I looked at the photo. At the young girl smiling with her tired, red eyes. At the baby in her arms. At the little square window behind them, with the pink cherry blossoms.
My grandmother’s window. My grandfather’s tree. My father, three hours old.
And the woman who gave birth to him.
“Around seven in the morning,” Grandma said, “the agency woman woke up. She came in to take the baby. And Ruth wouldn’t let go.”
“She screamed,” Grandma said. “Ruth screamed so loud the whole floor heard it. She held on to that baby and screamed that she wouldn’t give him to a stranger. She wouldn’t let him go to someone she’d never met, in some faraway place she’d never know. She said she’d rather die.”
Grandma’s voice was shaking now.
“They called her father. Harold Calloway came in his three-piece suit with his lawyer. He stood at the foot of her bed and told her she was being hysterical. He told her the papers were already signed. He told her the family was already waiting.”
