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

  Immediately after I had that baby, I was angry—I got angry at everything. I was angry at my sister and we got into a terrible fight. I just wanted to go home. She kept telling me, “If you go home now, they’re all going to know. Your stomach’s all out of shape.” My mother obviously suspected. When I went home, she had new clothes for me that were two sizes larger. My mother would have loved that little boy. But my mother was a blind-faith Catholic and sex was something that was never talked about. Never. It was like everything was the immaculate conception. Last year, my sister said she heard a rumor that Mom was pregnant when she got married. It kept gnawing at me, so I sent for a copy of her wedding license. Not only was she pregnant, she was seven months pregnant. She could have told me that. We would have loved her just as much.

  I went home. I needed a job. I had been a fairly talented writer in school. I had won some contests. As a matter of fact, I won the state “I Speak for Democracy” contest. I got twenty-five dollars, which was huge in 1952. The whole basis of my essay was something like “Communism is like a cancer. It has its little claws and tentacles that reach out everywhere.” My mother loved that. She said, “It was the line about the cancer that made you win.” We absolutely thought that if we didn’t kill the Russians first, they would drop a bomb on us. We were terrified of the bomb.

  People who worked on the farms were getting jobs with General Electric, the government subcontractor for the Hanford Project, which was just thirty miles from my home. They extracted radioactive plutonium to make the atomic bomb, which, of course, was used to wipe out Nagasaki. I applied and got a job there. It was very isolated, way out in the sage brush. The workers would go out to these top-secret fields and do something with radiation. They had little badges they wore to see if they got too much exposure. My job was to put these badges in a machine to see how much radiation they’d received.

  I’d been in the job for about four months and I was putting badges in the machine and my supervisor came in and said, “Jeanette, I don’t know what this is about, but they want you down at AEC.” That’s Atomic Energy Commission. “You’re to go now.” In order to get to the job site, you took these shuttle buses that drove about forty-five minutes to an hour out to these Quonset huts. He said, “Take the shuttle bus into town and go to the office.” I had no idea what this is about. I’m eighteen years old. There was an outer office with a gray-haired woman receptionist. I gave her my name and she said, “Have a seat. He will be right with you.”

  Shortly after, this young man—twenty-four, twenty-five years old, very handsome man with coal-black hair, white, white teeth, impeccably dressed in a blue suit—called me in and told me to sit down. He said, “Do you know why you’re here?” I told him no. He said, “You weren’t honest with us.” And I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “In your application…” He said, “Do you know what we do here? This is top-secret work. We have to be very careful who we hire.” And I’m trying to think, “What did I do?” He says, “On your job application you were asked if you’ve ever lived anywhere else for over four months? You have, haven’t you?” And I said yes. And he said, “You went to San Francisco for five months and had a baby, didn’t you?” And I said yes. “And you didn’t tell us, did you?” I said no. He said, “You thought you could sneak away, have a baby, come back and lie about it on your application.” He said, “Have you ever considered that if the Communists found that out, in order for you to keep that secret you would have to give them secrets about your job?” I was just sobbing, sobbing, sobbing. He convinced me that I could be coerced into giving up information so that the Communists would keep my secret. I put badges in a hole and wrote down numbers. I had a security clearance, but I didn’t know anything. I didn’t even understand what they were doing. But at the time, it made all the sense in the world to me. I thought, “My God, I could have overthrown the free world.”

  When I left through the outer office, the gray-haired woman wouldn’t look at me, but she said, “He didn’t have to do that. He didn’t have to do that.” I was sobbing all the way back on the bus. I knew right then that I would not be going around telling anyone about this baby, and I didn’t for forty-three years. If I had not separated that baby from me when I was pregnant, I really separated him then.

  I became a registered nurse. I got into a terrible marriage a few years later and had other children, but I never even mentioned this incident ever, ever, ever. I had visions, though. I had visions of a knock on the door and it would be him.

  In the small town where I attended nursing school, the newspaper would list all of the births in the paper. The reporters would call every night. We had two boards—the real births and the “no information” births, which would not be listed in the paper. I thought those were terrible, terrible women. They were tramps. I never connected my pregnancy with anything that happened in my life, ever. The social structure at that time was so rigid that I couldn’t acknowledge it. Eisenhower was president and we were in an ultraconservative era. The boys had just come home from the war and they were building houses, they were going to school on the GI Bill, and we were getting America back together again. I never really knew that the adoption movement was opening up, never paid any attention to it. It had nothing to do with me because I had never had a child. I never had a child.

  In 1995, my kids are grown, they’re out of the house, and my neighbor came over one evening. She was divorced and had two adult sons that she was having difficulty with. She started crying, and to make her feel less bad I told her about my son. I thought, “Oh, my God. I’m talking about it for the first time ever.” She said, “Why don’t you find him?” And I said, “I can’t. What are you talking about?” And she said, “Just go find him.”

  She came back with a phone number for the Oregon Adoption Rights Association and I listened to their message. I’m thinking, “This is crazy,” but I went to their meeting. I was sitting there with my mouth open. This woman is talking about her search. She said she knew that her daughter was in Iowa and she was going to see if she could find a yearbook picture. I said, “Why?” and she said, “Because I yearn for her.” That was so alien to me. She said, “Why are you here?” And I said, “Because I’m curious. He might have died in Vietnam.” I’m thinking, “What’s this concept of yearning?”

  When the searcher called me and said, “I’ve found your son,” I wanted to argue with her: “That’s not my son. No, no, no, no. It’s the baby. It was always that baby.” It was just the most remarkable thing to think, “This is my son.”

  I called him and said, “I have something very personal to talk to you about.” He said, “You’re my mother,” and he started crying. We talked for about forty-five minutes and he said, “It wasn’t good, you know, it wasn’t good. My mother started drinking right away.” He said, “I’m coming to see you on Thursday.”

  I fell in love with him instantly. Absolutely instantly. He stayed the weekend. He was planning to leave on Monday, but he left on Sunday and I’m glad he did. It was too much. It was more than I could bear. I didn’t hear from him for two months and I went into an incredible depression. Then he called and said, “Well, I need to tell you something. When I saw you, I drove as far as Roseburg, pulled over at the rest stop, called my wife, and asked her for a divorce.” He said, “It was a terrible marriage, but it was so liberating to meet you, I was able to do it.”

  The first two years of our relationship were very rocky. I’ve never figured out why, then one day it all came together. He asked me to come down and visit him and he asked if he could call me Mom. We’ve had the best reunion. I fell totally in love with him—every part of being in love. I was obsessed for four years; ten minutes didn’t go by that I didn’t think about him. He’s a really nice guy. He was a commander with the county sheriff’s department and he left to become the chief of police in another town. He just retired.

  He had a terrible, terrible childhood. His adoptive mother drank herself to death when he was fourteen
or fifteen. His father traveled and left him in charge. At eleven years old, he was buying the groceries and raising his younger siblings. I was just outraged at them. I thought adoption was wonderful. It never occurred to me that it wasn’t. Why didn’t they help me keep him, rather than help me give him away?

  This is kind of unfair to my other children, but I think my life began at sixty when I found my son. For the first time ever, I was able to love someone in a way that I was not able to before. I started loving my raised children more—I could love them. The most shameful thing in my life was now sitting in front of me, talking to me. I never had to be ashamed of anything I did again. I went to my fiftieth high-school class reunion and I told them the story of having my son because I didn’t ever want to hide him again. If there was anything shameful about it, it was giving my baby away to strangers, not having my baby. It was by far the biggest event in my life. It shaped my adulthood because I was a child when I had him. I couldn’t get close to anyone, ever. I had self-esteem issues that were just incredible. I married down. I never stood up for myself. At one point, I probably drank too much and I could have been a better mother. I think I spent a lot of my life being unhappy.

  Then there was the incredible joy of finding him, and the terrible sadness of having missed all those years. But it almost felt good to get into that grief and live it. I don’t know if there’s such a thing as joyful grief, but that’s what I would call it. I would cry and sob and scream, but so glad I was finally grieving.

  It’s still very shameful to say you gave a baby away. One day at work I printed something out on the printer that had something to do with birth mothers and one of the nurses picked it up and said, “Jeanette, is there something you’re not telling us?” So even though I never wanted to hide him, ever again, I still do. I had my seventieth birthday not too long ago, and it still colors my life.

  RUTH

  I was a sophomore at Boston University. I was dating a wonderful young man. We were falling in love and I was just very, very happy and really naïve, and got pregnant. I was shocked, but I was really happy about it. We had talked about getting married, and this just moved everything up.

  My parents were not happy about it. My parents are Holocaust survivors, and I was raised very strictly. I remember the look on their faces when we told them. My daddy called me a whore, and it was very upsetting. My boyfriend’s father never said anything. His mother was very, very upset—irrationally so. His mom had bouts of depression her whole life. She was just very upset. I think she felt I wasn’t good enough for him. He came from a family of means, and I didn’t. She realized we were going to get married and she tried to talk us out of it. The night before our wedding, she locked herself in the bathroom and refused to come out.

  I was happy because I was marrying him and I was going to have a baby and in my soul I knew it was going to be a little girl, I just knew it. We continued with school. We got an incredible, horrible, wonderful apartment. I mean, it had bugs, but it was our apartment. We were so happy. His parents cut him off financially and he worked two jobs and went to school full time, and I worked one job and went to school full time.

  His mom kept calling and giving us reasons why we should not keep the baby—that we didn’t have insurance, that we were too young, that we didn’t have careers. Those weekly phone calls turned into daily phone calls. She drove us nuts. I just tuned her out, but he couldn’t. We were twenty years old and it’s true we didn’t have two nickels to rub together. He decided that his mom was probably right. I just kind of blocked out everything and went on my merry way, excited about my baby. Then he told me we couldn’t keep the baby, that he wanted to give the baby away. I didn’t even acknowledge it.

  I went into labor and my husband took me to the hospital and they knocked me out; I don’t think it was that unusual in those days. It was October 17, 1968. When I woke up, I said to the nurse, “I’d like to see my baby.” She said, “You can’t, your baby’s been adopted out.” I had no idea what the hell she was talking about. My husband told me it had been arranged, and that it would be the best thing for the baby because we really couldn’t take care of her. So I never saw my baby. He took me home and I went to bed, and I didn’t get out of bed.

  The time came for me to sign the papers. My husband got me up, got me dressed, got me to the office, and told me to sign, and I did. We went home and that was it. Nobody talked about it. I was just supposed to go on with my life. Any feelings I had about that baby were kept inside because I had no one to talk to about it. Whenever I brought up the subject with my husband, he wouldn’t discuss it with me. It just became a taboo thing. No one talked about it, ever. We finished school and graduated and I became a high-school English teacher.

  My mother-in-law finally realized that he and I were good for each other. I think she thought that if we didn’t have the baby we would break up, and it didn’t happen. She got to know me, and she got to love me, and I got to love her. As a graduation present from college, she and my husband’s father took us to Europe. She and I actually had such a ball. We laughed; we had the best time. When we came home from Europe, she killed herself. She was fifty years old.

  Years went by, and every single day I thought about my baby. It was the worst pain that I ever had in my life. Every night when I went to bed I prayed that God would forgive me for the awful sin I had committed by allowing my baby to be taken from me. I felt like a horrible human being that I didn’t stand up for her better, that I didn’t tell everybody to go fuck off and keep my baby. I blamed myself.

  Time went on, and I got pregnant again and I had my two daughters. I was thrilled when I had my children. With my first daughter, I was so overprotective because I thought God would take her away from me because I was so bad. He took away my other baby. They didn’t know my secret. So the best thing that I ever did in my life was to go to a therapist, and this was a super therapist. He helped me figure out what to say to the kids. And one Christmas when my daughter came home from college we sat down and I told them. I was so scared to tell them because I thought they would hate me. My kids have always said I was the best mommy. And I thought that if they knew what I had done that they would hate me, but they didn’t. We all sat and cried, and they all hugged me and said how much they loved me, and it was wonderful.

  After that, I decided I would look for my baby. I wasn’t sure how to go about it, but I got some great advice from my therapist. The first thing I did was call the adoption agency and ask for nonidentifying information. It was a religious agency, and it was an outstanding agency. In about a month, they sent me the papers. Oh, I was so glad to get them. They were a piece of my baby. I ran into the house with the mail and ripped them open and started looking at them. There was a paper in there and I read it, and it was just filled with nonsense and lies. It said that I had approached the adoption agency and that I had arranged for the adoption, that I had a social worker come out to my apartment many times and every time she did I reiterated that I did not want my baby. It said that on the day my baby was born the social worker came to the hospital and I was smiling, and my husband was sitting on the bed smiling, and I told the social worker that I had seen my baby and I still wanted to give her up.

  I read that and I freaked. I screamed. I didn’t know what to think. I called my husband screaming. And then I called the adoption agency and spoke to the director. I made no sense, I was just screaming. She put their therapist from the office on the phone and I screamed some more. Then I hung up and fell on the kitchen floor and just cried. My husband came home and I was still on the kitchen floor crying.

  The next day I was calm, so I called the adoption agency. I realized what must have happened. My mother-in-law had gone to the adoption agency and arranged for the adoption, and my husband obviously knew about it. She got a social worker to write down these lies. I think that might be one of the reasons she killed herself, because of what she had done. She finally realized that she loved me, and I was a good girl, and
I would have been a good mom to her grandchildren.

  I called the adoption agency back and I said, “I want these papers taken out of the file. God forbid my daughter should go looking for me and read those papers. She’ll think I never wanted her, that I didn’t love her.” They said, “You can’t do that, it’s part of the legal document.” I said, “I want them out. I want them expunged. I’m going to find a lawyer, and I’m going to sue you, and I’m going to find the social worker who did this. If I have to rip her out of an old-age home, I will. So you go talk to your lawyers, and I’m going to go talk to mine.” The next day, I was making my bed and the phone rang. It was the adoption agency—the paper had been expunged.

  Through the therapist and the people he had me talk to, I found somebody who found my baby. She found my baby in one week. It was the most amazing thing. My baby was living in another state. She was a rabbi. I got the call when I was at work. There were people all around me and the woman who found my baby was giving me this information and I was writing it down, trying hard not to cry, because people are going by, back and forth around me. It was like I was alone in a wind tunnel. It was the most wonderful news.

  I’m also a breast-cancer survivor, and that was another reason I wanted to find my baby. I wanted her to know, and tell her doctor, that her birth mother had cancer. So I wrote my daughter a letter. I wrote maybe sixty letters and ripped them up and started again, and ripped them up and started again, and cried over them. Finally, I had one that explained what had happened, and that I wanted her to know that I had had cancer. I stood in front of that mailbox for twenty minutes, and I finally mailed it.

  My birth daughter got that letter when she was in the company of her mother, thank God. They were coming home from her wedding shower. I’m glad her mother was there. They cried together. And then I got a phone call from my daughter. I couldn’t even talk. She said, “I just can’t do this. I just can’t do it.” I said, “Okay, I understand, but there are three things that I want you to know before you hang up. One was that I always loved you, and I always wanted you. Another is that you have two sisters—they’re your full sisters, and they’re wonderful young women and I would love for you to know them. And the third is that it’s very important that you speak to your doctor about the cancer, my cancer.” She hung up and I thought that was it.