A Southern Girl (19 page)

It was noon. I had promised to take Mother to lunch at one. With a vague sense of killing time I drove to the newspaper offices, where I was directed to a third floor office labeled “Archives.” A clerk motioned me toward a table and minutes later returned from a door behind the counter.

“Be careful turning pages,” she admonished as she placed it in front of me.

I gazed down. As I had hoped, the facial definition in the photograph was a vast improvement over the microfilm. My grandfather’s mustache, which appeared as a long smudge above his lip in the microfilm, was clearly identifiable. Now, I saw sideburns where none had existed in the library. The profile of the nose, the Carter nose, was also vivid.

As I stared harder, longer, I felt drawn into the photo. The feel of the crowded, unventilated room became palpable, as if I could reach out and lay my hand on the shoulder of the man sitting in front of my grandfather, turned in his seat with his head inclined toward the speaker now giving F.D.R. hell. I looked up, pushed the paper aside, and rested my
chin on my fist, for some reason thinking not of my grandfather but my sons.

Fatherhood was a strange game, I had come to realize as Josh and Steven grew older and the rules grew more complex. It was like soccer, a game I never played—had never even seen played—as a child but was now called upon to coach, to teach as an adult. Each Saturday morning I stood authoritatively on the sidelines, urging my boys forward, blissfully ignorant of “offsides,” “indirects,” “yellow cards,” “dummies,” and the remaining argot of this Continental tongue. Gradually I got it, rule by rule, trial by error, the way I hoped to eventually master parenthood.

But my hours on the sidelines also served me as a primer on the fundamental laws of genetics. Above all other similarity, it had been Josh’s loping run that had impressed upon me the unbroken thread of heredity. I could still hear Coach Clemmons at Ashley High, screaming at me to spring forward from the balls of my feet; “There is simply not one ounce of bounce in the human heel,” he would repeat, proud of his apt little doggerel. But try as I might, I possessed a congenital flat-footedness which withstood all admonishment, rhymed or unrhymed, from coaches, trainers, and teammates. It withstood hours of “toe-lifts” requiring me to balance on a raised surface, heels off the ground, and lift myself on toes and forefeet. It survived Coach Clemmons’ last desperate measure to coax more speed from his otherwise potent quarterback: an Olympic training film featuring Bob Hayes, the world record holder in the sprint. When the lights came back on, I protested weakly that I was “no Bob Hayes.”

“That’s true,” said Coach Clemmons. “You run more like Helen Hayes.” By my senior year, the coaching staff had accepted the reality that my flat-footed lope was as much ingrained as my height and the green of my eyes.

I accepted it on the day I saw Josh’s lope across a soccer field, followed two years later by Steven’s. Seeing myself in my sons became a hobby. Little things intrigued me: a distinctive downward glance at being scolded; an early love of music without the faintest accompanying proclivity for carrying a tune; the wry anticipation of a smile when they told their first jokes; an incipient vertical furrow between the eyebrows when puzzled. I noted all of these shared variegations in the fabric of my being, and more.

But having noted them, what was I to make of them as I sat at the table in the company my irate grandfather? I sensed a connection, an intertwining of these ancestral threads. Had my father loped? My grandfather? Were these variegations which so fascinated me mere brush strokes on a larger portrait I had yet to examine? For each dye and tincture visible to casual, even studied observation, how much more lay indelibly below the surface, shading the essence of character and judgment and courage and compassion?

I reached for the paper and held it at eye level. When I backed away from the detail, when I held out the paper so that I took in the whole of my grandfather’s scowl, the indignant contortion of facial muscles marshaled against a politician he had never met, and never would, I saw a face I had seen before. I saw my father, sitting in the car, with his hand on the door handle ready to escape from his brief but fiery confrontation over the impending adoption.

And I sensed, for the first time, a reflection of that same look, and the defiance it captured. Had Elizabeth photographed me in our recent deliberations over this Asian child, I knew I would be wearing that look, that identical fear of the unknown, that same vehement denial in the face of inexorable forces, the nature and strength of which I only dimly perceived. I pondered it over dinner with Mother that evening, and on the flight home the next afternoon.

Elizabeth met me at the airport. She had left the boys with a sitter. “They missed you,” she told me.

“How about you? Did you miss me?” I asked.

She merely winked, as she did when things were on her mind. For the moment, I omitted any mention of my lunch with Barron Morris.

Elizabeth, turning onto the highway from the airport approach road, said, “Hey, how about taking me to dinner?”

“Deal. What sounds good to you?”

“How about … Chinese?”

“You never give up, do you?”

A waitress, who might have been Puerto Rican, possibly Mexican, but clearly not Chinese, took our order. As we sipped tea and spooned hot and sour soup, the discordant plunks and twangs of Far Eastern music fluttered in the background. I waited for a lull in chit-chat about how these places rarely gave out chopsticks anymore.

“Elizabeth, how would you feel about moving to Charleston?”

“As in, permanently?”

“As in, for good.”

She dabbed her mouth with the bright red napkin. “What brought that on?”

“A lawyer named Barron Morris.” I related my lunch with Morris and subsequent visit to the firm.

“And he offered you a job, just like that?”

“A partnership. And a big sweetener called ‘more money.’”

Dinner arrived. Teriyaki vegetables for her and something called General Chan chicken, very spicy, for me. “What does it say about a general’s combat record when they name a chicken after him?” I asked, and she laughed.

“I must say I’m surprised,” she said as she swirled a broccoli spear in the dark, briny sauce. “I’ve never heard you express any interest in returning.”

“I’m a little surprised myself.”

“Speaking of surprises,” she said, “and not to change the subject, but we owe Open Arms a decision.”

I stopped a forkful of chicken halfway to my mouth. “What does that have to do with surprises?”

“Well … I’m confident Open Arms is surprised it hasn’t heard from us already.”

“Weak. Very weak.” But I could not suppress a grin.

“I can’t help it. I’m afraid someone else will get her.”

“You’ve bonded to a photograph; you need counseling.”

“Don’t make fun of me. You can tell a lot from a picture.”

“You certainly can,” I agreed, with a confidence that seemed to surprise her.

“I just feel she’s right for us.”

I looked at her evenly. “Perhaps she is.”

“Do you mean that?”

“I think so. Hey, don’t do that. We’re in a restaurant.”

“I don’t care,” she said, grinning and wiping her eyes with the red napkin. “I just don’t care. And now, Mr. Carter, please take me home. I intend to be physically exhausted when I call Open Arms tomorrow morning.”

11

Hana

I thought back to grammar school; to the day of the shot. At age eight, I lingered near the back of a long line, reluctant to undergo a smallpox vaccination. Ahead, my classmates surrendered themselves one by one to the inevitability of the needle while I unconsciously clapped my right hand over the spot on my upper arm just below my bare shoulder. Friends closest to me shuffled their weight from leg to leg, the way you do when you are nervous. I watched each one as they approached the medic with the needle. Some looked away as they felt the alcohol swab their arm, knowing that seconds later they would feel the stick. Teachers stayed at the rear, making sure no one left the line, as I admit I had thought of doing. There were three in front of me, then two, then only a girl who was shaking as she walked toward the white coat. She cried out in pain when injected, then sobbed as the band aid was applied. When she turned toward me to leave the line I saw such pain in her face that I feared I would start crying before I was hurt. I fought against it, but then it was my turn. I shuffled forward, but evidently not close enough because the medic reached for my arm and pulled me toward him. Then I did something I didn’t expect. When he applied the gauze with the alcohol, I looked directly at him, and when he pinched the skin of my slender triceps to form a ridge of sorts, I continued to stare, and when he raised the syringe and brought the needle close, I shifted my attention from him to it. I watched the point of the needle disappear into my skin, do its work, then withdraw. I watched it all, and I didn’t cry out or moan or even flinch.

Today, twenty years later, I sat in my tiny office at the home. A metal desk, flush against the wall in my windowless office, permitted the opening and closing of my door virtually without tolerance. Overhead, a florescent light hummed. Eyeing a thick stack of portfolios piled in front of me, I sensed movement toward something harmful, a dread not unlike that produced by the needle; less defined, perhaps not as acute, but identifiably fear. The green portfolios contained “matches,” adoptive parents matched
to a child on my ward. Faith Stockdale had dropped them off that morning. Soo Yun’s portfolio, almost certainly within the stack, threatened the ethical dilemma I had foreseen from my first glimpse of the scars.

Inside the folders, copies of the biographical data on the adoptive family, the home study, and the family’s correspondence with Open Arms proclaimed the future for those fortunate enough to match that family’s specified criteria. Faith Stockdale had collected these materials, then prepared a summary which she translated into Korean. These she forwarded to me to enable me both to inform the child of the match and to educate the child about the family of which he or she would soon be a member. Obviously, for infants matched, this synopsis served only to enlighten me as to the child’s destiny. As often as I reminded myself that every pairing represented a triumph for the home in its mission to place as many children as possible, and thus a vicarious triumph for me, I nevertheless opened each portfolio with bittersweet resignation. A departing child meant more than an empty cot for the days, sometimes hours, needed to fill it. A funny business, this: striving for an inseparable closeness to a child who, in my fondest hope, would soon be taken away.

I picked up each green folder, perused them one by one, until my hand fell to a folder labeled “Soo Yun.” I thought back to my meeting with Faith Stockdale on the day of Jong Sim’s visit. I had intended to bring Faith into my confidence. The words formed on my lips: “The child has a horrible incision but is in perfect health.” But I had been unable to utter those words, then or since.

At home on the night of that meeting, I rationalized my silence. To inform Faith of Soo Yun’s biopsy was to transfer to her the very decision I made by remaining mute. Viewed that way, I felt a bit like a martyr. Thanks to my bravado, Soo Yun would receive the unimpeded chance she deserved to be adopted, and I, Hana, would take the consequences. If the biopsy triggered an inquiry, Faith would be shielded by her ignorance.

But as I went about my duties on the ward the following day, my wishful thinking showed itself for what it was. Unless disclosed, the scars were certain to launch an inquiry, meaning loss of credibility for Open Arms, angry recriminations against Faith Stockdale, ignorant or not, and untold consequences for me, including loss of my job or worse. And so, as the day progressed and my hastily constructed, undernourished rationalization of the previous night crumbled, I knew I had to set the facts fully
before Faith Stockdale at the first opportunity. But that had been weeks ago. I could no longer say whether fear, or guilt, most accounted for my failure to approach Faith; only that they competed within me, one gaining on the other in a circle of diminishing diameter until they lodged just behind my frontal lobe, causing headaches.