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He is dark haired with black eyes and pearlescent skin that shows the beautiful blue lines of his veins, faint beneath. Janice wouldn’t let me ride with her and Cici to the hospital, but I have a car, and there is no way I won’t be there. Janice doesn’t mind me going to the hospital; I know because she has been open about her belief that we have to support each other. So when Janice puts Cici in her personal car, I go around back and crank up Little Red to follow them to the hospital. Cici isn’t in distress, unlike Debbie, who had been nearing hysterics as she paced the downstairs hall. Cici just walked down and met Janice and walked to the car, telling her that “The spicy burrito did the trick.” Cici is my hero. If I can be as calm and cool as she is when the time comes, then I will consider it a job well done.
The image of her sitting on the toilet laughing like a crazy person, nearly eight months pregnant and a full four weeks shy of her due date, is one of those moments that will ride with me forever. I’m not allowed to go into the labor-and-delivery section of the hospital, but I am able to stand outside the nursery, so when they bring him out in his little plastic bassinet with the name “Baby Boy Dean” written on the card at the end, I know it is him. I am not alone in the nursery viewing area, and when he is brought out, the three people who have been huddled together in the corner turn toward the glass. The wife is wringing her hands and leaning into her husband, her dark eyes anxious on the glass that separates us from the babies. She jolts to her feet when he is brought out, and the three of them rush to the glass. “Is that him?” she asks the other woman with them, and her husband puts his arm around her shoulders.
“Baby Boy Dean, that’s him.”
I understand it now, with a sudden shock. These are to be his parents, and the woman standing with a file under her arm is a social worker. I step back from the glass to take them in, the adoptive mother’s blunt-cut bob and the adoptive father’s side-swept, skater-boy hair—too young a style for a grown man, but it’s clean; they are clean. He is dressed in trousers and a button-down shirt with a tie that has been loosened. He looks like a banker or a lawyer. He looks like a have; he looks affluent. She is dressed in jeans, but with a nice top with a fluttery bow tied in the back. It’s a Macy’s top, or Neiman Marcus. They lean into each other, their faces melting. “Isn’t he beautiful?” the woman coos.
“Yes, he is,” the man says. There is such longing in their voices that it runs through me, too. What has brought them here? Have they tried and not been able to get pregnant? Have they lost their babies due to miscarriage? Why are they here, falling in love with Cici’s boy? I don’t know, and there is no way to know. I wonder if Cici knows; has she met them, or is her situation closed?
“Would you like to meet him?” the social worker asks, offering the biggest gift of all.
“Yes!” they say in unison, and I watch them follow her to the door that will take them into the maternity ward. I stay back, watching the babies, watching Baby Boy Dean with one tiny fist waving in the air and his skin glowing in the dimmed light. There are other babies, but it is only him I watch. I try to memorize him, so when I see him in the future, I will know him, I will know the arc of his brow and the turn of his lips. Then I’ll be able to say, “I knew your birth mother,” because that’s what we are, “before you were born.” The threesome is led to the door of the nursery, and I can see the woman through the two panes of glass that separate us. She is crying, tears are just flowing down her face into her beaming smile. Does she cry for the babies she has not had, or does she only cry for the joy of knowing this baby will be her son? I want to know. Does she cry for Cici? She should cry for Cici.
The door opens again, and Janice comes through. “Did you see him?” she asks. I nod, but ask about Cici. She is the one I’m worried about. “She’s fine. You can go see her if you like.”
“Yes, please.”
She opens the door, and I follow her. We go past the room where the new family is curled over the baby in the woman’s arms, their fingers tracing the lines of his veins, smiling and crying. A chosen child, I think. What is it like to be a chosen child? I could have been somebody’s chosen child and not somebody’s mistake. My baby will be somebody’s chosen child. She will never be a mistake.
I swallow hard around the knot in my throat and follow Janice to the end of the hall, to the door farthest from the nursery. The door is closed. Janice knocks, tap, tap, tap, and then pushes the door on its swinging hinge . We step through, past the bathroom, and the smells of the room are antiseptic with an undertone of sweat or blood. Cici is sitting up, propped against pillows, and her face is swollen and red. Her knees are drawn up, and she is studying her hands between them. She looks up when we come in and lets a small smile form on her lips. Her eyes are dry, almost empty.
“Hi, Alison,” she says, and I look at Janice, not sure. Something is wrong. She isn’t slurring, but she is . . . slow.
“They gave her a little something to help her relax.”
I recognize it then, the vacancy, the emptiness that comes with pharmaceutical calm.
“Don’t let them do that to me,” I say, and I’m not the only one surprised by the fierceness in my voice.
“I understand,” Janice says, and I rush to the side of Cici’s bed. I sit down and take her hand. She now looks at both her fingers and mine. “I’m going to get her a milkshake. Do you want one?” Janice asks from her place at the door. I nod and hear the door open and click shut again.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“They took my boy,” she says, and a single tear rolls down her cheek.
“I know. I’m sorry.” A tear slides down my own, and she finally looks at me.
“He was beautiful. Did you see him?”
I bring her swollen hand to my lips and kiss it. “He is beautiful.” I emphasize that he is, because he isn’t dead—he is safe, he is alive, he is loved. “He’s going to have a beautiful, wonderful life.”
She nods, trying to keep her face from melting. “But he’s mine.” I slide onto the bed and pull her into me. We cry for what cannot be. She had never again mentioned the idea of us raising our babies together, and neither had I. We both knew that was just the night talking.
“He’ll always be yours. Ceece. Always, and someday you’ll see him again. You just have to become the type of person that will make him proud. Live up to his dreams of you.” She nods again, silent, but I know she understands. We are both of us broken people, and somehow, letting other people be the mothers and fathers is the only thing we can offer to do it better. We have to do it better. At least I know I do.
She sleeps some after she is cried out. I leave to walk down the hall in hopes of glimpsing her boy again. I see him with his new family all staring down at him like he is Baby Jesus while he sleeps in his new mother’s arms. I wonder what he dreams. I wonder if he misses Cici the way she misses him. I wonder if they will ever tell him he was adopted. I wonder if I would if I were them.