The Girls Who Went Away (20 page)

Then there was the incredible joy of finding him, and the terrible sadness of having missed all those years. But it almost felt good to get into that grief and live it. I don’t know if there’s such a thing as joyful grief, but that’s what I would call it. I would cry and sob and scream, but so glad I was finally grieving.

It’s still very shameful to say you gave a baby away. One day at work I printed something out on the printer that had something to do with birth mothers and one of the nurses picked it up and said, “Jeanette, is there something you’re not telling us?” So even though I never wanted to hide him, ever again, I still do. I had my seventieth birthday not too long ago, and it still colors my life.

RUTH

I
was a sophomore at Boston University. I was dating a wonderful young man. We were falling in love and I was just very, very happy and really naïve, and got pregnant. I was shocked, but I was really happy about it. We had talked about getting married, and this just moved everything up.

My parents were not happy about it. My parents are Holocaust survivors, and I was raised very strictly. I remember the look on their faces when we told them. My daddy called me a whore, and it was very upsetting. My boyfriend’s father never said anything. His mother was very, very upset—irrationally so. His mom had bouts of depression her whole life. She was just very upset. I think she felt I wasn’t good enough for him. He came from a family of means, and I didn’t. She realized we were going to get married and she tried to talk us out of it. The night before our wedding, she locked herself in the bathroom and refused to come out.

I was happy because I was marrying him and I was going to have a baby and in my soul I knew it was going to be a little girl, I just knew it. We continued with school. We got an incredible, horrible, wonderful apartment. I mean, it had bugs, but it was our apartment. We were so happy. His parents cut him off financially and he worked two jobs and went to school full time, and I worked one job and went to school full time.

His mom kept calling and giving us reasons why we should not keep the baby—that we didn’t have insurance, that we were too young, that we didn’t have careers. Those weekly phone calls turned into daily phone calls. She drove us nuts. I just tuned her out, but he couldn’t. We were twenty years old and it’s true we didn’t have two nickels to rub together. He decided that his mom was probably right. I just kind of blocked out everything and went on my merry way, excited about my baby. Then he told me we couldn’t keep the baby, that he wanted to give the baby away. I didn’t even acknowledge it.

I went into labor and my husband took me to the hospital and they
knocked me out; I don’t think it was that unusual in those days. It was October 17, 1968. When I woke up, I said to the nurse, “I’d like to see my baby.” She said, “You can’t, your baby’s been adopted out.” I had no idea what the hell she was talking about. My husband told me it had been arranged, and that it would be the best thing for the baby because we really couldn’t take care of her. So I never saw my baby. He took me home and I went to bed, and I didn’t get out of bed.

The time came for me to sign the papers. My husband got me up, got me dressed, got me to the office, and told me to sign, and I did. We went home and that was it. Nobody talked about it. I was just supposed to go on with my life. Any feelings I had about that baby were kept inside because I had no one to talk to about it. Whenever I brought up the subject with my husband, he wouldn’t discuss it with me. It just became a taboo thing. No one talked about it, ever. We finished school and graduated and I became a high-school English teacher.

My mother-in-law finally realized that he and I were good for each other. I think she thought that if we didn’t have the baby we would break up, and it didn’t happen. She got to know me, and she got to love me, and I got to love her. As a graduation present from college, she and my husband’s father took us to Europe. She and I actually had such a ball. We laughed; we had the best time. When we came home from Europe, she killed herself. She was fifty years old.

Years went by, and every single day I thought about my baby. It was the worst pain that I ever had in my life. Every night when I went to bed I prayed that God would forgive me for the awful sin I had committed by allowing my baby to be taken from me. I felt like a horrible human being that I didn’t stand up for her better, that I didn’t tell everybody to go fuck off and keep my baby. I blamed myself.

Time went on, and I got pregnant again and I had my two daughters. I was thrilled when I had my children. With my first daughter, I was so overprotective because I thought God would take her away from me because I was so bad. He took away my other baby. They didn’t know my secret. So the best thing that I ever did in my life was to go to a therapist, and this was a super therapist. He helped me figure out what to say to the kids. And one Christmas when my daughter came home from college we sat down and I
told them. I was so scared to tell them because I thought they would hate me. My kids have always said I was the best mommy. And I thought that if they knew what I had done that they would hate me, but they didn’t. We all sat and cried, and they all hugged me and said how much they loved me, and it was wonderful.

After that, I decided I would look for my baby. I wasn’t sure how to go about it, but I got some great advice from my therapist. The first thing I did was call the adoption agency and ask for nonidentifying information. It was a religious agency, and it was an outstanding agency. In about a month, they sent me the papers. Oh, I was so glad to get them. They were a piece of my baby. I ran into the house with the mail and ripped them open and started looking at them. There was a paper in there and I read it, and it was just filled with nonsense and lies. It said that I had approached the adoption agency and that I had arranged for the adoption, that I had a social worker come out to my apartment many times and every time she did I reiterated that I did not want my baby. It said that on the day my baby was born the social worker came to the hospital and I was smiling, and my husband was sitting on the bed smiling, and I told the social worker that I had seen my baby and I still wanted to give her up.

I read that and I freaked. I screamed. I didn’t know what to think. I called my husband screaming. And then I called the adoption agency and spoke to the director. I made no sense, I was just screaming. She put their therapist from the office on the phone and I screamed some more. Then I hung up and fell on the kitchen floor and just cried. My husband came home and I was still on the kitchen floor crying.

The next day I was calm, so I called the adoption agency. I realized what must have happened. My mother-in-law had gone to the adoption agency and arranged for the adoption, and my husband obviously knew about it. She got a social worker to write down these lies. I think that might be one of the reasons she killed herself, because of what she had done. She finally realized that she loved me, and I was a good girl, and I would have been a good mom to her grandchildren.

I called the adoption agency back and I said, “I want these papers taken out of the file. God forbid my daughter should go looking for me and read those papers. She’ll think I never wanted her, that I didn’t love her.” They
said, “You can’t do that, it’s part of the legal document.” I said, “I want them out. I want them expunged. I’m going to find a lawyer, and I’m going to sue you, and I’m going to find the social worker who did this. If I have to rip her out of an old-age home, I will. So you go talk to your lawyers, and I’m going to go talk to mine.” The next day, I was making my bed and the phone rang. It was the adoption agency—the paper had been expunged.

Through the therapist and the people he had me talk to, I found somebody who found my baby. She found my baby in one week. It was the most amazing thing. My baby was living in another state. She was a rabbi. I got the call when I was at work. There were people all around me and the woman who found my baby was giving me this information and I was writing it down, trying hard not to cry, because people are going by, back and forth around me. It was like I was alone in a wind tunnel. It was the most wonderful news.

I’m also a breast-cancer survivor, and that was another reason I wanted to find my baby. I wanted her to know, and tell her doctor, that her birth mother had cancer. So I wrote my daughter a letter. I wrote maybe sixty letters and ripped them up and started again, and ripped them up and started again, and cried over them. Finally, I had one that explained what had happened, and that I wanted her to know that I had had cancer. I stood in front of that mailbox for twenty minutes, and I finally mailed it.

My birth daughter got that letter when she was in the company of her mother, thank God. They were coming home from her wedding shower. I’m glad her mother was there. They cried together. And then I got a phone call from my daughter. I couldn’t even talk. She said, “I just can’t do this. I just can’t do it.” I said, “Okay, I understand, but there are three things that I want you to know before you hang up. One was that I always loved you, and I always wanted you. Another is that you have two sisters—they’re your full sisters, and they’re wonderful young women and I would love for you to know them. And the third is that it’s very important that you speak to your doctor about the cancer, my cancer.” She hung up and I thought that was it.

The next week I got a letter from her mom with pictures, and she looked just like my daughters. And her mom sent the most beautiful letter. Her mom is the most wonderful person, and the most generous person. The next week I got a letter from my daughter with more pictures. She explained that
she was about to be married and she was going through a whole lot and that when she got back from her honeymoon perhaps she’d write. Her mother wrote me again just before the wedding and said, “When I walk our daughter down the aisle, you’re going to be there with us.” I tell you, her mom is just a peach.

Since then, my birth daughter and I e-mail every week. She’s going to have a baby. We haven’t met, we haven’t talked since that first time on the telephone, but she e-mails, and she signs her letters “I love you.” It’s more than I could ever have asked. If I never meet her, I’ll know that she’s happy and healthy and has a fulfilling job, and is about to have a wonderful family, and that she has the best parents. I begged God every night that she would be happy and healthy and be with loving people, and God gave her to the best.

But for thirty-two years I really didn’t live. After we gave the baby away I was in shock. For a long time, we didn’t have a very good marriage and I thought I deserved that. Everything negative that happened in my life I thought I deserved, because I was a disappointment to my family, I dishonored my family. In my mind, I committed a sin. I felt I deserved unhappiness and I didn’t deserve a good marriage. I was ashamed and I was angry, and I just felt like I let God down, and I let my baby down because I didn’t do enough to keep her.

It was a combination of finding my baby and losing my breast to cancer that made me realize that it’s important to live in the here and now. I have forgiven my mother-in-law. I think she did what she did out of love for her child. I have forgiven my mom, and my dad, and finally, after fifty-five years, I have forgiven myself.

I was really messed up emotionally for a long time. It wasn’t until I went to the therapist that I allowed myself to have a better life. I have a really, really good marriage now. And I’m doing what I always wanted to do—going to school and studying things I love. I hope someday my birth daughter will meet me and tell me she doesn’t hate me, because I’m still hoping for absolution from her, but I’m okay.

I am sure that there are some people who surrender their babies because it’s really not feasible for them to be a parent, and they know that they’re doing something good. They’re giving their child to somebody who can really
care for her. In that situation, it’s an act of love that they should be proud of. In my situation, I never wanted to surrender my baby. My baby was taken from me. It’s like somebody ripping out a piece of me for thirty-two years.

I think any woman who’s had a child knows the depth of feeling she has for that child, and can imagine the pain you would go through if you lost that child. To not even be allowed to look at your child, to feel it inside of you and then have it gone into thin air—it leaves you feeling like a shell. You shut down all emotion, because if you don’t it comes to the surface and then it just spills over. So you keep everything bottled up and you keep pushing it down, down, and it’s just a horrible pain.

It’s important for people to know, while we honor adoptive mothers—and they should be honored—that birth mothers must be honored, too. That baby is with them every breath they take, every second of their lives. Every prayer, that baby is with them forever.

Going Away

I was in beauty school in Florida and my mom picks me up and takes me back to Alabama and takes me to the doctor. The next recollection I have is being dumped at the Salvation Army Home for Unwed Mothers in Birmingham. It was an old, old, old house with big rooms. I was just put in a situation in which I had no control. It was almost like being put on a train or like being in a car wreck or something. Once you start skidding, that’s it. I kind of skidded through it.