2 A So-Called Normal Young Woman
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Orphans don't know what to think about tomorrow. It's like we're afloat at sea in the dark and the sky is always overcast, so we don't know in what
direction we're heading or if we're heading anywhere. We even wonder if we will ever have a Christmas or a birthday. Who really cares if we do? The state? The caregivers at the orphanage? Even though all these people might have good intentions, it is still not the same as being in a living room on Christmas Day or on birthdays, opening presents with people we love and who love us. We know about it, of course. We see it on television or in movies, and we read about it in books, and of course there are those who had families for a while, those like me.
In the deepest places of my memory, I hear a piano playing on Christmas Day. I smell the hot apple pie and I see snowflakes sticking to the windows, the light of our living room illuminating them so they twinkle as though their edges consist of tiny diamonds. No matter how cold it was, the world inside our home was warm. It would surely be the same for all of us, but to have all that, we had to have families.
Think about never celebrating a Mother's Day or Father's Day or anyone else's birthday in your family. Think about the word family, and imagine it not being in your vocabulary. Think about feeling as if you are a whole other species. That's how it was for us.
People always say, "Blood is thicker than water." For us it was truly as if we had only water in our veins. No wonder I clung so hard to the memory of my spiritual family, despite the efforts of my therapists and counselors. Who else did I have? It's a terrible thing to be dependent only on the kindness and charity of strangers. No matter how they help you and what they say whe
n they do, you can't stop yourself from feeling obligated. I hate having to feel grateful constantly. No one says thank you more than we do. The words are practically pasted to our tongues.
It is so important to have family, to have someone who is part of you and whom you are part of as well. What you do for each other comes from a deeper place, a place you'll share forever. There is no obligation. There is only love. That was the way it still was for me and Noble. How could I ever give that up?
However, over time while I was at my first orphan-age, attending a public school, making some friends, I began to see and hear Noble less and less. It wasn't that I no longer needed him. I would always need him. He was too much a part of whom and what I was. It was more that things that interested other girls my age began to interest me. I wanted to watch more television, read magazines, go to movies, and Noble never did any of that or talked about it. Although I had no boyfriends as such, I flirted with boys and fantasized like my girlfriends did.
Eventually, I overheard Mr. Masterson tell Madam Annjill that she was worried about me for no good reason, after all.
I had discovered years ago that if I put my ear to the vent between their kitchen and our bathroom, I could hear their conversations clearly. Somehow, I anticipated when they would be talking about me. Maybe it was because they often were.
"See," I heard Mr. Masterson say, "all little boys and girls have imaginary friends, Annjill, especially our little orphans. Celeste is no different, and now, as you say, she's doing it less and less."
"I still think there's something very wrong with that child. How could she be brought up in a world of such madness and not have anything permanently wrong with her?" Madam Annjill insisted. "Why are we having such a terrible time finding any couple willing to take her into their home? On the surface, she is attractive enough, and she is certainly a very intelligent child. I'll give her that. Look at her school grades."
"Someone will come along," Mr. Masterson insisted.
"No. No one will come along. She's had too many chances, too many lost opportunities. We'll have to go fish them in," Madam Annjill said.
I always suspected that was just what she finally went ahead and did, and that was how I found myself being taken into a couple's home for the first time. The Prescotts, the couple who came to see me soon after I overheard Madame Annjill and her husband talking about me, had already raised their family. They had grandchildren, in fact, but their rationale for seeking to become foster parents at this late stage was that their children and grandchildren all lived far away. They needed to fill their lives with something meaningful. I think that was more true of Mrs. Prescott than it was of Mr. Prescott.
As soon as she met me, Mrs. Prescott immediately asked me to call her Nana and her husband Papa, as if they could snap their fingers and poof make me into their new granddaughter. She said I would have their daughter Michelle's old room, with my own television set and school desk. They sounded very generous, but I knew that they would be getting money from the state to use to pay for my necessities and clothes.
Unlike the other couples who had met with me, they weren't at all put off by my demeanor. Perhaps Madam Annjill had prepared and warned them about me ahead of time. Mrs. Prescott's face looked molded out of plastic. The smile sat there and never so much as twitched. Nothing I asked or said seemed to bother them, even when I asked Mrs. Prescott why her daughter or her son and their children wouldn't need the room I was to have when they visited. From the way she glanced at her husband, I did sense that they were not visited that often by their children and grandchildren, and that truly bothered both of them, perhaps Mrs. Prescott more.
Mr. Prescott was a tall, thin, balding grayhaired man with a pale complexion and watery dull brown eyes. Almost the entire time he was there, he tapped his long fingers on the arms of the chair as if he was keeping time to a marching band.
"And when they do come, we'll always find a way to accommodate everyone, dear," she told me. "Not to worry. Oh, how wonderful it will be to have a little person in our lives again! Why, I even had some clothes in the attic that would fit you, and I know I have lots of toys in the closet, lots of pretty little dolls, too," she declared.
She clapped her hands together and rubbed her palms as if she was washing them. She was stout, with a small bosom and wide hips. I imagined that long ago she had lost her waist, and the person she had once been had faded away like some very old photograph.
"Won't your grandchildren be upset about your taking me in and giving me so much of what belonged to them, especially dolls?" I asked.
Even at that young age, I could fix my eyes as a prosecutor fixed his on a witness in a courtroom. Madam Annjill always told me that was impolite, but I did it anyway. Most orphans wouldn't dare ask such a question for fear of bringing up a reason for their prospective parents to reject them.
But it was an important question for me. The last thing I wanted was to be taken somewhere else to be resented. I was already nine years old, and I knew about envy. Jealousy lived beside each orphan and could instantly turn any of our eyes green as soon as someone else had received a gift or had a prospect of being adopted. Surely it would be even worse when it came to my taking a part of the Prescott's grandchildren's world.
"Oh, no, no. No, no," she chanted.
During the whole interview, Mr. Prescott looked out the windows with an obvious longing to be out there instead of in here with me and all this adoption business. Later, I found out he lived for golf, and anything that interrupted his usual schedule was distasteful.
If Mrs. Prescott knew that, she ignored it or didn't care. She was in no rush. She talked incessantly, describing their house, which she said was a modest two-story Queen Anne with a wraparound front porch. She told me they had a pretty sizable backyard, with lots of room to exercise my little legs.
"Papa will fix the swing set in the back, too, won't you, Papa?" she asked him.
"What? Oh, absolutely," he said. "All it needs is a good paint job and some grease."