This lady being separated from her baby because of racist misogyny hurts my heart. Things that pop into my head:
1. If it’s really about being concerned for babies being born to mothers with (imagined in this case it seems) not enough materially/money-wise to take care of them, why aren’t all the social services and rich people leaving puffs of smoke where their bodies used to be as they rush off to ”rescue” all the babies and children in this country right now who are hungry and homeless? I’m not saying that’d be the right thing, I’m saying it rings false to say that’s what this baby-stealing is about, when the conditions that supposedly offend your superior-child-raising-asses abound and with nary a peep out of you.
2. In California the public foster/adoption system requires that a child be in the system for 18 months before adoption proceedings can even BEGIN. I hope it’s at least that long in Mississippi so that there’s still time to stop this madness.
3. I only know about the California laws because my friends are fostering a baby girl they hope to adopt. She’s the now-almost-two-years-old daughter of a teenaged undocumented immigrant girl from Mexico. I’m going to call the baby Violet here for privacy purposes. I’m going to call Violet’s mother M. I love them both, even though I’ve only met miss Violet.
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I don’t even remember them telling me they were on the list again to take foster kids. My friends, E and L, already had a son. E and L are an interracial lesbian couple living in an affluent predominantly black neighborhood. E’s not a lawyer and L stays home since their son came, but I would guess they are, if not in the same tax bracket as the baby-stealing lawyer couple above, certainly not far below. They got to adopt their son straight away, as the birth parents wanted to give him up when he was born.
Both parents signed papers, and both met with E and L. Their son, A, had a cleft palate. That’s why E and L were able to get to foster a newborn baby – that almost never happens in the public foster/adoption system, unless you’re willing to take black and brown and in any way disabled babies. A’s parents are also Mexican immigrants. [sidebar - can I tell you how much I choke on those words every time, as a California resident, living in what basically is long-occupied Mexico, but somehow Mexican people are immigrants here?]
So A’s still a toddler and I’m still getting over my fear of babies (A, plus my own niece and then nephew, basically hypnotized me with cuteness, to stop remembering that babies are unpredictable people who sometimes projectile vomit and accidentally shit on you – not my first choice for friends, I must tell you), and I’ve come over for our regular eat-dinner-and-hang-out date on a Saturday, and L’s holding a tiny bird in a blanket.
Surprise! We got the call this morning from the foster-people, her name’s Violet and she’s four months old, sorry for disruption but things are a little crazy tonight!
Um, she looks like she would lose a fight to a hamster – are you sure she’s four months old? It’s still hard to say it out loud, especially now that I’ve known and loved Violet for so long. But, uh, her mom had not been feeding her. She was literally skin hanging on tiny bones. They didn’t mention the bruises until many months later. Maybe that kind of excruciating information-share is not top of the list when you’re wrangling two babies and company just came over.
I was actually even more afraid of Violet that first night I met her than I normally am/was of babies. One of my fears is of their vulnerability. I find it unbearable. I mean to say that my entire self wants to protect them, and is simultaneously wholly aware that it’s impossible, and so I panic to find a way to just stop knowing how vulnerable they are. Avoiding babies really is the only way, if you’re wondering. And so much for that idea.
This story has much ugliness in it, by the way, and I’m sorry to tell you something so disheartening, but Violet’s near-starvation and undetermined possible physical abuse is maybe the least ugly thing I will talk about.
I did try, though. To avoid Violet. I was afraid she wouldn’t make it – E and L seemed afraid. Please god let her not-die and then if E and L could just not-invite me over until it’s gone one way or the other, that would be great. Seriously instead of ghosts and goblins people should just put babies everywhere on Halloween. Terrifying.
Of course E and L didn’t invite me over. If you don’t already know this – when your friends have babies, you either invite yourself over (offering to bring food or pay for the delivered-pizza softens the poor etiquette of inviting oneself over) or you kiss said friends goodbye. They’re busy and they’re not sleeping, they don’t have time to think about inviting you over, much as they’d love to see you.
Could it have been seven months since I first met Violet? She wasn’t quite a year old, but she was standing while holding onto things, like tables or your hands. How old are babies when they can first stand?
All I know is, she got fat. Even though months had passed, it felt to me like I was literally seeing her one day, almost not-alive, and then the next, magically brought back to full-on, scrumptious-baby life. Like you closed your eyes and made a wish and when you opened them, there she fucking was, safe, and the most beautiful sight you’d ever seen.
I’m calling A by an initial instead of a full made-up name, by the way, because I can’t think of one right now that matches his pretty, real one, while her fake one came naturally. Anyway, A liked her, even though she was at the stage of being able to follow him around and get in his every bit of business. They are two really nice little people. Violet though is basically the sweetest-spririted person I ever met. It’s eerie.
I know there’s a tendency to romanticize babies and anyone you love, and/or especially sometimes if they’ve had any kind of suffering – “oh they’re so saintly, it’s now extra-sad that they got hurt.” I personally find it sorrowful when a-holes get hurt too, and I’ve met babies who I did secretly think were a-holes (secret’s out now I guess, ahem), so believe me when I tell you that Violet has this mellow, happy-for-no-reason-I-can-discern personality that makes me just feel like, fuck, I can’t wait to know this person when she’s an adult, too. To have a friend with her heart, to get to love her for years and years.
So it’s hard to tell where that, and not wanting her to get hurt again and not trusting that she’ll be safe with her birth mother, ends, and all KINDS of privilege and racist misogyny begin. In me, I mean. Her mom did almost kill her. But, her mom was 15 when she got pregnant. She was, herself, a baby by my standards. And who the fuck was worrying about who/what might almost kill her?
She came to Los Angeles from Mexico and stayed with friends of her family. A hetero married couple. The husband raped her. I don’t know whether how it went down would qualify in misogynists’ eyes as “real rape”or “statutory rape,” all I can tell you for sure is that a grown man raped a 15 year old child either fucking way. And what I heard was that he got to keep his family and his life intact, while hers shattered.
Her brother and sister in law reluctantly “took her in” after she got impregnated via rape. Those home-wreckin’, whorish girl child rape victims, doncha know, always bringing shame to The Family. She was 16 when Violet was born. I wish I knew the name Violet’s mother gave her; I feel like I could use it safely, and I feel like it’s hers.
My first thought when E and L told me that Violet’s mom -sorry I forgot I was going to call her “M” – when they first told me that M wanted Violet back and was somewhat-doing the court ordered things she needed to do to make that happen, I thought “of course she does.” L and M had been having supervised-by-a-social-worker visits with Violet for a little while by then. How could anyone, including and especially her mother, meet Violet and not want to jump through hoops to make off with her? I’m sorry to put it crudely like that but I’m just telling you, if you met Violet, you’d know what I mean about the urge to just fucking grab her for yourself and never let go. And this is from a baby-phobic, committed spinster, so.
My second thought was, please can her 16 year old self get a case of the selfish-es and decide she’d rather be a child herself for a little while longer than have to be somebody’s full time caretaker for the next 17 years?
My third thought was to remember that she’s an undocumented worker here, and to catch my breath at the thought of her being deported, without Violet, and without a way to get Violet back then. I mean it caught in my throat because it’s what I wanted to happen, for a second. It was a shock of sickening – I don’t know what to call it besides hatred. I mean, even though it didn’t feel like the anger-hatred-fuckin’-hate-somebody way that I normally think of hate, I think that’s still the correct word for it. What else could it be, to wish for even a second for the immense suffering of one person as a price to be paid for the privilege you want someone else to receive?
So, it seems fair to say that I hated M for a second, for wanting Violet, for taking steps to get to be with her beautiful daughter again. What if she neglects Violet again, or hits her or something, M has so little support, so little of anything, why can’t Violet stay with us (because now I’d decided I had some unearned claim to her as well), hey, why can’t M stay with us too? Why can’t it be that instead of taking someone’s baby from her, when she herself is still a baby, that they both get to live better, be loved, have a family, have food, a nice place to live, be wanted, be cherished? And although I know by far not all teenaged mothers nearly starve their babies to death, you can’t tell me that little girl is just some bad person who was trying to kill a baby. You can’t tell me that little girl ever had a chance in any of this. I am afraid for Violet to go live with her mom again, but I am enraged that a girl who was still young enough to be someone’s foster kid herself has become the supposed villain in this.
I don’t know if they were saying it to soothe me or themselves or both, but when E and L told me they had to have faith that Violet would be okay either way, that faith was not contagious for me at first. Maybe we’re just meant to be in her lives for this short time, maybe it’ll be something she does carry with her, we don’t know what her path is supposed to be. They do mean it. And they also are terrified, and angry, and heart broke. They don’t want to blame this child, M, either. They don’t want to wish the mother of someone they love so much any harm. But they have. Wished it, like I did. And wanted to take it back. And wished there was a way to hold on to Violet without it meaning we had to leave M out there, hanging, by herself, and now also with a broken heart, for lack of Violet in her arms.
The next court date is in August. M has been missing a lot of the supervised visits, and some of the classes she’s supposed to be taking. E and L can’t help themselves, they hope it means they will get to adopt Violet. I haven’t felt as clear on it myself in a little while.
I want Violet to stay with E and L. I just mean that it’s hard for me to know and love Violet now and not-think about her mom. If Violet is this way, god can you imagine what the person she came from must be like?, is the kind of thoughts I have. I want to know that M will be okay, too. But she’s not been anyone’s concern in, who knows, years. Or maybe her parents, maybe she has parents who are alive and are in Mexico and care about her. Maybe they want to meet Violet. But M came here, to the US, to live with a rapist and his resentful spouse, and has no money of her own, and no one she’s stayed with – the rapist or her brother and sister in law – has money either, or not the kind where they can support her and a baby at any rate.
So I think about borders and custody and laws and jails and courts and I just want to know, how can it be a happy ending if Violet stays? Because if she stays, it means M is struggling, is, well, basically what she’s been the whole time – a child still, but now one who’s expected to succeed at life like adults are expected to, and maybe she was as afraid of babies as I was, when she had one. Or maybe she was hungry too, or maybe it’s hard taking care of a baby, even one as non-fussy as Violet, when you’re in the trauma of having been raped. Maybe it’s hard to take care of your rapist’s baby.
But either way, if M doesn’t get Violet back, it means M’s not really doing well. Not able to show up for things. Not able to prove income or a safe place to live. For Violet to have this “better life” of living with upper middle class privilege and safety, M has to remain in or descend more fully into chaos and deprivation. Nobody’s going to pluck her up and bring her to a loving couple who want the best for her.
So although the circumstances are very different between Violet’s story and the stolen baby and abused-by-the-system mother in Mississippi, the question of separation and erasure feels related to me, in both cases. How could it be otherwise?
Many of us will be taking part in the Women’s Media Equity