by Mark Johnson
“So the solution has become real clear to me, for these litters of feral youth running our streets: adoption or foster care. We need to break up these destructive, chronic clusters of criminal parasites. They’re not really families—there’s no social unit to save. Adopt ’em out to real families ideally, though that seems to be out of fashion these days.
“For the life of me I don’t know why. Some of you know, I’m a bastard, myself. A love child, put up for adoption as an infant. There was too much stigma back in the fifties for unmarried girls to keep their kids. Today, the middle schools have special parenting classes for thirteen-year-olds! Where’s the shame? We need to put the stigma back on pregnant girls and snatch their little bastards up for adoption.
“And if there aren’t enough adopting families, we build orphanages. Run by professionals, usually affiliated with churches. They’re a thing of the past, too, because it’s fashionable to be a single mother, and Uncle Sam subsidizes it. We build either more orphanages or more prisons.”
I’m undeterred by the open mouths and wide eyes around the table. I let the other shoe drop: “That’s the treatment. But to break the cycle, to prevent it, we should require monthly drug screenings and contraceptive injections as a qualifying condition for any and all government or charitable aid.
“There you have it: state-mandated adoption, orphanages, drug testing, sterilization.”
Silence.
I can talk a good game, despite private doubts. Besides, being the turd in the punch bowl can be fun, when your career isn’t threatened.
*A holder of a Master in Social Work degree.
7
My Parents Never Did That!
“You bastard!”
“Yessir, in my case, an accident of birth. But you, sir, you’re a self-made man.”
—Lee Marvin’s reply to Lee J. Cobb in The Professionals
Ernie and I and the others huddled in our tent, our flashlights focused on the cosmic wonders revealed in Ernie’s older brother’s smuggled copy of the holy grail. These amazing women, with their boobs exposed, smiled shamelessly, alluringly at us from the dog-eared pages of the Playboy magazine. We were maybe eleven or twelve years old, on the annual Boy Scout Troop 68 Spring Camporee, at Round Spring in the Ozarks.
The glossy anatomical catalog naturally led to a discussion of “the birds and the bees,” or “the facts of life”: the Talk that we were all awaiting from our fathers, the one about how babies are made. We knew it had something to do with our penises and the mysterious (and unseen) private parts of the female of the species. For well over a year now, about the time since we’d all graduated from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts, what was to be revealed to us in that imminent Talk was a matter of relentless speculation and conjecture, hopes and fears, discussed and imagined in minute detail every time we got together for a troop activity. Occasional reporting back from second- and thirdhand sources—usually somebody’s friend’s older brother or cousin, who’d received the Talk already—provided us with tantalizing, shocking, unbelievable details.
After our meticulous examination of female anatomy as revealed in Playboy, the mystery (and the sheer power of the mystery) of Woman struck awe and terror into my heart. Simple images, poses, skin, triggered murky thoughts that caused alarming physical stirrings and thickenings over which I had no control. What was going on?
Ernie and I retired to our own tent, and that’s when Ernie confided that he had discovered the Facts of Life in a book he had found hidden away in his older brother Chip’s closet. This didn’t have pictures, like Playboy—it was like a textbook, and it had diagrams. He had committed a key one to memory and re-created it for me. He drew a picture of a female from the waist down (actually, from the boobs down) and a male from the waist down. With arrows, he indicated what went where. I was horrified and demanded to see the original text. Ernie swore this is what he had seen in Chip’s textbook.
“Chip would beat me up if he looked in his closet and the book was gone!” Ernie said. “There’s no way I could sneak it out without him finding out! But I’m tellin’ ya, this is what it shows! I memorized it! This is what happens. Our parents did this to have us!”
I bowed up. My hands balled into fists, ready to go to blows with my best friend.
“Not my parents! They never did that!” I declared.
“Everybody’s parents do this! Mine, yours—it’s how the sperm gets to the egg! It’s in the book! And they do it sometimes even if they don’t want babies!”
“What? Why?”
“Because it feels good!” Ernie explained, as if it made perfect sense to him. “There’s ‘pleasure,’ the book said.”
“I don’t care how good something feels, it’s not good enough to do that! My parents never did that!”
“Yes they did,” Ernie declared, assured, crossing his arms, triumphant. “Or else how did you get born?”
He thought he had me there. But he didn’t know what I knew. I was “special.” My own parents had told me this, as long as I could remember. I had been “chosen” by them. At a hospital. I told Ernie so.
“But . . . well . . . ,” Ernie pondered, stammered. He didn’t question my account of my origins, but for him it still didn’t explain everything. “But how did you get to the hospital?”
This I had never considered. Never asked. Never been told. I was surprised at my own lack of curiosity and was utterly stumped by Ernie’s question. There had to be an explanation. My mind raced. I was losing credibility with Ernie as the seconds passed. Finally, I hit upon it. Of course!
I shook my head as if Ernie was just an imbecile.
“I just came straight down from heaven. I’m adopted.”
Ernie considered this. “Oh.” He climbed onto his cot, saying no more. We switched off our flashlights. Ernie seemed to buy it.
But I had my doubts.
By the end of the next day, most of the guys in the troop had learned that I was special. Chosen. Adopted. Ernie may have bought it, but there were some older kids who knew better. One of them, Stephen Huntsinger, informed me of this. Huntsinger was fifteen and smoked cigarettes on our campouts. Purloined Chesterfields from his father. He acted like a hood and easily intimidated—if not outright bullied—us younger scouts.
Huntsinger called me over to the older guys’ campfire. This could be considered an honor, or a trial by fire. I steeled myself for the latter.
“So you’re adopted, eh Mark?” Huntsinger said with a menacing smile.
“Uh-huh.”
“Do you know what that means, Mark?” His smile broadened, as he faced his audience of fourteen- to seventeen-year-olds.
“Y-yeah,” I said. “’Course I know what it means. My parents told me.”
“Yeah, we heard what your parents told you, didn’t we, guys?” The older guys all smiled conspiratorially, and I braced myself, for I knew not what. “But we’re gonna tell you the Truth.” He paused for effect, again taking in his audience, building anticipation. “Adopted means you’re a bastard.”
My face must have indicated confusion. The audience snickered. Huntsinger elaborated.
“It means your mama was a whore.”
I had heard that word before, applied to older girls at school, who had already “developed” (had budding breasts) and were known to have on occasion allowed one or more boys to look at them, or—in one alleged account—touch them. But I still wasn’t clear on how that applied to adoption, or my mama.
Judging from the laughter of the audience, I realized that this was evidently meant to be an insult of some kind.
“You don’t know anything, Huntsinger! Just go to hell!” I declared, affecting a pathetic swagger as I quickly walked away from the guffaws of the onlookers.
When I returned home from the Spring Camporee, the first thing I did was to ask my parents what a bastard is. My dad looked angry, my mother sad. They asked where I’d heard it, and why I wanted to know.
“Steve Huntsinger says adopted mean
s I’m a bastard, and—” I paused, considered sparing them the rest, then decided to go ahead and unload it. “And it means my mama’s a whore.”
Their mouths dropped. Mama hugged me, and I think she was crying a little. They composed themselves, then told me the rest of the story, the part that preceded choosing me at the hospital.
There had been another mama and daddy, they said. Before us. But the other mama and daddy were poor and couldn’t afford to pay for everything a baby needs. And they loved me and didn’t want me to be hungry or cold or sad, so they decided the best thing for me was to give me to another mama and daddy who could afford a baby but couldn’t have one of their own. They were very sad to give me away, but they loved me so much they did what was right for me, even though it made them sad. And of course, it made us very, very happy. So don’t pay any attention to those boys and their bad words. Your mama was not a whore and you are not a bastard, and we don’t want to hear you use those words ever again.
I was immensely relieved that this exempted my mama and daddy from having engaged in that repulsive act that Ernie had diagrammed for me. But a little wiggling worm of wonder and worry was now implanted deep in my heart, and it continued to wiggle and grow for the next two decades: who were those other parents?
“I don’t think you’re a loser, Mark. Or an outlaw. Or even an alcoholic,” Dr. Cohen said, with soothing tones of assurance. I was eighteen and seeing the psychiatrist weekly. In the past year I had transformed from the high school senior Academic Honor Roll, Eagle Scout, Presbyterian Deacon, and Football Letterman to the freshman on academic and disciplinary probation, who had been arrested twice for brawling and disorderly behavior and was drunk almost daily.
From Wally Cleaver to Eddie Haskell, and worse. From Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. I was in my second semester at the University of Colorado, Boulder. I had disappointed my parents’ hopes for me of an Ivy League education by picking Boulder. I told them it was because of the architecture school there and the outdoor opportunities in the Rockies. But it was really to get as far away from St. Louis as my parents would allow. Dad had vetoed anything in California.
And it was for the Coors. The drinking age for beer was eighteen in Colorado.
Which is what finally brought me to Dr. Cohen, who had accepted my referral from the university’s Student Health Center.
“This is nothing more than identity confusion, Mark. You told me in our first meeting that you’re adopted. ‘I’m a real bastard’ is the way you put it, remember? Your first words at our first meeting. And you told me the little you know from asking your parents about your biological parents: ‘My father was a Marine, and my mother was one of the whores he knocked up on his way to Korea,’ you said. Then you admitted your mother was really a college freshman at some fancy East Coast college for women. She’s Presbyterian and an accomplished pianist. And that you even found out that your original name wasn’t Mark Johnson. It was Russell Culkin, wasn’t it?
“All these episodes, these misadventures you’ve been having since you left home for college, are nothing unusual, except maybe by degree in your case. But all freshmen, or any young adult who moves out of his parents’ home, whether he goes to college, or joins the navy, or gets a job, everybody goes through a process of individuation, whereby they separate from their parents and become their own persons. It’s normal for the process to be a little scary, and a little painful, and there are lots of missteps, but everybody goes through it.”
“Yeah, but nobody I know has dumped his high school girlfriend, fought with cops, and almost got kicked out of school in just a semester and a half. And nobody drinks like me.”
“Exactly,” Dr. Cohen said. He was unflappable. Calmest grown-up I’d ever met, even when I had described to him the depths of my depravity. “But how many of your friends are adopted? See, I think you’ve known for a while that what pleases Mr. and Mrs. Johnson doesn’t necessarily feel right for Mark Johnson, to say nothing of how it might feel for Russell Culkin—whoever he is, or was. Does that make sense to you?”
I nodded.
“I think all of your uncharacteristic behaviors are just a kind of research, it’s how you are trying out different ways of being, seeing what fits best. Unfortunately, some of the personalities you’ve tried on are not healthy or productive ones. You’ve been taking a sort of trial and error, experimental approach, and I don’t think it’s getting you any closer to who you really are, do you, Mark? In fact I think you’d agree it’s getting you farther away.”
I nodded again.
“Let me suggest a more effective way of solving the Mark/Russell riddle: instead of this sort of random, sometimes dangerous experimentation, why don’t you seek out the truth? Go directly to the source?”
“The records are sealed, if you’re talking about the original parents.”
“They can be found and opened,” Dr. Cohen asserted. “Russell Culkin’s roots can be discovered and examined, and your questions, your doubts and fears, can be put to rest, and then you won’t need to wonder and to try on all these other personalities. You can just be you.”
Thus began my first taste of detective work.
Being an unschooled amateur, and utterly without resources, I was clueless about how to proceed. I asked my parents what it would take to find out the identities of my biological parents. As usual, my dad got mad and mom got sad.
“What do you want to know for? The records are sealed,” Dad reminded me. “But even if they weren’t, there’s nothing good that would come from it. Who put this idea in your head? I bet it was some sociology professor.” (Dad had little regard for most of my elective courses.)
“Dr. Cohen. He said he thought it would help.”
“I shoulda known!” Dad said, shaking his head. He was building up a good rage, though he’d always been pretty adept at keeping it from blowing his cool. “Margaret, I don’t know why we’re paying for that psychology business. He’s not even Christian! We don’t know anything about his credentials.”
“Why does Dr. Cohen think it would help?” Mom asked, ignoring Dad’s rant, her moist eyes focused on me.
I explained to them about “individuation” and getting questions about identity resolved.
Dad walked off in disgust.
“We’ve told you everything we know, and your father’s right about the records being sealed.”
I asked Mom if she could just show me any paperwork they might have, like my birth certificate, or any legal adoption papers. She went to the filing cabinet and brought out a folder full of yellowed papers that they had showed me once before. “The name was a mistake,” she explained, pulling out the certificate of adoption. “They were supposed to put Mark Johnson, our name for you, there,” she said, pointing to a blank on the form that had the words “Russell Culkin, white male infant, age 6 weeks” typed in. “The agency said we could have the adoption certificate amended, but since they got it right on the birth certificate, we just never bothered. We were so excited to bring you home!”
“What ‘agency’? I always thought you got me at a hospital. You said I was born at Tulane Hospital.”
“You were. But before the delivery, the girls usually stay at a home for expecting mothers. And the home arranges the adoption. It was called The Willows. Our doctor recommended it to us. He said it had an excellent reputation and was known nationally for good placements. But I think it’s been closed for years. I don’t remember what I heard about why it went out of business. There wasn’t any trouble or scandal, but I do recall hearing about its not being around anymore. So as your father said, even if legally somehow the records could be unsealed, which they told us could never happen, I’m not sure you could even find the records, with The Willows closed for so long. I’m not sure you had even started kindergarten when I heard it closed, it’s been that long.”
“Well, do you know anything about the name? Culkin? Was that her name, or his?”
“There’s no way of telling, and what dam
n difference would it make if you knew?” snapped Dad. He had returned in time to hear my question, and his rage had simmered to a peevish disdain. I noticed he had poured himself a drink, although it was only midafternoon.
“Stan!” Mom scolded. “There’s no need for that language!”
“I just don’t see the point of him runnin’ off down some rabbit hole that’s not gonna lead him anywhere, Margaret! What he needs to do is buckle down to his studies!” He turned to me. “You need to just straighten up, get on an even keel. You’re not in college to ‘discover yourself.’ Or to learn how to drink beer! You’re there to get an education so you can start a career. This is nothing but a distraction from your studies, a waste of time! And your time is running out, do you understand me? The school’s about had it with you, and we’re about out of patience, too. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Stan! I don’t see what harm if Dr. Cohen thinks it could help.”
“Margaret, don’t make me spell it out,” Dad said, his eyes flashing again. “You know, and I know, he’ll never find out. And you also know that if he did, it likely would not be good. This matter is settled.” He then turned back to me, gravely serious. “Agreed?”
“Yes, sir.”
When I got back to school I contacted a free lawyer at Boulder Legal Services, who told me that I would need to hire an attorney in New Orleans, and that I would need to have a compelling medical reason on which to base a legal argument for a court order to open the records containing the identifying information about the relinquishing biological parents.
“I think my shrink would certify that my ‘compelling medical reason’ would be lunacy, likely of genetic origin,” I said, testily.
The legal aid lawyer was unfazed. That might suffice, he said, but with the placement agency closed for so long, chances were slim I’d be able to locate the records, even with a court order to open them. And in the unlikely event that the records could be found, and opened, he continued, the father’s name would probably not be included, and the mother’s name would most likely be a maiden name that would have changed over the years due to marriage. Rather than legal action, he said, I might want to consider hiring a private detective. But, he cautioned, that could easily be even more expensive than hiring an attorney, adding (with a chuckle) it’s even harder to find an honest, reliable detective than an honest, reliable lawyer.