Chapter Sixteen #2
It had been years since Kit thought about her birth mother’s motivations for putting her up for adoption.
There was a part of her brain she didn’t venture into, thoughts that would make her heart constrict and feel an anger and shame she didn’t know how to hold.
She had always assumed that the choice was simple: the Herzogs could give her a better life, they were better equipped to raise her, and the adoption had been a selfless act by her birth mother.
“Huh,” Amy said, and then turned on her heel back toward her closet to pull out clothes.
The topic was closed.
After her fourteenth birthday, Kit was allowed to stay home alone while her parents went out for dinner with friends.
One night she sat on the couch and scrolled through the internet to study paparazzi photographs of a famous actor and actress who had adopted children from all over the world.
She examined the way the little girl from Ethiopia held her Caucasian mother’s hand, and the Cambodian boy skipped beside his Caucasian father, and the smiles on their faces.
An impulse took over her, and she ran across the house to her father’s office.
The top drawer of his desk was usually locked, but Kit knew where all the emergency keys were kept.
Her mother had made a big deal about trusting her when she had turned fifteen and gave her a tour around the house to show her where every spare key was kept.
Kit groaned and rolled her eyes. Why do I need to know how to stop the water, Mom? I’ll just call Dad.
She unlocked the drawer and looked in the A folder for adoption.
Nothing. Then K for Katherine. Finally, right in the back under W were her adoption documents.
Inside a worn-out brown manila envelope with a green county stamp from Pennsylvania Courts was a certificate that stated her legal status as a dependent and child to Sally and Terence Herzog.
There were bills to the adoption agency and a lawyer who had prepared the paperwork.
Then, one piece of paper with the words “non-identifying information.”
She stared at the words.
Age: 28
Height: 168 cm
Level of Education: Unknown
Religion: N/A
Ethnic Features: Asian
Originates from: Unspecified
Health: Good
Other Children: Unknown
That was the first time a terrible thought rushed through her mind—were there other children?
Did she have siblings? Was she the only one who wasn’t kept by her real mother?
Was there something about her that had repelled her birth mother so much she didn’t want her?
She pushed the thoughts away and buried the file back in that drawer with the documents and locked it away.
I will not go there . She repeated. Again and again.
A few days after looking at the documents, Kit asked Sally, “Did my birth mom ever get in touch? Did she ever ask about me?” She watched her mother from the breakfast nook in the kitchen.
The blue tits were feasting at the feeder in the garden.
The leaves had started to change color. Just that morning, a groundhog had crawled out from under the toolshed.
Fall was on its way. Her mother was making pancakes and slicing strawberries.
Kit had asked not to have fruit, but her mom insisted.
You have got to take a bit of yin with the yang, honey.
Or is it ying and yang? I never know. We should look that up.
When Kit had said “birth mom,” her mother’s hands had stopped in midair for a fraction of a second. Only a person who really knew her would have seen it. Kit saw it.
“No, honey, she never got in touch.”
A question answered simply with no emotion. At the time, Kit felt angry at her mother for her response. She wanted a softer explanation. The words felt too hard, too direct. Kit looked at her mother’s face and tears threatened to fall.
“But even if she did, Dad and I wouldn’t just let her see you like that—you know that, don’t you? We would have to discuss it carefully as a family. And decide what was best.”
“Why? Why couldn’t she see me if she wanted? I’m her daughter,” Kit said.
Her mother put the knife down and placed both hands on the counter.
“Katherine, you are our daughter. All I know about your birth mother was that she loved you enough to know that she wanted a better life for you. That’s all the information I have.
It was a closed adoption. Remember we’ve talked about this before?
We have to respect their wishes, and there is little we can do about how they wanted it to be.
You remember the terms of a closed adoption, right? ”
“Kind of,” she muttered.
“It means that the people involved chose not to share their identity. It means that we are not entitled to know the woman who gave birth to you.”
“So I can never find out?”
“I don’t think so, honey. Of course, when you’re a legal adult, there are options, and we certainly won’t stand in your way if you want to pursue that. But that is some time away.”
Kit watched her mother with a wary eye. This was where the conversation was supposed to stop, but she couldn’t leave it alone.
“I saw a movie where a girl finds her birth mom and she becomes part of her family, almost like a sort of long-lost aunt or something.”
Her mother’s mouth became a straight line. She took a deep breath, and Kit saw her chest puff up and then deflate as the sound of her sigh warned Kit she was close to the edge now.
“Honey, that’s a movie. Real life is different.”
“But how do you know that won’t be how it is for me?”
“I don’t. But what I do know is that we want the best for you.
And while you are a minor, we will make damn sure we make the right choices for you, our daughter.
And protect you in every way we can.” Her mother took another deep breath and walked out of the kitchen.
Kit waited, but the bowl of pancake mix and strawberries were left there, and her mother didn’t return.
There were many things she pushed, boundaries she tested—she liked to play at the edge of her parents’ patience to see how far she could go.
And usually, she won. She was stubborn and deftly navigated the lines drawn and stretched them out over time.
But when it came to her birth mother, she didn’t push. Something stopped her.
Instead, she thought about it with no limitations. Sometimes she would lie awake at night and fall into a dream where she pictured a woman in a printed dress, with shiny jet-black hair and narrow shoulders, hands placed together in front of her, looking at Kit with a serene smile.
She became obsessed with films and shows about adoption.
Then she wrote a secret list of facts and stories about any adopted actors and actresses.
As though there were an invisible thread that bound her to them.
This thing connected them uniquely, in a way that nobody else could understand. Only Sabrina knew about this list.
When her parents went out one weekend, Sabrina and Kit huddled under a blanket in the living room to watch Hallmark movies about adopted children.
They always had a happy outcome: an adopted child escaped a life of misery and deprivation to be with her newfound family.
A montage of happy laughter and hugs with the new family would follow.
But in Kit’s mind, her birth mother was an enigma she built up—a silhouette that appeared in her dreams, a faraway figure who lured her in.
Amy’s phone started to ring. She lifted her finger to Kit and mouthed, Just give me a minute , and walked out of her room.
Kit looked around at the bedroom. There were photographs of large groups of friends on skis gathered on a mountain, the girls holding up peace signs with their fingers, their heads tilted toward one another.
Amy’s closet was heaving with clothes, some were scattered over the floor, spillover.
Kit stood and entered the bathroom, where she looked at the two sinks side by side.
Amy’s was messy: open palettes of eye shadow with grubby applicators strewn around the surface.
There was a smell of perfume that she recognized from the Duty Free in Newark.
She looked at Ryo’s side of the bathroom.
It was neat, a clear line between the two siblings.
His electric toothbrush stood on its charger so it would never run out of battery.
He had floss beside his toothpaste. And a plain moisturizer, one bottle of aftershave.
Kit leaned over the sink to examine her pores and took out the foundation compact she had in her pocket. The door opened from Ryo’s side of the bathroom. He stopped in the doorway and looked startled to see her there. She stood upright at the sight of him, her index finger in midair.
“Oh hey,” he said. Kit wondered if he would close the door and excuse himself, but he didn’t leave. Instead he stepped over the threshold of the doorway.
“Hey,” she replied. Kit felt the heat rise to her cheeks as surprise and delight at his presence bubbled up inside of her.
“Do you mind?” he pointed to the sink.
“No, sure.”
She looked back at herself in the mirror and tried to remember what she was doing.
He started to run the water in the sink, and she watched him take the soap in his hands.
There was a surgical precision to how he carefully ran the bar between his fingers, the lather neat and white over his knuckles and fingernails.
She flicked her eyes down at his hands. She loved his hands.
There was no hint of any clumsiness in his movements.
She thought that he must be deliberate in everything he did, and looked at the toothbrush in its charger again.