by Helen Doss
When I opened the parsonage door in Boonville and threw myself into the welcoming arms of my family, I felt like the prodigal son come home. I love them, I thought, looking around at my dancing, joyous, beloved children. I had to blink my eyes to see them through the undersea mistiness. They seemed to be mermaids flipping wildly about as they covered me with wet kisses.
I love them, all twelve of them! Dorothy and Richard were throwing their arms around me, too, as if they had always been my children; and little Gregory was bouncing up and down in his playpen with a smile clear across his broad, dark face, holding up fat little arms so I would pick him up.
“He acts as if he actually remembered you,” Carl marveled. “He’s been leery of strangers lately, never lets outsiders pick him up.”
I kissed the baby, and decided I would keep my unhappy plans to myself. First, I rationalized, and I was good at rationalizing, I would get settled in the routine of home life, and then I could see what would be the best way to break the news. In the meantime, I would pretend that it was possible for us all to stay together. Dorothy and Richard should remember their last days here as being the happiest possible. If they ended with a happy experience with us, it would be easier for them to adjust in the next home that took them in. If another home was ever offered . . .
My first major task was to give haircuts.
“I took the whole gang downtown to the barbershop once while you were gone,” Carl said. “Wow! Our family can eat for a week on what that cost. It’s lucky you can do it for us.”
“They all look like cocker spaniels,” I laughed. “I can hardly tell the boys from the girls.”
“After you get our hair cut, you can,” Timmy assured me.
I put two low stools outside the back door, got out my scissors and clippers, and my home barbershop was ready for customers.
“Why don’t you cut mine and Gregory’s in a Mohawk?” Richard asked. “We’re both real Indians.”
“A Mohawk?”
“Yeah, like those college boys in the newspaper picture we saw,” he grinned. “You know, shaved all over, except with a piece down the middle like a long toothbrush upside down.”
“That might be interesting,” I admitted. “What do you think we should do with Alex’s? Shall we let it grow out in a long, braided queue? Or do you suggest we put a rice bowl on his head and cut around it?”
“No,” Timmy said. “You ought to keep cutting Alex’s hair short on top. He’s got a natural-born butcher haircut.”
As I clipped and trimmed, the hair piled up around me, blond, auburn, soft mole-brown, and shiny black; and the vari-colored snips blended together as they fell.
I soon discovered that I was wrong about the way our children felt about each other. My first night home, Laura came running up in her pajamas for her good-night kiss. Her straight brown hair was twisted into bunchy rolls.
“I sure like that Dorothy,” Laura beamed, patting her head. “She puts my hair up in curlers any time I ask her. I’m sure glad you brought her home to be our big sister. I always wanted a big sister, and now I got one. She helps me fix clothes for my dolly, too.”
The next day, while I was treadling my old-fashioned sewing machine and catching up on the mending, Donny and Richard ran in, flushed from play. Don, bare from the waist up, flourished a row of turkey feathers held in place by a leather strap in his blond hair. His fair cheeks had streaks of red water-color paint.
“Hi, Mama, we’re playing cowboy and Indian,” he said, pointing to Richard, who wore a battered cowboy hat and a bandanna knotted at his neck. “Boy, are we ever having fun!”
“Yeah,” Richard said, holding up a length of clothesline. “Here’s my lasso. Watch out the window, Mama, and I’ll show you some tricks I’m learning.” He dashed out.
When we were alone, I told Don, “You seem to be happy with your new brother.”
He looked astounded. “Well, gosh, why shouldn’t I be?”
“That’s a good question. Before I went to college, I seem to recall that you kept hollering for me to take him back.”
“Well, gee. Like Daddy told me. When a guy goes out and picks a bunch of roses, he ought to expect a thorn or two. Richard’s a real neat guy, boy.”
And my “Indian” whooped out to rejoin the cowboy.
Gregory, far from being resented by the other children, was the family pet. He was still cutting his baby teeth, and they watched him as excitedly as any set of fond parents. If one of the children was feeding him his cereal or applesauce one morning, and the spoon clinked on a new tooth, you’d have thought it was somebody’s birthday from all the gathering around and hullabaloo. The first time Greg pulled to his feet, the children cheered and laughed and praised him so much he giggled until he fell down. They encouraged him up again and again, until he learned to be steady on his feet; from then on, he was into everything.
Donny, as a baby, had explored his new world by putting as much of it into his mouth as he could. Gregory was different. Completely ignoring the world of taste, he turned all his attention to the fascinating world of sound. He never went around like a crawling vacuum sweeper, as Donny had, and never put a single thing into his mouth. Greg wanted to know but one thing: what does it sound like? He rapped his knuckles experimentally on everything, grinning as he listened attentively to the varying timbre of sound. His favorite toy was a tom-tom Carl had made out of a piece of old inner tube, stretched across a large-sized tomato-juice can. This amused the older children, and they taught him a song called, “Big Red Indian, Beats Upon His Drum.” Gregory couldn’t talk yet, but he could imitate the tune perfectly, singing a lilting da-da-da in place of the words.
I thought that at least Alex might feel jealousy toward Gregory, since his place as baby of the family had been usurped by this little newcomer. Apparently Alex was ready to grow up, and let someone else be baby for a change. He was as proud and possessive of the baby as were his older brothers and sisters.
“My baby,” he often announced with a big grin, his eyes crinkled shut as he happily patted Gregory on his dark hair. “Mine!”
One day a parishioner came to visit. She admired Gregory, who crawled at our feet on the floor, knocking with his knuckles on the linoleum, the chair legs, the toes of our shoes.
“Isn’t he a darling?” she cooed, leaning over to snatch him up for a kiss. Startled, Gregory scuttled into the next room and peeked out from under a dining-room chair with his round, brown eyes.
“Isn’t he sweet?” she gushed, then turned to the children clustered in the dining-room doorway. She was teasing, as adults often do, but the children didn’t know it. “I don’t have any baby. You have so many children here, you surely wouldn’t miss one. I think I’ll take that baby home with me!
They lost no time. Susie ran and held the front door open. Alex grabbed the lady’s hat and purse from the table and dumped them into her lap, his small black eyes flashing fire.
“Bye, bye,” he spit out, and it was more than a hint. It was a royal command.
The next time the parishioner came to call, Laura peeked through the curtains at the front door, and promptly turned the lock.
“It’s that lady who wants to take Gregory away,” she hissed to Teddy. “Run, lock the back door too. We just won’t let her in.”
Richard was nearsighted, so Carl drove him up the coast to Fort Bragg, to have him fitted for glasses. It was the best part of a day lost from his church work, and my conscience bothered me. If the last three children were going back, the sooner they went back the better. The longer they stayed, the more they seemed blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh, like the rest. It would be like cutting off a piece of myself, to see them go. . . .
That night, after the children were tucked into bed, Carl said, “Honey, we shouldn’t put it off any longer.”
I looked at him, and there was a lump of something’cold and heavy where my stomach was supposed to be. I knew what he was going to say.
“About thos
e last three, I mean,” he said.
I nodded, trying to keep my chin from quivering.
“The sooner we get it over with, the better I’ll feel about it. I don’t like it just dragging on and on like this.”
I tried to think of Carl’s needs, to concentrate on Carl’s face so that I wouldn’t see the faces of Dorothy, Richard, and little Gregory—so I wouldn’t cry, and let Carl know how bad I felt.
It didn’t work. All of my love for those three children welled up in my eyes, and the next minute I was in Carl’s arms, sobbing.
“Why, honey,” he exclaimed, surprised. “What in the world brought this on?” He patted my back helplessly.
“I—I suppose I’d get used to it, in time,” I said in a shaky voice. “And I know it’s better for everybody this way—”
Carl sat down and pulled me into his lap. He looked hurt, disturbed. “I had no idea you felt so strongly. I thought you might feel different about the new kids after you’d been away all summer. But if you’re absolutely sure you don’t want to adopt—”
“Adopt?” I popped upright in his lap. “Is that what you were talking about doing, to adopt? Richard, and Dorothy, and Gregory?”
Carl looked at me, puzzled. “Who else, silly? What did you think I wanted to do with them? Take them back to the orphanage?”
“Well I, well I—” I grabbed his shoulders and tried to read his eyes. “I thought that was what you really wanted, to take them back. I thought you were just putting up a good front about liking them, just to be nice to me.”
“I wouldn’t set those three kids adrift,” he said indignantly. “They’re wonderful youngsters. I’m proud to call them my children. That’s why I said I didn’t want to put it off any longer, getting their adoptions started. I’ve been meaning to talk about it ever since you came home. But every time I brought up the subject of the new children, the conversation seemed to get sidetracked to something else.”
“Call up the lawyer,” I told him happily. “Let’s get the court wheels moving.”
While we were waiting out our probationary period, the children started to school, then Halloween and Thanksgiving came and went, and it was Christmas again.
My mother and father, back in Illinois, sent out Christmas gifts to the children. They also wrote a letter saying how much they looked forward to a trip west the next summer, so they could get acquainted with their northern-California grandchildren.
On Christmas day, after we had our stockings and our tree at home, we drove down to Santa Rosa for a family get-together at the home of Carl’s parents. Carl’s father, who had become quite fond of little Gregory that summer, delighted in giving his papoose grandson a horsy-ride on his knee. He had also taken quite a shine to Richard; as a carpenter and a fine craftsman, he was pleased to find a boy who also had a knack with tools—Richard was forever whittling and working with wood.
As Carl and I watched, the baby crawled off his grandfather’s knee and headed for the piano. Carl’s father pulled Timmy up on his lap and started telling him a story.
“That tickles me,” Carl said. “When I was a boy, my dad used to say that you could never trust a Jap, and the only good Mexican was a dead one. And Timmy is both. I guess that shows that anyone can change his ideas for the better.”
The other youngsters were crowding around their grandfather’s chair. Out in the kitchen, Dorothy and her grandmother were talking chummily together. I whispered back, “You know, I believe they like our children just as much as if they were natural grandchildren. And when my own folks come out for their visit this summer, I’ll bet they’ll feel the same way.”
“Why shouldn’t they?” Carl smiled. “Maybe once these were children that nobody wanted, but not any more. Anybody would want them, now.”
“You know,” I said, “I don’t think there really is such a thing as an unwanted child. Anybody in the whole world could have the bad luck to be in a particular place where he didn’t happen to be wanted. But somewhere else in the world, there are always those who would love him.”
Carl nodded. “There’s the job that needs to be done. To help the ones needing love to find people who have it.”
Just before we gathered the children together for our trip back to Boonville, I overheard Teddy and our girls talking to one of their young cousins.
“I like your baby brother,” the cousin said.
“Us, too,” Teddy said.
“Guess what?” the cousin said.
“What?” Susie asked.
“We’re going to get a new baby, too.”
“Oh.”
A respectful and awed silence followed this announcement, then Laura asked, “Is your mother going to the orphanage, and adopt him?”
The cousin was taken aback. “Well, no. She’s just going to go to the hospital and have him borned.”
Again the silence, then came Laura’s consoling voice. “Well, don’t feel bad. I expect she’ll really get to love him, just the same.”
And all our children nodded.
I had a bonus present that came unexpectedly. The week after Christmas the children came running into the house, bursting with excitement.
“The ’lectricity men came,” Timmy shouted. “They’re putting up a new telephone pole in our yard.”
After having been postponed for financial reasons, then waiting its turn on the crewmen’s schedule, the 220 heavyduty wiring at last was coming to our house. Carl remodeled the kitchen, installed our electric range, automatic clothes drier, and dishwasher. A new septic tank had been dug, and the water now drained out of the sink instead of overflowing. The church even installed an electric hot-water heater, so I now had automatic hot water.
“Never was a woman so fortunate,” I told Carl. “With all these labor-saving machines, I don’t work as hard with twelve children as I did back in Hebron, when I had three.”
Another tremendous help was Carl’s getting up and cooking breakfast in the mornings. “I got used to doing it when you were at college,” he told me, “and I sort of like to keep my hand in things.”
Now, with Carl cooking the morning meal, with my breakfast dishes, my daily washing, and housecleaning done by noon, I was practically a lady of leisure. The three smallest boys took naps after lunch, the other nine children were still at school, and I had my afternoons free to work on a college extension course. Carl thought it would be nice if I finished my senior year and got my bachelor of arts degree, as long as I was so close to it. He thought it would be a good example to the children.
When grade school let out, I had plenty of time to talk with the children, and still get a casserole or stew finished for supper, along with a gallon or two of tossed salad. In the evenings I took care of the family mending, while the children sat at Carl’s feet and listened to stories, or while we all sang. Our family was always singing.
I was singing, too, when our lawyer phoned and told us that our probationary waiting period was up, and a court date set for the adoption hearings.
The night before the important day, Carl and I went around tucking the children into their cribs and beds and bunks. Hair like ripe wheat, hair shining like polished chestnuts, and hair as jet as the night sky outside, was flung quietly against white sheets. Donny was asleep in his top bunk, one arm hanging over down toward the bottom bunk, where at last he had a boy the right size of him. Richard had gone to sleep, his face peaceful, with his glasses on; Carl removed them gently and put them on the dresser.
Timmy was relaxed, a roly-poly Puck caught in his own enchantment. In the bed beside him, Teddy was a slim brown pixie curled under an imaginary mushroom, snoring with his lips parted. Alex and Greg were each sleeping softly in their cribs, more like dolls than babies.
In the girls’ rooms, Susie lay with one fair cheek against her favorite woolly lamb. Dorothy’s bed was tucked in as neat and tight as a hospital bed, but Diane’s was rumpled and looked like a magpie’s nest. Rita’s lashes lay like black lace against the creamy tan
of her face. Laura had crawled into Elaine’s bed, and they had fallen asleep with small hands still clasped over the quilt.
As we tiptoed back downstairs, I said, “In my prayers, I give thanks that we never had children of our own, after all. Of our own blood, I mean, because children couldn’t be any more my own than these. Somehow I feel that our family was meant to be just this way.”
“I do, too.”
I looked at him. “You truly don’t regret it?”
“If I had it to do over again, I’d still want it this way. You’re looking at a happy man who has his quiver full.”
“Full of what?”
“Children.” He laughed at my puzzled face. “It’s a phrase from a psalm:
“As arrows are in the hand of the warrior,
So are children to a man in his youth.
Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them.”
There was no mistaking his sincerity and he was not putting on any front. At last I was at peace with myself, inside. I put my hand in his.
“I’m glad you feel like that. I—I used to wonder, sometimes. You’ve always been so eager to, well, find God. You wanted to know what the divine will was, and you were often so impatient of things that stood in your way.”
“I did find God,” Carl said. “Not in my theology textbooks, not completely in a mere church building. I found Him this summer. I found Him in the trusting faces of our little children.”
In the morning Carl stirred up the usual gallon of hot oatmeal, sprinkled it, as we always do, with raisins instead of sugar, and poured the fourteen glasses of milk. Richard scrubbed oranges for everyone, and Dorothy filled one counter with bread, spread out for the eighteen school sandwiches.