When I was in sixth grade, the teachers separated boys and girls and we were herded into the auditorium for a pep talk from somefrosty-haired guidance counselor in a red knit sweater. She warned us about the effortlessness with which accidental pregnancies could occur, and the ruinous effects they had on everyone involved. The horrifyingly simple and dangerous formula was: V(agina) + P(enis) = B(aby), = D(isaster). Sperm was some kind of deadly virus to avoid at all costs.
Here I am, fifteen years later, actually wanting that oh-so-scary thing to happen. And twice, the supposedly foolproof V + P formula has not resulted in the expected B. First, a male fetus that died at fifteen weeks. And then, just six weeks ago, a stillborn baby boy.
A new strategy has been brewing in my mind for several days, one that requires three things that I’ve already considered and deemed achievable:
1) $30,000 (we can surely scrape together that amount in savings, supplemented by a no-interest “loan” from our parents)
2) A plethora of paperwork to sign (I can handle that)
3) Suspension of disbelief; total acceptance of a substitute child in place of my own.
It’s called…drum roll please….adoption, known in simplest terms as $ + pen = B(aby). The first two steps are easy, and I’ve already achieved step three by convincing myself adoption is, in fact, the route to getting not a just substitute child, but our child.
That a live, fluttering baby can simply disappear, particularly one whose elbows and knees I have felt pressed against the inner wall of my taut belly and whose mouth I’ve seen opening and closing on a fuzzy ultrasound image, is not a fact that I can or will accept. I am therefore certain that he isn’t gone after all, that he checked out of my womb and into another woman’s, and may still be floating in there at this very moment. He might have resurfaced as a healthy infant boy in another country altogether. Perhaps he felt too tied down inside my abdomen, and simply zoomed up and over the horizon to Siberia or Thailand or some other exotic locale. A naked little flying cherub-baby with white feather wings, morphing into the ethnicity of wherever he landed.
I realize, of course, Kevin is a major part of the equation as well; the true equation should read: $ + pen + SpAgr (spousal agreement) = B(aby). So I bring it up one day as we’re on the futon in my favorite position: me lying down with my bare feet on his lap and him sitting up, massaging my toes with one hand.
“What about adoption?”
Pause. Kevin looks up.
“We just lost a baby, Mon. I think we should wait.”
“But we don’t have time to wait!”
Sigh. “Well, I guess we could at least look into it down the line.”
“Down the line” for me means that very same afternoon, so I immediately dive straight into the Internet, frantically searching for international adoption agencies.
Each afternoon for several weeks, I brew a fresh pot of coffee and switch on the laptop. Never mind that I have no plan for either of my writing classes tomorrow, my mother has left six fretful messages on the machine, my armpits are looking like a wooly mammoth’s, the living room’s a mess, we’re almost out of milk, my bra is killing me, and the wild-caught salmon fillet I overpaid for from Whole Foods is sitting in the fridge, uncooked and starting to smell. No time to nap or pay attention to such trivial bodily/life matters; I am mother in search of her child!
I stumble across people’s personal websites, called things like: “Life with Lily, Our Adopted Chinese Baby” and “Journey to Guatemala for Our Son, Griffin.” Like a voyeur, I scroll through their pictures and try to imagine myself in their shoes, their baby as mine. I join blogs and post bold, enthusiastic announcements,like “I’m planning to adopt too, and I’m so excited! Anyone with tips or insights, let me know!”
Thick, glossy packets from places like “All God’s Children” and “Americans Adopting Orphans” are sent to us in droves, clogging up the mailbox and stacking up on the coffee table like Crate and Barrel catalogs. Sleekly organized and brimming with photos and charts, they all begin with a blurb on whether adoption is “right for you,” and allot several pages to each country that the agency deals with, plus some baby pictures to boot. China. India. Russia. One catalog contains a fold-out chart listing countries and the “features” of each: application “requirements and policies,” “children available,” “waiting time,” “cost,” and “travel requirements.”
Some catalogs include lists of “no wait list” children, available right away or for a lower fee because of being older or having a disability. These kids are advertised boldly in red font, like Thanksgiving Day sale items in the Nordstrom catalog: “Adoption fees waived! No wait time!” Everything looks so easy: choose your features, hand over the cash, and a baby will be shipped to your doorstep via FedEx, complete with a half-off coupon for your next baby.
Adoption seems so convenient, I can’t help but wonder why anyone bothers to go about baby-having in the sloppy, vagina-stretching, back-aching, shitting-yourself, old fashioned way.
When my dad flies up for a visit, and I drag him and Kevin to an “adoption fair” at a hospital out in Bellevue. It’s a long, dreary drive through the pouring rain. The room is lined with booths, each with a suit-clad representative of an adoption agency or law firm, ready to chat and give out butterscotch candies. This is serious business, so I linger at each table, collecting armloads of information, eavesdropping on others’ conversations, and discussing adoption logistics with lawyers and – what would you call them – baby salespeople?
Meanwhile, Kevin and my dad spin through in about sixty seconds, conveniently settling in next to the coffee-and-cookie table out in the lobby to talk about football, like those dads slumped in leather chairs at the mall while their wives do the shopping. Clearly, they don’t get that this fair is a key stepping stone toward getting our baby.
One day, just as I’m about to fill out a preliminary application to send in with a check for a few hundred bucks (since everything involving adoption seems to involve access to bazillions of dollarsin cash), it dawns on me :
None of those babies really sounds appealing to me.
Knowing my luck, whatever kid we adopted would probably act like a total shit head, unlike our quiet little perfect stillborn boy, Zachary. I mean, what I really want is my baby, the one I just lost less than two months ago. There is no substitute model, no quick fix, no swapping chicken for tofu and not noticing, no buying a K-mart brand handbag and slapping a Gucci label on it.
So the Crate and Barrel baby catalogs get stacked up on the floor of the den, where begin to gather dust, and eventually get transferred into the bedroom closet.
“What happened to the whole adoption thing?” asks Kevin one morning as we’re sipping our coffee on the sofa.
“I don’t know,” I say. “We just lost a baby. I think we should wait.”
“Good. Glad you figured that one out.”