CHAPTER TWO: January, 1995

Not available. All night the words echoed in my brain. Not available, not available, not available. When the phone rang the next morning, the words were still echoing in my head, making it hard to hear.

Margaret was on the line saying she had already sent another referral.

"It's a video of three kids in Volgograd. They are three, four and six years old. They are so cute and smart. You are going to love them, " Margaret crooned. " Wait till you see the video."

While I was on the phone, the doorbell rang. I tucked the portable phone under my ear and accepted an express mail package.

"I think it just arrived."

"You'll love these kids," Margaret said. "Call me after you see the video."

I turned the package over in my hands, not seeing it, not feeling it, still conscious only of those two words. Not available. No more Katya, no more Yulya, no more Vitya. The cute, blond children that had lived in my kitchen drawer and in my heart since Christmas Eve were not to be mine. I would never meet them.

Infertility is a long string of losses, and I was discovering that the adoption process is the same.

I took the photograph out of the drawer and took one last look at it. My little sweethearts. It was like they had died or something. Yet, they weren't dead. They were in that Orphanage in Nishney Novgorod and that's where they will stay.

Mark had held me tight when I told him about the video. I buried my face in his soft flannel shirt and breathed in his warm, familiar scent. Going through all we'd been through, I felt safe when he hugged me. He was tall with broad shoulders and when he hugged me, I felt out of danger, like a boat in a harbor during a storm. I could manage the reminding and reassuring duties if he could continue to hug me.

He didn't seem all that upset about losing Katya, Yulya and Vitya.

"Those kids weren't meant to be ours, Sweetie. That's all it means. Don't worry. We'll find other kids. I never felt that drawn to them anyway. Let's watch the video."

The first time through - the whole thing was only about three minutes long - I couldn't see anything but the faces of the three children in my kitchen drawer.

"Let's see it again," Mark said.

The second time, I began to see Oksana, Andrei and Yvegeny. They were dark haired and dark eyed. I began to let go of the image I had been carrying around in my brain for weeks.

My grief was my own damn fault. I had been told not to bond with the photograph and I bonded anyway. I chastised and then argued with myself. If I hadn't bonded, how else could I get on an airplane and fly across continents and oceans to retrieve three unknown children? How else could I feel like I would walk through fire if I don't bond?

Margaret had told us over and over again: "When you get your referral, if you don't feel like you could walk through fire for these kids, say no. If you can't walk through fire, they're not the right kids."

The only way I could walk through fire was to fall in love with the kids. I knew that about myself.

"One more time," Mark said. He rewound the tape in the VCR. "I like them. Look at Oksana. She looks like my sister Ellie as a kid."

Oksana earnestly stared at the camera, answered questions put to her in Russian, then she stood up and twirled around on command. "So you can tell she's not crippled," Phylly said, when I showed her the tape later.

Oksana didn't smile until the end of the video, when one of the questions caused her to break into a broad smile that lit up her whole face. The questions were in Russian so we didn't know what amused her so much but the smile transformed her.

"She is gorgeous," Mark said.

"What do you think of the boys?"

I was studying them. Andrei, the middle boy seemed shy. He didn't say much. He grinned a lot though, and nervously twisted his hands in his lap. He answered the questions very softly. Little Yvegeny just sat back in the couch and giggled.

"That little one is going to be a handful," I said.

"He looks like a little imp."

"The middle one is kind of a mystery. Hard to tell what he'll be like. I can see you with them, Mark. I can see you rolling around on the carpet with them, wrestling and laughing. Your two sons."

"And my beautiful daughter."

At the end of the video all three kids got up and left the room. Oksana was last. As Andrei went through the door, she put her hand protectively on his back and held the door open.

"Big sister takes care of them," I said.

"Who do you suppose that woman is?"

Sitting on the couch next to Oksana had been an overdressed Russian lady wearing a great deal of purplish makeup and an enormous fur hat.

"The Coordinator, I guess."

Adoptions were arranged in Russia by Russian Coordinators. I wondered if that was where our $8,000 program fee went, to fur hats for overdressed Russian ladies.

"I like the kids," Mark declared. "These are the first kids to really appeal to me. I think they are meant to be ours."

I looked at him, amazed. "You do?"

"Yep. This is it."

He had finally fallen in love. I was beginning to think it would never happen. He wasn't that excited about the Nishney Three. And he had rejected, instantly, the very first photograph the agency had sent us. The kids in the first photograph had lived in Kaleningrad. The Kaleningrad Three consisted of an older boy, a middle girl and a very young boy. We knew a bit about them. Their father died. They were taken away from their mother. They were not real orphans. That upset me. We were going to adopt children who were ripped out of their home by the government? I wondered what the mother had done to lose her children and would she have lost them if she lived here.

Margaret had responded to my probe for more details by saying off handedly, "The mother is undesirable. That usually means she is a prostitute or she has a drinking problem."

It was clear Margaret didn't want to talk about the wretched mother back in Russia, her children lost to my forever. I had to accept this. Part of the process. I filed my doubts in a big file cabinet in my mind marked "don't go there". It was getting pretty full.

"Send the picture," I told her.

Margaret had a request about The Kaleningrad Three before we hung up. "I need to know what you are going to name them."

"Don't they have Russian names?"

"Don't worry about that. Use the ones you give them for a middle name if you want to keep the Russian names later."

Names, how could I think of names? No one warned me this might happen. None of the books I read about international adoption said I might have to rename the kids on the spur of the moment. I kicked myself. I should have been keeping a list. I used to keep a list of names for horses when I was a child so that when I got a horse I would know what to name him. Why didn't I have a list for my kids? There were lots of names I liked. Why hadn't I written them down? Was I fit to be a mother? More material for the "don't go there" drawer.

"I need the names," Margaret said again.

"Umm. Paul."

What else? My mind went completely blank. I blurted out "Michelle." I forced my brain off the Beatles theme. "Christopher."

For Christopher Robin? In times of pressure, my mind turns to the Beatles and Winnie the Pooh. When Mark came home, I told him about his new family in Kaleningrad named Paul, Michelle and Christopher.

"Kaleningrad? Where the hell is that?"

"Near Lithuania, I think."

"Why did you have to name them? That's the craziest thing I ever heard."

"I don't know, Mark. For some reason Margaret wanted us to give them American names. For some form or something. Mark, come on, this could be a family for us."

"But three? I thought we wanted two."

"Margaret said two siblings are very hard to come by. The Russians take them. It's much more likely that sibling groups of three or more are released for foreign adoptions. It looks like it has to be three. Or we go to Russia twice, for two unrelated kids. You said you didn't want to do that."

"I don't. but three is so many..."

This was not going at all like I hoped it would. "You want to adopt right? This could be a family, Mark. You will look at the photo, won't you?"

Mark saw the frightened look on my face. He walked over and put his arm around me.

"I'm sorry. Right, right, right, that's how it works. Keep reminding me. Forget I said anything. Of course I want to see the picture."

The Kaleningrad Three arrived by express mail the next day. The older boy looked at the camera with a forlorn expression. He was holding a dirty yellow stuffed elephant. That pathetic, worn-out toy was the saddest thing I had ever seen. The other two children peeked out from around their big brother. The little boy had on baggy, faded purple pants. He was cross-eyed. The little girl was practically bald and lost in a horrible orange dress that was three sizes too big. Saggy green tights bunched at her ankles. She too looked cross-eyed. All three had bright spots of blue all over their faces.

At least we'd been warned about the blue spots and shaved heads. Margaret had told us that they use iodine for any cut or scrape in the orphanage. They shave the kids' heads to prevent lice.

"When the picture comes," Margaret said, "you have to look past the iodine, skin rashes and awful clothes."

I didn't realize what a challenge that would be. Plus, there were the crossed eyes, though I had read that this was a simple operation. The kids were possibly cute underneath.

I kicked myself. That wasn't the point, that wasn't the point, that wasn't the point. The point was that tonight they slept in the orphanage and Mark and I slept alone in the house we'd bought to raise a family in. The point was they might stay in the Orphanage for years if we don't adopt them. No eye operations, no parents, no new clothes, no future. I had heard that children who are not adopted live in the orphanages until they are teenagers. Then they are sent to work camps.

And here Mark and I were. Suffering because we had no children, longing for a family. We needed a family, those children needed a family. Nothing else mattered. Cute shouldn't matter.

I put the photo away until Mark came home. The next step was to say yes or no to the photograph.

I expected Mark to study the photograph in his usual methodical way and then tell me he needed time to mull it over.

He took one look at the photo and said "No."

"No? That quick?"

"I can't adopt those kids. They look awful."

"They can be cute," I said, going into my role. "Look past the surface. Remember the before and afters at the seminar? It's like looking at houses. Just because a room has awful wallpaper on it doesn't mean it will always be an awful room. It can be fixed up."

"You know I was never able to see things that way," he replied.

I did know. We looked at over 100 houses until we found one that Mark fell in love with. I could look past the hideous decorating and see the potential. But he saw things as they were. Were we not going to be able to adopt because Mark couldn't visualize a room with a different wall treatment? If I couldn't show Mark the potential in a room, how was I going to do it with a kid?

If I could get past the incredible longing for a family and examine my feelings underneath, which was very difficult, I knew I felt no rush of emotion when I opened the package. I had no spine-tingling feelings of "here is my long lost family."

As Mark was very sure he didn't want these kids, we decided to let them go. Margaret accepted our "No" without question. I worried about how it would affect our status with her. Would saying no put us lower down on the list? What about my karma. Would Buddha think I didn't really want children since I was rejecting some?

What about Mark? The Kaleningrad Three was our first referral. Would there ever be a photo he would love? At the very beginning, when we first started to consider adoption, after everything else we tried failed, he didn't want to adopt.

"How can I love a child that isn't mine?" he had said.

"You can. Trust me."

I worked hard to convince him building a family by adoption was the right thing for us to do. And now, finally, after rejecting the Kaleningrad Three and losing the Nishney Three, here were three he liked. Hallelujah!

So what if I had been more in love with the Nishney three? The fact of the matter was, I was willing to take almost any orphan. I wanted a child. Here was a child. I never had those strong feelings of this child was meant to be mine. It all seemed so random to me.

I called the agency and, for the second time, said "Yes. We like the kids from Kaleningrad."

We did get some written information with the photo, though it was hardly comprehensible. Oksana's sheet said something, in an almost unreadable scrawl, about a hyperactive kidney. What the heck was that? Andrei's said spina bifida. That worried me. They both looked perfectly healthy in the video but how to be sure?

"Margaret, can you find out more about the medicals?"

"I'll try, but you know how it is."

Yes, I do, I said to myself. Trust Margaret, trust Margaret, trust Margaret.

I set about my own research of spina bifida. I looked it up in the dictionary and asked my doctor neighbors. There was a mild version of it that is relatively common. Maybe it was nothing.

It was time for the next step. I called the pediatrician Phylly recommended months ago. Remember me, the person who called you with that strange request of reviewing a video of Russian orphans? Here I am. Amazingly, he did remember and fit me in the next day.

I borrowed a portable TV/VCR. I lugged it into the crowded waiting room. I picked a seat in the corner as far away as I could get from the mothers with their children. The mothers sat idly flipping through parenting magazines while tossing comments to their kids in bored voices.

"Hayley, stop climbing on the chair."

"Connor, don't put that in your mouth."

It was like a foreign language to me. They were inhabitants of a country much farther away than Russia.

I balanced the VCR on my lap, returning the occasional curious glance in my direction with a faint smile. Maybe they had some worries about the state of their kids' health, though they didn't show it. My worry was operating the VCR. I had been in such a rush to pick it up. I barely paid attention to how it worked.

I hoped the doctor would find nothing wrong with the kids. I hoped someday I would be one of those nonchalant mothers. Right now, nonchalance was as far away as Volgograd.

I walked in to the doctor's office. I couldn't get the machine to play. I punched all the buttons, breaking into a cold sweat, apologizing over and over.

"I'm sorry. It's borrowed. I'm so sorry. Just a minute, please."

"Are you sure it's plugged in?" he said.

"Oh. Uh, no it's not. There. Sorry."

I sat down. The doctor leaned forward, glasses on his nose, watching intently.

"I don't see anything major, although I can't be positive just from a video."

Another doctor passed by the open door and he called him in. I was a curiosity. He told me we were his first patients to bring him children from Eastern Europe.