978-1572305441

Sophie 177
for the last two years in Bucharest #1, a large orphanage in the center of
town. Marianne had seen the building on the cab ride from the airport.
It was a huge, imposing building, with large shutters and no greenery. It
had struck Marianne that it could pass for the headquarters of the secret
police. Instead it was “home” to hundreds of babies and children, most
with little hope of adoption. Marianne remembered the pictures from
TV. Each floor contained many cribs all lined up in rows. The children
lay in cots, were rarely taken out into the sunshine or out to play.
Children from the poorest families and those of gypsy origin were usually
placed at the back of the room, where they received even less attention
than those at the front, nearest the nursing station. Marianne
learned from the interpreter that the child’s mother was a gypsy who
gave up the baby soon after birth.
The next day, the interpreter brought Sophie, wrapped in a blanket,
to the apartment. Marianne was shocked when she saw her. The child
was shaking and covered in sores. Her head had been shaved in an attempt
to prevent lice, and she was still in a diaper. She could not lift her
head up and was covered in diarrhea that had leaked around the diaper.
She weighed about fifteen pounds and looked emaciated. The interpreter
asked if Marianne wanted to feed her. She handed Marianne a
giant pop bottle with an agricultural nipple on it as Sophie could not yet
chew solids. The bottle contained milk of indeterminate age and color.
Sophie had a hard time sucking, and Marianne noticed that she kept her
eyes turned to one side. Marianne tried to talk to her, but still Sophie
would not look at her.
Marianne had brought some toys for the child to play with. While
at the airport waiting for her assigned interpreter, she had talked to
other parents, who had given her advice about toys that could be used
to assess a child’s level of intelligence. Sophie was placed on the carpet,
propped up by pillows, and Marianne arranged the toys close by. But
Sophie did not play with them. She felt them, turned them around in
her hand, and brought them up close to her eyes. She was alert but very
distant. Marianne tried to relate to her, to talk to her. But Sophie, with
sores all over and shaking from head to toe, was in her own world.
Other adoptive parents had told Marianne that the “smart ones” create
another world for themselves as a protection. It would take Sophie a
long time to come out of her world, if she ever came out at all, Marianne
thought. She looked down at Sophie and said to herself, “You were exactly
what we decided not to adopt.”