One sunny day

I was four when I was adopted by a new family, but the last time my mother came to see me I was seven almost eight. During the follies of youth one doesn't always realize that a single moment could change everything. How was I to know that one day would be the last day I ever saw her, that this day would be different from any other Friday.

My mother was like many single women from the reservation; poor, addicted to drugs and with no way to take care of herself- let alone any children. She was not beautiful in the conventional way, with thick black frizzy hair, glasses that seemed a half inch thick and gave her googly eyes, and was built like a skeleton; Bones was her nickname. She had a smile that could been seen from across the room, teeth so large and white they looked like someone lined her mouth with Chicletts. Her whole face would light up, she was beautiful.

The day of my weekly visit with my mother would start like any other. Wake up, do chores, pick a nice outfit, and pack a snack to share with her. The visits to see her were the best of times and even though it was always the same routine, I loved seeing her. She came to see me even after her rights were terminated.

It was a popsicle melting kind of day just weeks before my birthday and summer vacation had just started. This would be the first year that my new family said they would be comfortable with her coming to see me outside of the scheduled visits. I planned to use my newfangled freedom to invite mother to my upcoming birthday party. This would be a new start for her and I.

There I stood outside of the child services building ready to see her. This building was far from anything special; a giant two story gray building made of cinder blocks, that smelled like sewage on a hot day in July, and left the taste of urine on the tip of my tongue. It was similar to a prison, with a front guard tower, high fences, fewer windows and minus the barbed wire. To me though it was the most wonderful place in the world better than Disneyland. It was the one place where I was allowed to see her for the last four years.

Getting inside the building was no picnic either. Security as strict as an airport on Christmas weekend. Bag check, pat down, they would even open my Scooby Doo lunch box to check its contents which was always the same, a tomato and pickle to share with mom, and to this day is still a favorite snack. Even though I had been there every Friday for the last four years they still would pat me down . What could a seven year old possibly be smuggling? Expired milk? But, it was worth it to see her.

Once inside and ushered to visiting room 403, all I had to do was wait for her to arrive, waiting was always the hardest part for me as a child (I have come to know that it is the same for most children). She was always a few minutes late as she would take the bus across town. At the moment it didn't seem like much time had passed. Laying across the floor coloring in the windowless room alone, it was easy to lose a sense of time. In my own world, time passed differently, but hours had ticked by. Finally a social worker came in to play with me she smelled like fresh laundry and wore a crisply starched grey pants suit. Then the phone call, my mother was on the other end of the line.

“I can't come see you today” she said.

Her voice was raspy and phlegmy from years of smoking. I could almost smell her breath through the phone moving towards me like a dark cloud of miasma.

“Why not?”

My voice, barely audible, came out hoarse and didn’t even sound like me. I knew what she was about to say next wouldn’t be good, as she had never missed our visits before now.

“I just can't. I won't be coming to see you anymore. Something happened and I have to leave now. I'm moving away today. Sorry I couldn't say goodbye in person. Bye baby.”

Click. Dial tone. She hung up. I stood there with the phone in my hand unsure of what to do next. What can one do next?

It didn't fully sink in at the moment that she would never be coming back. I sat in the room with the social worker as she rubbed my back and told me that she was sorry, that everything will be okay. I know it was a gesture of comfort but it did nothing to comfort me. She may as well of rubbed my back with a jumping cactus. The tears came and I had no way of stopping them nor did I want to. Everything was moving, swirling, rotating, everything but that windowless room. The world felt stifling. I could feel the contents of my stomach creeping up my throat. My mouth watered and I knew what would happen if I opened my mouth. Swallowing it back down left a bile taste lingering in my mouth and throat. I sat a while longer while the social workers whispered about the situation and called my adoptive mother to come get me.

Getting up to leave was the hardest part as I knew that leaving would likely be the end , I would never see her again. I had heard about this from other foster kids, the ill fated visit where you get the bad news about your parents going away. Grabbing my lunch box, I left the room, headed back to my new mom waiting in her car, waiting to hear all about the visit. I cried some more when I told her what had happened. I remember the look on her face. It was a mix of agony, heartbreak, hopelessness and an unsure feeling on how to comfort me. In that moment she told me something I will never forget as she held me crying in her bosom.

“It's going to be okay if she doesn’t want you because I do.” she whispered to the puffy eyed child looking up at her.

In that moment I had never felt so loved and wanted.

I went back every Friday for weeks - I lost track of how many more times I went back - waiting, hoping, praying for her to come back for me. I was like a lost puppy that keeps returning to the last place it remembers for the simple fact it knows nothing else. I don’t know why my new mother let me keep going back maybe she thought I needed to see for myself or maybe she didn’t want to crush the hopes of a small child, but for whatever reason I was glad she did.

My biological mother never did come back and I never saw her again. She left because she found out she was pregnant again and wanted to keep the new baby. When I first found out that was the reason she left I was so angry, the fury a smoldering fire I wished nothing but agony for them. I resented her and the baby I thought she loved more than me. Eventually I forgave her and even went searching for the son my mother gave birth to maybe just out of curiosity or perhaps for closure. I found him in Los Angeles, a grown man now, I chickened out of contacting him further. He had a life and a family now . I never found her I have searched time and again with no avail.

The last memory of her rejection overshadowed any other memory I had of her. I can still hear her voice, picture what she looked like, sometimes I can even catch a whiff of her scent on the breeze like cigarettes and a hint of something sweet like orange blossoms. But I lost every other memory of her somewhere in that room, on a sunny day just weeks before my birthday.