to look at them. She remembers her foster mother's name and phone number, but she has no interest in contacting her. I wrote the number down and filed away the pictures, just as I have recorded what she has told me about her life in xiang xia and the SWI. They are part of her story.

And here is the miraculous part of that story. Somehow, despite being mistreated and abandoned, despite being frightened and alone, this little girl maintained her belief in herself as worthy of love. She could have concluded that she deserved bad treatment and sunk into self-loathing. She could have become so consumed with anger that she lost the ability to love. But she didn't. She never faltered in her conviction that she deserved to love and be loved and that there was a good life waiting for her somewhere. And that unwavering belief in herself has made all the difference.

Not long after we brought her home, May became enamored with Disney’s Cinderella. She watched the DVD over and over again and amassed quite a collection of Cinderella collectibles. She asked me to sing "A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes" to her every night at bedtime. I wondered to myself whether she made the connection between Cinderella's trials and her own story. It seemed like a pretty sophisticated leap of reasoning for a child.

But May is a sensible girl. One day she said, “I know why I like Cinderella. Cinderella have one bad mama. I have five bad mamas! Now Cinderella marry the prince and live in a castle. And I have a good mom and dad.”

Dreams really do come true.

Comments

[Deanna]

Sniff. I have no words. You are all so lucky to have found each other, and I'm so happy May's with you now. Beautiful.

[tshapedgirl]

Wow. I'm sitting here overcome with emotion. This is beautiful. May is one strong and amazing kid!

[Heather]

Wow, I'm overwhelmed also. Your May is one amazing girl. Thanks for sharing her story with us.

[Jo]

I'm late reading your posts about May but I just wanted to thank you both for telling us a part of her story. She is such an incredibly beautiful girl, inside and out it seems. I'm so happy for you all that she is now a part of a real family. Dreams really do come true.

[Shannon]

Jeez, those stories are always heartbreaking. I wondered, too, if that was why she liked Cinderella so much.