From unwed mothers. From lawyers and social workers. From the police, who sometimes found infants in trash bins.
(Trash bins! Dr. Schussler: Where are you?)
Trash bins! said the patient. My God! Then before I could get over this, Mrs. Waters led me back into that night-dark elevator, where she turned a key in a lock on the elevator panel and then pressed a button for a floor. This lock, the darkness, brought back the anxiety I had been feeling while I had waited to meet her. And in the confinement of the elevator, during the long, quiet ride, with only that whistling ventilator—I suddenly felt that I was in extreme danger. I clutched my damp clothes and held my breath, the way I did as a kid passing a cemetery, as if just inhaling would let in whatever horrible thing was out there. All at once it came to me that I was making a terrible mistake. I was trespassing. I was doing something totally, completely, utterly forbidden: finding out where abandoned babies came from.
The elevator door abruptly opened, and now I had no choice but to follow Mrs. Waters, who clip-clopped ahead of me down a long, stark hallway, finally opening a door and waiting for me to enter. It was very dim in there, almost as dark as the elevator, and I could make out several people sitting before a panel full of knobs and buttons, some sort of controls, I thought.
This is where we test the children, said Mrs. Waters, gesturing as she said this toward what at first had seemed to be some sort of screen but that I now saw was a glass, a one-way mirror, and on the other side, being looked at by the people in the booth or control room, were several babies—I don’t mean babies, exactly; they were sitting up by themselves, so maybe they were six months old or so. I found all this very strange. Those babies, the people observing them, the darkness, the locks, the knobs and buttons—what were they for? And what exactly did they control? Although there was nothing at all sinister about what the babies were doing. They were sitting there playing, in a patty-cake sort of way, with blocks and stuffed animals and puzzles and colored shapes, all very normal. And it seemed they were mostly enjoying themselves, just a few tears now and then, but only in that quick way children have of crying when they’re thwarted for a minute.
Then Mrs. Waters explained the purpose of the booth: They were investigating the psychological health of the children. We need to understand them before we can offer them for adoption, she said. We place the children in both comfortable and less comfortable conditions. We want to see how they react, whether they’re sturdy or fearful children, or maybe truly disturbed, all of which has a bearing on what we would tell the prospective adoptive parents, or if we would consider them adoptable at all. For instance, we can make the room instantly dark, or we can introduce a very loud noise, and see what is called their “startle” response. Strange people can suddenly walk in; or already-reliable people can play with them, then suddenly leave. We’re stressing them psychologically, it’s true, but only briefly and under the most controlled conditions—and all in the interest of placing them in suitable, happy homes.
Mrs. Waters stood over me, so tall, so imposing. The investigators kept their backs to me and said nothing, only adjusted the controls before them. And I looked over at the babies, playing, trusting, all unsuspecting, about to be put through some terrible gauntlet before they could leave this strange hospital and find a home. Which one, I wondered, was the unlucky one: the one who might not be “adoptable at all”?
At that moment, several people entered the room on the other side of the glass, picked up the babies, and carried them away—I don’t know where they went. Then Mrs. Waters said, Why don’t you sit here quietly, and you can watch us put the next batch through their paces.
And so the next “batch” came in, three babies of about the same age as the previous group—girls, each one held by a woman. The women put the babies on a table and sat down beside them, and then they played with the babies, each woman with the baby she had carried in. This went on for some time. They played coochie-coo and patty-cake and