When A Network Has Been Broken

What can we make of our parents, our grandparents, the network of kin who constitute our tribal past ?

If one is an adoptee, they can’t make anything out of it.

If one is the child of two adoptees, the past is shrouded in mystery.

So learning about my original grandparents was the beginning of a process of interrogating the past. Trying to understand why what happened to my parents had happened.

My dad’s situation is fairly easy to understand. It was the 1930s. My grandmother had an affair with a married man. Giving her the benefit of my doubts, I doubt she knew he was married when the affair started. However, given the outcome – that she went to a Salvation Army Home for Unwed Mothers to have him, I’m fairly certain she knew he couldn’t be there for her when she found out she was pregnant. I suspect by then she knew he was married.

My mom’s will forever mystify me with questions that can’t be answered and so I find myself forced to live the questions. Some of the aspects, I have rather solid theories for.

Where it becomes muddied for me is why my grandmother’s husband was unwilling to be there for her. Why did he leave her 4 months pregnant ? Why didn’t he respond when she returned to Memphis, after having the baby in Virginia, and the Juvenile Court sought to inform him of his responsibilities ?

Poverty is certainly part of his equation. A superflood on the Mississippi River that was particularly severe in his home state of Arkansas is likely part of the equation too. Georgia Tann sensing a vulnerable young woman ripe for exploitation certainly put the screws to my grandmother.

At least, I know what my parents died not knowing. At least I know now who my grandparents were. My own process now has been to re-establish my own tribal kin network.

The Effects Of Relinquishment

In my mom’s attempt to receive her adoption file, which was denied her, she said to me – “As a mother, I would want to know what became of my child.” She also believed she had been stolen and I believe she wanted to determine if that was true or if there was some other explanation (there was another explanation). I now possess her file thanks to the baby stealing and selling scandal of Georgia Tann in Tennessee.

Before relinquishment, it is clear to me that my maternal grandmother wanted to keep my mom. She worked very hard to make that happen but her timing and the situation around her were not kind. It was deep into the Great Depression and Memphis had just experienced a superflood that began the month my mom was born in Virginia. My grandmother arrived in Memphis with my mom in the midst of charity fatigue because thousands of refugees had poured into the city from Arkansas.

My mom’s father was in Arkansas shoring up levees and doing other flood related work for the WPA. Therefore, when the Juvenile Court wrote him about my grandmother and her baby’s needs he didn’t respond. I’ll never know why he left her with her father 4 months pregnant but I do have some kind theories that I prefer over any kind of brutal one. He didn’t divorce her for 3 years but then how could she face him having lost their child ?

My grandmother never had any more children. I believe she hoped throughout her lifetime that my mom would find her. When my mom tried, she was told her mother was already dead and that devastated her. My grandmother was clearly pressured and exploited by Georgia Tann with a no win choice. She even tried to undo the damage but with a paying customer on the train coming from Arizona to pick my mom up, Miss Tann was not about to give her back.