Page 44 of Forever Then
“This is a lot. Let’s sit back down so we can talk,” Cheyenne prods as we return to the living room.
We all make use of the tissue box Cheyenne passes around as Miguel says, “We didn’t want to overwhelm you with the kids here, so we have a neighbor down the street watching them. If and when you’re ready, we’ll go get them.”
I nod in understanding, thankful that I wasn’t overwhelmed with all of this when I knocked on the door.
Cheyenne asks about what led me to her. With Connor’s hand running smooth strokes up and down my back, I launch into the story about the DNA kit and the detective that provided me with her name and address, but no other details.
When I circle back to the part about Miguel’s name not being on my birth certificate, Cheyenne turns to him and places her hand atop his. The look that passes between them feels fraught with regret and bad memories.
“Miguel was not able to be there when I gave birth.”
“I wanted to be there,” he rushes to add.
“But there was a lot of tension between our families.”
They both pause and Cheyenne looks to Miguel, a sorrowful smile on her face. Miguel squeezes her hand, an encouragement to continue.
“My parents were high-ranking in the Navajo Nation government while I was growing up,” she starts and then hesitates before finally saying, “they were…strict. Tribal culture and preservation was ingrained into us from an early age. It was expected of us to keep our relationships within the tribe.”
My brows furrow.
“This was not a Navajo standard,” she clarifies.
“This was the rule in my house and the small tight-knit community of full blood Navajos that my parents kept us sheltered within on the reservation.
They disowned my oldest sister, Winona, when she eloped with her British boyfriend.
The fact that they were both medical students studying at Harvard made no difference to them.
“Anyway,” she focuses back, “I met Miguel on a day trip into Flagstaff with a friend’s family. I was fourteen and he was fifteen.” They exchange a smile. “We started sneaking around to meet up with each other. After several months together, I wound up pregnant just before my fifteenth birthday.”
Fifteen and pregnant. One sister already disowned, I can’t imagine the fear she must have felt in that situation. Fear of disappointing her parents. Fear of abandonment. I fight to keep my expression neutral as she goes on.
“When I finally got the courage to come clean to my parents, well, you can imagine how they reacted. They tried to get me to terminate, but I refused and it was too late anyway.”
Connor squeezes my shoulder as the grimness of this revelation settles over the room. In an alternate scenario, I would have never been .
Miguel clears his throat and moves the conversation along. “My parents tried to arrange a meeting with her family to discuss options about what the future could look like, but they wouldn’t talk to us.”
“So, I called Winona,” Cheyenne supplies.
“She was across the country at school, but she became my rock. My parents pushed for the adoption and, given how young we were and the conflict with our families, we both knew it was the right decision. Besides that, they weren’t really involved other than setting the adoption terms and pushing it through. ”
“When you say ‘adoption terms’, what does that mean?” Connor interjects.
“There are federal adoption laws in place designed to keep Native children within the tribe as much as possible. It’s all an effort to preserve our culture.
Under more normal circumstances, Gretchen, you would have most likely been adopted by a member of my extended family or another Native living on the reservation. ”
“But yours weren’t normal circumstances?” I ask.
“No, they weren’t. My dad planned to run for President of the Navajo Nation and having one disowned daughter married off to a British man and another pregnant by a Mexican boy at fifteen was too scandalous for his campaign, or so he said.
” The hurt in her eyes turns to righteous indignation.
“My pregnancy was kept a secret. When I started to show, they transitioned me to homeschooling and a tribal doctor made house calls for all my prenatal care. I relied on Winona to keep Miguel and his family up to date on the pregnancy because my parents wouldn’t let me leave the house. ”
My head swims. Tidal waves of thoughts and questions run every which way as I listen to their story— my story.
“You were due the last week of June. My sister and her husband came back to Arizona and got a temporary apartment in Phoenix for that summer. My parents refused to see her, but they allowed me to spend the last few weeks of my pregnancy living with her so that I could deliver at a small private birthing center in Phoenix that my parents had selected for its discretion.”
Because my grandfather couldn’t have an unplanned, half-blooded grandchild, my mother was forced to give birth in secret .
“I’m sorry, I know this is a lot to absorb,” Miguel says, reading the distaste on my face.
“No, it’s okay. Um…yeah, I’m trying to understand. Can you go back to the adoption terms you said your parents set?”
Cheyenne bobs her head. “Yes, sorry. In extreme circumstances, a judge can approve, at the request of the parents—or in my case, my parents, since I was a minor—to have a child placed with a family out of state. Since my parents rubbed shoulders with all the higher-ups in the tribal government, they pretty much got anything they asked for.”
Cheyenne reaches for another tissue.
“So, neither of you got any say in where I ended up?”
“No. It’s always been my understanding that at least one of your parents has some Navajo blood which I suspect is why my mom selected them. On paper it was a more respectable choice, even if you wouldn’t be remaining on the reservation itself.”
Mom . She’s told me that she has a small amount of Native American blood and that, when they were pursuing adoption, they added their names into every adoption database they could qualify for across the country. This must have been what compelled Cheyenne’s mom to select them.
“And you didn’t know their names or where they lived?” I ask.
Cheyenne shakes her head. “It was a closed adoption, so names and distinguishing information were all kept confidential.”
These are widely known facts about closed adoptions that I’d come to understand well in my own research. It’s how I know my parents couldn’t have possibly known any of this.
“You said you weren’t at the birth?” I ask Miguel.
“No.” He squeezes his wife’s hand, a silent apology for not being there.
“When Cheyenne moved down to Phoenix, my family and I went to see her as often as we could that summer. As much as I wanted to be there for her when she went into labor,” he pauses to regain his composure as a lone tear slides down his cheek, “they were worried her mom might show up during the birth and well…we all agreed it was best to avoid that confrontation.”
“Did she come?” Connor asks .
“Not for the birth, no,” Cheyenne croaks out on a shaky breath. “It was just my sister in the room with me.”
“Winona’s husband, Arthur, stayed in the waiting room and called me a few times, though, to give me updates,” Miguel adds.
A teenager giving birth with only her sister at her bedside, under the cover of night and non-disclosure agreements, in a town two hours away from home—I can’t even fathom.
“My mom showed up a few hours later, you had already been taken away by someone with the adoption agency.” Cheyenne wipes at her cheek.
“I don’t know, the next few days are a blur.
With the hormones and trying to suppress my milk, there’s not much I remember other than sleeping and crying a lot.
” With a resigned sigh, she continues. “My mom filled out the birth certificate paperwork and I would suspect she left out Miguel’s name so that if it ever leaked nobody could go digging. ”
The secrecy. The cover-up. And the two kids, who weren’t much more than babies themselves, at the center of the drama unfolding around them without the power to stop any of it. I don’t know what kind of story I expected to hear about how I came into the world, but it definitely wasn’t this.
“Let me show you one happy thing that happened that day,” Cheyenne says, voice soft, smile warm.
She moves across the room and retrieves a small picture frame from one of the bookshelves.
I take it from her as she says, “I got to hold you.”
No larger than a four by six, the image is grainy and slightly out of focus.
It’s taken from too great a distance to make out any nuanced details and the camera flash combined with the dim lighting in the delivery room has left a light flare in one corner of the image.
Yet, I see a teenage Cheyenne, face turned away from the camera, gazing down at the newborn baby cradled in her arms.
Me.
“It was only for a few minutes, but you opened your eyes and looked at me and…” Her voice trails off as she begins to cry.
I run my fingertips over the glass. “My God, I saw it clear as day even th en, you look just like your father.” She laughs, voice thick with emotion.
“I don’t think he believed me before today. ”
I look over at Miguel who stares back at me, glassy-eyed but content like he’s come face to face with a miracle.
“This is the only picture you’ve ever had of me?”
You can’t even see my face in this picture. I’m nothing but a tiny swaddled blob cradled against Cheyenne’s chest.
Miguel—for more than two decades he’s been told that his first daughter looked just like him, yet he never saw it for himself until now.
He flashes an affectionate grin and a wink at his wife. “Yeah, I had to take her word for it.”
For the past twenty-two years they’ve had nothing but this single blurry photo to remember me by. This photo that they’ve preserved, framed and put on display in their home alongside countless other family photos.
“A few minutes after Winona snapped this picture, a woman showed up and took you away. I’m assuming your parents took you home sometime after that.”
I know the story from here. “They said they picked me up from a hospital in Phoenix a couple days after I was born.”
A heavy pause settles between us, both our gazes fixed on the photo in my lap.
“And you’ve had a good life?” Her question comes out quiet, a little broken, but eager—a mother desperate to know that her child ended up in a good home.
I turn to Connor who hasn’t said much but remains strong and steady at my side. His face is a display of pure adoration and pride behind a lens of unshed tears. I squeeze his hand and the dip of his chin in reply says, I’ve got you .
“I’ve had a great life,” I say.
Cheyenne’s smile is relief and curiosity wrapped into one. “Will you show us pictures?”