This is an adoption story written by “Grace” an adoptee and sent to me. Grace’s story begins over 56 years ago; relinquished by Mavis, adopted by Kay and Charlie, with the help of the “Egg Lady” Mildred who acted as the go between. In many ways, it’s a typical adoption tome; literally a “nice” Catholic Girl gets pregnant, goes to her aunt’s, has a baby who is then adopted by a childless couple. Said baby grows up and searches for her mother only to find a fully intact family as her birthmother married her father and now has two full sibling brothers. And sadly, like so many, her original family was indeed broken and not prepared to accept a lost daughter even after 14 years of trying. ~Claud
There are no “tangled up in blue” memories of a mother’s arms to discover or sing about for Grace, who was adopted. She was born in starched white hospital sheets to Mavis, a Protestant girl who the delivering Doctor called “cold as ice.” According to the Doctor, Mavis had not held the child at all. She had turned over; self absorbed. Grace was then handed over to the Sisters of Providence for six days at the Catholic hospital after she came into this world to await a home.
“I put you on a shelf in the closet and closed the door,” Mavis calmly explained some 40 years later when Grace had grown up and found out her father and mother had married each other a couple of years after she was born.
How a woman who went on to mother two other children could blithely state this fact to her first born is a question still unanswered. The matter of fact tone she used spoke volumes. The question remains a searing wound unhealed to Grace; unspoken.
“The nuns treated me like dirt and hissed at me for smoking a cigarette with the nurses who were much kinder”.
This fact seemed to hold much significance to Mavis and was offered as if it would solve all queries and suffice.
Creating the “Well Behaved Adoptee”
Grace grew up knowing not only she was adopted, but, was also informed by Kay, the woman who adopted her, that if she didn’t “behave herself”, her adoptive father, Charlie, would “send her back to where she came from”.
This warning was given after some minor childhood transgression in an attempt to prove to Grace how callous Charlie was and how lucky she was to have Kay on her side. It may have been the time she hid behind the cellulose curtains in the archway to pee in hopes of catching Popo Gigio’s last few minutes on Ed Sullivan. The pee had created a puddle on the waxed linoleum without soaking into the chenille rug. Being just under three, the implications eluded Grace.
Kay used the same matter of fact tone as Mavis. The law of averages would lead one to believe that the chances of two emotionally crippled females aligning themselves with the same child are pretty slim, but it happened. These women were not nasty, conniving women; just two normal girls who grew up in the 1940’s.
Adoption Secrets and Small Town Rules
Mavis had an intact family steeped in Protestant ethics. Grin and bear it. Go somewhere quietly and disperse with the blessed embarrassment efficiently. A place was offered by her Aunt Mildred on an egg farm that produced strawberries as well. She left town to save strife for her family, especially her younger sister, Mary, who was still in high school.
The munitions town that Mavis grew up in was full of hardworking people who had jobs and prospects after the War to end all wars. Women were supposed to be happy with their appliances and leave the jobs outside the home to the men. The Catholic girls smoked behind curtains. The loose Protestant girls smoked in plain view, but not while walking. One group tipping their noses up to the other in full skirts, pedal pushers and pumps. Both Protestant and Catholic girls were expected to keep their legs together and their wits about them if they didn’t so people wouldn’t talk.
Down river further East, in a town with much less potential, Kay had grown up with her grandparents due to an affair committed by her mother which caused her father to fly the coup. At least that’s what Grace’s Grandpa said was the reason he jumped the border and moved to the States. The fact that the Grandpa, instead of Kay, told this to Grace when she was 18 drove the barren woman to blow Craven Menthol smoke out in a long puff like a steam engine.
“I don’t know why he would have told you and not me.”
Resentment simmered. Maybe for the same reasons Kay didn’t tell Grace what she knew about her birth; the harm that could occur or the uncomfortable questions that might follow?
Creating Families at the Chicken Farm
As luck would have it Mavis’ Aunt Mildred had befriended Kay. The old girl had chin whiskers and a dowager’s hump above her gnarled hands from carrying heavy wire baskets full of eggs with straw still attached. She wore her steely grey hair wrapped in a coil held by sharp hairpins and pumped an organ occasionally. Small towns being what they were; she must have heard that Kay and Charlie had neither chick nor child and saw an answer to the problem of having Mavis tucked away in a small bedroom ready to burst. She likely clucked happily to herself while candling her eggs one morning and a deal was hatched. Whether silver crossed her palm is only speculation. Sharp tongues prone to gossip mongers were dulled by the clever scheme.
An agreement was made and the secret was sealed. Appearances held in high esteem and mouths with lips pursed silently kept the pact despite Kay’s marriage that went awry and Mavis’s husband James’ tendency to drink. Mavis resorted to sipping Bourbon over the ironing board in wedded oblivion. Mavis’ boys were raised protected by the silence not knowing that a older sister existed. The family was sanctioned in proper protocol by the Holy Catholic church. James told Grace upon inquiry why he had not married Mavis when she was due. James being a good Catholic lad had gone to the Priest for advice stating, “I got a girl in trouble”.
James quietly told Grace “The priest said, ‘Is she of our Parish and when I answered No he replied ‘There is nothing I can do’. ”
Not Always “Better” but the Church Approves
Evidently the Hail Mary’s and rosaries could not bring this child to her rightful place despite the Grace of God. No amount of standing, kneeling, candle burning or confession could right this wrong. The product did not candle well to the light and the results were not fit for the Holy Catholic Church.
There was a Catholic church just down the street from the Anglican church where Grace went as a child on Sundays in black patent leather shoes and scrubbed knees. A thin dime held tightly in a white cotton gloved hand accompanied her. She attended in good humour to sing the songs and colour the pictures of Jesus and his deeds with all of the legitimate children. As the smashing and pushing continued in the little white framed house, the marriage became a burden, but Grace remained in acceptable attire with good grades.
Mildred, the egg lady took pity and gave Kay a job picking strawberries in the summer.
The sun burned the skin between the waist band of her pedal pushers and the hem of her sleeveless blouse. She wore a scarf tied in the front over her hair hunching over the row to insure that the bills were paid. Charlie broke into the freezer periodically and took the preserves to the other woman as a gift. He pried open the cedar chest and took the booty there as well. Despite this, Kay made his bed with Grace pulling the sheets straight in close quarters near the wall and the two walked the black metal lunch box down to the factory gate when the whistle blew at noon as any other dutiful females would.
One would hope that Mildred might have lifted the black phone and interrupted the party line to tell the acceptable Catholic family who gave up Grace because they might be concerned. “Things are bad and this little girl needs you”. Whether or not the call was made is a mystery.
Would Mavis have opened the closet door and taken the box off the shelf to find her heart melted? If she had come to reclaim Grace would it have broken Kay’s heart or provided relief when Charlie left them with no paycheque and the shame of a broken marriage?
A conversation was shared with Grace over the course of time that had occurred between the protected sister, Mary, and Mavis about giving Grace up. The sister had cancer and not long to live.
Mary said, “When are you going to go and find that girl”.
There was a disagreement of some proportion according to Mavis.
An Adoption Reunion 40 Years Later
A few months after Mary died somewhere up in the sky or the collective consciousness above Grace’s 40 year old head, a snippet of hope came through and a call was made. Grace called an old friend of Kay’s and Mildred’s maiden name was remembered. Information, please….the rest is history. The secrets bond broken and the silence shattered. Out of the woodwork, from off the shelf she jumped, into the proper Catholic family’s reality on a day between Christmas and New Year’s.
Forty years later almost to the day she was conceived. Perhaps the phone should have exploded in fireworks in lieu of the synchronized circumstance. Grace’s call brought an answer from a cousin who called Mavis’ brother. He called Mavis, who may or may not have been cleaning up Christmas paper when she heard the secret was out, alive and well. A decision was made to inform her two sons of the existence of a sister.
Cobwebs shuddered and tight lips gaped in gob smacked disbelief. Perhaps a candle flickered out in the Holy Catholic Church and a nun dropped a bead from her rosary. Protestants looked away and chewed the grizzle on their pork chops in grim resignation. They would rather the child stay hidden away until she turned to dust when they would come in to sweep the floor to prevent the buttons left from going to waste.
Questions Remain, Dreams Still Haunt
In the wee hours of the morning these questions still linger 15 years after breaking the silence; rattling Grace’s adopted head; sometimes manifesting themselves in twisted menopausal dreams with disturbing themes. There are Freudian knots that will remain long after the rope has disintegrated. Grace grew up, but the questions bring her back to the state she found herself in listening to the barren Kay and the adulterous Charlie bashing each other in the night. Grace learned to fly out through the roof and look down upon herself under the comforter trimmed with braid used as the guest bed when people came over to stay. Up through the rafters safe in the sky Grace was able to hover in the night.
In the dreams, Grace would turn the corner on her street to find her house had disappeared. It was gone. No hollyhocks, no rose bushes, no poplar tree, no white lattice work on the eaves; nothing. She would walk around the block hopeful that when she turned the corner it would be there again but it wasn’t. She would look in the lighted supper time windows of the others houses and watch the families eating their meat loaf and round steak; smelling it all. Wishing for mashed potatoes and peas alongside to be waiting for her on her dinner plate. Kay leaning with the screen door open and the steam on the window behind the bird cage with the two canaries Charlie had bought for Grace in the good old days.
Round and round she went until she woke up in a tangle of sheets with a pounding head and a sour stomach.
Mildred, the egg lady, is long dead. Kay died and maintained the title of “mother” to Grace.
The family that could have been goes on ,with or without her. No memories of watching cartoons in flannelette pajamas with her brothers or pulling them away in a wagon as Mavis told her she had dreamed. Mavis said she used to fear that something would happen to her sons to punish her for giving up Grace. The facts remain, the dreams keep coming and the Freudian knot exists despite the rope’s demise.
There is no happy ending to some stories, just unanswered questions and a puzzle with a key piece missing. The churches stand silent with closed doors and waxed woodwork. The lips of those more invested in appearances clamped shut out of due diligence and the secrets kept in mothballs on closet shelves under lock and key.
The sky still holds stars in the night along with the children hovering high above the chimney tops waiting until all of the icy hearts melt and the memories are made. They whisper their secrets to each other as the lights flicker in the churches and the fat sizzles in the frying pans startling the women who worry over them.
Grace rolls over in her sleep and curses the fools who believe these children’s souls need baptism to go to Heaven.
