Free The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler Page B

near the stairway, that indicated people’s chores. The chores rotated. They were minor, like cleaning the bathrooms, running a vacuum cleaner, helping out in the kitchen, setting the table, that kind of stuff. As new girls came in, their names went to the bottom. So, over the time you were there, you would watch your name continue to move up that list—that was one indicator of how close you were. When a girl left we would never see her again. A few girls, revolutionary girls, talked about keeping their babies but we knew they were crazy. We knew: no one was allowed to keep their baby.
    When I went into labor, someone from the home drove me to the hospital. She left the car running, went into the emergency room, and said, “I’ve got a girl from the home here” and she turned around and left. They put me in a room and I lay on a bed holding on to the bars above my head, enduring contractions in silence. I was afraid to make any noise. I lay there almost all night. It got worse and worse and I held on for dear life. Finally, someone came by and said, “What are you doing in here?”
    They took me into the delivery room. It was a huge room with a lot ofpeople milling around. Here I am, up in stirrups, and all these young doctors are kind of walking by chitchatting, like they’re at a baseball game. I remember being so humiliated. Finally, a doctor comes in. He starts saying, “Push,” and I’m thinking, “Push what?” I didn’t know what he was talking about. I didn’t know how to help. I couldn’t help; I had no control over my body at that point. He started yelling, “Who gave this girl so many drugs?” Then two other people started pushing on my stomach, and I could see, in that round light above my head, the reflection of what was happening. My child was being born. And this guy saw that I could see and moved the light. He tipped it away once he realized I could actually see this event that was mine. He took that away from me.
    Every day I asked if I could see my baby, and every day they said, “Yes, we’ll come and get you and take you to the nursery.” But they never did. Then the day I was being released, someone took me upstairs and wheeled me in front of the nursery window. She pointed to the one that was mine and said, “That’s him.” I asked if I could hold him, and she said no. I just looked through a piece of Plexiglas and she stepped back from the wheelchair and said, “Are you done?”
    Afterward, I sort of fell into my old ways and started seeing my friends again, but I wasn’t the same anymore. I mean, you just can’t be the same after the experience of becoming a mother. I knew that my son was gonna be part of my life again one day. I never let go of that from the very beginning. I remember writing to the agency because I had some things I was making for him that I wanted to send. I got a note back saying, “Don’t send anything else.” I remember thinking, “Over my dead body are they gonna tell me this is done.” When he was about two, I met my husband. I remember it was one of the first things I told him: “I have a two-year-old son that’s gonna be a part of my life someday.” I figured, you know, I’m a package deal now and there was no way to undo that.
    In the late eighties, I was reading the paper one day and there was a little block ad, which I still have, that said, “Adoption Issues group meeting at the Library.” I closed the paper and then I opened it again, and I thought, “Adoption issues? I think I have an adoption issue.” So I cut it out and put it on the bulletin board in the kitchen. I found myself ruminating over it constantly. I remember sitting at the table one night and my husband was looking at meand he said, “What are you thinking about?” And I said, “Nothing.” He said, “You’re going to that meeting, aren’t you?” And I said, “Yeah, I’m going to that meeting.”
    I had to say it many times over the next few weeks in order to