Saturday night (while we were still at the beach) my cell phone rang at 2 am.  The girl on the other end sounded so young that at first I wasn’t even thinking ADOPTION!  My first instinctive thought was this is a little girl, lost in the dark.  But she said she was 17.  And she was calling from a hospital in South Carolina.  And she had just had her baby – a  girl – and she needed to find an adoptive family for her daughter.

I looked at Paul – his eyes and mouth wide open in a silent Hooray!  Behind my eyelids I was seeing that fish swimming around and around me, gold in the green water.  Paul brought me a jacket, and then a blanket, as I slipped outside to the deck chairs – because somehow being outside felt more private than being in the thin-walled hotel room.  And the whole time this girl was telling me about how her father (a Baptist preacher) had been so heartbreakingly disappointed in her, and how her family was so relieved when she decided on adoption, but how the decision about choosing a family had been put off because her grandmother was ill, and then suddenly it was time…   She had found me on IAC’s website.  Could I be there by tomorrow?  And I’m thinking there’s a lot about the conversation that seems a little strange – but on the other hand, it’s two in the morning, and of course everything is a little strange, for her as well as for me.   Mostly I’m thinking How many hours is it to South Carolina?  And I’m headed back into the room to get a pen and write down where she is, the name of the hospital, her adoption attorney’s name… and the call is dropped. 

The dropped call was really, really suspicious.  Ok, yeah, sometimes that happens with cell phones.  But I said “your attorney’s phone number” and then suddenly she wasn’t there.  And there were a few other red flags – she “didn’t want to work with IAC,” which is often the sign of a scam.  And she said her family supported her decision, but… there wasn’t anybody there with her at the hospital.  (?)  That seemed pretty damn unlikely.  But she really sounded scared, and alone.  And all of this takes such a huge leap of faith, right from the start and all the way through.  And sometimes you might be 17 and alone at 2 in the morning in a hospital and scared and sad and you might not know the phone number of your attorney and you might panic.  So I called back and left a message, and did my best to sleep, but of course it was pointless.  Paul assured me we could get to any point in South Carolina within hours with no problem.  I lay in bed for an hour or so and then we got up and went to walk on the beach and watch the sunrise.

But I knew something wasn’t right.  I waded into the water in my pajamas and cried and cried.

It’s all salt water.

Sunday morning I waited until a barely-decent hour and then called IAC to check in.  They agreed that the whole thing seemed a little suspicious, and said it would be ok to call the number back one more time, but not to expect much.  I did call again, and by then, no, I really wasn’t expecting much.  I’ve talked with them again and it seems this woman has called at least 15 IAC families since then.

The few people I’ve told about this, all had the same reaction:  a kind of disbelief and horror that anyone would do something so cruel.  For what?  Is she trying to get money somehow?  Or is it just some weird emotional game?  I don’t know and I don’t care.

All I know is I was right the first time – whoever she is, she’s lost in the dark.

And my magic fish?  Well.  He was a very, very small fish.  He was probably doing his best.