Wednesday, June 30, 1999

The social worker called back. The home visit is set for Tuesday, July 20th, at ten in the morning. She'll see the house, talk to both of us, and "observe Nicolas in his environment," which I suspect means watch him try to feed crayons to the cat.

School let out last week. I have three weeks to make this house look like the kind of place the State of California would leave a child in. It is currently the kind of place where you find a Lego in your shoe every morning. Kathy says that's what a house with a child in it looks like and the social worker will know that. Kathy is very reasonable. I've already bought new shelf paper.

Sunday, June 27, 1999
Twelve

Twelve years ago tonight I went to a party in Hillcrest that I almost skipped because I had papers to grade. There was a tall woman in the kitchen explaining to three people why the Twins were going to win the World Series. (They did, that fall. She's never let me forget it.) I asked her where she was from, and she said "Minnesota," like it was an apology, and I laughed, and that was that.

We celebrated tonight with takeout from the Thai place and a movie we both fell asleep in the middle of. Nicolas made us a card that says "HAPY ANIVRSRY" with help, and a drawing of the three of us plus the Grape. The Grape is bigger than all of us. That's about right.

Friday, May 28, 1999
The first call

The social worker assigned to our case called today. I was grading quizzes at the kitchen table when the phone rang, and when she said who she was, I stood up. I don't know why. Like she could see me.

She was friendly and brisk and sounded like the nicest receptionist at the dentist's, which I mean as a compliment. She said she'd received our petition and the paperwork, that she'd be doing the investigation and writing the report for the court, and that she'd need to meet with each of us and visit the home. She asked a few questions: how long we'd lived at this address, whether anyone else lives with us, what Nicolas calls each of us. I said "Mama" and "Mommy," and she laughed and said, "That's very organized of him."

Twenty minutes, maybe. When I hung up my hands were shaking. Kathy came home and found me reorganizing the spice rack. She didn't say anything. She just handed me the cumin.

Sunday, May 9, 1999

Mother's Day. His preschool teachers let Nicolas make two cards. One says MAMA and one says MOMMY, and each has a handprint in paint, and the handprints are the same size, because he did them one right after the other. I don't know why that got to me. Same hand, twice. Both of us.

Thursday, April 22, 1999

I teach twelve- and thirteen-year-olds. On Wednesday, the day after Littleton, nobody could do math. I didn't try to make them. We sat in the portable with the door closed and they asked questions I couldn't answer, and I let them ask. One boy who never talks asked if our door locks from the inside. It does. I showed him.

I came home and held on to Nicolas too long, and he said "Mama, you're squishing," and I kept squishing.

Sunday, April 4, 1999
Easter, and a question

Easter at Mamá's. Egg hunt in her back yard for all the grandkids, and the golden egg, the one with the dollar in it, was hidden low in the bougainvillea where only somebody very short could possibly spot it. Nicolas spotted it. Yolanda's girls, who are eleven and nine and taller than the bougainvillea, looked at their grandmother. Their grandmother looked at the sky.

Later, when I was in the kitchen alone with her, rinsing the ham plates, she said, without turning around, "¿Y los papeles?" And the papers?

She has never once asked about the adoption. I didn't know she knew we'd started. (Yolanda. Of course, Yolanda.) I told her where things stood, the lawyer and the fingerprints and the autobiography, and she dried her hands and nodded and said, "Bueno," and went out to referee the girls.

That's all. One question and one word. I've been turning them over all evening like the golden egg.

The news tonight was all Kosovo, the families walking out over the mountains with whatever they could carry. I held Nicolas's hand the whole way to the car.

Sunday, March 21, 1999
My life, in twelve pages

Part of the paperwork is an autobiography. Mine is due to the lawyer by Friday, and I am on page nine.

The questions are the kind you'd expect. Where did you grow up. What was your family like. How were you disciplined as a child. (Mamá's chancla. Look it up.) What are your values. How will you explain to the child that his family is different. I've been answering that last one for three and a half years on the playground, so that one was easy.

The hard one was: "Describe your current relationship with your parents."

My father died in 1990. He'd have loved Nicolas. I know that like I know my own name. My mother... I wrote and erased that paragraph six times. In the end I wrote the truth, which is that she loves me, she has had a hard time with my life, and she is getting closer to Nicolas one tamale at a time. I don't know if a social worker will understand that sentence. I hope so.

Saturday, February 20, 1999

Got fingerprinted this week, black ink and all, at the police station, like a criminal. The officer rolled each finger for me with great care. When he found out what it was for he said, "Good for you. My sister's doing the same thing up in L.A." You never know who you're standing in front of.

We needed letters of reference. Our neighbor Hector, a retired Navy chief who fixed our fence last summer without being asked, typed his on an actual typewriter and brought it over in a manila envelope. It says, in part, "I have observed Mrs. Arellano with the boy on a daily basis and she is a squared-away parent." I've read it about thirty times. My sister Yolanda wrote one too, and Kathy's mother wrote one from Minnesota in her beautiful old-lady cursive, and my principal wrote one, which I'll say more about someday but not today.

Tuesday, January 12, 1999
The lawyer

First appointment with the lawyer today, a woman in Hillcrest who has done a lot of these. I'll call her Ms. B. Her office has a ficus tree that's either real or very convincing and a bowl of those little strawberry candies in the wrapper that looks like a strawberry.

She explained it all. I file a petition to adopt. Kathy signs a consent, with special wording that says she isn't giving up a thing. There's an investigation by a social worker, with interviews and a home visit and a report to the court. Fingerprints. Medical forms. Letters. Our financial information. My whole life, in a folder. If the report is good, there's a hearing in front of a judge, and if the judge agrees, I'm Nicolas's legal mother, forever, same as Kathy.

"It's granted case by case," she said. "There's no statute that guarantees it. But I haven't lost one in this county in a while." Then she knocked on her desk, which is wood, so that's something.

Kathy asked how long. Ms. B. said, "Most of a year, give or take." On the way out Kathy took three strawberry candies, one for each of us.

Postage went up to thirty-three cents on Sunday, too. I mention it only because I'm about to mail the State of California a great many envelopes.

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