Page 21 of To the Moon and Back

In October 1981, the woman who was pregnant with me asked Matthew to sign away his parental rights.

He did, sort of. Not in a contract but on a postcard, which would hold up five years later in court.

The postcard said that if she was making him choose between paying child support or giving up his rights, then he chose option two.

Matthew told me, later, that he’d thought she was keeping me.

And he’d thought he could visit. When I was old enough to understand what lawyers are and why they exist, it hurt my feelings that he hadn’t called one.

I would never adopt a kid or abandon one. When it was my time to be a mother, I’d need to watch my child come out of my body and never let them go. But if anything, anything came to complicate that, I would get that shit written in blood.

When Matthew found out I’d been adopted, he called on the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).

If someone eligible for membership in a tribe (Matthew) has a child (me), and removal or adoption proceedings begin, ICWA says that the tribe (Cherokee Nation) must be notified.

This allows the tribe to participate, usually to advocate for an Indian home.

A reasonable effort should be made to place the child according to this order: (1) the bio-family, (2) members of the same tribe, (3) members of a different tribe, and then (4) non-Indians.

My parents, my bio-mom, and the Utah adoption agency that had made money off me—they chose to evade that process.

But the case kept coming back to one fact, a tear in Matthew’s story that made it sometimes hard to love him. He had signed me away. Before the adoption, he’d never once had custody of me. He had never wanted it.

The lawyers cared about “the critical period” when I should have been in Matthew’s custody, during which he’d establish the right to fight for what would happen to me.

But I didn’t consider that the critical period.

To me, the critical period had been my birth.

When the woman who carried me called Mom and Dad, and they rushed to the hospital with a suitcase packed weeks before.

I asked my mom about it once, what the suitcase was for, and the answer reminded me who she was.

Everything in it, aside from one pink crocheted outfit for me, was meant for the woman who carried me.

A butter-yellow delivery gown and a matching silk robe.

Many practical gifts I was afraid to think too hard about, like ice packs and special bottles and creams, to help the woman heal.

During this period, Matthew didn’t know I was alive.

I once found a shoebox of photos in the attic. Mom and Dad had taken me to a few Utah powwows in the months before Matthew got custody. They’d taken photos of me there. I was a newborn in baby regalia, little dance outfits with sequined shawls and pink ribbon fringe and tiny moccasins.

Mom and Dad weren’t happy to hear I’d been snooping, but they did answer my questions.

The outfits had come from a mail-order catalog.

The powwows had been suggested by a Mormon Navajo lady who went to BYU with someone in my uncle’s ward.

Of course the powwows stopped when I came home the second time.

“Those people don’t want you ,” Mom said. “Those people want your case, so they can use it for a law that gives them the power to break up families. Just because of their race .”

It was in the truck with Matthew, speeding away from the people who thought they knew me, that I knew I was ready.

When I went to college, I thought, I could be anyone.

I could change my name back to Della. I could meet other American Indian kids and listen to them awhile to see if I should be saying Indian or Native American or whatever.

I could learn how to be like them, and come back to Oklahoma a little at a time.

I didn’t tell Matthew this. I knew it made him nervous, not knowing if I’d choose to see him again, but I didn’t want to be pushed.

Matthew kept apologizing for the people at the fair. “I don’t even remember who that lady was!” he said. “I hate that I did all those interviews. I mean, now that I know they didn’t change things.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s fine.”

Matthew sighed. He drummed the wheel lightly, with just his fingertips. “I appreciate that. I just like things to be good in the time we have.”

He pulled off the road and parked outside the museum gift shop. He told me to pick out something nice. “Small, though,” he said. “It’s gotta fit in that teeny tiny bag.”

He was teasing me. Back at the office supply store I’d turned down the sturdy black backpack I really could have used. I could tell he wanted me to choose the one that was more like a purse, beautiful but ridiculous. Dad was the same; it was one of the fun parts of having a girl.

At the gift shop, I found a small black pot with swirly etchings around the lip. There was a long paper tag with cursive writing, with the name of the artist and the price.

“For my dorm,” I said. In my bedroom in Utah, it would freak out my mom.

I didn’t tell Matthew that next summer I’d buy a Pendleton blanket, and one of the extra nice baskets on the top shelf, and maybe a finger-woven belt I could try to pair with a jean skirt or something.

I didn’t tell him that American Indian kids at school might ask me what town I was from, and I really hoped I’d have the confidence to say it outright.

Totally chill, like, “Tahlequah, but I grew up in Provo.”

They’d know my case, because the internet said every Indian alive felt personally invested in my fate, at least for a few months many years ago, and they’d say something like God, you’re back .

Maybe I’d move in with Matthew and my grandmother someday, just for a little while after college, or even before that on one of my school breaks if it didn’t give my parents a heart attack. My grandmother would be so happy.

Matthew drove me to the airport. We kept our goodbyes short. He dropped me off in front, just like Dad had that morning. Neither one of them had wanted to walk me to my gate.

I love you , I said, just in my head. Matthew took my new tiny backpack out of the car and lifted the straps gently over each of my shoulders, like it was my first day of school.

I love you. I’m sorry. Why wouldn’t you just pay child support? What if Grandma dies before I come back? What if I’m gay?

I didn’t say any of these things, though I felt them harder and stronger and worse than ever before. When did Matthew stop saying I love you? When did I? Why? I hugged him hard. He patted my back, his hands a little awkward.

“Your flight, Della,” Matthew said. His voice was hoarse, and it cracked under my name.

“Be safe,” he said, and got back in his car.

I flew from Tulsa to Phoenix and Phoenix to Provo. It was late when I landed. Dad waved from the driver’s seat and pressed the button to unlock my door.

I’d been overcome with missing him on my first flight back, suddenly, though I was only hours from seeing him again.

On the layover in Phoenix, I thought about how little time we had left.

I was leaving for college soon, and then I’d get married and pregnant, and then Dad and Mom would get old and die?

I would never live in their house again.

My childhood had raced by me. I went in a bathroom stall and sobbed until they called my name for late boarding.

I was still crying when the gate agent checked my ticket. She squeezed my shoulder as I passed.

“Did you have fun today?” Dad asked.

“Yep,” I said.

“Good.”

That was enough. Matthew wouldn’t be mentioned again, not for another year. Or maybe never, I thought, now that the visitation years were behind us. I wondered if Dad thought I was done seeing Matthew, that the part of his life he’d had to share with him was over.

Dad took the slow way home. He drove through the center of town and almost every window was lit up yellow.

Students walked in pairs under streetlights, sometimes holding hands.

I could be like that, I thought. In two years Ethan would be back from his mission, and he’d enroll at Brigham Young.

I could transfer there from Hollis, if Hollis didn’t work out. We could get married.

Dad looped past Pioneer Park, twice. Finally he was ready to talk again.

He asked about the summer calculus course, the one Mom wanted me to take at BYU to “get ahead of the game.” If I passed, I’d get college credit. I might even make some new friends.

He asked how I was feeling about college, if I was nervous. “BYU would have been an easier fit for you than Hollis,” he said, “in a lot of ways. But Emma, when you make up your mind about something…”

I waited. I wasn’t ready for another lecture, but this felt different. Dad touched my shoulder, like the gate agent had only a few hours before. I remembered God was always with us.

“I believe you’re up for the challenge,” Dad said.

The challenge at a place like Hollis was to stay Mormon.

The day I told my parents I wasn’t sure about BYU, that I wanted to apply to a wider pool, Mom ordered me a sterling silver CTR ring to wear on my right hand.

It was a more elegant, expensive version of the one they’d given out in Sunday school when I was six—the same green shield, the same silver letters, reminding me to Choose the Right. To live righteously.

Another stoplight. I didn’t know what to say. I was surprised and moved by his faith in me.

Dad sighed. He looked at me—briefly, before the green light—and squeezed my hand. The crush of the ring between my fingers. “Your mom and I are so proud of you.”

I’m afraid to leave you. It will never be like this again. Two hours ago in an airport, I thought about you dying someday and I cried so hard I threw up. What if I’m gay?

“Thanks, Dad.”

I wanted to tell someone about the day I’d had. I couldn’t tell Ada, or Ethan. I couldn’t tell Mom or Dad or Matthew, or my grandmother. Or the woman who’d carried me, who had chosen not to know me. Every person who loved me loved me in a certain way, as a certain person I couldn’t fully be.

Dad pulled into the garage and closed his car door gently. He motioned for me to do the same. He whispered, “She’s probably sleeping. Your mother.”

At this, he pointed toward the back of the house, as if a day in Oklahoma had made me forget who she was. That’s her, down the hall. Second bedroom on the left. Your mother.

They did this sometimes, still.

I woke in the night to the creak of my bedroom door. I kept my eyes closed. I breathed slowly in and out, soft as sleep.

I heard them at the door. I saw the warm red on the backs of my eyelids, hallway light tumbling across my blanket. They closed the door behind them, slowly, someone’s hand on the doorknob until it clicked into place. Black again.

I smelled my mother’s perfume. She had bottles of designer fragrances lined up on her dresser, but now she wore the awful cheap stuff I’d once bought her as a child.

The battered green tin, little red birds fluttering up to the rim.

My father’s scent was quiet—the kind of man you couldn’t smell at all until he pulled you in, until your face was pressed against the shoulder of his sweater.

I knew they held each other now, the two of them, because I peeked once, and that image will be in my head forever.

I watched them with my eyes closed, my parents. A breeze came in from the open window, and my blanket was soft but heavy against my cheek. They were standing at the foot of my bed, fingers woven, my mother’s head on my father’s shoulder. I was sure of it.