Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found Read online

  IN 1981, RONALD Reagan was president and, with the aid of Congress, cut off Social Security death benefits for all students who were not full-time college students as of March 1982.

  Peggy took me to a restaurant called The Village Inn to tell me this news. She was panicked and wanted me to drop out of high school in order to get into college six months ahead of schedule.

  “It’s the only way to keep your benefits,” she said.

  Peggy wore a white and black polka-dot blouse—rayon—that tied at her neck. Under her chin was an enormous bow. Over this top, she wore a cheap gray blazer and a matching wool skirt.

  Richard was with us too. Upon Peggy’s urging, he had been interviewing for jobs. He wore a corduroy sports jacket two sizes too small and hunched over a plate of home fries, elbows splayed on each side of the plate. His cigarette burned in the ashtray on the table and the air was laced with his smoke.

  Leave high school early? Get into college now? No. I was just filling out all the applications. No, no, no.

  In my most professional, secretarial tone of voice, newly acquired from answering phones at my real estate office job, I said it was okay to let the benefits slide. “After all, you’ve been saving all these years so I’ll have enough for school.”

  Richard steered a glance at Peggy, at me, and then at Peggy again, but Peggy only stared into her cup of coffee.

  “There ain’t no money saved for you,” Richard drawled.

  “Yes,” I said, “there is.” I leaned closer to Peggy, as if we were the only ones at the table. “Don’t you remember? ”

  Red stains lifted on Peggy’s cheeks and swept down her neck.

  “That’s a goddamned lie!” Richard said.

  He hit the table and the dishes jumped against each other. People gawked. The waitress, coming over to refill Peggy’s coffee, changed course.

  “No,” I said. I put my hand on Peggy’s wrist, so she’d look at me. “You said. You promised.”

  “Now listen to me you snot-nosed kid—” Richard started.

  I held up my hand to stop him—a move I had seen Peggy do several times when she had had enough. Miraculously, he shut his mouth.

  I willed Peggy to look at me, eye to eye, woman to woman, and finally she lifted her chin. She glanced at Richard, just for a moment and then cleared her throat.

  “You must have misunderstood me,” she said. “There’s no money saved for college.”

  Was it the expression on my face—the shock—or was it just the way he was? I’m sure I heard Richard laugh at me. I’m sure I heard him go, “Heh heh heh.”

  IT’S TOO EASY to hate Richard. It’s too easy to hate Peggy, too. I don’t hate them. I don’t want to hate them.

  I do want to understand. I do want the truth. People have a right to these things. I can understand anything, if you just tell me the truth. Had Peggy said, “Geez, Jenny, I’m really sorry but after Richard lost his job we had to spend that college money.” Or, “I didn’t plan to save that money, not ever, I just said that to the man from the VA in order to look good in front of him.” Or, “I screwed up, I made a mistake. I’m sorry. How can I make it up to you?”

  None of this was said.

  Perhaps it is too much to ask from people who have been so wounded—somewhere in their own pasts—to make things right. Perhaps all I can do is let it go and apply a bit of healing amnesia to this situation. I don’t know the answer. Perhaps there is no answer. Perhaps this is just life, which is complicated and unfair and sometimes even cruel. Maybe it has to be this way in order for me to finally and fully appreciate how life is also simple, sweet, and beautiful.

  FIFTEEN

  SWEET INDEPENDENCE

  ON THE DAY I moved out of Richard and Peggy’s house, a gust of bitter wind blew over Spokane and then it began to snow. A blanket of white covered the lawns, the streets, and the rooftops. So much snow came down, I felt as if it were a sign. The past was gone and a new start was in front of me.

  My feet slipped on the sidewalk as I carried my bookcase to the front door of my new apartment.

  Up ahead, in the tumbling and swirling snow, stood a young woman. In the glow of the porch light, she looked like a snow angel.

  “Here,” she said, stepping forward. “Let me help.”

  She grabbed the other end of the bookcase and together we went the rest of the way.

  “New neighbor?” she asked.

  “Yep,” I said, “1A.”

  “2A,” she said.

  “Nice to meet you, 2A,” I said, and this made her laugh.

  I shouldered the door open and we carried the bookcase into the living room.

  My new place was a one-bedroom apartment near the community college where I was a full-time student. The living room was scattered with boxes and my princess bedroom set.

  “Actually, I’m Patty,” she said.

  Once the bookcase was deposited, I stomped snow off my feet and extended my hand.

  “Nice to meet you, Patty,” I said.

  She was about twenty-five years old and shaking her hand felt like holding a little bird—her bones were so fine. Patty looked around at my meager belongings, a smile fixed to her face.

  “Do you have a daughter? ”

  “What?”

  She pointed at the disassembled princess bedroom furniture, scattered between the boxes, and I finally understood. She thought I was a mother!

  I laughed so hard, I had to pinch my side. A mother? Me? That was a good one.

  At this point—having just left home—motherhood and I were not on good terms. In my wake there had been Peggy, Deb, and Janet—not to mention the mother who left me in the hospital on the day I had been born. Motherhood translated to mean inhumane in my vocabulary. I’d become a giraffe before I’d become a mother—or so I thought as I laughed in front of this stranger.

  “No, I don’t have a child,” I finally said, wiping tears of mirth from the corners of my eyes. “I’m saving this furniture. It’s mine. I’m not even married.”

  “Oh,” she said, put off by my borderline hysteria. She crossed her arms and shifted a little from side to side. “I’m getting married,” she finally said. Her ring finger held a very impressive rock.

  Since marriage was about as interesting as the subject of mothers, I could only muster a tepid response.

  “Congratulations,” I said. “Very pretty.”

  Patty did a hop and clapped her little hands as if marriage were a pinnacle of accomplishment.

  I squinted as I considered her. She seemed familiar to me.

  “Have we ever met before? ” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “Huh, you seem very familiar.”

  “Yeah,” Patty agreed. “You too.”

  FOR THE FIRST month of being on my own, I slept for twelve hours a day.

  I wanted to purge Peggy and Richard and all that had been. I didn’t want to know them, I didn’t want to think about what had passed between us as a so-called family and I didn’t want to be their daughter.

  I was haunted by the legal fact that they continued to be my parents.

  I tried to figure out a way to null and void them but didn’t know how such a thing would be possible.

  Sleeping was all I could figure out.

  “IT’S BEING ADOPTED,” Patty said. “That’s what we have in common.”

  “I still can’t believe you’re adopted too.” I said.

  “I still can’t believe you were adopted twice,” she said.

  We were in my living room, and she curled in the corner of my new L-shaped sofa. We drank glasses of red wine, which she brought as a housewarming gift. I had all new things. Mature furnishings—a sofa, an end table, a dining set, and drapes.

  With glasses of wine, we unfurled the stories of our lives and Patty’s tale lifted simple and easy, like wind on a spring day. She grew up in Spokane, went to the same school her whole life, and had a lot of friends. Her adoptive
parents loved her and she visited them all the time.

  I felt my own story was not even capable of lift off in light of her tale. I didn’t tell her much. I was in the process of sealing up the vault of my past. I was like one of those optimistic souls who believed you could contain radioactive waste if you just poured enough concrete, not realizing that it didn’t work that way. Like radiation, the past and our shadows are alive.

  I just changed the subject.

  “How do you like my place? ” I asked. “Groovy, huh?”

  Patty looked around. “You’ve done such a nice job,” she said.

  “It’s amazing what you can do with a credit card,” I quipped.

  She sipped her wine and considered me for a long time. I thought, for sure, she was going to try to pry my history out, but then she said, “I’m searching for my first mother.”

  She put her glass on the table and looked relieved. “You are the first person I’ve told.”

  I put my own glass on the coffee table and pulled my knees to my chest, as if recoiling from her and such a ludicrous plan. Search for her mother?

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Why am I telling you or why am I searching?”

  “Both, I guess.”

  She looked up at the ceiling, as if to find an answer.

  “Well, I just have to search, it’s in my heart,” she said, “and I felt like you might understand.”

  “Me?”

  “Well, sure,” she said.

  She looked at me, all starry eyed and hopeful and I wanted to suggest she go live with Peggy for a few months, that would shake her out of her romantic notions about mother. Patty was a woman who desperately needed a reality shakedown. Mothers were bad news.

  “Oh,” I finally said, “well, good luck with that.”

  I picked up my wine again and sipped the dark, bitter liquid. Patty did the same.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  AS A COLLEGE freshman, I attended journalism classes, had a spot on the student newspaper, studied French, and was a cheerleader for the football team. My journalism advisor said I had the makings of a fine reporter—as if he had picked up the script left by Ms. Nuxoll back in high school. He also said I should try to get an internship at the local newspaper. He promised to put in a good word for me.

  ONE DAY IN the spring, I came home from classes, my pack over my shoulder and a bag of groceries in my arm. Patty waited on the steps with a letter in hand.

  “I found her,” Patty said. She had tears in her eyes.

  Without knowing, I knew she meant her first mother. I dropped my things and we hugged in the narrow hall. Her door was wide open, as if she had been waiting for me. Mine remained locked.

  “I can’t believe how fast it happened,” she said, over my shoulder. “I wrote to the agency, just like they told me to do, and a letter was waiting. My first mother wrote years ago.”

  She stepped back and wiped tears away with her fingertips. She looked proud, relieved, grateful, tired.

  “My mother lives a few miles away, on a farm. She married my father, just after I was born but they couldn’t get me back. They have been waiting my whole life. Can you believe it? I can’t believe it. The whole thing feels surreal.”

  Her story was like a Disney fairytale. It was magical and amazing and even inspiring. I was happy for her, I was, but I didn’t believe in Disney fairytales. My sensibility was more aligned with The Brothers Grimm.

  I gathered up my groceries and my pack. “So, what now? Will you meet? ”

  “Yes,” she said, “she wants to meet me, right away. Of course, I want to meet her too.”

  “Of course,” I said. I unlocked my door. “That will be so great.”

  Inside, I turned on the lights in the living room, not the overhead, just the sconces and then the big brass lamp. In the dining room, I did the same thing—setting the lights on dim.

  Patty followed me into my home, chattering about what had happened. I went to the kitchen, nodding and saying, “Uh huh.” I turned on a lamp and put the groceries on the counter.

  Finally, Patty stopped talking and let out a deep, satisfied sigh. She looked around the kitchen.

  “Your place is always so clean. I don’t know how you do it.”

  “It’s just me,” I said. “It’s easy to keep clean.”

  “This is why I don’t have you over. You would be appalled.”

  “No I wouldn’t.”

  Patty leaned against the counter while I unloaded a carton of eggs, a stick of butter, and a half-gallon of milk. “You know,” she said, “you should search too.”

  I laughed like that was a good one and stood in front of the open door of the refrigerator. “Do you want a beer?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  I took out two beers, untwisted the tops, and passed one to her. Even though I was underage in Washington, I could buy beer and wine in Idaho, which was a thirty-minute drive. We clinked our bottles, said “Cheers” to her good news, and the beer sent a fast buzz into my arms and legs. I leaned against the edge of the counter like Patty.

  “I mean it,” Patty said. “I bet your mother is waiting for you too.”

  I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and looked at my friend, drunk on her good fortune.

  “What if she’s not?” I asked.

  “What if she is? ” she countered.

  “What if she’s not?” I asked again. The sound of my voice was harder than I meant it to be.

  Patty looked at me and I looked at her and she looked away first—unable to answer.

  The end of our friendship was near.

  EVEN THOUGH I thought I had forgotten Richard—he was soon in my life again in the form of a smart aleck guy named Jeff Means. Means. Can you imagine?

  Jeff played football on the junior college team and would stare while I yelled out cheers from the sidelines.

  “You’ve got the best legs I’ve ever seen,” he’d say after every football game.

  “You need glasses, buddy,” I tell him.

  He was a Class-A jerk.

  WHEN WE STARTED dating, Jeff Means told me he wanted to play football but he knew it wasn’t going to happen because he was too short.

  Jeff was cute enough but he was so young, so boring, and he was doomed between the sheets. The guy didn’t know up from down and was all over me like an overexcited puppy. I didn’t have the heart to tell him how bad he was and instead endured whatever he was trying to do.

  From the very beginning, I looked for a way to end it but Jeff was an amalgam of persistence and confidence. Jeff also insisted he loved me and that I would never find a guy like him again. I remember Richard saying a version of this to Peggy. No one will love you like I do, Baby, heh heh heh.

  A part of me—the old, wise, and cynical part—knew that Jeff didn’t love me. Jeff loved having sex with me. He also loved that I used birth control.

  Another part of me, the part that kept going out with him and who was so hungry to be loved, wondered if he was right about never being loved again. I hadn’t been loved up to this point—I had only been used. How would I know the difference?

  IN THE BEGINNING, I put up a good fight against Jeff and his intention to take complete occupation of my body, my home, and my life. I manufactured a story about being Catholic. I made a big deal about this spiritual affiliation, and with as much authority and mystery as I could conjure, I said being Catholic meant we couldn’t live together. I explained that cohabitation was a huge sin. I added that people who lived together had to be married—not because I wanted to be married, I didn’t. I said this to scare him.

  WHEN I MOVED from Richard and Peggy’s, I packed my Columbia Viking Desk Encyclopedia set in a big box marked “childhood.”

  A few weeks after Patty found her mother—I unpacked the set. Under the letter C, I found the sheet that described my birth parents.

  Mother: 17, blond hair, blue eyes, 5’ 8.5”, 128 pounds, English, Scottish, German, and Irish ance
stry.

  Father: 17, brunette, brown eyes, olive complexion, 5’ 11”, 160 pounds, German and Irish ancestry.

  I don’t know why I did it. It was insanity. A kind of selfmutilation. Emotional suicide.

  I suppose what drove me was the possibility that my first mother might be out there waiting for me. Within Patty’s success, I felt my cynicism—that great protector—finally slide aside. Like the tiny beating wings of a moth racing to the deadly light, I called the number on the top of the page and spoke to a woman in Nevada who worked at the Department of Child and Family Services. In a matter of moments, I was transferred to the adoption registry and a nice woman told me to write a letter. She said that if my first mother wrote a letter too, we’d be matched.

  I wrote the letter.

  A MONTH AFTER I sent the letter, I sat on my bed with the telephone on my lap. I called the Nevada Adoption Registry.

  “Hello,” a woman answered.

  “Yes,” I said, “I wrote a letter, um, let’s see, about a month ago. I was just wondering if you received it and have a file in my name.”

  The lady put me on hold. I looked around my bedroom—just to have something to do. My bed was queen sized and covered with a soft comforter. There were pillows, from big to small—at least six—and at the end I kept a fuzzy throw. My favorite thing was to be in bed, reading and doing homework. I loved my bed.

  The woman came back on the line and said yes, they had opened a file in my name.

  I cleared my throat and forced words.

  “Opened?” I asked. “Meaning you didn’t have a file already? No one else has written? ”

  “Yes, that is correct. You are a new case.”

  “Case?”

  “Adoptee making a request,” she explained.

  There was a thickness closing my throat, that predicable precursor to tears.

  “No one has written?” I asked.