Leaving Lana'i

by Edie Claire

  Six to twelve months, Julie thought with dismay as she struggled to maintain the necessary facade of approval. She was a psychotherapist, not a pediatrician. And she had no experience as a mother. But she had read and studied enough about child development to know that these babies were not acting as they should. By six months they should be sitting up; the older ones should be crawling, pulling up on the bars, maybe even taking their first few steps.

  She raised her head and scanned the room. She saw only five babies managing any sort of upright posture. Five of sixteen!

  Tom’s hand pressed gently into the small of her back. She turned to look at him and realized she had frozen in the aisle and was holding up the group. “Sorry,” she whispered, moving on.

  You knew it would be like this, she reminded herself sternly. Babies growing up under institutional care, with little personal attention and inadequate mental and physical stimulation, were bound to suffer developmental delays. At least in this relatively well-equipped urban facility, she and Tom had been assured that the infants were adequately fed.

  The director led them around the center island of cribs, then stopped short again. Her smile, which had been ever-present during the previous session of paperwork, transformed suddenly into a grim line. She reached out and took Julie’s ice-cold hands in her own large, calloused ones. Her words were earnest, but hushed.

  The interpreter pushed forward. He listened closely, but even after the director stopped speaking, he said nothing.

  “What?” Julie asked earnestly. “What did she say?” The director’s eyes had scanned the still-open doorway of the room as she spoke, as if afraid that staff outside in the corridor might overhear her. The attendant already in the room did not seem to worry her.

  The interpreter hesitated.

  Both Julie and Tom turned to the last member of their party, a paralegal who was their adoption agency’s local representative. “Yana?” Tom beseeched.

  The petite forty-something woman, who understood English fairly well but had difficulty speaking it, nodded and spoke calmly to the interpreter in Russian.

  The man frowned in disapproval, but he began to speak. “The director would like to thank you herself, personally, for adopting this particular baby.” He looked warily at the paralegal, but she nodded back at him once more, and he continued. “This is a very unusual situation for the orphanage, Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan. You understand that raising this child here… It is not a normal thing. That is, we have very few Negro persons here in Russia.” He shot a look at the director of the orphanage that bordered on reproach. “The director seems to feel as if the infant might not be safe here. She says that she worries about her, and she is very glad that the girl will be raised in the United States because life will be better for her there.”

  Julie looked into the eyes of the orphanage director. She wasn’t sure whether to trust the accuracy of the translation, but she had no doubt as to the sincerity in the director’s pale blue eyes. She was a caring woman. Caring… and fearful.

  Dear God. Was the director trying to tell them that the baby wouldn’t be safe growing up in Russia, or that the child wasn’t safe here, in the orphanage this woman herself was in charge of?

  “We will make sure that she is safe. Always,” Julie said forcefully, although she could hear her own voice shaking as she said it. “Can we see her now?”

  The interpreter spoke, and the director smiled at them again. She released Julie’s hand and stepped over to the crib tucked in the dimmest corner of the room. Julie and Tom approached together, shoulders touching. Julie held her breath as she leaned over the railing and peered inside.

  A baby in a faded yellow onesie squirmed on her back on the mattress, her sticklike arms and legs moving aimlessly in the air. Her tiny little hands grasped at nothing; her toes were bare. Her face — and Julie had never been one to exaggerate — was that of an angel. Her dark eyes sparkled; her light-brown complexion was flawless. Little ringlets of soft black curls covered her head. Her tiny lips were full, still moistened with the faintest bubble of milk from an earlier feeding. For one precious, wondrous second, this beautiful, perfect baby girl turned her face toward Julie, and their gazes locked.

  Julie Elizabeth Sullivan fell hopelessly, helplessly, permanently in love.

  The baby looked away again.

  “Oh, Tom,” Julie cried, reaching out to lift up her daughter. “She’s… she’s…”

  Her husband wiped a tear from his eye. “She is very beautiful,” he agreed, finishing her thought. “Just like her mother.”

  Tears filled Julie’s own eyes as she gathered her baby to her. So light, she thought with a pang of fright. She’s as light as a cat! She tried not to panic as the calculations ran through her head. An eight-month-old baby should weigh at least sixteen pounds. Could this child weigh twelve pounds, even? Ten? Julie tried to nestle the child against her, but the little body wouldn’t cooperate. The baby’s back remained stiff, her limbs unyielding. Julie held the infant awkwardly against her chest instead, facing out so that Tom could see her.

  The orphanage director was talking again. The interpreter translated as she spoke. “She’s a good baby. Very well behaved. Takes her feedings well. No vomiting.”

  Tom grinned at the child and attempted to hold her hand, but she avoided his eyes and clenched her fingers shut, staring fixedly over his shoulder.

  Julie leaned down to plant a gentle kiss on top of the baby’s head. The silky black curls were so soft. They exuded a soapy smell that brought back memories of childhood bubble baths. Julie closed her eyes and tried again to cuddle the infant closer.

  The baby stiffened.

  “All we’ve been told is that the child is biracial,” Julie heard Tom saying. “Can you ask the director again what she knows of the birthparents? Was the orphanage given specific information about them, or is everyone simply guessing, based on the baby’s appearance?”

  Julie opened her eyes, and as the interpreter repeated the question, the director shook her head. Her response was a long one.

  “She says no one knows,” the interpreter explained. “The baby was found at a railway station. She was abandoned. Wrapped in a blanket and left on a bench. The doctors said she had only just been born. But she was not born in any of the roddoms — the state maternity hospitals. Such a birth would not go unnoticed.”

  The director put a hand to her belly with an emphatic gesture and continued to speak rapidly. The interpreter threw her a pained expression, but nodded and continued to translate as she spoke. “Nor was the baby’s mother likely attended by any trained midwife, since the cord was not cut properly. But everyone believes the mother must have been white, because the very few dark-skinned people living here either work at an embassy or are exchange students at university, and these will almost certainly be men. A Russian mother with a dark-skinned baby would find her life made very difficult. The child would… not be accepted.”

  Julie watched her husband’s face harden, even as her own teeth clenched. They were both aware of the scarcity of people of color in the Soviet Union, whether African, Asian, or any other ethnicity. Discrimination was prevalent even among the various shades of Soviet nationals. They had not been surprised that a white Russian mother might choose to give up a biracial baby for adoption, particularly in the midst of the present political chaos. But at no point had she and Tom been told that their future daughter had been abandoned in a railway station, much less born without any medical assistance. They knew from the agency only that a biracial baby had been expedited for adoption, and that because the Sullivans had indicated no racial preference, their names had been moved to the top of the list.

  Julie caught her husband’s eyes and held them. She lifted the stiff, too-tiny body and tucked the baby’s head protectively under her chin. Had the birthmother been so afraid of exposure, of public censure, that she had given birth in secret — possibly even alone? How terrified she must have been… and yet, she must have cared for
her child. Had she not left the infant wrapped warm and snug in a crowded place where she would be found quickly?

  “Please,” Julie pleaded, looking at the director, “is there anything else you can tell us about who her mother or father might be? What country her father might have come from? Anything at all? It could be very important.”

  Julie held her breath as the interpreter began his translation. For her own part, she couldn’t care less what part of the world her baby’s progenitors hailed from. The warm bundle in her arms was already a permanent appendage of her own body. But she had read enough about adoption to understand that the information could someday matter very much to her daughter.

  Julie’s hopes were crushed as the director’s response came with saddened eyes and a shake of her head.

  “She says she has no idea,” the interpreter said. “She doubts the police even tried to track down the mother. They just took the baby to hospital and then at two weeks old, she came here. The nurse who brought her from hospital thought she might be half Indian. Most of the staff here believe she is half Negro. But no one knows.”

  Julie shifted her daughter in her arms, and tears welled up in her eyes again as she gazed into the perfect little face. The baby’s cheek bones were high, her lashes thick and long, her eyes bright with awareness even as she insisted on staring out into the room rather than back at Julie. She squiggled again and emitted one brief, gurgling sound of protest.

  “That will be the first of many,” Tom teased, smiling. He was still attempting, unsuccessfully, to hold the baby’s hand.

  “Oh! I’m sorry,” Julie apologized. “I guess you’d like to hold her too, huh?”

  He laughed. “Well, yes, actually. If you don’t mind.”

  Julie handed over the baby, and Tom set her against his chest atop one strong arm, supporting her back with the other. He too dropped a kiss on her precious little head, and Julie wanted to smile at the picture they made, but a biting fear left her with a frown instead.

  So small. Julie looked around the room again. All of the infants might have some delays, but none looked as small and underdeveloped as their daughter did. At eight months many normal babies were crawling, but this tiny girl could not brace herself to sit on Tom’s arm without assistance. Food was in short supply at some orphanages, yes, but they had been told that this one was well provided for. Had they been lied to about that? Or…

  A sick feeling churned in Julie’s stomach. Was it only their baby who had been shorted?

  She shot a glance at the attendant who sat by the window, sewing. The woman looked back at her, her face expressionless. Her pale eyes were inscrutable.

  Julie’s pulse pounded in her ears again. She took a deep breath and tried not to judge. Perhaps this woman was one of the trusted ones. Perhaps that was why the director had spoken openly in front of her. But the director could not be at the orphanage every day and night, could she? If even one of her staff had acted with bigotry toward a dark-skinned baby — had fed her a little less, scowled at her, spoken to her cruelly — who would know? How would anyone ever know?

  All at once, Julie felt as if the sterile, white-painted walls were closing in on them. “Tom,” she barked, putting out a protective hand to cradle her new daughter’s thin, fragile shoulder. “I think we should be leaving now.”

  Tom’s eyes studied hers. He could see her panic. “Are we sure there’s nothing else we need from here? We don’t want to be sorry later that we forgot anything.” He turned to the interpreter. “Please ask if anything was with the baby when she was found. The blanket she was wrapped in, maybe? Did the police bring anything at all with her to the hospital?”

  Julie watched as the baby grew increasingly agitated. The child seemed to want down, to be put back into her crib. The sight pierced Julie’s heart with a primal pain.

  This little girl wasn’t used to being held. Wasn’t used to being looked at, or talked to, or played with. Wasn’t used to being loved. Their little angel baby showed any number of red flags for having attachment problems. She and Tom would have a tough road ahead of them.

  It’s all right, sweetie, Julie’s heart pleaded. Don’t worry. We will love you, now. No matter what.

  “The nurse from the hospital brought nothing here with the child,” the interpreter reported. “She said the blanket the baby was wrapped in originally was very nice, but that it was ‘lost’ in the hospital. The nurses thought the mother must not be so poor, or she would never have given up such a fine blanket.”

  Julie’s eyes flashed with ire. As if the freakin’ blanket was the sacrifice!

  “We’re leaving now,” she said firmly, giving one last nod of thanks to the director as she turned her feet toward the door. “Our daughter is going home.”

  Chapter 1

  Near Maui, Hawaii, May 2016

  “Excuse me. Seat in the upright position, please. We’ll be landing shortly.”

  For one long, very confused moment, Ri Sullivan had no idea who was talking to her or where she even was. All she knew was that her back was sore, her neck was sore, her head weighed a couple hundred pounds, and everything was dark.

  She pulled off her face mask and rubbed her eyes. The back of an airplane seat swam into focus.

  Landing shortly.

  Oh my!

  She whipped her brain to attention, pushed the button to fix her seatback, and hastily shoved up the window blind. Immediately her blanket, the face mask, and the worthless inflatable pillow that had deflated hourly since its purchase at LAX slipped off her lap and onto the floor.

  Ri ignored all three and looked outside.

  Maui!

  Was she really here? A hint of a greenish-brown mountain peak showed itself briefly, then vanished into a bank of fluffy white clouds.

  Wait. Or was that Moloka'i?

  Ri wasn’t sure. She knew that Maui was the biggest in this particular cluster of Hawaiian islands, and that the bi-lobed, lopsided land mass was made up of two volcanoes, the small West Maui mountain, and the much larger East Maui mountain, better known as Haleakala. She had learned that the names of the smaller, older volcanic islands that dotted the ocean nearby were Moloka'i, Lana'i, and Kaho'olawe, but although she could point them out on a map, she couldn’t tell which was which from the air when she didn’t know which way North was. She also had no idea how to pronounce them, particularly the last one. But she would figure it all out, with time. She had four months.

  She sucked in a breath and held it behind her smile. She was as excited as she was terrified. Hopefully, no one would realize the latter. Her apprehension would be difficult to explain. She was twenty-five years old and past due for a grand adventure. She’d spent her entire life in New England, growing up in southern Maine, attending the University of New Hampshire in nearby Durham, and then working her first real job at a small aquarium on the Massachusetts coast. Although she couldn’t imagine ever being parted from the ocean, she had never intended to plant herself permanently in the North Atlantic, either. Everyone always said she was the dreamer in the family — the born explorer who would grow up to scale Mount Everest or hike the Sahara or take the first step on Mars. She didn’t really care about any of those things anymore, but exploring the other six of the seven seas had been her heart’s ambition for as long as she could remember.

  She hadn’t considered, as a child, that she would have to put thousands of miles between herself and everyone she loved in order to do it. But she was here now. And everything would be fine.

  Ri felt the plane drop in altitude, and as she peered out the window, blue sky began to show through the cottony wisps of cloud. She bent her sore neck and looked down, and her eyes widened in wonder. Bright green peaks of mountain. Scalloped, chiseled cliffs. Sandy-brown shores meeting cerulean-blue waters. Long streaks of white where waves broke over underwater reefs. The vivid tableau was so surreal she felt as if she were watching a movie trailer.

  The plane turned. It dipped further. Ri’s gaze remaine
d glued to the window as the jet neared the airport, which lay in the land bridge between Maui’s two mountains. From the shape of the land below, she reasoned out that the peaks she had seen first must be those of the smaller western mountain. She tried to make out more landmarks, but as the plane made its final approach into the city of Kahului, her view was obscured by clouds again.

  Ri sat back in her seat with a bounce. No matter. She would have plenty of time to see everything there was to see on the island, even without an airplane. Haleakala was 10,000 feet tall. She’d read that from near the top of it, you could look out towards the other volcano and see the ocean on both sides of the land bridge at once.

  She’d definitely be doing that.

  Her spirits remained high as the plane touched down and taxied. Her view out the window in the low-lying valley was less dramatic, but if she gazed out over the asphalt and past the bland airport buildings she could see the West Maui Mountain in the distance.

  Despite her excitement, her exhaustion caught up with her again as she waited an eternity to deplane, dumped the worthless inflatable pillow in the nearest trashcan, and followed the signs to baggage claim. At some point as she moved through the disappointingly generic airport she must have slipped into autopilot, because as she stood by the luggage carousel sizing up a nearby bench for a nap, she suddenly realized she could remember nothing since leaving the jetway. For a brief moment, she even forgot which airport she was in. Sheesh, she was tired!

  Hauling her bag off the carousel caused an unexpected wrench in her back, and she stretched her spine and rotated her shoulders with a grimace. She was in excellent shape physically, and she wasn’t used to such bodily protests. Then again, her body wasn’t used to spending thirty-six hours straight in airplanes and airports, including trying to sleep with her knees drawn up on a two-seater bench overnight at LAX after her first flight to Maui was cancelled yesterday.

  Ignore it. You’re in Hawaii!

  She pulled up the handle on her bag and headed off toward the pickup curb. A cluster of transport people stood near the doors, holding signs. She scanned them, but saw nothing relevant, then jumped when she realized that a person standing not four feet away was looking at her and waving. The woman was about her own age, had a blond ponytail, and wore an aqua-colored polo shirt emblazoned with the Foundation for Ocean Mammals logo, a breaching humpback whale.