An-Ya and Her Diary by Diane René Christian Page A

didn’t look at him after I said that because I wasn’t sure if he even heard me.
    What happened next was even harder to believe.
    He grabbed my hand. Well, not really grabbed, but slid my hand off of my chest and rested it with his in the grass. His skin felt rough and it made mine feel smooth. He rubbed my palm with his thumb, told me he was sorry he lied, and then he pointed to the sky and showed me a cloud butterfly.
    Angel Bones slept through the whole thing.
    115
    Dear Penny,
    Tomorrow Wanna is taking Ellie and me to an Asian food market. It is a one hour drive to get there. I will need to be given car sick medicine because I get very sick. Driving around China was horrible. I can’t even count how many times I threw up. The airplane was awful too.
    Wanna said maybe going to the market would be a good change to be around people who look like me and Ellie. Wanna thought that maybe I might recognize some food that was familiar and we could buy it and bring it home. I told her that mostly we ate rice in the orphanage. The rice had vegetables on top and sometimes a little meat. Sometimes we had a clear soup. A nanny would watch the kids to make sure that they ate all of their food. If we weren’t eating fast enough, then she would give us an angry look and point to our food.
    Anyway, I don’t expect to recognize any food but rice, and I am worried about being around a lot of Asian people.
    116
    Dear Penny,
    The drive to the Asian Market was terrible. It felt like it took forever to get there. At one point we stopped at a red light. I looked into the car stopped next to us and saw a little boy who was my age. His head was pressed against the window, and he was staring up at the sky. Next to him was the man driving, and he looked like the little boy—just bigger. The man was screaming at the boy. He was angry and kept hitting the boy in the shoulder. The boy just kept looking up to the sky. What if someone like that man would have adopted me?
    Right as the light turned green, the boy looked straight at me. His eyes were empty. I don’t know what he saw in my eyes.
    The Asian market was much bigger than I thought it would be. It had Japanese food, Korean food, Chinese food, and all different Asian countries that I never heard of before.
    And there were a lot of Asian people. It was easier than I thought it would be. People were speaking a lot of different Asian languages. I couldn’t understand what anyone was saying and I wasn’t too bothered by that. That was good because I was worried about how I would feel about the talking. What did bother me is that it was so obvious that Ellie and I didn’t match Wanna. If I walked in there without Wanna, then it would be so much easier. I wish Wanna would have stayed in the car and handed me the money to buy stuff. I felt like people stared at us because we don’t match. Lots of people asked us where we were from and where were we born. People congratulated Wanna, and Wanna said yes, she was very lucky to have us as her children. It was so uncomfortable. Some people didn’t say anything to us, but just gave us the thumbs up sign. That was weird because after I was adopted, people did that to us in China too.
    We bought some food to try for cooking another Chinese meal. People looked happy to help us.
    There was one great thing that happened, and you won’t even believe it…
    Remember the Nanny that I loved? Sometimes she would sneak me this little jelly candy in a tiny cup. It came in different colors and flavors. I couldn’t believe it—the Asian market had my Nanny’s special candy.
    When I saw it, I started jumping up and down. I couldn’t control myself.
    Wanna and Ellie jumped up and down with me—I guess they had never seen me so happy before and it made them really excited. Wanna bought a huge bag of jelly candy in a cup. I said thank you.
    Ellie begged Wanna to buy her all of the toy things they had in the gift section. I liked that stuff too, but I stayed