do I have a daddy?

My daughter and I spent Christmas 1998 in Gallup, New Mexico. My sister and niece were living there.  My sister had just moved there, working as a school teacher, not really earning enough to live on. She survived cause our mom paid for her childcare.  This meant, among other things, that not only did she not have guest beds, she didn't have enough blankets for all of us.  I picked up a twin air mattress at Target in Albuqueque after we got our rental car at the airport. I slept on the air mattress. My daughter slept on something else, but I forget what. Katie slept on something on the floor next to my niece's bed. I slept in the living room.  My sister, renting one of the cheapest apartments in Gallup, which is a poor town so dumps are really dumpy, did not control the heat. And her landlord basically cut off the heat at night.

The first night in that place, I think I was the coldest I had ever been. The coldest for many hours. Up until then, if I had ever gotten that cold, I did something about it but there was nothing to do. I cried out about freezing, half asleep but half fantasizing that my sister would invite me to get into her queen size bed with her just to get under the blankets. But she didn't.

In the morning, she voiced empathy for me being cold, apologized and pretended it had not occurred to her to invite me to get warm. She just said 'there was nothing I could do for you so I ignored your cries about being cold'.  I didn't want to buy blankets. I had already bought the air mattress, which was, admittedly pretty cheap. I had brought my own air pump from home.  I guess we could have gone to Walmart to buy blankets -- my daughter had also shivered through the night. Since we were going to be there a week, we had to do something.

I suggested my sister ask some teacher friends to lend her blankets. And that's what we did.

Get this.  My sister chose the best borrowed blanket for herself. Her friend had given us two wool blankets. One was soft, pliant. The other wool was like a horse blanket, stiff, scratchy, not really a sleeping blanket. The stiff wool blanket was more like something you might have used in an ancient sleighride or maybe had literally been a horse blanket. Sis chose the soft one -- she already had blankets! and gave me the stiff one. You can't really curl up warmly in a stiff, unyielding horse blanket. It was an improvement. I made a kind of stiff tent of warm air for myself on my air mattress. But I still shiver as I recall that my sister took the best borrowed blanket. I actually said something to her about my surprise and she said "Well, she's my friend", referring to the teacher who had lent us the binkies. And I was her cold sister.

My sister did not have enough cooking utensils to really cook. So the day after Xmas, I went to Walmart, determined to buy her a few basics. The Walmart in Gallup was, pretty much, the only place in Gallup to buy anything. No Williams Sonomas.  No Target. No mid-market department stores. Just Walmart. And the kitchen department of that Walmart was sold out. First, that Walmart only carried crappy kitchen stuff. Well, maybe it had some higher quality items before Xmas but after Xmas, the picked over selection -- and the product signs for the sold-out kitchen merchandise -- indicated only the cheapest stuff, like very lightweight 'frying pans' covered with the cheap teflon that flakes off immediately.  I wanted to buy sis one real frying pan, at least one with a copper core on the bottom but there were none.

I bought her a bunch of stuff the spatulas, cheap pots to boil pasta. I didn't spend much cause there wasn't much to buy and what was there was crap.

Gallup, of course, is in the middle of Navajo country. Navajos are mostly poor.

In 1998, there were rich white folks, like doctors, lawyers, shopkeepers. It was widely reported that the richest families were the white ones that sold tourist crap. The tourist crap also included authentic Navajo rugs, kachinas, belts, wall hangings. Some of those Navajo rugs were priced at sixty thousand, seventy thousand and more. We toured those stores, to see the Navajo culture. We  wondered how much the 'real' Navajos that sold their real stuff to the stores got paid. We wondered why Navajos didn't just set up their own shop.

And, sure enough, there was a shop run cooperatively by a tribe. I bought a Corn Maiden at that shop. But that Navajo co-op did not have any of those sixty thousand dollar rugs.

Apartheid exists everywhere. We think it's gone. Somehow we have a collective spin of how life works in this country that often erases the day-to-day reality in human lives.

An old white-haired, rich white lady waited on us at the fanciest store selling authentic Navajo arts and crafts. Her granddaughter had a class with my sister. The grandmother talked to my sister about her granddaughter.  I guess the granddaughter was a problem kid.

For some reason, I hated that old lady.  She had referred to the country club a couple times in her exchange with my sister. It seemed to me that she was reminding my sister of my sister's low status compared to her, reminding my sister that the pain-in-the-ass teenage slut granddaughter doing drugs at school was a class or two above my sister who got a Masters from Stanford on a full fellowship.

I had a strong urge, that, thankfully, I suppressed, to ask that old lady to invite my sister to socialize with her. The only people my sister got to know while she lived in Gallup were other teachers. The white middle class in Gallup did not seem to see public school teachers as part of the white middle class.

We drove around Gallup a lot during our visit. At the time, my niece only napped on snooze cruises. She was always like that. When we had all lived in Minneapolis, my sister and I, with our napping baby in the back seat, drove up and down the boulevard lining the Mississippi River on both sides, driving up and down for miles, while the baby napped. This is an old trick. I used it with my kid when she had ear infections. Sleeping upright was easier on the ear pain, it seemed. Somehow, my niece got hooked on napping in a moving car. Maybe it's analogous to becoming dependent on sleep medication.

So we snooze cruised around Gallup. But also, I was evaluating a move there. Could I dare to set up shop as a lawyer? Clearly I could not earn a living in Gallup as an OD consultant, which I was getting a degree in at the time. But I could have motioned into a lawyer license in NM. Would anyone hire me?  I didn't want to end up starving doing heartbreaking work for impoverished Navajos. Not that I don't have empathy for impoverished Navajos. I needed to earn a living. And something told me that the people with middle class incomes in that town -- very few Navajos fit this category -- already had white lawyers.

I guess all towns are the same.  It's who you know.

I have veered far off course.

On Christmas Eve, the four of us, me, my daughter, my sister and my niece, went out to the only Chinese restaurant in town. There aren't many restaurants in Gallup. The main one is Earl's, which is an ordinary roadside diner, with booths, burgers, fries, fried chicken. In Navajo country, of course, you could get fry bread most places. Earl's is 'famous' because while you eat, Indians walk through selling Navajo crafts. Mostly cheap crap. Jewelry. Lots of turqoise. Beaded things, but little things, not elaborate expensive beaded pieces which passing travelers were unlikely to buy.

We found that if we bought something, that meant more traders would come to our table.  You start to feel like you have to buy something to pay for the show. These traders were mostly females, dressed in native outfits, performing for the mostly white tourists.  I doubt if many local folks bought very often. But if a traveler was barreling through western New Mexico on Route 66 -- and who has not dreamt of barreling along Route 66 -- Earl's was where most of them stopped. And Earl's had decent food so we ate there a few times during the week. We did not do much cooking, except for Xmas. I was on a trip and my sister had no cooking utensils. And we were all on vacation. My sister, after all, was on vacation from her very grim job teaching in that school.

My sister visited the mother of one of her students at the mother's job at Dunkin Donuts.  She thought the girl had some potential but was making no effort whatsoever. She thought that if the family just gave the girl a little bit of support, the kid would graduate high school and could think of college as a realistic choice. It is hard to visit families who live on the res, which spans hundreds of miles, so she visited parents at their jobs in town if she could.

The mother who worked at Dunkin Donuts told my sister she was the first teacher that had ever talked to her about her daughter. The daughter was in high school. The white teachers were not necessarily blatantly racist but they all bought into the culture at the school which was that the Navajo were lazy, did not care about education, would likely never graduate, the parents didn't care. The school did absolutely nothing when a kid stopped coming to school, even the underage ones. The administration said it was impossible to find people on 'the res'.

Anyway. That Dunkin Donuts mother cried when my sister told her that she thought the daughter, with a little faith from her family, could graduate high school, even go to college.  I don't think the mother believed her kid would graduate high school. She was crying because my sister's gesture touched her.

I don't think my sister pointed out to that Navajo mom, working one of the few 'good' jobs in Gallup for Indians (good in the sense that it was a job), that the mother could have gone to parent-teacher conferences.

Back to the Chinese restaurant on Xmas Eve. When we left Gallup, we spent a few days, all four of us, in Santa Fe, then I flew back to Massachusetts and my daughter flew to Omaha to spend a week with her father. We talked about Katie's  upcoming New Year's visit to her father during our Chinese Christmas Eve dinner.

My niece, age 3, said "Mommy, do I have a daddy?"

My sister, my daughter and I probably all blanched inwardly but we all maintained the same composure on the outside. I knew that was a question my sister had to handled.

"No," my sister said firmly.

There was an awkward pause. Should we go on talking about Katie's visit to Omaha? Change the subject?  No one wanted to verbalize any cues.

"Bobby at my school says everyone has a daddy, that's how I was born. Who was your boyfriend when I was born, Mom" Isabelle persisted.  "Your boyfriend was my daddy, that's what Bobby says."

"I didn't have a boyfriend when you were born and you don't have a daddy."

Then I offered, "I was married to Katie's daddy when she was born." hoping to reinforce my sister without actually telling Isabelle anything related to what Isabelle really wanted to know.

In 2006, when my niece was 10, I spent a week with her, my sister, my sister's new husband (and Isabelle's adoptive father) and my sister's infant son.  My sister was living in Kuwait and had come  to the states for a job fair.  My job was to be child care during the three or four day teacher job fair.  It was frigid, bleak midwinter in Northern Iowa. For some reason, the University of Northern Iowa is where the main teacher fair for jobs in foreign English language schools is held.

Sis and her family flew into O'Hare, we rented a monster SUV, that was actually called 'The Armada'. It was designed, we concluded, to appeal to the market that bought Hummers. Sis had requested a minivan but when we got there, we were given the Armada at the minivan price. This was not such a great deal cause it sucked up way more gas, making it much more expensive. It was like driving a tank.

We stayed in a place with a beautiful indoor pool and hottub. The kids and I spent lots of time  in the pool and hottub. There is not much to do in bleak midwinter northern Iowa in February. We did a Target run, looking for a new sippee cup for the baby. My sister showed me the specific feature she liked in her sippee cups. Some sippee cups, she pointed out, had a feature that prevented spills if the baby dropped the cup.  I am smart. I got the instructions. That Target did not stock the no-spills-guaranteed sippee cups so I bought one that spilled. Later, she yelled at me for the mistake, doubting my story that I had carefully checked.

Anyway. Finally I am getting to my point. In 2006, I had not seen my niece since 2000, when she had moved to Korea with my sister. After two years in Korea, they had moved to Egypt for two years, then on to Kuwait. My niece is a brainiac, like all my clan.

"My mom has told me all about my dad, now, Aunt Therese," she calmly, too casually announced as we bubbled in the hot tub. "So you can tell me everything you know about him.  I want to know everything I can about my father."

One trait about my niece that she shares with me is she seems to remember far more detail than most people do. Like me, she is a writer. I think part of what makes writers write is the way writers notice and remember detail that many either don't notice or forget.  During our week in that hotel pool in Northern Iowa, my niece had reminded me of a time she and I went swimming at my sister's then-first-husband's horse farm in New Jersey. Peter, the first husband to my sister, was quite wealthy. His family owned a bunch of apartment high rises on Central Park. Yes, on Central Park. Plus he and his mom owned a twelve-stall horse farm where they raised sheep.

In August 1999, my sister had moved from Gallup and spent the summer in NYC. I was babysitting my niece while her mom and Peter had gone to Ireland for ten days. We spent most of the time in NYC. It was an adventure to go to the horse farm and, since it was hot and August, we got into the pool.

Isabelle wore some kind of floating device.  I have been an avid swimmer my whole life. I had my own daughter in a swimming pool when she was three months old. My daughter was jumping off the diving board when she was a year old. I wanted to encourage Isabelle to lose her fear of being in the water. So I kept a little distance  between us.When she voiced some anxiety, I verbally coaxed her how to move in the water if she wanted to be able to grab the side. I was never so far from her that she was in any danger. No way I would have let her drown, right?

In that Iowa hotel pool, I employed the same technique with Arthur, hoping to foster his comfort in the pool. And Isabelle recounted in detail how I had almost let her drown at the farm in New Jersey when she was three or four.  I explained to her, in Iowa in 2006, how I had not been far from her, that I was watching her like a hawk but pretending not to. I wanted her, I explained in 2006, to realize she could take care of herself in the water. I was trying to get her to feel her own power, to instill confidence.

"Really?!" she exclaimed in Iowa in 2006, "I thought you were not taking care of me. I was scared. I told my mom all about it."

In that pool in Iowa in 2006, I pointed out to her that her brother was about three feet away from me, that it would take me an instant or two to get to him if he seemed to be in the least bit of trouble. One slightly wrong movement by Arthur and I would be there to 'save' him.  I told her that no way would I have ever failed to save her in 1999.

My niece thought she was being very subtle when she tried to coax me into telling her everything I knew about her biological father. I knew that if she remembered the precise details of the one time in 1999, when she was four, of going swimming with me on that farm in New Jersey, that if she knew any real details about her bio dad, she would have asked me very different questions. She was pumping me. She was trying to trick me into telling her about her biological father.

My sister and I had had many private moments on that Iowa trip. The subject of what had she told Ruby about her father had come up because the question of Ruby's father is a big deal. I won't write what I know about Ruby's bio dad on this blog just in case my niece reads my blog, which I doubt she does.  I don't use my last name on it these days. She might have found my blog when I used to have my name on it. My last name is the same as hers and my first name, my legal one, is about as unusual as Ruby's first name.

The story of her bio dad is not my story to tell.

When she tried to coyly, cleverly, lure me into telling her everything I knew about her biological father, I answered her with a true statement.  "I never met your father, Isabelle.  I don't know anything about him.  I know what he did for a living when your mom met him but if, as you say, your mom has told you everything, you know what he did for a living. And that's about all I know. I don't even know his name."

I wonder if my niece knows more now. She's fifteen now. In a school for brainiacs. Sharp as anyone ever gets.

The whole truth is that I really don't know the story of my niece's biological father or my sister's relationship with the guy. My sister has told me, convincingly, versions of the story that are significantly different than stories I have heard from my brother Dave or our mother, both of whom actually met the bio dad.  One thing I keep learning, but this lesson always seems brand new, is that there is no one right version of anything. One of the many shared illusions humans share is that we have lots of shared meaning. But we don't.

If I point to the sky and see a clear, perfect blue sky, how do I know the next person sees the same blue I see?  I don't.

What a mystery to carry through childhood, to have no idea who one's father is. And to have the added burden of realizing there were secrets being kept. I guess all kid given up for adoption go through some struggle like this but adopted kids at least know they were given up.  My niece does not know, or didn't, the last time she and I broached this subject in 2006, know even that. For all she knows, her bio dad does not know she exists. And lots of kids grow up with their bio dads unaware the dads sired kids.

There is no one right way for anything. No single interpretation of anything.

I have always thought that once Isabelle became an adult, if she were to ask me again to tell her everything I know about her biological father, I would tell her the various versions of what I have been told. I would be constructing a story.

In my first semester in college, I took a course called Introduction to History. Instead of being about a particular time in history, the course inquired into how humans write history. We looked at a couple events in history, and discussed the various documentary traces that a historian might use to write a history. I was a freshman in college in 1971. We were still in the Viet Nam War. I remember watching the fall of Saigon in the student union, where the only televisions on campus could be found. I think frat houses had TV's And I think nowadays, lots of college students have TV's in their dorm. When I was in college, no one had TV's. We spent our evenings studying. Seriously. I went to a serious college.  And my kid did not ask for a TV when she went to college in 1998.

The student union was packed. It was dreamlike, watching hordes of frightened Vietnamese people being stuffed onto planes, lots of helicopter noise that gave the scene a scary soundtrack. The helicopters, though, were most likely news helicopters, capturing the scene.  I didn't know any Vietnamese people but I remember urgently, fervently wanting everyone that wanted to get out to get out. I remember feeling fear. Why did so many want to escape? Was it just a chance to go to America? Or were they afraid of what would happen when the Americans left?

Anyway. In my Introduction to History class, which was taught by a brand new PhD from the U. of Chicago, a guy who felt like he had stepped down pretty low to take the gig -- he smugly, elitely told us that it was a good job for most professors but he expected to only be at our school a short while before he scored a prestigious university.  He shocked me by giving me an 'A'.  I still remember the gist of what I wrote on my final.  He had asked a general question that gave students a chance to recite the various kinds of sources available to historians to construct a history. So I mentioned official records, personal diaries, personal correspondents written by people during the period of history the scholar is studying, blah blah blah. But then I wrote that the most important choice that a historian made was her own perspective. I wrote that the historian's perspective shaped all her choices. I wrote that a rigorous historian tried to be as conscious as possible of her own bias, and to acknowledge, in whatever she wrote to inform her readers or students of a history of a certain time, that everything she wrote was shaped by her lens.  I wrote that stuff down cause he had said it in class. And as he said it, I could tell he was really into it. I wrote that stuff in my final cause I was doing the kitchen sink approach. I didn't think I had done a very good job discussing the various kinds of documentation or evidence or artefacts available as tools to the historian so I tossed in the grand theory to cover my ass.

Turned out my instinct was right:  he actually stopped me on campus as we passed one another the next semester and told me he had given me an 'A' because I was the only student in the class who had understood his whole point which had been that line about how the historian's perspective shaped every choice in any history she presented. He even said the rest of my final had not been very good, not well written or well organized but he gave me the 'A' cause I had understood him.

I had accurately read the guy and flattered him.  My perspective, that the guy was a smug elitist with an inflated sense of his own genius, shaped my final essay.