Kate took a few steps toward me. 'Here he is,' she readily offered the baby.
I hesitated. I had to use my left hand, the more coordinated one, to power my wheelchair; I knew I wouldn't be able to cradle him with my right. I thought about my seatbelt, though I wasn't sure how comfortable it would be for a two-month-old infant. After a deep swallow, I made the suggestion. 'Let's give it a try with my seatbelt.'
Kate sat David in my lap and fastened the black strap, making sure the buckle didn't press into his chest. He sat in the curve of my body with amazing balance. I still used my right arm to brace him, just in case he flopped over when we rounded a comer or weaved in and out of pedestrians' paths on our way to baggage claim.
I drove slowly at first, quite aware of the precious cargo I held in my lap. My mind, however, raced. This kid is gorgeous! The pictures didn't even come close. How could anyone wanting a child give him up - CP or no CP? And what CP? So he's stiff, maybe it's spasticity, so he'll have little leg movement but good use of his arms and hands, like Valerie (a friend of mine) -we'll be a three-wheelchair family. Or he'll be like Susan (a colleague) and have minor paralysis of one side of his body-walk with a limp and play piano with one hand (the piano you're selling, anyway).
He sat so erect, even as we glided through the airport crowd. We jiggled a bit -my front wheel casters needed new bearings,-but David just gurgled at every little jerk and jolt. I was surprised by his solidness; I thought two-rnonth-old babies usually keeled over and had to be cradled. Yet his fuzzy reddish-blond head, resting on my chest, remained upright, and I savored his sweet, innocent scent as his head bobbed up and down under my chin.
At the same time I stopped, realizing I had no idea where I was going, I heard Kate and Colleen call from behind. I spun around. They were yards away. I waited while they jogged to catch up. 'This is the way to baggage claim,' Colleen panted as she pointed in the right direction.
Oh, I thought we were going to the departure gate,- I grinned. 'After all, I got what I came for. Now I can go home. Right?'
'No-no-no-no-no," Kate shook her head as Colleen squeaked a giggle. "Do you know how much explaining we would have to do to Rita Sue?' (Rita Sue James was the head of the Christian Family Community Adoption Agency.) "She'd have a fit if she knew we took him to the airport. That woman gets so flustered over everything.... Not that your idea doesn't appeal to me,' she added mischievously.
We collected my brown and tan suitcase and immediately pulled out the Polaroid camera - the camera Neil had bought on Saturday as a Valentine's Day gift for himself so I could take it on this trip. I hadn't been too thrilled when we purchased it, since all I got from him was an unwrapped stuffed Panda holding a heart. It had irked me even more when he pulled out his checkbook crammed with the loose pictures Colleen had sent us, leading the saleswoman to ask about 'that cute baby.' 'He's my son!' Neil beamed. To which I lowly grumbled, 'not yet." But now I was the one who beamed as Colleen snapped the first picture of me with my son, before we bundled up and headed for her van.
Colleen had an adapted van, equipped with a lift, like ours. Unlike ours, her van had a raised roof because Colleen's husband, Max, was quadriplegic from a motorcycle accident more than twenty years ago, and happened to be over six feet tall. A lift equipped van made this trip more inviting, for it meant that I could take my power (motorized) wheelchair-which doesn't fold to fit in a standard vehicle with me instead of my push (manual) chair. My power chair not only is more comfortable to sit in but, as its appellation implies, I feel and am much more autonomous and independent using it.
I waited for Colleen to creak open the van doors and lower the grumbling wheelchair lift. The February air was crisp and cold. Looking down I saw patches of snow on the concrete; even covered with at least day-old soot, the whiteness shone through. I had forgotten about city winters.
Kate went in through the passenger door and settled David in an infant carseat. She cleared some of the debris of empty soda cans and toys away from the lift entrance. Before my fingers numbed, I boarded the lift. After it was raised, I maneuvered in to the tight spot beside the infant seat. I locked my brakes, carefully crept my arm over to theseat next to me, and wedged my forefinger into David's little pink palm. His warm fingers curled around my cold skin.
Kate and Colleen chattered as we drove along the highway. With the motor roaring and the van rattling, it would be almost impossible for me to take part in the conversation. My sinuses were still stuffy from the plane ride, anyway. So I just sat, leaning to my left, watching as we rolled by the outskirts of the St. Louis countryside while keeping a newly acquired mother's eye on my son, who had fallen into a gentle sleep.
I had never been to St. Louis, yet as we drove from the airport to Kate's house, the stretches of scattered bare trees, the patches of snow on the slightly sloped roadside, and the view of a few single-family brick houses sitting along the highway reminded me of the outskirts of New York: the city where I grew up and the place I still think of as home, even though I'm happily settled in the Bay Area. My sense of familiarity grew stronger when we entered the residential part of the city, where buildings got taller and streets widened. I felt as if our destination was going to be the second floor of a five-story, brown brick walk-up (an apartment building with no elevator) in the three-bedroom apartment where I had lived with my mother and father, my sister, and periodically an uncle (my mother's youngest brother) for the first eighteen years of my life. It had seemed like an eternity ago when I hobbled around on crutches, certain that I'd be spending the rest of my life in that same apartment.
St. Louis triggered a sense of awareness that both haunted and seduced me. Much of the time over the next four days, I felt as if I were back in the world I grew up in, both good and bad.
Kate's home was large, warm, and comfortable. Although it was much bigger than the apartment I grew up in, the smell and feel of it was very much the same. No hardwood floors or trim, sleek furniture to create that modern, stark, yuppie, transient look. Instead, a woolly, well-walked-on olive green carpet stretched through the downstairs rooms and wended its way upstairs to the second and perhaps third stories. The rooms generated warmth and permanence, graced with antique knicknacks resting on matching pieces of mahogany furniturel--the kind that stood on intricately carved lion's paws and was crowned with regally crested swirls. So like my mother's furniture that had been passed down from her mother, but my sister and I had been too young to appreciate its somber dignity when my mother died; we had been only eighteen and fifteen years old, respectively, so we convinced our father to gold-leaf some of it and sell the rest.
I spent most of my four-day visit to St. Louis in Kate's den-a thick-curtained, cozy little room with a day crib, a card table stocked with all sorts of baby-powder-smelling paraphenaha, a remote-control TV, a loveseat, and an overstuffed sofa with pink flowered cushions that swallowed me up when I plopped down on it. As soon as I took my coat off and an unbundled David was propped up beside me, Colleen and Kate fired the same question. "What's his name?'
I hesitated. In the last two months, the baby had already been through two names-one by his birth mother and one by the other couple. I also had the feeling that if Colleen and Kate didn't like his new name, I'd have two disgruntled 'aunts' to contend with. Finally, I blurted out, after eying both of them carefully, 'David.'
-1 like it," Kate said. -It's good and solid."