by Amy Hatvany
“I know.” Her mother shrugged. “But with just your father and me, it takes forever to fill the thing up. Besides, it’s relaxing.”
“Zen and the art of dishwashing?” Natalie said as she settled onto one of the stools lining the granite-topped island in the middle of the room, waiting for her mother to finish.
“Exactly,” her mother said, turning to smile at Natalie as she set the last dish in the rack by the sink. She pulled off her gloves and set them on the counter. “Coffee?”
“Yes, thanks. I brought scones.”
“My favorite.” She grabbed two mugs from the cupboard and filled them with coffee from the pot she’d apparently already brewed. Natalie took one of the cups from her mother and set it in front of her so it could cool.
Her mother sat down next to her at the counter and held her coffee with both hands, as though warming them. Even their fingernails were different—her mother’s long and elegant versus Natalie’s short and square. “How are you?”
“I’m good.” What Natalie actually felt was anxious, but she was trying not to show it.
Her mom reached inside the box and broke a piece off of one of the scones, then popped it inside her mouth. “Mmm,” she murmured. “Fantastic. I love the almonds.”
“Thanks,” Natalie said, trying to find the right way to bring up the subject they needed to discuss. But first, she spent a while making small talk with her mom, inquiring about her volunteer work at the food bank and the European vacation she and Natalie’s father were planning in the spring.
“And how are my gorgeous grandbabies?” her mother asked after they’d each finished eating a scone and decided to move to the more comfortable overstuffed couches in the family room.
“They’re good, too,” Natalie said. They settled into opposite ends of the same couch, and Natalie looked at her mom, who appeared about as relaxed as Natalie had ever seen her, and decided there was no sense waiting any longer. She dove into why she was there. “Hailey actually has a project for school that reminded me of one I had to do, too.”
“Really?” her mom said. “What is she doing?”
“Our family tree.” The muscles in her mother’s face froze, as Natalie suspected they would, but she forged ahead anyway. “I know this is a touchy subject, but it reminded me of how I wanted to include my birth mother on mine and you didn’t want me to. It made me think that it’s time for me to at least know her name.” She paused. “Kyle and I talked about it, and he thinks my knowing more about her might be a good idea, too.” Her mom loved Kyle like he was her own son; Natalie brought him into the conversation because she wanted her mother to see that this idea wasn’t just coming from her. She had her husband’s full support.
Her mother pressed her thin lips together and looked out the large picture window, so Natalie did, too. The rain from the previous night had dissipated before dawn, and strong winds had blown away the steel-wool clouds. Now, the sky was an intense, brilliant shade of blue, as though the storm had scrubbed it clean.
After a minute of silence, Natalie spoke. “Mom?” she said. “What do you think?”
“Why,” her mother asked, “do you think this would be a good idea?” Her voice was quiet but tense, and her fingers were linked tightly together in her lap.
“Because she’s the only blood relative I have, other than the kids.” Her mother closed her eyes and jerked her chin upward, as though Natalie had hit her. “Mom, please. I’m not trying to hurt you. I just think if I want to know my birth mother’s name, I should be able to.” Natalie grabbed a throw pillow and hugged it to her chest. “Honestly, I feel like I should already know it.”
“You only want to know her name?”
Natalie shook her head. “I want to see my adoption file. I want to know more about where I came from.”
Her mother’s blue eyes glossed with tears. “You came from your dad and me. We raised you. We took care of you. Aren’t we enough?”
Natalie gritted her teeth. “Of course you’re enough. That’s not the issue.”
“Then what is? Tell me how I’m not supposed to feel like I haven’t been a good enough mother to you when you want to go off and find another one?”
“Jesus, Mom.” Natalie released the pillow she held, letting it fall to the floor.
Her mother stared hard at the fallen pillow. Natalie sighed, reaching down to return it to its rightful spot on the couch. Some things never changed. In her parent’s house, if you dropped something, you picked it back up.
“Thank you,” her mom said, looking at Natalie again.
“You’re welcome,” Natalie said. A deep pinpoint pain began to pound below her right eye. Oddly enough, her sinuses were often the barometers of her emotional state—the more stressed she became, the more they swelled. Her doctor told her it was likely an autoimmune response, her body’s reaction to too much adrenaline. She pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to relieve the pressure, not knowing why she had thought this conversation would be any different than the others she and her mother had had about this subject. They always ended this way, her mother in tears and Natalie with the kind of headache that comes from banging your head against an impenetrable maternal brick wall.
“It would be harder,” Natalie finally said, “but you know I can look for her without your help. I could hire a private investigator.” She and Kyle had discussed that possibility the night before, in case her mother refused to cooperate. Now, Natalie kept her voice gentle, filled with as much compassion as it could hold. “But I came to you first, because I didn’t want to hide anything. I wanted you to know that this isn’t about you or Dad.” She felt a barb of tears in her throat, and she had to swallow them down before she went on. “You are my mother. You will always be my mother. The one who held me and took care of me and made sure I had everything I could ever possibly need. You and Daddy both did that. And I’m not looking to replace you. You could never lose me . . . you have me. I’m already yours.”
Her mother’s chin trembled, and before Natalie could say anything else, her mom stood up and without a word, strode out of the room.
“Shit,” Natalie muttered, pushing on the sore spot of her cheekbone with her thumb. She didn’t know why she’d even bothered coming. She should have just found her birth mom on her own and told her mother about it after the fact. After Natalie could show her mother that the other woman wasn’t any kind of threat—she was simply a part of Natalie’s history, a history she was entitled to know.
Her phone buzzed in her purse, which she’d left on the counter next to the half-eaten box of scones, so she rose to get it. “On a quick recess,” Kyle’s text message read. “How’s it going?”
“She just walked out on me,” Natalie responded, grateful that her husband had remembered what she was going to do that morning.
“Not surprising.”
Natalie’s gratitude was quickly replaced by a flash of irritation at her husband’s seemingly flippant remark, but she did her best to push it down, telling herself that he was in work mode, focused solely on pointing out the facts of a situation. She reminded herself that there were two parts of her husband—lawyer-Kyle and family-Kyle. Sometimes, when she needed one, she got the other. “No,” she typed, “but that doesn’t make it any easier.”
“Sorry,” he said, and she knew that her conclusion about his current mind-set was spot-on. “Be home as soon as I can tonight, OK?”
Natalie thanked him and shoved her phone back in her purse, trying to think about what else she could possibly say to her mother in order to get through to her. But before she could land on anything that might work, she heard footsteps behind her on the hardwood floor and spun around. “Look, Mom,” she began. “I’m sorry.” But then Natalie saw the box in her mother’s hands, and she froze where she stood. The box was white, its edges slightly torn and yellowed with age. “What’s that?” she asked, feeling her heartbeat quicken.
“It’s what you wanted,” her mother said. Her face was pale
. “All we know. Everything before you were ours.” She held the box out to Natalie, who took it from her. It was lighter than she’d expected; it seemed like something as significant as what her parents had kept from her all these years should have more heft. She fought the urge to rip the box open right then and there, but she didn’t want to hurt her mother any more than she knew she already had.
“It’s okay,” her mom said, as though she had read Natalie’s thoughts. “I just called your dad. He agreed it was time for you to see it.”
“Are you sure?” Natalie asked.
“No. But one of us should be here when you do.”
Natalie cocked her head and furrowed her eyebrows, wondering what, exactly, she was about to see that her mother thought she needed to witness. But then it didn’t matter, because she set the box down on the kitchen island and lifted its lid.
The first thing she saw was a purple blanket with a silky but threadbare trim. “I remember this,” she said. Her voice quavered. “I used to sleep with it.”
Her mother nodded, pressing a closed fist against her mouth. “Until you were Hailey’s age,” she said when she dropped her arm back to her side.
“It’s the same color as my delivery boxes,” Natalie said, a bit dazed by the realization. She remembered the day she’d chosen the lavender boxes for her business over white ones, something about the color appealing to her in a way she couldn’t explain. She looked at her mother through glassy eyes. “Did my birth mother give it to me?”
“I don’t know,” her mom admitted. “Maybe. You had it the day we came to get you from the social worker. You wouldn’t go to sleep without it.”
Natalie lifted the blanket out of the box and set it on the counter. Her birth mother might have wrapped this around her. Natalie swallowed hard, then looked inside the box again. There was a single manila file folder with no label on the tab. She reached for it, but her mother’s voice stopped her.
“Honey, wait. I need you to understand something, first.”
Natalie looked at her mom, then back at the folder. Her pulse raced. “What?”
Her mom shifted her feet, her eyes darting to the floor, then back up to Natalie. “Your father and I did what we thought was best at the time.”
An alarm began to sound inside Natalie’s head, screaming in sync with the pounding beneath her eye. “What are you talking about?”
Her mother took a step toward her and placed a single hand on Natalie’s forearm. She stared at her daughter’s face as though trying to memorize something. “You said you want to know more about the girl who gave birth to you,” she said. “When you open that folder you’re going to see something I hope doesn’t upset you too much.”
“Mom, please. Just tell me.” Natalie’s thoughts spun with worst-case scenarios. Was her birth mom a prostitute? A victim of rape? Did she already know her? Natalie’s mom didn’t have any siblings, but her father did. Did her aunt Vicki get pregnant and then let Natalie’s parents adopt her? Was this some big family secret they’d been keeping all these years?
Her mom reached into the box and picked up the folder, holding it out for Natalie. “You already know she gave you up because she couldn’t take care of you,” she said. She held very still, a muscle twitching just under her right eye. “But what you don’t know . . . what your dad and I never told you . . . is that she gave up your sister, too.”
Brooke
The Hillcrest Home for Girls was located on the outskirts of Georgetown, an industrial area in South Seattle. The four-story, blue square box of a building was set against a steep hillside; its locked windows, worn linoleum floors, and buzzing fluorescent lights screamed the word “institution” the instant someone walked through the front doors. It was the place where Brooke and Natalie were first separated; babies were kept in a different part of the building than the older kids.
Gina tried to explain what was happening. She dropped down, squatting next to Brooke, and looked her straight in the eye. “I know it’s hard, sweetie. But believe me, I’m going to do everything I can to help you two find another home to be in together. Right now, though, you have to be away from each other a bit. You still can see her every day while you’re here. Okay?”
Brooke bit her bottom lip and nodded, slowly. Gina was nice, even if she was the one who took her from her mom. Thoughts of her mother stung like tiny splinters trapped beneath Brooke’s skin. Sometimes she picked at them, trying to dislodge the pain of missing her. Brooke didn’t understand why her mom hadn’t come to get them yet, why her time-out was lasting so long.
Gina led her around the building, and Brooke was relieved to see the cafeteria, where other children sat at long rectangular tables, eating from trays filled with spaghetti and green beans. It seemed like eating was the only thing Brooke could think about since she’d begun having regular meals with Rose and Walter. Now that she was somewhere new, she had worried it might be like living in her mom’s car again, and the gnawing ache in her belly would come back. One of the first things she had done at Rose and Walter’s house was to stand in the middle of the pantry, touching all the boxes and cans of food, counting them. “This is for us?” she asked Rose, her voice edged with wonder. “Pineapple and spaghetti? We get to eat it?”
“Yes,” Rose had said, gently. But after they’d stayed there a few weeks and she discovered that, not for the first time, Brooke had hidden a jar of peaches and packages of cookies and crackers under her bed, Rose got angry. “We feed you more than enough. You don’t have to take it.”
Brooke didn’t know how to explain why she took the food—she only knew that she found herself sneaking into the pantry every night, stealing away bits of anything she could save for later, just in case. After that, when Gina came to get Brooke and Natalie from the house, Brooke knew it was her fault, even though Gina told her it was because Walter’s boss had unexpectedly transferred his job to another state.
She thought it was her fault, too, when two weeks later, Gina had returned to Hillcrest to inform her that her baby sister was being adopted. “We are?” Brooke asked, confused by the way Gina shook her head and frowned.
“She is,” Gina said. “Only Natalie. I’m sorry, honey. For now, you’re going to stay here.”
Thirty-five years later, Brooke recalled the cloudy, fractured moments of that morning at Hillcrest. If she wanted to—if she let them escape—she could still feel the rough sobs that tore at her chest when Gina told her she wouldn’t get to see Natalie anymore. Back then, she didn’t understand that most couples looking to adopt only wanted babies, not older children, like Brooke, who were more likely to have behavioral issues. It was only 1980, and the system was less likely to take into account how important sibling bonds were for healthy development. She remembered the last time she saw her baby sister, in a room not much different from the one where they’d last seen their mother. She remembered Natalie’s big, brown eyes and wispy blond curls, her chubby pink cheeks and the way she grabbed Brooke by the ears and gave her gummy and wet, openmouthed kisses.
“I love you,” Brooke said, just before Gina took Natalie away. Brooke tucked her treasured purple blanket snug around her sister and then, just like their mother, Natalie disappeared.
Thinking of that moment now, Brooke tried to distract herself by heading into the bathroom to shower. She had an appointment at the women’s health clinic at eleven, and it was already nine thirty. As she let the warm water rush over her, she considered her options. It had been a week since she realized she was late, which meant she had plenty of time to figure out her next step, but so far, the only thing she had decided to do was make this appointment to confirm the results of the home tests.
Two hours later, after taking yet another test at the clinic, Brooke sat in a small office with a woman named Jill, who couldn’t have been more than a day over twenty-five.
“So,” Jill said. “You’re definitely pregnant.” Her bright eyes and positive, bubbly demeanor made Brooke think she probably had b
een a cheerleader. Jill glanced down at the chart in front of her. “About eight weeks along, according to when you had your last period?”
“I think so, yes,” Brooke said, holding her hands together tightly in her lap. Her stomach growled; she’d been too queasy to eat before she came. Now she was ravenous. She wished she’d thought to bring along a snack.
“Have you informed the father?” Jill held a pen with her right hand, poising it over the paper in front of her.
“No.” Brooke purposely hadn’t seen Ryan that week, telling him she had a stomach bug and didn’t want him to get sick, too. Wrapped up in finishing a big job on a high-rise condo project, he hadn’t pushed the issue. “Call me when you’re feeling better,” he said, and later that night, when she came home from an office-cleaning job, he’d had her favorite hot and sour soup delivered from a Thai restaurant down the street. A sweet gesture, to be sure, but a small part of Brooke couldn’t help but wish he’d shown up to deliver it himself. She couldn’t help but feel that if he really cared about her, her germs wouldn’t matter. Having this thought surprised her—she’d never been a needy girlfriend—but something about the idea of carrying Ryan’s baby made her wish that they were closer—that the minute she’d taken those tests, she could have called him and told him the news. She wished she had it in her to admit to how scared she was—to ask him to comfort her and help her make the right decision. Instead, she kept silent, clenching her jaw as she made the appointment at the clinic.
“Do you know who he is?” Jill asked. She kept her eyes pointed down, at her desk.
“Yes,” Brooke said, feeling embarrassed to be having this discussion with a girl fifteen years her junior. Her hair was in a side-pony, for Christ’s sake. She had perfect skin and cherry-pit dimples. She couldn’t possibly know anything about making this kind of life-changing decision.
Jill set her pen down and looked at Brooke. “Well, there are three options. Parenting, adoption, or termination. We can assist with any of them.” She paused. “Have you thought about which you’d like to pursue?”
