Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found

by Jennifer Lauck

  With the way I am feeling at this moment—unwanted, rejected, and forgotten—what comes next should be this: Catherine should go away and I should continue with my life. The end.

  “We can try to know each other,” she says. “Can’t we? I would be so sad not to know you.”

  “You would?” I ask.

  She nods and gives the impression of sincerity. “And you have to meet Jessie, she’s dying to know you. Daniel too. Oh my goodness, you have such a big family.”

  I bite the edge of my lip, completely lost. Yes, it would be great to meet Jessie too, but I already knew Daniel isn’t in the least interested in me. His wife wrote an email, apologizing for the fact the man hadn’t reached out yet. She suggested I be patient.

  It had only been a few days and already these people asked a lot of me. Move to Reno? Be patient with the elusive Daniel? Make it a priority to meet Jessie?

  A part of me knew I had done all I could do. I had brought Catherine to Portland. I booked and paid for her flight. I gave her this day and my time.

  But another part of me, that tiny part so hungry for family and a mother, took over and I nodded yes.

  I agree to know her, to know them. I agree to try.

  She lights up, as if delighted. She laughs out loud. The sound fills the inside of my car and makes me think of Jo. My mother and my daughter have the same laugh.

  WE GET OUT of the car and walk in silence, holding hands once again. As we approach the airport terminal, I feel shaky and scared. What have I agreed to?

  “Saying goodbye is supposed to be the hardest part,” I hear myself say, quoting one of my adoption books. “If we are going to be in each other’s lives, you need to call me, in a few days. We’re also supposed to make a plan to see each other again. We are supposed to set a definite date.”

  Catherine and I separate and go down the escalator. When we reach the bottom, she doesn’t try to hold my hand again. In the passage from the top of the stairs to the bottom, she has become someone in a hurry to get home.

  She walks ahead of me, eyes trained on the glowing blue screen that displays the schedule for the departing flights. “Well, I can definitely call you although I’m not sure when,” Catherine says over her shoulder. “And I’m not sure when we can get together again either. I have a lot of things coming up, things I’ve already scheduled months in advance—”

  Catherine strides over to the security checkpoint and digs into her purse for her ticket.

  Dragging behind her, my hands get cold, and I open and close them to bring back circulation.

  “Okay, well, I guess I don’t need to know exactly when we can meet again,” I begin but she doesn’t seem to be listening as she gathers up her license and her boarding pass.

  I feel waves of fear that cannot be rationalized. She’s leaving. She’s leaving me again.

  When we get to the front of the line, Catherine puts her arm around my shoulder. She gives me a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek. It’s a peck, like we are strangers.

  “Okay,” she says. “So I’ll call you when I get home. I’ll try to call tonight.”

  “Okay,” I say. “But I feel like we might need to know, tentatively, when to meet again. Do you have any idea when you might be free? ”

  It’s like asking a disinterested guy for a date. I’m setting myself up to be rejected and here it comes.

  She does this little shift from one foot to the other. She is restless. She sighs. “Well, not really,” she says. “Why don’t I figure that out when I get home.”

  I tell myself that her reassurance should be enough. I want to believe we will form a plan later but my body tells a different truth. Catherine left me before and she will leave me again and she is leaving me right now. If she truly meant to know me and be in my life, she would not behave this way. She would stand still. She would look me in the eye.

  I hug myself and try, one more time.

  “Are you sure?” I ask. “Will you figure it out? Will you remember? ”

  “Yes, yes, I will, I promise,” she says. She hugs me once again but it’s an impatient embrace. She is eager to get on her way.

  I step off to the side and let my mother go on without me.

  Catherine weaves though the maze of security, shoulders back and hips slung forward. When she reaches the x-ray machines, she slips out of her high-heel sandals.

  My face is wet but I don’t wipe away the evidence of tears. I let myself cry and hug myself tighter still. Is this the fear, terror, grief, and rage that I felt as a baby? The pain makes me dizzy. How did I survive?

  Catherine forgot to ask: How are you here, Jennifer? How did you make it without me?

  She also forgot to say she was so sorry for leaving me. That she would do anything to make it up to me—her first child—her daughter.

  She rushes back to a full life of children, grandchildren—her big extended family. I watch from here—as unknown to her as I was when she arrived this morning.

  Catherine exits the x-ray machine and bends over to push her feet into her strappy sandals. In a final gesture, as if it is enough, she lifts her arm and waves goodbye.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  REUNION

  WHEN I RETURN TO THE HOUSE, I pull into the driveway and Spencer and Jo explode from the front door.

  Cries of “Moooom!” pierce through the closed windows of the car.

  I am shaky and unsteady, my eyes are puffy from tears spent at the airport, but now it’s going to be okay. I shove the keys into my purse and get out of the car. The kids bound down the stairs, elbows and long legs and pure hearts. They throw themselves against my body.

  I want them to. I need them to.

  “Mooooooom!” Jo yells, pressing her face into my stomach.

  “We missed you, Mom,” Spencer yells, hugging around my shoulders.

  They feel so good and I’m so lucky for their love.

  “How did it go?” Spencer asks. “Was she nice? Are you going to see her again?”

  “Mom, Mom, Mom,” Jo says. She doesn’t ask about Catherine.

  Roger is on the porch, watching the scene and has a big grin of welcome on his face too. He waves and I lift my hand.

  “Come on,” I say, wiping at my eyes. “Let’s go in. I’ll tell you everything.”

  Jo tugs my arm, the signal she wants to be lifted and I scoop her up to my hip. She wraps her arms around my neck and presses her face into my shoulder. It’s like she wants to crawl into my skin and the funny thing is—I finally get this desire now. Didn’t I want to crawl into Catherine’s skin? Don’t I still?

  With Jo on one side, I put my arm around Spencer’s shoulders and we all go up the steps together—this six-legged crowd of awkwardness. “Was she nice? ” Spencer asks again.

  “She was super nice,” I say.

  “Will you see her again? ” he asks. “Will we meet her?”

  “I don’t know, Honey,” I say. “I just need to think about everything. We’ll see.”

  At the top of the steps, I kiss Roger hello over the top of Jo’s head.

  “We made a party for you, Mom!” Jo announces, wiggling down from my side.

  “A tea party,” Roger adds.

  I nod like a tea party is just great.

  I don’t need to tell Roger how I feel or what’s going on with Catherine. He already knows since I called from the airport and told him about the day.

  “Come on, come see,” Jo says. She races around Roger, wanting to be the first one in the house and to show off what they’ve been cooking up, which I already know—since Jo is a tea party expert—will be a dozen tiny plates of snack foods, big pots of fresh mint tea, and candles flickering in tiny cups.

  Roger goes into the house too but before I can move, Spencer stops me at the threshold. He turns me to face him, his hands on my shoulders and it’s funny the way he does this.

  “Let me look at you,” he says.

  Spencer peers into my face—into my eyes.

  “You’r
e different,” he says.

  I don’t really get it yet—this biological surge of sensory information that has passed from Catherine to me in our one afternoon together—but Spencer does. He looks at a person he’s been looking at his entire life and there is a confidence in his voice.

  “You’re better,” he adds.

  CATHERINE DOES CALL, the next morning after our meeting, and she continues to call. She tries to stay connected over the next few days. She does her best.

  But she’s not coming to see me again. She makes this clear on the phone. “I don’t like to travel. I have things to do. I’m busy, you know.”

  These are normal things that normal people say. I understand and a part of me, that stranger part of me who realizes we do not know each other, cuts my mother an ocean of slack. But the other part of me is a blender of complex emotional response. I need her, I ache for her, I want her, and I am so pissed off too. I’m sad, scared, confused, worried, and a million other shades of feeling.

  This duality—established at our first conversation—becomes the defining quality of our reunion. I am full of need and I am full of understanding.

  Catherine doesn’t admit need from her end of our reunion. She has the same feelings and desires that I do, I know she does, but her life has been largely lived and not largely explored. She likes things to be nice and easy. She likes to have fun. She doesn’t seek understanding. She believes she understands well enough.

  I would say that Catherine thinks of me like a new girlfriend, an acquaintance that she is trying to incorporate into her life. In this way, she can keep me at a distance while trying to be polite. But the truth is, she is also pissed because I’m not a new girlfriend. I am an old secret and the way she had it worked out, I was supposed to stay hidden. She has to be furious with her new pal. Of course, I’m just guessing.

  THE ADOPTION BOOKS are accurate when they report that an adoptee needs to be close to the birth mother and to have some form of regular contact. After ten days pass without a plan to meet, I feel I am going insane. I have to take some action for myself and my own well-being.

  I make a call.

  “I’ve booked a flight. I’m coming at the end of the week, just for a couple days,” I blurt over the telephone line.

  “Oh,” Catherine says. “Well, that’s kind of short notice.”

  It sounds like she is at work. Her voice has a professional clip.

  “I’ll stay in a hotel ... ” I stammer. My stomach churns. “I won’t impose. We can just visit when you have time.”

  “It’s only been ten days, crimeinee,” she says. Her voice is like a knife.

  I almost say that I won’t come.

  I almost hang up the phone.

  “It’s fine. It’s fine,” she concedes, just in time. “Just come. Jessie can’t wait to meet you anyway.”

  SUNDAY MORNING, 7:00 AM, I am booked on the earliest flight to Reno. Standing in line to get on the plane, I’m on the phone with Jessie and she’s totally pissed. Fire feels like it is coming out of the phone. “Fine, you don’t want me at the airport, I get it,” she says.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to meet you,” I say. “I need to just do this one person at a time, Catherine first, then more people can come in but this is really intense. I don’t think I can handle more people, right away.”

  Jessie says nothing more but I feel her on the other side of the line, tapping her foot and drumming her fingers on her kitchen countertop.

  “It’s fine,” Jessie finally says again.

  “It’s not personal, Jessie,” I say, “please understand.”

  “I do, I do, I totally understand,” she says, only her voice is not understanding.

  “Jessie, come on, I’ll see you when I get there,” I say. “I cannot wait.”

  I hand my ticket to the man at the gate and he scans the numbers with a computerized wand. Converging with the rest of the passengers, I go down the long walkway that funnels travelers into the belly of the plane.

  “Come over after I have a couple hours with Catherine, please? ”

  “Well, I don’t know. I’ve got a lot to do today,” Jessie says. “Anyway, I gotta go.”

  She hangs up the telephone, gone as fast a hummingbird.

  All that has happened is that I’ve asked to see Catherine first, just for a couple of hours, and then I will meet Jessie in the afternoon. This is the way it needs to be—the child who was given away needs to have some control as she returns to the world of those who rejected her, but Jessie is not interested in psychology.

  What gets me is not that she’s pissed. What gets me is that she is pissed in the same way I get pissed. She is abrupt, hurt, and incredibly fast to react and then she is off protecting herself with excuses of being busy.

  I’ve behaved in exactly the same way for most of my life and now I get to see that this is the way my people are. I thought I was so wounded before—incapable of managing slights and hurts and disappointments. No, that wasn’t it. This is how my people deal with pain. They get snippy, they hang up the phone, they run away.

  “Welcome to Southwest,” a flight attendant says.

  I hear myself say thanks and walk down the aisle, smiling this weird, stupid smile. I should be really upset with this situation with my sister but I’m not. I’m learning about myself by the simple act of engaging with her.

  “Please fasten your seat belt,” comes the voice of a flight attendant, from the front of the plane. “And turn off all electronic devices.”

  I buckle myself in and take a deep breath. Here we go.

  TWENTY-SIX

  BREAKFAST IN RENO

  RENO AIR IS like no other—it is bright and crisp and laced with the smell of sage. Reno air is mountain air with a bite.

  When I step off the plane in Reno, the old smell hits me.

  The next blow is that my mother isn’t waiting.

  Slot machines, cigarette smoke, and strangers greet me instead.

  Welcome home.

  I weave down the long corridor that leads through the terminal, passing signs advertising all manner of entertainment from hookers to musicals. If I believed the postings on the walls, I’d be at a casino as fast as a Checker Cab could get me there and I’d be feeding my silver dollars into a Wheel of Fortune machine.

  Janet used to say, “You cannot win playing another man’s game,” and this was how she felt about gambling. Did I make that up? Was the voice of reason born inside of me, all on my own? I cannot say with one hundred percent certainty but I do not gamble with my money. I only take risks with my heart.

  CATHERINE HAS LEFT a message on my phone and says she will meet me at the curb, since parking is such a hassle.

  If this were Denver, Chicago, or New York City, I’d get the whole excuse about parking hassles and the need to keep things simple. But Reno International is only large in name. At this time in the morning, on a Sunday, the Reno airport is like a ghost town. A dried wheel of sagebrush actually rolls past, pushed by the morning wind as I snap my phone closed.

  Yes, Catherine is pissed.

  No, she really didn’t want me to come.

  Yes, my heart is broken.

  No, I’m not surprised.

  I cry as I stand at the curb, waiting.

  I wonder if this is too much for me to bear? I ask myself if I need to just toss in the towel and go home now?

  I ask myself the question of all questions—the one I always ask when I can’t take care of myself: What if it was Josephine instead of you?

  The answer is so clear when put into that context, and I am about to turn around and go back to buy a return flight when a huge blazer roars up to the curb.

  Catherine drives the rig like she’s a cowgirl on a horse and waves her hand, only the gesture is impatient, as if I am a task on a to-do list that she doesn’t want to be responsible for.

  Catherine pulls on the emergency break and gets out of her rig. She comes around to give me a quick hug and I’m there, in m
y pathetic sadness—crying and lost. I’m a forty-four-year-old baby. What could be worse?

  Something about my tears makes her even more impatient and she sighs.

  She hugs me, just for a second, and then tries to let go but I won’t let her get away. I hold on to her familiar body, close my eyes, and breathe in her smell. I can’t help myself. I just have to do this. She is my mother, my very own mother. How can I not hug this woman? How can I not want her?

  “I missed you,” I hear myself say.

  She pats at my back, exasperated, impatient, and distracted. But does she also soften? Is there something that gives way in her? I want to believe it’s true. I want to believe she wants me too.

  “Okay, it’s okay,” she says, clearing her throat. “Let’s get you into the truck.”

  THE DRIVE TO her place is filled with chatter. She talks about how upset Jessie is, as if I didn’t know, and apparently there is some problem at work as well. It’s important, what she is saying, these details of her immediate life, but I don’t follow her line of thinking or reasoning. It hurts to think in that way—to take in intellectual information. While she talks, I nod and smile as if I am following along but what really goes on is that I am taking in—as deeply as I can—the timbre of her voice. It’s so musical and right. And look at her! My hungry eyes reconfirm that she looks just right with those long fingers, long legs, and her slim womanly body.

  Like I did in Portland, I absorb her into my senses, only this time, being with her is that much more precious. I know this moment will not last. I know I may never see her again. I know I have to make the most of our time together.

  Finally she runs out of talk and reaches over to touch my arm.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” Catherine says. “It was a hassle, rearranging everything, but now I see you, I am really glad.”

  “I’m sorry it was a hassle,” I say.

  “Oh, pooh,” she says, waving me off.

  SHE MAKES A few turns and we are in a neighborhood of tract houses—cookie cutter lookalikes. The colors are indistinct whites and tans.