The Truth is Bad Enough: What Became of the Happy Hustler? (26 page)

Slight and meek, she took the stand. When asked why she was seeking custody, she answered, “Because she is family. During our visits, I have established a good relationship with her.” Sincere yet unconvincing, Miss Coleman then attempted to convince the judge that there was yet another potential birth father.

Stoutt scoffed at that desperate attempt, dismissed it as bogus, and called me to the stand. “Tia is my daughter,” I told him. “She has been since she was five months old. I feed her, dress her, take her to the doctor, play with her, teach her and love her.”

After the testimony of several social workers involved in the case, Commissioner Stoutt reviewed the details. Dispassionately yet forcefully, he stressed one undisputed fact above all others: Miss Coleman’s repeated refusal to care for Tia during the first eighteen months of her life. The court did not buy her well-rehearsed excuse: “My sister had just recently died and I was too tired from having taken care of her.”

“The hearing to determine the final relinquishment of parental rights will take place in this courtroom at two p.m.,” Stoutt said, playing the judge role with a bit of flair.

I don’t know how it happened, but I found myself standing in line next to Miss Coleman in the downstairs cafeteria, surrounded by overworked court personnel and overwrought litigants.

“It’s in God’s hands,” she said, simply and earnestly.

“Yes, I suppose it is,” I said.

Adding to the drama of the afternoon session was the fact that Stoutt was retiring and this was his last day on the job. Thanks to his reputation as an advocate for reunification, he had been a regular in the media during the past few years. In his final bang of the gavel, would he actually rule against a biological relative in favor of an unrelated single man?

CHAPTER 48
               

“The court,” Stoutt said, pronouncing each word slowly, “having reviewed the evidence and heard the testimony, now officially declares all claims to parental rights terminated.”

Before we were adjourned, the issue of visitations had to be hammered out—by me. “I will continue visitations with Miss Coleman, but I do not want Tia exposed to Miss Washington’s negativity.”

Pushing Stoutt to specify the visitation rights, Ms. Meyerhoff went too far. Relishing his final histrionic close-up, Stoutt delivered his final pronouncement with a booming voice: “Visits will be at the discretion of Mr. Kearns.”

Against my attorney’s advice (“She accused you of being a child molester,” he reminded me), I agreed to remain in contact with Miss Coleman.

It appeared to be a Movie-of-the-Week happy ending, so why was I not in a state of ecstasy? Not only was I feeling residual pangs of identification with Miss Coleman, but the uncertainty of my future with Tia was not magically erased. Yes, I was thrilled to have won this battle, but the victory carried with it a responsibility that I both welcomed and feared.

As Thanksgiving approached, I concentrated on being grateful for the impending adoption and the deepening relationship with Eric. We celebrated the holiday at his parents’ sumptuous Santa Barbara estate in spite of the fact that Eric’s parents were not entirely comfortable with his gayness and they were, “like most Asians,” according to him, “racist.”

The family members, including eight siblings with multiple nieces and nephews, were consistently polite, but many could not hide their discomfort. At one point during the lavish dinner, I noticed an expression of disbelief on the beautifully contoured face of Eric’s mom. Tia, seated between Eric and me, devoured mashed potatoes as if she hadn’t eaten in months, while we attempted to teach her table manners (a bit late).

Eric’s mom’s response was more understandable than some of the responses we’d routinely received from the purportedly liberal L.A. population, including gay men. We began looking for an apartment that would satisfy the needs of a two-year-old and a frequent visitor. Although Eric didn’t plan to move in full-time, he agreed to divide his time between L.A. and Santa Barbara.

“The Rainbow Triangle” that was us—Tia, Eric, and I—seemed to put off landlords, many of whom responded to us with a degree of discomfort that verged on hostility. By the time Christmas arrived, however, we had found a great two-bedroom apartment in Los Feliz, a convenient and hip area of L.A.

There’s nothing comparable to experiencing Christmas through the squeals of a two-year-old. Tia’s entire extended family gathered at our new place on Christmas Eve. Not only were we celebrating the holiday, but everyone was toasting to our new domestic paradigm.

Trouper that he was, Eric didn’t let on that he was in excruciating pain, dehydrated and exhausted, resulting from a flu that had been growing increasingly virulent over the past two weeks. He felt well enough to make the trip to our Idyllwild cabin, where we planned on welcoming the promising New Year.

It takes at least a day to acclimate to the altitude on the mountain, but Eric seemed to be having a particularly difficult time breathing, even as one day melted into the next. On New Year’s Eve, we lit every candle in the cabin and dined on Eric’s home cooking. All three of us fell asleep before midnight.

The tranquility of the mountain was short-lived. Back home, there was a message from Miss Coleman, requesting a visit. Since she hadn’t asked to see Tia during the holidays, I was surprised to hear from her more than six weeks after our day in court. Nevertheless, I complied.

Even though I knew I realistically had no control over Miss Washington’s involvement with Tia unless I monitored each visit, I trusted that Miss Coleman was honoring my wishes to keep her out of the picture.

I was wrong. The day following the second visit of the year, I received a call from Lucy at DCS. “Before we can move forward with the final adoption paperwork,” she said, “I’m afraid we’re going to have to clear up some things once and for all.”

DCS had received a call (“not from Miss Coleman,” was all Lucy would say), insisting that Tia was the victim of neglect and sexual abuse. This was based on two observations: a bald patch on her head and “excessive masturbation.”

I was livid. The hair loss had already been diagnosed as alopecia areata, a skin condition not uncommon to African American children. The recrudescence of the sexual allegation, decidedly more damaging, enraged me. “This is it,” I told Lucy. “They will never, ever, see her again. Let them know that I have had it with them.”

Even though it was evidently Miss Washington behind these eleventh-hour attempts to discredit me, I had to hold Miss Coleman accountable. She had betrayed me. I repeated into the receiver, “They brought this on themselves and they will never see her again.”

Lucy attempted to calm me down, giving me instructions to get an official dermatologist’s report and undergo a thorough child abuse evaluation, to be conducted by the Children’s Institute International.

What if, however wrongly, the evaluators made a mistake and concluded that Tia had been molested? What if the person who conducted the interview was black and felt I shouldn’t raise her because I was white? What if he or she was homophobic? Or maybe someone who simply had a bias about a single man raising a little girl. What if? What if? What if?

Tia and I endured three intense sessions of scrutiny, conducted by the same team of professionals who had provided testimony in the wrongful accusations of the famed McMartin schoolteachers. No matter how they were interpreted, these encounters were somehow proof of our bond. I was given the opportunity to explain Tia’s intimate relationship with her diaper and how she relied on the soft texture to soothe her.

Eric’s “flu” led to a series of hospitalizations, as he bounced back and forth between doctors in L.A. and doctors in Santa Barbara, none of whom seemed to be able to diagnose his worsening condition. In addition to respiratory problems, he experienced unremitting diarrhea, rapidly losing weight and morphing from that strapping young man into what appeared to be a debilitated old man. I had never seen AIDS do its dirty work with such sinister swiftness. By the time an official diagnosis was discovered, it was far too late. His lungs were being eaten away by Kaposi’s sarcoma. Incurable.

I began driving back and forth to Santa Barbara, where he chose to remain, two or three times a week, often with Tia in tow. Even though he was hooked up to feeding tubes and oxygen, he’d let her bounce on his queasy stomach.

He eventually settled in at his parents’ home as the countdown began. I drove up on a Sunday, alone, to spend some time with him. There were always three or four relatives bedside, attending to his every whim. “We need to be alone,” he whispered to the group that had assembled that particular afternoon, struggling to get each word out.

With a damp cloth, which I kept cool by dipping it in a bowl of ice, I bathed his entire body from his toes to his forehead. Practically moving in slow motion, I remembered his body as it had been less than a year prior, all hard and sinewy, pressing against me, making love to me. His withered skin, now stretched taut over his bones, was no less lovable as I soothed every inch of this beautiful creature who had made what amounted to a cameo appearance in my life.

When I finished, I kissed his forehead and then his eyes, gently and softly. Without realizing what was happening, I felt my tongue inside his mouth and his tongue was inside mine and we were kissing, as the saying goes, like there was no tomorrow. It was one of the most erotically charged kisses I’d ever experienced—driven and hot, all at once calming and utterly unsettling. He could barely breathe or speak or move his head, but jeez, could he kiss. On his deathbed.

Our last kiss.

CHAPTER 49
               

Eric chose to die the following day.

Tia and I spent a few days in Idyllwild as I tried to make sense of his death—not only for her sake but for mine. I placed him—his spirit, if you will—in nature. “Eric is in the clouds; he’s in the mountain rocks and the pine trees,” I told her. “He’s in the sunshine in the morning and the moonshine at night.” This made perfect sense to a kid with Tia’s vivid imagination.

A week or so after he died, we celebrated his life on the beach in his beloved Santa Barbara, where dozens of golden helium balloons were released in his memory. “See,” Tia said, covered with sand, “the balloons know Eric is in the clouds.”

A few days later, an envelope arrived containing the document from my attorney, confirming the imminent adoption of Tia Katherine Kearns.

This recurring pattern of extreme highs and extreme lows, always in tandem, must be imprinted on everyone’s life, I figured. You simply aren’t given entrée to one without the other, are you?

Because the adoption celebration would be a big extravaganza, I planned a low-key birthday party (just kidding). Several of our family members rented a suite of rooms at the Disneyland Hotel and, although the atmosphere was clouded by the death of Princess Diana, our little princess had a smashing third birthday fete.

The formal adoption took place on Friday, September 5, 1997, in the same building where the interminable legal maneuvering had played out. My dear, dear friends, Dale Raoul and Joe Gill, stood at our side. I held Tia in my arms. Sitcom silly, the judge cracked jokes and appeared to relish every minute of this joyous occasion.

As he spelled out my obligations and responsibilities as a father, I was unable to contain the tears, tears that had been building up for nearly three years. I would not save this watershed for the stage, goddammit. Let ’em flow, Daddy. Let ’em flow, Daddy-o.

The judge’s final declaration that this little girl was, finally, my daughter carried with it a symbolic resolution that represented a lifelong struggle to overcome prejudice, ignorance and my own self-doubt. In that stunning moment, everything I had fought for coalesced and I felt vindicated.

The following day, nearly one hundred people gathered for a blissedout bash on a grassy hill above the merry-go-round in Griffith Park, amidst hundreds of balloons emblazoned with her name: Tia Kearns.

A photo of her, taken on that day, serves as a pure representation of who she was in that moment. Bare brown arms stretched around her neck, hugging herself, she is a testament to opposites. Charismatic and withdrawn, fierce and frail, she is part survivor and part victim. Her eyes project intelligence and defiance. Her sturdy little body, wrapped in a sleeveless pink dress dotted with purple flowers, begs to be held but is poised for combat. This is my girl.

“Who braided her hair?” someone asked.

“Uh, I did,” I answered.

Believe me when I say that our roots have entwined and our bond is thicker than blood. She is my daughter and I am her daddy.

CHAPTER 50
               

Identifying the right preschool for your kid carries with it the emotional involvement, not to mention the financial consideration that used to accompany a search for the right college.

This quest is marked by a variety of philosophies, all containing a veritable language of its own. Diversity is the battle cry of almost all of L.A.’s preschools, so Tia and I would ostensibly be able to fill more than one quota. The very qualities that were potentially poison in the adoption scenario transformed into gold when it came to finding a preschool and, subsequently, a K–8 school.

But no matter the degree of our desirability on paper, there would be a mandatory personal visit to the prospective school as well as a slew of probing questions along the line of, “Is she potty trained?”

The director of one well-respected preschool chose for us to participate in a Mommy and Me session so that she could observe Tia in that setting. Daddy and Me didn’t exist.

Tia was herself—loud, aggressive, oppositional and a bit confrontational. She was also accessible, funny, playful and verbal. At the end of the session, where Tia was the only black girl and I was the only male Mommy, we formed a circle and each child was asked to sing his or her favorite song.

Little Susie sang, “It’s a small world, after all …” Then adorable Billy half sang, half whispered, “Twinkle, twinkle, little star …” After several more darling renditions of familiar kiddie ditties, Tia let loose with, “R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me. Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me …” There was a collective gasp from the mommies (and mes) as they glimpsed a soul sister unleashed.