Rescuing Julia Twice

by Tina Traster

  One night it sounds like a sot is stumbling among glass bottles outside the window. I race to the window and squint. Blackness. In a hushed whisper, I call Ricky upstairs. He turns off the light and we return to the window. “Oh my God,” I gush. “He’s massive.” He is a colossal, silver-eyed black bear who is erect on his hind legs and leaning on our car. “Oh my God,” I keep saying. Ricky shines a flashlight into the bear’s face. He sees us. No biggie. “Oh my God,” is all I can say. Eventually he clatters away. I barely sleep that night. I’m jittery the next morning. Ricky, who comes in from outside, reports Mr. Hungry Bear left a swath of detritus. “I’ve tried to pick up what I can.” We resume our routine and drive two hours to Nyack, where we drop Julia at nursery school. Ricky and I go off to work. I spend the day calling every subcontractor to keep each one on schedule. I worry about our cats alone in the flimsy cottage. When we return at night, I ask Julia and Ricky to make insane yodeling noises as we walk from the car to the house. Julia likes this. “I’ve heard that’s the way to keep the bear away.” In the days that follow, I throw every ounce of myself into making our move-in date Halloween, no matter how hard I have to fight and scream. The word “deadline” is not a word contractors know. I make a lot of people angry. I harass and harangue. I’m single-focused. I’m mama-bear, keeping me and my “cubs” from harm.

  Miraculously, the badgering and persistence pays off. We leave Ellenville on Halloween and drive through a riot of autumn splash along the Palisades Parkway, before pulling into our driveway. Our driveway. I can’t believe it!

  Julia’s little girl bed looks like dollhouse furniture in her spacious, freshly painted pink room. Ricky had to slide a shim under her wooden dresser drawers because the hardwood floors slope. Gallons of light pour through four large windows. We bought Julia a painted toy chest that Ricky assembled and filled it to the brim. She has a little table with chairs. A surge of regret sears through me—maybe if Julia had had a proper room from the start and I could have sat in a rocking chair and read to her. I stop the thought. We are here now.

  Day after day I walk around the house in a reverie, amazed at what I’ve built. This old farmhouse, which was left to rot, is resuscitated and handsome. It holds my DNA. It is something I gave birth to. My genetic material resides in every tile, faucet, finish, light fixture, and shade of paint. This is how it feels to have something around me that reflects me. This is how a birth mother must feel when she arrives home from the hospital cradling her newborn.

  “Who were you on the phone with?” Ricky says, as he plops groceries on the glittering green granite counter.

  “That was Julia’s teacher Craig, again!” I say, with a frown.

  “What’s wrong this time?” he asks.

  “Same old thing. Julia is acting up. She won’t take instruction. Blah blah.”

  “What’d you say?” he asks.

  “I just said, ‘I see. I see.’ But then he said something disturbing.”

  Ricky pauses from putting the groceries away and waits for me to continue.

  “He asked if I wanted to have someone from the county come down and evaluate her. To see if she needed, I think he said, special services.”

  “What kind of special services?”

  “I don’t know. It didn’t get that far. I was taken aback. I said I’d talk to you and get back to him.”

  We both recoil at the notion of letting some county bureaucrat “evaluate” Julia. Throughout the adoption process, we tolerated intrusion from home-study counselors, adoption workers, and the police who pressed our fingers in inky pads to capture our fingerprints to assure Russia we were not criminals. For months and years after the adoption, the agency would call from time to time, urging us to file reports. We never did. I was no longer willing to parent en masse.

  Ricky thinks a visit like that ends up as a permanent record that will follow Julia through her life. He is skeptical a county counselor would have the skills to deal with our situation. So the uncomfortable thought hangs in the air, dangling like a phone receiver that bleeps annoyingly over and over off the hook.

  Nineteen

  His dinged jalopy kicks up dust in the driveway. He sticks his hand out the rolled-down window to open the car door, which is attached by the grace of duct tape, and then he springs from the car like a jack-in-the-box.

  “Hi, I’m Christian,” he says, extending his hand while a Cheshire cat smile spreads across his face.

  I pump his hand.

  He reaches into the car for cameras, a tripod, and lighting equipment.

  He’s instantly familiar from my decade spent with reporters and photographers in newsrooms. I recognize that boundless energy, the twinkle in his eye, an insatiable hunger to see inside people’s souls. He’s probably taken a million photographs during his career, but he shows up at my house with so much sunshine and gusto, you’d think this was his first assignment.

  I lead him down the path to the house.

  “This is quite the place you’ve got here. Wow!”

  “It’s my muse,” I say, tossing that thought over my shoulder.

  “We’ll start inside,” he says. “Then we can take some outdoor shots.”

  The New York Post has sent Christian to take photos of me and my family for a column I’ve begun writing. “Burb Appeal” is about the trials and tribulations of a hard-boiled city girl adjusting to life in her rural-ish suburb. It’s about shock and awe. It’s about leaving what is familiar and finding out who you really are. The first column will run in a few weeks with photos. This is a high point in my writing career.

  Christian transforms our house into a studio. He tests lighting. He raises shades; he lowers them. He moves furniture. He stages. He suggests a mock tea session in the living room. “Can you add a book to that scene—pretend you’re reading?” he directs. He talks to our cats when they wander by. He snaps me on the couch. “You’ve modeled before, right?” he says to flatter me, to cajole my come-hither glint. He’s good. He photographs me in the kitchen handing Julia apple slices. She grabs them with delight and mugs for the camera in her pink stripy shirt and flared pink skirt that looks like a cheerleader’s. Her socks have gone AWOL. Upstairs Christian captures Julia rolling around on her new wrought-iron bed under the pink-petaled floral comforter. He gets one of her pretending to serve food on plastic dishes from her make-believe kitchen and another of her lifting up her purple alphabet caterpillar. She likes this a lot. It’s interesting to see her engaged in something. Then we go outside. Early spring flowers are muscling through the earth. Christian lines us up, one behind the other, sitting on a stone bench like a human caterpillar.

  We are a caterpillar in its cocoon, hiding from the glare and scrutiny of the world. We cocoon ourselves because it’s too hard to explain to others what we are. I don’t speak to my mother. Or my father. Or my sister. We barely speak to Ricky’s mother, and when we do we are careful to keep our troubles private. Old friends are far away, disembodied voices that have no real connection to my life. I don’t tell them how disconnected I feel from my child or how devastating motherhood is. Or how I doubt that my relationship with Julia is ever going to fuse into something I don’t think about on a philosophical level. Instead I talk about the house and the newspaper column, the things that work for me. I project a happy face to the world—just like my mother taught me to do. “Never let them know you’re weak,” she’d say. The people I see now are acquaintances from Julia’s preschool or women from yoga class. I wait for a breakthrough, to be that caterpillar that pushes his way from the cocoon and becomes a brilliant flash of light and color. I gaze skyward while Christian checks his camera’s digital monitor, and I speak to that invisible force out there who has some inkling as to how this is all going to play out. Is it going to get better? I ask silently. When?

  Three hours glide by in the wink of an eye. As Christian walks up the driveway to his hopeful hunk of junk on wheels, we wave good-bye. I feel like we’ve spent a day with an old friend. M
aybe it’s the intimacy of being photographed? Maybe it’s Christian’s infectious nature?

  A couple of weeks later, a CD arrives in the mail. Christian has sent me fifty pictures from the shoot. I scroll through the staged version of my life. What is real? What truths does the camera tell? What does it hide? In most of the pictures, Julia appears to be an adorable almost-four-year-old despite the bad bangs chop, which is my fault. She is giggly and expressive. There’s even one where I’m at the kitchen counter cutting fruit, Ricky is standing two feet away, and Julia is balancing herself on a little white stool in between us, one hand holding Ricky’s, the other resting on my knee. Did Christian ask her to do that? Would she have leaned on me if he hadn’t? But then I spot a couple of disturbing photos. In one, Julia is looking up at the camera from her bed, and her face reminds me of children I’ve seen at the orphanage, children who will never leave because they have fetal alcohol syndrome or other neurological issues. What brings them to mind is how thin her lips look and the way her eyes seem too widely spread apart.

  “That’s him,” Ricky says.

  “That’s who?” I ask.

  “Timmy and Kenny’s father. You know, the Russian brothers I told you about.” It’s Friday afternoon. We’ve just pulled into the preschool parking lot to pick up Julia to go out to dinner.

  “Let’s talk to him,” I say.

  He’s an imposing man, suited and groomed. He’s talking on his cell phone. He looks like he sells things. Ricky and I hang back until he stuffs his cell into his pocket.

  “Hey, Jim,” Ricky says.

  “Oh, hey.”

  “Jim, this is my wife, Tina,” Ricky says.

  “Nice to meet you.”

  “Waiting for your boys?” Ricky says.

  “Yup,” he says.

  He furrows his brow.

  Because we have to get Julia shortly and because he’ll soon be distracted with his boys, I brazenly jump in.

  “I don’t know if you know this, but Julia is from Russia. Ricky tells me your boys are also from Russia. Adopted, like Julia.”

  He hesitates for a minute.

  “Uh, yeah.” He recovers smoothly. “We adopted the boys at the same time. They’re not biological brothers, but we wanted two children.”

  “Did you have to make two trips to Russia?”

  “We did,” he says.

  “So did we. It’s not an easy thing.”

  He’s looking at me. Waiting for me to continue.

  “It’s just that … I don’t know what it’s like for you and your wife, but Julia is, let’s just say, difficult. She’s got issues. We don’t really know anyone with adopted Russian children.”

  I wait with hopeful eyes.

  Slowly, he warms.

  “It’s true. These guys are a handful. My wife and I are exhausted all the time. They’re hyper and insatiable. They really thrive on chaos.”

  “I know, I know,” I trill. “I know exactly what you mean. Chaos. The perfect word.” I look at Ricky.

  He’s nodding.

  “They run rings around us,” Jim continues, “and they’re difficult in school too, but we’re doing our best to cope. What else can we do?”

  “We’re in the same boat,” I say. “It’s like there’s never any peace …”

  “Daddy.” “Daddy.” “Daddy.” “Daddy.” “Daddy.”

  Jim’s head whips around. The two wiry boys are scaling him like he’s their favorite backyard tree. Ricky shoots me the See what I mean? look. I do. These boys have that same feral look in their eyes as Julia. They are relentless and demanding and determined to ingest Jim’s marrow. Jim apologizes and says, “Gotta go. We should talk more some other time.”

  Though it’s nearly Memorial Day, the nights are cold in our old-but-renovated wooden farmhouse. In the city we lived in a prewar building with thick plaster walls. We had no control over the radiators, which pumped out heat through June. Even in winter, we’d keep the windows cracked open. Now I’m walking through the house wrapped in a sage-green alpaca blanket when Ricky shrieks, “Come here, come here.”

  He’s propped himself up from the couch, staring in disbelief at the television screen.

  “What is it?”

  “Just come here, hurry.”

  A woman in orange-issue prison garb is telling her story to a female reporter. Natalia Higier is spending a year in prison for involuntary manslaughter of her two-year-old son adopted from Russia. The adoptive Massachusetts mother is recalling how she originally said her son, Zachary, who died from massive brain injuries, had fallen out of his crib and hit his head. And that she later changed her story, saying she threw him in the air—a game he loved—and he slammed his head on a coffee table. She is telling the dewy-eyed reporter she was lambasted for waiting two hours to take him to the emergency room. She was alone when all this happened. Tearfully, Natalia Higier concedes she did the wrong thing and she’s paying for it. The boy, her son, was difficult to care for, she explains. She never really felt like his mother. Her husband was constantly away on business, and when she’d tell him how difficult it was to manage the child, he didn’t believe her.

  Natalia Higier was alone in the world. She had no one to confide in. She didn’t even know how to ask for help.

  If I were watching this interview four years ago, before I became Julia’s mother or before I started down the road of adoption, I’d see a twisted monster on my television screen. I’d say this woman should have been better screened and, had that been the case, she never would have been allowed to adopt a baby boy. But this is not four years ago. This is May 2006, three years since Julia came home, and I understand this woman’s plight. I know what it’s like to have a child who doesn’t feel like he or she is yours. I know what it’s like to have a child who resists you, who never takes your hand or looks you in the eye or listens. I know this woman’s daily struggle between the desire to love this blond boy and how difficult that is when what is returned amounts to indifference. I get how a woman who is forty-seven years old, who ran a business, and loved her dog, could become so inconsolable that she becomes unhinged. How too many consecutive days of relentless isolation and despair can lead to violence. How there’s nothing left to lose.

  When the program ends, Ricky and I hold each other. I’m shaking.

  “Could that ever be me?” I ask, tearfully.

  “Of course not,” he says.

  “That’s because I have you,” I say. “That woman was all alone in the world.”

  “It’s true,” he says. “It sounds like she was struggling by herself and snapped.”

  “The world condemns a woman like that. Which I understand. There was a time I would have been scornful too.”

  “Yeah, but now you—we—know what this woman’s life was probably like. This is a problem. I bet many parents with Russian children are struggling behind closed doors. There’s so much shame around this.”

  “Exactly,” I say, stabbing my finger in the air. “Nobody can fathom that a child may be unlovable. It’s got to be the parents who are damaged.”

  “Well, maybe a program like this shows people a different side to the story, though I doubt it. They probably air stories like this because they are sensational. Anyway, let’s go upstairs. It’s getting late.”

  “I need a few minutes,” I say.

  I walk to my desk and type in “Natalia Higier and Russian adoption” on my keyboard.

  As the pages load, Ricky leans over my shoulder and says, “I bet there are more cases like this. A lot more cases.”

  “Oh my God,” I gasp.

  “What is it?”

  “Well, for one thing the Higiers used the same adoption agency as we did. Look here. It says, ‘The state Department of Child Care Services will investigate to make sure that the Frank Adoption Center used a Massachusetts-licensed adoption agency to conduct the home study and background.’”

  “Whoa. What else?”

  “According to this story, the couple had
a home study, and everything checked out. But listen to this. There’s a lawyer from the adoption agency quoted here saying, ‘This family was very well suited to adopt a child.’”

  “What else?”

  “Hang on…. Okay, listen to this. This is from the director of the Center for Family Connections in Cambridge, the people who did their home study. They say, ‘Often parents who adopt foreign children may not be prepared to take care of a child who may have been abandoned or malnourished or lived in an orphanage.’”

  “Yeah, well, they certainly don’t tell you that when you’re plonking down $40,000 to adopt a child,” Ricky says. “Let’s go upstairs.”

  I toss and turn all night, imagining what it’s like to accidentally or maybe intentionally be driven to the point where a mother kills her child. It makes me ache. I picture Julia, across the hall, sleeping in her bed. Julia, Zachary. Unwanted children who are severed from a mother’s love and sent to live in orphanages like dogs and cats to the pound. Only their absolute needs are met—and not necessarily in a timely or loving way. And we adoptive mothers believe we can cure them with our love, but it’s not a medicine they’re willing to swallow. Poor little Zachary. Unwanted. Disconnected. Dead. A footnote in history.

  Twenty

  I tiptoe downstairs, trying not to wake Ricky or Julia. I cinch my robe tightly because the heat hasn’t kicked on yet and the house still feels like a meat locker in early June. I rarely have time for myself in the morning. Julia rises at the crack of dawn every day, like a rooster. I raise the kitchen shades and stare into the milky light. I cannot stop thinking about Zachary or Natalia. I saw the clock every two hours last night, tossing like a fish gasping for air in a waterless bucket.