Moving Forward in Reverse (33 page)

37

‘Hi, Kathy, this is Scott
Martin, Dr. Ellen Martin’s husband,’ I said into the phone, turning from the
packet I had flipped open to Michias’s image on the desk to peer out the window
at the tranquility beyond. The gangly, white trunks of aspen trees leaned slightly
off-vertical at the outskirts of the woods like the stakes of a fence no one
had bothered to finish. From where I stood between the two windows in the
office, I could just make out Nadia and Danny’s play structure, deserted except
for a small brown bird hopping along the beam over the swings. Nadia and Danny
attended preschool now, leaving me and their toys alone from 8:40 in the
morning until 12:20 when I met them at their bus stop at the beginning of our
driveway each afternoon.

Sending them off to school
wasn’t hard so much because my two little buddies were gone for a few hours but
rather because my parenting style dictated that I not be overly protective or
coddle them incessantly despite every nerve itching for me to do exactly that.
I had been working my way up to creating a greater distance between us so they
could gain confidence: forcing them to cross the creek on their own using a
plank of wood I’d purchased and standing back when the bus came so they could
learn to fend for themselves and find their own way. It was that distance – my
self-imposed distance – and watching them learn not to need me which was the
hardest thing to endure.
One day they won’t need you at all,
I mused and
became so engrossed in the thought that when Kathy’s voice reached my ear I
flinched in surprise.

‘Oh, Scott! Yes, hello! I had
a feeling you’d call.’

‘Mm,’ I hummed
noncommittally, smiling at the implication of fate’s hand in our lives yet
again. ‘Ellen and I would like to discuss the possibility of adopting from Ethiopia.’

‘Okay!’ Kathy replied, her
enthusiasm making the word rise in pitch at the end like a cheer:
o-kay!
‘How
about I come to your house so I can meet your children who I’ve heard so much
about and we can discuss it then?’

‘That would be great,’ I told
her sincerely.

~~~

Kathy came by Saturday afternoon. After being welcomed into our
home with open arms (Literally: Nadia and Danny hadn’t yet learned how to
differentiate between family and acquaintance. At the time, they’d hug the UPS
man whenever he came to the door.), she introduced us to Adoption Advocates
International. Started by three volunteers in a couple’s garage, the
organization focused on finding homes for the children often overlooked by
other organizations. The kids who had disabilities or needed homes with
siblings – the kids who were, arguably, the most vulnerable.

Michias, she told us didn’t technically fit into either of these
categories, having no disability or family to speak of. He was one of the
majority at Layla House, AAI’s Ethiopian orphanage, who had lost everyone they
had to AIDS. And he was still available for adoption.

It was all Ellen and I needed to hear.

‘Lock us on Michias,’ I told Kathy. ‘Get us the paperwork and
let’s roll.’

‘You’re sure?’ Kathy asked.

I looked at Ellen. Ellen looked to Nadia and Danny who had each
claimed a couch cushion on either side of our guest of honor.

‘Do you guys want a brother?’ Ellen asked.

‘The boy in the paper?’ Nadia asked.

‘Yes,’ I told her with a smile and a nod.
The boy in the paper.

‘Yes!’ she shouted, turning to hop onto the sofa and begin jumping
up and down exuberantly.

Giggling, Danny followed suit. ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ they hollered as
they bounced on the cushions. Kathy braced herself exaggeratedly, both hands
grabbing the edge of the middle cushion upon which she sat as she pretended to
be in a rocking boat. I snuck a glance at Ellen, who grinned and shrugged one
shoulder.
What the heck.

This once, we let them bounce on the furniture to celebrate our
decision to expand our family.

~~~

I leaned a hip against the counter to watch my wife work. ‘We
received a letter today.’

‘Just one?’ Ellen retorted, grinning at the pot of spindly
spaghetti noodles she was about to strain.

‘One important one. It was from AAI saying that our completed
paperwork has been received and found to be in order. And Michias is officially
locked on us.’

Her head shot up like a squirrel startled from its nut-burying.
‘Really?’ she asked, her wide, bright eyes beseeching me to say it was true.

‘Really,’ I told her. I smiled at her quiet whoop of joy, her
teeth biting her lower lip on a prodigious grin.

‘That’s wonderful! Did it say how much longer we would have to
wait?’

‘No,’ I admitted a touch gravely. I had been looking for promises
when I tore open the letter, too. ‘But I spoke with Kathy only yesterday and
she had stated that once the paperwork went through we’d be in the home
stretch. No more than six months, I’d say.’
Three months to get the
paperwork completed and in order and three months for the courts to get in
order. Could it really be that easy?
I was afraid to hope.

Ellen clutched a hand to her chest and exhaled dramatically.
‘Thank goodness! I don’t think I could go through another adoption like Nadia
and Danny’s.’ I nodded in accord as she hoisted the pot of pasta and started to
make her way around the island towards the sink. I didn’t care to remind her
that Barb had made promises to the same affect, too. It was a six to nine month
time frame and then it was ‘three more weeks’ before becoming ‘three more
months’ and finally simply, ‘please be patient.’ So far, Kathy had proved to be
efficient and trustworthy, keeping us apprised of all actions and never once
asking me to ‘be patient’.

As long as things continue as they’ve been, we’ll be fine,
I thought, grabbing the
basket of garlic bread and detouring into the living room on my way to the
table.

I peered around the fireplace to find Danny sitting with his back
to me, legs bent in front of him with his heels on the floor and knees arching
above the ground.

‘Weew-weew-weew-weeeew,’ he said in a hushed voice, while his
right hand guided his toy fire truck out of its plastic fire station and
beneath the bridge of his legs.

‘Time for dinner, guys,’ I called to the fire crew and young
artist behind the coffee table.

Nadia delicately lifted Stuart’s large snout with both her hands
and slid her legs out from beneath his bulbous, black speckled head. He watched
her with forlorn eyes as she lowered his skull back to the floor and started
making her way into the dining room.

‘Hustle, hustle,’ I chanted as they drew near. They laughed and
scurried past me in a dash for the table.

‘Whoa there!’ Ellen cried when Danny veered around her, barely
making the turn to swerve into his seat. When they had settled, I swapped
my basket of garlic bread for the bowl of meatballs and marinara sauce.

‘So, that letter,’ I segued as Ellen began dishing pasta onto
Nadia and Danny’s plates.

‘Mm-hm,’ Ellen murmured.

‘It also came with some other documents, one of which mentioned
that we could send Michias a gift if we wanted to.’

Ellen glanced up, a heaping spoonful of pasta plunking a bit
haphazardly onto Danny’s plate.

‘Of course we want to!’ Her eyes narrowed at me as if worried I
may have thought differently.

Danny was staring at the noodles with single-minded determination
as he waited for the marinara sauce to accompany them.

‘That’s what I said,’ I assured her. ‘Whatever we send would need
to fit in a shoebox, though.’

‘Three meatballs, please, Tata,’ Danny chirped, eyes still fixated
on the bare noodles as if waiting for a green light so he could dive in.

‘You bet, buddy.’ I ladled sauce and meatballs onto his
 noodles, dropping an extra, conciliatory ball to make up for being so
distracted.

Ellen moved down the line towards her own seat. ‘A shoebox? That’s
it?’

‘Better than nothing.’

‘True.’ She served herself then brought the bowls of pasta and
garlic bread to my end of the table so I could do the same. ‘What should we
send him?’

‘I don’t know,’ I told her truthfully as I used the right myo to
shovel food onto my plate. I couldn’t serve as neatly nor as easily as Ellen
could, but it was an unspoken agreement between us that she give me no handouts
because of my handicap. I always had and always would serve myself. The one
exception to the rule was cutting meat, a difficult task to accomplish without
a wrist. She graciously gave me a break on that one.

‘Hey, kids, do you want to send your brother a present?’ I asked,
plunking a fourth meatball onto my pasta.

‘A present?’ Danny asked, his lips smeared with tomato sauce like
a crazed clown and a noodle hanging out of the corner of his mouth.

‘Yes, a gift for Michias.’

‘Yes!’ Nadia cried, throwing her arms in the air, fork and all.

‘Careful!’ Ellen cried out around a laugh, reaching for the
sauce-laden utensil before marinara could go flying everywhere.

I snickered and caught Ellen’s eye. ‘We’ll think of something,’ I
assured her, turning to my mound of spaghetti.

~~~

Michias’ gift box grew to include two t-shirts, one for the US
National Soccer Team and one for the Seattle Mariners; one pair of red adidas
shorts and another in white with blue stripes; two pairs of socks; and a photo
of our family, including Bogart and the dogs. We knew Michias probably wouldn’t
understand what the picture meant or who we were, having no knowledge of our
existence, but we gave it a shot and set the photo on top of his pile of
clothes.

Nadia added her Seattle Mariners baseball cap to the box and Danny
put in a few of his Hot Wheels: his favorite car, favorite truck, and his
Batmobile. It was a gift that was a part of each of us, only Michias wouldn’t
know that for many months still to come. This was the hard part of adoption:
when your child is a part of your family already but he or she has yet to
include you as part of his or hers. I hated that there was no way to
communicate with him other than through these few items, lovingly crammed into
a single, men’s size 9 shoebox, but Ethiopia required only one parent to travel
and only once and that was to bring their child home.

~~~

Muffled by the pile of clothes in her arms, I could barely make
out the word Ellen called from behind me. I glanced over my shoulder at her,
slowing my pace so as not to drop any of the books and dolls I carried.

‘Andrew?’ I asked, puckering my brow. Behind Ellen, Nadia and
Danny were proudly parading like a pair of ducklings marching after their mama
duck as they each clutched a stuffed animal in their arms. In preparation for
Michias’s arrival, we had sold Nadia and Danny on the idea of moving into
separate rooms – easily accomplished when we proposed it on the heels of ‘Do
you want a new brother?’ – and were now onto our fifth trip down the hall with
Nadia’s belongings.

‘Michias Andrew Martin,’ Ellen enunciated, wriggling her chin out
from behind one of Nadia’s down winter coats.

‘Andrew,’ I repeated, understanding dawning as I tested the feel
of the name on my tongue.
Andrew,
I mouthed, picturing the scared little
boy with the wide eyes and narrow frown.
Andy.
I led our gaggle into
Nadia’s new room, down the hall and separated only by a Jack and Jill bathroom
from the bedroom that would now belong to Danny and Michias.

‘I like it,’ I told Ellen as I dumped my collection of bedtime stories
and partially-clothed dolls onto Nadia’s new bed. ‘Andy Martin,’ I said with a
grin. It was perfect.

‘What do you guys think?’ I asked Nadia and Danny as they marched
into the room on Ellen’s heels, Nadia sticking her elbows out in the doorway to
ensure Danny didn’t sneak around her to enter the room first. ‘Should we call
your new brother Andy?’

As with any mention of Michias, they became instantly animated,
throwing the stuffed animals they carried into the air to chant their favorite
answer to any and all questions regarding their new brother: ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’

Ellen laughed and looked over their heads to smile at me with
glowing eyes, ardor and adoration radiating from her like sunlight off a
mirror. ‘Andy Martin,’ she whispered, just loud enough to be heard over Nadia
and Danny’s hollering.

38

Red. Everything seemed to be red. Red carpet. Red drapes. Red
chair. Heck, even the wallpaper had a great deal of red in it. It was two in
the morning, East Africa Time, and I was seeing red. Literally.

I sat down on the side of the bed – with, yes, red stitching –
near the phone and opened the room service menu. 2:00 a.m. here was 1:00 p.m.
back home and having slept for a fair portion of the twenty-four hour journey,
I wasn’t tired but boy was I hungry. Andy’s adoption had culminated so quickly
– unexpectedly smooth after our turmoil in Romania – that Ellen had been unable
to take time off work to bring him home with me. I was on my own for this trek
across the globe and back again.

After skipping over the breakfast selection, I decided on a nice,
robust taste of home and called in an order for a hamburger.

‘Thirty minutes, please, Mr. Martin,’ the waiter said when he’d
taken my order, ‘thirty’ getting caught somewhere between ‘thrifty’ and ‘dirty’
in his Ethiopian twang. I thanked him and hung up the phone, turning to my
abundance-of-red hotel room.

The manager of Layla House, a woman named Gail Gorfe, would be
meeting me outside the hotel at a more reasonable hour of the day and logic
told me to unpack, eat, and sleep before she arrived. Severe jet lag and
unavoidable excitement at being so close to Michias, however, made neither of
the latter two prospects appealing at the moment. Instead, I tossed my legs
onto the bed and turned on the thirteen-inch television. It was perched atop a
wooden stand that looked more like a rickety barstool than an entertainment
console.

The screen flickered to life, displaying a weathered man with
corrugated skin standing before a small gathering of black, horned steers. He
was talking to a male reporter who wore slacks and a navy sweater and was doing
a valiant job of looking interested. Overlaying the scene was a man’s voice –
young if the octave and tone was anything to go by – uttering a series of
sounds which were so rapid in succession and distinct from anything I’d ever
heard that I had the urge to hold my breath as he spoke, as if perhaps that
would trap some meaning inside me.

It didn’t. He kept speaking and speaking, making these incredibly
obscure sounds that couldn’t possibly be strung together as words, and I kept
listening, barely breathing, wondering if he had used a single vowel in the
past several minutes, until a sound at my door told me my meal had arrived.

Whatever Ethiopians’ views of American cuisine are, they do not
match my own. The burger looked familiar enough, sitting innocuously on a
polished white plate atop a wooden tray. But I assure you, this was no simple
burger. It was the Mount Vesuvius of burgers; the Death Valley of burgers; the you’re-going-to-regret-this
of burgers. I went in ignorant of all this, of course, taking a Big Gulp of a
bite and chomping greedily through the bread in my quest for the meaty goodness
within. By the time that first tiny morsel of substance had touched the back of
my throat I was seeing red for very different reasons. First my tongue, then
the roof of my mouth, then my throat, and finally my whole, sweat-beading head
felt like it was lit on fire. I looked accusingly at my burger then squinted at
the door through teary-eyed panting.
Someone must have stuffed this with
something,
I scowled. Then took another bite.

By the time I was finished, I had drained every bottle of water in
my room and was satiated in a way only acutely spicy food can engender.
If
this is what Michias has been living on, we won’t need to have a spicy-taco
night when he gets home,
I thought and wiped my brow with a towel from the
bathroom.

~~~

A woman with fine, medium-length hair just the dark side of blonde
and bright pink cheeks was waving to me. She was standing on the driver’s side
of an old, off-white Land Rover which would have looked more at home on a
safari than the riddled streets of Addis Ababa.
Must be Gail,
I thought
and took a chance at waving back without glancing over my shoulder first.

‘Scott!’ she said, raising her voice to be heard over the racket
of the abused engines hobbling down the street. ‘I’m Gail, goot to meet you!’
Gail smiled at me from across the hood of the vehicle, wrinkling her nose and
squinting behind her eyeglasses. She was all soft curves beneath a rich violet
shirt, a stark contrast to the lanky and at times skeletal natives to the area.

‘Hop een,’ she said, opening her driver’s side door. I pulled at
the door on the passenger’s side, caught off guard by the amount of effort
required to open it. After a solid, feet-planted jerk, the metal door came
reluctantly ajar and I climbed up onto the dark beige, polyester seat. She
started the engine engendering the sound of a waking dragon (an unhappily
waking dragon) and wasted no time in cutting her way into the throng of
dilapidated vehicles slowly progressing down the road. In front of us, blue
smoke spewed from the backs of rickety compact cars with rust stains peppering
their paint like the spots of a giraffe. The pollution wafted into the air like
a cloud of spray paint, mixing with that of the car in front of it to create a
dark fog for us to cut through. I reached for the door, bracing my legs against
the floor as Gail drove us over a pothole the size of a manhole cover.

‘Dutch?’ I asked as I fumbled my seatbelt into its buckle. The
roads through Addis Ababa reminded me of the potholes back home –
Wisconsin-after-a-rough-winter home, that is – only about one-hundred times
worse. Cracks fractured the asphalt surfaces like the strands of a spider web
and in places there seemed to be more holes than road. Unperturbed by any of
this, Gail shot me a surprised glance and smiled.

‘Yees. How coult you tell?’ she asked, thankfully turning back to
the road a moment later.

‘I’m familiar with the accent,’ I told her, readjusting my feet on
the floor to get better traction. ‘I traveled to the Netherlands quite a bit in
my days as a soccer player. I love the casual attitude of the people there and
the country itself.’

‘Mmm,’ she replied, her voice carrying like a gentle breeze
through the SUV. A sort of reverence came over her face; wistful and adoring.
‘Eet truly ees.’

We slipped into conversation about her homeland for a while,
chatting amicably about Amsterdam, the countryside, and the history of soccer
there. She navigated us through the pollution-laden streets of Ethiopia’s
capital with the casual expertise of someone long-since acclimated to this way
of life.

As we spoke, my vision meandered across our surroundings. I stared
at the patchwork roofs of houses that seemed to sway on their miniscule plots
of land; clusters of homes no bigger than the one Nadia’s foster family had
lived in but in far worse condition. They accumulated in herds along sections
of battered road, punctuated by the occasional tree or giant fern sprouting
from between their inured depths like a malignant mole amongst a myriad of
freckles. If parts of Romania are considered ‘poor’, then I have no words to
describe the poverty I saw in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

We passed vans used as buses which were so over laden with
passengers that the rear bumper would thud against the road with each pothole.
I forced myself not to gape at the people crammed between the smeared or broken
windows in an indistinguishable jumble of limbs as we passed, but something
deep in my chest clenched unbearably at the thought of such penury.

More than once we passed what I could only assume were victims of
the military skirmishes in Ethiopia. They scooted along the side of the road on
flat, wooden carts with four contorted wheels just round enough to rotate. What
little remained of their legs protruded from their hips like thumbs. I watched
the first one we came upon as he used a long wooden stick – likely once the
handle for a broom – to paddle his way along the road, bouncing over pothole
and debris alike. To the second amputee we saw, a gaunt man in an oversized
t-shirt which obscured any leg he may have had, I gave the kindness of
disregard and turned to Gail, instead.

‘So what brought you here?’ I asked now that our musings of the
Netherlands were running out.

She gave a sigh and slight shrug as she brushed a hair from her
face. ‘I just vanted to go vherre I was neeted.’

‘And they need you here,’ I said, not asking but agreeing.

‘I like to sink so. Eet’s a rough place but full offf goot people
just trying to get by.’ She glanced out her side window as she said this. I
wondered what she saw when she looked upon these ravished streets. At some
point did you stop seeing the plumes of smoke rising from the other vehicles
like the tail feathers of a bird? Or the homes built with slabs of whatever
material was on hand, slapped together as little more than lean-tos? Or the
people, weather-beaten and haggard, with huge, brown eyes that could peer at
you so sharply one minute then turn blindly to the road ahead the next? How
long would it take for such sights to become mundane?

‘How is the government here?’ I asked, curious to know what the
bureaucracies were doing for their people.

‘Eet coult be better,’ she admitted, wincing at some intimate
knowledge. ‘Corruption ees a big concern. Dee officials siphoning money from
exports to – how do you say eet in America?
Line deir pockets?’
I
smiled, feeling a cold in the pit of my stomach, and nodded.

‘Yes. Exactly. And all the while the people go hungry.’

‘Yees. Eet ees very unfortunate.’ We dropped into silence for a
moment; a brief period of depressed and disappointed reverie, until Gail made a
thoughtful noise and asked, ‘Have you heard of any new efforts to help with
AIDS, perhaps?’

She glanced at me with such hopefulness I almost couldn’t bear to
speak the truth. ‘No, nothing much that I hear. It doesn’t help that Bush is in
office.’

‘Hm.’ She turned back to the road with a resigned sigh. ‘I see.’ After
another pause she seemed to forcefully shake the dismay from her countenance
and changed the subject to distant concerns. ‘Ant how are sings in Amereeca?’

I smirked at her and shook my head. ‘Eh, Bush is beginning to
receive criticism for entering Iraq. Gas prices are rising. But the pizza’s
still good.’ She laughed and peeked at me briefly to gauge my sincerity. I
winked at her and told her the story of my Burger from Hell earlier that
morning.

~~~

By the time we had passed our third cart-riding amputee, I could
no longer harbor any insecurity about my robotic hands. As we turned onto a
side street lined on one side with a patch of neglected greenery which seemed
to serve as a park and more ramshackle houses on the other, I had relaxed into
a new reprieve of self-assurance.

Layla House seemed to take up most of the block. The sagging,
pastiche homes quickly gave way to a long, walled compound made of houses in
significantly better condition. Painted the bright hews of blue and red I had
seen in Kathy’s photographs, they peeked over the grey wall like children
peering out of their playpen. Gail turned off the road with a thud as we
plunked over a curb-lined ditch to face a long, metal fence. She honked and
waved to a man dressed in black-and-dark-green camouflage with a black Poorboy
hat pulled low over his brow. He lifted one hand from the assault rifle he held
across his chest like a sash and waved in return before striding across the
driveway to open the gate.

My son is living in a gated compound with armed guards,
I thought and swallowed
through a sand-paper throat. Whatever the man and his gun said about this dour
side of Addis Ababa in which Layla House resided, I quickly decided I was
thankful for the precautions they were taking with these children – and with
my
child. The grey brick-and-mortar wall abruptly became a comfort at my back
as Gail navigated us across the lumpy concrete. I leaned forward to glimpse the
gate in the side view mirror, watching as it was slid closed by the expert
hands of the gunman.

We drove past a white building with a red brick chimney on our
left. Gail gestured out her window, commenting, ‘That ees our office, dining
hall, ant video room for ven vee haff movies to show.’ She turned alongside the
building and put the Land Rover in park. ‘They are out of date, of course, but
dee children love Disney movies.’

I nodded in understanding and opened my mouth to comment, but she
had already begun climbing out of the SUV. The door creaked objectionably as
she swung it wide then slammed it shut behind her. I hastily unbuckled myself
to follow her around the back of the Land Rover.

‘I weel show you around for a bit, den we can find Michias. Okay?’

‘That would be great.’ I started pacing alongside her. I wanted to
take it all in, this place that Michias called home. ‘Please don’t keep me from
anything,’ I said as I lifted the camera I had draped around my neck. ‘I’m not
someone that you need to impress or worry that you may turn off. This is where
my son lives.’

She nodded sharply and, gauging by the slight upward curve to her
lips, respected what I had said. We passed a bright blue building with a red
line painted along its base..

‘We do dee best we can vith vhat we have.’  She waved her
arms in a vague, all-encompassing gesture.