The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade

by Ann Fessler

  My parents took me to Catholic Social Services, where I met with a social worker who—I don’t know, when I was eighteen I had a hard time judging other people’s ages—I thought was really ancient, so I would say she was probably in her fifties. She was the first person I heard the word adoption from. It never, ever crossed my mind. I thought, “Well, I’m having a baby and I’m going to raise him.”

  I kept working and I had to go see her once a week. I worked the evening shift, so I’d get home from work at maybe one in the morning and then I had appointments with her in the early morning, so most of the time I wasn’t on time. That convinced her even more that I was a horrible, irresponsible person because I was always late. I would go there to have her tell me what a lowlife I was. “How do you think you could ever raise a child? Look at you. What do you have to offer a baby?”

  I had really long bangs at the time, and I’m sure that’s because I was trying to hide. I had terrible posture. I was just trying to be invisible. She’d always say, “Brush those bangs out of your face.” But she used to marvel at my eyebrows. I think it was the only feature about me that she thought was passable. When I got a copy of my records after my son found me, there was a physical description in there that said I had sallow skin, dark circles under my eyes, thick lips, a snub nose, and I lumbered when I walked. The only nice thing she had to say about me was that I had wonderful, naturally arching eyebrows.

  So it was always, “What are you going to do? How are you going to support this kid? What makes you think that you could possibly be fit to raise a baby?” And this was week after week after week. “What are you going to do with your life?” I think I was working for less than a dollar and a half an hour at the battery factory. We made big battery packs with about twenty-one cells in them. We soldered the little wires together and they were used for radios for soldiers in Vietnam, which always made me very sad. You know, is somebody going to die if this isn’t right? So it was dirty, dirty, dirty work. It was filthy, but I religiously went off to work every night, even though my friends were out socializing.

  My dad said, “I’m not going to spend one damn cent on that little bastard.” He dragged me off to the welfare office to apply for welfare. The plan was that I would go to a maternity home. I went along with it because obviously my wages were not going to pay for anything. He also took me to the district attorney’s office to file paternity charges, which were sent off to my boyfriend’s family. Of course, they totally denied it: “Not our son.” So the welfare was approved to pay for a maternity home and medical care.

  I had some time off from work, so I tried to track down my ex-boyfriend. I went to his parents’ house and I remember his mother came out on the front steps holding his youngest brother, and there were I’d say probably six other siblings with her. I’m standing down on the sidewalk below her. It was a bright sunny day and there was a beautiful blue sky and a couple of his siblings had the most incredible blue eyes that matched the sky. I remember that. I told her who I was and she proceeded to scream at the top of her lungs, telling me I was nothing but a whore and a slut who had led her son astray and given him clap or something like that. I said, “What’s that?” Then I just turned around and left.

  I went back home and kept on working at my job. There was a dance hall that had live music where my friends and I spent the weekends dancing and I met, wow, the most incredibly gorgeous guy I had ever seen. He actually gave me a ride home. We stopped and walked around a golf course until four in the morning and talked. He walked me to my door and said good night and I went inside and I thought, “Hmm, if I’m ever going to marry anyone, this is the person I’m going to marry.” But of course I wasn’t going to breathe a word about this to him. We saw each other from July until I went to the maternity home in October.

  I think it was after Thanksgiving, and the social worker at the maternity home rounded up the girls and gave us a presentation about the wonders of adoption: how all these infertile people are just feeling so heartbroken and what a wonderful thing it is for us to give our babies to them. I couldn’t handle it. I left the room just sobbing my brains out, “You just can’t do this to us, you just can’t do it.” I locked myself in my room and refused to come out for the rest of the day.

  My baby was due on December 26. All the other girls wanted to be with their parents on Christmas, so they decided that I should be with my parents and induced labor on December 14. The grown-ups told me to do it, so I did it. You know, all my life I really, really tried to be doing the right thing. I just didn’t always get it right.

  On the morning of December 14, I took the tunnel over to the hospital, which was right across from the maternity home. They put me in a room and shaved me, which I was shocked by, then they did the internal, broke my water, hooked me up to an IV, and left the room. There might have been some kind of little light on, but it was just a really cold winter day and the light was just as cold. It was kind of a gray light and I just lay in that bed for hours and hours. I always had horrible, horrible cramps when I was a teenager when I got my period. Well, this was like, ugh, the worst thing I could have imagined. So finally at about one in the afternoon a nurse peeks her head in and I said, “Isn’t there something you can give me because these cramps hurt so bad I can’t stand it.” She said, “You should have thought about that nine months ago!”

  I didn’t do any screaming, I cried. Finally, it was just so bad that I rang for the nurse and somebody decided to see what was going on. They panic: “Oh my God, the baby’s gonna be born.” They wheeled me out of there into the blaring bright lights of the delivery room. I remember them transferring me to the table, tying my arms and my legs—you know, spread-eagle. She’s putting the mask over my face and the last thing I remember was wanting my own mother, which was probably the only time in my life I ever did. I had never in my life felt as alone as I did right before my baby was born.

  And then I don’t know how long it was, but this nurse-anesthetist brought me out of it enough to show me my baby, so it must have been right after he was born because he was still all covered with newborn baby stuff. And, of course, I couldn’t touch him because my hands were tied down. Then I was out again.

  The next thing I remembered I was in recovery and I started throwing up, and I kept throwing up. Finally, I think they got sick of me throwing up in there and they put me in a room all by myself, down at the end of the hall with the door closed. Which was fine because I didn’t want people looking at me. I kept on throwing up, but I managed to get myself out of bed. Every step I took I felt like the guy had sewed my heel to my butt. Honest to God. I think it was around eight-thirty at night that I called home and my dad answered and I said, “Guess what? You’re a grandpa. You have a grandson.” And his reply was “When are you coming home?” I said, “I don’t know.” That was it.

  I was in the hospital probably five days and my son was in the baby nursery. At first he was in one of the front rows and I could see him. He looked just like my aunt Katie, who is my favorite aunt on my dad’s side. I thought, “Wow, that’s a narrow little group of genes there.” I guess we all think this, but he was really a beautiful baby. When they realized that I was there looking at him, he was suddenly moved waaaaaaay to the back. I started begging any nurse who came in to please let me see my baby and they all said, “Absolutely not.”

  The nun came over to the hospital and I spent a whole lot of time just sobbing my heart out to her, just crying and crying, and she finally said, “You know what? You’re gonna forget all about this, you’re gonna go home and you’re gonna meet a nice young man, and you’re gonna get married, and you’re gonna have other babies, and you’re never even gonna remember you had this one.”

  They moved me back over to the maternity home, where I refused to come out of my room. I didn’t have a roommate because they didn’t want people being around me. I wasn’t making it look too good. Finally, I pulled my act together. I was supposed to go home and I said, “No. I refuse
to leave. I don’t care where you make me go, but I’m not going back to them.” So I stayed there for Christmas and every day I would go to the newborn nursery. After supper we folded diapers and then I would at least get to peek in and see him. Then, just like that, one day he was gone.

  On Christmas my dad called. It was the only time while I was there that he called. “How come you’re not home, god damnit. Get the hell home.” I said, “I don’t care if I never see you again. I don’t want to be around you.” He said, “That’s bullshit, you’re getting home.” So the day after Christmas a social worker picked me up and she actually gave me some Christmas presents. She gave me some really fancy stationery and some perfume and I thought that was kind of odd. By the time we got home it was already dark and she helped me unload my one little suitcase.

  I wasn’t welcomed. Within hours my mother is screaming at the top of her lungs about how I’ve ruined her happy little family. She didn’t want me sharing a room with my sister. She had this room where she sewed and ironed and where the kitty litter was, so they set my bed up in there with the kitty litter. It was just kind of a walk-through room; there were no doors. If it wasn’t the dead of winter in Wisconsin, I’m sure she would have been glad to send me off to the barn to sleep. That’s how happy she was. When I was at the maternity home my sister, who was fourteen at the time, wrote me one letter and told me how I had ruined the family name because I was a whore, and on and on. I mean, it hurt, but it didn’t surprise me. I knew she didn’t come up with this stuff on her own. This is what she heard at home.

  I went out with the guy I had met in July on New Year’s Eve and I had nothing to say. I just couldn’t even talk. The only thing I was thinking about was the baby. So we didn’t have very much fun and then we didn’t see each other.

  After New Year’s my dad marched me into town, where there was a cheese-packaging factory, and got me a job working there. I think my son was probably two and a half weeks old when I started working there. The job involved standing in one spot on the cement, doing the same thing all day. I felt like absolute death when I got home. I still got up and went to work and just kept on. It was maybe the second week at work, this guy who worked there and was two years behind me in school, said, “Hey, I heard you had a baby.” I stood right there and I said, “Ha! Where’d you hear that?” And he said, “Oh, I just heard it.” And I said, “Well, you’re wrong.” I actually denied my own child. He said, “Yeah, well that’s not what I heard.” I just felt like…what a horrible, horrible mother. I mean, it was bad enough I didn’t know where he was, but to deny his existence.…

  The social worker would call at least once a week. “Well, did you make up your mind yet?” “Well, I’m trying to figure this out.” By that time I was trying to weigh the options. I kept a diary: “What’s worse—for a child to grow up being adopted or being labeled illegitimate? What’s going to be harder for him to live with?” I thought, bottom line, if I put this off long enough she’ll just say, “This kid’s too old. You’ll have to take him home.”

  I think it was early in February when I did talk to my mother about keeping him. Even after a horrible childhood with her, she was my last hope. She said she would babysit while I worked, but that scared me because of the way she treated me. I mean, she stopped beating on me when I was fourteen because I grew five inches and suddenly I was taller than she was. I was very concerned about leaving my baby with someone who was capable of doing that, but I was desperate. Of course, I’d have to pay her for babysitting, besides the room and board that I was paying.

  I called the social worker. This was just the happiest day. I was calling to find out when we could pick him up. She sounded really mean, “I’ll call you back tomorrow and let you know.” So my mother was actually getting excited about it and was saying, “We can get the crib down from the attic,” and all this kind of stuff. Then, the next day I go to work and I get laid off. When the social worker called back, she said, “You can pick your baby up, but before you do, you have to pay me for your hospital, his hospital, your doctor, his doctor, my counseling, the maternity home, and the foster home.” She was going to keep the meter running at the foster home until that was paid in full. I couldn’t have him until then.

  I still can’t remember the exact amount she told me but it was thousands. I’m thinking that even if I got called back to work at $1.57 an hour I just could not imagine how I would ever be able to get that much money. So I said, “Fine, I’ll sign your f’ing paper because I’ll never have that kind of money.” She called me to tell me when I would be signing the papers and she wanted to know if I wanted to see him before and, of course, I did. I had one more glimmer of hope. I asked my mom to go with me to see him because I thought, “She can’t let this happen if she sees him.” But she said no. I found out after he found me that that was exactly why she said no.

  On February 14 my dad drove me so I could sign. He parked six blocks away because he didn’t want anyone to think that he had anything to do with this. I went into the social worker’s office and she led me to some cold little institutional room. There was no light on, but there was light shining through Venetian blinds and it was kind of a hazy winter day. I sat in a chair and she brought my baby in. He was all bundled up. He was sleeping and she handed him to me and left. I just sat and held him and cried. I was dropping big tears on him and trying so hard to memorize his little face. He was just so, so cute, except he had some scratches and kind of a rash. I’m thinking, “Professional people are taking care of him and this is how he looks? How did I ever think I could do it?” Half an hour later she came back and said, “Okay, your time’s up.” He didn’t see me because he slept through the whole thing.

  I gave him back. It didn’t even cross my mind not to give him back. I was just at rock bottom, totally hopeless. Instead of me making her break my goddamn arms to get him, like I should have, I just did it. I left and walked the six blocks to my dad’s car. He drove me to the lawyer’s office. I went in and the lawyer asked me, “Are you doing this because you want to?” And I just mumbled, “Yes.” And he said, “Okay, I’ll see you in court tomorrow.”

  I walked back to my dad’s car and we went home and said nothing. The next day we drove to the courthouse and I think it was a judge’s chambers. It was this big wood-paneled courthouse room. This time it was kind of warm, yellow sunlight. It always seemed like nobody had bright lights on. I had to go in there and the judge asked me if I was doing this because I wanted to, if anybody was forcing me to, and I answered, “Yes, because I want to. Nobody is forcing me to.” I signed my name to I have no idea what and I turned around and left. I didn’t shed a tear. I showed nothing. I went to my dad’s car, and from there he took me to a job interview at some savings and loan. I did pretty bad. This time my dad parked right out front. Then I got back in the car and went home and we never once mentioned it again. You’d think we just dumped clothes off at the Salvation Army. The next day I went out with my friends and I drank until I puked.

  I was unemployed for about six weeks, then I got a job at another factory. This one was a piston-ring factory. I didn’t know what piston rings were. I had to ride to work with these creepy guys from my hometown because they drove past our house. I had an iron bar and the piston rings were in stacks of one hundred and I had to stick the bar in the rings, tilt it, dip it in this tank of solvent, pick it up, drain it off, and then put the rings on these metal trees with arms that looked like Christmas trees. I did that for eight hours a day. Occasionally, I would be sent to this little room and have to dip stuff in tar. I still have scars on my arm where the tar splashed. I did this for six weeks. It was mind numbing but I’m trying to be a good girl.

  The supervisor who taught me how to do all this stuff was a balding, not very nice woman. She walked up to me one day and said, “What are you doing?” “I’m doing exactly what you told me to, ma’am.” She said, “That’s not how I told you to do it! Gimme that thing!” She does some kind of backhanded
little maneuver and then she said, “Now do it the way I told you.” I tried to do it that way and a hundred piston rings fell all over the floor. She says, “Now pick them up.” And I took the iron bar and I said, “F— you!” and I threw it at her. Thank God I missed. It bounced off the wall behind her. I just started screaming at the top of my lungs and ran to the bathroom and just sat in there screaming and screaming. Not even sobbing, just screaming. They got the personnel manager—and he’s a man—to come in the ladies’ bathroom and try to talk me down. I can’t even explain it, you know—it was like I had tried and tried and tried to do what all these f’ing adults want me to do and it still wasn’t right.

  He finally convinced me to stop screaming and led me out to his car and took me back to my family. When my dad and brother found out why I was home before I was supposed to be, wow, all hell broke loose: “You useless piece of no-good shit, can’t even hold a goddamn job,” and on and on and on. “If you don’t get back to that goddamn job…” So the next morning the guys from my hometown picked me up and I went back to work. I no longer had to dip rings in solvent; I got to sort them. God knows how many bad piston rings got sold. There was a little old lady there that I talked to and she’d been doing that for twenty-five years. I said, “So how do you know the good from the bad?” I had no idea what I was doing and I don’t know that she did, either. The personnel guy called me into his office and told me that he didn’t think I was factory material and they were going to have to permanently lay me off at the end of two weeks. He said that I really should think about going to college.