When the Morning Glory Blooms (20 page)

Because Corrie’s baby lived, and because she did not want him, we were forced to enlist the aid of an attorney.

And so I faced another crisis of faith. With memories of Mr. Rawlins as nose-stinging as ammonia, I was not eager to work closely with any attorney. But that was the least of my concerns. Where on God’s green earth would I find a lawyer willing to handle the paperwork for adoptions without collecting his customary fee? Where could I find a lawyer willing to work for eggs and dried apples? Ludicrous!

Pressed by a sense of urgency, fueled by doubts that Corrie would remain with me long enough to sign the necessary papers, I enlisted the Kinneys’ aid. Before the week’s end, they had secured an appointment for me with an attorney in Newcastle. The extra miles seemed a small price to pay, under the circumstances.

Because Corrie would not volunteer to watch the infant, I feared leaving them together while I kept my appointment in Newcastle. I couldn’t trust her to change or feed the baby—or to care that he needed either task performed. It sounds as though I’m being especially hard on her. But I’m not exaggerating her lack of interest or cooperation.

So the child, whom I called Thomas, for lack of an appointed name, rode with me when Puff drove us to Newcastle. The child remained in my arms when I walked through the doors of the office building and introduced myself to Mr. Grissom’s secretary.

The child, rooting hungrily at my breast as if I could feed him from my own barren body, made his presence known with loud protests as Mr. Grissom welcomed into his office our sorry duo—a woman who was anything but prepared to beg for help from a sophisticated lawyer, and the days-old babe who did not understand that his future lay in the hands of the man and woman who shared the office space with him.

“Miss Morgan. A pleasure to meet you. Please, have a seat.”

I shifted Thomas to my shoulder, covering the infant’s mouth-sized wet spot on my blouse with the baby’s body, and lowered myself into the offered deep leather chair. Thomas nuzzled his face into my neck and cheek, his rosebud lips searching for what he could not find on me. My embarrassment nearly sent me fleeing from the room.

“A baby’s hunger knows no propriety, does it, Miss Morgan?”

“I have a bottle for him.”

“Please. Take your time. We can talk as he eats, can’t we?”

The bottle I retrieved from the bag slung over my other shoulder was mercifully still warm enough. Puff had suggested I nest it in newsprint to insulate it. Where had he learned such a thing?

Thomas settled into a comfortable pattern of sucking and swallowing. Mr. Grissom and I settled into a more comfortable pattern, too.

The man’s face registered a kindness that startled me. I assumed I’d be up against a fight for the rights of the child in my care. But Mr. Grissom’s fists were not raised for battle. His hands were relaxed and outstretched on his paper-strewn polished oak desk.

“How can I help you?”

“I was led to believe you might consider giving legal counsel in regard to adoptions?”

“The Kinneys have talked to me about your ministry.”

That was the first time I’d heard my feeble efforts called a
ministry
. It both humbled and thrilled me.

“And, yes, I would consider being of assistance. Is this child being put up for adoption?”

“Yes, sir. As soon as possible. The mother is with me at the present. I can’t guarantee her whereabouts for long, I’m afraid. And then what would happen? I know nothing about legal
matters. I have heard it has become more complicated. There are rules to follow and adoption agencies with good intentions that sometimes run aground. If the mother disappears, who decides the child’s future?”

Thomas gulped too deeply and choked on the milk for which he was so hungry. I lifted him to my shoulder again and patted him on the back.

“Raise his arms over his head,” Mr. Grissom suggested. “That often works.”

It did. I was grateful and growing more indebted to the man across the desk.

“You have children, Mr. Grissom?”

“Yes. A son and a daughter. Both nearly grown now. My son is away at the university. My daughter will graduate this spring and head to Europe to study music, if she has her way. Since her mother died, she has been comfort, companion, and caretaker for me. A blessing I’ll sorely miss when she is gone.”

“You can understand, then, how important it is for a child to be given the advantage of a two-parent home, if at all possible.”

“Oh, yes.”

“And you must have dealt with families over the years who had not been blessed with children but who longed to provide a home for children who had none.”

“Yes. Are you endeavoring to win me over to your cause, Miss Morgan? Your efforts are unnecessary.”

The infant swallowed contentedly. I sought for words to introduce the financial questions swirling through my mind. That, too, was unnecessary. Mr. Grissom relieved me of the dilemma.

He leaned back in his wheeled desk chair, his vest and shirt stretching over a sturdy chest. “I understand that you are not involved in a money-making venture, that you do not charge the unwed mothers who find shelter with you.”

“True.”

“I also understand that you’ve yet to find a team of permanent backers, that you have had only seed money and God’s grace off of which to live these months of operation.”

“Also true.”

He leaned forward, resting his forearms on papers representing cases far more significant than mine, of more interest to the courts than a small bundle curled against me, content to be held and loved, even if not by the woman who gave birth to him.

Mr. Grissom smiled as he inhaled. “It’s been laid on my heart to consider tithing the hours I spend behind my desk.”

“Excuse me?”

“I give financially to my church. But the Lord has impressed upon me the good that might be done if I also gave Him a percentage of my time here in the office. I handle an occasional pro bono case, but am interested in expanding to include other service opportunities. Can you be of assistance to me in this capacity, Miss Morgan?”

How gallant of him to turn my need to make it appear I was somehow capable of helping him! I stared down into the face of a child and up into the face of a saint.

“What is the standard fee for adoption legal work? No, please don’t tell me. I would pay too high a price in guilt if I knew. Until I see where God takes me, until I know if I will care for two women a year or twenty, and how many of them will need to consider adoption, I can’t begin to guess how much this might cost you, Mr. Grissom.”

“I will not give to the Lord that which cost me nothing.”

He quoted King David at the threshing floor. It moved me to hear a man of such education weaving Scripture into his conversation as smoothly as “Pleased to meet you” and “Good day to you.”

“As I said, I am not at all familiar with adoption proceedings, Mr. Grissom.”

“Before we’re done, I am confident you will be, Miss Morgan.”

So began our working relationship.

I believe the word
bittersweet
was invented to describe the emotions that accompany adoption. Bitter-tasting bile pushed against the back of my throat as I witnessed Corrie’s signing away her child. Would she ever regret the way her hand determinedly gripped the pen? Would she live to regret the decision to pretend she was not a mother? As calloused as she then appeared, would years and longing and disappointments and wisdom sand the edges of her slate-cornered heart?

Corrie and Josiah Grissom and I attended the moment, with Lydia and Pastor Kinney serving as witnesses. With different mothers and sometimes fathers, we would play the same parts too many times. It was always bittersweet.

The young women who shook like willows in an earthquake and cried with wrenching sobs and smeared the legal documents with their tears and needed my hand to steady theirs as they signed their names  . . .  their sour grief sweetened with the golden nectar of the family they knew waited in the wings to care for their child.

The women who wavered at the last moment, clinging to the fragile thread of hope that maybe, somehow, oh could there be a way  . . .  ?

But no. They knew the answer. Before signing, the women were experienced wrestlers, having wrested from God’s hands the answer they needed, convinced in their heart of hearts that the choice was the only real choice they had.

“Please don’t put your name to paper until you’ve heard from God,” I counseled, always conscious that theirs was a decision no mother should have to make.

It was grievously difficult for me to hold my tongue sometimes. I advised. But I could not choose for them. Some gave up babies I thought they should have tried to keep. Some kept babies against my better judgment. I prayed the more diligently for them.

Corrie’s Thomas was our first. Not long after the screen door slammed behind Corrie’s “don’t look back” body, an eager man and woman walked through my front door, fell in love with him, and pledged to care for him as their very own. I knew they would. I read faithfulness and gratitude in their eyes.

A lovely young couple. They sat so close on the sofa that I entertained the thought that they might be conjoined twins masquerading as a married couple. Once the child was brought into the room, neither Mr. Grissom nor I could draw their attention back to legal or practical concerns for more than a cursory nod or brief word of agreement.

“Yes. All right. Certainly. We will,” they said, without glancing up from the face of the child.

The love they felt in an instant was so deep and profound, I knew it had celestial roots. The bile retreated. I tasted what I imagined manna must have tasted like the very first day.

I never saw the couple again after that, but I suspect their entwined hands tucked the love gift into the envelope that appeared in my mailbox every year on the anniversary of Thomas’s adoption.

Do we really live before we are loved? I ask because I was often tempted to mark a date of birth according to the moment when the child first knew love. For some, like Thomas, it was not his birth date. The real beginning of his life fell on the
day an eager couple wrapped him in their arms, intentionally choosing to love him.

Other children born under my roof could mark much sooner the day they began truly living. The day the young mother-to-be touched the bulge of her growing abdomen with the tenderness of a caress. The day she spoke soothing mews to her unborn child to still his or her hiccups. The day she confessed she would sacrifice everything to ensure the little one was cared for.

I’m wrong. Even Thomas was never unloved, not for a moment. I loved him, yes. But before I knew he existed, God did. God saw him and loved him long before his body was fully formed. The child might have been neglected and unwanted by his natural mother. But he was never unloved.

15

Becky—2012

Becky twirled the pink microflashlight in her fingers.

“A baby girl? Monica, I’m so sorry.” The whispered words into Monica’s too quiet living room seemed inadequate at best, acidic at worst.

Monica held her hands pressed together in her lap, her spine rigid, rocking back and forth as if an internal pain took her full focus to control.

“So the baby was  . . .  far enough along to  . . .  to tell?”

Monica didn’t respond.

Becky’s veins ran hollow. Vacuous brain cells failed to supply her with words remotely comforting, healing, soothing. So she slipped from her chair and joined Monica on the couch. Mirrored her posture. Put one arm around Monica’s trembling shoulders. Slid into the same rocking rhythm as if they were twin sisters. Silently prayed the only word she could remember, the only word that mattered:
Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Oh, Lord Jesus
.

Monica made several attempts at conversation. Nothing more than a consonant or two survived.

As the room darkened in response to the lateness of the hour, a single flame from the hurricane centerpiece the only
illumination, Becky spoke. “Monica, I don’t know what to say. Nothing’s right. Nothing can match the pain you must feel right now. So I’m going to stop trying. I just need you to know I’m here. I’m here.”

With a wracking breath, Monica turned a few degrees in Becky’s direction. “Brianne  . . .  Brianne thought she was getting rid of a problem. Simple as that. She says it didn’t occur to her that she was getting rid of my grandchild.”

The word stung. A beautiful word. One of the most emotionally evocative in any language.
Nipotina. Petit-enfant. Nieto. Enkel. Child of my heart
.

“That’s what got to her,” Monica spoke into the deepening darkness, “what made her confess the truth. That it was, had been, my grandchild. Imagine. She felt  . . .  she felt bad for me. What will happen the day she realizes you can’t erase a child? The child will  . . .  it will wake her  . . .  in  . . .  the night  . . .  and call out to her. Like mine does.”

“Yours?”

“My first. Before Brianne. Long before Brianne. Long before I knew I had other choices.”

Becky sniffed, then dug into her sweater pocket for a tissue.