Monthly Archives: March 2009

that’s what she said.

first she said:  i was 20 when i got knocked up.

then she laughed a bit and looked around the room at all of us in group,
the group of families wanting to adopt a child and dressed too nicely
for a monday off of work and taking notes and hands clasped.

then she said:  “is that wrong?  knocked up?  i don’t know what they’re saying these days.
up the spout?  is that right?  i got it up the spout when i was 20.  yeah.”

later, after giving her baby to the most conservative family she could find
(they even put pennies in their penny loafers)
she pumped every day for 9 months and would drop the milk
off in a cooler on their porch.

we spent two whole days meeting adoptive mothers,
birth mothers, adopted children who are now adults,
people for whom things went right and those for whom
it couldn’t have been messier.

we ate lunch by ourselves in the sun.
these were the stories we needed to hear.
all of them.

we’re still waiting for a baby,
or a birthmother who doesn’t hate jews.

and if you haven’t figured it out yet, we fired
our old agency, Adoption Choices.
fucking crooks.

if you hate anyone and want them to suffer,
send them to adopt through that agency.
they’ll probably kill themselves.

—–

on the way out of the new adoption agency,
lydia says:

i want a white baby.

where does she get this?

—–

a few weeks ago, leanne felt lumps in her neck.
just didn’t feel right…and she was nervous going in for her scan.
really nervous this time.

i went out and bought her a breakfast burrito while she
was in the tube.  i called nick – who i always call
when leanne is getting scanned, and left a message.

in the drive-thru i waited and tried to think about
how it’d be different this time if she came out of the tube
and the techs were not looking her in the eyes….

i’m not sure i would even cry.

just start doing.

the truth is that i’m not sure
that i like the person that this cancer has left me.

and i’m not talking about leanne.

like the lead apron that the x-ray tech puts on you.
i wear it every day.

at the oncologist’s office, he made us wait.
we looked at magazine covers to not think.
the ghost of heath ledger and angelina and all her lips
and kids.

the scan was clean.
we chided him for making us wait.

dr. menter felt leanne’s abdomen
while lydia played with leanne’s boobies.

“that’s not appropriate”, leanne said.

dr. menter agreed.

i did not.