Rescuing Julia Twice (10 page)

I look at Ricky. He is listening intently. I think back to the day in the bookstore when, perhaps, I should have picked up a book or two on foreign adoption.

Neal sees he's unnerved me.

“Well, don't worry. Your baby seems very animated. I'm sure it will all work out as it's supposed to.” I accept his answer, believing Brandon and Julia are so fundamentally different that I don't need to worry about the scary words he's just uttered.

We are dropped off at a cafeteria-style café. We line up and put our food on trays. We invite Neal to sit with us, and he does. He discusses his work. I chat about my writing career, telling him I worked at New Jersey newspapers for ten years. Barbara is a teacher, but she's taken time off to raise their child. Ricky talks a little about the tea company.

During lunch, I notice a group of young women, maybe twenty-year-olds. They peel off heavy fur coats. Underneath they are wearing thin leggings with pencil skirts and baby-doll shirts. There are three of them, and they're all tall and gorgeous with long, golden hair, exquisite paper-white complexions, and broad cheeks with slightly slanted eyes.

Is this Julia in twenty years? I can picture her dark, slightly slanted eyes and her alabaster skin.

Siberia is a crossroads of European and Asian cultures. Its very name conjures up images of prison camps and frozen death. Siberia equals banishment. It's the place people never return from. Or go to, unless they are forced to.

Novosibirsk, with 1.5 million people, is Siberia's largest city. It has its own narrative, according to the few bits of information I had been able to scrounge on the Internet before we left. The city was founded in 1893 at the future site of a Trans-Siberian Railway bridge crossing the great
Siberian river Ob. Since 1925, it has been the center of heavy metallurgy and machine-tool manufacturing, of international trade conferences, and of mining and chemical manufacturing. The Ob River, one of the longest in the world, runs through the broad, wide city, flowing toward the Arctic. The river is so polluted with industrial waste and toxic oil it doesn't entirely freeze in winter. There's a world-class opera and ballet house here. In the 1950s, the Soviet government built Akademgorodok, a scientific research complex located on the city's outskirts. Novosibirsk has fourteen research institutions and universities.

Neal says he's going to walk around and get some fresh air. Ricky gets us each another cup of black tea, and we linger a bit longer. “Wow, I don't envy him,” I say. “Barbara probably blames him for coming here alone and not seeing that the baby is a problem.”

“I don't know,” he says, blowing on the steamy cup. “She seems a bit neurotic. I feel sorry for him.”

“What would you do if I suddenly had a change of mind?”

“C'mon,” he says. “Let's go see what we can find to like about Novosibirsk.”

It is cold, but the frigid air is rejuvenating. Our first stop is a store that sells maps. None of the maps are in English. We've been wanting desperately to have a map, because we constantly feel disoriented. We're driven everywhere by Vladimir. We're never allowed to take public transportation. Ricky says they drive us a different route from our housing digs to the orphanage every time just to keep us off our game.

We duck into an Internet café. It is up one level and filled with grungy twenty-somethings. They scowl when they see us. The computer is slow. Our friend Jay has been staying at our apartment with our cat. He's our only lifeline. His e-mails are peppered with adorable things Floopy has done. He reports on the cat's eating and bathroom habits. He mentions how tense things are as President George W. Bush prepares to start a war in Iraq.

I sign off with a heavy heart. What grief will a war in Iraq bring? Will New York be targeted again by terrorists? I have not been the same since 9/11. The horrific attack left me unable to feel unfettered and free in a city I've loved my whole life. I wasn't at Ground Zero. I only knew people who knew people who died. But I was changed. I stopped riding the subway, I became claustrophobic in high-rises, and I didn't like to be in places with crowds. I craved a little cabin in the woods we could escape to at the drop of a hat. As I reread Jay's words about Bush waging war, I think maybe we should stay here in this frozen city at the end of the world.

“You OK?” Ricky asks.

“The neocons are marching to war,” I say.

“Yeah, I saw that too. Onward Christian soldiers.”

“What if we stayed here?” I say. “What if we stay in the lost corner of the world where presumably nothing awful ever happens? I bet the people here have never even heard about 9/11.”

“I don't know about that,” he says. “We might be in a remote place but, look, you're on the Internet. I don't think these people are some aboriginal tribe cut off from the world.”

Of course he is right. It's been about a decade since Novosibirsk has been opened to the West. There are glimmering signs of capitalism all around us. Still, this place feels like the end of the world to me. A safe house, ironically.

The next day we go to court to finalize the adoption. I had brought a skirt to wear, thinking it'd be important to look nice, but I cannot bear to wear hose and expose my legs to this frost. On the ride to court, we are coached; we are told what will be asked and what we should say. This all seems ridiculous, like all the bureaucracy we've been exposed to before, but, like good monkeys, we respond on cue. Even though this is a formality—and we're told the courts never deny an adoption—my stomach is filled with butterflies. “What if …” We've come this far. “Can you imagine?” I say to Ricky.

“It'll be fine.”

I've learned there's only one thing that rattles Ricky, and that's a day on the slopes, skiing. When he was twelve he was skiing in the Catskills with his two older brothers. They abandoned him on an icy day, and he broke his leg. He was laid up in bed for months and needed to be home tutored for the rest of seventh grade. He never skied again. When we fell in love in 2000, he knew how much I loved to ski, and he dusted himself off and clipped on a set of skis. It's only when we drive up to the mountains that he grows quiet and pensive. I guess he needs to be afraid of something. Today, he's not worried. It's not that his training as a lawyer makes this process more decipherable; he simply trusts things will turn out okay. He often says, “I know the sun will rise every morning.”

The court session is quick and painless. We are asked a couple of questions by a panel of administrators. Olga translates. “Congratulations,” she says when we leave the tiny courtroom. The next stop is the ticketing office to buy airline tickets from Siberia back to Moscow. Olga had explained we couldn't do this in advance because there was uncertainty as to how many days we would have to spend in Novosibirsk.

On our last day in the city, we are free until 9:00
PM,
when we will be taken to the orphanage to collect Julia. Vladimir drives us to a local crafts market, which is a warren of art and collectibles. I buy some old maps of Novosibirsk.

“One day I'll want to write about this godforsaken place,” I tell Ricky. “It will be good to have a map.”

“Hopefully by then you'll have mastered Russian,” he says.

I thumb through the artwork. The place is dank and musty, but I come across a few pieces I like. We buy a six-by-six-inch framed enamel of a mélange of Russian-style buildings overlapping each other. “Novosibirsk” is written on the painting in English. It is signed by “Shylaga.”

“Very good artist. Local artist,” says the purveyor, a bulky man with a thick black mustache.

Ricky leans in and says, “They're probably made in a factory in China.”

Perhaps, but we like it.

Then I notice a pair of whimsical painted kittens with oversized eyes and curious expressions. “These really are sweet. I am going to buy these and hang them in Julia's room.”

On the way to the orphanage that night, we are told to be very fast. Julia will be handed to us naked. “Don't talk to anyone. Dress her quickly. Be very quiet.”

“How
noir,
” I say to Ricky.

“Shh,” he says. “We have our instructions.”

Olga tiptoes up the steps. We follow her lead. Everything is done with Japanese-knife-tossing speed. Ricky pulls on a diaper, then a one-sie, and then the yellow snowsuit, but there's no time to admire it. After she is dressed, Ricky sweeps her into his arms. There is a pacifier in her mouth. It has a plastic yellow and white daisy around it. I'm handed a tiny little cardboard box. I take a moment to lift the lid. Inside is a little gold baptismal cross. I fight back tears as I think of Julia's young birth mother, who will never again see her child.

Driving to the airport, I notice Julia is fascinated with the moonlight, just as she was with sunlight. What a phenomenon—a world outside the thick walls where she has lived her whole tiny life.

It is starting to snow. Again, we will be flying through a storm.

“How many times can we defeat death?” I say to Ricky.