by Amy Seek
I couldn’t deny my motherhood, and I couldn’t claim it honestly. I couldn’t do anything simple or consistent; I couldn’t even stay sad. Sometimes, bracing myself against the cold wind as I walked along the Charles, I found myself smiling.
One of my new friends told me about dances held almost every night at different locations, and, knowing little else about Boston, I started going. I’d learned to dance when I was young, in a barn filled with old car and bus seats planted right into the sloped dirt floor. Everyone wore taps on their shoes, and they danced alone without partners, as good Christians do. A kind of clogging called flatfoot, it looked simple, so I’d tried it. I tapped and leapt and bounced to the music, but an old man pulled me off the dance floor and escorted me outside. He went back inside, and a few minutes later a little boy fell out the door and looked up at me, perplexed. He’d been told to teach me to dance, but he didn’t seem to understand not knowing how to dance. He did a fast wagon wheel and some ornamented basics and looked up at me to replicate them, but try as he might he couldn’t slow them down or explain them. What I could see was the gravity. Unlike tap dancing or ballet, which aspire like the cathedrals to weightlessness and height, flatfoot was low to the ground and heavy. You were always lifting yourself up from a burdensome weight.
I danced almost every night. Dances with set steps, old contra dances and clogging that connected me back to the South. The structure and constraint of fixed movements established for centuries, the wild release of the whole history of myself, gains and losses, contained in my spinning mass.
* * *
And sometimes on Sunday mornings, I went to church and confronted God the father. I had never been in a better position to hear him, reduced by my loss to a state more primal than motherhood, more detached from desire than a monk. But now it seemed absurd to ask why. Why had it all happened, what good was in store because of it? God seemed to me very much a man, casting generative potential into the void without turning back to see what got fertilized. His creative prowess was a heartless force, and his reasons couldn’t be known by me.
The only thing I felt was the holy difference. That the Big Plan had very little to do with me. God’s ways had never been mine. People at church said I should be grateful about the adoption, but I liked facing that cold hardness blankly; it elevated God and made me turn on him.
We sang the Our Father and raised our fists in aggressive submission.
* * *
I took a weekend off in February and flew to North Carolina to see my son. He was locomoting, backward, mostly. He drooled so much they had to change his shirt several times a day. When Erik disappeared into the woods to help Sarah find her shoes, I ran with Jonathan, threw him upward and caught him, and he smiled at me. The morning I left, he lay on his stomach, on my stomach, the way he had when he was first born and they piled him, slippery, on top of me. He searched my face with all his senses. Put his hands in my mouth, gummed at my nose. Pulled my hair. When I left, my throat felt scratchy and sore, and I marveled that my son had an independent biology, and that he had made me sick.
When I got back to Boston, a boy I’d met at a dance said that he admired and respected me, but he’d been thinking about it, and if I was able to give up my own son, he couldn’t help but wonder what else I was capable of. He didn’t want to see me anymore, but it was just in time. My ten-week internship was almost over, and I was already packing to go. The weekend before I left, in one of the oldest churches in Boston, I was baptized into an incongruous understanding of God, the only thing certain that I often thought of him. In a strange union that embraced my body, its history and its denial, I was baptized under three cupfuls of water in the name of the Father, the image of the detached; the Son, my tragic loss; and the Holy Spirit. I left town without having found the Right Red, and in my internship evaluation, my supervisor said it would be a shame if I didn’t pursue my love of dancing.
TWENTY-ONE
In April, Jonathan was nine months old. The colic had subsided, and he was practicing language that Paula described as “the funniest little combination of mumbling and humming.” She said his voice was very much a little boy’s voice. He was beginning to balance on wobbly legs and had a full head of bright white hair and a mouthful of baby teeth. She sent pictures of him proudly pouring a pitcher of water over Sarah’s head in the tub, Sarah’s eyes shut tight, laughing. He smiles like the sun, I thought—like the happiness is coming from within him. I realized I had thought of him like the moon.
Paula said that when Sarah turned nine months old, she realized she’d been Sarah’s mother for as long as her birth mother had, and that felt significant. People would sometimes ask about Sarah’s real mother, and although comments like that bothered her, having had her own nine-month gestation she found herself feeling a little more like a real mother. Now that Jonathan was nine months old, I hoped she’d feel more like his real mother, too, and that I might experience some kind of positive inverse: my son would feel to me more hers, and my loss, less.
We talked about these things like we weren’t right in the middle of them. We were always lightening our relationship by exposing it to air: the fraught and complex aspects of our joint/mutual/exclusive motherhoods. She was the person who came closest to being able to understand. I’d tell her really hard things—like the feelings of regret I’d unearthed at the birth mothers’ retreat—and she’d describe her own ambivalence as an adoptive mother. She said because she’d seen the strength of my bond with Jonathan, her motherhood could never be simple. Openness didn’t make anything easier, but she said it at least gave her the assurance I was busy with school and not plotting to steal my son back. I laughed at that, but it was important—being able to share some of what we were each going through was heartening. Whatever the animal complexity of what we’d done, ethically and intellectually, we were solidly on the same side.
* * *
And at nine months, Jonathan was doing his own kind of sophisticated thinking. Paula said he was now able to recognize and remember people. When he saw someone he knew, he’d smile and his face would light up. But I didn’t expect him to remember me. I might not even recognize him, he was growing so fast. On my way to see him, I reminded myself that much as he might have grown, he was still just a baby; I’d try not to expect anything at all. When I arrived, he crawled furtively behind a chair, and when Paula picked him up, he buried himself in her chest, glancing at me from the safety of her arms. Sarah made it easier by leaping into mine, but squeezing her I wondered, If he does recognize me, what does he see?
Paula would probably have prepared him for this visit by explaining that I was his mother in some simple way a nine-month-old could understand. This was important data he’d now be able to store and use, and maybe next time, and from then on, he’d recognize me and know something about how important our visits together were. But how could she not at the same time explain that I’d given him up? Those two facts were inseparable. Could he love me for one without hating me for the other? I touched his hand to say hello, and he drew it back as if he were afraid of me. And I realized I was afraid of him, too.
* * *
That question consumed me as I carried him to the park that afternoon. He had warmed to me after spending the morning watching Sarah climb on me, and run away squealing, and return all over again, and Paula suggested I try taking him for a walk. But it was the first time we’d been alone together since his adoption, and I was nervous. I pushed him gently on an infant swing, grabbing his toes every time he returned to me. I felt lucky when he smiled, arriving at my collarbone. But watching him watch me, I wondered what image he was now taking in to store. I told myself his furrowed brow meant he wanted off the swing, but I was afraid it meant more. I lifted him up, chatting continuously, adding stories, songs, spins in a circle—in a race with his growing consciousness. The more experiences we shared as his understanding took shape, perhaps the less he would see me through the stark circumstances of his birth and adopt
ion. His affection for me might stand a chance against his anger. He studied me at close range, and it seemed urgent: I could not let him cry. His tears at that moment would seem decisive.
Rain suddenly began falling hard, lightning and thunder; real and outside of us. We stepped into a gazebo for shelter and watched it pour. I loved storms. They bent the rules of the day; people came alive and abandoned plans and ran for cover. The rain made our strange relationship feel real. Our relationship could get wet. It invigorated me. I stepped into the storm, holding him. Me and him and the pummeling rain, the only important facts of the gray and watery world. He wrinkled his face and looked at me, and I remembered putting him in the shower as a newborn to make him cry. I tried to own the confidence in our connection I’d had then.
When the sky began to clear, the world was a steaming memory, puddles everywhere reflecting a sky that had forgotten it made them. He pointed at one, and I dropped down to a squat. I leaned forward, and he held one hand around my neck while he splashed in the puddle with the other. Our heads were smashed together to give him leverage for the splashing hand, and he would turn, his nose nearly touching mine, and smile and scream. I stood back up, we found another, squat, splash, scream.
I had forgotten how magical puddles were. They reordered the known universe of my neighborhood when I was little; we knew exactly where to go for shallow ones and deep Barbie bathtubs; oceanic ones that spread across the street. We’d pick up earthworms along the way, returning them to the grass before they dried up or got run over. We called that activity STEW: Save The Earth Worms. I put Jonathan down and rolled up his pant legs. He steadied himself on me with wet hands, earnestly, as if our splashing was serious business. When I was finished with his cuffs, I lifted him and put him down at the edge of a shallow pothole. He kicked it and laughed. Then he crouched to touch it. I felt I’d found something real between us. Not my motherhood, but some simpler alliance.
* * *
After dinner Paula surprised me by putting on the mix tape I’d sent in the fall. Sarah danced, and she even sang along to some of the songs. Jonathan joined in, bouncing on his rubbery legs, and Erik bounced on his own legs a few times as he passed through clearing dishes. Washing the dishes was one of his jobs. Paula grocery shopped and cooked; Erik did dishes and laundry. They both cleaned, and, because their teaching schedules were flexible, they shared child care without needing much additional help. Paula seemed to savor the after-dinner social time, when her chores were done. We were drinking wine out of big, round glasses, watching the kids, and when my mix tape ended, she surprised me more by playing a mix tape my mother had sent, filled with children’s songs she’d taught her students in France and Germany. “Sur le pont, d’Avignon, on y danse, on y danse!” I was impressed that my mother had sent such a record, or knew how to make one, or had the same impulse I did, to share music with my son.
“I was starting to tell you before about Jevn’s visit, because it’s just—so funny how these things happen with adoption.” Paula sank into the couch, one leg folded underneath her, like it was a slumber party at midnight. I was a little sister, completely under her spell. “There’s this little bagel shop we discovered; we can walk to it just down the street. Maybe Erik showed it to you; it’s one of our favorite little places to go in the morning.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, shrugging. I liked hearing about Jevn from them; Paula spoke of him like he was ours.
“Well, when Jevn was here, he and I took Jonathan there. We were sitting at a little table, eating our bagels. And one of my colleagues comes in. This is someone we know through school, and you know we just can’t tell everyone the whole story, how the kids were adopted, what an open adoption is—most people know, but sometimes it’s just easier not to get into it. And sometimes we forget who knows what. Anyway, so Jevn is sitting there with Jonathan on his lap, and I see this colleague taking a good look at them while she’s in line. I wave hello, and I see the gears turning. She’s looking from Jonathan to Jevn, who is of course like a perfect adult version of him, and I see what she’s thinking.” She laughed and leaned forward. “I’m having a secret rendezvous with my child’s real father! At the bagel shop down the street!”
She laughed. I laughed; the foibles of open adoption.
I told her my own story, about a woman I’d met at a dance who, after hearing about Jonathan’s adoption, asked me if I might consider being a surrogate for her. I had a proven pelvis and a proven ability to give up my babies.
“Amy, no. You have got to be kidding me!” Paula laughed.
* * *
That night I passed the bedrooms on my way to brush my teeth. I wanted to say goodnight to Jonathan, but the bond we’d built in the afternoon felt tenuous. And he was so sensitive. Paula said his sensitivity was sometimes so extreme, he’d get upset when her coffee cup wasn’t centered on the microwave turntable. I feared what that might mean—was he trying in vain to right a world that had wronged him? But Paula took it in stride. Part of his personality. I imitated her, taking things simply, and after I brushed my teeth, I peeked in. Paula was laying him down on the bed to change him, and he had already started to cry. I could kiss him then, because then no one would know whether he was crying because of me or because of the changing. Paula stood back as I kissed his forehead, and he paused to look at me. His eyes blinked to focus through his tears. And then he started to laugh.
The next morning, my parents arrived to pick me up. I’d flown down from Boston after my internship, and they’d be taking me back to Tennessee to retrieve my car and drive back to school. While my mother and I talked to Paula in the living room, my father took Sarah for a walk; he found a construction site, crossed the No Trespassing signs, and let Sarah climb on piles of sand and gravel between backhoes and construction debris. Sarah returned quietly smitten, with dangerous new knowledge of the world within walking distance.
We said goodbye, and I settled into the hard cushions of the backseat, the soft seal of the doors as they closed dividing this family from that one more cleanly than I knew how to. As we drove through the mountains into Tennessee, my parents talked about what good parents Paula and Erik seemed to be. My mother said she sort of felt she hadn’t lost a grandson so much as she’d gained a son- and daughter-in-law in Paula and Erik. But after Mass the next morning, when one of her friends pulled out a photograph of her beautiful newborn grandchild, she said nothing about her own.
* * *
It was nice to be home, where family was easy. Family had always meant: eating supper together and going for hikes. It meant knowing exactly what one another will think is funny, what words make us cringe (panties, chuckle, nibble, snack); it was conversations that begin when you can’t really talk because you’re brushing your teeth and the recognizable weight of each person’s feet going down the steps in the morning. It was knowing exactly what part of the creek has the most crawdads and hiking through the tall grass to get there. It was turnip parties in the garden, when we’d take a slice right off the edge of Dad’s knife, still warm from the ground and the sun, and spicy. It was Dad making us gag by calling those sweet moments togetherness. Above all, it was being able to take one another for granted and taking the greatest imaginable comfort in that.
But with my son it was the opposite. I second-guessed every word; I doubted every touch. He changed radically every time I saw him, and I couldn’t even assume he would know who I was, or what he would see in me if he did. I’d created a whole different kind of family, one that would never be able to take anything for granted. It was only through our loss that we would know each other, and knowing each other would require intention, and care, and effort. Time together wouldn’t be easy and obvious; it would always be a kind of tending to our wounds.
* * *
My father cracked peanut shells in his pockets as we walked through the neighborhood, talking about my good time in Boston, the good parents I found for Jonathan, and the exciting things coming up for me in school. It
was just like when I was little; sometimes I’d have trouble sleeping and he’d lie down beside me and set happy things afloat in my imagination, with no narrative to connect them.
Remember Prince? The horse across the field by the gas station? He loved those apples we brought him, even the wormy ones from the trees. And Topsy, she was your favorite horse to ride, wasn’t she?
It was as though the mere existence of such good things around me meant their goodness somehow extended to me. But they always seemed alien, horses floating across the groundlessness of night, while the crickets and cicadas and buzzing insects gave volume to the darkness.
Ebony jumped the fence that day! She must have been very hot! But she just went back to her stall, didn’t she?
Surf Song, and Sugar Foot, and every other horse in the stable.
TWENTY-TWO
It was almost Jevn’s birthday when I got back to school. I hadn’t seen him in months, but he had been present everywhere all the same: Jonathan was growing to look just like him, and Paula and Erik spoke of him easily and often. We were always going to be in each other’s lives, and on good days I thought things could be simple with us. So that Saturday I mixed up nuts and flour and salt and cinnamon, my mother’s recipe, and then I mushed the bananas, cooked and cooled everything, and I took it to his house. A loaf of banana bread to say that I was sorry for everything, or everything was forgiven, and I still cared about him and always would. Simple. I stood on the stoop, heart pounding.
