Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found

by Jennifer Lauck

  “Oh, right,” I said.

  I turned on the faucet, washed my hands with soap, and rinsed the bubbles off. There was comfort in the heat of the water.

  “Now you’re here,” Peggy said, “what I wanted to talk to you about—before Richard got home—is that we have decided to adopt you.”

  I turned off the water and looked at my aunt.

  “Adopt me?”

  “That’s right,” Peggy said.

  Smiling, she took two cans of refried beans from the cabinet and opened each one with the electric can opener. Her voice mixed with the grinding sound of the machine and she said they were tired of explaining who I was and how I came to live with them. She said if I had the same name, it would be so much easier on everyone. I could have a fresh start too—put my past behind me, and since we all looked so much alike, no one would ever have to know they weren’t my true parents. The grind of the electric can opener stopped and Peggy turned over the coagulated beans into a silver saucepan. “Isn’t that great?” she asked. “I think it’s great. Richard thinks it’s great.”

  I gripped the counter. In the sink there were bits of onion peel and an empty Styrofoam wrapper from the ground beef. The bottom of the Styrofoam container was coated with cow blood. I thought I might throw up.

  “Would you cut up tomatoes already,” Peggy said. “Come on now, chop, chop. ”

  Like a robot, I cut through the tomato, making the round fruit into a pulp of small red squares and finally found my voice.

  “What about Bryan? Are you adopting him too?”

  Peggy shook the pan of meat on the burner.

  “Well, no, of course not. You know very well he’s with Uncle Larry in Oklahoma now. He has his own family.”

  “But he is my family. He’s my brother.”

  “Honestly, Jenny,” Peggy said. “You know you two don’t get along. Why are you talking about Bryan now?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Can I be adopted when I have a brother out there?”

  “Well, of course you can,” she said, laughing as if what I said was lunacy.

  I wanted to ask if Uncle Larry was adopting Bryan but I didn’t. I backed my own mind up, like an old truck grinding through rusted gears. I searched through what she had said. They were both adopting me. Richard too.

  “Uncle Richard wants to adopt me?”

  “Well, of course he does. Richard loves you. We all do.”

  Now I was certain I was going to be sick. I looked hard at Peggy—almost angry.

  “You love me?” I asked.

  Peggy turned from the stove and looked at me with her mouth open.

  “Well, of course we do,” she said, indignant. Color lifted on her cheeks. “My goodness, you’ve been here for more than a year now. We’ve opened our home to you and have shared our lives. If that is not love, I don’t know what is.”

  Peggy stood there with her fists on her hips and her spatula dripped grease on the floor. She believed what she was saying. She was utterly convinced that her decision to adopt was the right one for the family and for me. I could not speak. There wasn’t room for my voice in her version of reality. I did not exist.

  A FEW MONTHS later, the adoption plan ripened to fullness.

  Richard and Peggy took me to a courthouse in Reno. I stood before a judge and they stood on either side of me.

  The judge asked if I agreed to this adoption of my own free will. He had to ask it again because I didn’t hear him the first time.

  Everyone in court looked at me. The judge, a lady who sat over at a little type machine, Richard, Peggy, and a bunch of other people. Strangers.

  In my head was a voice that wanted to ask the judge if he could define “free will.” I wanted to see if his definition would line up with what I knew the words to mean.

  Richard pushed his arm against my shoulder and looked at me like I better answer the man or I was going to get smacked up the back of my head.

  I blurted out, “I do.”

  Laughter erupted in the courtroom. Richard snickered. And the judge hit his gavel with a crack—like rock hitting rock.

  In that sound, Jennifer Caste Lauck became Jenny Duemore. I had been erased.

  THIRTEEN

  THREE THINGS SHE DOESN’T KNOW

  SHE IS WICKEDLY SMART.

  She is hysterically funny.

  She is fantastically gorgeous.

  Not necessarily in that order.

  And yes, there is even more—good things, every single one—but she won’t allow herself to consider herself in such grand terms. If she thinks of herself with any kind of praise, a feeling of itching anxiety sends her running to organize a drawer, fold laundry, wash the floor on her hands and knees, or clean out the refrigerator. As she fritters over these meaningless tasks of order, she fills her head—like a countermeasure—with all that’s flawed. You talk too loud, your rear end is too big, your nose—what a honker on your face, and you’re not really that smart, no, you’re just street smart. You’re scrappy.

  The voice in her head is a combination of the voices she’s heard throughout her life: Richard, Peggy, Deb, Auntie Carol. And the voice is also unique. It is her own.

  The voice is like a form of protection—a firm taskmaster that needs her to lay low. It tells her she will die if she brings attention to herself. The voice believes that to know her merits is dangerous. Such knowledge would put her one step away from becoming arrogant or proud and both of these very human qualities would then lead to her standing out in the crowd. To be outstanding would bring attention, and to bring attention would make her a clear target. The voice tells her she is most safe when she is below the horizon line and behind the scenes. When she tidies up, helps without complaint, and follows the rules, all is well for her. Anything else, any large expression, is disaster.

  This is how she makes it as Richard and Peggy’s daughter—Jenny Duemore.

  On the surface.

  But deep below the surface of herself, there lives another truth. It is a seed, awaiting the mysterious conditions necessary for a new self to emerge. One day, those conditions will exist and the voice in her head will stop ordering her to drop down low and she will rise from her hiding place, scramble over the edge, and stand to her full and glorious height. She will dust the dirt of the past off her shoulders and legs and then, she will take flight. A phoenix rising won’t be her metaphor. Such a suggestion will be too puny and passé.

  She will be without a name, an awe-inspiring sight, and will rise as bright as the sun. Right away, in one blink, she will merge into that light.

  Most won’t see the ascension of the small human who once lay so low. When people finally look, trying to see this magnificent sight, she will be no more than a speck in the forever blue sky.

  FOURTEEN

  ONE THING I DO KNOW

  “I’M GOING TO COLLEGE.”

  Despite the nullifications of being made into a Duemore—I was firm in my belief that had been implanted by my father. “Go to college, Jenny,” he had told me. “Education is freedom. Go to college. It’s important.”

  Did Bud actually say these words or was this conviction contained in my cells? It’s hard to know. Memory is so cagey and also such a prison. I can only say there is evidence in a file at the VA. Apparently, a man—just prior to my being adopted—had interviewed me. I have the fuzziest memory of him in the living room of Richard and Peggy’s house just before the adoption day.

  “What do you plan to do when you grow up, little girl?” he asked. A clipboard was balanced on his lap.

  “I’m going to college, sir,” I said.

  I remember the man laughing and writing these words down. He wrote, “This child is quite adamant about her higher education and her guardian and aunt has agreed to save all benefits received for said higher education.”

  RICHARD AND PEGGY moved five times over the six years we coexisted as a family.

  Moving from Stead, we lived in the city of Reno. Next, we went to a doub
le-wide mobile home on the outskirts of Reno, and then moved to an apartment in a damp Washington town called Longview. In Longview, Richard, Peggy, and Kimmy stayed together and I was packed off to live with Richard’s younger brother, Irv.

  Irv had a young wife named Dede and they had two big hound dogs—Duke and Earl. Irv, Dede, Duke, and Earl were all wedged into a single-wide mobile trailer in a tiny town called Toutle, which was little more than a few paved streets, a scramble of wild blackberry bushes, and acres of pine trees. There was a river, the Toutle River, and it ran down from Mt. Saint Helens. It rained so often and was so humid that mold grew on mold.

  For one school term, I jammed into their tight, damp world. During the day I went to school and at night slept on a fold-out sofa in the minuscule living room.

  Every night, Duke and Earl took mountain-sized shits and pissed rivers of bitter urine on the floor around my bed. Every morning, I woke to Irv skidding, barefooted, through the mess while he said, “Shit, goddamn, piss.”

  Richard, Peggy, Kimmy, and me finally regathered and settled, for a few years, in a mouse-and-rat infested house at the end of a road called Morton in a town called Winlock. Richard worked fixing appliances. Peggy stayed home with Kimmy. And I went to Mt. Saint Helen’s High.

  Winlock locals were—for the most part—farmers, laborers, and housewives. The average education in the area was a high school diploma. After that, most kids went to work for their parents, joined the military, and/or got married and had babies.

  People expected very little of themselves in our new town. Ambition, beyond winning a football game, was remarkably low. Accordingly, very little was expected of me. Under these conditions, I flourished.

  I joined the French Club, played basketball (both junior varsity and varsity at the same time), became captain of the junior varsity team, and wrote a bit for the student newspaper. I was voted the Funniest Girl.

  By the time I reached my freshman year, I was a dervish of accomplishment who, for money, baby-sat and took a summer job waiting tables at a take-out place on Interstate 90. The truckers, stopping over for coffee and plate-sized cinnamon rolls would tell me I was pretty. They gave over fat tips.

  It was at this restaurant that one of the truckers told me I looked a lot like a guy he knew. He said, “Hey, you look just like a guy who lives just south of Seattle—Renton, I think. Name of Wright. I swear you could be his kid.”

  I was fifteen years old.

  I put the pot of coffee on the counter and looked hard at that man, that trucker, and said, “I was adopted as a baby.”

  The trucker nodded like he knew this. He seemed unfazed—as if lost children were a part of his every day. He told me he would ask around. He left me a ten-dollar tip, a lot of money back then. I never saw that trucker again.

  JUST UP THE road from that diner, my birth father Bill did live in Renton, Washington, and later moved even closer, to a town called Yelm. He was with a woman named Helen. They had a son named Tom. I didn’t know all this about my birth father for many years—it all came out long after I was done pouring coffee.

  MIDYEAR, WHEN I was a sophomore, we moved away from Winlock and went further east—to Spokane.

  Richard was told he had strong people skills and was provided managerial training to run the service department of a store in Spokane.

  When this bit of good fortune happened, I was sixteen years old—twenty-four months from sweet liberation.

  I was very unhappy to leave Winlock behind but my feelings were not considered in the decision to move.

  In Spokane, I entered Mead Senior High and promptly joined the drill team—where again, I was voted the funniest girl. In typing class, I got myself up to sixty words a minute, error free, and this skill helped secure employment. I worked half of each school day as a secretary for a real estate company.

  Another accomplishment was my placement in an Honors English class, which was the result of state testing that showed I had strong scores in reading and writing.

  In the midst of my year in Honors English, I was pulled aside by the teacher, Ms. Carla Nuxoll, who dressed in flowing garments and was a slight woman with a ’fro of light brown hair—kinked tight of its own accord.

  Ms. Nuxoll held one of my compositions and told me I was a fine writer. “A truly fine writer,” she insisted. “Where did you learn to write like this ? ”

  Unnerved by her proximity and suspicious of adults in general, I could only stare at her hair and the way it caught the light and shined rainbow colors through the separate filaments. Something about her reminded me of that time, in the communal house, when I watched those babies being born.

  “I dunno,” I mumbled.

  Ms. Nuxoll regarded me for a long time, a furrow working between her eyebrows as if I were a riddle on a crossword.

  “Well,” she finally said, straightening her shoulders and lifting her proud chin. “You must consider being a writer as a profession. You are that talented.”

  Her statement caught my attention and pulled me to my own full height.

  “Can I make money as a writer?” I asked.

  “Certainly,” she said.

  “How?”

  “As a journalist,” she said, “in the short term and then a novelist perhaps. Or short stories.”

  In my head, a series of computations were being run. Be a writer. Make money. Escape. I had a plan.

  AND THEN EVERYTHING went horribly wrong.

  Richard was fired, something about the black market sale of out-of-warranty appliances. He said he was framed. The whole thing was a scam. It was politics.

  Richard was then home, all day, everyday. He watched TV and made a nuisance of himself. I knew because it was my job to fix the meals, do laundry, clean the house, and care for Kimmy. Richard followed me around, bossy and rude, saying, “You’re doing a half-assed job, you no-neck brat. Get out there and wash my truck, vacuum the living room again, blah, blah, blah.”

  He drank brandy in his coffee.

  He slept on the sofa in the afternoon.

  He was depressed.

  Peggy was the one to support the family. She became embittered by their reversal of roles.

  This was about the time they both began to push me to join the military rather than go to college. Peggy made enlistment sound like a Parisian holiday. “You can travel,” she said, “and they pay for college.”

  Graduation was one year away.

  I WAS SO damn busy with school, my job, my homework, all my domestic responsibilities, and my extracurricular activities, but still, somehow, I found time to become obsessed with the notion of sex.

  As if a time bomb had exploded inside my seventeen-year-old body, I was on fire with a desire to have intercourse.

  If one traced my secret history, the explanation was there in the annals of time. My own mother had had sex when she was sixteen, and look at the shame, the concealment, the denial, and the forgotten result (which was me). Full of wild adolescent hormones, I was burning to explode from my faux skin and enter into truth no matter the cost. A sexual encounter could be a doorway to freedom.

  I was quick to choose an object of adoration—a new boy who had moved in across the street. Dark and mysterious, this new boy played the saxophone and was painfully shy. He called himself a military brat—his father was in the air force. He was perfect for me—moody, emotionally unavailable, and withdrawn. The fact that he showed no interest in me for months, even though we lived across the street from each other, made him that much more of a catch.

  I charmed, smiled, and seduced him with relentless focus. Once he noticed me, I made it clear that I would “put out” for the right guy. What boy, at seventeen, doesn’t want to get laid?

  After school and in secret, I got myself on the pill, because I was not—under any circumstances—getting pregnant.

  And then we did it!

  Sex.

  Total disaster.

  The boy across the street was a novice, of course. Most virgins
are. And I was a ticking time bomb of repressed sexual abuse. Our experimental and very painful copulation made me cry so hard that the kid was paralyzed by confusion and could not get through the process of inserting tab A into slot B. I urged him forward, all the while reassuring him that all girls cried from the ecstasy. Didn’t he know? Crying was in all the books, I said with worldly confidence, between sobs and sniffs. When we were finally done with the wretched act and he scurried away, I stopped being stoic and let the tears rain. The physical pain was bad, but worse, there was so much inside of me that was hidden and buried and yet alive in my cells. I had blundered into the dark realms and hidden corridors of myself but had no way to understand where I had landed. There were no therapists, no teachers, no guides, and no wise women in my life. I had only my books and my own mind, which was full of insane ideas including one that said, Now you’ve done it. You’ve had sex and are no longer a virgin. Major sin!

  The time I once used to lure the boy across the street was redirected to time served at the Catholic Church where Peggy and Richard sometimes took mass on Christmas Eve and Easter.

  On my own, I went to confession, did thousands of Our Father and Hail Mary prayers on a ten-cent rosary, and prostrated myself in front of the statue of St. Mary Magdalene. Since she was considered the whore of the bunch during biblical times, I begged Mary for divine insight and wisdom. We were two women with a common bond. If she became a saint, in her fallen state, surely my actions were redeemable too.

  I have to wonder if I was prostrating myself for my own sins, which were pretty benign considering the outcome, or was I actually reliving the shame absorbed by my mother in 1963 and thus absorbed by me as the baby she carried? Was I trying to heal the both of us through my reenactment of her past? Was I, in fact, healing us, in some way, due to my clear-headed decision to take the pill and avoid an untimely pregnancy?