Switched at Birth: The True Story of a Mother's Journey (12 page)

“Oh, really?” I smiled. “Picture this, if Grandma Bonnie and Bay and I went out for ice cream …”

“You’d wind up paying,” John joked.

“Probably, yes,” I laughed. “But if we did, we would be two mothers—Grandma and me, and two daughters … Bay and me.”

Bay’s face had lit up with understanding. “Because you’re not just somebody’s mother, you’re somebody’s daughter, too.”

Now the sound of Adrianna’s chair scraping on the patio brought me out of my reverie. She stood up and smiled at me.

“You are a good girl, Kathryn,” she said, and I drank in the words like cool water on a hot day. “And Bay and Daphne are good girls.” Then to my surprise, she leaned down and kissed me on the top of my head. “And Regina is a good girl, too. She lost her way for a while, she’s made her mistakes. But she’s a good girl.”

As I watched Adrianna cross the drive and take the stairs up to the guesthouse, I knew that what she’d said was true. Regina had been in a terrible position, and I can’t, with any kind of certainty, say that I wouldn’t have done exactly what she did.

I am somebody’s mother. And I am somebody’s daughter. I am the one who teaches, but I am also the one who still has so much to learn.

If there is one overriding question that has been the crucial theme of this journey, that question is
Where do I come from?

For me personally, I needed to look back and ask myself,
Where did I learn to be who I am? Where did I form the ideas—right or wrong—that have influenced the decisions and choices I’ve made in my life? Where did John and I begin? Where did we become this couple that has become this family?

For Regina, it has been about staring into that dark place called alcoholism and knowing that, although that is where she came from, she will never, ever go back.

For Bay, it’s been about finding the sense of heritage that evaded her for so long. As much as we’ve always joked about her lack of athletic ability and her darkly exotic beauty, I know that until now it has been a source of great pain and wonder to her. Maybe because as a painter, Bay has such a powerful appreciation of the visual aspect of the world, she needed to make that connection between her outward appearance and the unique sensibilities of her soul. I understand that she once proudly described herself to Regina as a “Latina artist,” and although my Bay has never cared much for labels, this one seemed to suit her just fine.

But for Daphne, the question
Where did I come from?
has a multitude of answers. The most significant, magical, and gratifying element of her journey began long before the switch was revealed. After her illness, thanks to Regina’s love and determination, Daphne came from a world of silence and potential loneliness into a world of words spoken in sign, into a proud community of friends and companions who would be there to share her experiences in a way that the hearing people in her life never could. She came from being a fatherless girl into a family with one of the most devoted and loving male role models I could ever imagine. She came from being an only child into a three-sibling household, which includes a big brother who is sworn to look out for her and also to relentlessly torment her every chance he gets.

And she came from East Riverside, a neighborhood where she saw with her own eyes how hard times can lead to bad choices; where dark streets were off limits, and if she ever found herself alone on one, she’d be wise to look over her shoulder more than once and double her pace to get home and lock the door behind her.

Until I met my daughter Daphne, to me East Riverside was a place to avoid at all costs. Which is why, one day, I decided that I had to go there.

I didn’t tell John. I just got in my car and headed north and took the exit as directed by the voice on my GPS, to the place where my daughter grew up.

Was I nervous? Sure. Did I lock the car doors? You bet I did.

And would I have been shocked to see a chalk outline in the shape of a dead body on the sidewalk? Probably not.

Because I was a wealthy woman from the affluent suburbs, and these were the kinds of horror stories we heard about places like East Riverside.

But as I drove the wide boulevards, I was surprised by what I saw. This was not the scene from a
Mad Max
movie I’d envisioned; it was not the demilitarized zone I’d been warned about.

It was a neighborhood in disrepair, certainly. There were a handful of abandoned storefronts with boards across the windows, and the businesses that were still operational had bars on theirs. I saw a fair amount of graffiti, and more than a few teenagers (who should have been in school) wandering the streets looking for trouble.

I saw a homeless man on a park bench, and I saw a very young mother pushing a stroller along a sidewalk bordered by more than a few abandoned cars.

But no shots rang out that had me ducking under the dashboard. And no one rapped on my window offering to sell me drugs or, worse, demanding me at gunpoint to get out of the car and hand over my purse.

The jumpiness I’d felt when I first veered toward the East Riverside exit began to subside.

I saw old women sitting on their front porches, laughing together over coffee. I saw children playing on jungle gyms and storekeepers sweeping the sidewalks in front of their establishments.

I saw life happening, for better and for worse. I saw people doing their jobs, enjoying their families, making the best of the situation into which life, or chance, or choice had put them.

I only panicked when I realized that all my people-watching had caused me to miss the road I was looking for and I’d taken a wrong turn. I consulted my GPS, but since they’ve yet to work out a system that addresses missing street signs, I realized I was going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.

I was going to have to roll down the window and ask for directions.

I would be lying if I said my stomach wasn’t doing backflips when I pulled over to where two men stood on the corner.

They looked to be about my age. Since it was two o’clock on a weekday afternoon, I assumed that they were unemployed. For some reason, this made me even more nervous, as though “out of work” was synonymous with “evil,” and then it occurred to me that in our current economy, being unemployed was not necessarily a situation of their own choosing, and that they would probably be happy to rectify that condition if only there were more jobs available.

I hit the button that made the passenger’s side window slide downward, and I leaned over the center console to call out, “Excuse me?”

One of the men stepped forward. “Can I help you, lady?”

“I’m lost.”

He eyed the BMW and smiled as though to say, “I figured as much.”

I gave him the address of the house Regina had rented for the last twelve and a half years. He thought for a minute, then consulted with his friend.

“Two blocks up,” he instructed. “Take a right at the stop sign.”

I thanked him and drove on.

Minutes later I was pulling up in front of a tidy little ranch-style home. There were bars on the windows, as John had reported after that first night when he’d driven Daphne home—God, was it only months ago? (Honestly, it feels like a lifetime.)

I parked the car and got out. My plan had been to knock on the door and explain that a family member had once lived in this house, and might I please just take a quick look around?

But in the end, I didn’t have the guts. I stood on the sidewalk across the street and just took it all in. I admired the tidy flower beds and the freshly painted shutters and the neatly trimmed patch of grass that bordered the front of the house. I thought of the team of professional landscapers that descended on us every other Saturday, and how even with six of them working at once, using their high-powered mowers and industrial trimmers, it took upward of two hours to get the job done.

And yet this tiny plot of grass was every bit as green and cheerful as ours.

Then the front screen door banged open and a little boy of about four or five clambered out onto the stoop. He was laughing as he hopped down the two steps and dashed around to the swing set in the narrow side yard (less grass, more dirt). He wriggled himself onto one of the swing seats and began to pump.

I wanted to call out to him, “Hold on tight,” like I used to tell Toby and Bay. Maybe I did say it softly, I don’t know. But for close to twenty minutes I just stood there and watched him as he rose higher and higher in a wide arc under a glorious blue sky (as blue as in Mission Hills), and I listened to him giggle with absolute joy at the sensation of swooping toward the sun.

After a while, an older woman, who I assumed was his grandmother, came outside and stood by the mailbox. Minutes later a school bus chugged to a stop and a girl of about eight or nine bounded down the steps, her Justin Bieber backpack bouncing against her shoulder as she ran to greet her grandmother.

“
Abuela
,” she cried. “I got an A on my spelling test.”

“
Muy bueno
,”
Abuela
replied, catching her in a hug.

Life. Happening.

Just before she turned to lead the little girl into the house, the woman must have sensed me observing them. She turned. Our eyes met.

I smiled. I think I may have even waved.

She nodded at me, smiled cautiously, then called for the little boy to join her and his sister in the house. I don’t think she thought I was dangerous, but I was a stranger and I was just standing there, staring at her house.

I would have done the same thing.

When the family had disappeared behind their screen door, I took a moment to memorize the place. In my mind’s eye, I saw a tiny, strawberry-blond girl bouncing her first basketball on the cracked pavement of the sidewalk. I saw her getting on the school bus. I saw her learning to ride her bike and playing tag with her friends. All the things I had missed.

I saw Daphne’s life. Not the one I could have given her, but the one that she somehow came to have. I ached for what wasn’t, and then I smiled for what was.

I had had the great joy and privilege of watching Bay do all those things, and I knew in that I was blessed. But I wanted to have seen Daphne, too. And even though I knew there was no way I could have had them both, that didn’t stop me from wanting it. I’m sorry, but when it comes to my children, I’m greedy.

I almost laughed when a police cruiser appeared, moving slowly. The officer gave me a good long look as he drove past, and I knew it was time for me to go.

So I got in my car, found my way back to the highway, and left East Riverside behind me. Not out of fear, or prejudice or snobbery or disgust, but because it was time to go home.

I left because it was not the place that I came from. That didn’t make it any better or any worse, it just made it what it was.

And in the end, isn’t that what we all want? To find our way home?

I am sad to report that the Kathryn Tamblyn prom legacy reared its ugly head when the time came for Bay and Daphne to attend the Carlton School for the Deaf formal dance. Unlike me, the girls were not jilted by their boyfriends at the eleventh hour and left to settle for a date of their mother’s choosing (although Daphne had a near miss in that regard). Their prom drama happened afterward, and I’m still not clear on the details. All I know for sure is that Bay and Emmett had a huge fight at the dance, and Daphne learned something about her date that was game-changing to their relationship.

I had some drama of my own that night. Due to circumstances beyond my control I was not there to gush over how lovely they looked, or to pose them for those ceremonial pinning-on-the-boutonniere photographs, or to wave them off as they pulled out of the driveway. I did manage to catch up to them at the dance, and I can promise you both of them looked stunning.

But before any of that happened came the question of what they would wear. The minute the date of the prom was announced, I wanted to throw the girls in the car and take them straight downtown to hit every department store and boutique in search of the perfect prom dress. Instead, Regina suggested we at least narrow the playing field by going online, searching the season’s best designs and determining which style each girl had in mind. So we gathered in the guesthouse, fired up Daphne’s laptop, and began surfing the sites that featured the hottest prom fashions. Daphne was all about feminine elegance; Bay wanted something chic and edgy.

I accepted the cup of coffee Regina had just brewed for me and began to giggle.

“What?” Daphne asked.

“Oh, I was just thinking about my prom gown.” I laughed harder, just picturing it.

“Judging by your reaction, it must have been a real winner,” Bay deadpanned.

“It was all the rage at the time,” I assured her, then smiled at Regina. “Two words,” I said. “Gunne Sax.”

Regina nearly choked on her sip of coffee. “Oh, Lord. Gunne Sax! Remember all those ruffles?”

“And the lace!” I added.

“The sashes and bows!” Regina shook her head.

“Are we talking about a prom dress here,” Bay asked incredulously, “or a baby’s bassinette?”

“Wait,” said Regina. “Let me guess. Your date wore a powder-blue tux!”