The Mothers A Novel - By Jennifer Gilmore Page 0,19

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Nickie.

Gabe and Brian looked like a nice couple, and so did Anita and Paula, who sat close, rubbing each other’s backs. As for the other two couples, each from separate small towns near Raleigh, I was reserving judgment, which is to say I judged them negatively. They made clear that they desired a white child—both claimed the landscape of these small southern towns as motivation for this—before the question had been posed to them. Their concern over what to do with their guns and ammunition when the social workers came for the home visit (store them separately!) made me think of them as the Killers, and I wanted to be sure to remember this term so I could later tell Ramon something droll about our day.

I could see who these couples were on the outside, but what information did that give up about what darkness lay within? What light?

I thought of those late afternoons fading into night in the basements of our American childhoods, the basements we snuck in and out of through sliding glass doors, stickered with rainbows or unicorns, so birds—and drunken teenagers—would not forget the transparent divisions between outside and in, in those basements where we grew up beneath the weight of our homes; it began for me a kind of wonderment that I would carry into adulthood: How would I convey who I am on the inside to the outside? I thought it now: How do we relate what is private about our relationship, a secret sometimes even to each other, to the world? And how would we reveal something so vital and true it would make a birthmother set our brochure aside and say: These two. I choose them.

I did not think, then, what would make a woman give up her child. Or any of the factors that might make her have to do so.

We broke for lunch, take-out “Italian,” my antipasto salad of canned mushrooms, rolled-up and sliced ham, American cheese, and turkey on a bed of limp lettuce, Ramon’s calzone soggy, nearly cold, and, he found upon biting in, nearly empty of its spinach-and-mozzarella promise.

“Good God.” I nudged Ramon.

“Stop being such a snob,” he said. “Not every meal has to be handcrafted.”

I raised my eyebrows at him.

“Hmm.” Martin glanced up from his meatball sub to look at my meal. “Did you get the pink raspberry vinaigrette with that? The pink raspberry vinaigrette is awesome.”

The training then switched gears from who might want us to whom we might select, as if we had any control in this process. To announce this changed perspective, a large glass bowl of white, black, brown, and yellow pom-poms was placed on the table, and smaller, empty bowls were passed out to us.

“Take the pom-poms based on the color of the various people in your lives, your friends, your neighbors, your family,” Crystal and Tiffany told us.

We all stared rather dumbly at the large bowl set before us.

“Even if you are open to adopting a child of any color, you have to think about what kind of role models of their own race they will come into contact with as they grow up,” they said. “Think of your families, your communities.”

We all went for our pom-poms.

I looked around the room. Martin and James’s bowl was very white. So was Gabe and Brian’s, though they had some yellow peeking out. I looked down at our bowl; I had taken all the pom-poms. They didn’t fit in the bowl, and so I held on to them, my arms widening; I was embracing all the pom-poms.

Ramon looked at the spread before us.

“Okay,” they said. “Good! Now we’re going to hand out your profile forms.”

We were handed a two-page client profile form to select the races and ethnicities of our prospective child, as well as the amount of the birthmother’s alcohol and drug use we could possibly tolerate, and the genetics of her family, ranging from physical and correctable issues such as cleft palates and clubbed feet, to mild to severe issues of mental health.

“Be as open on your form as you are both comfortable with,” Nickie instructed, tightening the bright-colored scarf knotted at her neck. “Look at your pom-poms but also know that the more open you are, the quicker you will get a child.”

Crystal and Tiffany nodded behind her, silent backup singers.

I glanced at the form. And then I watched the other couples looking at