by Amy Hatvany
“Come on, sweetie,” Gina said, carefully extricating Brooke from my embrace. “Say good-bye to your mom.”
“Noooo!” Brooke cried, squirming as violently as she could, the way I’d taught her to get away from a stranger.
“It’s okay, baby,” I said through my tears. “You’re going to be fine, I promise. You’re going to be okay.” I tried to reassure her—and myself.
Brooke struggled against Gina as the other woman lifted the car seat, where she’d harnessed Natalie once again, even as my younger baby shrieked.
“I’ll be right back,” Gina said. “I’m just going to help them out to the car.”
A male guard stood at the door, holding it open as they began to leave. A jagged sob ripped through me. “I love you both so much,” I said. “Don’t forget your mommy loves you!”
“Mama, please!” Brooke screamed as Gina took her into the hallway. Her voice echoed and bounced, shooting through me like arrows as I stood alone in the room. “I want my mama!” she cried, over and over again. Her tears were razors, slicing open my skin.
“Wait!” I said, rushing toward the door, only to have the guard grab me.
“Back up, inmate,” he said, as I pushed against his strong arm, straining so I could see my girls one last time.
“Mama loves you!” I cried out again, but Brooke had stopped talking by then, dissolved into an indecipherable auditory tangle of screams and tears. I leaned hard against the guard’s arm, staring at the backs of the silver-haired woman and Gina as they walked down the hall. The last thing I saw was the flash of Brooke’s lavender blanket, and then my daughters turned a dark corner and were gone.
• • •
The next few days passed by in a blur.
I remembered Gina hugging me when she returned to the room, murmuring words too dull and meaningless to help. I remembered stumbling back to my bunk, the other inmates calling out names like “pussy” and “fucking crybaby,” none of them knowing the magnitude of what I’d just lost.
I remembered feeling like I wanted to die.
I spent my days curled fetal on top of the scratchy gray blanket on my bed, fists tucked up under my chin, my face shoved into the pillow. Sobs racked my body, and I wept what felt like an endless stream of tears. Every time it seemed like I might stop, that I could control my grief, my sharp, hiccupping breaths, it would rise back up, washing over me in a wave with a violent undertow, pulling me down, down, and down. My babies’ faces haunted me. Their cries echoed through my bones.
The only relief I found was in the blissful, dark comfort of sleep. I fought waking as best I could, closing my eyes and attempting to force myself back into an unconscious world. A world where I wasn’t in jail, where I hadn’t just given up my children. Hours went by, then days. I didn’t shower, I didn’t eat. I used the bathroom only when I absolutely had to. The correctional officers on each shift tried to talk to me, tried to make me rise from my bed, but I swatted them away. “Please,” I croaked. “Just leave me alone.”
I wasn’t sure how, but word of what I’d gone through made its way around to the other inmates, and I started to feel the occasional pat on my back, to hear a soft voice saying, “It’s okay, girl. You did the right thing.” The compassion in their voices only brought up a fresh round of tears, the desire to spiral deeper into despair.
“You need to get up,” one of them said. She sat on the edge of my bunk, the weight of her causing me to roll over. “You need to eat.”
“No,” I said, opening my eyes just enough to see the woman trying to rouse me. She was tall and thin, with braided blond hair and ice-blue eyes. Her long, bony fingers squeezed my arm.
“You think you’re the only one in here with a sad situation?” she said. “Please, mama. I know you feel like shit, but you need to get up.”
“I can’t,” I whispered. The marrow in my bones felt as though it had hardened into lead, pinning me to my thin mattress. I tried to move away from her, but she pulled me over onto my back, forcing me to meet her steely gaze. Her skin was almost translucent; I could see the thin blue rivers of veins in her long neck.
“Yeah,” she said, “you can.” She sighed. “You want your girls finding out you let yourself die? That the story you want to give them to carry around the rest of their lives?”
Her words tore through me like a knife. I hadn’t thought past the moment I was in, the sharply barbed agony I felt. I hadn’t considered the possibility that someday, wherever they might end up, my girls might want to find out what happened to me.
“Come on,” she said. “You can do this.”
And so I let her put an arm around my shoulders, helping me to sit up. My head spun, and I had to close my eyes again so I wouldn’t pass out. My tongue was dry as sand; it stuck like Velcro to the roof of my mouth. She handed me a Dixie cup full of water and told me to drink. After I complied, I looked at her again. “Thanks,” I said.
“No problem.” She smiled, revealing horribly crooked, crowded teeth. “I’m Peters.”
“Walker,” I said. I’d made the mistake of introducing myself as Jennifer the first night I was here, only to learn that inmates all called each other by their last names. Now, I swallowed the rest of the water in the cup and felt the shrunken, dried-out cells of my body beg for more.
“What they get you for?”
“Petty theft,” I said, and then had to steady my voice before going on. “Child endangerment and neglect.” I dropped my eyes to the cement floor. “What about you?”
“Armed robbery.” She paused. “How long did you get?”
“Fifteen months,” I said.
“Headed to Skagit after this?”
I nodded. My public defender had explained that I’d stay in county lockup until a bunk opened up at the minimum-security women’s correctional facility in Mt. Vernon. With good behavior, he told me, I could be out in less than a year. Out to do what? I wondered. Beg for enough money to survive?
“Me, too,” she said. “Seven years.”
“Sorry,” I said, fiddling with the hem of my bright orange shirt.
“Don’t be,” Peters said. “Ain’t nobody’s fault but my own. And the worthless asshole boyfriend who talked me into it.” She stood, and then helped me get to my feet, too. “Here,” she said, handing me a granola bar. “Eat this, then hit the shower. No offense, but you don’t smell too good.”
“Sorry,” I said again.
“Stop apologizing. Jesus.”
“Okay.” Still feeling numb, I unwrapped the granola bar and forced myself to take a bite. It felt like dirt in my mouth, but I managed to swallow it, then finished the entire thing. My stomach rumbled in appreciation. Peters reached under my bunk and handed me a thin, white terry-cloth towel and a flimsy plastic comb.
“Good luck getting through that black rat’s nest with this,” she said. I lifted my hand to touch my hair, only to discover she was right—after days on my pillow, my curls had matted into a dreadlocked mess. Brooke’s hair had often ended up like this when we slept in the car; it took half a bottle of detangler and over an hour with a wide-toothed comb to smooth it again. I’d tell her stories and sing her songs to distract her from the yanking at her scalp, and now, the thought of holding her so close made me want to climb right back into bed.
Peters spoke again. “I’ll see if I can find you some conditioner.”
“Thanks,” I said, pushing down the urge I felt to collapse.
“You’re welcome. Now do us all a favor and go wash off that stink.”
As weak as I was, I managed to shuffle to the bathroom, unsure if once I was there, I’d have the energy or inclination to get myself clean. I supposed that I could. I could do it like I’d have to do everything from now on—forcing each movement, each breath into my lungs. Putting one foot in front of the other until someday, I’d find a way to be far, far away from this pain.
Natalie
In fifth grade, the year Natalie found out she was adopted, she began
telling herself stories. Not just the stories about whom her birth mother might be, but ones involving people she saw every day. She would lie in her bed, whispering to herself, acting out the kinds of conversations she wished were real.
“Hi, Natalie,” she would say in a high-pitched voice, pretending to be Sophia Jensen, who was friends with practically everyone in their class. Sophia had bright blue eyes and thick red hair, which her mother fashioned into a French braid almost every day, setting off a frenzy of other girls wearing the same style. She was the girl everyone wanted to sit next to at lunch; the person who always received more Valentine’s Day cards than anyone else. She was also the girl Natalie wished most to have as a friend.
“Hi, Sophia,” Natalie would say, lowering her voice again, back to being herself.
“You look so pretty today,” Natalie said, switching to her Sophia voice.
“Really?” Natalie replied, as herself.
“Yes,” Natalie answered, as Sophia. “Do you want to come over to my house this weekend? I’m having a party. A sleepover.”
“Wow,” Natalie said, as herself again. “That’s so nice of you. I’d love to.”
“I just know everyone will be so happy you’re going to be there,” Natalie said, pretending to be Sophia once more. “We all think you’re so smart and like you so much.”
But the truth was, instead of attending parties, Natalie spent most of her time alone, or with her mother, who stayed home to take care of Natalie while her father went to work at his law firm. They lived in a large, three-story Tudor on a bluff in West Seattle that overlooked the Puget Sound. The house was surrounded by a thick forest of western hemlocks, red alders, and Douglas firs, and Natalie’s room was on the third floor and had wide, clear windows, making her feel as though she were flying. She often stared out at the water, dreaming about the places across the ocean she might someday go, wishing she had a sister or brother to play with, or the courage to invite one of the girls from school over to her house. She wanted a best friend. But Natalie was quiet, the student who knew the answers to her teachers’ questions but never raised her hand. She had a tendency to speak only when spoken to. At recess, she sat on a bench outside and kept her nose in a book—she loved anything by Judy Blume or Beverly Cleary—watching the other girls play on the monkey bars or jump rope together, wondering how they made talking to each other look so easy. As she peeked at them, she tried not to look too anxious, waiting for someone to invite her to join in, but no one ever did.
There wasn’t a day Natalie got off the bus that her mother wasn’t on the corner, waiting. Now that she was ten, she wished her mom would at least wait for her inside the house—none of the other kids had parents that waited for them on the street—but every time she dropped a hint about being able to walk the three blocks from the bus stop on her own, her mother pretended not to hear.
One Friday afternoon in April, the last day of class before spring break, Natalie and her mother entered their house and closed the door behind them. Natalie hung up her jacket on the coat rack, as she knew her mother expected her to, and set her backpack on the floor in its designated spot. “Can I watch Rugrats?” she asked. The cartoon was Natalie’s favorite show.
“You don’t have any homework?” Natalie shook her head. “All right. But put your laundry away first, please. It’s on your bed.”
Obediently, Natalie nodded, and turned toward the stairs.
“Shoes, Natalie!” her mother called out, and Natalie turned around and went back to the entryway, where she’d forgotten to put the white Keds she’d kicked off her feet onto the shelf in the closet. As her mother looked on, Natalie set them in their appropriate place, next to her dark green galoshes and the black slippers her father liked to wear when he got home from work. There were certain ways her mother liked things done: freshly washed and folded clothes needed to be put away in their proper places, never randomly shoved in one of Natalie’s drawers, or worse, left sitting around. Doors always needed to be shut, towels hung in the exact middle of the bar, lights turned off when you left a room. Shoes needed to be on the shoe rack.
“If your life is messy on the outside,” her mother had told her for as long as Natalie could remember, “your insides feel messy, too.”
Natalie didn’t really understand what her mother meant by that statement—she felt just fine if her dirty clothes landed on the floor instead of in the hamper, or if she forgot to put her breakfast dishes in the sink. Sometimes, she wondered what would happen if her mother walked into Natalie’s room to find her daughter’s entire wardrobe strewn across the carpet. She imagined the look of shock on her mother’s face, taking some small measure of satisfaction from the thought, followed immediately by a ripple of guilt. However overly stringent some of her mother’s rules might be, Natalie loved her, and wanted to keep her happy. She tried to do what was expected of her, if only to keep the peace.
Twenty-five years later, after dropping Hailey off at her school and then saying good-bye to Henry in his classroom, Natalie made her way to the preschool’s parking lot. Just as she reached into her purse for her car keys, she looked up to see Katie, whose son, Logan, was in Henry’s class and had invited Henry over to play that afternoon. Katie was alone now, so Natalie assumed Logan was already inside, too. Katie wore gray sweats and her brown hair was twisted into a messy bun on top of her head. She had the kind of good skin and natural beauty that didn’t require makeup, something Natalie envied. With her light complexion and fair lashes, if Natalie didn’t put on a little mascara, she barely looked like she had a face.
“Can Henry still come over this afternoon?” Katie asked.
“Yes, thanks,” Natalie said with a smile. “He’s excited.”
“Logan is, too. I’ll bring Henry home around five, if that’s okay?”
“Perfect.” Luckily, Henry wasn’t the only one with a playdate that day—Hailey was going to her friend Ruby’s house, too—Natalie had planned it that way so she could work on a dessert order she needed to finish for a party the next night without the kids clamoring for her attention.
But first, she needed to go see her mother. Natalie had spoken to her mom earlier that morning, while she fed Hailey and Henry scrambled eggs, asking if she could come over for coffee around ten. Natalie thought about the guilt she had felt in her mother’s presence that day all those years ago when while working on her family tree. The guilt she still felt, today, when she thought about bringing up the subject of finding her birth mother. When she turned eighteen, Natalie had thought about registering with an adoption reunion organization, so if her birth mother was looking for her, she’d be easier to find. This was in 1998, before the Internet had taken over as the only way to get things done, so the process would have been more involved than simply typing her name into an online system—she would have had to go to the registry’s office and fill out hard copies of paperwork. But when she talked with her dad about the idea, he begged her to reconsider.
“You know how your mom is,” he said, running one of his large hands through his salt-and-pepper hair. Natalie knew that no one would ever look at the two of them and suspect they were father and daughter. That was one of the disconcerting realities of being adopted—you look at your parents, your entire family, and see nothing of yourself reflected back.
“She takes everything so personally,” her father continued. “She’ll be devastated.”
At the time, Natalie conceded that he was right, so she let the idea go, reasoning that there wasn’t any urgency, any real logistical need for her to find her birth mother. It was more a general curiosity, a wondering about the past. So what if one day the previous summer she had chased after a woman walking in the Junction who resembled an older version of Natalie, only to catch up with her and find that other than being petite and having blond hair, the woman looked nothing like her at all. So what if Natalie sometimes felt a dull, strange sense of emptiness she didn’t know how to explain to anyone else, but often wondered if t
hat feeling was the reason she had a harder time opening up to other people—if after being abandoned by her birth mother, she couldn’t help but be wary of letting other people in, showing them who she was, for fear that they’d leave her, too. Natalie had a good family—a family who loved and provided for her. She reminded herself that was more than a lot of people had; she told herself that would have to be enough.
But didn’t she, as Kyle had said, have the right to know more about the woman who gave birth to her? Intellectually, her curiosity made perfect sense, but as she parked her car in her parents’ driveway, she knew that what made sense to everyone else didn’t always align with what made sense to her mother. She didn’t like emotional messes any more than physical ones.
It was almost ten by the time Natalie grabbed the small box of currant and almond scones she’d baked before the kids had gotten up—she always kept a little something in the freezer, ready to be put in the oven at a moment’s notice—climbed out of her car, and entered the house. “Mom?” she called as she took off her shoes and put them on the rack in the closet. “Where are you?”
“In the kitchen,” her mother answered.
Natalie walked down the hall and through the family room into the large, square kitchen her parents had recently updated with new maple cabinets and restaurant-quality, stainless-steel appliances. Her mother stood in front of the sink, wearing yellow rubber gloves, black yoga pants, and a blue hoodie. At sixty-eight, she wore her silver-streaked black hair in a stylish, chin-length bob. Natalie set the box she carried on the counter, then stepped over to give her mother a quick hug and kiss on the cheek.
“You know you have a dishwasher for that,” she said, nodding her head toward the sink full of soapy water and what she assumed were the pans from the previous night’s dinner.