I didn’t know what to expect the first time I met a biological parent, face to face. I imagined a convict who had already served five out of ten consecutive life sentences.
My wife, Mary, called about the new foster baby, “…a little boy, only fourteen hours old. Still in the hospital, and his mom has no idea that CPS is taking the kid.” Mary described his situation, “His father’s in jail, something about drugs and spousal abuse. The mother also has a grade school child, a girl, in a different foster family. She’s not coming to us.”
By the time I got home Tommy was sleeping but squirming awake. I watched him for a long breathless moment before I picked him up. Dark brown eyes. Chubby cheeks. He was a beautiful baby boy.
His mother, Rosanna, lived at a shelter—a house converted into a Catholic alternative to abortion/halfway house.
Rosanna sat on the edge of her bed, staring off into space, and I recognized her distant expression, her “faraway look.” This kind of altered state of consciousness required chemical assistance. Rosanna was a pretty woman with a merciless limp. She stood 4’ 11” and one leg was shorter than the other, the result of polio. She came to the United States at the age of seven to get an operation that allowed her to walk for the first time. Her thick, jet-black hair cascaded down over her shoulders, and she had Theda Bara style, Kohl-rimmed eyes. Rosanna also wore one of those unique dual expressions—hard and vulnerable at the same time. She squinted at Tommy, regarding him quizzically.
“He looks funny,” she finally decided.
“Do you want to hold him?” I asked.
Without speaking she took him and cradled him in her arms. She didn’t say anything for a long time. Mary started talking to her, but Rosanna just cringed and listened and choked out the words, “Can I feed him?” Mary fumbled for the bottle in Tommy’s diaper bag and gave it to Rosanna. Someone came in the room and asked me something in Spanish. After a few repeated requests I realized they wanted me to check the pilot light.
When I got back to her room Rosanna muttered, “I want to hear him cry.” She cuddled him and talked about herself. She did downers and Dilaudid when she was pregnant, but she was rather proud that she never did uppers like crystal meth while Tommy was in utero. Ring the church bells and have a parade in her honor!
“That lady was wasted!” I said casually as we drove away.
Mary didn’t comprehend. I explained, “Rosanna was high on something.”
Mary has a way of clenching her hands around a steering wheel when she is angry. “She would not be high for a visit with her child.”
“He is soaked!” shouted Rosanna at the beginning of our next visit.
“Well, change him…” I started to say. Mary shot me a look so I didn’t finish. Rosanna acted like she hadn’t heard but changed the diaper, and I took it. It was barely wet, only a few drops. I wanted to say something, but I figured that any Mother of the Year who only took downers during her pregnancy had to have her say.
The newborns seem to magically change, to get just a little bit calmer, when the birth mothers cradled them in their arms. For the first couple of visits at least, Rosanna would get teary eyed, not crying but close to it. She settled down to a comfortable routine: giving him his bottle and griping about us:
- “Haven’t you been feeding him?”
- “I complained to the social worker that you weren’t taking care of my son.”
- “Don’t you ever hold him?”
- “I requested that Tommy be placed in a different home. I’m sorry, but I had to do what was best for my son.”
- Sometimes she would ask what else she could possibly do with a baby other than feed him.
- She would grumble about us one minute and sweetly ask for advice the next.
Rosanna resented me, but she hated my wife. Mary began to dread the visits. “Chris, can you go without me next time?”
“But we always go together…” I started to say.
“I just want to stay as far away from her as I possibly can,” she said, staccato voice, clenched teeth.
Tommy’s Dad still rotted in jail—the crystal meth charge wouldn’t go away. We knew that Rosanna would sometimes “test dirty” on a urinalysis. We also found out that the Dad had a brother.
“Rosanna, I heard you had a brother in law named Jose with a family in Texas?” I asked one day.
Rosanna said Jose couldn’t keep a job, the family collected welfare and his wife was on probation. According to Rosanna they were scheming to get custody of Tommy and his sister.
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