by Tina Traster
Two hours later, I’m back at my desk. The phone rings. I cringe when I see the caller ID. Why is the adoption agency calling? I wonder. We’ve only been back four days. They probably want more money.
“Hello,” I say.
“Hi, Tina,” says the adoption counselor. “I know you’re probably still recovering from your trip, but I have some interesting news.”
“Interesting?” I say. “What kind of interesting news?”
“You guys will be traveling within the next ten days to get your baby,” she says. “She’s from … let’s see here … ah yes, she’s from a Siberian orphanage. Yep, that’s right. You’ve got to make arrangements for your next trip.”
I hear the words but can’t absorb them. I know what she said, but assume I’ve misheard her. After a long pause, she says, “Tina? Are you there?”
“What?!” I exclaim. “That’s not possible. We just returned a few days ago. I’m not even over my jet lag,” I say, hoping for a laugh. “No, seriously, we’d been told by our handlers out there that we wouldn’t be called back for three to six months. Are you sure you’re not making a mistake?”
“Hang on a minute,” she says, leaving me on the phone to listen to on-hold music, Patsy Cline singing “Crazy.”
I glance at the folders on my desk and mentally calculate my writing deadlines. I break into a sweat even though the apartment is not too warm. I tell myself to calm down. There must be a mistake.
“Hi, sorry to keep you waiting. No, I’ve got the right information in front of me. Your daughter is ready to go.”
“Okay,” I say, resigned but clearly not thrilled and increasingly aware that the counselor must be wondering why I want this delayed.
“It’s just that, wow, I’m just taken aback,” I say, heaving a big breath. “And I don’t have anything ready for the baby. I thought I had so much more time.”
“Oh, I understand perfectly,” she says. “Don’t worry—ten days should give you enough time to make travel plans. I’ll send you the details by e-mail. Let me know if you have any questions. Bye.”
I’m stunned. This must be what it’s like to give birth prematurely. You’re walking along in your sixth month—thinking you’ve got three more months to glow, organize spice racks, and decorate a precious nursery, and then boom, all that time is snatched away.
If there were a Guinness World Records entry for speediest foreign adoption, ours would win. From the time we shipped the telephone book-thick dossier to our adoption agency last August to what is now the projected date Julia will be in our arms, it will be just six months. Everyone told us adoption takes one to two years. Olga had said we wouldn’t be back in Siberia for three to six months.
“At least it will be spring,” I had said. But it won’t.
Mental preparation is an important part of this transition. We don’t have a crib or a single toy. I feel hysterical. I do what I always do when I feel hysterical. I call Ricky.
“Calm down,” he says. “You need a sed-a-give.” He loves that old Young Frankenstein joke. “When I get home, we’ll sketch out a plan, and everything will be all right. I’ll come home a little bit early,” he adds.
I dial my friend Lynn to tell her we’re traveling again in ten days.
“Mazel tov!” she shrieks. “This is so exciting.”
“I don’t have anything for the baby. Nothing! Not even a diaper.”
“Why don’t you come down here and get Hil’s old crib?” she suggests.
“Really?” I say. “You still have Hillary’s crib?”
“Could never part with it, but I’d feel so good about lending it to Julia,” she adds.
“Okay,” I say, “I’ll let you know when we’re coming to Pennsylvania.”
The days are a succession of acquisitions and preparations. I am working off the longest to-do list I’ve ever had. Ricky and I go to a Babies“R”Us in New Jersey. I have never been in one of these baby superstores. I imagine we need one of everything. We get one of those enormous carts and start filling it with a baby blanket and a crib bumper and a crib sheet. “Where are the pillowcases?” I say.
“Babies don’t use pillows,” he says.
“They don’t?” I ask. We move on to the diapers, formula, pacifiers, baby wipes, baby shampoo, plastic bottles. In no time, the cart is full. This is not how I pictured feathering my baby’s nest. I’m not the type of person who shops in a big-box store—what was I doing in a place like this?
“Being practical,” Ricky reminds me, unsentimental about the need to stock up on what we needed fast and affordably.
“We have a lot to do,” he says.
The day after we bring the crib home from Lynn’s, we are standing in the foyer that will become Julia’s nursery. It is a windowless space of about seven by nine feet. At least our prewar building’s ceilings are high and airy, and we’ve enclosed the space with pretty glass French doors. There will be enough room for the crib, a bureau of drawers and a changing table. The space is too tight to include a rocking chair. Ricky opens up the folded crib, and I gasp.
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s dusty and scuffed,” I say.
“Okay, we’ll wipe it down. Let’s just get it built first.”
It takes about forty minutes to assemble. When it’s ready, Ricky rolls it into a corner.
Tears spring from my eyes.
“What’s the matter?” he says. “It’s not bad. It’s pretty, really.”
“It’s used,” I say, dropping to the floor. “I want something that is new. Something that is my own. I appreciate Lynn lending us this but, I don’t know…. It’s just that nothing is the way I thought it would be.”
But I stop short at saying what I’m really thinking, which is I have a used crib for a baby that is not really mine. A used crib and a used baby. I don’t let these thoughts turn to words. They’d be poisonous the second they left my lips.
Ricky comes to me and holds me.
“C’mon, let’s make up the crib.”
He rips open the bags with the sheet, comforter, and bumper and begins arranging them.
“See, look how cute this is,” he says.
The comforter is a patchwork of yellow squares filled with jungle animals. It is precious, and it cheers me up. It was designed by John Lennon.
“You’re right,” I say. “I’m just feeling overwhelmed.”
The next day I go to a travel agent the adoption agency recommended to get travel documents. It is manned by a flame-haired woman who is buried in stacks of paper in a stifling midtown office. She moves back and forth between Russian and English and makes no attempt at being friendly. She reminds me of Olga and of other women we met in Russia. Harsh, unsentimental, no soft edges. I wonder if Julia’s genes will carry these traits.
I meet a man named Robert who will be traveling the same day we are. On our first trip to Russia, Ricky and I were alone; we did not encounter any other adoptive parents. But I’m told the second trip will be different. We will be traveling with two other adoptive families to Siberia, and there will be a large contingent of adoptive parents scheduled to fly to Moscow with us. Robert and his wife, Laura, will be collecting their child from Samara, which is about a ninety-minute flight from Moscow. He’s intrigued when I tell him we have to go to Siberia—that in fact we have only just returned from Siberia and that I am not looking forward to another round in the gulag. He laughs, which puts me at ease. Robert tells me he and his wife are thinking about bringing back two children because they have been unable to conceive and they don’t want to have to go through this adoption process more than once.
“Wow,” I say. “Two children. I’m having enough trouble preparing for one,” I say.
He smiles again.
“See you in a few days at Kennedy Airport,” he says, when he leaves the office.
It’s Saturday, the last Saturday night Ricky and I will be free to live it up without a baby-sitter, but I’m dead tired. So is he. I can’
t remember when we last “lived it up,” though it’s nice to know the option’s there. It’s like living in Manhattan. People always say the city has the best museums and theater, but how often do you really do these things when you are preoccupied with settling down and making a family?
Nevertheless, the thought of life with a baby is scary and, in truth, almost impossible for me to picture.
We go over our checklist. Everything is in order.
“We have to pack the ‘gifts,’” I say sarcastically.
We have been told by our agency that we are expected to disseminate “gifts” to nearly everyone who handles us. We are bringing silk scarves, the loose-leaf tea we sell, New York paraphernalia such as T-shirts and snow globes and lots of diapers for the orphanage. I don’t mind the diapers because they are for the babies.
The Chinese delivery boy raps at the door. I’m watching television halfheartedly. While Ricky hands him money, I shriek, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God!”
Ricky practically drops the food. He assumes I’ve seen a mouse. Or a ghost.
“What’s the matter?”
“I haven’t bought any clothes for Julia,” I moan. “She doesn’t have anything. We can’t bring her out of the orphanage buck naked, which is how she’ll be handed to us, buck naked.”
“Okay, calm down. We’ll get her some clothes tomorrow. We’re not leaving until Wednesday.”
“I don’t even know what size she is. I’ve never even bought baby clothes.”
“You’re just nervous. Everything will be fine, you’ll see. Go to Bloomingdale’s first thing tomorrow and buy her a whole bunch of clothes. If the sizes are wrong, we’ll exchange them. Don’t be so afraid.”
I think back to that fateful day in the fertility clinic last May. For six months I needed to have my blood monitored every other day while we were trying artificial insemination. Ricky came with me every time, which was good because I’m a complete coward when it comes to medical intervention. The technician had wrapped the rubber tourniquet around my arm and told me to make a fist. She already knew I was one of those problematic patients who needed her husband to hold her hand.
“Come on, darling. Try to relax,” she had said, wriggling my arm. “I need to find a vein.”
Bruised from too many blood tests (or bloodlettings, as I called them), it took three attempts for the nurse to jam in the needle. I felt a searing pain. I started to cry. Ricky rubbed my shoulders. Afterward, I said, “I can’t do this anymore.”
“Okay, you don’t have to,” Ricky said, and without skipping a beat he added, “We can adopt. There are millions of babies who need homes.”
“Really?” I said, snuffling. Lately, I had been thinking that if I couldn’t even tolerate blood tests, how in the world was I going to be able to move on to more aggressive in vitro fertilization treatment with its daily injections? I’m terrified of being put under with anesthetics. How was I going to be able to undergo a surgical egg retrieval of maybe a dozen eggs and then an implantation of multiple embryos? What if I had twins or triplets? In the back of my mind, I knew I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I never said anything.
“Ricky, we’ve never talked about adoption before,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “But this is grueling for you, and if we move on to in vitro, there’s a huge risk of failure, whereas adoption is a sure thing. And, we only have enough money for one attempt. Our COBRA won’t even cover the procedure.”
I rolled down my sleeve, stood up, and hugged this man who seemed too good to be true. I might not be able to make a baby with him, but I knew then and there that no matter what, we’d always be able to muddle through our darkest hours. I felt like the luckiest woman in that fertility clinic that day—the one who walked out, never to return.
I arrive at Bloomingdale’s on 59th and Lexington, breathless. The door is locked. I cup my hands around my cold face and peer through the steamy, tinted glass. It’s five to ten, and my teeth are chattering. Standing alone on the frosty street, my mind drifts back to a time when shopping here with my mother was the most natural thing in the world. Shopping was love; shopping was sustenance; shopping was what we did. Especially before the start of each and every season. If she were here with me now and I was twelve again, we’d be shopping for bathing suits and lacy coveralls for a winter break in Puerto Rico. This might be the one place where she wouldn’t constantly flick her wrist to see what time it was. We’d have grabbed ten bathing suits, definitely bikinis, before slipping into the dressing room. She’d let out a sigh of relief while settling into a chair, letting her heavy pocketbook fall to the floor. She was a beautiful woman, still. She’d been a bleached blonde practically my whole life. She had large blue eyes and good bone structure, but she had a complicated life with my father, and the strain of their relationship tightened her face. I was the most important person in her world, which must have made me feel useful. I’d model the bikinis, one at a time.
“What do you think of this one?” I’d ask, seeking her approval.
“That suits your figure,” she’d say, looking up and down, pleased at the sight of my slender body. “See if they have that one in another color or pattern. You could always use an extra suit.”
After she’d paid for the suits, she’d hand me the big brown bag and say, “Use everything in good health.” Then, she’d pause. “But don’t tell your father what we bought today.”
It was an odd thing to say, because there never was any detectable shortage of money. But I never asked why she said that. It made our shopping ventures seem like a clandestine mission between mother and daughter. I realized years later that she was subconsciously trying to alienate me from my father by creating secrets between us he couldn’t be privy to—secrets that didn’t even matter but secrets just the same.
I’m startled when I hear the sound of keys jiggling the front door. An effete man dressed in an impeccable wool suit leans his head outside and says, “Welcome to Bloomingdale’s.” He doesn’t know I’ve been here a million times. I look as though it’s my first visit.
“Can I help you?” he sing-songs, tilting his head one way and then the other.
“Do you, are the, do, where are babies’ clothes?” I stammer.
“They’re on the lower level,” he says, sweeping his arm in a balletic gesture toward an escalator. “Right down there,” he points for emphasis.
I hear my heart thumping in my chest. I am in a foreign world when I reach the bottom of the escalator. Teeny clothes hang on wee hangers, and neat piles of shirts and pants are stacked on tables. They look like dolls’ clothes. I should be delighted, but I’m dizzy and disoriented. I’m buying baby clothes for my baby who’s not here, whom I don’t even know. It’s another reminder of how upside down mothering can be when you’re adopting a baby and you’re shopping for her and you can only hazily picture her height and girth. I must look like I’ve stumbled into a postnuclear world. An African American saleswoman comes over and gently says, “May I help you?”
“Um, yes, I need baby clothes, for a baby, my baby, but she’s not here now.”
She looks at me quizzically for a moment. “I think I understand. Come with me.”
As I trail her I keep stammering. “Yes, I’m adopting a baby. She’s seven months, and I’m going to get her in Siberia in a few days.”
“Siii-beeeeeer-iii-aa?” she says while clearing her throat. “Well, well, darling, I think we better look at some of these old winter clothes we have right here. Some are even on sale. C’mon, honey.” I trot behind her like a duckling following its mother. She hands me tiny snowsuits, and I hold them up and eyeball them.
“I like the yellow one,” I say. It is a one-piece suit with a hood. It’s fuzzy, and it has pink swirly buttons. I hold it up to my cheek and try to imagine what it will be like to see Julia’s little face poking through the hood. “Yes, this is good.”
Yellow seems like a good color for starting a new life. Like the sun coming up. A new day. A new life. Bet
ter than pink. I remember that her crib quilt is also yellow.
For the next forty-five minutes, I look at nearly every piece of clothing for a one-year-old baby. This kindly woman is the mother who is not here for me now. I wish my mother was here with me now, but our relationship has been strained for a decade. There’s no intimacy or shared moments, only anger—anger because so many things have gone wrong and they can’t be put right. Everyone says things will change when I bring Julia home, that giving her a granddaughter will give us another chance.
Our rift started when I got divorced in 1994. I had married an Englishman who seemed to her like Prince Charming. My marriage was filled with jet-set travel and diamonds. I waited for real life to begin, but it never did. My mother could not understand how I could walk away from such financial security.
Even through the process of adoption, tensions between my mother and I have not melted.
By the time I’m ready to leave, I have filled two big brown bags.
“You’re gonna have the best-dressed baby around,” she says while ringing up the clothes. “And the warmest.”
I suppress tears. I’m afraid if I cry she’ll be compelled to put her arms around me until I stop. I get a hold of myself. “I can’t tell you how much your help has meant to me. Thank you.”
“That’s no problem,” she says. “Now you enjoy that baby of yours, sweetheart.”
I leave the store and hail a cab. Julia has a wardrobe. A brand-new, unused wardrobe with tags on clothing that is crisp and neat and unstained. I recall how the orphanage had her dressed in threadbare, mismatched clothes.
Yes, yellow is optimistic.
Five
“Hey, there’s Robert,” I say to Ricky. “The guy I told you about. The one I met at the Russian travel office.”
He is with a tall, statuesque woman with a thick mane and heavily painted face that conceals her age. That must be Laura. They are mingling with a group of couples. We will all be on the Delta flight to Moscow within a couple of hours. Our lives changed forever.
