Paper Dolls by Katy Goforth

I first learned about her while sitting in an Ingles grocery store parking lot. I was in town from college, and my mother needed to go to the store. She burst into tears and said, “You have another sister. I gave her up. Don’t hate me.” I thought about it for the few seconds I was given and responded, “I don’t hate you. You had a baby. It’s ok.” Then we walked into Ingles and shopped. There was no family meeting. No handwritten letter pouring out her soul. We put the makings for dinner that night in our cart while she told me about 1966, her decision, and the baby that would change my life.

If an emotion wasn’t beautiful to the outside world, then you didn’t feel it in my Southern family. Only show the happy times. It was like being a paper doll. Beautiful clothes for the world to see on the front but exposed on the backside with those beautiful clothes just barely hanging on by paper thin tabs. You shoved unwanted emotion down deep inside of your belly to burn. It’s what my mother had been taught before me, her mother before her, and so on. And it was very much like a fuel for me. As we walked the aisles and my mother shared her story, she also issued a stipulation. Rules for how to move forward with this new-found information. No talking about it. No talking with my friends, my family, and certainly not my immediate family. I felt my mother’s shame wash over the entire cereal aisle that day. I was angry, and once again I would shove it down deep and just let it burn away. I was also interested. There was someone out there who might look like me.

I went back to college, and I sat with this information. There was no deep dive into an internet search at this time. It was the late nineties after all. I did the one thing I always did when I had information that I couldn’t trust with anyone else around me. I called my big sister. She had actually been given a few more details about the baby—a name, a birthplace, a birthday. I also confided in a friend who I knew was adopted. Looking back on it, I realized this was my deep dive into the internet. For the first time in my young life, I was not accepting that Southern shame that women get labeled with so often, especially when sex is involved. My mother shouldn’t be ashamed. All she did was have a baby. And this shouldn’t bring shame on my family. It could be a joyous finding if I let it be.

I found comfort through the years talking to my friend about her adoption. I would daydream about finding the baby, but I could never move to the next stage of actually finding her. At this point in my life, I was newly married and teaching college English. I would sneak in writing prompts for my students that touched on adoption and its history in the South, but what I was really doing was finding excuses to search for more information. I knew my sister had been born in Charlotte, N.C., and she had been kept in the area until her adoption. I also knew it had been a private adoption, which could have meant that a religious organization was involved. So many complicated layers, but that burn deep inside of my belly had grown to a full-blown inferno.

In 2006, I sat outside of a Barnes and Noble waiting on the doors to open. Author Ann Fessler’s The Girls Who Went Away had finally been released. Fessler gave a voice to young single American women who were forced to give up their children. She also shared her personal story of finding her own birth mother. I carried that book around with me like some carry Bibles. I wanted to know how my mother felt. I could have asked her, but I would work up the nerve and then hesitate too long. And to be fair, she owed no one an explanation. I knew that. So, I would continue reading and highlighting and making notes in the margins of Fessler’s work. I was still no closer to finding the baby or unraveling what it would mean for my family if I ever did find her. I had started to understand the stigma and the shame that surrounded unplanned pregnancies, especially in the South. My home state of South Carolina passed the Safe Haven for Abandoned Babies Act. A mother can surrender her unharmed baby at designated safe locations without the fear of prosecution. When a mother does this, it’s often picked up as a news story that details the baby’s sex, weight, and measurements. The name of the law really says it all. Abandoned babies act. These mothers aren’t abandoning their babies. They’re making a conscious choice for the baby’s safety. That’s love.

It was the summer of 2018. That same friend who had talked to me about her adoption had been looking for her birth parents by using a DNA kit. She’d found them. I quickly called my sister, and the story spilled out so fast that I didn’t think about the repercussions. A month later I was standing in my kitchen keeping my husband company as he cooked supper, and I had a breathless and excited voicemail from my big sister. She and the baby had found each other. The fire in my belly that had pushed me forward turned into a big, heavy stone. I was terrified. In her message, my sister said she had an email exchange with Kelley. Kelley—the oldest of our trio now had a name. I scrolled through my email and opened the message. I frantically read it to my husband as he paused his cooking. My hands were shaking and big silent tears were rolling down my cheeks. She had spent the early part of her life in North Carolina, but she had spent most of her life on the California coast. I was stunned. Being from the South and knowing that Kelley was born there, I just didn’t expect her to be from the West Coast. I thought to myself, “Did she grow up with sweet tea? Did she shell peas with her granny on a porch? Does she say pecan correctly?” All of the emotion that I had been taught to stuff down deep had boiled over. I had imagined this moment since I was a young adult, but at no point had I thought past finding her. What do I do now?

My first emotion after finding Kelley was anger. Not anger at Kelley, but anger at the situation. It should be so simple. I wanted to know my sister. I knew who she was now. I should have a relationship with her. But the what ifs started to flood my mind. What if people thought less of my mom because she’d given a baby up for adoption? She had nothing to be ashamed of. I’m not even sure I would call it entirely her choice, but I knew how our small community would likely react. Social circles would shrink. Whispers at the church covered dish suppers. Judgment of my mother and my family rather than the system that had been created to take these women’s babies rather than offer the support needed to keep them. I chose to keep pushing through like I had on that fateful day in the Ingles parking lot.

Kelley and I emailed at first. These were long emails dotted with childhood and adult experiences we’d had. We dove deep from the beginning. This was when she shared that she was sick. Her condition was called Genetic Pulmonary Hypertension. I remember the day I told my husband this, and his face fell.

I asked, “What?”

He said, “Make plans to meet her now.”

So, we did. Next came the planning phone calls. A call from Kelley made me feel like I had been transported back to Thanksgiving feasts at my grandparents’ house. Cousins, siblings, grandchildren, and even friends all talking at once, and the noise being pierced frequently with genuine belly laughter. I learned about her childhood, raising her own children mostly as a single mom, and her love of animals and hairbows. She was never without her signature bow in her hair. Through our talks and emails, I learned that Kelley had been a paper doll, too. On the front side, everything was presented beautifully to the outside world, but if you flipped her over then you would get a glimpse of what she had pushed down deep inside to burn. Kelley raged against being a paper doll. That rage was inspiring to me. Calls from Kelley were familiar—a warmth. They were a piece of home.

We started to plan on her and her family coming to visit us in our hometown of Spartanburg, S.C. She wanted to see where we were from and where we grew up. My sister and I had assumed we would go to her because of her health, but she was insistent. She arrived with her husband and her youngest daughter in tow. We packed in visits to our favorite Spartanburg restaurants, Wade’s and Papa Sam’s. There was even a day trip to Charleston, S.C. to explore Fort Sumter and get some fresh seafood. My mom was able to come with us. It was wonderful and sad to watch her take in that she was spending time with the baby that she last saw in 1966. These are memories that sustain me.

We lost Kelley on February 12, 2019. I was at work, and my phone rang. It was her husband. He told me she was very sick, and it was near the end. Twelve minutes later my phone rang again. She was gone. I knew Kelley was very sick, but I still hadn’t planned on losing her. I sank to the floor of my office and all of that emotion I had proudly packed down deep just spilled out. My colleagues literally and figuratively lifted me off of the floor that day. As I was able to tell others what had happened, they too lifted me off of the floor. The judgment I had been worried about and the shame that still engulfed my mother perhaps didn’t exist in my circle. No one was waiting to weaponize the story. They were simply sorry for my loss.

July 28, 2019 would have been Kelley’s 53^rd birthday. Pushing against every emotion and anxious thought in my body, I planned a birthday celebration for Kelley along with my sister. We invited close friends that wanted to be on this journey with us and to support us. There was good food, good drink, and good company. All of the things that Kelley loved. We raised money in her name for the local humane society, and of course, everyone wore a hairbow.

This loss runs much deeper than people are ever willing to talk about—the loss of a sibling. There are so many layers to my relationship with Kelley. It started all those years ago in a grocery store parking lot. Had I caved to the small town Southern societal norms that have traditionally been assigned to women, then I would have denied myself a relationship with my sister. I would have also missed out on knowing my mother on a different level. On a level that I could relate to myself as a grown woman living the small-town Southern life. I was no longer that paper doll.

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The story behind the story:

There’s how you plan it out and how it turns out to be. Those are always two different things for me whether it’s my life or my writing. The words build in my brain until they spill out on paper. I can’t physically hold it in anymore. I never chip away at any story. One day it overflows. It is only once it’s all down that I can go back and work with it. Hone it.  

Writing about my sister, Kelley, was no different. I was a young adult when my mom told me about giving her up for adoption. Finding her one day was always knocking around in my head. 

We found her. I gained a sister, a brother-in-law, two nieces, and a nephew. Then we lost her. To say I was devastated is an understatement. No one talks about sibling grief much, but it slams into your body like all grief does. I thought I would try to write about it and see if it could help. It did. I hope Kelley is proud of me. I sure do miss her. 

“Paper Dolls” was previously published in Montana Mouthful.

Header by Matthew Henry on Unsplash.