Free Rescuing Julia Twice by Tina Traster Page B

defense attorney faster than he could make it. On Valentine’s Day she expected to be showered with flowers and jewelry. Ricky maintained the charade long after he’d realized he had married a gold digger. We treat Valentine’s Day casually, writing love poems and staying home and cooking dinner. Here we are in Moscow, with our new baby, experiencing the living poetry of becoming parents. Ricky is wearing Julia in a sling. When I try her on, so to speak, I am shocked at how heavy she is around my neck. I can’t support her because I have a weak back. At fifteen pounds, Julia feels like a solid sack of potatoes or a small bag of cement.
    That morning, I run out to the drugstore for formula. It takes an hour to make myself understood, but the clerk is patient. In between a day of bureaucratic stops to fill out papers, we take Julia with us to lunch. Every time Ricky or I give her formula, I suck in my breath and wait for our modern-day Pompeii to rip. The last stop is another government compound where Julia is checked by a doctor. There are so many questions I’d like to ask. I try to explain the back-arching, but I know the doctor doesn’t understand me or won’t let on that he does. He examines her in five minutes, as though she were a piece of meat being inspected by a USDA official. Would these doctors ever reveal there was a problem if they had found one this far along in the process? I doubt it.
    The next morning we have the lavish buffet breakfast the Marriott serves.
    â€œHey guys, how’s it going?”
    We haven’t seen Robert and Laura since that first night in Moscow, but his melodic voice is familiar even before I see him. He is carryingNoa, who has a full head of silk-black hair and a caramel complexion. She looks like a tiny gypsy. Robert tells us she’s eleven months old, but she looks at least a year older than Julia, who is completely bald.
    â€œWhere’s Laura?” I ask.
    â€œShe’s upstairs on the phone to her mother,” he snorts. “She’s emotionally overcome by this whole thing. She’s a little upset because we were planning on adopting two babies, but it didn’t work out.”
    â€œWe’ll …,” he continued, hoping to keep talking. “We’ll see you guys later at the American Embassy.”
    â€œI guess this really is a tough thing for a lot of women,” I say to Ricky.
    He tells me he’s going to the buffet to refill his plate.

    There are about fifty couples at the American Embassy, the next to last step in the adoption. They are sitting in rows of chairs with their newly adopted babies. I scan the room, across one row of chairs, then the next, and the next. Uncannily, it looks like the babies have been matched to the parents, like a scarf to a suit.
    â€œHow do they do that?” I say, in complete bewilderment.
    I look at Julia.
    No one would say she resembles me or Ricky, but she does have a small, scoop nose like mine and large, broad cheekbones like Ricky’s.
    â€œThat’s incredible,” I continue. “Look at the parents and the babies and tell me what you see.”
    Ricky scans the rows.
    â€œWow, they look like the parents!” he says.
    I’m not crazy.
    â€œI guess that’s why they ask for pictures of us when we fill out the dossier,” he says.
    â€œThis is like a science fiction movie.”

    Russian children are easier to blend into their American families than their counterparts from China or Ethiopia. But flying now on the “Orphan Express,” it’s easy to identify newly minted families. A woman is sitting across the aisle from me. She’s traveling with a girl, about two years old. The child is inconsolable, rolling around on the floor, braying like a distressed donkey. There is nothing the woman can say or do to break the child’s fit. Even the flight attendant, fluent in Russian, is powerless. I look at the woman