Under the Beetle's Cellar

by Mary Willis Walker

  “What happened?”

  “Well, he went off to Austin and run into a brick wall. See, you have to be twenty-one to see your records. He fussed and carried on trying to get me to sign, and when Donnie gets to wanting something, I can tell you there ain’t many in the world can stand up to him, but I did what was best for him. And turns out I was right.”

  There were so many questions Molly wanted to ask, she didn’t know where to begin. “What was it he wanted you to sign?”

  “Oh, so he could see his records. If the parent signs, someone under twenty-one can look at them records. Evelyn was out there in Las Vegas, so he wanted me to do it. But I wasn’t the mother and hadn’t never adopted him, so I don’t think me signing would’ve worked anyway, but he sure wanted me to do that.” She took a deep breath from having talked so fast. “He just had to wait to twenty-one and it didn’t make no difference because when the time come, there was nothing to find out. Just like I told him.” She said it with grim satisfaction.

  “Nothing to find out?”

  “The day that boy turned twenty-one, he went back to that state adoption place and he demanded his file. Of course, it didn’t tell him nothing, really, just like I told him.”

  “Did you see that adoption file, Mrs. Huff?”

  “Well, sure. They give him a copy. He come here waving it around and carrying on. He followed me around the house, getting me to read it to him. See, he don’t read so good. He kept on pushing. He wanted to find his real mother in the worst way. But the record didn’t give him nothing to go on. So he took it out on me. As if I had anything to do with it. See what happens, Mrs. Cates—you do the best you can and you get blamed for everything good you done.”

  “It does sound unfair for him to blame you,” Molly said, desperate to keep her talking. “What information was in his file?”

  “Well, not much. Like Evelyn said, he was left abandoned, just hours old when he was found, throwed out like a piece of garbage.”

  “What was the date?”

  “It was 1962. August the third.”

  “Who found him?”

  “Some man, just passing by the creek.”

  “The creek?”

  “Waller Creek, down there near the university, in Austin. He was floating in the creek, just like Moses, the man said. Moses. You ever heard anything like that?”

  “Floating in the creek?” Molly heard herself repeating everything like an idiot, but each revelation stunned her so much she had to check she’d heard it right.

  “In one of them Styrofoam beer cooler things. Don’t that beat all? Moses in a beer cooler.”

  Molly wasn’t sure whether she believed it or not, but her entire skin surface tingled. She needed to find out more about this, much more. But there was a problem looming: Adoption records in Texas were closed; nothing short of a court order could get you access through official channels. Her only hope was right here, to extract everything there was to get from this woman. She leaned forward. “Mrs. Huff, this is very important. Do you still have that adoption file?”

  Dorothy Huff’s face got hard as Mount Rushmore. “Maybe.”

  “I’d like to read it. It might help.”

  “Even if I had it, it wouldn’t do you no good. If he couldn’t find nothing, you couldn’t neither.”

  “Not necessarily. One of the things I do in my work is research. I’m pretty good at it, but I need some information to start me off. Do you have it?”

  She looked down at her old brown slippers. “He might’ve left it here with his other junk, but if he found out I showed it to you, he’d have me killed, his own granny.”

  “Mrs. Huff, I wouldn’t show it to anyone else. I’d just use it as a starting point for my research.”

  The woman shook her head.

  “Mrs. Huff, you told Mrs. Bassett you would do anything you could to help. Well, this is how you can help her.” Molly made herself add, “And little Kimberly. Those children are what’s important here, aren’t they?”

  “Well, yes, they surely are. But I don’t see how this would help them.”

  Molly was afraid of this question, because she wasn’t sure either. But she needed to answer it because she certainly did want that file. “Well, the negotiators who are talking to Donnie Ray are having trouble communicating with him. They’ve tried everything they know how to do to get him to give up those children. Now they are thinking of letting Thelma Bassett and maybe some of the other parents talk to him, try to get him to see he needs to let those children go before something awful happens. If we could locate his birth mother, maybe she could talk to him, too. We need to try this. Let me look at the file, Mrs. Huff. It might make a difference. Really.” It was as close to begging as she liked to get.

  Dorothy Huff set her mouth in its extreme downward arc again. Molly was sure she was going to say no. “Well,” she said, “it don’t surprise me none that those negotiators can’t talk no sense into him. I never could neither. I reckon I could take a look, see if he left it with the rest of his junk, but it ain’t gonna do you no good.” She struggled up out of the chair. “Oh, lordy,” she moaned, teetering on scrawny legs, “I should be in bed.”

  Molly reached out to take her elbow. “Let me help you.”

  “No, no.” Mrs. Huff shook her hand off. “I ain’t used to no help.” She walked painfully to the door that led into a hallway. “I’ll look, but I don’t guarantee nothing.” She disappeared into a room off the hall and softly closed the door.

  Feeling edgy, Molly got to her feet. If Mrs. Huff couldn’t or wouldn’t find the file, this search might dead-end right here. She looked out the picture window to a small stockade-fenced backyard. There wasn’t so much as a blade of grass or a weed growing from the dusty earth.

  She switched her attention to the room. On a table under the picture window sat one object: an acrylic square for holding photographs. There was only one picture in it—a black-haired girl with a heart-shaped face and lovely blue eyes. Annette Grimes. Molly recognized her from news photos. There was no other decoration in the room. No pictures on the wall, no photographs of Donnie Ray as a child, no books, no newspapers, no magazines. Not even a Bible. Just a big television, a sofa, a table, and the gold recliner. A motel room had more warmth.

  Molly turned when she heard the shuffling tread in the hall. To her delight, Dorothy Huff carried some papers in her hand.

  “All that bending down and dust is real bad for me, but here it is, for what it’s worth. I surely do hope you’re a woman of your word.” She stuck the thin stapled sheaf out in Molly’s direction.

  Molly felt like kissing the yellowed hand. “Thank you, Mrs. Huff. Thelma Bassett will appreciate this and I surely do. May I keep it and send it back in a few days?” Now all she wanted to do was escape this house, and find a quiet place to sit and read the file. Of course, she should stay a while, interview this woman, listen to stories of what a burden Donnie Ray was as a baby, how wicked he was as a toddler, how unfair it had all been. The problem was, she couldn’t bear to hear it. Anyway, she’d promised not to write anything about Dorothy Huff.

  “Mrs. Huff, you’ve been very kind. I need to be getting back to Austin now.” She reached out to shake the woman’s hand, but Dorothy Huff had already turned and shuffled toward the door. Molly followed.

  Getting into her truck, Molly felt the old tingle of the hunt vibrating through her body. She didn’t want to wait until she got back to Austin to read the file, so she headed back to McDonald’s, back to the drive-through window. This time she ordered an Egg McMuffin. She was in the nick of time, just minutes before the ten-thirty end to breakfast.

  She parked and sipped the orange juice as she looked at the first page of the slender file. It was labeled as property of the Department of Public Welfare of Travis County, which apparently handled adoptions back in 1962. At the top it said “Case Number 3459987—Baby Boy Waller, later named Donnie Ray Grimes.” Molly thumbed through the six pages. Her heart sank. On ever
y page there were words blacked out. She put her Egg McMuffin, still wrapped, on the dashboard and studied the inked-out words. They were all names, last names. Someone had inked out all the important names—the name of the man who found the infant, the name of another witness who saw the man find the infant, the name of the police officer who responded to the call. She felt like banging her head against the steering wheel. If she had any hope of tracing the person who abandoned the baby, those were the names she needed.

  Her first reaction was a rush of anger. That old witch Dorothy Huff had done this. But then she calmed down and decided it might have been done by the welfare department. They probably did it to keep the identity of the birth parents confidential. But in this case no one knew who the parents were, so what did it matter? Well, she certainly intended to find out. She settled back to read the file.

  The story was essentially as Mrs. Huff had told her. There was a sketchy police summary describing the infant being found by a man jogging along Waller Creek. The policeman who responded to the call immediately took the infant to Brackenridge Hospital and called the county to come and take over. A caseworker’s report picked up the story from there. The infant, a six-pound male, approximately five hours old, was mildly dehydrated but otherwise healthy. He spent only one day in the hospital, and was then placed in a foster family. There was a lengthy part she skimmed over about the baby’s health and the financial arrangements with the foster parents.

  Attached at the end were the court records concerning the termination of parental rights when the infant was two months old, and the adoption by James and Evelyn Grimes.

  Molly read it through at warp speed. Then she went back and read it again, slowly. It was frustrating because with the crucial names missing it was like trying to get your footing on a glass cliff; there was nothing to grab on to. But she kept reading and got rewarded with something she’d sped over the first time: At the end of the police summary was a line saying, “Male infant and found effects given over to the custody of Public Welfare case worker.” Found effects! Something was found with the baby? She read through the rest of the report carefully searching for any other mention of found effects, but there was none.

  She looked at the Egg McMuffin on the dashboard and decided she didn’t want it after all. What she needed now was some information on how adoptions like this were handled, and she didn’t want to wait until she got back to Austin.

  She used her car phone to get an Austin operator to look up the number for the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services. Then she managed, after several tries, to get an adoption supervisor on the line.

  “Susie Garcia. How can I help you?”

  “This is Molly Cates, Miz Garcia. I work for Lone Star Monthly magazine,” she said in the brisk, professional tone she assumed for extracting information from bureaucrats. It was a tone that assumed she had the right to anything she requested. “I need some information on adoption procedure for an article I’m writing and I wonder if you could help me.”

  “Well, I’ll try, ma’am.”

  Molly decided to start off with something she thought she already knew the answer to. “Miz Garcia, I know that adoption records in Texas are sealed. But what does that mean in actual practice?”

  “It means that adoption records are closed to everyone except the adult adoptee and the adoptive parents.”

  “I see. This woman I’m writing about—she’s an adult adoptee—got a copy of her file, but it has lots of names blacked out. Do you do that?”

  “Of course. We have to de-identify the file before we give it to the adoptee.”

  “De-identify?”

  “Well, yes. To protect the privacy of the birth parents.”

  “Yes, I see why you’d do that, but on this file, other names are blacked out, too.”

  “Well, ma’am, that would probably be because those people might be able to give information that could lead to exposing the identity of the birth parents.”

  “But in this woman’s case,” Molly persisted, “she was abandoned, and the parents were never found. Why would the file be de-identified if there’s no identity known?”

  “Well, it’s our policy. I suppose it’s done so that the adoptee is not even tempted to try a search. It would be a waste of time anyway. If we couldn’t find the birth parents, she couldn’t either.”

  “How hard do you look in a case like that, with an abandoned infant?”

  “The law just says we are required to conduct due and diligent search. We give it a good try. If we can’t find the parents after several months we go to court to have the parental rights terminated so we can put the child up for adoption.”

  “In the meantime the child is in foster care?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What about the original file? That’s not de-identified, is it?”

  “Well, of course not. We keep the original in our files with all names intact, but no one is allowed to see it.”

  “Ms. Garcia, when an infant is abandoned, as in the case I’m writing about, your agency takes custody of the baby, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happens to any clothes or items that might be left with the baby?”

  “Funny you should ask. We had one just a few weeks ago. A newborn baby girl left in the Kmart parking lot with seven jars of strained prunes, a plastic nursing bottle, and a beautiful silver St. Christopher medal. What we did in that case was toss the prunes because we worried about contamination. But the medal and the bottle we gave to the foster mother when we put the baby into her care.”

  “Then what? The baby will get adopted, won’t she?”

  “If we don’t find the birth parents, and we haven’t so far. Oh, yes, she’ll get adopted. In a flash. She’s a real sweetheart.”

  “Then what will happen to her stuff—the bottle and the St. Christopher medal?”

  “The foster mother gives it to the adoptive mother. Such objects often turn out to be very precious, you know—the only link that child has with its birth parents. So we make an effort to preserve everything we can.”

  “So anything abandoned with the baby would end up with the adoptive parents?”

  “Yes, eventually. That’s what usually happens.”

  “Would that have been true back in the sixties, too?”

  “I imagine. I don’t go back that far. This sounds interesting. What’s the article about?”

  “Oh, it’s just the story of a woman who was adopted in the sixties and has been searching for her parents.”

  To prepare herself for the ordeal of another dose of Dorothy Huff, Molly fortified herself with more coffee. She decided not to phone first because she wanted to watch the woman’s reaction to her questions.

  When Mrs. Huff opened the door this time, she held a half-smoked cigarette between her fingers. She looked disconcerted to see Molly.

  “Mrs. Huff,” Molly said. “I hate to bother you again, but there’s just one more favor I need to ask. I stopped at McDonald’s for lunch, and I read the file there. It mentions something about the effects found with the infant. I wonder if I could take a look at them before I drive back.”

  Mrs. Huff assumed a quizzical look. “Effects?”

  “Yes. You know, the things left with Donnie Ray when he was abandoned.”

  The old woman stood perfectly still, the only movement the smoke from her cigarette drifting up her arm. “It says that in the file?”

  “Yes, in the police report.”

  Mrs. Huff turned without speaking and walked inside, wafting smoke behind her. Molly followed without being invited. She watched the woman walk to the gold chair and mash the cigarette into a coffee cup that was sitting on the arm. “Well,” Dorothy Huff said with her head down, “there was the beer cooler, you know. I told you that. But it was old even then, and just one of them cheap ones you get at gas stations, and it just dried up and fell to bits some years ago. I threw it out.”

  Molly followed a hunch.
“What about the other things?”

  “You mean that thing he was wrapped in?”

  “Yes.” Molly’s heart fluttered. “Do you still have it?”

  “Just an old robe. Nothing to see.”

  “Will you get it for me, please?”

  Dorothy Huff’s face hardened into a stubborn look that worried Molly. “I really don’t see—”

  “Please, just let me look. It might be helpful in the search. For Mrs. Bassett and little Kimberly,” she added.

  Dorothy Huff sighed, but once again she turned and shuffled off. This time she was muttering something about if she’d known how much trouble all this would be, she would have stayed in bed where she belonged. She was gone longer this time and there was still nothing to look at in the living room. Except the coffee cup. Molly walked over and peered inside. There were six cigarette butts. Six in the forty minutes since Molly had left. The woman had a prodigious habit.

  Finally Mrs. Huff returned carrying a flat white cardboard box about the size you’d get if you bought a sweater at Foley’s. Molly wanted to grab it and run, but she stood patiently as the woman carried it across the room. She set it down on the table gingerly, as if it contained live rattlesnakes. She put her hands on the box, then paused. “Mrs. Cates, are you a saved woman?”

  Molly didn’t hesitate. “No, Mrs. Huff. I imagine it’s a great comfort to those who are, but I seem unable to believe in anything I can’t see.”

  Mrs. Huff nodded as if that was exactly what she’d expected to hear and raised the lid of the box. She stood aside to let Molly look inside. It was a garment made of a shiny red fabric, neatly folded. “See,” she said in a hushed voice, “that’s it.”

  “Would you take it out for me?” Molly asked.

  Mrs. Huff sighed. She reached in and lifted it out. Holding it with her fingertips, she gave it a shake to open the folds. It was a kimono, clearly old, but still a vivid red. Slowly Mrs. Huff turned it to show Molly the back. Embroidered there was a huge multicolored dragon, coiled in a circle. It had lots of heads and tongues. Molly was amazed: Thirty-three years it had sat in the box and the colors were still vivid, gaudy even.