Moving Forward in Reverse (32 page)

I set the CD into our stereo, turned the volume knob up near the
end of the spectrum, then stepped back to let the fun begin. I’d changed out of
my prosthetic feet and into a pair of plush slippers. It was a bit of a feat,
but for what we were about to do, I needed the ability to slide on my feet.

I turned to face Nadia and Danny just as a voice erupted from the
speakers: ‘
Whoa-oa-oa!’
he sang, startling the kids. They flinched and
whipped around to face me in surprise. ‘
I feel good.’

As the drums and saxophone joined his voice, I began to shake my
shoulders in time with the tune.
Da-na-na-na-na.

I
knew that I would, now.

I
fee-eel good,

I
knew that I would, now.

The kids hooted with laughter as I let my hips accompany my
shoulders and began popping them to the bass.

So
good
(pop,
pop)

So
good
(pop,
pop)

I
got you
(pop,
pop, pop, pop, pop!)

I waved at Nadia and Danny to join me as the rhythm of the
instrumental repeated.

Whoa!
I feel ni-ice,

Like
sugar and spi-ice

I
fee-eel ni-ice,

Like
sugar and spi-ice

They leapt to attention into the middle of the cleared floor and
started trying to shake their butts in time with my rocking and popping.

So
nice
(pop,
pop)

So
nice
(pop,
pop)

I
got you
(pop,
pop, pop, pop, pop!)

I pointed to Nadia as James Brown sang, ‘
I got you
,’ making
her giggle and point at me in return a few bars too late but it was close
enough. They shivered and shaked, twisted and turned, swung and swayed to James
Brown’s music in moves I’d never seen before, their short little arms and legs
jerking by their sides as they worked to move their hips like pepper grinders
to the beat.

We danced our way through the entire CD, stopping only once we
reached “Get Up Offa That Thing” to press the repeat button at Nadia and
Danny’s insistence. By that point they were really getting their groove on.
What had started as hopping between feet and flailing in a jerky, awkward
motion was turning into genuine rhythm. They swung their hips, twisted their
legs, and shook their shoulders exuberantly. I even caught Danny hopping onto
the balls of his feet in a maneuver he certainly hadn’t picked up from me. By
the third time through “Get Up Offa That Thing”, I had them singing along with
the lyrics, though it was more of a Romanian chant than melodic song coming
from them.

‘Geet
up offa that thang,

An
dance ‘till you feel betterrr,

Get
up offa that thang,

An
dance ‘till you, sing it now!’

36

We were all gathered in the kitchen later one night, Ellen busy
dicing some grilled chicken breasts for tacos while I prepped the toppings of
choice and the kids dipped Doritos in various salsas for their first taste of
spicy food. We had little bowls of pineapple, mild, and medium salsa for them
to explore. I kept sneaking glances at them as they worked their way up the
heat scale. The pineapple salsa went over without reaction, but mild gave them
a zing. I stifled a snort of laughter as first Nadia then Danny went bug-eyed
and opened their mouths for their tongues to loll in the fresh air. Still, they
were nothing if not brave, because after a few plain Doritos to calm their
palates, they reached for the medium salsa, each dipping a chip a tad more
tentatively this time and slowly raising it to their mouths. Danny paused long
enough to sniff at the sauce before sliding the chip into his open mouth.

I set the bag a shredded cheese down to watch their reactions this
time. They progressed past the acidic tomato and onion flavor to the gradually
warming heat and finally to the genuine burn in the back of their throats.
Mouths flapping open again, they each grabbed for their glasses of water and
rapidly began chugging it to douse the inferno. I chuckled and shook my head
before returning to my shredding. They tended to stick with plain Doritos after
that.

His glass of water thoroughly drained, Danny hopped off his bar
stool to get a refill. As he came around the island towards the sink, he began
to shake his shoulders and twist his hips. His hands flailed the empty glass in
the air. As he danced behind her, Ellen turned from the stove to keep his
wiggling little body in view; her brows furrowed and eyes narrowed curiously
above a sideways smirk.

At the sink, my three-year-old boy threw his arms in the air,
whooped, and boomed a la James Brown, ‘I fee-eel good!’

There was no point in stifling the laughter now; it bellowed out
of my chest as I threw my head back to let it burst free.
Yup, they’re being
Americanized,
I thought and glanced over my shoulder at Ellen, meeting her
raised-eyebrow gaze with my own teary-eyed one.

‘I see you’re teaching them English,’ she commented dryly, but I
could see the approving humor sparkling in her eyes. So they weren’t getting
the “typical” American upbringing, per se, it didn’t seem to be hindering their
progress any. (
Thankfully.
)

~~~

‘What’s this?’ I asked,
picking up the slim packet of papers Ellen had nonchalantly dropped on the
kitchen counter. I slid it closer to where I perched on one of the stained pine
barstools, eying the images on the front page. The faces of young, African
children zigzagged down the paper, five in all and each accompanied by a short
block of text. I tried to read the blurb for the first one, but my eyes
wouldn’t focus on the words long enough to absorb their meaning. Instead, I
found my gaze continually straying to the faces: two smiling, two frowning, and
one caught open-mouthed as if in the middle of singing a note, his chin raised
ever so slightly as he gazed at the camera through the corners of his eyes.

‘Hm?’ Ellen replied
distractedly, glancing up at me from washing her hands in the sink. ‘Oh, do you
remember that patient I told you about last week who said how happy I’ve seemed
since Nadia and Danny came home? Kathy Barner?’ I nodded, vaguely remembering
an earlier comment along those lines. ‘Well, she works for Adoption Advocates
International, an adoption agency based here in Washington. She brought me that
today,’ Ellen said, gesturing to the papers in front of me. ‘Apparently
Adoption Advocates International has close ties with an orphanage called Layla
House in Ethiopia.’

Turning to the fridge, Ellen
sighed and shrugged her shoulders, ‘I guess Kathy thought we may be interested
in adopting again.’

I looked down at the boy who
appeared to be singing in a dark blue button-up shirt with the shoulders of two
boys in similar attire just visible behind him; then let my eyes drift to the
closely framed picture of a girl with short frizzy hair like black steel wool
above a wide forehead, captured in profile as a giant smile spread across her
face, her nose wrinkled and eyes squinting with rapture; and the little boy, no
older than Nadia and smiling at something or someone off camera much as Nadia
had in the first picture I saw of her. Then there were the two children too
young to identify as boys or girls who weren’t smiling at all. One stared
forlornly at the camera, his or her mouth pinched into a disapproving pucker
and the other was looking down at something, a furrow of consternation creasing
his or her brow. Each photo had been cropped so that only one child was visible
and was accompanied, I now realized, by a short biography about the child
pictured.

I flipped to the next page and found more of the same: five images
paired with five biographies. Each of the six pages stapled into this packet
was covered this way, front and back. I turned back to the beginning and stared
at the faces of the five children advertised there – for that’s what these
were: advertisements for orphaned children.
Ten pictures per page with six
pages total,
I thought, feeling something akin to nausea rolling through my
stomach.
That’s sixty kids.

I took a swig of chocolate
milk in the hopes that it would help settle my stomach and my thoughts.
I
could get up and walk away,
I mused, trying and failing to keep my eyes
from looking back down at the packet. With its lack of a title page, it looked
like part of a larger pamphlet; the photo part at the end of the document, like
the classified ads at the back of a newspaper. Only these classifieds were for
children in need of homes, not used trucks or garage sales.

Ellen and I hadn’t discussed
adopting more kids – the notion hadn’t even occurred to me what with all my
energy and attention being devoted to the kids we already had. I didn’t know if
I wanted more kids, so maybe it was best not to even look. Besides, we had
Nadia and Danny now. The hole in our lives had been filled. So yes, I could
walk away.

But I didn’t. I started
reading instead, working my way through all sixty bios, one sip of chocolate
milk at a time. They read so much like the stories of homeless pets. A few
sentences about how the little boy or girl came to be at Layla House followed
by a rosy blip about the child’s adoring or light-hearted or outgoing or cuddly
personality. It killed me that all these children were living day-to-day in a
crowded orphanage with no parents to tuck them in at night and provide for
their future; no home to call their own; no one to make sure their birthdays
were special and their Christmases bright. If there was one thing I had learned
from adopting Nadia and Danny, though, it was that unscrupulousness was as
common as righteousness in organizations such as these.
I can’t get pulled
in,
I told myself.
That’s what they want you to do.

But there was this one boy,
the second to last photo on the second to last page, who made me pause. The
picture was taken from above, with him gazing up but not quite into the camera;
more like he was watching the person behind it. He had one hand resting on the
top of his head, more forehead than anything else, and the clearest eyes of any
child I’d seen thus far. His mouth was parted slightly, puffy lips revealing a
set of tiny, white teeth. He looked so confused and frightened; as if he just
needed a break. His biographical blurb stated that he first experienced the
death of his mother and shortly thereafter that of his father, both to AIDS. He
– Michias had tested negative for the disease, however.

I studied his image for a
while, almost as if waiting for those big, dark eyes to turn and meet my own.
He just looked so small, the way the camera was peering down at him, making his
head seem even more disproportionately large in comparison to his little body.
It took a fair amount of time for me to look away and continue on to the next
photo in the lineup, and even then I snuck one final glance at Michias before
turning the page and working my way to the end of the packet.

When I had read about them
all and let my eyes rest on each of their faces long enough to become familiar
with their features, I turned back to the beginning and resettled the documents
on the countertop. My chocolate milk was long gone and my stomach far too tight
to do anything other than lay down. How I hated the injustice in the world.

I shuffled my way down the
hallway to the kids’ room and found Ellen helping Nadia and Danny into their
pajamas. Danny was looking through the books on the bookshelf while Nadia was
being tugged into her vivid pink, footie PJs.
This is much better,
I
thought with a renewed sense of peace working its way through me. We already
had all we needed right here, in this happy home.

~~~

I didn’t mention the packet and neither did Ellen. The next
morning it was gone from the counter and I told myself I wasn’t sorry to see it
go. Publications such as those were too heavy to have lying around. Their mere
presence seemed to cast a gloominess over everything around them, making you
acutely aware of them, like a thorn in the sole of your foot. We had only just
finished our last adoption ordeal ten months ago; I couldn’t even begin to
think of undertaking another one so soon.

I continued watching PBS and exploring the woods; teaching the
kids to dance and watching them grow. I thought it impossible for a parent to
love their children any more than I loved Nadia and Danny in those moments, but
with each passing day I became more and more enamored with them. It wasn’t only
nature which could make a child your own, I realized, but also the act of
nurturing which solidified us as parents to these children. It was the
experiences and journeys we embarked on together which made Nadia and Danny as
much “ours” as any biological children could ever be. I couldn’t imagine my
life any fuller than it was with them. But, then, before meeting Ellen and
happening upon a news broadcast about Washington parents who adopted from
Haiti, I never could have imagined my life with Nadia and Danny, either.

~~~

‘Hey!’ I turned from the computer in the loft office where I’d
been skimming the latest baseball results to find Ellen chewing her lip at the
top of the stairs.

‘Hi there,’ I replied, swiveling my chair to face my wife and
eyeing the stapled sheets of paper in her hands. Two weeks had passed since the
Layla House photos came and went without comment, and I wondered idly if Kathy
Barner had sent Ellen home with another promotional packet to try persuading us
again.

Ellen hovered on the top step for a minute, her teeth kneading her
lower lip distractedly. I waited for her to come to whatever conclusion she was
seeking, something in her demeanor reminding me of that phone call back when
she first asked me out for coffee: Perhaps it was the irresoluteness or the way
she seemed so uncertain about how to broach whatever topic was up for
discussion tonight; like a high school sophomore with an MD, that reminded me
now of then. Eventually, her eyes refocused on her present surroundings and she
released her lip from between her teeth, striding fully into the room with
renewed confidence.

‘Here,’ she said, holding the papers out to me. I reached for
them, my eyes falling on a familiar layout of pictures and biographies. It was
the same packet of Layla House kids, but this time she handed it to me opened
to a specific page, the corner neatly creased around the staple as if it’d been
repeatedly rubbed and pinched. I drew the packet towards me, skimming the
displayed page and finding one photo had been meticulously circled in dark blue
ink.

‘This little guy caught my eye,’ she said, pointing vaguely in the
direction of the boy whose face she’d ringed with a felt-tip pen. ‘He was born
exactly one week after Danny.’

I stared into the dark brown eyes, hypnotized by the speck of
light lurking in their depths as I reacquainted myself with the confusion and
fear portrayed by his expression. It was Michias. She had circled Michias.

I swallowed and blinked, trying to clear my throat and my eyes. Of
the sixty kids in the pamphlet, Ellen had noticed the same boy I had.

‘This is crazy and you know I stopped believing in fate after I
became sick,’ I told her, my voice hoarse and higher than usual, ‘but that’s
the same kid I noticed. I didn’t mark him because I didn’t want you to feel
pressured.’

‘Really?’ she asked, her expression rising with hope.

‘Yeah. What do you think?’ I asked, suddenly forgetting all my
earlier thoughts of money-grabbing and heart-stabbing charities; of injustices
I simply couldn’t afford to focus on; of my life so full I couldn’t imagine it
holding any more.

Ellen was quiet for a moment. Her lip found its way back between
her teeth as her eyes returned to the document now hovering above my lap. ‘Will
you contact Kathy to see if he’s still available? And if he is, what the
process for adopting from Ethiopia is?’

I smiled. ‘It can’t be any worse than Romania.’