“What’s the matter?” Peggy asked.
I shook my head since there was no way I could talk.
Richard adjusted the mirror to look back at me. “Shut up already,” he said. “You’re going to wake Kimmy.”
“Richard, enough,” Peggy said, and when she spoke like that
he would actually do what she said. She reached over the seat and touched my knee. “Are you hurt?”
I shook my head to say no and swiped at my drippy nose with the back of my arm. I looked out the window like changing my view might help me stop crying but then I just thought about Catherine again and how she was at the side of the creek, alone in the dark. I could see her in my mind, surrounded by leaves and daisies and rocks. She had been my boat. My good, sturdy, wonderful boat, with the best name in the world, but I had left her. I had abandoned her.
Richard finally said I had better shut up or he was going to give me something to really cry about.
I wanted to tell him to go ahead and hit me because, frankly, a blow from him would have been a merciful relief from the way it felt to know Catherine was back there, alone in the dark.
WHEN WE GOT home, I went to my room and closed the door. At my desk, I pulled out a sheet of paper and wrote:
All time favorite girls name: Catherine.
I put the sheet of paper into my
Columbia Viking Desk Encyclopedia
under the letter C, so I’d never forget.
TWELVE
FREE WILL
MY CHILDREN WILL TELL YOU many things about me—they will say I have been sad, I have been frustrated, I have been confused and even full of doubt about the right way to parent them—but they will never tell you I have silenced their dreams or stifled their full expressions of curiosity, sorrow, frustration, anger, confusion, or joy.
Josephine needed to change her name to Belle for a year. Okay. I’d say, “It’s your world, girlfriend,” and did my best to call her Belle until she was ready to be Jo again. She also had a phase where she wanted to wear every pair of pants, every pair of underwear, and every princess dress to preschool. Okay. “It’s your world,” I’d say while wondering if the child had been a refugee in a past life.
When Spencer needed to dance in the kitchen, doing an imitation of John Travolta—that was fine. When he wanted to do Tae Kwan Do, learn the drums, take up rollerblading—okay, okay, okay.
He wanted to read Japanese comic books, study Japanese animation, and eat sushi every day. Okay. Okay. Okay.
These children of mine are not mine. They are themselves. I just kept them as safe as I knew how and said, “It’s your world.”
If expression, a full wide range of self-expression is all I give to my own children—as a result of my own childhood—I consider the adventure of motherhood to be my greatest success. And if that is what I was being taught by the experiences I endured, then I can say I learned. Oh yes, I learned.
IT WAS ANOTHER day in Stead. I rode the bus, went to school, fell asleep on my desk, rode the bus back to the house, and walked into the front door.
Peggy was watching
Donahue
while she folded laundry.
“How was school?” she asked, looking up from her task.
“Fine.”
Kimmy sat on the floor, surrounded by Tupperware containers in shades of pastel. She popped up, containers rolling in every direction, and toddled over to the front door. Like I was a moving object she needed to catch, Kimmy lunged at my legs and squeezed hard.
Kimmy was always happy to see me. She was the same with Peggy, Richard, Grandma, Grandpa, and the mailman. Kimmy loved the world.
I shoved the door closed with my hip, careful not to knock Kimmy over.
“Hi, Kimmy, hi, hi,” I said. I made my voice bright and happy,
being nice to Kimmy because she deserved kindness. “Let me go now, Sweetie. Let Jenny go.”
Kimmy opened her arms and grinned up at me like a happy fool. I wanted to tell her to wise up and stop liking me but I figured she’d get the hang of it soon enough.
“Why don’t you put that stuff into your room and come help me,” Peggy said. “I need to talk to you.”
“Okay,” I said.
I carried my schoolbooks into my room and Kimmy followed like a pup. On my pillow, was a slip of unfamiliar paper.
“Ba ba?” Kimmy pointed at a stuffed lamb also on the bed and I nudged the lamb her way.
“Baby,” she said, grabbing it with both hands. Kimmy hugged the stuffed animal as if it were the most important toy on the planet.
The page had an official-looking blue seal and read Non-Identifying Information. Further down it read, “Mother,” and there were details: blond hair, blue eyes, fair complexion.
My eyes went out of focus and I swayed a little.
I went back to the living room and Kimmy followed.
“What’s this?”
Peggy did a fast glance over her shoulder. “Oh, that was in Bud’s legal papers.” She waved her hand like it was nothing. “I finally got around to sorting that stuff out.”
I felt like I was rising out of my skin and away. I was smoke, mist, wind.
“Is this what you wanted to talk about?” I heard myself ask.
“Huh?”
I waved the page at Peggy. “This paper? Is this what you wanted to talk about? ”
Peggy shook her head. “No, no, I thought you’d want it, that’s all.”
Kimmy held the stuffed animal up for Peggy’s inspection.
“Oh, Sweetie, you have a new baby,” Peggy said. “Did Jenny let you have that?”
Kimmy lifted her huge blue eyes as if to ask the question and I nodded.
“Baby,” Kimmy cooed.
“That’s so nice,” Peggy said. She went back to folding and watching her program. Kimmy dropped to the floor with the lamb. She shoved the stuffed animal into a bowl—trying to make it fit.
ONE TIME, AT the grocery store, Kimmy got lost. She had been toddling next to Peggy and wandered away while Peggy looked at the ingredient list on a box of Hamburger Helper.
“Well, let me tell you, my heart just sank into my shoes,” Peggy said, her hand clutching her chest.
Kimmy had made her way over to the produce section, all alone and then started to cry.
The manager of the store, bag boys, checkout girls, and other shoppers were all frantic trying to help Kimmy but she couldn’t talk.
Peggy was at the other end of the store, going crazy too. She was crying as she searched through the cereal aisle, the dairy section, and the bakery.
Kimmy wasn’t lost for more than ten minutes but those ten minutes were so hard on Kimmy, she almost passed out and Peggy was sick for the rest of the day. Mother and child separated created trauma in both of them.
I WENT BACK to my room and this time, Kimmy didn’t follow.
Sitting down on the edge of my bed, I read out loud: “Mother: 17, blond hair, blue eyes, 5’ 8.5”, 128 pounds, English, Scottish, German, and Irish ancestry. Father: 17, brunette, brown eyes, olive complexion, 5’ 11”, 160 pounds, German and Irish ancestry.”
I waited and waited, as if I had just spoken some magic formula and now my true parents would appear. Nothing.
I read the page again.
Mother, father, German, Irish, 5’ 8.5”, 5’ 11”, blond, brunette.
My hands, arms, and body got very cold from the shock of memory or perhaps the tripped wire of amnesia.
All I could think to do was to fold the sheet of paper in half, in half again, and then in half one more time as if to make the information as small as I was becoming in my own mind and I whirled back to the beginning when I had been separated from my mother.
I put the page into my
Columbia Viking Desk Encyclopedia
, right next to the sheet that read,
Catherine: All time favorite girls name,
and then I crawled into bed.
“HEY! WHAT ARE you doing?” Peggy bellowed. The doorway framed her solid body. “Are you asleep?”
I sat up in bed and the covers fell away.
“It’s not bedtime,” she said. “What in the world is wrong with you? Get up!”
Peggy retreated down the hall, talking to herself. “Geez Louise. I need help with dinner. Richard will be home soon.”
A slash of light from the overhead in the hall cut into my room. The smell of ground beef hung in the air.
My mind was tied to the sheet of paper folded away in my encyclopedia. Was it still there? Had it been real?
I felt as if I existed in two places—the displaced alternative Jennifer who adapted to exist in Richard and Peggy’s world and the original baby born to the strangers detailed on that small bit of paper.
Rather than examine the sheet again, I stumbled out of bed and into the kitchen.
Kimmy sat in her froggy high chair, bits of cheese, cheerios, and olives were scattered over her tray as snacks.
Peggy jostled past, making a big deal of gathering a brick of cheese, a head of lettuce, and a bag of tomatoes from the refrigerator shelf. “Oh my god, we have so much to do. Cut up these tomatoes, then grate the cheese. Come on, chop, chop. Richard will be here any minute.”
Peggy always got into a fever before Richard came home, as if her value was tied to making a meal and having it on the table at the moment he walked in the door.
She stomped to the stove and used a spatula to push around the ground beef in the pan.
I picked up a knife and a tomato and this brought more rage. “Oh my god, don’t cut before you wash your hands! You know better.”
Kimmy shoved a Cheerio into her mouth, blue eyes wide in the way of small children. Silent witnesses, omniscient observers, pure beings of awareness. She was perfect presence in the room.
“Oh, right,” I said.
I turned on the faucet, washed my hands with soap, and rinsed the bubbles off. There was comfort in the heat of the water.
“Now you’re here,” Peggy said, “what I
wanted
to talk to you about—before Richard got home—is that we have decided to adopt you.”
I turned off the water and looked at my aunt.
“Adopt me?”
“That’s right,” Peggy said.
Smiling, she took two cans of refried beans from the cabinet and opened each one with the electric can opener. Her voice mixed with the grinding sound of the machine and she said they were tired of explaining who I was and how I came to live with them. She said if I had the same name, it would be so much easier on everyone. I could have a fresh start too—put my past behind me, and since we all looked so much alike, no one would ever have to know they weren’t my true parents. The grind of the electric can opener stopped and Peggy turned over the coagulated beans into a silver saucepan. “Isn’t that great?” she asked. “I think it’s great. Richard thinks it’s great.”
I gripped the counter. In the sink there were bits of onion peel
and an empty Styrofoam wrapper from the ground beef. The bottom of the Styrofoam container was coated with cow blood. I thought I might throw up.
“Would you cut up tomatoes already,” Peggy said. “Come on now, chop, chop. ”
Like a robot, I cut through the tomato, making the round fruit into a pulp of small red squares and finally found my voice.
“What about Bryan? Are you adopting him too?”
Peggy shook the pan of meat on the burner.
“Well, no, of course not. You know very well he’s with Uncle Larry in Oklahoma now. He has his own family.”
“But he
is
my family. He’s my brother.”
“Honestly, Jenny,” Peggy said. “You know you two don’t get along. Why are you talking about Bryan now?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Can I be adopted when I have a brother out there?”
“Well, of course you can,” she said, laughing as if what I said was lunacy.
I wanted to ask if Uncle Larry was adopting Bryan but I didn’t. I backed my own mind up, like an old truck grinding through rusted gears. I searched through what she had said. They were both adopting me. Richard too.
“Uncle Richard wants to adopt me?”
“Well, of course he does. Richard loves you. We all do.”
Now I was certain I was going to be sick. I looked hard at Peggy—almost angry.
“
You
love me?” I asked.
Peggy turned from the stove and looked at me with her mouth open.
“Well, of course we do,” she said, indignant. Color lifted on her cheeks. “My goodness, you’ve been here for more than a year now. We’ve opened our home to you and have shared our lives. If that is not love, I don’t know what is.”
Peggy stood there with her fists on her hips and her spatula dripped grease on the floor. She believed what she was saying. She was utterly convinced that her decision to adopt was the right one for the family and for me. I could not speak. There wasn’t room for my voice in her version of reality. I did not exist.
A FEW MONTHS later, the adoption plan ripened to fullness.
Richard and Peggy took me to a courthouse in Reno. I stood before a judge and they stood on either side of me.
The judge asked if I agreed to this adoption of my own free will. He had to ask it again because I didn’t hear him the first time.
Everyone in court looked at me. The judge, a lady who sat over at a little type machine, Richard, Peggy, and a bunch of other people. Strangers.
In my head was a voice that wanted to ask the judge if he could define “free will.” I wanted to see if his definition would line up with what I knew the words to mean.
Richard pushed his arm against my shoulder and looked at me
like I better answer the man or I was going to get smacked up the back of my head.
I blurted out, “I do.”
Laughter erupted in the courtroom. Richard snickered. And the judge hit his gavel with a crack—like rock hitting rock.
In that sound, Jennifer Caste Lauck became Jenny Duemore. I had been erased.