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awkward, took our son into his arms.
    “Watch his neck. Support his head,” I commanded, as if I was an expert on babies.
    My husband adjusted his hands and three nurses swarmed.
    What if something happened? What if these doctors made a mistake?
    “Stay with him!” I called out.
    “I will,” my husband said.
    “Don’t leave his side.”
    “I won’t.”
    As the door closed, I eased back into the pillows again and looked between my legs. The doctor was a woman but she behaved like a man—professional and detached.
    “Do you have children? ” I asked.

    She laughed like having a child would be the last thing she would ever do and shook her head.
    I directed my attention to the ceiling and chastised myself for being difficult and defensive and making all this worse than it was but I couldn’t help myself. I was so scared. What was happening to my son?
    And that is when it happened. I began to awaken from a lifelong slumber.
    As if time had split in half, I was back in 1963. I saw my own mother—helpless on a table. I saw myself being brutally separated from her. I felt a rush of intense emotion—shame mixed with fury.
    And then I felt myself being dragged from her by unforgiving strangers. I felt sensations of movement that were swift and certain.
    A series of jagged flashbacks took over then and flooded my senses: white light in my field of vision, laughing murmuring voices in my ears, and in my stomach there was a turn of nausea.
    While being stitched up, I began to shake. My arms and legs were out of my control.
    The doctor called out for the nurse and soon I was covered with warm blankets. I heard someone say I was in shock from giving birth and then I lost consciousness.

THREE
    THE GIFT FROM GOD
    AFTER BEING TAKEN FROM CATHERINE, I was deposited in the nursery at St. Mary’s Hospital.
    Bud and Janet got a call from their doctor, a man named Smernoff, not long after he had washed his hands of my mother.
    Although Dr. Smernoff is dead now, he is on record as saying he delivered 6,200 babies between 1929 and 1974. How many infants were taken in the way I was taken from my own mother? How many of us were given away on his advice?
     
     
    “SHE’S WAITING,” SMERNOFF told Bud on the phone, as if I was at the hospital and tapping my foot.
    According to family lore, Bud was Smernoff’s accountant. Smernoff’s daughter went to school with Bud’s younger sister and the two families were longtime friends. They went to the same cocktail parties, danced with each other’s wives, and shared stories over plates of barbeque.

    Dr. Smernoff pulled strings to get Bud and Janet off a three-year adoption waiting list. He told the Catholic agency that in his opinion, the Laucks were special people and he recommended them with no hesitation. He didn’t mention Janet’s medical problems, which included a recent surgery to remove an eleven-inch tumor from her spine, a history of hallucinations, lacerated ulcers in her stomach, and kidney failure. He didn’t talk about Bud’s financial ruin, due to Janet’s medical bills.
    The adoption was approved.
     
     
    BUD AND JANET couldn’t get to me right away. I’m not sure why the time lapsed but there is a story of how they had a bowling match to attend that had been scheduled months in advance (Bud was an accomplished bowler with trophies on the mantel of their home). I also remember hearing there was childcare to arrange for their older child—a boy named Bryan—and that there was shopping to do in order to pick up diapers, a crib, and bottles.
    Two days after I was born, they arrived at St. Mary’s and I was passed into Janet’s arms. “This one is a real handful,” the nurse warned, as if my incessant crying had gotten on her nerves.
    Janet asked after the purple welts that were spread over the top of my head. “Forceps delivery,” the nurse said. “Very stubborn baby.”
    This brief conversation became Lauck legend. I was defined as a “handful” and