by Scott Martin
‘This little guy caught my eye,’ she said, pointing vaguely in the direction of the boy whose face she’d ringed with a felt-tip pen. ‘He was born exactly one week after Danny.’
I stared into the dark brown eyes, hypnotized by the speck of light lurking in their depths as I reacquainted myself with the confusion and fear portrayed by his expression. It was Michias. She had circled Michias.
I swallowed and blinked, trying to clear my throat and my eyes. Of the sixty kids in the pamphlet, Ellen had noticed the same boy I had.
‘This is crazy and you know I stopped believing in fate after I became sick,’ I told her, my voice hoarse and higher than usual, ‘but that’s the same kid I noticed. I didn’t mark him because I didn’t want you to feel pressured.’
‘Really?’ she asked, her expression rising with hope.
‘Yeah. What do you think?’ I asked, suddenly forgetting all my earlier thoughts of money-grabbing and heart-stabbing charities; of injustices I simply couldn’t afford to focus on; of my life so full I couldn’t imagine it holding any more.
Ellen was quiet for a moment. Her lip found its way back between her teeth as her eyes returned to the document now hovering above my lap. ‘Will you contact Kathy to see if he’s still available? And if he is, what the process for adopting from Ethiopia is?’
I smiled. ‘It can’t be any worse than Romania.’
37
The Boy in The Paper
‘Hi, Kathy, this is Scott Martin, Dr. Ellen Martin’s husband,’ I said into the phone, turning from the packet I had flipped open to Michias’s image on the desk to peer out the window at the tranquility beyond. The gangly, white trunks of aspen trees leaned slightly off-vertical at the outskirts of the woods like the stakes of a fence no one had bothered to finish. From where I stood between the two windows in the office, I could just make out Nadia and Danny’s play structure, deserted except for a small brown bird hopping along the beam over the swings. Nadia and Danny attended preschool now, leaving me and their toys alone from 8:40 in the morning until 12:20 when I met them at their bus stop at the beginning of our driveway each afternoon.
Sending them off to school wasn’t hard so much because my two little buddies were gone for a few hours but rather because my parenting style dictated that I not be overly protective or coddle them incessantly despite every nerve itching for me to do exactly that. I had been working my way up to creating a greater distance between us so they could gain confidence: forcing them to cross the creek on their own using a plank of wood I’d purchased and standing back when the bus came so they could learn to fend for themselves and find their own way. It was that distance – my self-imposed distance – and watching them learn not to need me which was the hardest thing to endure. One day they won’t need you at all, I mused and became so engrossed in the thought that when Kathy’s voice reached my ear I flinched in surprise.
‘Oh, Scott! Yes, hello! I had a feeling you’d call.’
‘Mm,’ I hummed noncommittally, smiling at the implication of fate’s hand in our lives yet again. ‘Ellen and I would like to discuss the possibility of adopting from Ethiopia.’
‘Okay!’ Kathy replied, her enthusiasm making the word rise in pitch at the end like a cheer: o-kay! ‘How about I come to your house so I can meet your children who I’ve heard so much about and we can discuss it then?’
‘That would be great,’ I told her sincerely.
~~~
Kathy came by Saturday afternoon. After being welcomed into our home with open arms (Literally: Nadia and Danny hadn’t yet learned how to differentiate between family and acquaintance. At the time, they’d hug the UPS man whenever he came to the door.), she introduced us to Adoption Advocates International. Started by three volunteers in a couple’s garage, the organization focused on finding homes for the children often overlooked by other organizations. The kids who had disabilities or needed homes with siblings – the kids who were, arguably, the most vulnerable.
Michias, she told us didn’t technically fit into either of these categories, having no disability or family to speak of. He was one of the majority at Layla House, AAI’s Ethiopian orphanage, who had lost everyone they had to AIDS. And he was still available for adoption.
It was all Ellen and I needed to hear.
‘Lock us on Michias,’ I told Kathy. ‘Get us the paperwork and let’s roll.’
‘You’re sure?’ Kathy asked.
I looked at Ellen. Ellen looked to Nadia and Danny who had each claimed a couch cushion on either side of our guest of honor.
‘Do you guys want a brother?’ Ellen asked.
‘The boy in the paper?’ Nadia asked.
‘Yes,’ I told her with a smile and a nod. The boy in the paper.
‘Yes!’ she shouted, turning to hop onto the sofa and begin jumping up and down exuberantly.
Giggling, Danny followed suit. ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ they hollered as they bounced on the cushions. Kathy braced herself exaggeratedly, both hands grabbing the edge of the middle cushion upon which she sat as she pretended to be in a rocking boat. I snuck a glance at Ellen, who grinned and shrugged one shoulder. What the heck.
This once, we let them bounce on the furniture to celebrate our decision to expand our family.
~~~
I leaned a hip against the counter to watch my wife work. ‘We received a letter today.’
‘Just one?’ Ellen retorted, grinning at the pot of spindly spaghetti noodles she was about to strain.
‘One important one. It was from AAI saying that our completed paperwork has been received and found to be in order. And Michias is officially locked on us.’
Her head shot up like a squirrel startled from its nut-burying. ‘Really?’ she asked, her wide, bright eyes beseeching me to say it was true.
‘Really,’ I told her. I smiled at her quiet whoop of joy, her teeth biting her lower lip on a prodigious grin.
‘That’s wonderful! Did it say how much longer we would have to wait?’
‘No,’ I admitted a touch gravely. I had been looking for promises when I tore open the letter, too. ‘But I spoke with Kathy only yesterday and she had stated that once the paperwork went through we’d be in the home stretch. No more than six months, I’d say.’ Three months to get the paperwork completed and in order and three months for the courts to get in order. Could it really be that easy? I was afraid to hope.
Ellen clutched a hand to her chest and exhaled dramatically. ‘Thank goodness! I don’t think I could go through another adoption like Nadia and Danny’s.’ I nodded in accord as she hoisted the pot of pasta and started to make her way around the island towards the sink. I didn’t care to remind her that Barb had made promises to the same affect, too. It was a six to nine month time frame and then it was ‘three more weeks’ before becoming ‘three more months’ and finally simply, ‘please be patient.’ So far, Kathy had proved to be efficient and trustworthy, keeping us apprised of all actions and never once asking me to ‘be patient’.
As long as things continue as they’ve been, we’ll be fine, I thought, grabbing the basket of garlic bread and detouring into the living room on my way to the table.
I peered around the fireplace to find Danny sitting with his back to me, legs bent in front of him with his heels on the floor and knees arching above the ground.
‘Weew-weew-weew-weeeew,’ he said in a hushed voice, while his right hand guided his toy fire truck out of its plastic fire station and beneath the bridge of his legs.
‘Time for dinner, guys,’ I called to the fire crew and young artist behind the coffee table.
Nadia delicately lifted Stuart’s large snout with both her hands and slid her legs out from beneath his bulbous, black speckled head. He watched her with forlorn eyes as she lowered his skull back to the floor and started making her way into the dining room.
‘Hustle, hustle,’ I chanted as they drew near. They laughed and scurried past me in a dash for the table.
‘Whoa there!’ E
llen cried when Danny veered around her, barely making the turn to swerve into his seat. When they had settled, I swapped my basket of garlic bread for the bowl of meatballs and marinara sauce.
‘So, that letter,’ I segued as Ellen began dishing pasta onto Nadia and Danny’s plates.
‘Mm-hm,’ Ellen murmured.
‘It also came with some other documents, one of which mentioned that we could send Michias a gift if we wanted to.’
Ellen glanced up, a heaping spoonful of pasta plunking a bit haphazardly onto Danny’s plate.
‘Of course we want to!’ Her eyes narrowed at me as if worried I may have thought differently.
Danny was staring at the noodles with single-minded determination as he waited for the marinara sauce to accompany them.
‘That’s what I said,’ I assured her. ‘Whatever we send would need to fit in a shoebox, though.’
‘Three meatballs, please, Tata,’ Danny chirped, eyes still fixated on the bare noodles as if waiting for a green light so he could dive in.
‘You bet, buddy.’ I ladled sauce and meatballs onto his noodles, dropping an extra, conciliatory ball to make up for being so distracted.
Ellen moved down the line towards her own seat. ‘A shoebox? That’s it?’
‘Better than nothing.’
‘True.’ She served herself then brought the bowls of pasta and garlic bread to my end of the table so I could do the same. ‘What should we send him?’
‘I don’t know,’ I told her truthfully as I used the right myo to shovel food onto my plate. I couldn’t serve as neatly nor as easily as Ellen could, but it was an unspoken agreement between us that she give me no handouts because of my handicap. I always had and always would serve myself. The one exception to the rule was cutting meat, a difficult task to accomplish without a wrist. She graciously gave me a break on that one.
‘Hey, kids, do you want to send your brother a present?’ I asked, plunking a fourth meatball onto my pasta.
‘A present?’ Danny asked, his lips smeared with tomato sauce like a crazed clown and a noodle hanging out of the corner of his mouth.
‘Yes, a gift for Michias.’
‘Yes!’ Nadia cried, throwing her arms in the air, fork and all.
‘Careful!’ Ellen cried out around a laugh, reaching for the sauce-laden utensil before marinara could go flying everywhere.
I snickered and caught Ellen’s eye. ‘We’ll think of something,’ I assured her, turning to my mound of spaghetti.
~~~
Michias’ gift box grew to include two t-shirts, one for the US National Soccer Team and one for the Seattle Mariners; one pair of red adidas shorts and another in white with blue stripes; two pairs of socks; and a photo of our family, including Bogart and the dogs. We knew Michias probably wouldn’t understand what the picture meant or who we were, having no knowledge of our existence, but we gave it a shot and set the photo on top of his pile of clothes.
Nadia added her Seattle Mariners baseball cap to the box and Danny put in a few of his Hot Wheels: his favorite car, favorite truck, and his Batmobile. It was a gift that was a part of each of us, only Michias wouldn’t know that for many months still to come. This was the hard part of adoption: when your child is a part of your family already but he or she has yet to include you as part of his or hers. I hated that there was no way to communicate with him other than through these few items, lovingly crammed into a single, men’s size 9 shoebox, but Ethiopia required only one parent to travel and only once and that was to bring their child home.
~~~
Muffled by the pile of clothes in her arms, I could barely make out the word Ellen called from behind me. I glanced over my shoulder at her, slowing my pace so as not to drop any of the books and dolls I carried.
‘Andrew?’ I asked, puckering my brow. Behind Ellen, Nadia and Danny were proudly parading like a pair of ducklings marching after their mama duck as they each clutched a stuffed animal in their arms. In preparation for Michias’s arrival, we had sold Nadia and Danny on the idea of moving into separate rooms – easily accomplished when we proposed it on the heels of ‘Do you want a new brother?’ – and were now onto our fifth trip down the hall with Nadia’s belongings.
‘Michias Andrew Martin,’ Ellen enunciated, wriggling her chin out from behind one of Nadia’s down winter coats.
‘Andrew,’ I repeated, understanding dawning as I tested the feel of the name on my tongue. Andrew, I mouthed, picturing the scared little boy with the wide eyes and narrow frown. Andy. I led our gaggle into Nadia’s new room, down the hall and separated only by a Jack and Jill bathroom from the bedroom that would now belong to Danny and Michias.
‘I like it,’ I told Ellen as I dumped my collection of bedtime stories and partially-clothed dolls onto Nadia’s new bed. ‘Andy Martin,’ I said with a grin. It was perfect.
‘What do you guys think?’ I asked Nadia and Danny as they marched into the room on Ellen’s heels, Nadia sticking her elbows out in the doorway to ensure Danny didn’t sneak around her to enter the room first. ‘Should we call your new brother Andy?’
As with any mention of Michias, they became instantly animated, throwing the stuffed animals they carried into the air to chant their favorite answer to any and all questions regarding their new brother: ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’
Ellen laughed and looked over their heads to smile at me with glowing eyes, ardor and adoration radiating from her like sunlight off a mirror. ‘Andy Martin,’ she whispered, just loud enough to be heard over Nadia and Danny’s hollering.
38
Humbling
Red. Everything seemed to be red. Red carpet. Red drapes. Red chair. Heck, even the wallpaper had a great deal of red in it. It was two in the morning, East Africa Time, and I was seeing red. Literally.
I sat down on the side of the bed – with, yes, red stitching – near the phone and opened the room service menu. 2:00 a.m. here was 1:00 p.m. back home and having slept for a fair portion of the twenty-four hour journey, I wasn’t tired but boy was I hungry. Andy’s adoption had culminated so quickly – unexpectedly smooth after our turmoil in Romania – that Ellen had been unable to take time off work to bring him home with me. I was on my own for this trek across the globe and back again.
After skipping over the breakfast selection, I decided on a nice, robust taste of home and called in an order for a hamburger.
‘Thirty minutes, please, Mr. Martin,’ the waiter said when he’d taken my order, ‘thirty’ getting caught somewhere between ‘thrifty’ and ‘dirty’ in his Ethiopian twang. I thanked him and hung up the phone, turning to my abundance-of-red hotel room.
The manager of Layla House, a woman named Gail Gorfe, would be meeting me outside the hotel at a more reasonable hour of the day and logic told me to unpack, eat, and sleep before she arrived. Severe jet lag and unavoidable excitement at being so close to Michias, however, made neither of the latter two prospects appealing at the moment. Instead, I tossed my legs onto the bed and turned on the thirteen-inch television. It was perched atop a wooden stand that looked more like a rickety barstool than an entertainment console.
The screen flickered to life, displaying a weathered man with corrugated skin standing before a small gathering of black, horned steers. He was talking to a male reporter who wore slacks and a navy sweater and was doing a valiant job of looking interested. Overlaying the scene was a man’s voice – young if the octave and tone was anything to go by – uttering a series of sounds which were so rapid in succession and distinct from anything I’d ever heard that I had the urge to hold my breath as he spoke, as if perhaps that would trap some meaning inside me.
It didn’t. He kept speaking and speaking, making these incredibly obscure sounds that couldn’t possibly be strung together as words, and I kept listening, barely breathing, wondering if he had used a single vowel in the past several minutes, until a sound at my door told me my meal had arrived.
Whatever Ethiopians’ views of American cuisine are, they do not
match my own. The burger looked familiar enough, sitting innocuously on a polished white plate atop a wooden tray. But I assure you, this was no simple burger. It was the Mount Vesuvius of burgers; the Death Valley of burgers; the you’re-going-to-regret-this of burgers. I went in ignorant of all this, of course, taking a Big Gulp of a bite and chomping greedily through the bread in my quest for the meaty goodness within. By the time that first tiny morsel of substance had touched the back of my throat I was seeing red for very different reasons. First my tongue, then the roof of my mouth, then my throat, and finally my whole, sweat-beading head felt like it was lit on fire. I looked accusingly at my burger then squinted at the door through teary-eyed panting. Someone must have stuffed this with something, I scowled. Then took another bite.
By the time I was finished, I had drained every bottle of water in my room and was satiated in a way only acutely spicy food can engender. If this is what Michias has been living on, we won’t need to have a spicy-taco night when he gets home, I thought and wiped my brow with a towel from the bathroom.
~~~
A woman with fine, medium-length hair just the dark side of blonde and bright pink cheeks was waving to me. She was standing on the driver’s side of an old, off-white Land Rover which would have looked more at home on a safari than the riddled streets of Addis Ababa. Must be Gail, I thought and took a chance at waving back without glancing over my shoulder first.
‘Scott!’ she said, raising her voice to be heard over the racket of the abused engines hobbling down the street. ‘I’m Gail, goot to meet you!’ Gail smiled at me from across the hood of the vehicle, wrinkling her nose and squinting behind her eyeglasses. She was all soft curves beneath a rich violet shirt, a stark contrast to the lanky and at times skeletal natives to the area.