Read Online Rescuing Julia Twice by Tina Traster - Free Book Online

intrigued by the large window filtering in light. When we let her relax backward, we notice she is strangely contorting her body, arching her back over and over.
    â€œWhat is she doing?” I ask Ricky, feeling panicky.
    â€œI’m not sure,” he says. I notice he looks uneasy, which is unusual.
    We watch her do this again and again.
    â€œPick her up,” I say to Ricky.
    I get up and look for Olga. I ask her to come and watch what the baby is doing.
    Olga comes to the gym, a little peeved. She stands over the baby, her lips pursed. Ricky lets Julia back down on the mat, and she arches her back again.
    â€œOh, this,” Olga says. “This is nothing. Sometimes children in orphanages have this kind of trouble. They’re stretching because their muscles are tight because they don’t get enough activity. They spend too much time in the crib, you know. It’s perfectly normal.”
    Ricky and I look at each other. Olga is our only conduit to explanations. We have to take it or leave it.
    Over my left shoulder, I hear a fuss. Barbara and Neal seem to be arguing over something. We shift our attention over there. Barbara is squatting behind a bench, poking up and down like a meerkat, playing peekaboo. The baby is unresponsive. Barbara beckons Olga.
    â€œThis baby doesn’t seem to be responding,” she says. “He won’t make eye contact. He won’t play peek-a-boo.”
    â€œWe do not play peek-a-boo,” Olga says in a stern response.
    Barbara looks like she’s about to collapse.
    I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. We are in
The Twilight Zone.
Everything is surreal.
    Just then, a bevy of little girls drifts into the gymnasium. Some are wearing dresses. They are blonde, and they range in age from three to five. They look like a nursery school class. They dance around in a circle. They have large foreheads, thin lips, and eyes set wide apart. They suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome and other ailments because their mothers drank through pregnancy. This is what Olga explained when I asked what will happen to these children. From the look in her eyes, I know these are the “damaged” children—the ones who never end up in grainy videos sent to adoptive parents.

    I remember what the pediatrician had said when she saw Julia’s tape and medical records. She was one of those pediatricians who specializes in evaluating the health of foreign adoptees based on records and videos. They are a cottage industry in America. There’s a whole crop of these doctors, and they know adoptive parents hang on their every wordbecause the Russian medical records are indecipherable, even though they are translated in English.
    â€œThis is as good as it gets,” she had said over the phone.
    â€œWhat does that mean?” I’d asked.
    â€œFrom what I can tell, she looks healthy, and the good thing is she’s very young so you’ll have a chance to reverse any of the negative consequences of her early months.”
    Are we to believe we can reverse these early damages?
Yes, yes,
we tell ourselves.
Yes, absolutely, we have enough love to compensate for what they’ve lost.
We will undo the damage, wipe their slates clean, as though they are Etch A Sketch pads. We will love and adore them and make them feel as though they were born the moment we took them away from the ammonia and tiny cots where they are virtually imprisoned with swaddling blankets and left to suck on cold-tea concoctions. We will replace these first memories with the aroma of fresh-baked apple pie and a crib with a spinning animal mobile.

    After we’ve returned the babies to the caretakers, Barbara is crying hysterically. Neal is trying to soothe her. Olga is attempting to hush-hush her. Disruptions in the orphanage are frowned upon.
    I ask Olga what’s wrong.
    She curtly says Barbara is upset and walks away.
    We hear Neal say to her, “Take your time. If you don’t