The lies we tell ...

“Mrs. Rivera”?
“Yes”, I lie, not fully knowing why I answered to that name from the past.
“It’s Detective Jones, from the 73^rd Precinct. We have Mary here. She wants to come home”.
I could feel the silence, made so much more palpable by the rapid beating of my heart, as he waited for my answer. The problem was, my answer was just another question, “What home”?
She was two when we met. Bright and beautiful, with the biggest brown eyes I had ever seen. Her dark hair, the same chestnut color as mine, was naturally curly, with ringlets that framed her face like a Botticelli angel.
I knew from the moment I held her in my arms, that she was mine. But, she wasn’t, not really.
Mary and her 6 yr. old sister had been abused and neglected, left for days in the same dirty diaper, by their drug addicted, 16 year old, biological Mom. We would be their 3^rd foster home and, hopefully, their last.
The social worker explained to us that the state was in the process of terminating the Mother’s parental rights to the 6 year old and she would soon be free to adopt. Legally, things had not progressed as far for Mary, but they saw no reason why things wouldn’t go the same way. Everyone involved was certain, given the bio-Mom’s track record, that the girls would never be separated and we should treat them as our own.
Nothing was easier. Since we could not have children, naturally, we poured all the love we had to give into the girls, who soaked it up like dry sponges that hadn’t felt water in years.
Their birthdays were always catered affairs. Theme parties where everyone dressed as princesses or Disney characters, complete with clowns, magicians and, one year, Barney, the Purple dinosaur, who sung his signature song with Mary on his lap.
Christmas’s were, also, special. Each year we’d have a real pine tree with ornaments that the girls had hand-made, candy canes on it’s branches and so many different lights, it would take hours just to sort them all out. By the time we were done decorating, the house looked like something out of a Rockwell painting.
Of course, we knew, monetary pleasures were not what the girls craved. Love, as the song says, was all they needed.
It was all we needed, too and despite the nightmares, always about going back to their biological Mom or the temper tantrums, normal for children who have been shuffled around since birth, they were happy and we were happy.
6 years later, sitting on a hard wooden bench, etched with the names of those who have worried and agonized before us, we waited for a stranger to make a decision that would change our lives forever and tried to do what we were told, since the legal proceedings for Mary began, which was, plan for the best, and prepare for the worst. Or, at least, we thought we did.
Two weeks after that day, as I drove Mary to the same foster care agency where we picked her up all those years ago, something we saw struck us both as hysterical and we laughed and laughed forgetting for the moment that this was the last time I would make this trip and the last time I could be considered her Mom. I thought about how much we shared and the true joy she brought into my life. Trying not to cry, was one of the hardest things I have ever done.
For awhile, we tried to stay in touch for the sake of the girls, but it was like jabbing something sharp into an open wound and took weeks to recovery in between attempts.
In our longing to have children and the fervor with which we fought to stay a family, we had failed both girls, miserably.
The older child, adopted by my husband and I, while still fighting for her sister, could never come to grips with why her bio-mom wanted her younger sister, and all her subsequent children, but never wanted her.
She would remain with us, until she reached 18, decided she could no longer live with our rules and moved out with her boyfriend. I see her now and then on Face book, but any attempts at communication is always met with privacy settings.
Mary returned to her bio-Mom, but could never forgive this stranger for taking her away from the only parents she had known and loved. Eventually, she was placed in a group home for troubled children, where, last I heard, she had been raped and tagged a habitual runaway.
I heard once, while on the run, she had tried to find us, but her biological Mother destroyed anything we had given her, including our address and telephone number, so she was sent back.
Now 6 years later, the Detective on the phone still waited for my answer.
During what seemed like hours, but, in truth, was mere minutes, my mind went through all that had happened in my life, since Mary left. The troubles with her sister, my husband’s business failing and his, subsequent, heart attack. My own prescription drug addiction and the emptiness, with me always, that the pills could never fill and I heard myself give the only answer I could, “I’m sorry, Officer, but Mary doesn’t live here anymore. Maybe, you should call her “real” Mom”.