Fall, 1972. “I want to cancel my appointment,” I told the woman at the front desk. “Instead of birth control counseling I need a pregnancy test.” The doctor at the Clinic rubbed his beard. “If you are pregnant and don’t have any money you’ll have to apply for welfare.” He scribbled an address and phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to me.
The next morning at the social welfare office, under bad fluorescent lighting, I filled out the forms. The clerk took my paperwork and motioned for me to sit down. “Number thirty-two,” the social worker called out. I was number fifty-six. My shorts were soaked with sweat, and my bare legs stuck to the orange plastic chair. The room was filled with women and crying babies. I thought of my mother at age fifteen, pregnant with me. Finally my number was called. I was led into a windowless office. The social worker lit a cigarette, and smoke poured from her nose like a dragon.
“Are you giving the baby up for adoption?” She asked. The question unnerved me. She eyeballed me up and down and hissed, “You’ve written down that you are American Indian—if it was going to be a white baby it would be easier to find a family to adopt it.”
I clenched my jaw to stay calm. Brown haired and green eyed, most strangers didn’t place me as Native American and the father of my child-to-be was a full blood. This was my first glimpse at the way race and culture collided in adoption. I was a nineteen-year-old, unmarried college student, and pregnancy caught me unprepared to become someone’s mother.
Though we spoke occasionally on the telephone, my relationship with R. was over. It had ended weeks before on a windy night in Nevada, under a climbing moon. The next day I headed home to California. Underneath my embarrassment about repeating the family cycle of unplanned teenage pregnancy, especially when I’d been so determined not to, there were moments when I smiled as the baby swelled within me. But I was certain I was not ready to be a mother. Or was I? Before I made a decision, however, I miscarried. At least I did not have to surrender my child to another.
Twelve winters later, in 1984, I sat in the lobby of Holt International Adoption Services. The room was decorated in pastel wallpaper, with a nubby textured sofa. This time I was married and on the receiving end of adoption. Within the next twenty-four hours my husband and I were due to become the parents of a one-year-old Korean boy.
As our son grew up I knew he would wonder about his first mother, his Korean mother. Perhaps it's wishful thinking, but I like to believe his mother is a lot like me, but was forced to make a decision that I did not have to make.
An excerpt from Pushing up the Sky: A Mother's Story.
Copyright © 2006 Terra Trevor. All rights reserved.