by Eric Smith
“Hi,” I say as I step into the foyer. The house is beautiful, as if it was recently staged for a Southern Living photo shoot. It couldn’t be more perfect if Hollywood had designed it.
“Neill, Corey’s here,” he calls, then gestures down the hall. I don’t want to lead the way. I want to follow, preferably ducking safely behind his broad back.
My shoes, a pair of brown leather ballet flats that I borrowed from Mom, click on the hardwood floor. We pass an arched entry, through which I see clusters of party guests sipping lemonade and chatting.
“We have the same couch,” I say of the overstuffed white sectional that flows seamlessly into the immaculately decorated room.
“Oh yeah?” he says, as if I’ve just said something profound about the state of peace in the Middle East. “We had that before Ella. I doubt it’ll last much longer. White upholstery plus tiny human is not a good combination.”
I inwardly flinch at the mention of her, which is a thing I absolutely cannot do. I’m here now. I chose to come. I need to act normal.
Neill pops his head out of the kitchen at the end of the hall.
“Corey! I’m so glad you came. I’d hug you, but I have guacamole hands.” He wiggles his fingers, which are covered in green goop.
“That’s okay,” I say, thankful I’ve managed to dodge a second hug.
He glances over my shoulder at Bryan, a quick look that seems to telegraph something I can’t read, before focusing his piercing blue eyes back on me. “She’s in the family room. Bryan will take you.”
And in that moment, I know I’m not ready. It’s a feeling I know well, not being ready. But after the last two years, I know that not being ready is not at all correlated to experiencing the thing. The thing is coming, whether you’re ready or not. That’s what she taught me. Of course she’d remind me now.
The family room is apparently not the same as the room with the big white couch we passed. The family room is designed for, well, family. The couch is a soft, fluffy leather (easily wiped down, easily crashed into), there’s no coffee table (to avoid head bumps), and the rug is brightly colored and patterned (to hide stains). There are bins and baskets in every corner overflowing with brightly colored toys, blocks, and stuffed animals. There are small children playing amid a cascade of those giant, toddler-sized Legos with parents hovering nearby carefully trying to pretend they’re not watching their children like hawks.
And then I see her, standing and holding on to the arm of the couch with one chubby hand while with the other she flings a Lego across the room.
“Ellie-bell, no throwing,” Bryan says, bending down to scoop her up. She’s so much bigger than the last time I saw her, which was almost a year ago at the lawyer’s office. She was only a few weeks old, and she slept in her carrier the entire time. But despite the obvious growth, she still looks tiny in his muscular arms. She grabs his cheeks with her little hands and blows a raspberry right in his face, sending spit and drool in every direction. He laughs, and she laughs, and I want to sink into the floor or teleport back to the front seat of my mom’s car.
“Ella, look who it is!” Bryan points at me. Her eyes scan the room, looking for what he’s pointing at, before settling on me. I brace myself for some kind of recognition, but there’s nothing. Just a blank toddler stare and more than a little drool.
Bryan swipes at her chin with the sleeve of his shirt. “She’s teething,” he says, and I nod as if I know all about that. I don’t. That’s the point of this.
“It’s Corey!” he says to her with all the enthusiasm of a child’s birthday clown. Oh god, is there a clown here? Please don’t let there be a clown here. “Let’s go out back.”
I follow Bryan out a set of French doors into a beautifully landscaped backyard. He sits down on a wooden bench, Ella balanced on his knee, and I take the spot next to him. I wave and smile at her, but she mostly ignores me in favor of pointing at two squirrels chasing each other across the lawn. I’m sure some girls would know how to talk to a one-year-old, but I’m not one of them. I wasn’t one of those girls who babysat for extra money or worked as a camp counselor. I spent summers filing and compiling mailings in my dad’s dermatology practice. I have absolutely no idea what to say to a person who enjoys throwing Legos and spitting in people’s faces. So instead I talk to the grown-up. That’s what I’m good at, usually.
“Does she know who I am?” I ask.
“No,” he says, and I must recoil, because he quickly continues. “Not because we haven’t talked about you, but because she’s one, so she doesn’t get it. Plus, she doesn’t see you that often. Her world basically consists of me, Neill, her nanny, and Neill’s mother, who lives in town. Otherwise, everyone is a stranger. She probably thinks you’re one of our friends.”
“I don’t want to, I mean, I’ll just—” I say, but he holds up a hand to silence me.
“Corey, you just try to make yourself comfortable. We’ll go at your speed, okay?”
I let out a long, slow breath. I hadn’t realized that I’d been breathing as if I’d just finished a marathon, but now that I’m focused on it, I realized that I’d been wound up like a top.
“Thank you,” I say.
“Of course.”
As if she can tell we’ve reached an awkward impasse, Ella starts squirming until she slides off Bryan’s lap, then takes off in a wobbly sprint, like she’s just stepped off a cruise ship and still has her sea legs.
“We can go back inside,” I tell him, as he rises to chase her. “I’m happy to just, you know, watch.”
He nods, and the three of us head inside. Almost immediately Bryan disappears with Ella to change her diaper, and left alone for the first time, I decide my safest bet is the buffet table. Most of the other adults in the room are laser-focused on their children, but a few give me furtive sideways glances. They know who I am, if only by process of elimination (they don’t know me, so they know me). Most everyone gives me a wide berth while I fill a Sesame Street plate with mini quiches and crudité. But as I’m filling a cup from a glass jar of pink lemonade, a woman corners me.
“I’m Cecilia,” she says, offering me a manicured hand, which I can’t take since my hands are occupied by Sesame Street party dishes. When I give her the international gesture for “nice to meet you, but my hands are full,” she gives me what looks like a sort of tense smile. “I live down the street. That’s my Noah over there.” I follow her finger to see a chubby little redhead boy who is currently trying to relieve a Barbie of its head.
“He’s adorable,” I say, because I’m pretty sure that’s the only acceptable response.
“So you’re the birth mother.”
Despite my best efforts to plaster on a smile, this drops it like it’s been slapped off my face.
“Um, yes.”
“Well, I just think what you’re doing is amazing. The generous gift you’ve given Neill and Bryan.” She continues talking, her hand resting delicately on her heart like she just can’t bear the wonder and beauty of me. But I’m not listening. I’ve heard it before, of course. It’s the same best-of-Hallmark platitudes I’ve been hearing since the moment I walked into the adoption agency. Precious gift, as if Ella is a quilt handed down by my grandmother. Strong and brave, which are words best reserved for people whose jobs involve them getting shot at. Hero? Not me. Not even close. Most of the time I feel like a coward, like the rest of my life is going to be an elaborate game of duck and run. Because that’s what I want to do right now, while Cecilia is blathering on, already giving me a third bless your heart.
“And to have the strength to know you’re giving that child a better life—”
“Excuse me,” I practically bark at her, my lemonade sloshing over Elmo’s face. Cecilia breaks off her stream and blinks at me. “I need to, um, find the restroom.”
And with a final glance at Ella, who has toddled back into the
room, I bolt for the nearest exit, tossing my plate in a trash can as I flee.
Some hero.
I head back to the bench in the backyard. I sit and take several deep breaths. I can tune out most of the platitudes, but the one that won’t leave me is the whole “better life” song and dance. Like I’m some kind of poor, pathetic charity case who’s just looking for someone to take a chance on me. I can feel my blood pressure rising when Neill steps out on the lawn.
“I saw Cecilia cornered you. I was about to come rescue you,” he says, rolling his eyes. “She can be a lot to handle.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you okay?”
Yes? No? I have no idea? And because my thoughts are spinning around in my head like one of the light-up toddler toys in the family room, I open my mouth and things just start spilling out.
“I don’t know how to be this person, the one they keep making me out to be. The person I’m absolutely not. People keep saying that I’m giving her a better life, as if that’s supposed to make me feel better. But it just makes me feel 100 percent selfish.”
Neill looks like I’ve just told him that I feel like a serial killer. “Why?” he asks, horrified.
“Because I could have given her all this,” I say, gesturing to the house and the yard. “My parents are doctors. We’re not destitute. She could have grown up in a beautiful home and gone to the best schools and had everything I had, which was everything. I didn’t give her up so she could have a better life. I gave her up so I could have a better life.”
Neill stares at me for a long time before speaking. “And you think that makes you selfish?”
“You don’t?”
“Look, you’re never going to get me to say anything bad about what you did, because that decision created my family.” His voice becomes deep and gravelly, and I realize his eyes are welling up. Then he blinks hard and turns his whole body toward me, until his knees are touching mine, and he stares me straight in the eye. “You putting yourself first meant you were putting Ella first,” he says. “And it’s not as if you abandoned her. You’re here. This is still a family if you want it to be.”
When the party’s over, I leave with a stack of pictures of Ella, a piece of cake covered in tinfoil, and the satisfaction of having cornered that awful Cecilia woman and told her all about my plans to study political science at Wesleyan, where I’ll be headed in just over a month. Mom is idling by the mailbox, and when she spots me coming down the driveway I can practically see her unwind.
“Everything okay?” I ask as I climb into the car.
“I was about to ask you the same thing.”
“It was good.” I pass her the stack of pictures. The top one shows Ella, a smudge of pink icing on the tip of her nose, a birthday hat askew atop her nearly bald head. Neill practically mowed down his party guests en route to the office to print it up moments after snapping it. As soon as she sees it, she gasps, her fingers to her lips, her mouth slightly agape.
“She looks just like you,” she whispers, then grimaces. She didn’t mean to say it out loud. There’s a heavy silence that hangs in the car.
Finally, I break it. “I told them I’d come by over Thanksgiving break,” I say.
Her head whips in my direction, a mixture of shock and relief on her face.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” I say. And I am.
We’re a family.
Lauren Elizabeth Morrill is many things, including, but not limited to, a writer, an educator, a badass roller derby skater, a former band nerd, an aggressive driver, and a die-hard Mac person. She also watches a lot of TV, eats a lot of junk food, and drinks a lot of Coke. It’s a wonder her brain and teeth haven’t rotted out of her head. Lauren is the author of Meant to Be, Being Sloane Jacobs, The Trouble with Destiny, and the forthcoming My Unscripted Life (October 2016), all from Random House.
Empty Lens
by Tameka Mullins
Empty Lens: A Mother-Daughter Photography Project
Blog Entry 15—June 7, 2015
Pictured: Jill (mom) and Jessie (daughter). The mom’s hazel eyes are red, but twinkling. She looks like she had just been on vacation as her tan is still visible but wearing off. I can tell she had a long day at work. Her skirt is wrinkled from sitting at a desk all day and there are small sweat stains poking through her green blouse. Jessie is wearing a school uniform and attempting to create a Snap of me with her iPhone that she can share on Snapchat. She’s asking me more questions than I’m able to ask her. She’s twelve. She and her mother are coming out of a McDonald’s on 72nd Street. After asking Jill for permission to take their photo and my interview question she lets out an exhausted sigh.
Interview Audio: “I cherish my daughter because she almost didn’t make it. I had a complication during my pregnancy, but here she is all energy, arms, and legs. She’s going to be tall like her father.” Jessie breaks in with, “I want to be a fashion model that creates science experiments. That’s possible, right?” She looks at her mother and smiles. I take the shot.
I think these images are touching other people too because I get new followers every week. I find this to be like therapy, but without the glaring eyes of judgment and weekly appointments. Shrinks claim they don’t judge you, but I know their gears are turning as they sit with their legs crossed trying to appear objective. The last one I had was infuriating. I wanted to slap her so bad. Something about the way she looked at me made me uncomfortable. Her eyes were too perfect, too green, like looking through the ocean floor straight to the bottom. Her dark brown hair was casket sharp. Not a strand out of place. How could someone so put together understand my scattered thoughts?
“Eva, are you going to share anything today? I can’t help you if you don’t share what you’re feeling and why you’re hurting.”
That’s the day I got up and walked out. My mother was pissed, but she didn’t force me to go back. Talking to that head doctor was like talking to a dead fish. Blank eyes, no emotion at all. Maybe that shit works for some people, but it doesn’t work for me. All that clean antiseptic sharing is for white folks.
Yes, I am a POC who has white parents. How that happened was that I was adopted. I’m sure most of you didn’t know this. Actually, I wasn’t sure if I would ever share this part of my life with you, but since I no longer have a therapist’s couch to purge on, I’m gonna use this space to clear my head and share my art.
The whole reason I created this blog was to share my photography, and then I found that over the past year I had become more interested in taking pictures of people. Namely, mothers and daughters. I never liked photographing people as I am more of a nature girl, but something in me shifted after my short stint with that shrink. I’d never admit it to her, but she did touch a nerve with me, and it was then that I realized I wanted to find my mom. My real mom.
Donna and Gene Westminster are my parents and they are the only ones I’ve ever known, but they are the whitest white folks ever. When we go out, we look like those Golden Oreo cookies with a chocolate middle. I know they love me, but sometimes, well, a lot of times, I don’t think they get me. Loving someone and truly being connected to them and understanding their struggles are two different things.
A lot of my friends would really question whether I have any struggles. I live in an amazing brownstone on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, my parents are rich doctors, and I have never wanted for anything. Not anything material, anyway.
Blog Entry 23: July 21, 2015
Pictured: Brenda and Virginia. They were both scurrying out of the light rain that had just begun to fall and into Red Rooster, a soul food restaurant on 125th Street in Harlem, where celebrity chef and owner Marcus Samuelsson often mixes and mingles with the guests and guides them through the menu. I went once with my mentor, and that dude that hosts Chopped was there. He looks taller on TV. Anyway, back to the ph
oto subjects. They both were wearing sporty attire, but with fancy shoes. I learned that they were tourists from Atlanta who were in town on vacation. Brenda looked to be in her late forties or early fifties and her mom was probably in her seventies, but she looked young, like one of those grandmothers you see in Facebook videos dancing to hip-hop music. Older mothers and daughters always fascinated me. Especially moms and daughters of color. I actually got off lucky that day because, due to the bad weather, no one wanted to talk to me. These two were thrilled and probably were going to tell their friends back home about this.
Interview Audio: Brenda said about her mom, “If someone would have told me that I would be on vacation in New York City with her,” she pointed at her mom, “ten or fifteen years ago, I would have laughed at them. We were never that close when I was younger, but time and God worked it out.”
Virginia smiled and added, “Raising a headstrong daughter is never easy, but neither is living with a Southern mother. I knew we would work it out. Now, can we get something to eat, gal? You’ve done dragged me all around this city. I’m hungry!”
Interview over.
Thinking about the issues that this mother-daughter duo had overcome made me think about my dad. I had a fight with him last night. Not a big blowup, but he snapped at me and I’m not used to that. He hurt my feelings really bad. I was telling my mom that I should be getting some information soon about my biological first mother. I was taught in therapy not to refer to my natural mother as my birth or biological mom. I am still kinda confused about this because that’s what she is, isn’t she? Anyway, the statue in a skirt of a therapist explained that saying biological or birth mother is like reducing the mom to being a baby-making machine, kinda like she was only on Earth for making babies. She said that a mother’s bond with her child goes beyond birth, so we shouldn’t put that negative title on them. Like I said, I’m still getting used to talking about this adoptively correct stuff. I always knew I was adopted. My parents told me when I was little. I thought it was cool at the time until I started wondering why my original parents didn’t want me.