19
A CASH DEAL
Anne Bloumer, the lady I had called while visiting my mother in the hospital, wrote that she had searched her files and hadn't come up with anything regarding my adoption. I was shocked. My mother had told me I had been adopted from the Baron de Hirsch, an institute that housed two orphanages among other organizations. Upon the realization that my parents fitted into the mold described in all the adoption books I read, I knew I must accept the fact that they had lied to me about everything: my mother dying in childbirth, my father in the war, and having got- ten me when I was three days old with no papers except a birth certificate. I was awakening not only to the reality of being adopted and actually having another set of parents, but also to the fact that the life I had led until now was based on lies.
When I confronted my father on the phone, he retorted annoyingly that there was no agency involved, it had been a cash deal. He didn't remember if I was three days or three weeks old when they got me and what was the difference anyway? I was taken aback by his insensitivity. Dr. Rabinovitch, he continued, who had delivered me, had a small private clinic and catered to unwed mothers. There were no records. They had burned in a fire as had the hospital, and the doctor was dead, another routine lie reported in the books along with the mother's being killed in an automobile accident on the way to the hospital.
I recalled that he had once told me, during one of our infrequent, uncomfortable (awkward) talks about my adoption, that he paid $50 for a doctor's visit to have his sperm implanted into his wife, my adoptive mother, and carried the jar under his armpit all the way, by streetcar, to the doctor's office to keep it warm. I found it strange that he remembered this incident, but couldn't recall how much he paid for me or how and when I arrived. There was nothing else to discuss, the subject was dropped, and we hung up.
"While believing themselves to be doing everything for their child's well-being, they are actually withholding from them the very knowledge they need for their development into healthy adults. This role eventually works against them, estranging them from the very children they want to hold close." 1
I called Dr. R.'s son, also a doctor, who was not at all happy to hear from me. He became irate when I asked where the records were and said I should have called twenty years ago when his father was still alive. He wasn't any help and a slip of the tongue caught him unawares. He said his father had burned the files, immediately correcting his statement to "when the files were burned.”
I was getting nowhere. There was nothing left to do but place an ad in the newspaper and hope this mythic mother of mine might see it.
Looking for birth parents, girl born October 27,1940, private hospital, Montreal, Quebec, private adoption, phone # or write direct.
After mailing an $18 check to the Gazette, I felt uneasy, as if I were taking a step into a dark place, not knowing if my foot would hit the floor, desperately trying to see into the blackness. I didn't care what my parents would think if they knew what I was doing.
Nothing happened. Eleanor Bott sent me the ad and I put everything in a folder and filed it away. Every attempt brought hope and when there was failure, despair. Nothing was working and maybe I really didn't want to know badly enough. Did I need another family? My real mother might be worse than the one to whom I was accustomed.
Steve and I left for Canada at the beginning of October when the gold of autumn governed and any slight breeze sent leaves scattering, each worth collecting for a scrapbook. The under growth had thinned and walking through our meadows revealed the lay of the land. Suddenly one morning, the gold was gone and only dark green covered the landscape.
Susan had called my father's workplace and found that her grandparents had been in hospitals and that her mother had been in Montreal. She wrote that it hurt to read my letters saying we must break down the barriers when I didn't follow through by having the courage to call. She was working hard in therapy and maybe it was time for me to do the same. The blame and responsibility were equally mine. Had we chosen to live in the patterns of the past or could we create a new relationship based on mutual respect and understanding? She signed it, "Very sorry,
Susan." She and I hadn't seen one another for over five years and had never talked about what had happened that fateful summer she spent in Jackson when she had accused me of getting the fed after her father because the government had accused him of forgery. I firmly believed that in order to move forward and develop trust and respect, we had to deal with the past.
We returned to Wyoming and during that month my father called a lot even though there were strange feelings between us, which got stranger when, while talking to Steve, he complained about my mother, saying, "It's hard to fuck a ninety-year-old." Steve got nauseous and finally repeated the ugly remark to me. I wondered who this crude stranger was.
I received a letter from Valerie. In her twenty-eight years I had never forgot- ten her birthday. I didn't remember forgetting it this year. Something must have been going on between my two older daughters because they both felt the same about our relationship. They never asked about what I was doing, nor about Steve or Elizabeth, and were only concerned with telling me about themselves and what I was doing wrong. Neither girl had made an attempt to visit for a long time. She also thought about why she hadn't written sooner. I wondered if she would ever get to that part of the problem. It was all very sad to her. She wished I were more a part of her life; she felt I wasn't interested. At the end of the year she called and angrily accused me of not being her mother! Who knows what prompted that? I was tired of being blamed for everything that went on in their lives and decided to take care of my own.
Bush started the war against Iraq even though he knew the American people were utterly against it having had enough after Vietnam.
At the beginning of January we left for the far north. Back in Canada my search continued. Perhaps buying land in the country of my birth was an unconscious desire to open the search, and the piglets, the impetus, but what spurred me on and kept me going? When my mother had said she didn't want to read a book I had just published, I felt motherless and motivated. My father had read it twice. She provided me with another incentive when, in the hospital, she rudely told me to go back to Wyoming. When she called me "a thorn in her side," she made me realize that was probably what I had been to her most of her life. I remembered her reaction to Grand Teton National Park - "Can't they clean this place up?" referring to the fallen trees - and I felt a stirring inside. Who was this woman? I bet she's the only person in the world to feel this way in a place where I had hiked for the last fifteen years, a place that charged me with excitement. Her comment caused deep-seated emotions of hatred to surface.
You're becoming extroverted. That's the search. Your searching for your biological parents is a metaphor for you searching for your place. Do not get seduced into thinking that you have to find your parents. Be aware that you're just finding yourself. You need to know those parts of yourself.
Dr. Caplan, Holistic Optometrist
As long as I was doing something, whether it was reading books or sending letters, I felt I was dealing with my adoption. Even though I still didn't relate to being adopted, I wasn't denying it anymore. I continued to ask my father about my adoption and he continued to insist he knew nothing. The only clue might be in the two penciled notes I discovered on the back of my birth certificate that seemed to match my father's handwriting.
Norton, Vt. 11/24/44, 10 days, CLE (or C), No 694; Norton, Vt. 8/9/46, 2 wks, Co C
"Where do you connect with the human condition when you are chosen and every- one else is born?" 2
"For while the search promises to make us free, it also stirs up previously re- pressed material that has lain dormant until now." 3
"Although blood relationships may not be