Moving Forward in Reverse (27 page)

30

Igor parked in front of a dark brown brick, single-story building
hunkered sullenly between its two-story neighbors. It had a chain link fence. A
shadow cast by the taller building to the east cut across its entrance and the
water-stained sign tacked beside it. Whatever information the sign held, it was
written in Romanian and thus lost on me. There was an old, rusty swing set
plopped in the middle of a patch of brown grass out front, the seats sagging
with pocketful’s of water from the prior day’s rains.

Ellen grabbed the back of my upper arm in excitement as we slid
out of the aged Mercedes. My eyes flickered to her before returning to what
could only be our orphanage.

I wanted to run inside, grab the kids and get them on the next
plane out of there. Every muscle from my amputated feet to my neck was
twitching in anticipation. My jaw clenched in poorly disguised disapproval.

After the fall of Communism in 1989, the horrible orphanage
conditions thousands of Romanian children had been living and dying in were
revealed. With the rallying attention of the Western world and the resources
that began pouring in, the conditions had since been improved. Or so they
claimed. Looking at this dilapidated little building with water stains weeping
from its windows like dirty tears, it was hard to imagine it could have been
much worse.

Igor led us through the chain-link fence leaning slightly askew
and down the cracking concrete pathway to the front door. As we hurried past
the bisected patches of dirt and dead grass that served as a front yard, I
mentioned the swing set to Ellen.

‘That hasn’t been used in a while,’ I murmured over the top of her
head. She nodded somberly, quickly glancing at the set before turning back to
the squat, little orphanage. There was a single, curb-sized step up to a flat
porch of less-cracked concrete and a horizontal three-panel window looking in.
The double front doors were white-framed glass with metal grating in the shape
of fish scales stretching from top to bottom. Someone had at least bothered to
try to make the metal grating over the glass doors look decorative, which was
more than could be said of the square grills that had been nailed over the
window.

Igor pulled the right side of the double doors open and we
followed closely behind him, parading into a dim expanse of an entranceway.
White walls and a lack of furniture helped augment the sense of cleanliness,
but did nothing to disguise the dilapidation that had clearly seeped inside.

I looked around, my eyes traveling across the vacant front room,
unlit and seemingly unused; straining to see down a dark hallway that led
deeper into the building; and turning to the right where a wall and closed
wooden door blocked off whatever lay beyond. Nowhere were there any signs that
children lived here. No toys, no pictures on the walls, no bottles or blankets
discarded across the floor. No signs that anyone lived here at all unless you
counted the cleanliness of the place.

Igor stayed with us until a woman emerged from the shadows of the
hall. She seemed to be expecting us, though her greeting was hardly welcoming.
She looked us over as she approached before coming to a stop beside Igor. I
watched her as they exchanged a few words in Romanian, noting her youth –
barely into her twenties, by my guess – and the straight brown hair that skimmed
the top of her shoulders. It was the color of Nadia’s hair, I realized, and
found myself wondering if Nadia would grow up to look like this woman with her
slightly slanted brown eyes and permanently frowning mouth.

Nadia always smiles,
I thought in defense, then realized I was hardly in a position to
know this. Nadia was always smiling in my mind because the only mental image I
had of her was from a photograph taken when she had been smiling. For all I
knew, that could have been a rare and often sought after occurrence.

The woman looked to us and nodded once, waving a hand towards the
hallway. Ellen and I trailed after her as she strolled purposefully over the
scuffed wood floorboards, leaving Igor to wait alone in the furniture-less
front room. Halfway down the hall, a rectangular patch of light shone through
an open door. As we approached, I turned my head, subconsciously slowing my
steps like a rubbernecker at an accident.

Inside, rows of metal cribs lined the floor. They had been pushed
together so each row was two cribs wide and four cribs long with gaps between
like the aisles of an airplane. Each baby could be reached from one of the
aisles, but the other side of his or her crib was pressed against either
another crib or a wall. I tried not to think of them as pens at a zoo; tried
not to envision potential parents striding casually up and down the aisles,
gazing down at the one-, two-, and three-year olds and saying,
Aw, that
one’s cute. Look how he sucks his thumb so vigorously.
Or,
I like the
coloring of that one. How exotic!
Or,
Honey, look at this little one.
She would look great in that outfit your mother bought.

A woman with short-cropped hair and skinny features appeared in
the doorway. She stared at us with vacant brown eyes, one hand slowly closing
the door to the nursery as we drifted numbly past.

I shuddered, squared my shoulders, and faced forward as I was
clearly meant to do. I hadn’t been able to locate Nadia or Danny inside the
cramped little room with the peeling flower wallpaper and single, curtained
window.
Perhaps they sleep somewhere else
, I thought – hoped.

The woman stopped at another door midway down the hallway but on
the opposite wall of the nursery. There was a red cross painted on the white
wood door. For a moment I feared something had happened to one of our children.
Why are they keeping them in the medical room?
I thought accusingly,
distraughtly. I turned to the woman, an inculpating question hot on my lips.

Before I could lash out at the orphanage or the care these women
provided, she pushed the door open to reveal an unoccupied room. No bandaged
children crying silently on cots or in the corner. No blood or sullied clothes.
Just more clean sparseness.

The woman held the door open with one hand, plastering herself
against the wall to give us room to pass.
I suppose that’s what qualifies as
in invitation,
I thought and slid by her to inch into the cramped little
room. I sensed Ellen following closely behind me and twisted sideways with my
back to a leather-topped exam table to give her room to move fully into the
room. Once we had both crossed the threshold, the woman shut the door with a
perfunctory clunk.

I looked at Ellen who looked at me. I wondered if she was thinking
of checking the lock on the door as well. I was feeling edgy and distrustful in
this strange little room.
Why on earth would they have prospective parents
wait in here?
I asked myself, not wanting to voice my concerns lest they
become reality. It felt like we were being stored; hidden away where we
couldn’t get into trouble.

To distract myself from the ominous sense of unwarranted
(probably) foreboding writhing inside me, I let my eyes wander over our
surroundings. For a medical room it was rather meagerly stocked. I was pretty
sure there were people in the States who had medicine cabinets with more
supplies than this room held. The shelves, like the rest of the building, were
more empty than full but meticulously clean. The white walls were polished to a
near shine and I was relatively certain running a finger over the laminate
counter would produce no residue.

‘They have so little,’ Ellen whispered from beside me. She was
gazing despairingly at the exiguous supplies lined up on the shelves in
far-removed rows. I recalled the desolate front rooms and barren yard and
nodded in wholehearted agreement.
We have to get Nadia and Danny out of
here.

Feeling the urge to test the door rising up within me again, I
hopped up on the brown leather exam table, letting my legs hang over, feet
nearly touching the floor. A few moments later, Ellen sighed despairingly and
lowered herself onto the edge of one of the two plastic chairs against the wall
opposite me. She cast one more disconsolate glance at the shelves, then looked
up at me. I opened my mouth to say something, anything, to fill the silence and
ward off the anxious anticipation we both were feeling, but no words came. The
only thoughts my mind seemed capable of engendering centered around my
less-than-favorable impression of this place. I figured those thoughts were
best kept to myself. Instead, I gave her a half-hearted, sympathetic smile and
looked away.

Luckily, we had only to wait a few minutes before the doorknob
turned portentously. The door creaked inwards. My breath caught in my chest as
all signals from my brain suddenly ceased. I stared at the woman framed in the
doorway, the same curt woman from before. A little girl in a faded, blue jean
jumper with a frilly white shirt underneath clung to the woman’s right hand.
The girl’s head barely stretched above the woman’s knee.

Nadia.
I had to stifle the urge to rush forward to shower her with hugs
and kisses. Ellen and I had decided that it would be best for the kids if we
weren’t emotional. The orphanage staff probably hadn’t described us to Nadia
and Danny as ‘parents’ because they wouldn’t understand the concept. Their
world revolved around the orphanage; the closest things to parents they’d ever
known were the women who staffed it.

Attached to the woman’s left hand, a boy with pudgy cheeks and
narrowed eyes peered at us from behind his left fist as he sucked reassuringly
on his thumb. He looked from me to Ellen and back again like an outnumbered
fighter trying to decide who was likely to attack first. An adoring smile
developed on my face and I felt pinpricks behind my eyes at the puerile beauty
of them both.

Our kids.

I slid from the exam table with excessive care, sinking onto the
beige tile floor like a handler desperately trying not to startle a frightened
animal. The woman disentangled her fingers from the children’s grips and turned
to push the door closed, leaving it slightly ajar. She stationed herself
against the wall at the kids’ backs.

Nadia and Danny hovered side-by-side where the woman had left
them, staring at us with wide, uncertain eyes. After a few moments of silence,
Nadia clambered onto the exam table where I had been. Her little legs dangling
over the edge barely reached below the bottom of the mattress. She hunched her
back, arching over her knees and stuck her lips out in the universal language
of a pout.

Danny tried to follow suit, waddling over to the table in a
pudgy-legged hustle. He stretched his arms up towards the top of the table as
if hoping to magically fly up to join his sister. When he realized he was still
two feet shy of reaching the top, he bobbled back around and, much to my
astonishment, plopped himself into my lap, thumb securely back in its place
inside his mouth.

I stared in baffled wonderment at the fluff of brown hair now
nestled against my stomach and smiled unabashedly. I felt like The Chosen One,
blessed by the Powers that Be to watch over this child. I wanted to wrap my
arms around him and never let go. I wanted to kiss that bulbous, round head
that was exuding such a disproportionate amount of heat, the warmth of him
radiating inside me to join forces with my own joyous flame. I could scarcely
breathe for fear of disrupting this momentous juncture in our relationship.

Father and son.

Me. He had chosen
me
, The Man with No Hands, as the person
whose lap he felt safest in.

Motion to my right drew my eye from Danny’s tiny form in my lap. I
glanced up to see Ellen holding her sunglasses out to Nadia. Nadia climbed down
from the table, inched towards Ellen’s outstretched hand, and cautiously took
the wire-framed glasses. She fumbled them around in her plump little hands
until they were facing the right way then slid them onto her face. They stuck
an inch out on either side of her head and their dark lenses shielded
everything from her eyebrows to halfway down her cheeks. The bridge of the nose
bar hovered across her tiny, button nose, the nose pads closer to her eyeballs.

She looked so stern, staring at Ellen and me through the obscure
lenses; I couldn’t help but laugh. Ellen joined in. Even the woman still
standing in the corner began to chuckle. Nadia looked around at each of us, a
proud smile lighting up her face. She modeled the glasses for us with a
baby-toothed grin, her fat fingers regularly pushing the frames back up her
nose as she teetered around the room.

Danny watched her be the center of the attention from the sanctity
of my lap, where he contentedly remained for the entire forty-five minutes of
our visit. Even when I shifted position slightly, reaching back with my right
arm to take the strain off my back, he stayed where he was, simply readjusting
his own position to nestle into the crook of my left arm. There was no question
about it: these were our kids.

Forty-five minutes never passed so quickly. Before we knew it, the
woman unpeeled herself from the wall and made her presence known once more.
Ellen and I looked up at her and I felt my left arm subconsciously draw Danny a
little deeper against my chest.
Not yet,
I pleaded with her silently.
It
can’t be time yet.