An-Ya and Her Diary Read Online Free PDF

in China, so they started making laws to make sure that there would be enough food and jobs for everyone. Wanna said that the laws were written a long time before I was born and they are complicated. Families in China hope for a boy, because they will stay with the family and will take care of their parents when they get old. Girls will leave the family when they get married. If a family breaks the law and has another child, then they have to pay a lot of money to the government. Most families don’t have the money to pay.
    So maybe She left me because I was a girl. How could She do that because She was a girl once too? I can do anything a boy can do, and I am smarter than all of the boys that I know. She didn’t give me a chance. She put me in the box without giving me a chance.
    54
    Dear Penny,
    The bad dreams won’t stop. I am afraid to go to sleep. Abby has been coming to me in my dreams. In my dream I return to the orphanage and Abby is outside. She is not supposed to be outside because her skin will hurt. I run to her and she smiles when she sees me. She stands up, and some of her skin is sick from being outside. Somehow she wandered outside and nobody noticed. Her legs have black spots, and I am scared that her skin will fall off her body.
    She is so happy to see me that she doesn’t care about her skin. Her smile is so big and her grey eyes sparkle with happy feelings. I am happy to see her too, and I let her grab onto my shirt and I walk with her to find the orphanage door.
    But again, I can’t find the door. I don’t remember where it is.
    When I turn around to check on Abby, I see that she is growing smaller. A little bit at a time, she is shrinking. I tell her not to worry, that I will find the door. I search and search. Every time I look at Abby, she is smaller.
    And then she starts to disappear. She becomes like a cloud that I can’t touch but I know is there. She is so tiny that she begins to float away. As she starts to fly off, like a weak balloon, I reach for her and she reaches for me. Her tiny arms reach out and she whispers my name— An-Ya .
    I can’t catch her. My hands go through her body and there is nothing to hold on to. I can’t bring her down. I watch her float away and there is nothing that I can do.
    After I woke up, I put Wanna’s robe on. I feel a little better but not all the way. I am still scared.
    55
    Dear Penny,
    Tonight Wanna tried to teach me and Ellie a song. It was a song about a rainbow. The song is boring. Wanna has a nice voice, but the song is for babies. It goes on and on about the different colors of the rainbow. I can sing about a rainbow too, over and over again. After Wanna sang the song, she asked if we could see the rainbow in our hearts. She asked if we could feel the rainbow. Oh, yes —said Ellie.
    What? I can see the rainbow. Sure. I see it. Can I feel the rainbow too? No. I don’t even understand what she is talking about.
    56
    Dear Penny,
    We went to the parlor for ice cream after spending all day at the lake. I chose chocolate.
    57
    Dear Penny,
    Sometimes I don’t know what to write inside you. Should I write about then or now?
    Some days it is difficult to imagine that I lived in China for so long. When I think about it, it feels like one long day. So many days were the same and they all blur together.
    Life in America is quiet. It is a strange kind of quiet. There is noise, but it is not the same. In the orphanage it could get very loud with many children crying. Usually it was the new babies that cried a lot. If you live in the orphanage for long enough, then you learn to wait. It doesn’t take long to learn that nobody will be coming for a long time. I would notice when a baby would give up. Some were stronger than others, and some of them lasted longer and fought harder. Some babies would give up quickly. It is like they knew, even though they were babies, that their lives would never be the same and it wasn’t even worth it to try.
    58
    Dear