I saw trees on the edge of a cliff, their roots sticking out and hanging down, trying to cling to soil that is no longer there. And yet, they managed to survive.
When I “think babies” I think of seven pounds as the norm, and in my limited, sheltered, middle class experience that was true. In the universe that I now inhabited as a foster dad who just took infants, seven pounds was a big baby. No, let me change that. Seven pounds was the max. There was another extreme that we found out about—preemies. Premature means a child is born before thirty-seven weeks of gestation and usually weighs under five pounds. Some hospitals won’t release a preemie that weighs less than five pounds, but we got one that clocked in at four and a half.
Since the lungs are the last organ to develop in the womb, preemies often cannot breathe and have to be put on a ventilator right after they are born. They are prone to a number of diseases and infections including pneumonia, cardiovascular complications, anemia, and respiratory distress syndrome. Premature babies frequently suffer from jaundice and have a yellow tint to their skin.
Jaundice was one of baby Alice’s problems. She had a strong yellow coloring. She was African American but you might not be able to tell that right away because of the yellow cast to her skin. My wife, Mary, gloried in the repelled fascination of preterm birth. She kept commenting on the private-parts area. “It just bulges out. There’s no meat to it. Oh my god! Chris, this is so strange!” Alice was too thin and too small. I had seen a number of tiny, malnourished babies, but I wasn’t ready for this. Her tone was not the only problem, her skin was loose and the muscles were tiny, not giving much extra shape to the bones. The eyes seemed more sunken than was usually the case, and I was stunned by the elongated, somewhat distorted face. She seemed more like a skinny doll than a baby, and if it wasn’t for her chest moving up and down with her breathing I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. Mary continued to stare as I encouraged her to bundle up the tiny girl. Mary scoffed and said something about how warm I kept the house and added, “But, just because you’re you, I’ll bundle her up.” I think that if the infant was still in an incubator or if she still had a breathing tube stuck up her nostrils, an IV still in her veins and a heart monitor stuck to her chest, Mary might not have been so drawn to the sight of a preemie in all her underweight glory.
We didn’t want to take Alice out of the house because she was so young and because of the increased risk of infection. (Preemies account for about twenty-five percent of infant deaths in the US). Mary drove to the store and bought a boatload of preemie clothes. The newborn clothes would not fit but hung over her body like skin on the body of a tummy tuck patient.
Our year old foster girl, Ella, was completely uninterested. I tried holding Ella up so she could see the tiny baby, and she stared at Alice for a bored moment. Then again Belle weighed only eleven and a half pounds when she came to us at nine months so a four and a half pound newborn was no big deal.
“What did Alice’s mom have to say?” I asked. “Was she upset? Worried?”
Mary rolled her eyes—this was a trick she hadn’t been able to do B.F.C.--before foster care. She didn’t say anything for a moment. I was struggling against that “Ijust-said-something-stupid” feeling, knowing I hadn’t done anything wrong. I said “What?”
Mary shook her head a little and muttered something about the woman saying, “Oh, you’re finally here.” Mary asked her if she wanted to hold the baby one more time. She said, “No, I need a cigarette.”
“Then what happened?”
“She never came back.”
“What do you mean, she never came back?”
“She left the hospital.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She didn’t even leave an address.”
I got that dizzy feeling—like I had too much oxygen and was going to collapse out of sheer disbelief. The unreality of it gave me artificial vertigo. Leaving to have a smoke break, not sticking around to hold her baby, not leaving a forwarding address… Were non-human aliens with no natural affections inhabiting the bodies of people and wandering the earth?
“What did she look like?” I asked, expecting a description of a shot-to-hell, crack mom, still wearing the clothes she was wearing a year ago and consuming a steady diet of garbage and cheap rotgut whiskey.
“She looked really normal.”
I was expecting an obvious monster and not getting one. Someone who can be so callous shouldn’t look normal, but that’s the reality of the situation. Villains do not always match up with their imaginary counterparts. Wicked stepmothers do not always turn into evil sea witches with tentacle, suction cup arms. It would make life a lot simpler if they did.
Mary took little Alice to a visit, not with the mother who had moved on to parts unknown, but with the county worker. The social worker stared at Mary in wide-eyed shock when she saw her for the first time. “Oh! I didn’t know you were white!” she
whispered glancing back and forth between Mary and the baby. “I don’t usually place black babies with white couples.”
To CPS’s credit, this was the only time our race ever mattered during our time as foster parents. We had heard about this particular social worker in Foster Adoptive Parent training. Race was not just a word but a sacred trust to her.
Things started happening quickly. The next day we got a call. Even though Alice’s mother had not yet relinquished the child it was suddenly discovered she needed to be in a fost-adopt home. Since mom had disappeared like Amelia Earhart I had to agree, but the timing was interesting.
The following day Mary took little Alice to the CPS office where a fost-adopt parent was waiting. She was a young woman who had tried to adopt before.
She took the baby and cradled her in her arms as she told Mary how her last attempt at adoption had failed. A relative had appeared at the last minute and took the baby. Mary wished her luck. Alice made me think of those trees I mentioned—the pines that hung out over the edge of a cliff, half the roots jutting out into the air. At the time I didn’t understand how they managed to stay upright, much less survive. Now, I think I get it.
Owner/Editor - Chris Chmielewski