Butchers Hill

As usual, Kitty understood what Tess meant, even if Tess wasn't quite sure. 'More like three or four, maybe five. But it's always been that way, Tesser. Rich Baltimore, poor Baltimore. Black and white Baltimore. Old Baltimore, those folks who can trace their blue blood all the way back to the Ark and the Dove, and immigrant Baltimore.'

'I just never thought I'd feel like I was in a foreign land less than a mile from my own apartment. I was scared today, Kitty. Scared of an old man who wanted to do nothing more than give me a soda. Scared to stand in front of a vacant house on Chester Street and talk to some stoned kid inside. The city's dying. It's not going to exist a hundred years from now.'

'You're too young to be so disillusioned, Tess. Once you start to think like that, there's no turning back. Remember, in last year's nests, there are no birds this year.'

'Say what?'

'You still haven't finished Don Quixote, have you?'

Reminded of her literary bete noire, Tess scrubbed harder at the floor, although she had soaked up most of the water spilled there. 'I finished the first part. It took Cervantes another decade to write the second, so I thought I might take a ten-year break before I read it.'

'It's the second part that really matters, more than all that tilting at windmills stuff in the first.' Kitty unlocked the store's double doors, where some of the Sunday regulars were already lined up, cups of coffee in hand. These were her devoted customers, the ones who waited until noon each Sunday to buy the out-of-town papers here and then settle into her faded armchairs to read them. Few of them managed to leave without picking up a new book that Kitty had pressed into their hands. Kitty Monaghan, queen of the hand-sale.

'You know, I'm wrong,' she said suddenly, straightening a pile of Anne Tyler paperbacks on permanent display by the cash register. It was Kitty's quixotic quest to lure the reclusive local writer to a signing at the store. It hadn't happened yet, but Kitty's hopes never flagged.

'You were wrong about something? Alert the media, I don't recall ever hearing that particular statement come out of your mouth before.'

Kitty ignored the dig. 'It's not illusions you lack, Tess. It's a Sancho. With Whitney in Tokyo and Crow in Texas, you need a sidekick. There is no Don Quixote without Sancho Panza, you know.'

'Whitney will be back. As for Crow-I never think about him.'

'Liar.'

'Probably. At any rate, Esskay is all the Sancho I need.'

The dog looked up at the sound of her name, jowls dripping, chest heaving, tongue lolling from her mouth in an antic grin. One ear stood straight up at attention, while the other flopped forward at half-mast.

'She'll do,' Kitty said. 'Until the real thing comes along.'

Chapter 12

'I think coffee is getting better,' Tess said, sipping a cup as she and Jackie waited for the Adoption Rights meeting to get under way. 'When the prices were raised-when people became accustomed to paying two, three dollars, expectations went up, too. Now places that used to serve that overscorched, underbrewed crap have to offer something decent. Even places like this, where it's free.'

Jackie said nothing, just wrapped her arms tighter around her middle and shoved her long legs backward beneath her plastic chair.

'Then again, there's this whole instant coffee mystery,' Tess kept prattling, hoping it might calm Jackie down. 'I read in the paper that the vast majority of people who drink instant are senior citizens. When asked why they drink instant, they said it takes too long to brew a fresh pot. Takes too long! Like, they have something better to do than wait the ten minutes it takes to make real coffee.'

Jackie bent forward at the waist. She now looked like someone with severe abdominal cramps. Tess was beginning to think Jackie wanted her here in case she lost her nerve and bolted from the room. Then again, the Columbia Interfaith Center made her stomach ache, too. The ecumenical, all-religions-welcome-here place of worship was part of the original Columbia vision and the building still had a touchy-feely vibe.

'They're not going to make us form a circle and hold hands, are they?' Tess asked Jackie. 'And sing those Jesus songs that sound like bad folk music?'

'Don't be silly, we're just meeting in the community room here, we're not going to a service.' Jackie's tone was snappish and impatient, but Tess was happy just to get a response.

Still, Jackie continued trying to fold herself like an origami swan, as if she might be able to disappear if she made herself small as possible. But Jackie couldn't help being noticed. There was the fact of her clothes, casual for her, just navy slacks and a matching sweater, but nicer than anyone else's here. There was the fact of her beauty. There was the fact that she appeared to be practicing yoga.

And there was the fact she was black, the only nonwhite person in the room.

A brisk-mannered woman with graying sandy hair approached the podium at the front of the room. She turned on the microphone, made all the usual tapping tests, then turned it off.

'I guess I don't really need this tonight,' she said in one of those clear, bell-like voices that carry easily. Most of the crowd laughed, Tess included, but Jackie looked impatient and edgy.

'My name is Adele Sirola and this is Adoption Rights, a support group in the best sense of that much overused term. We help reunite adoptees with their biological parents. We also lobby, at the state and federal level, for increased access to adoption records and more resources for mutual consent registries. Last month, as we do every May, we marched on Washington for ‘Open My Records Day.'' She smiled ruefully. 'And last month, as they do every May, the media ignored us. We've had what you might call something of a public relations problem over the last few years.'

A hand waved down front. 'A friend of mine warned me not to come here tonight. She said you were really a radical fringe group that thinks all adoptions should be banned.'

Adele sighed. 'That's the legacy of Baby Jessica, Baby Richard, and other totally aberrant cases in which a remorseful birth mother wants to reclaim a baby before the adoption is final and some loophole in the law-often her flat-out lie about paternity-provides the opportunity she needs to take the child back. The television cameras gather 'round and record the moment when the screaming, confused child is torn from the arms of the adoptive parents and placed into the arms of virtual strangers. It makes good television, but it's not what we're about.'

Adele was pacing back and forth behind the podium, off-script now, but on fire.

'My hackles go up when someone tells me I don't understand something because I haven't experienced it. I like to think of myself as the empathetic type. But the fact is, people who aren't adoptees don't get it. They don't know what it's like to have two wonderful, loving parents and still stare in a mirror, wondering who gave birth to you. Why did they give you up? What is their legacy? Given all the ground-breaking research in genetics, how can you not want to know who your biological parents are?'

Another voice piped up from the left side of the room. 'The agency that arranged my adoption said I was entitled to medical information, but that if they couldn't guarantee lifetime confidentiality, the whole system would fall apart.'

'Let me guess, you were placed through Catholic services,' Adele said. A few people laughed with indulgent familiarity. Every group has its own language and folklore, its own private jokes, Tess thought.

'Yeah, I know that argument,' Adele continued. 'Kind of outdated, don't you think? I mean, it rests on the assumption that adoptions result from shameful secrets that can be revealed only at great risk to the parent or the child. Well, last time I checked it was almost the twenty-first century and an out-of-wedlock pregnancy is nothing more than a career move. From Ingrid Bergman to Madonna in one generation. When they use the ‘shame' argument, they're saying in essence, ‘You're a mistake. You're an embarrassment.' Ridiculous.'

Jackie was fiddling with her earring now, opening and closing the back with a loud snap, over and over again.

'Are you an adoptee?' a woman called from the left side of the room.