Switched at Birth: The True Story of a Mother's Journey (6 page)

It proves to you, and to me, that I am only human.

Two days later, we were driving back to the genetic counselor’s office to meet our biological daughter.

Same diplomas, same DNA model. Very different set of circumstances.

We arrived before they did, so we stood around making awkward small talk with the counselor. Bay’s big brown eyes seemed bigger than usual. I’m sure I was shaking in my Christian Louboutins. John was jumpy.

Because we now knew that our daughter had grown up a mere fifteen miles north of Mission Hills, in a neighborhood called East Riverside. This was not something John and I were particularly happy to learn. East Riverside is a high-crime, low-income neighborhood. Years ago, we had considered opening a car wash there, but John’s financial advisors deemed it a bad risk to open a primarily cash business in an area known for, among other things, a fair amount of drug traffic.

East Riverside!

Were there sections of town as bad or worse? Sure.

Would I want my child growing up in any of them? Not a chance.

John’s powerhouse attorney had dropped this bomb on us just the night before; he’d managed to drag the information out of one of the hospital lawyers and he immediately called us to report it. John, Toby, and I were in the kitchen, finishing dinner. Bay was in her art studio.

“Hello, John, Kathryn....” His über-educated voice came booming through the phone’s speaker. “Are you sitting down?”

(Now, I ask you, did any good conversation ever begin with that phrase?)

On his end of the line, I heard papers shuffling. I think I may have been wringing my hands, waiting for this legal equivalent to a superhero to speak again. When he did, I wished he hadn’t.

East Riverside
, he told us.

Single mother
, he said. On the plus side, this single mother was an American citizen (not always a given for residents of that neighborhood), or at least he hadn’t been told anything to the contrary.

“Anything else?” John asked, dragging a hand down his face.

No, that was all he had for us at the moment. Captain Adjudication apologized for not being able to do a full background check on the single mom from East Riverside, but when he’d prodded the hospital henchman for a name, the other lawyer suddenly remembered his ethics and shut up. But certainly, the three facts we did have did not bode well for the next day’s meeting.

“Good work, Counselor,” John said heavily. “Thanks.”

When the super-lawyer signed off, I pictured him rushing to the nearest phone booth to change out of his cape and tights and back into his Hugo Boss pinstripe.

I pressed my fingertips to my temples and sighed. “Our little girl lives in East Riverside?”

“So what are we thinking?” Toby asked, taking his last bite of pecan-crusted tilapia. “Worst case scenario, she’s a gang member?”

At that, I gasped. I think I turned completely white and my eyes flew open wide.

Toby gulped down his fish. “Mom, I was kidding!”

“Of course he was kidding.” John quickly put his arms around me. “Sweetheart, she’s a fifteen-year-old girl, not an ex-con.”

“As far as we know …”

“You’re being irrational.”

“Well don’t you think I’m entitled?” I lowered myself onto one of the bar stools, throwing up my hands. “Hell, I’d say I’m entitled to be stark raving mad! And so far I’ve managed to keep it down to a mild case of crazy. So how about giving me a little credit?”

Toby offered me a fist bump and said, “Respect.”

I lowered one eyebrow at him. “Is that gang lingo?”

“No, it’s Aretha Franklin.”

Believe it or not, I laughed and clonked my knuckles against his.

I think this is a good place to make a point about humor: Never, ever underestimate its healing power. Because, looking back, I know in my heart that it was the laughter—when we could manage it—that got us through those six weeks. Bay’s rapier wit, Toby’s clever irreverence, John’s goofy jokes, even my own occasional silliness—they were like an elixir that kept me from burying myself under the emotional weight of it all. We laughed to keep from crying, and that is the reason I never did cross the line from mildly crazy to full-on nuts.

Laughter
. Enough said.

Now, less than twenty-four hours after our conversation with the Caped Litigator, we were preparing to see firsthand the effects of growing up in East Riverside.

When the office door opened, my heart leaped into my throat.

And then, it melted.

Melted, at the sight of the stunning, slender strawberry blonde who was smiling shyly at John and me. (No do-rag, no gang ink, thank heaven.) Just an utterly angelic-looking teenage girl.

Did I notice the woman who had come into the office with her? Not at all. Because for one split second it was as if this girl and Bay and I were the only three people on the entire planet. I felt a surge of pride at how beautiful both my daughters were.

If I had a billion pages to fill I could not adequately describe how I felt in those first few seconds; I think perhaps I was experiencing emotions that have yet to be named, feelings so rare and extraordinary that they simply cannot be defined.

Then the counselor who had started it all was saying, “Daphne, this is Bay. Bay, Daphne.”

And Daphne, my daughter Daphne, who I’d held in my arms just once sixteen years ago, flashed a gorgeous smile and said, “It’s nice to meet you.”

I would like to say that my first thought was that my daughter was well mannered. But that was not the case. Because Daphne didn’t just
say
it.

She signed it.

Which is why my first thought was not
She’s polite
.

My first thought was
She’s deaf
.

Amazingly, I was able to stay on my feet; miraculously I didn’t weep, and this was because I had to think of Bay. I had to be strong and calm for Bay, who right that very second was going through something every bit as enormous as what I was going through. Equally enormous, but in reverse.

She was looking into the dark eyes and lovely face of the woman who had pushed
her
into the world and fed
her
from her own body. Her biological mother.

Something fiercely protective ignited in me. I was like a warrior, ready to attack if this woman did one thing to make Bay feel anything less than unconditionally adored.

But this woman, this Regina Vasquez, with the rich chestnut hair (like Bay’s) and deep brown eyes (like Bay’s), was looking at my daughter—her daughter—as though she were seeing a priceless work of art, a precious treasure.

Which, of course, she was.

And I understood that I wasn’t the only one whose heart had just melted. Regina was taking Bay in, her eyes filled with tenderness and awe. She was making up for a decade and a half of not having this exquisite young woman in her life. She was trying to make sense of it, even as she knew that there was no way to make sense of it. And she was looking every bit as proud and delighted and terrified as I was.

The reality set in: This was Bay’s mother.

Bay’s mother?
No.
I’m
Bay’s mother.

And I’m Daphne’s mother.

It didn’t take a mind reader to know that this woman, this Regina Vasquez, was thinking the same thing. For one crazy second, I considered knocking her down, grabbing both girls, and running away with them, never to be found.

But that is not how a self-respecting Mission Hills mom conducts herself.

This is:

“Regina,” I said in my most gracious voice, “we’d love to have you to our house for lunch.”

So we dined together.

I made some rookie errors with regard to Daphne’s deafness, and Regina reacted in a manner that, at the time, I thought was hostile. But I understand now. She had one agenda, and that was to protect Daphne from our ignorance. The only thing we were guilty of was having never known anyone who was deaf. We guessed, plain and simple, and we guessed wrong. I spoke too loud, I spoke too fast, I asked Regina if she was Mexican—wrong, wrong, and wrong (she’s Puerto Rican, in fact). We found out that Daphne and Regina lived with Regina’s mother, Adrianna, and that Daphne was a vegetarian (so much for the chicken enchiladas I had warming in the oven).

Through all of it, I sensed Regina’s defensiveness (although at the time I might have said contempt). But now that I’ve had some time to consider it from her point of view, I know I can’t blame her. First impressions are mostly about what you see on the surface (since there’s really little else to go on), and Regina was walking into a pretty intimidating setting. I’m sure, at that point, she saw us primarily in terms of the neighborhood in which we lived. And weren’t we seeing her in the same way? Not to mention that she was outnumbered. We had the “conventional family” thing going for us, and it must have seemed to her that we were flaunting it.

Of course, she had the significant advantage of speaking Bay’s language, whereas every time Daphne tried to communicate with us in hers—those graceful but elusive signs and hand gestures—I held my breath hoping John wouldn’t make some seemingly insensitive crack about the third base coach signaling him to steal second! He didn’t, thank God, but if he had, he wouldn’t have meant it as anything other than a joke to lighten an incredibly awkward mood.

We were all doing our best.

Isn’t that what all parents do? Their best?

Of course it is. But sometimes, as we were soon to find out, even your best gets tested.

Bay tested us, a week later, by getting arrested. I’m sure that wasn’t her plan when she tried to buy beer with a fake ID, but that’s what happened. And since she now found herself the daughter of two mothers, she opted to use her proverbial single phone call to reach out to the one she thought would go easier on her: Regina.

When John and I went to pick Bay up at the police precinct (a phrase, believe me, I never thought I’d have occasion to use), I will admit that I behaved badly.

How badly? Well, let’s see … basically, I accused Regina of being responsible for the meningitis that caused Daphne to go deaf (and blamed that negligence on her having been a raging drunk) and then I threatened to sue her for custody of both Bay and Daphne. But the irony was that while I was shouting at Regina and calling
her
a bad parent, Bay, the daughter
I
had raised, slipped out of the police station right under my nose.

She was gone for most of the night. We didn’t know where she was, and I was terrified as we searched for her. (I wondered: Was this to become some kind of sick pattern in my life? Looking for my daughters and not knowing what I’d find?)

Bay went missing for hours. It was a miserable night.

But miraculously, something wonderful came out of it.

The next night, as we were getting ready for bed, I said to John, “Bay had a thought....”

“Did she?” He flung aside a throw pillow. “Did it have anything to do with never getting arrested again as long as she lives?”

“It had to do with the guesthouse,” I said, as he pulled down the quilt and climbed into bed.

“Ah, so she wants to move out now?”

“Actually, she wants Daphne and Regina to move in.”

He froze, clutching the hand-embroidered edge of the bedsheet. “She wants them to move in?” he echoed. “To the guesthouse?
Our
guesthouse?”

“Yes. I just don’t know how I feel about it.”

Above our expansive garage was a finished apartment, a three-bedroom, two-bath living space that took a beating every five years when John hosted a reunion of his college baseball buddies; other than that, the place rarely saw any action. I pictured the guest suite now, with its spacious rooms and charming eaves, and knew that Bay’s idea had much to recommend it. It would mean that Daphne would be with us, safe, a mere twenty feet away on the opposite side of the driveway. Inviting the Vasquezes to live in the guesthouse would allow me to have daily contact with Daphne. Of course it also meant that Regina would have equally convenient access to Bay.

And I just wasn’t sure I was ready for that.

John, however, seemed totally on board. “It’s not a bad idea,” he said reasonably. “It’s just sitting there, empty. Well, except for the squirrel overflow.”

I rolled my eyes at his reference to my beloved collection of anything squirrel-related—knickknacks, cookie jars, bookends …

“I don’t know....” I leaned back against the pillows and tried to imagine it. “I mean, it sure sounds great on paper, but how would it work in practice?”

“Well, let’s see.” John pretended to puzzle it out. “You can parent the girls on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Regina can parent them on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.”

“Right. And on Sunday, we can all go straight to psychotherapy!” I laughed. “I bet we could get a group rate.”

He reached up to turn off the bedside lamp; the room became silvery with the moonlight that spilled in through the windows. I thought about Daphne in East Riverside; the same moon was shining in her window. A window which, according to John, had bars on it.