Her name is like a weeping willow, a black sumi-e brush drawing of a lovely tree with flowing branches. Not so long ago, she cried every night for her mother to return. But no one came.
The two strangers plunked her down between a stuffed rag doll, three bronze taels strung together by red yarn and the year you were born to choose a future. In the oak-paneled room, incense burned as the congregation clapped softly at first and then loudly. A little boy wearing a fireman's helmet scribbled his wishes in green felt-tip marker on a small pink cotton shirt. She pointed toward her fortune, oblivious to family lurking beyond the altar.
Her fate, like the twenty helium-filled balloons touching the ceiling, is sealed.