Can I be frank with you? I want to be perfectly honest. I’m not sure how to begin to tell the story, but I’ll just begin and here it is.

Do you know what he said to me; what my high school counselor said to me when I went in to talk about my life, my future after graduation? It was our senior year, and we were all being called in. Not even looking at me, but shuffling papers around his desk, he said that it didn’t matter because I would be pregnant before graduation anyway. That’s what he said. Just like that. What is he, like some prognosticator, like some fortune teller, like some shell casting vodou man, like some tea leaf reader?

Was it written on my face? Does he read it in my young body? Was it my short skirt? My pointed-toed shoes? The way I walked? The way I talked? Something particularly nasty about me?

But hey! Maybe he saw something, in spite of the fact that I loved learning, or was he a fucking jackass? Literature, writing, calligraphy, painting; I excelled at many things. I loved music and played in the band and orchestra, but my future was already determined according to my high school counselor. I was just going to get pregnant, so “get out and don’t waste any more of my time”. Anyway, that’s what I heard him say. Get out and don’t waste any more of my time. So I got out. No college applications, no discussion of financial aid, no what do you want to become, do… nothing. Nothing. Thank you, man. Thank you, a hell of a lot.

So, I made him a prophet. Maybe he later patted himself on the back that he had me pegged. But I showed him. I finished school and I could have gone to college; I could have done a lot of things. He doesn’t know… this is what he doesn’t know.

Aunt Wilma said. “You tell her or I will”, as she met me at the front door one day after school. Mom was in her bedroom. Aunt Wilma was important.

“Are all girls who get pregnant out of wedlock bad?” “YES!”, Mom said. She’s sorry now. She did the best that she could. She wants me to forgive her. I do. What I didn’t know then was that she had gotten pregnant while in or shortly after nurse’s training and given the baby, her baby, up for adoption.

Why couldn’t she have been more empathetic? Why couldn’t she admit that she could relate to me? Take me in her arms and cry with me. Why would she wait for another decade to tell me her story? I know why really I do. She was ashamed. Always, we are ashamed. We are shamed by language. Bastard. Illegitimate child. Unwed mother. What were the fathers called?

Instead, I was left alone with my heart, my heartbreak, my fear, my dilemma. I wasn’t ashamed. But Mom was ashamed to let anyone know. I was hidden away from the family, from the neighbors, the school, the church. Dad was silent but I know that I had disappointed him. That was papable. Mom knew how to deal with the dilemma.

I’d love to know what to say…

Johannah? I named her Johannah. I left her when she was only 3 days old. Put her into the arms of strangers. Don’t cry. Have never cried. I don’t feel anything. In the White Shield Home for Unwed Mothers. Alone. Bursting waters. Dead from the waist down. Shaved, slit open.

Tiny feet just like Jack’s, his fingers too. Fuck him. No! don’t fuck him. Why should I hate him? He’s only a boy like I’m only a girl. And I am not too young to know that love is not enough to make a family. We could make a baby but I had no way of knowing how to make a family.

What was my mother thinking to put me away like this? Hide me. Give away my baby. Old enough to get pregnant but not old enough to take care of the tiny baby, take care of the tiny baby.

Kristi has hers. She started at 15. Steve has his. He started at 17. I don’t have mine. Should I die for this? Suffer for this? Be punished? Shamed? It was out of my hands but I understood that this was right. Better for the baby. Better for me and Jack.

Apple Jacks in the morning. Girls masturbating in the night. Sobs coming from the cots in the overcrowded dormitory. There were too many girls. Cots were lined up one next to the other. Sobbing. We were crowded, pregnant and each with a sad story.

Visitors. I had only Mom; she came on Saturday and bought me a banana popsicle. It was never enough. I wanted, I thought I needed, tuna fish. She couldn’t come in because of so many secrets and the shame. She was forbidden. We ate in the car.

Salvation Army officers with stern faces. Classes about what? I don’t remember. I think I quit thinking then. While I waited, nothing. Just empty days and empty nights.

I borrowed dresses and waited for Jack to come. He never called but when I called him, if he answered, he made promises at my pleading. Me, I was waiting all day.

My house, my world was across the river. I could see my neighborhood from the windows. I was put on hold. They tried to shame me by the words that they spoke: repeating the words, illegitimate, unwed. Like that. But it didn’t work.

Does my body echo my pain today? I know that parents do damage unknowingly. Mom and Dad tried but what about me? What kind of damage have I done? How did that tiny baby feel? She knew only my heartbeat, my smell, the sound of my voice. She didn’t know I was only 17. Then she was in the arms of strangers. New smells, new heartbeats, new voices. Did she miss me? Did she yearn for me? For how long did she cry for me?

I didn’t know where she was. I didn’t even know if she was dead or alive. A prostitute or a doctor, or if she was loved and had siblings. Was she addicted to drugs or have children of her own. There was no way of knowing. I signed a paper saying that I would never look for her. My files would be sealed. She came from me, but I gave up all rights and blocked all roads that would lead me to her or her to me. I was told only that she was going to a family who raised horses and had a son but could have no more children. That was good enough, I thought. But that was a lie. A big, fat lie, even.

I left the home without her and went on with my life. I worked, married Jack, had two more children, went to school, divorced after 27 years, traveled, had other relationships. But what was Johannah doing?

Oregon’s 1957 statute sealed the birth certificates of adoptees though it violated the State’s Bill of Rights. These were and are stored at the State Department of Vital Records. This act reflected the social mores of the time, the social stigma of the shameful act of giving birth to an illegitimate child. This act would keep the secret whether the mother wanted it or not. A separate birth certificate would be created with the new name, new mother’s name, and new address and the original birth certificate hidden from the eyes of the adoptee.

In 1984 Oregon created the State Adoption Registry. But I didn’t know that. Initiative 46. So, as soon as I could, I updated my files at the Boys and Girls Aid Society, so if she wanted to find me, she could.

Throughout the years, some people in the family and some friends wanted me to look for her. More shame. More shame. What have you done? they said. I didn’t know if I should look for her. What if her parents hadn’t told her she was adopted. What if, what if, what if… Other women shared that the same thing had happened to them. The same shame, the same sadness, the same wondering. I did tell Hannah and Jesse, my other children, her brother, and sister when they were 11 and 9 years old, that maybe there might be someone looking for us and I told them the story. Hannah was mad, “If you can give one baby away, maybe you can give another baby away too,” she said adamantly as she stomped out the door. I don’t blame her. I understand that for her it was not at all understandable. Here stood her loving mommy, telling her that she had given away a baby to someone else and she didn’t even know where she was.

Many years passed. Fifty to be exact when I received a message on FaceBook. I’m helping my wife look for her birth mother. We think you might be her, it read. My heart skipped a beat. Maybe more than a single beat. I could barely breathe. I called Jack and said I had received this message but I thought it might be a scam. Jack had always been in favor of looking for our long ago baby. “Answer”, was his simple response. So I did. My baby would be fifty years old now. The response came back, and her name was Johannah. There was no doubt, our child had found us.

No, I had no trepidation. I had no fear. I had no reservations. I wanted to know her. I wanted to see her. We emailed each other and we both had so many questions. She had been looking for me for a long time but she found Jack first through Ancestry.com. Then Facebook confirmed that I was her mother, attached to Jack, though we had been long divorced, and Hannah and Jesse were there too. She was anxious and ready to know us. She wasn’t about to wait. Within two weeks, she was on the doorstep with her wife, Raquel.

Our family is complete now. I only regret that Mom and Dad and my sister Kristi will never know her.

Though I am sorry for any pain I caused my beautiful Tracy by handing her over to strangers. I could not have known the love and joy that she would bring to this family that missed her forever. Thank you, Tracy and Kelly, for not giving up.