Beyond the Blue

by Leslie Gould

  People at church had stopped asking years ago when they planned to start a family. So far, they hadn’t told many people there that they planned to adopt. Gen was waiting for the right time.

  Aunt Marie sat down next to Gen. “Did you like your shower?” she asked.

  “It was wonderful,” Gen answered. “Thank you.”

  As Gen climbed into the station wagon after loading the gifts in the back, her cell phone rang. Jeff. He’s calling to ask about the shower. She pulled the phone out of her purse.

  It was Jeff, but he didn’t ask about the shower. “Robyn just called asking for you,” he said. “You need to call her right back.”

  “Why?” Gen asked, alarmed.

  “They lost their referral. The investigation turned up a birth dad.”

  “What?”

  “If two birth parents are identified, the United States INS won’t allow the adoption,” Jeff explained.

  “They can’t adopt their baby?”

  “No.”

  “What’s going to happen?” Gen gripped the steering wheel with her left hand.

  “They’ll get another referral. Maggie’s working on it. But Robyn’s devastated.”

  Gen scribbled Robyn’s number on the back of a receipt, asked Jeff to stay up until she got home, and told him good-bye.

  She sat for a moment and then dialed the number. Robyn answered. “I’m sorry,” Gen said. “So sorry.”

  Robyn began to cry. “It feels just like the last time,” she sobbed.

  “The last time?” Gen asked.

  “We had a failed domestic adoption a year ago. I saw her born, held her, even dressed her. And then the birth mom changed her mind. It feels just like that all over again. I didn’t think anything like this would happen with international adoption.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Gen said.

  “I knew you’d understand,” Robyn said.

  “What will happen to the baby?” Gen shivered.

  “Maggie said that she hoped the mother will take her home so she doesn’t have to stay in the orphanage. She said Mercy for Children is trying to start a sponsorship program to help mothers keep their children.”

  “What’s next?” Gen glanced into the rearview mirror of her car, out into the empty parking lot.

  “Maggie said she’d call me tomorrow,” Robyn said. “There may be another referral in the works. We won’t travel with you though.”

  Gen listened for a few more minutes and then told Robyn she’d call her the next day. Her hand shook as she pushed the End button. Birth father. She hadn’t thought about a birth father. Did Mai and Binh have the same birth father? Or different fathers? What if one turned up? What if they both turned up?

  Chapter 22

  Lan handed the Australian tourist a bag of green oranges. She bowed as she said in English, “Thank you. Have a good day.” The man smiled. She was selling fruit in the market again and, along with Truc’s cigarettes and souvenirs, on the beaches. Mrs. Le hadn’t said anything about Lan taking Binh to the orphanage, but word had gotten around.

  The man who worked for the adoption people came to a stop on his scooter in front of the fruit stand. “My ride is here,” Lan said to Mrs. Le. The man nodded as Lan climbed on for the ride to the Justice Department. He wore a clean white shirt and shoes, not flip-flops, smelled of soap and aftershave, and carried a cell phone on his belt and a book bag slung over his shoulder. He drove quickly, weaving in and out of the traffic. Lan’s braid bounced against her back as they rode over the rough street.

  The adoption worker walked into the office and spoke in a quiet voice with the official while Lan sat on the second floor landing with her head down. A mouse ran into the corner and disappeared in the shadows. In a few minutes the adoption worker came out, sat beside her, and dialed a number on his phone.

  She closed her eyes and listened as he spoke in English. After a while the official, still sitting at his desk, called out Lan’s name. She walked into his office. Uneven stacks of paper lined the walls, and sunlight wafted through foggy windowpanes. The ceiling bulb was off, a sign the electricity was down. Another citywide blackout, most likely. The official wore a pale green shirt and slightly darker pants. A cigarette burned in the ashtray on his desk. Lines creased his aged face. He appeared to be in his midfifties, maybe even sixty. Old for a Vietnamese man.

  “You’ve come to relinquish your child,” he said.

  “Children,” Lan corrected. A horn honked on the street below.

  The official wrote the date on a document. At the top Lan read: The Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Independence-Liberty-Happiness. The official squinted at Lan in the dim light. Her blouse stuck to her sweaty skin. She bowed her head, looking down at her rough hands resting in her lap.

  “Do you write?” the official said. “Or would you like me to write the statement?”

  “You, please.” It had been so long since she had written.

  “Why do you seek to relinquish your children?”

  “I cannot provide for them.” She tucked a loose strand of hair that had fallen from her braid behind her ear. “I cannot give them enough food. I will not be able to pay for them to go to school.”

  The official glanced up at her. “There is no cost for elementary school.”

  Lan took a breath. “I cannot afford to buy clothes for my children to wear to school. I cannot afford the books. I wish to give my children to the people of Vietnam, to the orphanage.”

  “Do you realize,” he said, putting down his pen, “that they could be adopted by a person from another country? From France, Sweden, England, Germany, or even the United States?” He picked up his cigarette and slowly inhaled. Tires screeched on the street below. Two men shouted at each other.

  “Yes,” she whispered. No one in Vietnam adopted children. No one she had ever heard of, anyway. Maybe an uncle would take a nephew, but no stranger in Vietnam would want her children. In Vietnam it was all about who your father was. Her children had no father.

  He blew the smoke toward Lan as he rested the cigarette on the edge of the ashtray. “Answer me properly.”

  “Yes, I realize they could be adopted by a person from another country,” she said softly. Her stomach began to hurt.

  “Do you have a husband?”

  “I did have a husband. He and I had a child, my older daughter, together.”

  “And where is your husband now?” The man tapped his fingertips on the desk.

  She bowed her head deeply and shook her head. “I do not know.”

  “And how about the two younger children? Did you have a husband when you had them?”

  She shook her head.

  “And yet you had children?” The official’s stern gaze pierced her.

  Lan nodded.

  “Answer me properly,” he demanded.

  “I had these two children outside of marriage. I did a shameful thing. They have no father to care for them.” Her voice quivered.

  “Who are their fathers?”

  She shook her head a third time. “I do not know.” Her face grew hot.

  He looked at her harshly, then finished writing and spun the paper around. She struggled to read what he had written.

  “Sign it,” he said. “I’m in a hurry.”

  She read the words “donate my children.” Donate. As if she had children to spare. That isn’t it, she wanted to scream. I don’t have children to spare. I cannot spare these children. Her eyes stung, and her hand shook as she signed her name.

  The adoption worker held her elbow as they walked down the stairs. Still she stumbled on the bottom step. When they reached the sidewalk, the bright light momentarily blinded her. The man pulled out his sunglasses and climbed on his scooter. Lan settled behind him.

  He started the bike. “I’m going to the orphanage to deliver a book of photos I just received and to take photos to send to the United States,” he said over the motor, patting the bag slung over his shoulder. “I will check on your children.”<
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  “Take me with you,” Lan said.

  “I shouldn’t.”

  “Please take me with you,” she begged.

  “We’ll only stay a few minutes,” the adoption worker said.

  Lan walked into the baby room. The orphanage worker handed her Mai. She kissed the sleeping baby’s forehead and handed her back to the woman.

  “Where is Binh?” Lan asked the adoption worker, stepping back onto the second-floor veranda to look out over the dirt soccer field below.

  “Mama!” She turned, and there he was, racing across the tiles. He threw himself at her. She stumbled backward, caught herself against the rail, and stooped to wrap her arms around him.

  He tilted his face toward hers. “Where is Hang?”

  “At school.”

  “Have you come to take me home?” He clung to her.

  “No. Just to visit.”

  Binh began to cry.

  “You must stay here, little one,” Lan said.

  He let go of her and stood tall. “I never see Little Sister, and there’s not much food here, either.”

  “Soon you will have plenty to eat. And you will see your sister. Wait and see.”

  “Take me home. I miss Grandmother. And Hang. And you.”

  The adoption worker walked up behind Binh. “Little boy,” he said, “she can’t take you home.” He opened a small book of photographs. “Look, here is a family for you to live with in America.”

  Lan studied the photo. A tall American man with brown curly hair and a big smile stood with his arm around a woman with short, dark hair. They stood in front of a gigantic white house. On the next page was a picture of a room with yellow walls and two little beds, one with a fence around it. Next, the couple stood in a grove of white flowering trees, a white mountain rising behind them. Snow. She’d heard of snow but had never seen it. The nuns told her about snow, about mountains in France that touched the sky. White as snow, they’d say Clean as snow. As high as the mountains. As close to heaven as the mountaintops.

  “These are the people who want to adopt your children. They want both of them. Most people want babies, but they want Binh, too.”

  Binh pushed against the album, knocking it to the veranda floor. It slid along the tile, bounced through the railing, and fell to the dirt courtyard below. Lan grabbed Binh’s hand, ashamed to have him act this way. The orphanage people would think she hadn’t taught him to behave. “Take me home!” he wailed.

  Lan let go of his hand and turned away from him.

  “Mama! What are you doing?” he sobbed. “Don’t leave me.” He dove to the floor and slid across the smooth tile and then grabbed Lan’s ankle.

  “This wasn’t a good idea,” the adoption worker said. “I shouldn’t have brought you here.”

  “Binh, Binh.” Lan turned and bent down. “You need to be a big boy. Big boys don’t act this way. Be brave.” Binh sobbed. Lan reached for him. He threw his head against her shoulder, banging his forehead against her collarbone.

  Lan turned toward the adoption worker. “I can’t leave him.” She began to cry.

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t do this to my child.”

  “But he’ll have a wonderful life in America. He’ll go to school, have plenty of food, have all that he needs.”

  The orphanage director, Mrs. Ho, came out of her office.

  “She wants to take her son,” the adoption worker said.

  Mrs. Ho shook her head. “You can’t.”

  Stubbornness welled inside of Lan. He’s still my son. “I take either Binh or the baby girl. Which would you prefer?”

  Lan and Binh walked the ten kilometers home. She carried him the last third of the way, feeling faint. The sweat, tears, and dirt from his face stained her shirt. He wound his legs around her waist. The sun had set, but still the heat under her hat stole her breath, settled in her throat, pounded against her chest. Pain shot through her feet and back with each step.

  Binh sobbed the entire way. It wasn’t until he saw Hang and crawled onto her lap that he quieted.

  “You brought Binh back?” Mother crouched in front of the family altar.

  “I couldn’t leave him. He cried and cried,” Lan said.

  “You brought him back for good?”

  Lan nodded.

  “You shouldn’t have gone to visit.”

  Binh began to cry again.

  “You could have sent him to heaven and instead you brought him back to hell? Don’t be selfish, Lan.” Mother shook her head.

  The couple looks kind; the house is huge. Mai will have lots of books and will live among the trees. Lan shifted her eyes from Mother to her two children.

  Mother’s voice softened. “Now, now. How is the baby?”

  “Better. She’s getting fat.”

  “Binh looks better too. In another month or two he would have been a chubby boy. Do you love Binh less than the baby? Is that why you brought him back?”

  Lan sighed. She’d lost a day of work. And now she had another mouth to feed.

  Chapter 23

  Gen stood at the dining room table and placed the passports in the gray accordion file along with copies of their home study and tax forms. She lined up the Deet mosquito repellant, malaria medication, antibiotics, lice shampoo, and diaper-rash ointment along the edge of the table.

  She fingered the velvet jewelry box that held a locket with Mai and Binh’s photos. She hoped the birth mother would like it. She stacked the books she planned to take—Goodnight Moon, Where the Wild Things Are, Noah’s Ark, Baby Moses, and Brown Bean Brown Bear, What Do You See? Next she opened the Playmobile set of a family—a dad, mom, child, and baby with a blue car, roof rack, and bicycles—and put the pieces in a Ziploc bag with a pink zipper. She carefully placed the books and toys in a red backpack and added a small notebook of unlined paper, crayons, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a box of animal crackers, and another Ziploc bag filled with pouches of fruit snacks.

  The two car seats sat against the wall. Binh’s was a high-back booster seat with a cup holder; Mai’s was an infant seat. A double jogger stroller waited next to the car seats. They were told it could handle the gravel roads around their house. Maggie had said that a stroller couldn’t handle the uneven streets and crumbling sidewalks of Vietnam; instead a front pack for the baby would work best. Jeff could carry Binh.

  Gen filled the backpack with diapers, baby toys, a teething ring, a pacifier, and two bottles. Maggie had said not to take formula; they would buy whatever Mai had been fed in the orphanage in Vietnam.

  Gen headed upstairs to the children’s room. The children. The words sang to her. She repeated them over and over in her head several times a day. She took the hamper from the corner and carried it to the dresser. She opened the top drawer and took out Osh-Kosh baby T-shirts and Old Navy little boy underwear. Snipping the tags off with the little scissors, she dropped each item of clothing into the hamper—shorts and shirts, little dresses, socks, sun hats, bibs, and two bath towels with sewn-in hoods. The children. The children’s room. The children’s clothes. She pulled four flannel blankets and a stack of spit rags from the shelf above the changing table. How many years had she dreamed of draping a spit rag over her shoulder for her own baby? Her heart swelled. She’d been waiting her entire life for this. They would travel next week. That’s what Maggie had said. It was time to wash the clothes.

  They were meeting her dad, Sharon, Don, Jake, and Aunt Marie at the Columbia Gorge Hotel for Jeff’s birthday dinner. Gen had left school at three thirty to get some things done at home first. For a decade she had watched other teachers rush out to pick up their kids from day care or rush a child to music lessons or basketball practice. Now she was rushing home to wash baby clothes and pack books and toys.

  Maggie had said she would call in a day or two with the exact travel date, and she would fax the itinerary as soon as possible. It was really going to happen. Gen threw the last of Binh’s shorts into the basket. Binh. They’d decide
d to call him by his Vietnamese name. They’d also give him the American name Samuel, “asked of God.” Samuel Binh Taylor. Mai’s first name would be Olivia. Olivia Mai Taylor. Olivia meant “olive branch, peace.” Gen chose it in memory of her mother. They hadn’t decided on whether they would call her Olivia or Mai. They wanted to wait to see if it would be confusing for Binh if they called her Olivia.

  Gen picked up the laundry hamper and headed to the landing. In a few weeks Binh would be running up and down the stairs. In a year Mai would follow her brother. Mai was nearly two months now. Gen ached to travel. She didn’t want her children to spend any more time in the orphanage than they had to.

  She backed through the swinging kitchen door and headed to the washer on the mud porch. She opened the lid and pulled the colored shorts and shirts and big boy underwear and bright sundresses out of the basket and tossed them in the washer, added the soap, and spun the dial.

  The phone rang. She hoped it wasn’t Jake saying he would be late. He’d been in Japan on business.

  Gen picked up the phone with a cheery hello. It wasn’t Jake. It was Maggie.

  “Hello, Gen,” she said. “I need you to sit down, okay?”

  Gen hated it when people said that. She leaned against the counter.

  “Are you sitting?”

  “Yes,” Gen lied.

  “Is Jeff home yet?”

  “Not yet. Soon.” What is Maggie getting at?

  “Bad news. Binh’s not at the orphanage. One of our Vietnamese adoption workers called. I waited a few days to phone you, hoping the birth mom would take Binh back, but she hasn’t.”