I pull my hair into a tight bun, but somehow it just isn't tight enough. I pull the pins out and stick them in my mouth, and let my long blond hair fall down my shoulders. But this really isn't a loose hair kind of an outing. So I try to pull it back up into a bun. It's tighter this time, but nothing will ever be tight enough.
My mom, really my adopted mom, would say I was just fidgeting. It's something that I do whenever I get nervous. And I wonder where I got it from. Certainly not from her, who was so far beyond perfect that they couldn't even see it from where they were. She didn't have any nervous ticks. She didn't have a nervous bone in her body.
Maybe I got it from my birth parents. Like my hair and eyes and height and ungirlish strength. Or maybe I got it simply because I have a complicated enough life to have two sets of parents. Maybe if whoever my birth parents were had kept me, I wouldn't have any nervous ticks.
This was just one of the million things I am determined to figure out.
The bus came to a stop so quickly that if I hadn't already been nauseous, it certainly would have made me that way. I'm here, about to walk into an adoption agency and see if I can figure out who my birth parents are.
This whole thing is insane. I mean, I can't even ask someone for help in the college bookstore. If I can't find my textbook by myself, I'll just get along without it for the semester. I mean, most of them are so filled with nonsense that I'd be better off looking through a microscope than studying them anyway. On the flip side, I can't even tell the male chauvinistic clerks in the hardware store that I don't need help. Hey, just because I'm a woman doesn't mean that I don't know exactly what kind of tools I need to do a job.
But if I can't even talk to people whose job it is to help me, how am I going to walk up to a stranger and ask for everything they know about my birth mom? And how am I ever going to walk up to her and introduce myself?
But I get off the bus, and walk the two blocks to the office. Inside there is a secretary with a pom-pom worth of twisted red hair actually painting her nails. She blows a huge bubble with her gum, and pops it. She looks to be about my own age, but doesn't have the air of a perpetual college student that I carry around with me. She is a cliché of a ditsy secretary, and I hate clichés.
"Hi," I say, and find my voice coming out cracked and soft.
She turns to me. I've gotten her attention, but she's not actually acknowledging my existence quite yet.
I clear my voice and try again, "Hi," I mutter. This time it comes off as slightly less cracked, and a bit stronger.
"Can I help you?" she asks, and I realize she's not a cliché at all. Her face is covered with concern, and she's got the sweatiest voice.
"Yes, I was adopted from here when I was little. Well, actually when I was a baby, you see," and I find to my shock and horror that once this voice gets going it has no intention to stopping.
I'm relieved when she interrupts my rambling, "And you want to see if we can tell you who your parents are?"
"Right, but I know what the laws are. I know that you can only release information to me if the birth mother has given it the ok," I ramble on.
"I'm glad you're so well-informed on the whole business. I've had to break that nasty bit of news to more than a few unfortunate souls, it's not exactly something that I like to do. What's your name dear?"
"Ah… Jane Grent. Of course, it wouldn't have been Grent when I was born, that was the name that my adopted parents gave me." I am tempted to roll my eyes at my own stupidity. She works in an adoption agency office, I'm sure she knows the basics of how the naming works.
Her eyes light up right away, and she fingers through a file. "Your birth name was Baby Carter, and we've all been hoping that you would show up sooner or later." She pulls up a pile of letters so big that she has to hold it between her two hands, and that letters keep slipping out, and after she's handed them to me she has to pause to pick up all the stragglers.
"What are these?" I ask in shock.
"You're mom's been writing letters to the office, just in case you ever stopped by to pick them up. They've all got numbers on them, so you can read them in the order that she's written them." Suddenly she slaps her forehead, "Oh, what a dunce I am! I've got to find you a convenient way to carry them home."
She disappears, leaving me trying to simultaneously balance the precarious stack of letters and decipher what kind of a person my mother might have been based on the precise and blockish handwriting she used to address the envelopes.
The secretary comes out in a minute or two with a box that proclaims its contents is cheap copy paper, but which actually holds nothing besides the faint smell of coffee. Behind her comes about half an office full of people. They don't say anything, they mostly just stare at me.
"I forgot that I will need some sort of picture ID to prove you are who you say you are," the secretary says.
I carefully lay the precious letters in the offered box, and dig into my wallet to fetch her my driver's license. She stares at it for a little while, and a few people glance over her shoulder at it.
"You look just like her," a woman in her early sixties mutters.
"Not the eyes," another of the older one says, "Her eyes must be from her father."
"Thank you," I say, a bit stunned by how successful an outing it is. I escape from the office and hike the few blocks back the bus stop. I want to save the letters for when I am alone in my apartment tonight. It seems somehow sacrilegious to read letters from the mother that you've never met while sitting on a bench with a gaudy real-estate ad waiting for the 11:17 am bus.
But I can't wait that long. So I paw through the box until I find one that has a "1" scrawled on it with a purple marker which pretends to be a pen. It's not my mother's handwriting, but was added by the office I just left.
I carefully slice it open, trying not to ruin the envelope it came in. I've always scorned people, like my mother (my adopted mother of course) who used letter openers. I always thought they put a whole lot of effort into saving something which really didn't need to be saved.
But this envelope was to me more precious to me than any envelope I'd ever had before was. I opened it up and found more of the blockish writing inside.
My breath caught when I saw the date. It was my second birthday. I was about to begin reading it when an oddly prompt bus pulled up next to my bench. I hustle inside, and dropped my fare into the driver's hands before rushing into the first available seat.
Well, I don't know quite where to begin this letter. So, I'm just going to start with the questions I would most like answered if I were you.
I'm sure you are wondering why I gave you up. Let's just say you were quite the surprise. I was sixteen when you came along, and I did not think there was any way I could get pregnant.
Still, I really wanted to keep you. But my dad wouldn't even hear of it. He was furious that I was throwing away my future.
And keeping you would have done it. See, I want to be an astronaut. And right now I'm at the Academy training in the Air Force. And you can't go to the Air Force Academy if you have dependent children.
If it makes any difference, I usually wish that I'd gone against my father's wishes.
I guess the other thing you're probably dying to know is who I am. Well, most of that hasn't been decided yet, because like I said, I'm only eighteen.
Your Uncle Mark says I'm scrappy, and I suppose that's a good a description of any to start off with. I can beat most of the boys at the Academy with arm wrestling. That does harm to their egos. But it's all physics.
Brain beats brawn every time.
I don't know, it's hard to describe myself. I suppose it's because we spend so much time being told not to brag about ourselves. It almost comes to the point where we feel like we can't say anything good about ourselves at all. I'm going to counterbalance this by telling you three good things about myself, and then telling you three bad things about myself.
Good things:
1. I am currently the top of my class at the Air Force Academy.
2. I am a really good shot with a gun.
3. I am building a motorcycle from scratch.
Bad things:
1. I can't talk in front of groups without turning into a nervous looking geek.
2. I have never had a boyfriend (I know that's strange coming from a teenage mother).
3. My relationships with my family are all really strange and estranged.
So, I guess that's your mother in a nut shell. I bet by now you're glad that I gave you up for better parents.
You Mother,
Samantha Carter
She was wrong. I wasn't glad that she gave me up. She sounded like quiet the amazing person.