Throwaway Daughter

Prologue No one seemed to understand what it was like to have no real birthday. Even Blackie, our Shih-Tzu, had one, noted on the form given to me when Mom put my name down as his adoptive "parent" when I was five years old. Never mind how that affected my understanding of the word adoption. Blackie's registration form even recorded his family history, the whole pedigree. Lucky me. I had a made-up birthday -- December 8, 1980, the day I was found on the steps of the orphanage. I could have been weeks old or a couple of days young; I didn't know and neither did anybody else. I might as well be a lake discovered by an explorer. My name is Grace Dong-mei Margaret Parker, but don't call me anything but Grace Parker, without initials. Grace is my nanna's name, and Margaret is the first name of Grandmamma, my mother's mother. When I came along I ended a silent battle between my two grandmothers that had smouldered ever since my sister was born. Megan was Grandmamma's middle name, but Nanna only won a spot as my sister's middle name, Carole. It became a bigger deal, I guess, after my mom had a hysterectomy. My name has Chinese in it thanks to my pig-headed parents. I did everything I could to change their minds. I begged, argued, and threw tantrums. All I wanted was to have my Chinese name, Dong-mei, removed. "I promise I'll never, ever ask for anything else," I pleaded. But my pathetic begging failed. So I tried playing dumb and deaf, with my mother especially, refusing to respond when she called me Dong-mei. I made fun of the sound, saying "done-mine" or, once, "dung-may" because I thought it was a dirty word. My mother applied her teacher's patience and reasoning like sticky ointments. "It's not just a name, Grace; it means much more. Your dad and I promised Mrs. Xia that we would bring you up in touch with your culture and your roots. The name is a good place to start." "I don't know any Mrs. Whatever," I shouted. "Why do I want their roots? I don't want to be Chinese, and I don't want a Chinese name." Finally, Mom came up with one of her "reasonable" compromises. Up 'til then, she had called me Dong-mei only at home. If I didn't stop fussing, she said, she'd use my Chinese name outside our house as well. My resistance crumbled. As if there wasn't enough repeating or reusing names, my confusion deepened when my grade three teacher, Miss McKerrow, taught us a new word, junior. She used a boy's name in my class as an example. "Robert Smith Junior," she said loudly before she wrote the name on the blackboard, "because Rob's father is also called Robert." Rob, who always needed a haircut and smelled bad, beamed at the attention he was getting. He stood up and told the class that in his family there were three Robs and two Juniors. "My grandfather is the first Robert. My dad and I are Juniors. Whenever my grandfather stays with us there's a mix-up." That evening I told my mother that I wanted to be a junior, too. I didn't have much idea what the term meant, even after Miss McKerrow's little lesson, but I was pretty sure I was missing out on something, and that it wasn't fair. After the dishes were done Mom sat me down and said that only boys could be Juniors. It was a sort of tradition that boys were named after their fathers or grandfathers. It seemed to me that boys enjoyed a lot more choices than I did. * * * * * My parents insisted on feeding me memories of the misery in mYe, Ting-Xing is the author of 'Throwaway Daughter', published 2003 under ISBN 9780385659529 and ISBN 0385659520.