PAGE 5
HELEN HILL'S DRAWING OF HER 5 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER RAINE, 1984
A TREATISE ON ADOPTION
What freeway am I on now?, no signs. The maps are gone too. Well, the road is
straight and there are no turns. And I know I am headed west because the sun is straight
before me
I remember family vacations driving west. We planned to see the caves and the
National Forests. Monuments. Geysers and Redwoods. Everything was planned and mapped
out long after I was asleep at night. My clothes were packed for me, selected and folded into
a large v\4iite suitcase by my mother. There was a swimming suit for motel pools. A light
windbreaker forsumWiefStorms: ,r
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Where are we going? Where is the next stop? How long before we stop for lunch, for
dinner? How long until we get a room? A Best Western room with 4 Stars Rooms without a
speck of dust and two double beds made up as smooth as boards and the bathroom blinding
white — a fresh paper ring sealing the toilet as if it had never been used before
Most of the motels on the outskirts of town were nevdy constructed so there was still
red-brown dirt turned over and raised in mounds past the parking lot curbs. They were good for
climbing, the loose dirt went falling and rolling down the mounds.
I remember the hollow sound of pounding the second story concrete walkways with my
feet on my way back to the motel room in the twilight hour between the restaurant dinner and
bedtime. The sheets and piilovoases were impossibly clean like no one had ever rested there,
and they would be made that way again when I was gone. Before we left the next morning I
would see a motel maid with her cart, waiting for us to leave so she could eradicate all traces
of us. Her cart was piled with more glasses wrapped in wax paper and more boxes of soap,
each wrapped carefully so that the next occupants could be sure that they were the first to
touch everything in the room
Gradually we reenter the stream of freeway traffic. Cheyenne, Ogden, Helena. Where
are we now? When will we stop? Will there be a pool tonight?
Summertime We are a family encased together, wrapped inside a station wagon
traveling across the country. We are an island unto ourselves and in the early morning before
the wind gets hot, before the windows have to go up, I have the window down all the way to let
the air in, the air that blows through other people’s lives and is commonplace to them The air
that blows across their front porches comes in through the window and touches my face,
changes the hair across my forehead I am excited to be blown by a wind so many miles from
home — But it is as if they sense my love of a strange wind and the windows are ordered up
and the air conditioner is switched on
Perhaps I caught a scent of my own people, a way of life that had expelled me but
calls to me all the same
Somewhere there is an eye that rests in a hollow beside the nose just the way mine
does, but I have never seen it. There are hands shaped like mine and a way of walking that
resembles mine but I've never seen it I am to know only that I am a second child, youngest;
I am daughter and I am to ride in this seat on family vacations and be glad the sheets are
impossibly clean and there is no trace of anyone before me. I am to roll up the window when
the wind bears a thrill and a promise of a place I might have come from
I stare deep into the black vinyl of the seat in front of me and press my knees into it.
Unknown miles of asphalt pass underneath me and I embrace the feeling of moving, of drifting
even as I sit still in my place. I am in no one place even as this car surrounds me.
Sometimes we would cover five hundred miles a day to get to a 4 Star motel. The four
stars insured its absolute cleanliness. The wide open seemed to me nothing more than days
of being encased in a car and a succession of motel keys dangling from a plastic oval We
were traveling over and above the country, never touching it We flew through it and slept on
beds that were prized for their anonymity I was part of these vacations and they passed before
my eyes like television shows.
She is always with me, my mother. She is me, but standing somewhere at rest,
connected To find her would place me. To know the slightest detail would let me rest. I
would like to see a dress that she wore, a comb she used. Instead of building on top of
an empty hole I could build over a form
But for now I would rather be moving I would rather be in a boat or a car or on the
edge of the ocean
My mother years ago made a sad mistake Her life was not her own There was an
event beyond her control She was young, her life was ahead of her This one child could have
twisted her life and her plans and robbed her of all hope of a logical future So she cut this child
loose from her. She cut it cleanly away Those who cared about her arranged it, and it was gone.
Whatever regrets she had were silenced by the logic and the necessity and the regard for the
promise of her future The event was severed cleanly and permanently like an unidentifiable
suitcase thrown from a moving car. (The event rushes away from her Laws protect her from
ever being haunted by her mistake.)
Years ago my parents who raised me were faced with an empty place. They took home
someone else's child and called it their own To protect themselves they had to eradicate all true
history of the child She was to serve as daughter, to fill a hole they found gaping, regardless and
heedless of any history but the clean and unused one they made for her.
My physical being was a subject that was unspeakable for it was the one clue that
they could not seal in an envelope away from my eyes They used the most powerful weapon
— shame — to discourage a natural desire to know the past
If they could change everything about me they would have They would rather have
melted their own flesh and blood together to form me like others do but they could not, so they
pretended. I was in need of a home so they filled an empty place with me. My hands, my face,
the way I seem to think and walk is foreign to them and must therefore be kept foreign to me.
Vacation trips seemed a good family thing. To see the vorld as they felt it should be
for me, clean and removed and free from history as all things should be The sheetrock walls,
the slick headboards of each room in each Ramada. Holiday and Best Western where maids
wrap soap and seal toilets My parents who raised me thought that I could grow so much
beyond them within the boundary of a locked and speeding car
Summertime and we are a family encased together, wrapped inside a station wagon
traveling across the country We are an island unto ourselves in the early morning before the
wind gets hot, before the windows must go up I have the window down all the way to let the air
in, the air that blows through other people's lives It touches me and excites me to be blown by
a wind so many miles away from home — but again they sense my love of a strange wind and
the chance it might bring me a knowledge of a line of people I belong to whose eyes and ways
of talking are like mine I roll up the window as I am told.
But the shame they imposed did not last much longer than the years I lived at home.
Where do I turn now? How far can I look into myself without uncovering a void?
Both of you have been fully protected for the duration of my youth You, my mother,
have an uncomplicated past You are free to walk alone and the law protects your right You, my
parents who raised me, have had your daughter, your empty place filled I have served you both
well and in silence, but age weighs heavily on me The face that is mine in the mirror is more
and more groundless and strange.
Am I to die without the barest detail of my own? Am I a secret illegal to myself?
All roads for me lead to a sealed envelope kept in a courthouse unknown to me, which
for the protection of others I have no nght to open
And for now I would rather be moving
BRONZE ABSTRACTS BY DONALD WRIGHT
FEBUARY& MARCH 2000
HELEN HLL
10« 10TH ST., ASTORIA - 131 W. 2ND CANNON BEACH
-HELEN HILL (1984)
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