Like Topsy, We Grow
CARL and I might have been satisfied with three children, but our son was not. When Donny was four, he watched his two baby sisters scoot about the floor on their hands and knees.
“You and Daddy got each other,” he said wistfully. “And Laura and Susie got each other to play with. But Mama, there isn’t nobody in this house the right size of me!”
I took him onto my lap. “That’s true, isn’t it? Mama has the little family she always wanted. Daddy’s going to school to get what he wants. I don’t see why we can’t help you get what you want.”
I started saving money for stamps, and every time I could get three cents together, I sent a letter to another adoption agency on my list. My letters, to all the states in the union, asked, “Do you have a boy about four years old, of any mixed or minority ancestry, who needs a home?”
Two agencies answered. One, in a nearby state, offered a Mexican-Indian baby girl named Rita. The other, on the West Coast, had a Filipino-Malayan-Spanish boy named Teddy. Nobody wanted to adopt these little youngsters, with their dark hair and dark skins.
“Not that baby girl,” Donny said. “We got enough baby girls around here already. “Let’s get that Teddy for me.”
“That Teddy’s not the size of you,” I explained. “According to this letter, he’s only a couple of months older than the girls.”
“Yeah, but we two boys could stick together,” Donny said.
“Don’t I have anything to say about this?” Carl said. “I told you before, ‘No,’ and I say again, ‘NO.’ How can I work my way through seminary with four children?”
“It’s only one more than three,” I said.
“I can count!” Carl thundered. “Wait until I get through school, and then you can adopt a dozen, if you must.”
“Who’s asking for a dozen? I’m not crazy.”
“No?” Carl said. “I’m beginning to wonder.”
“Just one more,” I pleaded. “That will give us two girls and two boys—a nice, well-rounded family.”
“I don’t want to be well-rounded,” Carl grumbled, as he retired behind a schoolbook. “I’d rather try to get square for a change. Financially square.”
I sat in his lap, put his book down, and mussed the top of his head where his hair used to be. “Look, honey, how can you bear it, knowing that nobody wants this little fellow, and when we could, if we wanted to put our minds to it—”
“All right,” Carl said. “So we could take him, if we put our minds to it. Well, you’ve put so much mind to it, there isn’t any space left for mine.”
“Darling!” I said. “You will?”
Carl took out his date book, riffling the pages. “Let’s see. My spring vacation comes up in three weeks. I’ll stay home and study and take care of the girls. You and Donny can take the train west, and bring home this Teddy.”
“Whoopee!” Donny yelled.
“But this is the last one,” Carl hollered, waving his date book in my face. “The very last one, do you understand?”
I squeezed our budget until it whimpered. We ate beans instead of hamburger. We appropriated the little sum that was supposed to grow into a washing machine. Three weeks later, when Carl’s spring vacation came up, we had enough saved for my round-trip ticket by chair car. There was no money for eating in the dining car, so I took along a shopping bag full of food—perishables for the first day, plus enough staples, such as canned milk, graham crackers, and tins of fruit and vegetable juices, to last for the balance of the trip.
“You look as if you had everything along except the dog and the kitchen sink,” Carl said, as he hoisted Donny and me, and our lumpy bundles, onto the train at Woodstock.
“A dog wouldn’t complicate this trip a bit more than Donny will,” I predicted darkly, as I watched our small son whizz around the corner and down the aisle, kicking up his heels like a spring lamb. “I’ll bet Donny keeps me in hot water for the whole trip.”
Donny did.
First, I made the mistake of leaving him alone in our seat with a color book, while I went to the women’s washroom. As I came back down the aisle, I heard people chuckling, and I just stopped in time when I started to drop into my seat. Donny had a picnic spread all over the place. With his fingers he was eating cottage cheese from my seat, where it had spilled.
I cleaned up the mess the best I could and marched Donny down to the women’s room. After I had him washed and dressed in clean clothes, I made another mistake. I turned my back to comb my frazzled hair. Donny lost no time. He crawled under the washbowl and unscrewed the bottle attached to the liquid-soap dispenser. The bottle crashed down, spilling a slippery mess of soap jelly over the floor. Just then two plump dowagers opened the door, and the train lurched around a curve. The poor ladies lost their balance and skidded across the cubicle, screeching and clutching at everything in sight, to the wide-eyed amazement of Donny.
I tried to keep him out of trouble by amusing him with the bag of color books, crayons, and toys I had assembled especially for the trip; but such inanimate things, inedible in the bargain, could not hold his attention for long. Every time I was lulled into a doze by the clicketty-clicketty-click of the wheels, Donny disappeared. I would find him three cars back, sharing a box of homemade cookies with some soldiers, or up ahead in the dining car with a sweet old lady, being treated to a bottle of soda pop. He would be chattering like a squirrel, as much at home as if he had run into delightful old friends.
At the start of the trip he had been eager to tell everyone where we were going, and why. While we waited to change trains at the Chicago and Northwestern station, he galloped between the benches like a junior Paul Revere.
“We’re going to get a brand new little brother for me!” he proclaimed to all who were interested, and a good many who were not.
“It isn’t polite to bother strangers with our private affairs,” I told him, when I coralled him. “Shall we make it our very own secret?”
The secret evidently was too important to be kept. All during the trip to the coast I wondered why the soldiers across the aisle were so solicitous. They leaped across the aisle to help every time I reached for a suitcase or lumpy parcel in the rack overhead.
“Your Donny told us about the addition you expect soon,” one confided at the end of the trip, as he helped me off the train with my luggage. “Hope it’s another boy! Donny seems so sure it’s going to be a brother.”
For once Donny had been a help. The assistance had been welcome, because we had no money to tip a porter.
At the adoption agency, Donny immediately made friends with the secretary in the outer office. He climbed in her lap to watch her typewriter work, while the social worker took me into her office to explain about Teddy’s background.
“This little boy has been in undesirable boarding homes since birth,” she said. “The last woman who has been paid to care for him has several older children of her own, but Teddy, with his bright eyes and quick mind, has become her favorite. She even applied to adopt him. As much as we at the agency want Teddy to have a home of his own, we just couldn’t see him permanently in this home.”
“Was the home so bad?”
She shook her head. “It was a hopeless home for any child, slovenly, broken by drink, a contempt for education. It would be especially bad for a bright little youngster like Teddy, who needs understanding and college opportunities.
“Was the boarding mother resigned to giving him up, then?”
“Hardly. She has tried to fight our agency in the most underhanded way she could—through little Teddy. She has tried to bind him to her emotionally, to make him so fearful of all strange women, that he wouldn’t adjust to another home. When one of us from the office makes a required supervisory visit, this woman snatches Teddy into her arms and whispers, ‘Don’t cry. I won’t let that bad lady hurt you. I won’t let that bad lady take you away!’ Teddy was such a friendly, outgoing little fellow before, and now she has him almost hysterical.”
The agency had been fully aware of the situation, but what could be done? Nobody wanted even to board a little brown-skinned boy of mixed race, much less adopt him. No wonder they had been so happy to receive our letter and references, especially because Teddy would have another Eurasian child for a sister.
The social worker left to fetch our new son. An hour later, when she brought him into the office, I wasn’t surprised to see the little tyke sobbing in her arms. When I held him, he shrieked through his torrent of tears, his large brown eyes round with fear.
I had planned to stop for a visit with Carl’s family at Chico, nearby in California, but I never guessed what an ordeal that extra short ride would be. Even after we boarded the bus to go to my father-in-law’s ranch, Teddy was determined to have nothing to do with me. Although he was worn out with crying and it was past his nap time, I couldn’t soothe him to sleep. To make things worse, the bus went around one too many nauseating curves, and Donny lost his dinner all over the place. Donny started to wail, Teddy was sobbing, and I was tempted to join them. We were ignored by everyone except a large man with a serene black face and grizzled white hair who sat across the aisle. He gathered the white cloths from the back of his seat, and from several empty seats, and came over.
“You’ve got more than you can handle, little lady,” he said, handing me the cloths. “Let me rock the baby to sleep, while you take care of the other little boy.”
Teddy looked into the understanding dark face, settled himself into the gentle arms, and fell asleep. When we reached Chico, the Negro gentleman was still holding Teddy. After he was handed back to me, Teddy again began to scream hysterically. Luckily, Carl’s family was waiting outside the bus.
“Here,” my father-in-law said. “Let me carry that little fellow for you.”
Teddy’s arms went quickly around his grandfather’s neck. “Daddy!” he cried, and his tears stopped. The boarding woman had forgotten to make Teddy fearful of men.
Donny continued to feel upset that night. “I ate too much candy and pop on the train,” he groaned. “My tummy isn’t used to it.”
In the morning his temperature shot up and his breathing became labored. A hastily summoned doctor gave him a shot of penicillin.
“Pneumonia,” the doctor said. “Rig up a steam tent over his bed. That will help his breathing.”
For two days, for two fearful, dragging nights, I sat by Donny’s bed, listening to his hoarse and raspy breathing inside the sheet which was draped, umbrella-fashion, over his bed. I didn’t dare doze off when he needed the kettle boiling for steam. The sheet or bedclothes might drag across the electric hot plate, and set us all on fire.
All this time I was too busy to see much of Teddy, but Teddy didn’t care. Carl’s younger brothers were home at the time, and Teddy followed his new uncles and his grandfather around the ranch, happily calling them all “Daddy.”
The crisis past, Donny’s abundant good health stood him in good stead. He convalesced quickly. By the end of the week, the doctor said he was well enough to make the trip, if I kept him quiet and warm. By this time Teddy was getting used to seeing me around. His complete rejection and fear had progressed to a tolerant putting-up-with-me. On the train going home, he seemed in good spirits as he chuckled and played peek-a-boo and patty-cake with Donny. All the way home I told him about his Daddy and his two little sisters waiting for him, and I gave him snapshots of Carl and the girls.
When our train arrived in Chicago, we took the local north to Woodstock. Here friends met us, and drove us the remaining ten miles to Hebron. I carried my new son up the steps and stood him on our front porch, while Donny rang the doorbell.
Carl came out, kissed Donny and me, and then knelt down. “So this is Teddy! You know, that’s a good name for you, son, because you look just like a little brown Teddy bear.
Teddy looked him over gravely. Then he scooted over to wrap his small brown arms around Carl’s neck.
“Daddy!” he said.
At first Teddy refused to play with his two little sisters. While Laura and Susie dug in the sandbox, Teddy withdrew, his eyes like those of a wounded fawn. After a while he would run to a far corner of the yard, throw himself on his face and beat his head upon the ground, screaming. When I picked him up, he quieted immediately, clinging to me like a baby opossum to its mother. I would carry him indoors and rock him, singing folk songs and lullabies, and he would be outwardly calm for another day. After about two weeks, Teddy stopped beating his head, gave up the hysterical tantrums. He joined the sandbox play with his sisters, becoming both their pal and their little guardian.
His first sentences were full of concern for them. As Susie would start down the long stairs, Teddy would rush to take her hand, cautioning, “Careful, Thu-thie. Careful, don’t fall.” If one of the little girls stumbled or hurt herself, Teddy was there first to help his sister to her feet. His arms would go around the small shoulders as he pulled a Kleenex from his pocket to dry the tears, consoling, “Too bad. Too, too bad. Blow, now.”
Teddy was as different from his older brother as night is from day. Donny was the loud, rowdy, happy-go-lucky kind of boy who rackets through the house and never shuts a door behind him, who wouldn’t be caught dead hanging up his clothes. Teddy was a neat and orderly little fellow, who preferred to put his things away systematically so he could find them when he wanted them. He would even stop to close a door or drawer that someone else, usually Donny, had left open.
Teddy was thing-conscious, with the scientific turn of mind that enjoys collecting and cataloguing, and finding out what makes things tick. We always had to check under any car parked in our yard before it was driven away, to make sure that Teddy wasn’t under it. He would lie under an automobile for an hour without moving anything but his dark eyes, just trying to figure out how the gears made the car run.
Donny was essentially people-conscious. He had no interest in things, except as they related to people. He was supremely interested in finding out what makes people tick. One day we drove past a cornfield where an airplane had crashed. Teddy was full of questions: Why was it smashed? What happened to the motors? Why couldn’t he land on the wheels? How did they fix a broken plane?
Donny had only one question: “Was anybody hurt?”
Although Teddy’s conscious self had become happy and adjusted within the first few weeks, his subconscious was still hurt, still puzzled and frightened, from his boarding-house experience. An emotional wound is deep and must heal from the inside out; it takes a long time, and sometimes the scar is always there. We knew, because of Teddy’s nightmares. He would go to sleep with a smile on his little brown face, his Teddy bear in his arms. Two or three times a night he would scream out in his sleep. His crib was in the room next to mine, so I could rush to take him in my arms.
“Teddy,” I’d whisper softly. “Don’t cry. Mama’s right here.” He would be all right the minute I woke him; even with his face wet with tears, he didn’t know he had been crying.
As the months went by, the nightmares came only a few times a week, and eventually the time came when the emotional wounds in Teddy’s subconscious seemed to be completely healed. He never cried out in his sleep any more. When he was nearly three, I heard Laura tell him, “Sometimes when I in bed, sleeping, I got pictures in my eyes. Pretty pictures.”
“That’s dreams,” Teddy said. “Me, too, but always bad ones.”
“Always bad?”
Teddy nodded. “Bad animals scare me, lots of bad things.”
A year later the children were talking about dreams again.
“I had a bad dream,” Susie reported to the rest. She had been frightened by a large, stray dog the day before. “I had a dream that a giant big dog chased me and tried to bite pieces out of me, but I climbed a tree.”
“I don’t have any dreams,” Teddy said, “except once in a while. When I dream, I have good dreams, and sometimes I laugh.”
. . .
“There’s only one trouble with Teddy,” Donny said when he was five years old.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“He’s not big enough,” Donny said. “He’s just exactly the right size of the girls, and there still isn’t nobody the right size of me.”
I promised Donny I would think about it. The more I thought about it, the more I felt I ought to write some more letters. This time I didn’t tell Donny I was writing, because I didn’t want him disappointed if I could not find a boy his size. And I didn’t tell Carl. Why should he be all stirred up for nothing, if I didn’t find a boy?
I didn’t find a boy, but I did get a letter that stirred us up. It was from the agency which had written before, about the Mexican-Indian girl named Rita.
“So you still haven’t found a boy the size of your Donny?” the letter began. “We are sorry that we do not have a five-year-old boy of any kind, for adoption. Little Rita is still here, though. She is nearly a year and a half now, and still nobody wants to adopt her. Since our agency is only equipped to care for infants under a year old, and since she shows signs of being slightly retarded, the only place left for her to go is our state institution for the feeble-minded.”
I met tremendous opposition all the way around, trying to bring her into our family.
First Carl balked. “No!” he hollered. “I’m going in circles now, to find enough time for studies and church work. We can barely scrape along with four children already, and you want to bring another one home. For the last time, no!”
Then the church stepped in to add its two cents’ worth. The church year was up, and the official board offered Carl the pulpit for another year—on condition that we have no more children. I doubt if the board members knew we were thrashing over talk about another adoption; but we had adopted three in two years, and I suppose they just thought we didn’t know how to stop once we got started. Racial prejudice was not involved, because the congregation had accepted all of our youngsters with real affection. The main issue was that Carl had little enough time for the church, and an expanding family might hinder his work.
Carl wasn’t the least interested in having any more, but the ultimatum made him stubborn. It was the principle of the thing, he informed the board. “Having children is a private matter, between a man and wife, and God.” He added his sincere regrets that, under the circumstances, he would not be serving them the following year.
The members of the board held another meeting and decided that the number of our children was not their rightful business. They unanimously asked Carl to return for another year, no strings attached. Any additions to our family would be solely up to the discretion of Carl, our Maker, and me.
I was jubilant. “Now can we drive over and get Rita?”
“I’m being pushed,” Carl complained. But the next week he drove us to the agency in the next state.
“This little girl does seem retarded,” the agency director admitted, when we arrived. “She has started to toddle, but there is no inclination to begin to talk, feed herself, use the toilet chair, or any other such things other children her age begin to do.” Before she brought Rita down from the nursery she warned, “Don’t be alarmed if she wails when she sees you. She seems to be quite fearful of strangers.”
She was not afraid with us. Carl and I took turns holding her on our laps, and she clung shyly, black eyes shining. She had a creamy-beige complexion, and sweeping black lashes that matched her patent-leather hair.
“Pretty baby,” Teddy said, patting Rita. “We take this baby home, okay?”
Laura looked dubious, a hint of jealousy sparking in her almond eyes, but Susie agreed with Teddy. “Nice baby,” she lisped. “I sink we need zis baby.”
At first, I was afraid that Rita, nearly a year younger than the two-year-old “triplets,” would have trouble holding her own. The first morning after we brought her home, Rita gathered blocks to make a tower. Laura, Susie, and Teddy put their heads together in a conspiracy in another corner of the room, obviously hatching up some plot, along with much pointing at Rita and giggling behind hands. The huddle over, Laura ambled across the room, snatched one of Rita’s blocks, and ran off with it. Susan followed, pilfering another. Then Teddy tiptoed over, his eyes dancing with mischief, and reached for the top of Rita’s tower.
Rita was ready for him. She grabbed a long block and promptly clonked Teddy on the head. A new respect was established for the newcomer, and she was accepted into the fold.
After less than a month, Rita was no longer backward. She did everything other children her age did, and she jabbered continually, talking as well as the older three. All she had needed, to make progress, was the love and security of a family all her own.
My next opposition on Rita came from the state welfare department, which had to approve the out-of-state adoption before the final petition could be granted in our local superior court. The state social worker who came to see us was already familiar with our family; she had supervised the adoptions of Laura, Susan and Teddy.
“I don’t like the reports on this latest one you’ve taken,” she said, as she sat in our living room. “I see that the agency had thought to send her to a state home for feeble-minded children.”
“But that was only because nobody wanted to adopt her,” I pointed out. “There was no other place for her to go”
The social worker pulled Rita’s case history from her brief case. “Yes, but there was good reason for sending her there. According to the test reports made on her, just before you took her, she wasn’t too bright. In fact, she registered too low to be tested. You and your husband will have problems enough, when you adopt children who are different from you in racial background. Now must you take one that is mentally retarded in the bargain?”
“She’s not the least bit mentally retarded, now,” I said. “She was just lost and lonely in the institutional surroundings where she spent her first year. She didn’t have any reason to try to do things, then.”
“I’m only trying to consider your best welfare,” she said, “and the best welfare of Rita, too. Here you have Teddy, Laura, and Susan, just a little older than Rita, all bright, all sharp competition during Rita’s formative years. Look at Susie, who is nearest Rita’s age.” She checked her notes. “Susie not only belongs to the dominant race, but also has beautiful blue eyes and blonde hair. How will poor little Rita feel, when the neighbor girls invite Susie to their birthday parties, their dances and slumber parties, and Rita isn’t asked? And later, when Susie has dates, and Rita hasn’t?”
“You haven’t seen Rita,” I said, “or you wouldn’t worry.”
“Nevertheless,” she said, tapping her pencil on her notes, “the facts are here before you. You have to face the facts.”
Just then I heard some of the children waking from their naps, so I excused myself. Laura and Teddy were still asleep, but I dressed Susie and Rita, and they started down the stairs. Susie was still in her painfully shy stage. When she saw a visitor in the living room, she scooted behind the couch like a frightened rabbit.
Rita came in singing, like a petite, ebony-haired princess, not the least ruffled to find a stranger there. Poised and happy, she pranced over to the social worker as if she owned the place. She leaned against the lady’s lap, grinned her utterly bewitching smile, and flirted through her long, curling black lashes. They exchanged names, but Rita couldn’t stand still for long. She never has.
Dancing around the room on toes as twinkling as a miniature Pavlova, she gathered treasured toys to heap in our visitor’s lap. She swept down the playroom slide backwards and did a couple of graceful somersaults. Then she flitted out through the back of the house, and returned with a glass jar containing some ladybugs.
“She’s a budding entomologist,” I explained.
Rita climbed into the lady’s lap, her black eyes sparkling and beautiful, her creamy-brown face lighted with her vivacity. “You like my baby bugs?” she asked. “I keeps them in a bopple, den I puts them in the gar-den.”
She hopped down and raced out to the back yard, her patent-leather hair bobbing on her shoulders. Susie crept from her hiding place, gave one frightened look, and sped after Rita.
“Well,” I said, “what do you think?”
The social worker looked thoughtful. “I was just thinking about Susie, growing up with Rita.” She turned toward me, her face concerned. “Does Susie show any particular talents? When she’s older, if she could have piano, or dancing lessons—do you know what I mean?”
“Yes,” I said. “I know what you mean.”