A Southern Girl Read Online Free Page B

“This mirror was wrapped up with her.”
    I caught a cab back, bypassing the orphanage and heading straight to the offices of Dr. Lee, who treated our wards. He ran a high-volume clinic, but always managed to find a way to move me to the head of a long line. As I lingered at his shoulder, he unwrapped layers of rough, cheap cloth until she lay naked on the table, a crude incision of the umbilical cord just beginning to heal.
    “About three weeks old, I think,” he said, bending over her. “A bit premature.”
    My eye caught the small rectangular paper pinned to the cloth. “The child has a name,” I said, examining the Hangol. “Soo Yun.” Dr. Lee took no notice, repositioning his stethoscope on her inflamed chest.
    “I’ll give you something for the fever,” he said. “If she isn’t better in a day or two, bring her back.”
    After slipping the paper on which her name was printed into the same pocket holding the mirror, I discarded her wraps and swaddled her in a surgical gown I promised Dr. Lee I’d return. Then I stuffed her into my coat for the walk to the orphanage, two blocks away. Looking back, I feel sure something changed in those two blocks. Most of the abandonedchildren came without names. The staff took turns naming them. As it was a task I disliked, I pulled rank as supervisor of Ward 3E and skipped my turn in the naming rotation. Some came without even clothes. This one had not only a name but a mirror, and I couldn’t remember any of our foundlings arriving with a possession. From my brief examination of the mirror, it was hardly of the best quality, but if this child came from the impoverishment signaled by her crude clothes, her mother gave something up in sending it. Sending them.
    A sucker for children, I told friends who asked that I took the job at Open Arms Orphanage eight years ago because I had always wanted fifty children and this seemed like the only practical way to have them. They were my life, as anyone who came to my pathetic apartment and met my needy cat, Bo-cat, knew. I was rarely at home, and not for the reasons most women twenty-nine were away. I hadn’t had a date in over a year. Physically, I was what you would call “plain.” I knew this and had reconciled myself to it. I blamed my parents for my boxy build, my flat chest, my rugby calves, and uninspired features. We can’t all be movie stars. But if I was honest enough to admit my shortcomings, I stated with equal sincerity that I was one damn fine nurse. I could tell you the name of every child on my ward and their birthdays, whether those birthdays were real or the ones we guessed at. I knew their histories. I knew their fears and their favorite foods. I rejoiced when they left and I cried when they left. I also cried when they stayed, as so many did, until they aged into the next grouping, where their chances for placement diminished each year. It broke my heart to see a child without a family. But while they were in my care, they knew love and compassion and support. I couldn’t give them everything, but I could give them that.
    That little peanut inside my coat weighed barely two kilograms. Her lungs sought air by the thimbleful. Tiny Soo Yun with the mirror, whose fevered pulse I felt pumping up against me. What would become of her? I asked myself that question about each of my children, but I had not been at the home long enough to test my instincts against results. When I started on Ward 3E, the oldest children, now fourteen, were six. I projected wonderful futures for them, the way you do when you are young and idealistic and lack experience. With my help, each would become a ballerina, a tennis champion, a teacher, a doctor, a mother. Soo Yun wastoo young to forecast any such future. First, she had to breathe. Next, she must be adopted. Lastly, she must be inspired. Soil, water, light; the elements of survival, and without all three she may find herself, years from now, the drug-crazed landlady of a