Picture Us In The Light(91)
There were forty-seven families from the accounting statements. And that was all there was—just names and routing numbers. They were common names, mostly, the kind of names where googling didn’t narrow anything down but did the opposite: suddenly the world exploded with Susan Cerras, Helen Starks. They remember the names still.
For seven years they searched. They posted her picture in private adoption forums; they worked their way through phone books; they scoured blogs and public Flickr albums and newspaper articles. When they could afford it, they took trips to try to find the families they’d tracked down, each time staked out somewhere watching for their daughter, only to find an adopted Chinese son, or a girl the wrong age. It took seven years to find the Ballards, another two years to save the money to go see them. I was six years old.
That was the trip from Texas, then: to go to her. They’d flown to California and gotten a car and made their way to the Ballards’ house and watched from the street, waiting to catch a glimpse of my sister. They were parked there on the side of the street when two girls came out of the Ballards’ house, and their hearts nearly stopped. They were convinced it was her, the eleven-year-old, the older of the two: their daughter. After all these years.
They thought that if they talked to the Ballards, the Ballards would understand, and would relinquish the child. They would find a way to come up with the money the Ballards had paid for her, if that was the case. They would do whatever it took.
The girls disappeared back inside. My parents knocked on the door. They clutched each other’s hands while they waited. My mom was tapping her feet up and down, picturing what it would feel like to finally hold her baby in her arms, trying to practice holding her face steady so she wouldn’t burst into tears at the sight of her daughter. Would she recognize her parents right away? Would they recognize her?
The woman who answered the door was small and blond, well-dressed and perfectly made up.
“Hi there,” she said, giving them a practiced smile. “What can I do for you?”
My parents introduced themselves. My mom’s voice was shaking in anticipation. The woman’s eyes went wide, and she stepped back. “Clay!” she yelled. “Clay!”
While Sheila Ballard was standing there, frozen in place, my parents stumbling over themselves to explain the situation, there were soft footsteps in the entryway and someone came up behind her. And there she was.
My mom gasped. My dad’s eyes filled with tears. They both started toward her, crossing the threshold into the house, but then before they could touch her Sheila Ballard yanked the girl back. “Clay!” she screamed. “Joy, come here!”
This time he showed up, his footsteps quick and heavy. “Who is it?” They were all talking over each other, my parents trying to get close to Joy, and finally my mom grabbed for her, and wrapped her arms around her. Her daughter; the first time in ten years she’d held her. Joy yelped in fear and reached for Sheila Ballard, crying “Mom, Mom,” and my own mom’s heart shriveled into something hard and small and parched. She clung tighter, desperate.
Clay Ballard lunged for my mom. My dad crouched and rammed his elbow into Clay Ballard’s solar plexus as hard as he could, and Ballard doubled over in pain, struggling for breath. Then he went around behind the half wall and came back holding a gun and a camera.
“Let go,” he yelled. “Sheila, call the cops. Let go of my daughter this instant.” He took a picture of my parents—my dad lunged at him, knocked the camera away, but he raised the gun higher. “Let go or I’ll shoot you.”
Joy was crying, and when my mom let go, uncertain, Sheila Ballard swept Joy into her arms. She held her fiercely. Joy melted into her, and my parents felt that rift in every one of their cells.
I was the reason they left. If Joy had been their only child, they would’ve stayed there; they would’ve fought to the death. But without talking, they each thought about me back home, playing obliviously with Ethan Parker-McEvoy, and so they stepped backward, and they let themselves be chased out with the gun, let themselves feel cold and afraid and panicked. Clay Ballard slammed the door behind them. They could still hear Joy crying inside.
On the porch, on top of a bin of well-loved toys, was a small stuffed bear. My dad picked it up. He felt numb and hollow, ice coating him from inside. He thought he might be sick.
On the way home, on the plane, my mom said, “I won’t lose another child.”
My parents understood they weren’t the kind of people who would win this case in court—what did American courts know of leaving a child behind to work at a better life, of children traded on the black market? The Ballards were white and rich and well spoken and well connected; they’d given their daughter American clothing, an American bedroom, an American name. They had, in the eyes of the United States, legally adopted her and made her their own. No laws had been broken in the US, except by my parents, who’d broken into a house and attempted to kidnap a child who wasn’t legally theirs and who’d assaulted that child’s parents. It would be very easy for them to be deported. If the woman from the adoption agency had reported them in China, surely they’d eventually be caught there too.
And that was no life for their second child. They would lose me to the foster care system if they were both incarcerated; I’d grow up shipped off from house to house, in and out of group homes, maybe, unloved and unwanted; they might never get me back. Maybe they’d never be permitted inside the US again, and then they’d lose me altogether.