The Kindest Lie(61)
Ruth pictured Ronald in fatigues leaning on a tank with desert dust swirling behind him. In high school, he had never been particularly patriotic, and she always assumed he’d get a job at the plant like Eli and Papa.
“I had no idea he was over there. I hope he makes it back home safely,” Ruth said absently.
A new sadness and regret swept over her. It hit her that Ronald could die fighting somebody else’s war and never even know he had a son. Not that she had much faith in him stepping up to do the right thing and being a father to their child. Ruth thought of her own father, which she rarely did—a nameless, faceless creation of her imagining, a man she’d been forced to build and design in her mind. Either her mother didn’t know who had impregnated her or she hadn’t bothered to inform him. There was a man out there with her DNA who didn’t know she existed. His absence had left a hole in her that could never be filled.
Natasha pulled her back to the present moment. “What’s your plan? I wonder if your kid is still here in Ganton. If he is, I probably know him. We’ll find him together. I got you, girl.”
A heaviness Ruth didn’t know she’d been carrying lifted with her friend’s offer to help. She didn’t have to do this alone. It also hit her that after all these years of holding on to her secret, she’d told three people about the baby in the past month. Xavier had been the hardest to tell, and her honesty might have doomed her marriage. They still hadn’t spoken since she’d left Chicago; it was the longest they’d ever gone without speaking. But Natasha had been supportive and nonjudgmental. If Ruth had confided in her a long time ago, things might have been so different.
Tess had been helpful, checking with one of her National Bar Association friends in Indianapolis who handled adoption cases. He told her that for every adoption decreed by an Indiana court, the State Department of Health needed to furnish a record of adoption for the child. This was added to the Indiana code in 1997, the same year Ruth gave birth.
“I don’t have much to go on.” Ruth sighed. “Maybe it was all off the books or maybe not. He could have been adopted, and if so, there has to be a record of it. I’m sure there are plenty of adopted kids in town. How do I find which one is mine?”
In dramatic fashion that reminded Ruth of the spontaneous Natasha she’d known growing up, her friend lifted her hands, streaked red and gold with hair dye. “You know what? I don’t really remember the details, but a few years after you left Ganton, there was this scandal in town. A lawyer got arrested for some shady shit. He did all sorts of illegal stuff, but I know there was some kind of adoption fraud. Now, I’m not saying it’s connected to your baby, but you never know.”
Ruth tried to hide her terror. It had never occurred to her that there had been anything nefarious about her son’s adoption. She’d heard stories about people selling babies on the black market, but that only happened in the movies and in news stories overseas. Not here in Ganton. And as churchgoing as Mama was, she’d never be involved in something like that.
Natasha opened the door of the supply closet. Her next client would arrive soon and she needed to restock her chair area. She had no idea she’d just turned Ruth’s world into a spinning top, leaving her to consider that her son might have inadvertently become a pawn in some crime.
Ruth followed her friend back out to the salon, where stylists and clients moved about, women getting their hair done before the upcoming Christmas holiday. Natasha called the entire room to attention and wrapped her arms around Ruth.
“Ladies, this is Ruth. My bestie from day one. She’s a doctor in Chicago, y’all.”
In a low hiss, Ruth corrected her. “Engineer. Not a doctor.”
Waving her off, Natasha said, “Same thing.”
To some people, it really was the same thing. Either you’d made something of yourself or you hadn’t, and that was all that mattered. Ruth was acutely aware of how different her life was now compared with those of everyone in the room. But even with a six-figure salary, she was still the same person. A twinge of panic still hit her when she would come home to a dark apartment after a thunderstorm before she remembered that she’d of course paid the electric bill that month.
To her surprise, people cheered as if starved for good news, drinking in a success story. When Natasha hugged her, Ruth smelled the citrus scent of her gum and she thought of how they were scolded by their teachers for gum-smacking.
Whispering in her ear, Natasha said, “We’re so proud of you. And I’m here for you, girl. Let me know if I can help, okay? You got this.”
Alone in her car, Ruth turned over in her mind what Natasha had said about a lawyer who was arrested for adoption scams a few years after Ruth gave birth. Pulling out her cell, Ruth ran a Google search and a series of results appeared. She slid her finger over the face of her phone, scanning headlines and the first few paragraphs of several news stories.
A South Bend family had sued an adoption agency for not disclosing the violent past of a child the couple adopted from India.
A think piece claimed the world orphan crisis was nothing but a myth. The neediest children were sick, disabled, or too old by the standards of Americans seeking the perfect baby. There just weren’t enough healthy, adoptable infants available in third-world countries for the Westerners clamoring for them.
Had her son gone to one of these hopeful or even desperate families? Or had he been an ornament, a decorative conversation piece for some ostentatious social climber? That possibility turned her stomach. She thought of the elegantly coiffed white women she’d seen strolling city streets with Chihuahuas and Yorkshire terriers peeping from their purses. They even adorned their dogs with sweaters and topknot ribbons like little girls. These had to be the same type of women who adopted Black babies from Africa and toted them around as accessories.