“Well, that’s not the case in this family,” he said defensively. “The grandparent wants a better life for her daughter.”
“My point exactly!” Carolyn said. “Confidentially, I don’t understand why the Native community has issues with these transracial adoptions. We’re certainly offering the baby a better life with the new family than it would have with the birth mother. What do you know about the father?”
“Nothing,” he lied. “Carolyn, what do I have to do next?” he asked, changing the subject.
She gave him a folder of paperwork for Gus and Penny to fill out. Once the baby was born, they’d be named on the birth certificate, Ravenna erased from the baby’s life.
***
Thirty years later, Mike and Ravenna’s last child, April, was born. Ravenna decided that it was the right time to tell the children about Maria, too, while the concept of a baby was fresh in their minds. Mike didn’t agree, but it wasn’t his decision to make. Ravenna was desperate to freely speak of the baby, and the only way she could do that was if the others knew the story.
Eleven-year-old Regina saw baby April first; the birth took place late at night, the others already tucked in. Ravenna was sitting on the edge of the bed with the infant swaddled close by.
“Come see your new sister, Regina,” Mike said.
Regina stood shyly next to the bed, looking down at the baby. Finally, she thought, another girl! After four brothers, a little sister would be welcomed even if there were ten years between them.
In the morning when the boys woke up, they filed in to see April, the older ones embarrassed and the younger laughing and whispering to each other.
“Oh, no!” Walter said, whining. “A girl sister?” He realized at age four that his reign as the baby of the family was over.
“What’d you think a sister was, nutty Wally?” little Michael asked.
Ravenna picked the baby up and pointed toward the dining table. “Stop bickering, please, and sit down,” she said. “Let’s have a snack.” She kept a loving grasp around Walter’s shoulders as they walked side by side. She pulled a chair with a booster out for him and held onto his arm as he climbed up. She’d coddle him as long as he needed it.
Mike was pouring iced tea into little glasses placed in front of each child. “I brought donuts, too.”
Ravenna got up from her chair and brought a stack of small plates and the box of pastries over to the table. She sat down at the head with the baby in her arms, sound asleep. She was exhausted, too, but wanted to do this while she had the nerve. It might mean nothing to the children, but they might be upset. Mike poured Ravenna tea and a cup of coffee for himself.
“Okay, we can start,” he said, looking at Ravenna for guidance.
She nodded for him to go ahead.
“I don’t even know where to begin,” Mike said.
Ravenna rolled her eyes and reached over to squeeze his arm.
“Let me, Mike,” she said. When everyone was quiet, she spoke in a low, soft voice. “Many years ago, I had a baby named Maria. She lives with a new family in another state. We don’t know her, but we know of her, and we want you all to pray for her every day.” She looked at her kids and their confused expressions. Maybe Mike was right and this wasn’t such a good idea after all.
“How come you didn’t have another brother?” Walter asked.
Mike stood up, exasperated. “Okay, I guess that about does it for today,” he said. “Eat up your donut and go outside.” It was his solution to everything—send them on their way with junk food.
“Do you have any questions, Regina?” Ravenna asked.
The child nodded her head but didn’t speak.
“Well, what is it?”
“How old is she? How old is Maria?” She was thinking of a playmate, a girl to share her toys with. Someone besides boys and a tiny baby.
Ravenna frowned. How old was Maria? She had her when she was thirteen and was now forty-four. Oh God. She’d be over thirty now. How was that possible? “She’s thirty-one,” Ravenna said softly. “Yes, thirty-one.”
The baby was now a woman. If she were still alive, she’d probably be married with her own children. It struck Ravenna suddenly as the saddest thing she’d ever known, her flesh and blood approaching middle age without knowing her own mother and father. She bowed her head and started to cry.
The older boys were halfway out the door when they heard the weeping. They’d never seem their mother cry before, and this was an oddity of the worst kind. They’d all say years later it was a source of recurrent nightmares and insecurity.
Eight-year-old Ozzy turned from the door. “Wait,” he said to his brothers.
They followed Ozzy back to Ravenna, the baby still asleep lying across her lap and tears streaming down her face. “Mama, what’s wrong?”
“I’m sad, Oswald. I wish I knew where she was.”
Mike stood over her with his hand on her shoulder, uncertainty and concern overwhelming his common sense. Why get the children involved now? This scenario would have never taken place in his own family, where secrecy reigned.
“What should we do?” Mike asked.
“We need to find her,” Ravenna said.
Ozzy chimed in, the wisdom of a small boy setting the direction the search would take. “Let’s put an ad in the paper,” he announced. “My friend did it when his dog ran away.”
“Okay, let me think about it,” Mike said. “Go on outside, please.”
They left the cabin, looking over their shoulders again toward their mother.
“Well, that went well,” he said sarcastically, repeating, “What should we do?”
Chapter 9
Maria’s adoptive father, Gus Patos, was the only obstacle between the family and Maria. When he died in April, no one knew how relevant it was. No one knew what his cousin, George Patos’s role in Maria’s adoption was either, because Peggy died without telling Ravenna what she knew. The family assumed they’d used an adoption agency in Grand Rapids. They’d wasted precious time trying to find information regarding Maria’s whereabouts until serendipity intervened.
Mike was visiting George in Chicago the weekend before, one of the last trips he’d make there alone. George, in his nineties, had moved back to the city after his wife died. It was a slip of the tongue so smooth that Mike almost missed it. George, Mike and two younger cousins were sitting around the table, playing poker after dinner Sunday night. One of the men was about to have his first child and shared his mortification at learning he was expected to attend the birth.
“I don’t want to know where it’s coming from, if that’s all right,” he said.
The others laughed at him.
“You know, you just don’t want to see it get stretched out of shape,” someone said. Gagging noises and guffaws followed.
And then out of nowhere, George gave his historic slip. “You missed the birth of your first kid, didn’t you, Mikey?”
Immediately, his face went red as Mike looked at him quizzically. The following week, Mike shared the story with his family as they sat around the familiar table.
“It took me a few seconds to realize what he’d said, and I felt the wind knocked out of me. ‘What’d you just say?’ I answered. George clammed up. He was actually going to pretend he didn’t say it. No one else should have known about it but Peggy, Ravenna, and the adoption people.”
“How’d you get him to open up again?” Regina asked.
“I got nasty. ‘George,’ I said, ‘tell me what you meant by missing the birth? What birth do you mean?’ He was bright red in the face. ‘I didn’t mean nuttin by it!’ he said. I reached over and grabbed his shoulder kindly but firmly. ‘Uncle George, if you don’t tell me what you’re referring to, I’m going to tell these boys our Douglas secrets.’ I won’t go into too much detail, but he did some bootlegging and other unsavory activities that he didn’t want the world to know about, but had no trouble doing in front of his teenaged nephew.
“�
�Leave us for a minute, will you?’ he said to my cousins. They got up reluctantly, not wanting to miss any juicy family intrigue.
“‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Explain what you mean.’ He looked at his hands; you could see he was struggling with telling me the truth. Fortunately, the truth won out, because we would probably still not know anything. ‘My cousin Gus and his wife, Penny, adopted Ravenna’s baby.’ I almost punched him. All this time, he knew. He watched as we kept coming to dead ends in our search, and said nothing.
“Our attorney was allowed to see the part of the adoption agreement that forbade contact with Maria until both Gus and Penny were dead. I don’t care if I am judging them now. Why in hell would they keep that information from their daughter?”
Ravenna placed her hand over his. “They must have been afraid of losing her love,” she said. “On the night my mother discovered I was pregnant, she summoned George. I’ll never forget it. John and I talked about it later; she was in love with him, I’m sure of it now.”
“Mama, no way!” Regina said. “He’s a creep.”
“She was dependent on him after my father died. He promised to take care of us,” Ravenna said.
“Daddy, did George go into details with you? I mean, did he just come and take the baby? What happened?” Regina knew some of Ravenna’s intimate sorrows, but facts were something no one had or kept secret if they did.
“You want to answer that?” Mike asked.
“After I delivered, my mother took her, and that was the end of it. I didn’t know who came to the house or if she drowned the baby in the river,” Ravenna said bitterly.
“Peggy didn’t understand the risk she put her family in when she let the social workers into the house. They wouldn’t investigate before removing children from a family; they didn’t need an excuse. The Bureau of Indian Affairs had a goal to assimilate Indians into American culture with the extinction of the tribes,” Mike explained. He looked over at Ravenna for confirmation and asked her softly if she wanted to go on with the story.
“What do you want me to tell you? Someone came to the house to look things over, and I’ll never forget how insecure it left us feeling. The house looked then about what it looks like now, neat and organized but packed to the gills with the things needed to care for nine kids and make baskets,” she said.
April and the rest of the children stared at her, frightened of what they might hear. The memories flooded over Ravenna. The worst part wasn’t the social workers or even the pregnancy; Peggy wouldn’t speak to her or make eye contact after the night George Patos came to the cabin.
“I continued to go to school because no one would suspect a thirteen-year-old would be pregnant. And I was so skinny I didn’t show much, and it was winter, so I wore layers of clothes.
“Remember that my mother trusted George. She didn’t have any reason not to. She must have thought it meant he’d simply hand the baby over to a family, never dreaming he would get the government involved. Mike, did he say why he did it?”
“I think he was protecting himself,” Mike said. “And in the long run, it was easier for him. It didn’t impact him at all.”
“Why not keep her?” April asked.
“My mother was probably trying to protect me,” Ravenna said, making excuses. “I always had the feeling she was coerced in some way. She was tired after having nine children. Life was difficult after my father died, but I think having another baby around wouldn’t have influenced our lives that much.
“Our day-to-day life after the baby didn’t change at all. We did the same things every day just as we had before. We chopped wood and gathered food, went to school and studied. Now it was under the scrutiny of the Child Welfare Association. Pules and Nadie were put into foster care during the fifties because Peggy didn’t get their inoculations during a polio outbreak. The rest of us got the shot at school.
“George helped get the girls back, but the experience was hardest for Pules, who said the people were very nice, but wouldn’t allow her to speak Ojibwa. Being separated from the family and her siblings, and having to try to adapt to a different way of life changed the way she looked at her own life. Except for my disgrace, we never had any strife in our home until Pules came back from foster care.”
“When did you and Daddy find each other again?” April asked, needing a break from the topic of Maria.
“I lived with Peggy until she died. I was going to be the old unmarried lady, and then your father came back,” Ravenna said. “Mike, you talk now.”
“When my marriage ended, it made my dream of moving here to paint a possibility. George moved back to Chicago, he asked me to take over selling Ravenna’s baskets, and the rest is history,” he said.
“Not really, inini. Nice try,” Ravenna said, chuckling.
“Right,” he said.
“Did you know about Maria?” April asked.
“No,” Mike answered.
“Wait, you didn’t know?” Regina asked. “How could you keep coming to Saugatuck and not find out?”
“Remember, I was only a teenager when she was born. I couldn’t visit unless the family agreed. Peggy banned me. After George asked me to help sell the baskets, I arranged to stop by the cabin to pick a load up and saw Ravenna for the first time in twenty years. Do you want to tell the story?” Mike asked Ravenna.
“We just loved each other,” she said, answering him, returning to her children. “We sat down to tea and caught up with our lives. Regina, I got pregnant with you in a matter of days. So that should clear up any questions you have.”
“Okay, we don’t need any details, please!” Ozzy pleaded, and the rest of the children agreed, laughing.
A registered nurse, son Michael was amazed and saddened by the story of his mother suffering. “Did you have the baby here, or did you go to the hospital?”
“I had her right in that room,” Ravenna said, pointing beyond the wall. “The same room where I had all of you.”
“I guess I must have blocked that out,” Michael said, pale. “It’s so dangerous for an adult to have an unattended birth, let alone a young girl.”
“I’m a basket maker, remember; that precludes things like health insurance. In my mother’s time, whether to deliver at home or go to the hospital wasn’t a choice an Indian had to make. You stayed home because that was the way we did it. Of course it was dangerous.”
“Infant mortality is twice as high in Indians as whites,” Michael said. “I suppose you didn’t have any prenatal care.”
Ravenna laughed. “Who would we go to? No, I didn’t have any prenatal care. But I was healthy, and you know we have a healthy lifestyle.”
The family sat in silence, thinking of their parents’ history. Was life that primitive in the recent past?
Michael thought about his father, who lived in town while the family lived on the river. His father came from a wealthy family. Why did his mother have her children unattended, in an unheated cabin by the river, like a peasant?
“Just out of curiosity, why didn’t you and Mommy get married?” Michael asked.
“I did ask her, but she didn’t want to.”
Regina was frightened as the conversation progressed. There was a lot of undercurrent that she feared would erupt if they weren’t careful. They pretended they didn’t think there was anything wrong with the way their parents lived, like hippies with no morals. She knew she was judging them, and the guilt was intense. But it went much deeper for her. She’d suffered as a child because of her parents’ relationship.
“The world might be a better place if more couples did it that way,” Michael replied, the others laughing.
“I feel like you’re criticizing me,” Ozzy said.
“Why? Because you got married?” Michael said, incredulous. “I’m jealous of you, Oz. Get over it.”
Ozzy scratched his head, this news catching him off guard.
Regina knew that it was just a matter of time before her father was going to have to deal with his irres
ponsible lifestyle. Ravenna teased that it was her decision for them to live apart, but Regina wondered if it wasn’t an attempt at saving face.
“Anyway, Mommy, go on with your story,” Regina said, encouraging her mother to continue. It could go on like this all night, with issues skirted, the subject being changed.
“I went into labor and had her early in the morning. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be. Peggy was furious with me. I thought seeing me in pain would soften her, but I was mistaken. She could barely make eye contact with me for months before the birth, often speaking about me in the third person even if I was sitting right next to her. She said I was a bad influence on my sisters, telling them to keep away from me.”
Ravenna was flooded with memories. The day of the birth, she’d sat in school trying to ignore the burning sensation under her belly. On the way home from school, she threw up after she got off the bus. After midnight, sick, she went to the outhouse, pulled down her pants and saw the bloody show. She was afraid to wake her mother, so she labored through the night, alone.
“I’d been with my mother when she was in labor with Pules, so I did what she had done. When the pain got bad, I got on my hands and knees and rocked like a dog. I squatted over the chamber pot when I needed to push, as I had seen my mother do, so that when my membranes ruptured, I wouldn’t make a mess,” Ravenna said, as if she was reciting a bedtime story to her children, who looked on in horror. Her sons especially were appalled. A thirteen-year-old delivering alone?
“I’d been pushing a long time when the grunting woke Peggy up. I have to say she was kind to me. ‘Have you been up long?’ she asked. I couldn’t get the words out, so she got the message. She attended me in silence then, which was just as well. It was hard work pushing to get her out of my body.
“I didn’t even get to hold her,” Ravenna said, stony. The sadness of giving the baby up was still painful sixty-two years later, her adult children looking on in horror. “The placenta hadn’t even come out when she was gone. Unless she had John run with a message to someone, I still don’t understand how she could’ve given the baby over so quickly. I looked around for her outside and in the longhouse where the children slept. Nothing. She was gone.”
The Liberation of Ravenna Morton Page 8