Rescuing Julia Twice (27 page)

I hear Julia and Ricky clattering down the steps. I close the screen quickly, as though I'm reading something illicit. Ricky pops into my office.

“What are you doing up so early? You look like you've seen a ghost.”

“Twelve of them.”

“What?”

“I'll explain later. Let's get breakfast started. Is Julia dressed and ready for school?”

“Mostly.”

At breakfast I watch Julia shovel cereal into her mouth. Her face is practically in the bowl. She chews loudly while rice milk seeps out of the corners of her mouth. Bits of oats stick to strands of silky golden hair. She doesn't look at me or Ricky. She doesn't clean her face with a napkin unless told to do so.

“Julia, wipe your face,” Ricky says, handing her a napkin. She hesitates a moment, watching us watch her. Then she dabs her chin, and looks back up at Ricky with her eyes narrowed, waiting to be told to do it again. I can see the satisfied expression ooze across her face. When that's done, she gulps her juice loudly and deliberately, like a dehydrated fireman replenishing himself after escaping a burning building. Usually I find the “eating game,” as Ricky and I call it, repulsive. Today I'm gazing at her with deep concern, and my eyes water.

“What's going on with you?” Ricky asks.

“I have to show you something.”

We send Julia upstairs to play with LEGO blocks. “Build a castle,” Ricky says as she stomps up the steps. We know she's not likely to stay put for long. I rush over to the computer, recover the screen and say, “Look!” Ricky bends over my shoulder to see the list of murdered Russian children. “Let me sit down,” he says, gently evicting me from my computer chair. He leans toward the screen. His eyes dart back and forth quickly. Every few seconds, he glances over his shoulder.

“Where's Julia?” he asks.

“Still upstairs playing LEGOs.”

“This is stunning,” he says.

“I know. It's insane. Do you think all these parents deliberately set out to abuse or murder their children?” I ask, shaking my head in disbelief.

“Of course not. I think people like us who adopt Russian children have no idea what they're getting themselves into.”

“Like us? Could this happen to us, to me?”

“Don't be silly. I know you're frustrated and unhappy and you're worried sick, but you're not violent. Besides, she's so physically powerful she would probably hurt you before you could hurt her.”

Ricky's jesting, but there's truth in what he says. At times, I am actually afraid of Julia's incredible physical strength.

“Notice how it's always the mother, not the father, who commits the act,” I say. “And look at those prison terms: a year, five years, eighteen years! My God! This is awful.”

“It's because no one prepares us or tells us what to expect. Maybe some adoptive parents are briefed, or maybe they know they need to research this, but I bet most are like us. All they think about is bringing home the child. That's what we were thinking about when we were going through the process.”

“So true. Look at that one,” I say, pointing to Jessica Albina Hagmann's name.”

Whispering aloud I read, “The mother claimed she accidentally killed Jessica while trying to stop her from having a tantrum.”

“Remember that child on the plane home from Russia?” Ricky says, waiting for me to recall. “You know, the one who sat opposite us. She was about twenty months or so. Remember how she was wailing and rolling on the floor for the better part of the ten-hour flight? I imagine a child like that becomes Jessica Albina Hagmann.”

We hear Julia on the steps.

“She's coming down,” I say.

“I'll run her down to school. We can talk about this later.”

I know I should get on with my day. I have so much work, but I can't tear myself away from this list. I keep going. I type each child's name in Google and piece together how each of these tragedies unfolded in online clips I find in local newspapers. I crave to know what happened in unhappy houses in Colorado, Vermont, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Maryland, and
North Carolina. I want to find a pattern. One that makes sense. One that tells me this will never be me. But I can't. These are ordinary people who adopted babies from Russian orphanages, and there are many of them. “This is not a coincidence,” I say to myself. I log off.

The blue sky fills up the world outside my large picture window. I see Ricky standing akimbo at the other end of our property pondering God only knows what. Surviving our first winter on the mountain taught us we live on a treacherous road that becomes impassable in the snow and that it's nearly impossible to get a car out of the driveway. When the snow melted, we discovered six concrete cisterns perched dangerously in our woods. They were used to capture rainwater a century ago, but we had to call in a stonemason to crush them up and haul them away because they were an eyesore and a danger. We learned the maple trees bloom first and the catalpas are still bare until late June. And the nutty professor who lived in what was barely a house for seventeen years before us scattered tin cans of cat food for strays and that she, and the inhabitants before her, never took the time to plant gardens.

“Julia, come with me,” I say, trying to grasp her hand.

She pulls it away. It's like trying to hold a birder dog chasing a sparrow.

“Come on, I want to see what Daddy's up to.”

I have to grip her arm tightly to get her to walk outside with me. She runs ahead toward Ricky. He catches her, as though I'd thrown a ball.

“What are you doing? Or should I say what are you
thinking?”
I ask.

“I'm going to pull out all the weeds and brush from this patch and make a vegetable garden.”

I stifle a laugh.

“How? This is not a ‘patch.' It's like an acre of garbage.”

“I know. I know. One weed at a time. You'll see. By July we'll have tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers.”

“Are you planning on getting a team of oxen?”

“Go ahead. Make fun. You have no faith. You'll see.”

“No, no. Knock yourself out. I don't want to discourage you. It just seems like an awesome task.”

“Isn't everything we take on?”

I walk back to the house to prepare lunch. His words linger … “Isn't everything we take on?” He's right. The two of us have tackled more in the six years we've spent together than I imagine many couples do. We've dealt with financial woes, unemployment, nearly losing the apartment sale, challenging family relationships, two trips to Siberia, and the complete renovation of a derelict farmhouse. And our biggest challenge—being Julia's parents.

After a week, Ricky has transformed himself into a human thresher. His arms are pricked with cuts from thistles. But he has miraculously carved a clearing and he is building raised beds, filling them with soil, and enclosing them inside a chicken-wire fence.

On the morning of Mother's Day, a day that is always difficult for me, he takes Julia to Home Depot so I can get an extra hour of rest. We don't have any specific plans today, which is okay but somehow it feels like it shouldn't be. This is my fourth Mother's Day as a mother. It is difficult to cope with my feelings about being a daughter, and it's equally sticky to feel celebrated as a mother. I'm an imposter in both roles. I'll call my mother today because I have to. We'll both follow the rules. I'll say, “Happy Mother's Day.” She'll say, “Thank you.” Neither will ask the other how each is spending the day. I'll try to get off the phone quickly as soon as the silence sets in. She'll breathe a long, exasperated sigh into the receiver and say, “Enjoy your day,” which she surely doesn't mean. And she will not say “Happy Mother's Day” back to me, to acknowledge that I, too, am a mother. This chill might be more bearable if I felt at ease at being Julia's mother, but I don't.

“Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, come and see what we got,” Julia says, rocking my shoulder as I lie sloth-like on the bed.

I open my eyes. Julia and Ricky hover over me.

“C'mon,” Ricky says. “Get up. Get some clothes on. Here, put this on.”

“C'mon, Mommy, c'mon.”

I toss off the covers. Ricky and Julia wait while I dress.

They each take one of my hands and lead me outside, up the path to Ricky's garden. I can't see where I'm being taken because Julia has insisted I keep my eyes closed. We stop at the top of the hill. “Okay, Mommy, open your eyes.” Ricky hands me a trowel and says, “Happy Mother's Day!” At my feet are scores of tiny, hopeful tomato, cucumber, and pepper seedlings poking out of peat cups. I'm like a giant in a miniature forest. There are also trays of green sprigs labeled basil, dill, and Italian parsley.

“Let's get our hands dirty,” Ricky says.

I hesitate for a moment because I've never planted a garden. Then I step into the spongy soil bed and kneel down low. Ricky shows me how to dig a small hole in the warm soil. Then he demonstrates how to twist and squeeze the plant from the peat cup. It feels like squeezing a pea from a pod. He shows me how to situate the tiny plant in the soil and to get it to stand straight by building a mound of dirt around it with my cupped hands.

“Let me know when you've planted a row,” he says. “I'll come back with water.”

He takes Julia by the hand and leaves me to plant.

The sun has warmed the earth, and the scent of dirt rises gloriously into my nose and intoxicates me. I don't even bother to wear the cotton gardening gloves he bought for me because it is such a pleasure to thread my hands through the loamy soil. I'm caked in dirt. I feel like a child who is finger painting. Messy. Surprised by swirls of color. Sure that something beautiful and ripe will emerge. My husband and daughter went to the Home Depot nursery this morning and brought me back a metaphor. Nurture something, and eventually it will bear fruit.

The humid room is packed. We're lucky to find a couple of free chairs in the back. Not long after we arrive, parents are lining up along the walls. Many are fiddling with video cameras, testing the angles. I know from
previous events like this that Julia will not know the songs or the hand movements. I suffer when I watch her on stage and she looks lost. That's what I've come to expect from these nursery school concerts, so I'm antsy. Ricky leans in to whisper “keep your expectations low.”

“I know,” I say. “I know the drill.”

The children march onto a three-tiered stage. Julia is always in the front because she's pint-sized compared to the rest. Ricky and I wave to her. She looks frozen. As the songs get underway, I see her fidgeting. Predictably, she is not singing. But she looks more agitated than she usually does in situations like this. By the second song, I see her vying for her teacher Jocelyn's attention. Jocelyn is sitting in the front row, trying to get Julia to focus. I see Jocelyn's arms waving and then she reaches out to steady Julia on the stage. There is some commotion. I can't exactly see what's going on, but my tumbling stomach tells me it's not good. I look up again, and Jocelyn is removing Julia from the stage, trying to appease her with a stuffed bear. The children continue to perform. A couple of parents turn and offer a sympathetic look. They're probably thinking,
Julia's having a bad day. It's not a big deal. Things like this happen.