NMH Magazine : Winter 2003

A Mother and Daughter Reunion

by Catherine McKinley '85

Growing up in the predominantly white town of Attleboro, Massachusetts, Catherine McKinley '85 never felt truly at home. The adopted, biracial daughter of two white parents, Donald and Elizabeth McKinley '53, she was called "Pocahontas" by her classmates because of her brown skin and black hair. As she grew older, McKinley increasingly longed to learn her birth parents' identities. In 1990 she began a seven-year quest that led to her birth mother and father. McKinley describes her search in her newly published memoir The Book of Sarahs (Counterpoint Books, $24). In the following excerpt, she discovers the enduring power of mother-daughter love. 

One day, provoked by my persistent melancholy, I called my mother and tried to ask some questions about my birth history that we had not spoken of since I was in my early teens. 

"The agency that handled your adoption is the New England Home for Little Wanderers," she said. "I'll be glad to send you their address. Certainly, if it is helpful to you." 

I listened to her funny formality. She must have been ready to say this to me, maybe as long as I had taken to decide it was a question. 

Later that week, a Mead standard envelope arrived. In her schoolteacher's hand, my mother had written the name "Mary Steed, LCSW, Adoption Coordinator" and an address for the agency. Her letter was full of caution: a request would take time to answer, and there probably would not be much information to share. She and my father had been told very little–"I've shared everything I know with you." I knew that her letter was also saying: You are on your own. 

After I received her letter, I wrote to Mary Steed. As if to underscore my mother's warning, a form letter arrived a few weeks later, along with an application to return if I wished to continue with my request. It explained that the agency could only give me "non-identifying" information about my birth parents, and possibly some details of the circumstances leading to the adoption. 

I filled out the form without much feeling. I put some narrow hope in what the request for non-identifying information might give me, but my desires and the whole idea of getting something were too abstract. It was like dumbly fishing for a prize card in a cereal box. 

After a year and a few notes to prod them, I received a reply.

10 December 1991

Dear Ms. McKinley,

In response to your recent letters, most recently on 7 September 1991, I am enclosing the information you requested about your Birth Parents. The information provided here is non-identifying. As you know the sealed records can be opened only by court order. Should you wish to pursue this option, your adoption was finalized in the Bristol County Probate Court. Your Birth Mother was a 22-year-old white, Jewish woman, who is described in the record as being 5 feet 2 inches tall, and weighing about 125 pounds. She had dark curly hair and brown eyes. She had graduated high school and completed a nursing program and was working as an LPN just prior to your birth. Her health history reports that she had no allergies or history of serious illness in the family. Her maternal grandmother had diabetes mellitus, which had responded well to medication. 

Your Birth Father was an African American man, in his forties and a Protestant. He is described as being 5 feet tall, with dark brown skin and eyes. He was working as an interior decorator, and enjoyed art as a hobby. He was reported to have been in good health, though there was no further background provided on his family. The records show that your Birth Father was married to another woman, and that he was unwilling to provide support for your Birth Mother's baby. She was unable to support a child on her own and elected instead to relinquish you for adoption in order to provide you with a stable, two-parent home. 

Your Birth Mother's parents were Jewish, both high school graduates, and both reported to have been in good health. Your grandmother was described as being of medium build, and she worked as a bookkeeper. Your grandfather was 5 feet 7 inches tall and worked as a supervisor in a clothing factory. 

...Please feel free to contact us if we can be of further service. I apologize for the delay in responding to your request.

Sincerely,Jim Wideman
Social Work Intern 

I read the letter so quickly that I only took in the flash of details. Then I put it back in its envelope and hid it away in my suitcase. I did not like the story the letter was trying to have on me, or how it disturbed the foundation of my fantasies. I took the letter like that cereal box prize–a disappointing little token in return for my patronage–and I stubbornly put it out of my mind. I had no room in my imagination for a white birth mother: I just excised that from my mind. And the complication of a Jewish family–the fact that there was another dimension of challenge to my identity–felt excruciating.

McKinley searched fruitlessly for more information about her birth parents. She stayed in touch with Mary Steed at the New England Home for Little Wanderers, who revealed one further clue: her birth name was Sarah. In spring 1996, McKinley registered with TRACE, an advocacy group for adoptees, adoptive families, and birth parents. Six months later, TRACE's director delivered news about McKinley's mother. 

Her name is Esther Hope Khan, born February 12, 1943, in Boston, Massachusetts, at 2:55 am. Her father was 28 years old; mother 25 years old–her parents started a little late. They lived in Sharon, Massachusetts at the time. She had sisters born in 1955 and 1948. There was noise about her having real emotional problems. She was married–she may still be." She explained that she had done some checking to try to find out whether Esther Khan was living. She had gone to all of the available records, but there was no record of her marriage, no credit record, no name in the nurses' registry. But there also was no death record. She promised to keep checking and call me again. 

As we said goodbye, she added, "I think that your birth mother's husband is black, but I don't think that he is your birth father." 

I called Mary Steed the second after we hung up and told her what I had learned. She asked me to wait while she went to get my file, and there was caution in her voice when she came back on the line. "The name does seem to match the one in your file." Her name is Esther Hope Khan! 

She didn't ask me how I'd learned it. She seemed to be thumbing through my records. Then the holy file spake: "She was depressed and suicidal and had been hospitalized because of it just before your birth. Before this, she had left home and was living with a group of friends, but the living quarters broke up. She wanted to keep you, but she and your birth father had parted some months before–they had quite a long history. She did not want to be back in her parents' home again. Her father was ill, perhaps manic-depressive. He was described as exhibiting abusive and infantile behavior. All of this preceded her breakdown. She was bright, highly motivated, and attractive, but she seemed to be giving in to what was happening around her." 

I was feeling overwhelmed by all of the information I suddenly had and more annoyed by Mary's parceling of my story than worried with what she was saying. 

She said something that was like a funny kind of congratulations, and told me that I should take my time proceeding.

Through TRACE, McKinley obtained Esther Khan's phone number and address in Cambridge, Massachusetts. McKinley called the number–but hung up as soon as she heard a woman's voice. Instead she decided to send a letter, but it came back stamped RETURN TO SENDER–ADDRESS UNKNOWN. She called the number in Cambridge again. 

It was almost Christmas. I called her house several times that evening. Each time a sweet child's voice spoke a perfectly dictated message on the answering machine. Had I dialed the same number as before? Each time I heard it, the voice upset the fragile image I had of Esther Khan. I did the math over and over again–my birth mother would be 51 years old. What age could the child be? 

I decided to call one last time that night. It was after ten, and I was afraid it was getting too late to continue calling. The thought of having to wait another night was killing me. The woman who answered spoke in a laughter-filled voice. 

"Good evening. May I speak with Esther Khan?" "This is Estie Khan." Estie. I liked this name and the kind of deep warmth of her voice. 

I was suddenly choking as I tried to speak just the way the adoption professionals advise–with clarity, immediate detail. 

"My name is Catherine McKinley. I was born April 25, 1967. I am calling–" 

"When did you say you were born?" 

We began just like that. We were both laughing a little bit now, and there was this ache in both of our voices. I had to cover the mouthpiece of my phone for a minute because this sound coming out of my throat I had never heard before and I was afraid I was going to start sobbing. Then there was this strange control in my body again. 

"I called earlier and I wasn't sure I should call again this late–" I said. 

"Oh, we just came home from the Cape," she said. "We have this silly time share and I was sick last summer, so we tried to arrange a trade, and we got stuck going there in November–Go! Right now! Get in the tub!" There was no power in her voice. It was struggling for control. 

"That's Sarah. She's nine." Sarah. My stomach folded like it does when you clear a sharp, blind turn. I couldn't reattach my body to its feeling. 

"I actually wrote you a letter–about ten days ago. I didn't want to call right away but the letter was returned. The address I have is four Ashton Terrace." 

"Oh, we live on Ashland. Did you call before?" 

I was crying–tears were running out of me from exhaustion, while Estie told me that she worked as one of the directors of psychiatric nursing in a crisis unit at Mass General Hospital. I told her that I was a writer and that I taught creative writing. 

"Maybe we can send each other our work!" she said. "I'm also published–in a few medical journals." 

She told me she was married–"Well, we're not really married, but we've been together for twenty-three years." 

Malcolm McKinley McFarland. "That's Sarah's father. Isn't it funny that you are both McKinleys?" she said. "You're like Sarah–black with one of those damn Irish names." 

"Did you name me Sarah?" My heart was beginning to ache. 

"Yes, that was your name too," she said quietly. 

"Why Sarah?" I asked. 

"Sarah was my therapist–Sarah Arnold. She helped me through the pregnancy and after the adoption. She died a few years ago." 

She became silent and then I thought I heard her crying. "I wish that she was here now so she could tell me what to do," she said. We both sat in choking silence for some time.

McKinley learned that her father's name was Al Green. According to Estie, he came from Cape Verde and his real name was Alfredo Verdene. She described him as a "crazy artist, very good-looking." After their brief but joyful talk, Estie went to Jamaica to vacation at her second home. McKinley felt a mix of joy and fury as she waited to hear from her birth mother. 

I came home from school and found a card from Estie. It was my first real sign that she was Estie, and I had found her–the first thing I could hold in my hand. It was a quick, friendly note. She wrote in funny, elliptical phrases about feeling surprised still, and happy. At the bottom of the card she wrote her two work numbers and her hospital page. 

I called her at one of the numbers the next morning. I called very early, around 7 am, just trying it out, not expecting her to be there. But she answered the phone and seemed happy to hear from me. Then she invited me in. We began to talk in that slice of morning nearly every day. 

For the first two months, we sent each other a flurry of mail, trying to express some closeness, some feeling. It was too difficult for me to talk outright–in a letter, or in person–any bit of what I was feeling then. I substituted by sending her copies of stories I'd written, beautiful cards, images I liked, and photos–a tiny string of them, trying to patch together a mini-narrative of 1967, high school, college. 

Estie sent me notes–for a while I got one nearly every day. I'd come home to envelopes addressed to me in her calligraphy-like writing. They had elliptical, deliberate-feeling messages, broken up and written in different corners of the page, the thoughts not always cohering. I saw the doctor that delivered you today in the corridor here at work. He is now a big shot M.G.H Chief of Service and a Harvard professor. Frederick D. Firgoletti, MD. Mysterious, maybe a bit alarming, precious because she was knitting tiny bits of my history. 

I have heard other adoptees say this: In these first months, the phone calls, the exchanges with Estie, started to feel very quickly like they were the acts of a love affair. I started to live for our morning calls. They set the quality of each day, replacing the anxious feelings, the melancholy that had marked it before. I was surprised by how this woman took hold of my heart. Our relationship became so devoted, and the feeling of love I had was automatic and powerful. I was surprised by it; I wondered if it was proof of the terrible way we'd been cheated of each other, or if just somehow wanting and expecting love to be there made it feel like that was what the feeling was. 

But if I can say my relationship with Estie was like a love affair, then I'd have to say it was like loving a married person in out-of-town hotel rooms. There was all of the pleasure and contentment of finding love, the heady absorption, but there were so many things kept hidden.

In March 1997, McKinley took an air shuttle from New York City to Boston to meet her birth mother. 

I came out of the narrow passage that led into the terminal and turned into a phalanx of velvet ropes holding us off from the small crowd waiting in the vestibule. I felt uncomfortably on display to Estie–somehow at a disadvantage. I was the only black woman on the flight, one of the last to disembark. She could not confuse me with anyone. But then I started to panic–maybe my unmistakeableness would betray me. She might see me and decide she would rather wait on this meeting. Or maybe she hadn't come. 

But as soon as I could see clearly, a woman's eyes caught and held mine. I walked towards her, knocking my hip into the rope so that the poles teetered, not letting go of her with my eyes. 

She wasn't the woman in the photograph she'd sent me; she was now a little heavier, with straightened, long gray hair. But I could not mistake her; there was my mouth quivering on her face in a pensive, almost awe-filled smile. 

I felt kind of silly when I realized I was hurrying to stand in front of Estie for what–a hug? Suddenly there was the press of her body against me and it felt familiar to me, uninhibited and total in a way I didn't think it would be. I felt something like the relief when you finally have that person you've been trying to date in your arms and it feels as good as you hoped it would. 

We sat down in the Delta Airlines terminal, and for a while, we couldn't speak. We just sat there looking nervously at each other and then quickly looking away. A wave of grief welled up in my chest when I let myself think about what I was doing, who I was with, but then her hand touched the skin at my wrist, and the swell of pain in my chest was pushed down in my surprise at her easy intimacy. 

"You have Al's skin. It's so soft. It makes me think–oh, he used to smell like olive oil or something," she almost whispered. 

Soon we were opening our mouths to each other, comparing eyes and teeth, fingers, taking off our boots and stockings to show each other our feet, rolling up our pants to compare our legs. We stripped down to our last skin of clothing to show each other our arms, the outline of our breasts beneath a T-shirt. I took stock of myself: I had her exact arms and feet; my breasts were thankfully smaller; I was glad to inherit those legs, but I'd have to watch my belly. Soon we were bawling and laughing. When we realized people were watching us, we kind of dried up and shifted shyly to showing each other our family photos. 

Later we took a bus into town. When the bus reached Mass General Hospital, Estie asked me if I minded walking, and then motioned to get down. We walked from there to Harvard Square, tracing Estie's regular lunchtime walk. She seemed a little nervous, laughing as she pointed out people from the hospital as they passed us. 

When we'd gotten off the bus, she had said, laughing at herself, that she hoped that she didn't run into anyone she knew. But as we walked, I felt a little like I was being shown off. Like it might finally be all right for her to risk having the secret she'd been carrying for so many years exposed. It might just be a relief.