At eight o’clock in the evening, the Baltimore airport was nearly
deserted. The wide gray corridors were empty, and the newsstands
were dark, and the coffee shops were closed. Most of the gates had
admitted their last flights. Their signboards were blank and their
rows of vinyl chairs unoccupied and ghostly.
But you could hear a distant hum, a murmur of anticipation, at the
far end of Pier D. You could see an overexcited child spinning
herself into dizziness in the center of the corridor, and then a
grownup popping forth to scoop her up and carry her, giggling and
squirming, back into the waiting area. And a latecomer, a woman in a
yellow dress, was rushing toward the gate with an armful of
long-stemmed roses.
Step around the bend, then, and you’d come upon what looked like a
gigantic baby shower. The entire waiting area for the flight from
San Francisco was packed with people bearing pink- and blue-wrapped
gifts, or hanging on to flotillas of silvery balloons printed with
IT’S A GIRL! and trailing spirals of pink ribbon. A man gripped the
wicker handle of a wheeled and skirted bassinet as if he planned to
roll it onto the plane, and a woman stood ready with a stroller so
chrome-trimmed and bristling with levers that it seemed capable of
entering the Indy 500. At least half a dozen people held video
cameras, and many more had regular cameras slung around their necks.
A woman spoke into a tape recorder in an urgent, secretive way. The
man next to her clasped an infant’s velour-upholstered car seat
close to his chest.
MOM, the button on the woman’s shoulder read-one of those man’s
read DAD. A nice-looking couple, not as young as you might
expect-the woman in wide black pants and an arty black-and-white
top of a geometric design, her short hair streaked with gray; the
man a big, beaming, jovial type with a stubbly blond buzz cut, his
bald knees poking bashfully from voluminous khaki Bermudas.
And not only were there MOM and DAD; there were GRANDMA and GRANDPA,
twice over-two complete sets. One grandma was a rumpled,
comfortable woman in a denim sundress and bandanna-print baseball
cap; the other was thin and gilded and expertly made up, wearing an
ecru linen pantsuit and dyed-to-match pumps. The grandpas were dyed
to match as well-the rumpled woman’s husband equally rumpled, his
iron-gray curls overdue for a cutting, while the gilded woman’s
husband wore linen trousers and some sort of gauzy tropical shirt,
and part of his bright yellow hair was possibly not his own.
It’s true there were other people waiting, people clearly not
included in the celebration. A weary-eyed woman in curlers; an older
woman with a younger one who might have been her daughter; a father
with two small children already dressed in pajamas. These outsiders
stood around the edges, quiet and somehow dimmed, from time to time
sneaking glances in the direction of MOM and DAD.
The plane was late. People grew restless. A child pointed out
accusingly that the arrivals board still read ON TIME-a plain old
lie. Several teenagers wandered off to the unlit waiting area just
across the corridor. A little girl in pigtails fell asleep on a
vinyl chair, the button on her green plaid blouse proclaiming
COUSIN.
Then something changed. There wasn’t any announcement-the PA system
had been silent for some time-but people gradually stopped talking
and pressed toward the jetway, craning their necks, standing on
tiptoe. A woman in a uniform punched in a code and swung open the
jetway door. A skycap arrived with a wheelchair. The teenagers
reappeared. MOM and DAD, till now in the very center of the crowd,
were nudged forward with encouraging pats, a path magically widening
to let them approach the door.
First off was a very tall young man in jeans, wearing the confused
look of someone who’d been flying too long. He spotted the mother
and daughter and went over to them and bent to kiss the daughter,
but only on the cheek because she was too busy peering past him,
just briefly returning his hug while she kept her eyes on the new
arrivals.
Two businessmen with briefcases, striding purposefully toward the
terminal. A teenage boy with a backpack so huge that he resembled an
ant with an oversized breadcrumb. Another businessman. Another
teenage boy, this one claimed by the woman in curlers. A smiling,
rosy-cheeked redhead instantly engulfed by the two children in
pajamas.
Now a pause. A sort of gathering of focus.
A crisply dressed Asian woman stepped through the door with a baby.
This baby was perhaps five or six months old-able to hold herself
confidently upright. She had a cushiony face and a head of amazingly
thick black hair, cut straight across her forehead and straight
across the tops of her ears, and she wore a footed pink sleeper.
“Ah!” everyone breathed-even the outsiders, even the mother and the
grown daughter. (Although the daughter’s young man still appeared
confused.) The mother-to-be stretched out both arms, letting her
tape recorder bounce at the end of its strap. But the Asian woman
stopped short in an authoritative manner that warded off any
approach. She drew herself up and said, “Donaldson?”
“Donaldson. That’s us,” the father-to-be said. His voice was
shaking. He had somehow got rid of the car seat, passed it blindly
to someone or other, but he stayed slightly to the rear of his wife
and kept one hand on her back as if in need of support.
“Congratulations,” the Asian woman said. “This is Jin-Ho.” She
transferred the baby to the mother’s waiting arms, and then she
unhitched a pink diaper bag from her shoulder and handed it to the
father. The mother buried her face in the crook of the baby’s neck.
The baby stayed upright, gazing calmly out at the crowd. “Ah,”
people kept saying, and “Isn’t she a cutie!” and “Did you ever see
such a doll?”
Flashbulbs, insistent video cameras, everyone pressing too close.
The father’s eyes were wet. Lots of people’s were; there were
sniffing sounds all through the waiting area and noses being blown.
And when the mother raised her face, finally, her cheeks were
sheeted with tears. “Here,” she told the father. “You hold her.”
“Aw, no, I’m scared I might … You do it, honey. I’ll watch.”
The Asian woman started riffling through a sheaf of papers. People
still disembarking had to step around her, step around the little
family and the well-wishers and the tangle of baby equipment.
Luckily, the flight hadn’t been a full one. The passengers arrived
in spurts: man with a cane, pause; retired couple, pause …
And then another Asian woman, younger than the first and plainer,
with a tucked, apologetic way of looking about. She was lugging a
bucket-shaped infant carrier by the handle, and you could tell that
the baby inside must not weigh all that much. This baby, too, was a
girl, if you could judge by the pink T-shirt, but she was smaller
than the first one, sallow and pinched, with fragile wisps of black
hair trailing down her forehead. Like the young woman transporting
her, she showed a sort of anxious interest in the crowd. Her
watchful black eyes moved too quickly from face to face.
The young woman said something that sounded like “Yaz-dun?”
“Yaz-dan,” a woman called from the rear. It sounded like a
correction. The crowd parted again, not certain which way to move
but eager to be of help, and three people no one had noticed before
approached in single file: a youngish couple, foreign-looking,
olive-skinned and attractive, followed by a slim older woman with a
chignon of sleek black hair knotted low on the nape of her neck. It
must have been she who had called out their name, because now she
called it again in the same clear, carrying voice. “Here we are.
Yazdan.” There was just the trace of an accent evident in the
ruffled r’s.
The young woman turned to face them, holding the carrier awkwardly
in front of her. “Congratulations, this is Sooki,” she said, but so
softly and so breathlessly that people had to ask each other,
“What?” “Who did she say?” “Sooki, I believe it was.” “Sooki! Isn’t
that sweet!”
There was a problem unfastening the straps that held the baby in her
carrier. The new parents had to do it because the Asian woman’s
hands were full, and the parents were flustered and unskilled-the
mother laughing slightly and tossing back her explosive waterfall of
hennaed curls, the father biting his lip and looking vexed with
himself. He wore tiny, very clean rimless glasses that glittered as
he angled first this way and then that, struggling with a plastic
clasp. The grandmother, if that was who she was, made sympathetic
tsk-tsking sounds.
But at last the baby was free. Such a little bit of a thing! The
father plucked her out in a gingerly, arm’s-length manner and handed
her to the mother, who gathered her in and rocked her and pressed
her cheek against the top of the baby’s feathery black head. The
baby quirked her eyebrows but offered no resistance. Onlookers were
blowing their noses again, and the father had to take off his
glasses and wipe the lenses, but the mother and the grandmother
stayed dry-eyed, smiling and softly murmuring. They paid no
attention to the crowd. When someone asked, “Is yours from Korea
too?” neither woman answered, and it was the father, finally, who
said, “Hmm? Oh. Yes, she is.”
“Hear that, Bitsy and Brad? Here’s another Korean baby!”
The first mother glanced around-she was allowing the two grandmas a
closer inspection-and said, “Really?” Her husband echoed her:
“Really!” He stepped over to the other parents and held out his
hand. “Brad Donaldson. That’s my wife, Bitsy, over there.”
“How do you do,” the second father said. “Sami Yazdan.” He shook
Brad’s hand, but his lack of interest was almost comical; he
couldn’t keep his eyes off his baby. “Uh, my wife, Ziba,” he added
after a moment. “My mother, Maryam.” He had a normal Baltimore
accent, although he pronounced the two women’s names as no American
would have-Zee-bah and Mar-yam. His wife didn’t even look up. She
was cradling the baby and saying what sounded like “Soo-soo-soo.”
Brad Donaldson flapped a hand genially in her direction and returned
to his own family.
By the time the transfers had been made official-both Asian women
proving to be sticklers for detail-the Donaldson crowd had started
to thin. Evidently some sort of gathering was planned for later,
though, because people kept calling, “See you back at the house!” as
they moved toward the terminal. And then the parents themselves were
free to go, Bitsy leading the way while the woman with the stroller
wheeled it just behind her like a lady-in-waiting. (Clearly nothing
would persuade Bitsy to give up her hold on that baby.) Brad
lumbered after her, followed by a few stragglers and, at the very
tail end, the Yazdans. One of the Donaldson grandpas, the rumpled
one, dropped back to ask the Yazdans, “So. Did you have a long wait
for your baby? Lots of paperwork and cross-examinations?”
“Yes,” Sami said, “a very long wait. A very long-drawn-out process.”
And he glanced toward his wife. “At times we thought it never would
happen,” he said.
The grandpa clucked and said, “Don’t I know it! Lord, what Bitsy and
Brad had to put themselves through!”
They passed to one side of Security, which was staffed by a lone
employee sitting on a stool, and started down the escalator-all but
the man with the bassinet. He had to take the elevator. The woman
with the stroller, however, seemed undaunted. She tipped the front
end of the stroller back smartly and stepped on without hesitation.
“Listen,” Brad called up to the Yazdans from the lower level.
“You-all feel like coming to our house? Joining the celebration?”
But Sami was absorbed in guiding his wife onto the escalator, and
when he didn’t answer, Brad flapped a hand again in that oh-well,
affable way of his. “Maybe another time,” he said to no one in
particular. And he turned to catch up with the others.
The exit doors slid open and the Donaldsons streamed out. They
headed toward the parking garage in twos and threes and fours, and
shortly after that the Yazdans emerged to stand on the curb a
moment, motionless, as if they needed time to adjust to the hot,
humid, dimly lit, gasoline-smelling night.
Friday, August 15, 1997. The night the girls arrived.
Chapter Two
Sometimes when Maryam Yazdan looked at her new little granddaughter
she had an eerie, lightheaded feeling, as if she had stepped into
some sort of alternate universe. Everything about the child was
impossibly perfect. Her skin was a flawless ivory, and her hair was
almost too soft to register on Maryam’s fingertips. Her eyes were
the shape of watermelon seeds, very black and cut very precisely
into her small, solemn face. She weighed so little that Maryam often
lifted her too high by mistake when she picked her up. And her
hands! Tiny hands, with curling fingers. The wrinkles on her
knuckles were halvah-colored (so amusing, that a baby had
wrinkles!), and her nails were no bigger than dots.
Susan, they called her. They chose a name that resembled the name
she had come with, Sooki, and also it was a comfortable sound for
Iranians to pronounce.
“Su-san!” Maryam would sing when she went in to get her from her
nap. “Su-Su-Su!” Susan would gaze out from behind the bars of her
crib, sitting beautifully erect with one hand cupping each knee in a
poised and self-possessed manner.
Maryam took care of her Tuesdays and Thursdays-the days her
daughter-in-law worked and Maryam did not. She arrived at the house
around eight-thirty, slightly later if the traffic was bad. (Sami
and Ziba lived out in Hunt Valley, as much as a half-hour drive from
the city during rush hour.) By that time Susan would be having
breakfast in her high chair. She would light up and make a welcoming
sound when Maryam walked into the kitchen. “Ah!” was what she most
often said-nothing to do with “Mari-june,” which was what they had
decided she should call Maryam. “Ah!” she would say, and she would
give her distinctive smile, with her lips pursed together demurely,
and tilt her cheek for a kiss.
Well, not in the first few weeks, of course. Oh, those first weeks
had been agony, the two parents trying their best, shrilling
“Susie-june!” and shaking toys in her face and waltzing her about in
their arms. All she did was stare at them, or-worse yet-stare away
from them, twisting to get free, fixing her eyes stubbornly anywhere
else. She wouldn’t take more than a sip or two from her bottle, and
when she woke crying in the night, as she did every few hours, her
parents’ attempts to comfort her only made her cry harder.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from Digging to America
by Anne Tyler
Copyright © 2006 by Anne Tyler.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Knopf
Copyright © 2006
Anne Tyler
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-307-26394-0
