Free The Cradle Robbers by Ayelet Waldman Page A

“I heard about the Lambs of the Lord from the social worker here at the prison. Some of the other pregnant women in the unit were using them, and it seemed like the perfect solution for me. The Lambs could keep the baby for as long as it took for me to find my aunt or my cousins. They sent me a packet and I signed a foster care agreement with them.”
    I frowned. “Did the social worker arrange for them to send you materials?”
    Sandra nodded. “A week or so after she told me about the Lambs of the Lord, I got their stuff.”
    “So you didn’t contact them? The social worker set it up for you?”
    “Yes.”
    That, it seemed to me, was going to be important in any lawsuit against the organization and against that social worker. If she was actively soliciting on behalf of the Lambs of the Lord, and going so far as to set up contracts with women who had not actually contacted the Lambs of the Lord themselves, that would directly implicate her in the baby-stealing conspiracy. If one existed.
    “What’s the social worker’s name?”
    “Brock. Taylor Brock.”
    I jotted that down.
    “Does she work here full-time, do you know?”
    “Mornings, I think, most days.”
    “Did you bring the paperwork you got from them?”
    Sandra took an elegant brochure printed on thick, creamy paper from one of her creased envelopes. She had brought dozens of these envelopes down with her. Prisoners aren’t allowed to have file folders, so they keep all their papers in the envelopes in which they receive them. I’ve known prisoners to carefully nurture a single manila envelopefor a dozen years. For that reason, I always make sure to send each page of correspondence in its own large envelope. Just in case they need an extra one.
    Sandra had a contract on matching paper, replete with fine print. There was also a form entitled “Instructions for Transfer of Custody.” I glanced over the documents, noticing the engraved letterhead and the organization’s address.
    “Did you ever meet with anyone from the Lambs of the Lord?”
    “Just the foster family. When I got to the hospital I called the number on the instruction sheet. The foster parents got there right away, but the midwife wouldn’t let them take my baby. She said I had a right to at least a few hours with Noah.”
    “A social worker wasn’t there to facilitate the transfer?”
    “No, just the couple.”
    I shook my head and motioned for her to continue.
    “It was a long labor, and I was so tired. I tried not to, but I fell asleep holding Noah in my arms. I wasted hours of his time with me, sleeping. But I remember it. I have reconstructed every single momentof those hours in my mind. Those are the only minutes in the first years of my son’s childhood that I will be with him outside of a prison and I want to remember them exactly as they happened.”
    I swallowed, willing myself not to cry, and swearing that I would linger with gratitude and joy over my baby as soon as I once again held her in my arms.
    “After about six hours the couple came in,” Sandra said.
    “What were they like?”
    “Young. Nervous. I don’t know. It was hard to pay attention. Everything happened so fast. I was staring at Noah, trying to hold him in my eyes for as long as possible. They sort of whisked him out and away. I didn’t even talk to them, really.”
    “And what’s happened since?”
    “I’ve written to the address they gave me, but my letters have come back ‘addressee unknown.’ The Lambs of the Lord won’t accept collect calls, but I’ve written to them, too. They wrote me this letter.”
    She opened an envelope that had softened and crumpled a bit over time, but was scrupulously clean and unmarked. She pulled out a single sheet of paper. The letter, on plain white paper with whatlooked like a totally different letterhead, laser-printed rather than engraved as it had been on the formal contract and the solicitation, informed Sandra that the Lambs of the Lord had no record