Rescuing Julia Twice (4 page)

Orphanage Number Two has no sign on it. It is another one of Siberia's secrets. We slip into the dimly lit building. It is stiflingly hot. Women furiously dust and polish staircase banisters, but they don't meet our eyes when we ascend the stairs. I can't believe that babies live here—one hundred babies, ten to a room. There is life and promise, I suppose, at least for the children who are “good” enough to adopt out. We've been told many children are afflicted with fetal alcohol syndrome, a disease that causes mental problems. Those children will never leave these austere places. We're led into a large room. A group of babies are in a giant crib, like a choreographed diaper advertisement. Older toddlers zip around in mobile chairs. A caretaker changes a diaper. A couple is handed a wriggling baby. I'm still sick with flu and fever. Olga and Alla are conferencing about something that has to do with me. Olga's voice rises, and Alla eventually seems to give in to something. Then I'm led to a chair outside the baby room and handed a surgical mask. “Alla thought you were too sick to hold the baby,” she says. “Wear this.”

I'm sitting in the chair. Ricky is standing beside me, his hand resting on my shoulder. My eyes dart left and right, searching for the caretaker who will bring us our baby. We have decided that we will change her name from Yulia to Julia, which is our best effort at allowing her to keep the only thing she's been given: a name. But at the same time, we're Americanizing it to Julia so she will not have to explain why she has an odd name. Names shape us. When I was born in 1962, my mother had seen a French model named “Bettina” in a fashion magazine. That was what they called me when I was born, but by the time I got to second grade, kids made fun. They rhymed the name into cruel configurations.
Bettina betina, vagina.
After that, I was called Tina.

I'm scanning the room, trying to match babies' faces with the one I had seen on the tape. “Is that her?” I ask Olga.

“No, she's over there.”

I'm stunned when I see the baby on the changing table. She turns her head toward me and flashes a dimpled smile. Does she instinctively know she will be mine and I will be hers? She is smaller than I imagined.

The caretaker, who has her swaddled in a blanket, says to me, “Pick up baby.” I hesitate. Fear whips me with hurricane force. I can't move. Instead, the caretaker places her in my arms, where she fits exactly right. I look into her eyes. They are khaki. I touch her fuzzy bald head. Her nose is runny and red. The caretaker hands me a brown tea concoction in a bottle and says, “Feed baby.” I do and then hand her to my husband. He pulls her close to his chest and says, looking down, “What's new?” I want to laugh and to cry. I want to run and to cling. I wish I could dance and spin in a sun-filled meadow with clean, bright light. In the orphanage chair, I sit still.

Time is suspended.

Everything falls away.

We have thirty minutes with the baby before she's returned to her tiny crib in the baby room. She is one of ten babies who share the room. There's a little boy in the baby room who has a large head, and his eyes are far apart. That is what fetal alcohol syndrome looks like. That little boy has no chance of being adopted. The caretaker lowers Julia into the cramped bed and tightly swaddles her, almost as though she's imprisoned. She leaves her with a half-empty bottle of the tea concoction. This tiny soul is straightjacketed into a crib where her needs will be met only when a caretaker can get around to responding. But what can they do? They have a hundred babies to care for.

Julia has a little smile on her face. I think she knows her fate will change. There is something about her dark, deep eyes that suggest she's lived on this planet more than six months. They have a knowing quality.

We next meet with the orphanage director. I ask questions about the health of the baby's mother. They are not answered. Then Vladimir drives us back to town and drops us off at the Irish grill, where we order blinis and salmon roe and shrimp kabob. We are grateful and relieved to be left alone for a couple of hours to talk about our daughter. We agree
she is startlingly beautiful. We see her in the Russian faces around us—broad cheeks, slightly slanted eyes, skin like goat's milk.

That evening we venture out on our own for dinner. Whatever sunlight we saw that day had come and gone quickly. The night air is as sharp as a cat's claws. It tears the skin.

People walking down Krasnyi Prospekt, the wide and vast main boulevard, look like floating apparitions, small and shimmery with plumes of steam trailing them. The majestically domed Opera and Ballet Theater anchors the street at one end. Siberia is otherworldly. I could not compare it to anywhere I'd been or anything I'd ever experienced. At Patio Pizza we find comfort. American-style pizzas and a waiter who is happy to practice his English. He spends a lot of time hanging around our table. He easily guesses we are adoptive parents, and I wonder if he thinks we're baby stealers. He tells us he likes to practice his English:
Do we mind if we chat?
We are delighted to do so. He's a student. He wants to study international relations. We tell him we are here to adopt a baby, and he says he already knew that. Then he pulls a pen from behind his ear and grabs an empty napkin. “What is your name?” he asks. I say “Tina.” He scribbles a few letters on the napkin and then shows it to me. “Tuha. That's your name in Russian,” he says, smiling.

I run my index finger over the name to make sure the ink is dry and place it into a safe compartment in my bag. I smile at this young man.

I cannot sleep. I watch my husband sleep peacefully on the rickety cot in the stifling hot room that feels like a lockup. The room is inky dark, but I write in my journal. I wait for 7
AM
before nudging Ricky from slumber. “C'mon,” I say. “Let's go to the bakery across the street.” Groggily he says, “It's the middle of the night. It's pitch dark.” I tell him it is morning. “Remember, the sun doesn't rise until after 9.” The bakery
is sultry, like a Laundromat. The tea and pastries are delicious. We pay with rubles, converted from our dollars.

Olga picks us up after breakfast, and Vladimir drives to the orphanage. The sun climbs into the blue sky. But a sunny day doesn't change the dull cast or the monotony of the section of town where Orphanage Number Two is located. Again we ascend the clean steps to the waiting area outside the baby room. The ruddy-cheeked caretaker hands me Julia, who is wearing clownish pajamas and mismatched socks. Her big toe pokes through a hole in the sock on her right foot. We three are sent to a large gym where we spend time with the baby crawling around on a giant rubber mat. A few young blonde girls, aged between three and five, skip into the room singing a tune. There is a piano at that far end of the gym, but the girls only stay for a few minutes and dance around before a caretaker seems to admonish them to leave. It is impossible to know why they were never adopted. They might have been brought here when they were two or three or older, and most adoptive parents want a baby. We have been told that there are half a million children living in Russian orphanages. Those who are “unadoptable” will stay in a place like this until they turn eighteen.

The next day we will leave Novosibirsk without Julia. The Russian government requires adoptive parents to make two trips. Everyone tells us we will be called back in the next three to six months. I doubt she will remember us when we see her, so I savor our last moments with her. I nuzzle my nose against her skin. She doesn't smell especially good, the way babies are supposed to smell. While sitting on the mat in the gym, I notice she is transfixed by the enormous ice-glazed windows high on the wall. I try to distract her with a big, bouncy ball, but she is craning her neck. She squints hard, staring intently at the burst of white light outside the room, a strange phenomenon. Julia has never seen daylight. The sun has never kissed her skin. She'd been transported from the hospital to the orphanage in October, when it was too cold for the babies to be taken outside.

I cannot wait to escape Siberia, even though we are leaving a baby,
our baby,
behind. An American woman we met made an incisive observation about the city and the experience Americans have in it. She said, “You could take photographs in color, but when they get developed they'll be in black and white.” We knew exactly what she meant. Everything about this place is harsh: the guttural sounds, the cold stares, the tight leashes adoption handlers keep Americans on. People dressed in masses of dark clothing getting where they need to go. Ammonia permeates every building, especially the tomb-like orphanage.

My fanatical desire to leave Novosibirsk comes with a feeling of remorse, too. This is, after all, Julia's place of birth. She might have grown up here. Somewhere in this city she has a mother, a father, and two siblings. Girls, I think. Maybe there are grandparents and cousins, too. We will never know. Someday we'll want to tell her about this faraway city in the geographical center of Russia. We're told it's quite beautiful here in the warm weather, though I think if we ever returned with Julia, I'd want to do so in the heart of winter because I'd like her to know that she comes from people who endure extreme hardships. There's something romantic about that history.

I'm hoping when we come back—three to six months from now—Novosibirsk may feel more welcoming. Maybe flowers will be in bloom.

When I arranged our trip to Russia, I built in a four-day diversion in Moscow.

“Why not,” I'd said to Ricky. “We're already there. Besides, the next time we pass through Moscow, we'll have Julia with us, and I don't think we'll be in the mood for touring Red Square.”

He agreed.

The prospect of balancing this momentous journey with pleasure brought comfort. But when I mentioned our intention to our American adoption counselor, she balked.

“Oh, no, that will not be permissible,” she said.

“Not permissible? What do you mean?” I replied, thinking I must have misheard her.

“Yes, no, um, the Russian government doesn't want adoptive parents in Russia on their own,” she said.