by Amy Hatvany
“Online adoption registries are your best bet. Social media, too. Facebook and the like. You could petition the court to open the files to your case, but that could take years and would be very expensive.”
Natalie thought back to when she was eighteen, when she let her father talk her out of putting her name on an adoption registry list in case her birth mother came looking for her. If she had defied him and done it anyway, maybe she could have found her sister almost twenty years ago. They could have found their birth mother together after that. The frustration she’d felt toward her mother earlier that morning melted into something harder, something with teeth, gnawing at Natalie’s insides. She knew her mother had been traumatized by the ectopic pregnancy and subsequent hysterectomy, but keeping a secret as significant as Natalie having a sister seemed extreme. Natalie wondered if there was more behind her parents’ decision than they’d said.
“Did you know our birth mother very well?” Natalie asked, unable to keep the tremor from her voice. Integrating this new information about her past into the person she’d always believed herself to be felt as though she were trying to knit a ball of yarn into an already perfectly stitched blanket. There were suddenly gaping holes in the fabric of who she was. The world she was living in now was not the one she had woken up to that morning.
Gina stared at her a moment, then nodded.
“Is there anything you can tell me about her? Anything at all?” A few more tears escaped Natalie’s eyes.
“She loved you,” Gina said, softly. “Both of you.”
“Then why didn’t she keep us?” Natalie asked, unable to keep the aching desperation from her words.
“I’m sorry,” Gina said, and Natalie knew there was nothing more the older woman could tell her. The only thing left to do was find Brooke, and see if her sister could fill in the blanks.
Brooke
“No! I won’t go!” Brooke insisted as Gina took her hand and attempted to pull her from the car. It was 1984 and Brooke was eight years old. This was the fourth foster home Gina had taken her to in as many years.
“Come on now,” Gina said, wrapping her arm around Brooke’s shoulders. “The Martins are expecting you. They already have a daughter about your age. Her name is Lily. I promise, you’re going to like it here.”
“No!” Brooke yelled, literally digging her heels into the grassy parking strip. “Take me back! I need to be where my mom can find me!”
“Sweetie, we’ve talked about this . . .”
“She’s coming to get me!” Brooke said, trying to keep from crying. Since she’d been brought to live at Hillcrest, her head had been filled with all sorts of stories about what kept her mother away—a long illness. A car accident that had put her in a coma. Maybe she had amnesia. Maybe she didn’t remember who she was. Brooke felt as though she were trapped inside a bubble, holding her breath, waiting for her mother to return. Each time she was called to the front office, Brooke would rush down the hall, positive that this time, her mother would be there. When she wasn’t, it was as though Brooke had lost her all over again.
Now, undeterred by Brooke’s resistance, Gina managed to get her and the black plastic bag filled with the few changes of clothes she owned inside the Martins’ house, where she introduced Brooke to a blond woman with bangs that stood straight like a wall from her forehead. The rest of her hair was crimped, and she wore a pair of acid-wash jeans and a light pink polo shirt with the collar turned up around her neck. Her lipstick matched her shirt.
“This is Jessica,” Gina told her.
“Hello!” Jessica said with a big smile, revealing tiny teeth that reminded Brooke of white Tic Tacs. “You must be Brooke. We’re so happy you’re here. Lily can’t wait to meet you.”
Brooke dropped her eyes to the floor and didn’t respond. Gina could make her live here, but she couldn’t make her talk. She looked around the living room as Jessica and Gina excused themselves to the kitchen. The walls were painted a pale blue, and the trim was white. All the furniture looked as though it had been taken from a magazine and plopped down in just the right place—a couch the color of peaches, two navy-blue armchairs, and a wrought-iron coffee table with a glass top. There was a tan brick fireplace and pictures on its mantel—Brooke took a few steps over to them and peered at the couple, Jessica in her mermaid-style white dress with huge, puffy sleeves and her husband looking movie-star handsome in a tuxedo with his hair feathered perfectly on each side of his head. He was blond, too, his hair cut shorter on the sides and left longer in the back, almost to his shoulders. He had a strong jaw and bright green eyes. There were pictures of a girl with blond hair, whom Brooke assumed was their daughter, Lily. She looked mostly like her mother, with the exception of having her father’s large teeth, which, with her oval face, Brooke thought made her look a bit like a horse.
Brooke smoothed her hand over her unruly black curls and looked at the pictures again. However much she hated the idea of living with this family instead of her mother, she caught herself wishing that she looked more like them—that people might easily mistake her for a member of their family. It was a game she played, spotting physical traits she shared with other people, wondering if she could pass as one of their relatives. Everyone commented on her violet-blue irises, a color she had yet to see in another person’s eyes. “Your mom had them,” Gina had once told Brooke, thinking, Brooke was sure, that this piece of information might make her feel better, when in fact it only made her feel worse.
Gina soon left, and Jessica showed Brooke the rest of the house. There were two bedrooms, one at the front of the house, where Jessica and Scott slept, and the other, down the hall, which Brooke had to share with Lily, Jessica and Scott’s nine-year-old daughter. When Brooke met Lily later that afternoon, the older girl announced that since it was her house, first, she was in charge of their room. At this, Brooke rolled her eyes, but at the time, kept her mouth shut.
Over the next several weeks, as she tried to get used to another new school and living in a house with three strangers, Brooke stayed on her best behavior, which wasn’t the easiest thing to do with Lily around. The older girl talked incessantly, and it drove Brooke crazy.
“I love my teacher,” Lily said. “She has the nicest smile and always gives me the papers to hand out to the rest of the class. Mrs. Pearson wasn’t like that last year. She was cranky all the time. We used to laugh at the stupid glasses she wore, but then I felt bad about it and told the other kids they should stop, which Mom said I was brave to do and I think she was right. Do you think that was brave?”
“I think you should shut up,” Brooke said, sounding as nasty as she could. She was already sick of the sound of Lily’s yammering. And then, she couldn’t help it, Brooke threw her math book at Lily’s head. Lily ran to her mother and tattled, of course, and as punishment, Jessica told Brooke that she had to stay alone in her room for the rest of the night, missing out on the pizza they were going to order and the video they had rented—Mr. Mom.
“You can eat in here and think about what you’ve done,” Jessica said. She brought a sandwich and a glass of milk, then left again, closing the door behind her. Brooke pulled the sandwich apart and smeared mayonnaise, turkey, and cheddar cheese across the cheery yellow paint on the wall. I hate you, she thought as she poured the milk on Lily’s pillow.
A while later, Scott came to check on her. When he discovered what she had done, his eyes darkened as he took a couple of steps over to where she lay on her bed, her arms crossed over her chest. “Get up,” he growled.
Brooke glared at him, her chin raised, but didn’t move.
“Fine,” he said. He grabbed her, lifted her up, and managed, despite how she flailed against him, to sit and then lay her facedown, over the tops of his thighs.
“Let me go!” Brooke yelled, but he didn’t listen. The next thing she felt was the smack of his open palm on her rear end. “Oww!” she cried, feeling the tears spring up in her eyes almost immediately after his hand had
landed. She’d never been spanked before. She squirmed and wiggled, trying to get away, but Scott used one of his strong arms to hold her in place. His hand smacked her again.
Tears still ran down Brooke’s cheeks, but instead of crying out, she pressed her lips together as hard as she could and tried not to make a sound, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of knowing he had hurt her. She kept her eyes squeezed shut, and her fingers curled into tight fists, wondering if her real father would have spanked her, if she had ever spent time with him.
When Scott stopped after swatting her twice, Brooke felt numb, despite the way the skin on her rear end throbbed. It was as though something had snapped inside her, and in that moment, she didn’t care about the consequences Jessica and Scott might dole out. As the weeks progressed and her behavior didn’t improve, they tried different ways to discipline her. When she purposely clogged the toilet with Kleenex, they took away her TV-watching privileges. When she refused to help wash the dishes, they didn’t let her have dessert. When she called Lily a bitch—a word she’d heard other kids say at Hillcrest—they put her in time-out. Scott spanked her again after he caught Brooke purposely tripping Lily as they entered the kitchen to eat breakfast. But no punishment worked, because Brooke had already decided that there wasn’t a thing they could do that would hurt her more than her mother already had.
One morning, after Brooke had been living there a couple of months, Lily returned to their room after taking a shower to find Brooke still in bed. “You have to get up,” Lily said, in a snotty tone that made Brooke want to smack her.
“You’re not the boss of me,” Brooke mumbled, burrowing her head under her pillow. “I don’t feel good.” Since losing her mother and Natalie, Brooke rarely felt good. It seemed like there was something heavy growing under her skin—something thick and black, like an infection. Her stomach often burned like there was a fire crackling inside it; acid rose up into her throat when she lay down to try to sleep. The night before, her dreams had been filled with the feeling of chasing her mother, running around corners and up hills, but never finding her. When she woke up, her chest ached and her pillow was wet. She knew her eyes would be swollen and red, and she felt as though she hadn’t slept at all. She didn’t think she could go to school.
“Faker,” Lily said, with contempt. A moment later, Brooke felt her covers being stripped off her body. She slept in a tank top and a pair of underwear; the cold air in the room pinched at her exposed skin.
“Hey!” Brooke yelled, and she leapt up, tackling Lily by pushing her shoulder into the other girl’s waist. They both ended up on the hardwood floor, wrestling, until Brooke grabbed Lily’s thin, wet hair, yanking it as hard as she could.
Lily screamed, and Jessica appeared almost instantly, attempting to tear the two of them apart. “What’s going on?” Jessica demanded when she was finally able to separate them. She stood between the two girls, staring at Brooke as she spoke, making it clear who she assumed was the instigator.
Brooke’s chest heaved, and she watched as Lily’s usually pale pink complexion turned tomato red while she told Jessica that Brooke had tackled her for no reason. “She pushed me over! And pulled my hair!”
“Did you do that, Brooke?” Jessica asked.
“She pulled my covers off first!” Brooke said, shooting a hateful look at Lily. “I told her I didn’t feel good! I might have pneumonia!”
“You’re a liar!” Lily whimpered through her tears.
“I don’t care if you felt bad or not,” Jessica said. “This is unacceptable behavior. Do you understand me, Brooke? I won’t have it.”
“I don’t have to do anything you say!” Brooke screeched.
“Oh, yes you do,” Jessica said. “As long as you’re living here, you’ll follow our rules.”
“I don’t even want to live here!” Brooke yelled. “I want my mom!”
“Too bad!” Lily taunted. “Your mom doesn’t want you!”
As soon as Lily spoke the words, Brooke felt as though her heart had exploded, breaking up into a million pieces. She wanted to tear Lily into shreds. A hot, primal feeling took her over, and she bent her fingers, clawing at Jessica to get away.
Jessica cringed and cried out, letting go of her hold on Brooke’s wrist, then pressed a hand over the spot where Brooke had scratched her arm. Brooke looked at her fingernails and saw that she had drawn blood. Jessica lifted her hand and saw this, too, and as she stared at Brooke, her jaw dropped.
Brooke trembled, wanting to cry. She wanted to tell Jessica and Lily that she didn’t know what was wrong with her—that she was sorry for all the bad things she’d done. But instead, she crawled back into bed, creating a tent with the covers, where she stayed as Lily got dressed and left for school. Not long after she was gone, through the thin walls, Brooke heard Jessica talking on the phone, but she couldn’t really hear what was being said or to whom she was speaking. After she hung up, Jessica came back into the bedroom. “Are you hungry?” she asked, but Brooke stayed silent. She felt the mattress sink as Jessica sat down and attempted to pull the blankets off.
“Just leave me alone!” Brooke screamed, holding the covers down around her head. “Stop touching me! I don’t want you to touch me!” Her skin hurt, worse than the times Scott had spanked her.
Jessica didn’t say another word. Instead, she simply left the room. Brooke felt bad for being so rude. Jessica was way better than some of the foster mothers Brooke had heard stories about from the other children at Hillcrest—mothers who put locks on the refrigerator and cupboards so the kids wouldn’t eat too much food. She was better than the single woman Brooke had lived with for six months the previous year, who told Brooke that it was her job to clean the cat box and do all the laundry as part of her “rent”; better than the older couple who’d taken her in right after Natalie was adopted and ended up sending her back to Hillcrest after only a few weeks, saying that they’d made a mistake in taking on another foster child when they already had three. Jessica might have punished her, Scott might have spanked her, but hadn’t she deserved it, every time?
If Brooke was honest with herself, there were moments when she liked living with Jessica and Scott. She liked playing Uno with them on Friday nights and having chocolate chip pancakes every Sunday morning. She even liked lounging on the couch and watching Scooby-Doo or Bugs Bunny with Lily after they got home from school. But as soon as she found herself feeling the tiniest bit content, she was overwhelmed with guilt. She worried it would make her mother feel bad if she knew that Brooke was happy living with other people.
Still, Brooke stayed in her room that entire morning, rising only when she had to use the bathroom. She didn’t eat, she didn’t say another word to Jessica, who again had been talking on the phone in a low voice. The only thing Brooke heard her say was “She’s a total hellion!” and she knew that Jessica could only be talking about her.
Scott came home from work early, around noon, and a couple of hours after that, before Lily got back from school, Gina arrived and told Brooke in a quiet tone that it was time to pack her things. Brooke thought about Lily discovering that she was gone, and she wondered if the older girl might miss her. Probably not, with how horrible Brooke had been to her most of the time. She wondered if Jessica and Scott would find another little girl to foster and maybe adopt—a girl who didn’t scream and yell and hurt other people.
“What are we going to do with you?” Gina said as they drove away from Jessica and Scott’s house. She looked in the rearview mirror at Brooke, who was staring out the window. “Did you hear me, honey? What can I do to help you?”
Brooke shrugged, not looking at Gina, too afraid if she did, she might start to cry. She’d gotten what she wanted—she was going back to Hillcrest—so why did she feel so awful? She bit the inside of her cheek, and tasted pennies.
“She’s never coming back,” Brooke finally whispered. “Is she?” She kept her eyes on the side of the road as she spoke, counting each of the trees as t
hey drove along. Her mother was out there somewhere in the world, living her own life, pretending that Brooke and Natalie didn’t exist.
“No,” Gina said quietly, knowing without having to ask who Brooke meant. “She’s not.”
When Brooke remained silent, Gina spoke again. “It’ll be okay. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow. But eventually, I promise, you’re going to be fine.”
Brooke nodded, knowing that her social worker was just doing her job, telling Brooke what she needed to hear. She knew that adults made promises they couldn’t keep all the time—the kinds of promises that simply never came true.
• • •
Just before midnight on the day she’d gone to the clinic and decided to keep the baby, Brooke stood in the hallway of Ryan’s apartment, trying to work up the courage to knock. She’d been distracted all night at the bar, mixing up orders and spilling drinks like a newbie waitress; she ended her shift having earned less than a hundred bucks. She kept playing out different scenarios of the conversation she had to have with Ryan in her head: one where he dropped to his knees and placed an ear against her belly; another where he screamed at her to leave. Not knowing which reaction he’d have was torture. She was so accustomed to keeping her lovers at a distance; she didn’t know how to manage these new feelings—the ache of need she felt in her gut. Suddenly, she wanted Ryan to need her, to want a relationship with her, to be the father of her baby. She wanted him to say, “We’ll take care of this child together.” It reminded her too much of how she had felt growing up, every time Gina took her to meet yet another foster family, wondering if this one would finally be the last. When Brooke would walk through a new house, touching the furniture, the pillows, the pictures on the walls, whispering only to herself, trying out the word “home,” to see if it fit.
And now, there she stood with a bright wedge of hope in her chest, about to tell Ryan the truth. She told herself that how she grew up didn’t matter. She’d have this baby, and then maybe, she and Ryan could build a family all their own.