by Scott Martin
Suddenly, I felt more handicapped than ever. It was bad enough not being able to hold their hands or touch their tender faces, but not getting to be the one to teach them how to climb a tree? How could I ever live with such shortcomings? They deserved better. They deserved someone who could give them everything. In the end, I was only going to hold them back further.
My mind drifted back to their faces as they went down their first slide earlier that day, to their first encounter with our exuberant canines, to the jubilance with which they plowed headlong into the Black Sea and the carefree joviality of their arms wrapped around me as we waded in together. You showed them all of that without human hands, my mind pointed out. I thought of my former soccer teams, the young women at UW Eau Claire and Gonzaga, the young men from TESC who welcomed me to Washington. I had taught all of them, too, as a handicapped coach.
So I couldn’t be the “typical” American father, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t raise and nurture them, regardless. If I had proven that I could make it to the Division I level as a soccer coach with no hands and only the back half of my feet, I could raise my kids to be anything they dreamt to be. Just like with coaching after the illness, all I had to do was change the way in which I approached the problem. Here, as it had then, the same motto could apply: My mission is not to teach you, but to put you in a position to learn.
If the myos were my handicap, growing up in a Romanian orphanage was theirs. I would need to set an example; to make it seem as though I had no handicap at all because they had a long path ahead of them and needed to know that the only limitations in life are the ones we place on ourselves. If you worked hard enough, you could achieve anything. It was the American dream and the philosophy by which I’d lived my life. I would do whatever it took to instill it in my kids. Nothing – not being raised in an orphanage and a foreign country, nor having a handicapped parent – could hold them back. Not if I had anything to say about it.
~~~
I became their playground coach and English language tutor; their sandwich-maker and American television educator. Whenever it occurred to me, I would say the name of an object nearby, have them repeat it, then try to clarify it with an adjective and comparison to a similar object. They learned the difference between the lake at the end of the neighborhood trail we trekked every afternoon, and the small pond of water that accumulated at the base of a beaver’s dam. There were beavers and there were squirrels. Big dogs (Stuart), medium dogs (Nelson, our lab mix), and small dogs (Fritz and Jackie the Jack Russell Terrier). Cats versus dogs and boys versus girls. On and on the learning went and with each new piece of knowledge I offered, they seemed to soak it up like a parched desert does rain.
I supplemented my lessons with mid-morning and afternoon sessions in the chair-and-a-half (which we soon named The Big Chair), a densely-cushioned cross between a loveseat and an armchair, beige flock upholstery embroidered with burgundy and dark green curves that sat across from the television in the downstairs office. With all three of us piled into its loving embrace, we’d tune the TV to the Seattle PBS channel for our daily dose of cultural immersion via good old American television. Mister Rogers and Sesame Street required prior experiences which Nadia and Danny didn’t have. Teletubbies freaked them out, Dragon Tails freaked me out (no two-headed dragon should laugh like that), so we stuck with Clifford the Big Red Dog, Arthur, Koala Brothers, Jay Jay the Jet Plane, and Zoboomafoo.
Later in the afternoon, after a lunch of Tat Specials and our daily romp in the woods, Nadia and I would curl up in The Big Chair to watch an old black-and-white episode of Perry Mason while Danny napped. I’m serious; Nadia liked to watch Perry Mason.
Of course, television wasn’t the only aspect of American culture I baptized them in. Music played an equally prominent role in our daily activities. One afternoon, feeling particularly rambunctious, I had the kids help me clear a patch of floor in our living room between the two brown sofas. While they ran around this new patch of open floor, rebounding off the sofas like a couple of Ping-Pong balls, I flipped through our collection of CDs. I was determined to give them a well-rounded exposure to all that American music had to offer, working my way through artists from Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles to Stevie Ray Vaughan. Today, it looks like James Brown’s on the menu, I thought as my hands found his Greatest Hits CD among the rest of our eclectic collection. Time for The Godfather of Soul.
I set the CD into our stereo, turned the volume knob up near the end of the spectrum, then stepped back to let the fun begin. I’d changed out of my prosthetic feet and into a pair of plush slippers. It was a bit of a feat, but for what we were about to do, I needed the ability to slide on my feet.
I turned to face Nadia and Danny just as a voice erupted from the speakers: ‘Whoa-oa-oa!’ he sang, startling the kids. They flinched and whipped around to face me in surprise. ‘I feel good.’
As the drums and saxophone joined his voice, I began to shake my shoulders in time with the tune. Da-na-na-na-na.
I knew that I would, now.
I fee-eel good,
I knew that I would, now.
The kids hooted with laughter as I let my hips accompany my shoulders and began popping them to the bass.
So good (pop, pop)
So good (pop, pop)
I got you (pop, pop, pop, pop, pop!)
I waved at Nadia and Danny to join me as the rhythm of the instrumental repeated.
Whoa! I feel ni-ice,
Like sugar and spi-ice
I fee-eel ni-ice,
Like sugar and spi-ice
They leapt to attention into the middle of the cleared floor and started trying to shake their butts in time with my rocking and popping.
So nice (pop, pop)
So nice (pop, pop)
I got you (pop, pop, pop, pop, pop!)
I pointed to Nadia as James Brown sang, ‘I got you,’ making her giggle and point at me in return a few bars too late but it was close enough. They shivered and shaked, twisted and turned, swung and swayed to James Brown’s music in moves I’d never seen before, their short little arms and legs jerking by their sides as they worked to move their hips like pepper grinders to the beat.
We danced our way through the entire CD, stopping only once we reached “Get Up Offa That Thing” to press the repeat button at Nadia and Danny’s insistence. By that point they were really getting their groove on. What had started as hopping between feet and flailing in a jerky, awkward motion was turning into genuine rhythm. They swung their hips, twisted their legs, and shook their shoulders exuberantly. I even caught Danny hopping onto the balls of his feet in a maneuver he certainly hadn’t picked up from me. By the third time through “Get Up Offa That Thing”, I had them singing along with the lyrics, though it was more of a Romanian chant than melodic song coming from them.
‘Geet up offa that thang,
An dance ‘till you feel betterrr,
Get up offa that thang,
An dance ‘till you, sing it now!’
36
Layla House
We were all gathered in the kitchen later one night, Ellen busy dicing some grilled chicken breasts for tacos while I prepped the toppings of choice and the kids dipped Doritos in various salsas for their first taste of spicy food. We had little bowls of pineapple, mild, and medium salsa for them to explore. I kept sneaking glances at them as they worked their way up the heat scale. The pineapple salsa went over without reaction, but mild gave them a zing. I stifled a snort of laughter as first Nadia then Danny went bug-eyed and opened their mouths for their tongues to loll in the fresh air. Still, they were nothing if not brave, because after a few plain Doritos to calm their palates, they reached for the medium salsa, each dipping a chip a tad more tentatively this time and slowly raising it to their mouths. Danny paused long enough to sniff at the sauce before sliding the chip into his open mouth.
I set the bag a shredded cheese down to watch their reactions this time. They progressed past the acidic to
mato and onion flavor to the gradually warming heat and finally to the genuine burn in the back of their throats. Mouths flapping open again, they each grabbed for their glasses of water and rapidly began chugging it to douse the inferno. I chuckled and shook my head before returning to my shredding. They tended to stick with plain Doritos after that.
His glass of water thoroughly drained, Danny hopped off his bar stool to get a refill. As he came around the island towards the sink, he began to shake his shoulders and twist his hips. His hands flailed the empty glass in the air. As he danced behind her, Ellen turned from the stove to keep his wiggling little body in view; her brows furrowed and eyes narrowed curiously above a sideways smirk.
At the sink, my three-year-old boy threw his arms in the air, whooped, and boomed a la James Brown, ‘I fee-eel good!’
There was no point in stifling the laughter now; it bellowed out of my chest as I threw my head back to let it burst free. Yup, they’re being Americanized, I thought and glanced over my shoulder at Ellen, meeting her raised-eyebrow gaze with my own teary-eyed one.
‘I see you’re teaching them English,’ she commented dryly, but I could see the approving humor sparkling in her eyes. So they weren’t getting the “typical” American upbringing, per se, it didn’t seem to be hindering their progress any. (Thankfully.)
~~~
‘What’s this?’ I asked, picking up the slim packet of papers Ellen had nonchalantly dropped on the kitchen counter. I slid it closer to where I perched on one of the stained pine barstools, eying the images on the front page. The faces of young, African children zigzagged down the paper, five in all and each accompanied by a short block of text. I tried to read the blurb for the first one, but my eyes wouldn’t focus on the words long enough to absorb their meaning. Instead, I found my gaze continually straying to the faces: two smiling, two frowning, and one caught open-mouthed as if in the middle of singing a note, his chin raised ever so slightly as he gazed at the camera through the corners of his eyes.
‘Hm?’ Ellen replied distractedly, glancing up at me from washing her hands in the sink. ‘Oh, do you remember that patient I told you about last week who said how happy I’ve seemed since Nadia and Danny came home? Kathy Barner?’ I nodded, vaguely remembering an earlier comment along those lines. ‘Well, she works for Adoption Advocates International, an adoption agency based here in Washington. She brought me that today,’ Ellen said, gesturing to the papers in front of me. ‘Apparently Adoption Advocates International has close ties with an orphanage called Layla House in Ethiopia.’
Turning to the fridge, Ellen sighed and shrugged her shoulders, ‘I guess Kathy thought we may be interested in adopting again.’
I looked down at the boy who appeared to be singing in a dark blue button-up shirt with the shoulders of two boys in similar attire just visible behind him; then let my eyes drift to the closely framed picture of a girl with short frizzy hair like black steel wool above a wide forehead, captured in profile as a giant smile spread across her face, her nose wrinkled and eyes squinting with rapture; and the little boy, no older than Nadia and smiling at something or someone off camera much as Nadia had in the first picture I saw of her. Then there were the two children too young to identify as boys or girls who weren’t smiling at all. One stared forlornly at the camera, his or her mouth pinched into a disapproving pucker and the other was looking down at something, a furrow of consternation creasing his or her brow. Each photo had been cropped so that only one child was visible and was accompanied, I now realized, by a short biography about the child pictured.
I flipped to the next page and found more of the same: five images paired with five biographies. Each of the six pages stapled into this packet was covered this way, front and back. I turned back to the beginning and stared at the faces of the five children advertised there – for that’s what these were: advertisements for orphaned children. Ten pictures per page with six pages total, I thought, feeling something akin to nausea rolling through my stomach. That’s sixty kids.
I took a swig of chocolate milk in the hopes that it would help settle my stomach and my thoughts. I could get up and walk away, I mused, trying and failing to keep my eyes from looking back down at the packet. With its lack of a title page, it looked like part of a larger pamphlet; the photo part at the end of the document, like the classified ads at the back of a newspaper. Only these classifieds were for children in need of homes, not used trucks or garage sales.
Ellen and I hadn’t discussed adopting more kids – the notion hadn’t even occurred to me what with all my energy and attention being devoted to the kids we already had. I didn’t know if I wanted more kids, so maybe it was best not to even look. Besides, we had Nadia and Danny now. The hole in our lives had been filled. So yes, I could walk away.
But I didn’t. I started reading instead, working my way through all sixty bios, one sip of chocolate milk at a time. They read so much like the stories of homeless pets. A few sentences about how the little boy or girl came to be at Layla House followed by a rosy blip about the child’s adoring or light-hearted or outgoing or cuddly personality. It killed me that all these children were living day-to-day in a crowded orphanage with no parents to tuck them in at night and provide for their future; no home to call their own; no one to make sure their birthdays were special and their Christmases bright. If there was one thing I had learned from adopting Nadia and Danny, though, it was that unscrupulousness was as common as righteousness in organizations such as these. I can’t get pulled in, I told myself. That’s what they want you to do.
But there was this one boy, the second to last photo on the second to last page, who made me pause. The picture was taken from above, with him gazing up but not quite into the camera; more like he was watching the person behind it. He had one hand resting on the top of his head, more forehead than anything else, and the clearest eyes of any child I’d seen thus far. His mouth was parted slightly, puffy lips revealing a set of tiny, white teeth. He looked so confused and frightened; as if he just needed a break. His biographical blurb stated that he first experienced the death of his mother and shortly thereafter that of his father, both to AIDS. He – Michias had tested negative for the disease, however.
I studied his image for a while, almost as if waiting for those big, dark eyes to turn and meet my own. He just looked so small, the way the camera was peering down at him, making his head seem even more disproportionately large in comparison to his little body. It took a fair amount of time for me to look away and continue on to the next photo in the lineup, and even then I snuck one final glance at Michias before turning the page and working my way to the end of the packet.
When I had read about them all and let my eyes rest on each of their faces long enough to become familiar with their features, I turned back to the beginning and resettled the documents on the countertop. My chocolate milk was long gone and my stomach far too tight to do anything other than lay down. How I hated the injustice in the world.
I shuffled my way down the hallway to the kids’ room and found Ellen helping Nadia and Danny into their pajamas. Danny was looking through the books on the bookshelf while Nadia was being tugged into her vivid pink, footie PJs. This is much better, I thought with a renewed sense of peace working its way through me. We already had all we needed right here, in this happy home.
~~~
I didn’t mention the packet and neither did Ellen. The next morning it was gone from the counter and I told myself I wasn’t sorry to see it go. Publications such as those were too heavy to have lying around. Their mere presence seemed to cast a gloominess over everything around them, making you acutely aware of them, like a thorn in the sole of your foot. We had only just finished our last adoption ordeal ten months ago; I couldn’t even begin to think of undertaking another one so soon.
I continued watching PBS and exploring the woods; teaching the kids to dance and watching them grow. I thought it impossible for a parent to love their children any more than I loved Nadia an
d Danny in those moments, but with each passing day I became more and more enamored with them. It wasn’t only nature which could make a child your own, I realized, but also the act of nurturing which solidified us as parents to these children. It was the experiences and journeys we embarked on together which made Nadia and Danny as much “ours” as any biological children could ever be. I couldn’t imagine my life any fuller than it was with them. But, then, before meeting Ellen and happening upon a news broadcast about Washington parents who adopted from Haiti, I never could have imagined my life with Nadia and Danny, either.
~~~
‘Hey!’ I turned from the computer in the loft office where I’d been skimming the latest baseball results to find Ellen chewing her lip at the top of the stairs.
‘Hi there,’ I replied, swiveling my chair to face my wife and eyeing the stapled sheets of paper in her hands. Two weeks had passed since the Layla House photos came and went without comment, and I wondered idly if Kathy Barner had sent Ellen home with another promotional packet to try persuading us again.
Ellen hovered on the top step for a minute, her teeth kneading her lower lip distractedly. I waited for her to come to whatever conclusion she was seeking, something in her demeanor reminding me of that phone call back when she first asked me out for coffee: Perhaps it was the irresoluteness or the way she seemed so uncertain about how to broach whatever topic was up for discussion tonight; like a high school sophomore with an MD, that reminded me now of then. Eventually, her eyes refocused on her present surroundings and she released her lip from between her teeth, striding fully into the room with renewed confidence.
‘Here,’ she said, holding the papers out to me. I reached for them, my eyes falling on a familiar layout of pictures and biographies. It was the same packet of Layla House kids, but this time she handed it to me opened to a specific page, the corner neatly creased around the staple as if it’d been repeatedly rubbed and pinched. I drew the packet towards me, skimming the displayed page and finding one photo had been meticulously circled in dark blue ink.
