the door and says, without any other introduction, “I should tell you. I’m going to adopt a baby from Vietnam. I’ve been try-ing to find out about his homeland.”
Her face is bright, vulnerable, anxious for my response. I look away. Out in the parking lot, the glare of noon has begun to soften. Later in the day, I will get a rush of customers dashing in for bags of rice, or frozen
catfish, or chilies. Each time the door opens, it will sweep in some fresh scent of spring. But at this hour, the door stays mostly closed and the air inside remains processed and artificial. Is adoption, then, her reason for coming to my store? Am I, after all, merely a mine for information that some prospective mommy seeks about my homeland? A strange emotion washes over me, one I can only compare to the feeling I experienced, long ago, when I realized a favorite classmate visited my house only because she loved my mother’s cooking. I haven’t felt hurt in many years, but I recognize the emotion quite easily now.
And so I don’t respond as kindly as I could. “Why?” I ask.
The sarcasm in my voice is clear, perhaps even more pronounced than I intended. Her face colors. Her lips purse. She looks away, then back at me, her gaze steady. “I’ve always wanted a child,” she says simply. “And there’s a boy in Vietnam who needs a home.”
Now I experience a little bit of embarrassment, which I also haven’t felt in years.
We talk. I have heard about infertility, of course. You see it every few months on Oprah, but like the shows on alcoholism or Alzheimer’s, I watch for ten, twenty minutes, then switch it off. In my experience, we worried about getting pregnant, not about not getting pregnant. Of course, people failed to have children in Hanoi as well as here. I had a barren aunt, but no one talked about it. My father’s cousin left his wife because she couldn’t bear a child, and a lot of people considered his actions to be perfectly natural and just. I remember, too, the couple from Lao Cai who lived up the alley. We neighborhood kids solved the mys-tery of their childlessness by constructing a story even more bizarre: the husband and wife were actually brother and sister . I never considered the failure to have a child as anything resembling a tragedy. Love and death and war created tragedy. How could you mourn something that never even existed?
Shelley doesn’t use the word tragedy, either. She doesn’t present herself as a victim, or even as someone deserving of pity. She recites the litany of her experience with a straightforward, almost amused detachment. But the numbers pile on top of each other in what amounts to an avalanche
of suffering and bad luck. Five years of trying. Six pregnancies. Six miscarriages. Two failed surgical procedures. Four doctors. Three fertility clinics. Six rounds of hormones. Hundreds of injections. Thousands of dollars in medical bills for services not covered by insurance. A year spent begging her husband to adopt. A third successful pregnancy for her sis-ter, an event that precipitated her husband’s sudden, much appreciated, change of heart. And then, three months of wrangling with adoption agencies, ten hours of interviews with social workers, hundreds of pages of paperwork, eight months of waiting, five drives to Raleigh, three drives to Charlotte, two lost birth certificates, thousands of dollars in fees, and one failed adoption, only weeks before they hoped to leave to pick up a little girl from Europe.
“And then they told me about this little boy in Vietnam,” she says in a little sigh of exasperation, as if it’s the latest not-so-funny punch line in a never-ending set of pranks designed to keep her from actually having a child. I start to laugh, but the expression in her eyes surprises me. She doesn’t look defeated. She looks kind of hopeful. Hopeful without any kind of conviction, but hopeful nonetheless.
“I think you’ll get this boy,” I stammer. Even as I
Her face is bright, vulnerable, anxious for my response. I look away. Out in the parking lot, the glare of noon has begun to soften. Later in the day, I will get a rush of customers dashing in for bags of rice, or frozen
catfish, or chilies. Each time the door opens, it will sweep in some fresh scent of spring. But at this hour, the door stays mostly closed and the air inside remains processed and artificial. Is adoption, then, her reason for coming to my store? Am I, after all, merely a mine for information that some prospective mommy seeks about my homeland? A strange emotion washes over me, one I can only compare to the feeling I experienced, long ago, when I realized a favorite classmate visited my house only because she loved my mother’s cooking. I haven’t felt hurt in many years, but I recognize the emotion quite easily now.
And so I don’t respond as kindly as I could. “Why?” I ask.
The sarcasm in my voice is clear, perhaps even more pronounced than I intended. Her face colors. Her lips purse. She looks away, then back at me, her gaze steady. “I’ve always wanted a child,” she says simply. “And there’s a boy in Vietnam who needs a home.”
Now I experience a little bit of embarrassment, which I also haven’t felt in years.
We talk. I have heard about infertility, of course. You see it every few months on Oprah, but like the shows on alcoholism or Alzheimer’s, I watch for ten, twenty minutes, then switch it off. In my experience, we worried about getting pregnant, not about not getting pregnant. Of course, people failed to have children in Hanoi as well as here. I had a barren aunt, but no one talked about it. My father’s cousin left his wife because she couldn’t bear a child, and a lot of people considered his actions to be perfectly natural and just. I remember, too, the couple from Lao Cai who lived up the alley. We neighborhood kids solved the mys-tery of their childlessness by constructing a story even more bizarre: the husband and wife were actually brother and sister . I never considered the failure to have a child as anything resembling a tragedy. Love and death and war created tragedy. How could you mourn something that never even existed?
Shelley doesn’t use the word tragedy, either. She doesn’t present herself as a victim, or even as someone deserving of pity. She recites the litany of her experience with a straightforward, almost amused detachment. But the numbers pile on top of each other in what amounts to an avalanche
of suffering and bad luck. Five years of trying. Six pregnancies. Six miscarriages. Two failed surgical procedures. Four doctors. Three fertility clinics. Six rounds of hormones. Hundreds of injections. Thousands of dollars in medical bills for services not covered by insurance. A year spent begging her husband to adopt. A third successful pregnancy for her sis-ter, an event that precipitated her husband’s sudden, much appreciated, change of heart. And then, three months of wrangling with adoption agencies, ten hours of interviews with social workers, hundreds of pages of paperwork, eight months of waiting, five drives to Raleigh, three drives to Charlotte, two lost birth certificates, thousands of dollars in fees, and one failed adoption, only weeks before they hoped to leave to pick up a little girl from Europe.
“And then they told me about this little boy in Vietnam,” she says in a little sigh of exasperation, as if it’s the latest not-so-funny punch line in a never-ending set of pranks designed to keep her from actually having a child. I start to laugh, but the expression in her eyes surprises me. She doesn’t look defeated. She looks kind of hopeful. Hopeful without any kind of conviction, but hopeful nonetheless.
“I think you’ll get this boy,” I stammer. Even as I
Similar Books
