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“Someone’s got a little crush on Mia,” Lexie singsonged, and Izzy rolled her eyes and went upstairs.
But crush was, perhaps, the right term.
There’s so much wonderful about you.” She gave Izzy’s elbow a little squeeze
Izzy beamed.
it was easy for Izzy to pretend that Mia ...
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Izzy would imagine herself in the house on Winslow: lying in bed reading, perhaps, or maybe writing a poem, Mia out in the living room working late into the night.
But the piece that had transfixed Pearl was a photograph: a black-and-white print, eight by ten, of a woman on a sofa, beaming down at the
newborn in her arms. It was unmistakably Mia.
the artist was Pauline Hawthorne.
lent for the exhibit by the Ellsworth Gallery in Los Angeles.
she was focused, totally and utterly absorbed, on the infant before her. On me, Pearl thought. She was sure it was her in the photo.
Virgin and Child #1,
She had never in her life gone to bed without Mia coming to kiss her good night, but that night she did,
Izzy, however, was determined to find answers. It was clear this photograph held some secret about Mia,
Pauline Hawthorne, she learned, had died of brain cancer in 1982.
“Change doesn’t just happen,”
“It has to be planned.”
wasn’t until Izzy that the charmed row of children came to an end.
Izzy had arrived precipitously soon thereafter, making her appearance—eleven weeks early—an
She remembered Izzy curled in a glass box, a net of purple veins under salmon-colored skin.
she displayed a tenacity of will that even the doctors remarked upon. She tugged at her IV;
she uprooted her feeding tube.
they warned of a host of other problems that might arise: jaundice, anemia, vision issues, hearing loss. Mental retardation.
Heart defects. Seizures. Cerebral palsy.
Did Izzy simply not notice things, or was she going blind? Was she ignoring her mother out of stubbornness, or was she going deaf?
As time went on, the concern unhooked itself from the fear and took on a life of its own.
Every time Mrs. Richardson looked at Izzy, that feeling of things spiraling out of control coiled around her again, like a muscle she didn’t know how to unclench.
“Izzy, sit up straight,”
thinking: Scoliosis. Cere...
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resentment began to sheat...
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The sense all the children had—including Izzy—was that
she was a particular disappointment to their mother, that for reasons unclear to them, their mother resented her.
but he was glad to see her undaunted after such a terrifying start.
He delighted in her intelligence, in her spirit.
A mother should never have to give up her child.
“Bebe,”
“It’s Mia, from work. There’s something I think y...
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“I knock and knock,”
I can see that woman inside. Peeking out from behind the curtain to check if I go away.”
Pearl did not realize, nor would she for a while yet, how unusually self-possessed her mother was for someone her age, how savvy and seasoned.
‘My name is Bebe Chow, I am May Ling’s mother.’ Just like that, she hang up on me.”
“I just want to see my baby again. I think, I can talk with these McCulloughs and get them to understand. But she will not come out.”
Mr. McCullough kept repeating—“You have no right to be here. You have no right to be here”—and
she could hear her child crying from behind the locked front door.
“Listen to me. You want to fight this fight? Here’s what you do.”
Channel 9’s bouffanted local investigative journalist—standing
“We understand that you’re in the process of adopting a little girl. Are you aware her mother is fighting to regain custody?”
Mrs. McCullough slammed the door shut,
“They say people really going to get behind me,”
“Who was that?” Izzy asked, when Bebe had gone.
