Daughters for a Time

by Handford, Jennifer

  Tim sat down, slid a piece of paper with three photos in front of me. My hands shook as I reached for the printout. In the first photo, she was sitting in a basket, propped up with blankets, looking upward as if the photographer were shaking a rattle overhead. Her grin revealed two front teeth and a dimple in her left cheek. The next photo was of her in the crib, nestled against another baby who looked much bigger than she did. The third photo was taken in front of an artificial backdrop of cherry trees, as if our new daughter wasn’t really in China but instead with us, enjoying the spring blossoms on the National Mall.

  I blinked back the stinging tears, swallowed the guilt and shame I felt for all of those months when I doubted that I could love an adopted child. My daughter was gorgeous, and without ever meeting her, I already knew her and could feel what she was feeling and knew that she’d never leave, and if she did, she would have company because I’d follow her to the ends of the earth.

  I placed my hand on my heart because it was warm and tingling and I knew exactly what was happening. It was healing.

  “Oh God,” I said solemnly. “I love her so much.” I put my hand over my heart because, truly, it was swelling and the stretch of it almost left me breathless.

  Tim, Claire, and Ross looked at me with their own watery eyes and quivering chins.

  “Excuse me for a second,” I said, and slipped out of the booth, down the hall, and into the ladies’ lounge, sinking deeply into the upholstered chair. Through blurry eyes, I smoothed the arm of the chair, remembering how I’d deliberated over the choice of fabric—this one (Tuscan Morning) or another (Florentine Flowers). I slid onto my knees and thanked God. I now knew that love showed no bias where children were involved, that love transcended international waters. That loving a child had nothing to do with pregnancy, labor, and delivery.

  After I dabbed my eyes with a wet cloth, I went back to our booth.

  “Now, Helen,” Tim said. “If you love her so much, give the child a name.”

  “Sam,” I said. “Samantha Ann, named after our mother, if that’s okay with you.”

  Claire hugged me and I felt her chest heave. “That’s really nice, Helen,” she said.

  “I had been saving it—the name—all these years, thinking that someday we would name our daughter Sam. But tonight I realize that the little baby in this photo is our daughter.”

  Philippe brought champagne and we toasted and cheered and smiled until our cheeks ached.

  After saying good-bye to Claire and Ross, Tim and I drove home in a giddy silence with only the hum of the car and the occasional clunk when we hit a pothole. There was a quiet and an awkwardness and an electricity to the moment that reminded me of a first date. Finding words beyond “Oh my God,” and “I can’t believe it,” and “This is really going to happen,” left us speechless. All these months I had tried to keep some distance, just in case the adoption didn’t go through. Now it was here. It was upon us. And I was bobbling my emotions, as though they were slick and impossible to grasp.

  Tim pulled into our neighborhood and then into our driveway, pushing the button to open the garage, which was so narrow that it was almost comical. We joked all of the time. “Suck it in,” we’d say as we each squeezed through the ten inches our car doors were allowed to open. We entered our house and stood in the darkness. Tim reached his arms around me and I leaned into him, letting the weight of my head bear into his chest, feeling the steady thump of my heart, hearing the drum of his in my ear.

  “This is really happening, huh?” I asked.

  “This is really happening,” Tim said. “I’ll be right back.”

  I went into the family room and sat on the edge of the sofa. Tim returned a minute later with a bottle of wine and two glasses. He poured, lit a few candles around the room, and flipped on the stereo. A Cranberries CD we both liked.

  Tim handed me my glass of wine. I took a long sip, letting the earthy notes of leather and dried cherries and licorice slide down my throat. I laid my head back against the pillow, staring up at the ceiling.

  “What are you thinking about?” Tim asked.

  “Sam,” I said, exhaling. “Her first year. How she’s been without us for an entire year.” I considered the parallels: how she was growing in her mother’s womb as our social worker, Elle Reese, walked through our home, inspecting it to see if it was suitable for a child; how she was born and abandoned right around the time our dossier of paperwork was sent to China; how she lay in her crib, staring at the ceiling day after day, and night after night, while Tim and I, too, stared at our ceiling, imagining what it would be like to be parents to our baby girl.

  Tim took a sip of wine, looked at me. “I hope she likes football. I need someone to watch the Redskins with me.”

  “I hope she’s fat,” I said, thinking of Maura when she was born, her doughy legs and ripples of elbow fat. “As fat as a Butterball turkey, with lots of rolls and dimples.”

  “I’m going to teach her to cook,” Tim said. “I’m going to get her a little apron and chef hat.”

  “I’m going to teach her to bake,” I said, wondering if raising a daughter shared any similarities to baking. I imagined a two-by-four recipe card. First mix your dry ingredients: an abundance of love, understanding, and compassion. Separately mix your wet ingredients: patience, tolerance, and forgiveness. Mix until your batter is as comforting as a set of mother’s arms. Pour into your pan. Bake. May take a lifetime.

  “I just hope she’s healthy,” Tim said, striking a more somber tone. “That’s all that matters.”

  “I just hope she likes us.”

  Tim kissed me and my body went slack. He undressed me, and we made love. For the first time in years, I made love to my husband without the thought of getting pregnant, without visualizing super-swimming sperm penetrating plump eggs, without sending a begging batch of prayers up to God.

  It was only our third date when Tim and I first made love. He’d cooked me an incredible dinner of filet mignon and lobster tails; we drank an endless supply of Chianti. I could still recall the buttery taste of his mouth, the roughness of the stubble on his cheek, the salt of his skin. It was at that moment that I realized how lonely I’d been my whole life: a father who left, a mother who died. I knew that, one day, I would tell Tim how I felt so alone. And while sleeping with him so early in our relationship was a patently risky move, I never once felt nervous that he wouldn’t still be around the next day. I curled into Tim and tried to hush a lifetime of Claire blaring in my head, “One or two drinks, maximum! Make him ask you for another date! Don’t give it away for free!”

  With the referral photos in hand, I slipped out of bed next to fast-asleep Tim, went downstairs, and logged onto my computer. Now that I had the name of Sam’s town and orphanage, I typed them into a search box. First, I clicked on a website for the town—a small rural village three hours from an industrial hub in southern China. It boasted of the region’s temperate climate, the rich landscape, the picturesque mountain range with unrivaled views. It told how numerous wars had been fought over this strategic location, the contemplative pull of the many Buddhist temples where one could witness the monastic life, the festivals that set the streets ablaze with activity for the New Year. What a lovely place to visit, one would think.

  Then I clicked on the website for the Children’s Welfare Institute, just a homemade site: an address, a few photos of the outside of the white cinder block building. There was a picture of the road that led to the orphanage. If we hadn’t been told, we never would have known that that was the road along which so many of the newborns were abandoned in their first days of life. Clearly, Sam and the others like her deserved some publicity. Shouldn’t the PR guys spin their story, too? Must see! Beautiful baby girls! Take one home today. Guaranteed to fill your home with happiness, good luck, and many blessings!

  That’s okay, I thought. The country of China might have forsaken these girls, but parents like Tim and I weren’t. All I needed now was for the adoption
agency to call with our travel arrangements. I needed to get there, urgently. I needed to get my daughter in my arms.

  Hang on, baby, I prayed. Mommy’s coming.

  PART TWO

  Chapter Eleven

  Tim’s parents, Davis and Delia, arrived at four o’clock on the Wednesday before we were scheduled to leave for China. They lived five hours away in a gated golf course community on the North Carolina coast, only a mile from the beach. When Delia hugged me, she broke into tears and then pulled back to reveal her happy face. “Oh, Helen, this is the most wonderful day in the world.”

  My chest hiccupped and my eyes welled with tears because she was right. In just a few days, I would have Sam in my arms. We were scheduled to leave for Beijing on Friday, landing us there sometime on Saturday. We would travel together with a group of other adoptive couples. The babies would be delivered a few days later, bundled and transported by bus to our hotel.

  While Tim and his father drank a beer out on the deck, I showed Delia all of the items I had collected to take with us to China. Inside the baby room, we gazed at what looked like a pharmacy: Tylenol, Mylanta, Gas-X, ipecac, Dramamine, Alka-Seltzer; a smattering of diapers, wipes, tissues, Band-Aids, gauze, hand cleaner, surface cleaner; cans of formula, boxes of Cheerios, teething cookies, bottles, liners, sippy cups; a thermos, camera, video recorder, gifts for the orphanage director and her staff; pacifiers, lots of pacifiers.

  “This is a lot of stuff,” Delia said. “And now I feel badly that I have something else for you to bring.” Delia pulled from her pocket a little rubber photo album. The edge of it was hard and ribbed, like a teething toy. Inside of it were pictures of all of us: Tim and me, Davis and Delia, and Claire, Ross, and Maura. “I read online that adoptive babies like to look at pictures of their new family members.”

  I choked back my tears as I hugged Delia. “Thank you,” I whispered.

  Delia and I went into the kitchen. She chopped vegetables while I gathered the ingredients to make cornmeal biscuits to serve with ripe peaches, candied walnuts, and fresh whipped cream. The smell of barbecued pork chops with an apricot glaze filled the air.

  When dinner was ready, we carried the food to the deck. Davis, who was leaning against the railing with a bottle of Sam Adams, looked at his wife of forty years as if he were seeing her for the first time. “Darling, can you believe this meal? Can you believe this beautiful weather?” he exclaimed. I smiled. Davis and Delia were excessively kind to each other, respectful, as if each knew the dangers of taking the other for granted. I wondered whether my parents ever had moments like that, when they looked at each other in wonder. Treasured. I remembered a happy childhood, but then the fighting started, and then Dad left. Mom getting sick overwhelmed every memory at that point. I now wondered which memories were reliable and which were false, a blur of reality coated in want, rolled in despair.

  That night, I hardly slept. Every hour I would wake, roll over toward my side table, and reach for the photo of Sam. Just a few more days, baby. When I was still awake at two o’clock, I went down to the kitchen and quietly made brioche bread dough. The butter-rich bread was always best to start the night before, to give it time to rest in the refrigerator.

  The next morning, I showered and dressed and, once in the kitchen, turned out the dough onto the floured counter, luxuriating in its coolness, and spread evenly onto it the pecan paste. In the greased loaf pan, I baked the bread for forty minutes.

  By the time Tim and my in-laws descended on the kitchen, the bread was ready and the coffee was brewed. Now I chopped chervil, whisked eggs, and cut smoked salmon into small pieces, cooking them lightly with a spoonful of Dijon mustard.

  “A fabulous dinner followed by a fabulous breakfast!” Davis proclaimed as he dug his thick pieces of bread into the rich eggs.

  “Wow, Helen,” Tim said.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” I admitted.

  “Too excited,” Delia said.

  I smiled and nodded because I couldn’t explain that “too excited” didn’t do justice to the feelings that had my heart racing, my hands shaking, and eyes tearing. The reality that I was actually close to getting what I wanted was almost too much for my little heart to bear. Too much liquid for the dry ingredients to absorb. Keeping my emotions at bay was like holding up a dam when I knew that there were cracks on the inside, hairline fissures that would soon make their way to the outer layer, an imminent burst.

  An hour later, Claire arrived to pick me up. She was treating me to a day at the spa, a milestone moment of pampering before I shipped off and then returned a mother.

  At the spa, Claire registered for us and poured us each a cup of green tea. Our first treatment was a mani-pedi. I nestled into a black leather massage chair that kneaded my back and neck. My feet soaked in a blue bath of water. A young Vietnamese girl scraped at my heels, sending pieces of skin sailing through the air like shavings of parmesan. Next, she cupped my toes in her hand and shook her head, as if untended cuticles reflected badly on me as a woman.

  Claire reached into her purse and popped open the bottle of Advil, poured three into her palm.

  “Headache?” I asked.

  “No, just pain,” Claire said, twisting in her seat. “Enrique has really been working my core.”

  “You’re a masochist.”

  “The hot stone massage will feel really good,” Claire said. “A few days from now when you have a baby in your arms and you’re begging for sleep, you’ll remember the massage and think, really, was that me? Was that really my life?”

  A baby in my arms. Five words threaded together and tied with faith. They still hit me as false.

  “I cannot believe that you’re leaving tomorrow!” Claire said, squeezing my forearm. “Can you believe it, Helen? You’re getting a baby!”

  “I’ll believe it when she’s in my arms.” It was difficult to explain that, yes, I understood that I would be getting a baby—Sam, specifically—but the notion still seemed just that, a notion. My mind was doing its part, conjuring images for me of Sam. And my heart was all in, too, squeezing and tightening and issuing heat at the thought of holding her. But my other senses were on standby, waiting to be invoked. I wanted to smell her babyness, taste her sweetness, touch her softness. Until my mouth was on her tender skin, none of this would be real.

  “In a mere few days, you’ll believe it when you’re doing everything in your power to get your baby to sleep.”

  “I won’t care,” I said. “She can cry, scream, and yell. As long as she’s mine.”

  Claire smiled. “It’s going to be great, Helen. She’s going to be great. You’re going to be a great mother.”

  “Hopefully you and Mom have rubbed off a bit.”

  “So, Helen,” she said, giving me a sidelong glance. “I’ve thought about your shenanigans with Larry, your little stalking escapades.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why are you doing it? What’s your objective?”

  Claire always had an objective.

  “Curiosity,” I said.

  “Just curiosity?”

  “No,” I admitted. “I kind of want him back in my life. Preferably, I want him back in our life.”

  Claire reached for her cup of tea and took a careful sip. “So what’s he look like?” Claire asked, her eyes closed. “Our father.”

  “He looks exactly like I remember him,” I said.

  “What else?”

  “He looks sad. Like he knows he missed out. There’s regret in his eyes like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Well…” Claire started and then stopped. “Well.”

  A massage, facial, haircut, and color later, the woman I saw in the mirror hardly resembled the fractured person I had become. I looked pretty. My hair was a shiny chocolate brown with lighter brown highlights falling in soft waves around my face. My skin looked glowing and healthy. My eyebrows were plucked and shaped into perfect arches. After years of feeling defective and incomplete, defining myself by my inability to
get pregnant, I finally felt a sense of wholeness. Not exactly put together, but at least holding all of the pieces.

  Inside the house, I had the feeling that Davis and Delia didn’t know quite what to say about my appearance, so I let them off the hook: “I clean up pretty well, huh?” I pirouetted around in a circle for full effect.

  “You look beautiful, darling,” Delia said, hugging me.

  “Truly wonderful!” Davis agreed.

  I felt wonderful, too. Exactly where I wanted to be—surrounded by family and on my way to China to get Sam. The hole in my heart was closing in on itself.

  Chapter Twelve

  On Friday, three weeks before Christmas, Tim and I boarded a jumbo jet en route to Beijing. We would be gone for eighteen days altogether. According to the schedule, we would get Sam on Day 3 of our trip. The travel coordinator told us that ten families from our adoption agency would be retrieving babies from the same orphanage, six of whom were on our flight. Seated next to us in aisle ten were Amy and Tom DePalma. They were from New Jersey and this was their second adoption. Veterans, back for another tour. Their first daughter, Angela, was now four years old and thriving in preschool and ballet. They were back to get her a baby sister, a mei-mei.

  Amy and I became fast friends. She had Claire’s confidence and outspokenness; more than anything, her deftness reminded me of my sister’s. The fact that she thought nothing of bringing her four-year-old on a seventeen-hour plane ride, the way she steadied Angela on her lap, rubbed her back, peeled apple slices with a plastic knife, all while carrying on a completely intelligent conversation with me. Within hours, over boxed meals, peanuts, and a plastic glass of Chardonnay, Amy had schooled me on the huge issues such as milk-based formula versus soy, a Baby Bjorn versus a Snugli, Huggies versus Pampers, scabies versus intestinal viruses.

  “There is a lot of behavior to be expected,” Amy said. “These children don’t have the best eye contact, they’re choosy about who holds them, they have a tendency to hoard their food. That’s normal—well, typical, anyway.”