Unfiled
by Maggie Hauser
It’s a hazy June day, and we’re driving down the freeway in my dad’s yellow Chevy truck. We’re headed to my Uncle Kirk and Aunt Jennifer’s house to visit the newest addition to their family, my cousin. At 4 years old, I’m inquisitive about everything I encounter – that’s how I got my nickname, “Duey.” I’m always asking, “Papa, what are you doing?” “Momma, what are you doing?” “What are we doing today?” Only my slight speech impediment causes my “doing” to come out as “duey.”
As my mom explains how the baby I’m about to see grew inside of my aunt’s tummy, I pipe up from my perch between my parents on the truck’s bench seat; “Momma, did I grow in your tummy like this baby did?”
At the time, the surprised silence and uneasy glance my parents exchange goes unnoticed. My mother replies, “No, Margee, you grew in another momma’s tummy.”
“Oh, OK then.” Kids are so easy to please.
I ask my parents how I came to be with them, since I came from someone else’s tummy. They describe how the woman who gave birth to me wasn’t able to take care of me and how she gave me to them. My mom explains that they “chose me.” For the next four years, I picture myself as a baby, lying on a rack with other babies, arranged like the loaves of bread at the bakery, where I go with my mother. I imagine my mom and dad smiling at me – the only peaceful child – and saying, “We’d like that one, please.”
As I grow older, I ask more questions about my birth mother, and my parents are patient and kind as they try their best to answer my endless inquiries.
Twenty years after the conversation in my father’s truck, I decide that enough is enough. I’ve asked my parents nearly every question imaginable pertaining to my adoption, and now I need to satisfy my need to know about my mother.
Pulling out the thick manila envelope, tattered with age and repeated handling, my fingers seek out the one document I know upside down and backward from repeated readings: the paper with my birth mother’s name and former address.
I sit down at my computer and navigate to the Classmates Web site. This is it, I think to myself as I enter my birth mother’s first and last name in the search fields. If this doesn’t work, then it was never meant to be. With hands sweating, I click on the button for Georgia, the state where she finished high school. I draw in one final breath before hitting “Search,” my heart hammering against my chest.
My search takes two seconds, and there is only one result on the screen. “Damn it, another dead end,” I murmur to no one in particular. Clicking on the lone result, I begin to read the profile of a stranger. “Moved to California in ’78 with my family … have two beautiful daughters” and so on. I’m intrigued because I know that my biological mother had moved to California just before I was born, but I have to pay $30 to read her entire profile and see any photographs she has posted.
The way I see it, this is a reasonably priced way of finding out if this woman is who I think she might be. I pull out my credit card, and, within moments, the entire profile is before me, including the picture.
I suppose we look like we could be related, I reason. I could be wrong, though. I can’t let myself get too excited, but hell, anything is possible. I’m too impatient to wait any longer. My curiosity has the best of me. I hurry to an online phonebook. Using the woman’s married name and state of residence according to the Classmates profile, I search again. Only one result returns.
Shaking, I grab the phone. Punch in the numbers. Hold my breath. The phone rings once. Again. Then an answer, “This is Midge.”
Oh God, what do I say? I know from the paperwork that is scattered across my desk that my mother’s nickname was Midge. Could this be her?
“Hello, Mrs. Coker,” I hear myself say. “My name is Margaret, and I have some questions for you, but I’m not quite sure how to do this, so go with me, OK?” Oh God, that was the dumbest thing that I could have said. Stupid, stupid, stupid! What was I thinking?
“Sure,” she replies.
“Did you live in Southern California in 1978?”
“Yes.”
What now? “Did you give birth to a baby girl in March of that year?” So much for easing into it.
She’s quiet. I hear her draw in a shaky breath and ask, “Who is this?”
I’ve started to cry silently, tears running down my cheeks, “I think I’m her. I think I might be your daughter.”
She’s crying too. “I’ve waited for this phone call for 24 years,” she says.
We talk for two hours that day, asking questions that we were afraid to ask – questions that had gone unanswered for so long.
“Are you happy?” my mother asks through tears. “I need to know if you were happy. Did I do the right thing?”
“I’ve never lacked for anything,” I reply, my voice cracking. “You gave me to wonderful people who love me. Yes, yes, you did the right thing.”
When she asks me what my interests are, I say that I love to sing, that I’ve been performing for as long as I can remember. I learn that this is one of many passions that we share.
“I always wondered if you got that from me,” she says. “I always hoped that you would.”
The more questions we ask, the more questions surface. Our conversations are tentative at first – tinged with anguish and guilt over the past for her, and full of uncertainty and hope for me. Finally, I’m getting to know this stranger who is so deeply ingrained in my bones.
I learn that day that I have an entire family who has been thinking about me and praying for me for 24 years. My mother met her husband a few months after I was given up for adoption. After suffering so much torment and pain, my mother finally told him about her pregnancy and my adoption, and, much to her surprise at the time, he loved her anyway.
That day I also learn that I have two half-sisters who didn’t know that our mother had given me up as a baby so many years ago. Once they are told my mother’s secret, their reactions are better than everyone could have hoped. Gracie, the youngest at 4 years old, says, “I have another big sister? OK.” Caitie, 11, asks, “You mean I’m not the oldest? Cool!” and dances around the room, basking in the idea that there is an older sister out there for her.
When we finally meet two months later on New Year’s Day 2002, it feels like a new beginning – not only of a new year, but also of a new life for each of us.
We see each other several times a year now and talk on the phone nearly every day. We have since built the kind of friendship that mothers and daughters experience only once their hearts and souls have grown to respect and admire each other. Now, with all of my questions answered, I know where I get – along with my smile, my singing voice and my lack of patience – my sense of curiosity.