It’s supposed to be a secret that I’m adopted. Mama says I’m not supposed to tell anyone, and made me triple promise, swear, and cross my heart, that I wouldn’t tell. She believes in honesty, but also says that sometimes there are things that are more important than the full truth. When they told me, she said to claim that I didn’t know, she was my mother, and that I had privacy to be respected. I wasn’t quite sure what she meant for years. I found out I was adopted when I was just starting school, and a lot of my classmates were having siblings.
I likely asked something about where babies came from, and if I would have a little sibling. It was on the way home from school. Mama took a detour on her bicycle; it was while I still had to ride in the baby seat on top of the baskets for groceries. She told me I had to be quiet and patient while she talked, but apparently she knew people from a long time ago in a place that smelled a bit funny and had barking dogs somewhere out of sight. She did a lot of talking, and they did a lot of talking, and I got bored, but then someone came out with a cardboard box that was making noises, and it barely fit in the basket on Mama’s handlebars. Mama said it was a surprise for when we got home. We stopped at Skippy’s, the little grocery store, and Mama kept me on the bike when we went in. She wheeled the bike up to the counter, and whispered to Mr. Skippy, and he laughed and smiled and patted me on the head, but then he helped her put more stuff in the bicycle baskets under where I sat. It took Mama two trips to bring everything to the door, and then she still had to bring her bicycle in to the hall as well. Once we were inside, she put Tiber and ‘Phrates in her room, and set the box on the floor. She let me open it, and laughed when I found the grey cat inside.
“What’s her name?” I demanded, while she stared up at me.
“I don’t know yet. Do you want to name her?”
“Okay. What do I name her?”
“Well, can you think of any names?”
“Can I name her Kitty, like in Aunt Jan’s stories?”
“I think so. Now, you can pet her, but I don’t want you to pick her up. She’s fragile, she’s going to have kittens, like Sally’s Mama is going to have a baby.”
“The kittens are inside her? Then how do they eat?” I eagerly stretched my hand out towards Kitty. She sniffed at it, then butted my hand with her head. She was purring.
“Well, when Aunt Jan comes home, she can show your pictures of human babies before they are born, but you’ll have to imagine what kittens look like.”
“Are you or Aunt Jan going to have a baby?”
“No, Thessely, you’ll be our only child.”
“But some people have babies by accident.”
“Yes, some people have babies by accident.” Mama scooped Kitty out of her box and let her wander around the kitchen.
“So how do you know? Do babies just grow?”
“No. It takes a male and a female having sex to make a baby grow.”
“But then how did you have me? I don’t have a Papa like most everyone else, do I?”
“You do have a Papa, remember? He just isn’t here very often.”
“But you and Papa don’t act like most Mamas and Papas. Did you get divorced?”
“No, although that may have been appropriate. Your Papa is a good friend from when I was a little girl, but I don’t love him the way I love Jan. Come sit on the porch with me.” Mama poured each of us a glass of juice. She sat down in the porch swing, then lifted me up into her lap.
“So you’re telling me a story?”
“Yes, but it’s a true story. I want you to promise me you won’t tell anyone else, not until you’re all grown up, not until you’re older than Aunt Lynnie is now.”
“Okay. I promise, cross my heart, that I won’t tell anyone, not until I’m all grown up, not until I’m older than ten, and swear it so, on my honor.”
“That’s my good girl. Before I was quite a grown-up, and before I ever met Aunt Jan, I had an accident. I felt like a grown up, and your Papa and I were pretending to be grown ups, and were doing grown up work. We went to Canada to deliver something for a lot of money. Well, we delivered it, and were really happy that it had all gone right, and happy to be headed home early, so we were racing. I was riding Star. She was fast, she was supposed to be a racehorse, but she’d a bad knee and my Papa got her for free.. She was fast, and I loved riding. Star was really afraid of snakes though. We were winning, almost three blocks ahead of your Papa. I didn’t win against him very often. There was a fence in the way, that was okay, since Star jumped fences like that with me at home. We got closer, and she jumped, but when she landed there was something that scared her and she jumped right back up again, but that didn’t go so well. She fell, and I fell with her, but didn’t fall off fast enough, so she kind of fell on me, and she was okay, but I really wasn’t. She stayed right with me, even when Jesse got there, she kept right close to me. Jesse likely saved my life. He wrapped me up, and took Star and I to the closest town. Jesse took me to the first doctor he could find, and wouldn’t go away when the doctor told us he was on vacation. I don’t really remember much else, but the doctor did some sort of surgery on me to fix me. He was looking for someone to experiment on. He got the experiment right, but Jesse never told him our real names, so it wasn’t for years later until he found out. The surgery he did made it so I couldn’t ever have a baby though. I was really upset with your Papa for letting him do that, but then you were born, and it was okay.”
“But how was I born?”
“Well, you’re a miracle. Your Papa still felt bad about my accident, so when he heard you were going to come, he made sure you came to me. So you’ve been my daughter since the minute you were born.”
“Really?”
“Really in truly. You’ve been my daughter since you took your first breath. Can you remember not to tell?”
“Not even Aunt Jan?”
“Aunt Jan already knows, but I don’t want you to talk about it if anyone other than Aunt Jan or I is around.”
“Okay. I promise.”
“Good. Now let’s go see about making some dinner, maybe some cookies too, and see about getting Kitty settled in.”
If I remember correctly, Mama getting a breeding cat to explain reproduction only vaguely disturbed Aunt Jan. She did, however, make sure that I understood the basic biology of reproduction, and that most women did not spawn six kittens. In all fairness, Aunt Jan is just as much my mother as Mama, but Mama was the one hauling me around to nursery school, preschool, and primary school, and she did try to keep things simple. Mama didn’t go back to work truly full time until I was close to five, and then she saw that I had a rotation of three babysitters, depending on the circumstances, with a few more making random appearances.