If You Lived Here (27 page)

I stand up. “I’ll see you this afternoon, Doctor,” I say.

He nods, then picks up his paper again. “Good-bye, then,” he says, and opens it.

In the van on the way to the G and R, my dress, a dark blue knit, is already sticking to my skin against the tacky vinyl seat. It’s only ten
A
.
M
., and bound to get hotter, but I’m not worried. That’s the beauty of knit— it absorbs the sweat. One of the other new moms, in a green silk blouse,

will not be so lucky. You should never wear silk in the heat, unless you like your clothes attached to your back in great patches of sweat. I’m practical when I dress in the summer. I learned the hard way, at more than one graveside service in July. The men in our van know the rules. They carry their jackets folded neatly on their arms, not garments so much as props that tell the audience: I’m serious.

We’re in a bigger van today, with an aisle down the middle, and plenty of room for all of us and our children. The mood of our group shifts between anticipation and anxiety, like a team headed for a game we expect to win but still worry about, a little. My situation is pretty straightforward: married woman, husband waiting anxiously for wife and baby to come home. Two of the families—Chambers and Elder—have it harder. They’ve got birth mothers to meet, women who’ve come to sign the final documents relinquishing their children, and, I suppose, to say good-bye.

Mrs. Huyen tries to prepare them for this meeting. “These are poor women,” she says. “Some of them have five, six children already. Others are only teenagers. Today is a happy day for them, seeing their babies adopted by loving parents and leaving for America.”

No one responds. Mrs. Huyen offers what she thinks these parents want to hear, but, if they’re honest with themselves, it can’t satisfy them much. Nothing will erase the fact that, given more money, or husbands, or jobs, or a decent education, these women might have kept their babies. Even if they’re drug addicts, or insane, you can’t deny the heartbreak there. I feel relieved that I don’t have to deal with that reminder in per-son, even though I recognize the downside, the fact that, one day, Hai Au will regret that I know nothing about his mother, nothing of the per-son who left him, bundled in a blanket outside the Ha Dong Children’s Center one night at three
A
.
M
. Maybe I’ll regret, too, that he has no accurate history, no family medical records, no birth date, even. But he has a name, scrawled on a scrap of paper and tucked between the folds of his thin cotton shirt. Hai Au. A seabird stranded far from the sea. Who knows why she named him that? Maybe it’s fate, or some premonition that I would take him to a life at the beach. He comes to me with nothing but his name, and we will keep it.

Right now, he sits sideways in my lap, a dazed look in his eyes. It’s ten-thirty in the morning and he may be sleepy. I don’t know his rhythms yet.

“Should we talk to the birth mothers?” Marilou Chambers asks Mrs.

Huyen.

“No problem. You do what you like. In this province, the ceremony is very genial. You take some pictures of the birth mother, maybe a few minutes of video, save it all for your child to look at later.”

Each time Mrs. Huyen turns back around in her seat, someone has another question. “What’s the name of this province again?” John Elder wants to know.

His wife, Posie, sighs loudly. “Honestly, John. We even put it in our Christmas cards last year.”

“I’m sorry, okay? I forgot.”

Mrs. Huyen shifts again in her seat, smiling as if she’s talking to a five-year-old. “Ha Son Binh province,” she says, distinctly. Very teacherly. Mai called Mrs. Huyen a priss. She told me an even worse word for her in Vietnamese, but she won’t translate it into English. I’d like to catch Mai’s eye now, but she doesn’t seem to be listening. I can’t expect much help from her today, but I don’t think I need much, either. I’ve got my boy. If all goes well, he’ll be my legal son tonight.

Just as we pull up to our destination, Hai Au vomits across my blue knit top.

At eleven
A
.
M
., we enter a dim but spacious meeting room on the second floor of the Ha Dong Justice Department Building. Thankfully, it’s air-conditioned. Three long tables form a U in the center of the room. On each table sits a large arrangement of flowers and scattered bottles of La Vie drinking water. I carry Hai Au, who looks less dazed now that he’s thrown up. My shirt, rubbed with a handful of baby wipes, feels damp and stinks.

Dr. Thuy and a few of her caregivers meet us at the front of the room. Hai Au squeals when he sees Minh, and as soon as she opens her arms, he

reaches for her. I don’t deny him. I want whatever makes him happy. He rests his head against her shoulder and tries to wrap his little arms around her. I feel deeply, deeply jealous. Then Dr. Thuy says a word to Minh and she makes to hand him back to me. At first, Hai Au hangs on, refusing to let go of her, then, suddenly, he does. He turns in my arms to look at her, laughs.

We sit on one side of the U with our babies in our laps. The white-suited caregivers sit in chairs along the wall behind us, Dr. Thuy fluttering from baby to baby, patting cheeks, cooing. At the center table, five men and one woman page through folders full of documents. I lean over Hai Au and count through my dossier: the home study form, my birth certificate, Martin’s birth certificate, our marriage license, criminal records, health reports, copies of our passports, our U.S. government form I-600-A, giving us permission to adopt, our I-171-A, granting us final approval. I can remember a time, not so long ago, when I felt intimidated by the requirements of so many legal documents. Now, the adoption bureaucracy seems tedious, but straightforward. After all this time, I know it by heart.

A door opens at the side of the room and more people shuffle in. These are peasants, clearly, in solid-colored, loose-fitting pants and shirts, rubber sandals, a few carrying the famous conical hats. They look at us and we look at them. I count among them four young women who could be moms. One of the officials directs them to sit on the other side of the U facing us.

When everyone has taken a seat, a white-haired man at the center table gets up and makes a speech. He is Mr. Ha, vice-director of something or other. The audience stares in all directions, parents toward their children, children toward whatever toy or gizmo they covet, Vietnamese toward Americans, Mai toward the floor. It goes on for thirty minutes and you don’t even have to pretend to listen. Next to me, Hal Chambers puts his hand on his wife’s knee. The gesture seems both comforting and casual, a signal passed between a husband and wife a thousand times in the course of a marriage, silent acknowledgment of mutual need. I miss Martin.

When the vice-director finishes, we clap politely. Somehow, I don’t

feel nervous anymore. It’s oddly fun. The Chamberses go first. Their baby is a little girl, hardly nine months old, dressed, now, in a pink dress with a pink ribbon clipped to her few strands of hair. She’d been whimpering at first, but now, still clutching her bottle, she’s fallen asleep. They pick up their daughter, walk around the table, and stand in the middle of the U facing the officials at the central table. Hal reads a prepared speech. He sways as he speaks, gently nudging his wife’s shoulder. She gazes down at their child.

The Chamberses, adopting baby number three, have it down: He salutes the People’s Committee, the Justice Department, the entire government of Vietnam, thanks the birth mother, too, for trusting them with her child. At this point, after a nod from Mrs. Huyen, a woman steps forward. She’s not, as I had guessed, one of the young ones. She could be forty or older, tall and bony, her shirt hanging off her thin shoulders like clothes from a hanger. She stands with her hands behind her back, looking at the Chamberses, but not looking at the baby in Marilou’s arms. Then she begins to speak. Her voice is not loud, but it carries. Next to me, Mai looks up for the first time. Everyone in the room listens.

Mrs. Huyen translates: “ ‘My name is Vo Thi Minh Ha. I am thirty-seven years old. I come from Ha Tan village, seventeen kilometers from Ha Dong. My daughter—I call her Ngoc because she is a precious gem— was born September 3, 2001. We grow rice in our family. I have three older children and my husband died from a malignancy in his leg. In addition to the work that I do in our rice fields, I make tofu to sell in the market. So far I have managed to keep my three older children in school. I relinquish my rights to Ngoc so that she might enjoy an education that I cannot give her. Please take good care of her. If she ever asks about her family in Vietnam, tell her that she is our precious girl, that we will always love and cherish her.” When she stops speaking, the People’s Committee guy directs her with his chin toward the Chamberses. She walks around the table and approaches the couple and the baby, who stand in the cen-ter of the U.

At that moment, Marilou, the baby in her arms, takes the tiniest step

backward. It might not be conscious, because she rights herself immediately, and even asks Mrs. Huyen, in a voice that’s only slightly strained, “Would she like to hold the baby?” She lifts the child a few inches toward the birth mother, clearly offering.

The birth mother understands Marilou’s gesture, because she gives a little wave, like someone declining a generous gift, and keeps her distance. Her eyes are on Hal and Marilou, not on the sleeping child.

The Chamberses glance at each other. Hal holds up his camera. “Can we take your picture, then?” he asks.

Now the woman nods. Her hands hover around her head, working on her bun. Then she stands, arms at her side, staring at the camera. When Hal’s finished, she makes a request: “Please, send me pictures of my girl. One every year, if you can afford the postage. If the postage is too expensive, save your money. Just make sure that she can go to school.”

I can’t see Marilou’s face, but I can hear the cracking of her voice. “Tell her not to worry. We’ll send the baby to school and we’ll send pictures.”

The woman nods, apparently satisfied. One of the officials opens the dossier spread out in front of him and instructs her to sign. She leans over and signs quickly, awkwardly holding the pen. And then she begins to cry. She keeps crying as she walks back around the table to her family. In a flurry of whispers and glances at the Americans, they crowd out the door. The last I see of the birth mother, she is being led by the elbow, her face in her hands.

Next to me, Mai sighs. She’s staring at the floor again, her chin in her hand.

“Mrs. Shelley. You’re next.” Without knowing what I’m doing, I stand up. The officials watch me. With Hai Au on my hip, I page through the pile of papers on the table in front of me, even though I know there’s no speech inside. After a while, I look up. “I come from Wilmington, North Carolina,” I tell them. “Thank you for considering my applica-tion to adopt Hai Au. Thank you to the People’s Committee and Justice Department of Ha Dong. You don’t know me, but I have been waiting all

my life for this day. I have a big family and many friends back home who are waiting to welcome Hai Au. I promise to do my best for him. Thank you very much. Thank you.”

Nobody does anything for a minute. Hai Au’s fingers begin to work their way into my hair. I don’t know if I should sit down, so I keep standing, trying to keep my hair out of his grasp. Mrs. Huyen, who stands beside me, motions for me to walk into the center of the U. The officials lean forward in their seats, looking through the documents. “Should I give them my papers?” I ask. Mrs. Huyen nods. I pick up my file and walk around the table, into the center of the U. My hands are shaking. Hai Au’s attention turns to the ceiling fan.

I hand over my dossier and stand in front of the table. They go through them once, twice, then discuss them again. For some reason, they spend more time on me and Hai Au than they spent on the Chamberses, long enough for people to start whispering among themselves. Posie Elder pours herself some water. The Chamberses and the Surveys, sitting next to them, are cooing over each other’s babies. I look toward Mai for information. She shrugs. She doesn’t know what’s going on, either.

The officials keep talking, moving my papers around, pointing at this and that. Mrs. Huyen walks over and hovers above them. The woman in the spectacles keeps shaking her head, pointing to a line on one page and then a line on the other, then back to the first page, then back to the other. They’re taking a long time. I hold Hai Au’s hand.

“Mrs. Huyen,” I finally say. “What?”

She raises a finger to get me to wait. She and the woman go back and forth again, between one page and the other. I have no idea what the pages are. I am two feet away. The pages are upside down. I have filled out ten million documents in pursuit of my child.

I am patient. But, again, I say, in the most neutral voice possible, “Mrs.

Huyen? What?”

Now they all look up at me. The woman picks the two papers off her desk and hands them to Mrs. Huyen, who says, “They’ve noticed a dis-crepancy here. In your documents.”

“What?” I ask. Over my shoulder, I look back toward Mai. She stands up and hurries around the table toward me.

“Your I-600-A, your original form, with home study, you filled out with a Mr. Martin Marino, your husband?”

“Yes.” I shift Hai Au to my other hip.

“But you have no power of attorney for him.”

“Power of attorney?” Carolyn Burns never mentioned power of attorney. Mrs. Huyen never mentioned power of attorney.

Mrs. Huyen explains, as if she’s told me a thousand times, “In Vietnamese law, both adoptive parents must be present at the G and R, but the authorities waive this regulation if the absent parent signs a power of attorney.”

“Why didn’t anyone ever tell me that?”

The vice-director draws Mrs. Huyen’s attention away. She translates, “You need to contact your husband and have him sign the document. He should send it here immediately.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

I lie. I never lie. I lie now. “He’s not at home,” I say. “He’s out of town.”