The Correspondent

by Virginia Evans

When I was a child your grandparents sat me down to explain that I was adopted. I was in first grade. Your Pop had come home from work and we sat down in the formal living room, which was unusual, and they explained it to me, and then they took me for an ice cream sundae in lieu of supper to smooth it all over. I was troubled by it. Of course I was, but I was something of a weird bird as a child (serious, grave, without friends, often ignored by other children) and tended toward fixating on things. I became fixated on this. It has always been my nature to see things in black and white, as you well know. I like rules. I relish living in a world that runs on laws and systems that are quite clear and declared. I think being adopted made me feel, as a child, that I did not fit inside the system. I didn’t tell a soul. My parents, knowing how it plagued me, a few years later gave me a letter that my birth mother had written before handing me over and I became obsessed with this piece of paper in a light pink envelope. I kept it in a small wooden box under my bed. For months I read it every night before sleep. I studied her script. I tried to read between the lines, between the letters, to see if I could find something maybe I’d missed. It was agonizing. I wanted my birth mother desperately, though I kept it to myself. Her name was Louisa, which I have only come to know through the Kindred membership your brother gave me for Christmas all those years back. I am enclosing the lett...