Who certified psychic counselors? The U.S. Department of Snake Oil and Charlatans?
Serving the Cape Cod community for 35 years.
Which meant she was within driving distance from my home in Bankton.
Let me be your bridge to the past.
Before I could chicken out, I clicked on the email link and sent her a message explaining my search for my birth mom. Within thirty seconds of sending it, I got a reply:
Marin, I think I can be of great help to you. Are you free tomorrow afternoon?
I did not question why this woman was online at three in the morning. I didn’t let myself wonder why a successful psychic would have an opening so quickly. Instead, I agreed to the sixty-dollar consultation fee and printed out the driving directions she gave me.
Five hours after I’d left my house that morning, I pulled into Meshinda Dows’s driveway. She lived in a tiny house that was painted purple with red trim. She was easily in her sixties, but her hair was dyed jet black and reached her waist. “You must be Marin,” she said.
Wow, already she was one for one.
She led me into a room that was divided from the foyer with a curtain made of silk scarves. Inside were two couches facing each other across a square white ottoman. On the ottoman were a feather, a fan, and a deck of cards. The shelves in the room were covered with Beanie Babies, each sealed in a small plastic bag with a heart-shaped tag protector. They looked like they were all suffocating.
Meshinda sat down, and I followed suit. “I take the money up front,” she said.
“Oh.” I dug in my purse and pulled out three twenty-dollar bills, which she folded and stuck into her pocket.
“Why don’t we start with you telling me why you’re here?”
I blinked at her. “Shouldn’t you know that?”
“Psychic gifts don’t always work that way, hon,” she said. “You’re a little nervous, aren’t you?”
“I suppose.”
“You shouldn’t be. You’re protected. You have spirits around you,” she said. She closed her eyes and squinted. “Your…grandfather? He wants you to know he’s breathing better now.”
My jaw dropped open. My grandfather had died when I was thirteen, of complications from lung cancer. I had been terrified to visit him in the hospital and see him wasting away.
“He knew something important about your birth mother,” Meshinda said.
Well, that was convenient, since Grandpa couldn’t confirm or deny that now.
“She’s thin and has dark hair,” the psychic continued. “She was very young when it happened. I’m getting an accent…”
“Southern?” I asked.
“No, not Southern…I can’t quite place it.” Meshinda looked at me. “I’m also getting some names. Strange ones. Allagash…and Whitcomb…no, make that Whittier.”
“Allagash Whittier is a law firm in Nashua,” I said.
“I think they have information. It might have been a lawyer there who handled the adoption. I’d contact them. And Maisie. Someone named Maisie has some information, too.”
Maisie was the name of the clerk of the Hillsborough County court who’d sent me my adoption decree. “I’m sure she does,” I said. “She’s got the whole file.”
“I’m talking about another Maisie. An aunt or a cousin…she adopted a baby from Africa.”
“I don’t have an aunt or a cousin named Maisie,” I said.
“You do,” Meshinda insisted. “You haven’t met her yet.” She wrinkled up her face, as if she was sucking on a lemon. “Your birth father is named Owen. He has something to do with the law.”
I leaned forward, intrigued. Was that why I’d been attracted to the career?
“He and your birth mom have had three more children.”
Whether or not that was true, I felt a pang in my chest. How come those three got to stay, but I was given away? The old adage I’d been told over and over-that my birth parents loved me but couldn’t take care of me-had never quite rung true. If they loved me so much, why had I been dispensable?
Meshinda touched a hand to her head. “That’s it,” she said. “Nothing else coming through.” She patted my knee. “That lawyer,” she advised. “That’s the place to start.”
On the way back home, I stopped off at McDonald’s to eat something and sat outside at the human Habitrail playspace that was filled with toddlers and their caregivers. I called 411 and was connected to Allagash Whittier. By telling them I was an associate with Robert Ramirez, I was able to sweet-talk my way past the paralegals to a lawyer on staff. “Marin,” the woman said, “what can I do for you?”
On the small bench where I sat, I curled a little closer into myself, to make the conversation more private. “It’s sort of a strange request,” I said. “I’m trying to find some information about a client your firm may have had in the early seventies. It would have been a young woman, around sixteen or seventeen?”
“That shouldn’t be hard to find-we don’t get too many of those. What’s the last name?”
I hesitated. “I don’t have a last name, exactly.”
The line went silent. “Was this an adoption case?”
“Well. Yes. Mine.”
The woman’s voice was frosty. “I’d suggest you try the courthouse,” she said, and she hung up.
I clutched the cell phone between my hands and watched a little boy shriek his way down a curved purple slide. He was Asian, his mother was not. Was he adopted? One day, would he be sitting here like I was, facing a dead end?
I dialed 411 again, and a moment later was connected to Maisie Donovan, the adoption search administrator for Hillsborough County. “You probably don’t remember me,” I said. “A few months ago, you sent me my adoption decree…”
“Name?”
“Well, that’s what I’m looking for…”
“I meant your name,” Maisie said.
“Marin Gates.” I swallowed. “It’s the craziest thing,” I said. “I saw a psychic today. I mean, I’m not one of those nutcases who goes to psychics or anything…not that I have a problem with that if it’s something, you know, you like to do every now and then…but anyway, I went to this woman’s house and she told me that someone named Maisie had information about my birth mother.” I forced a laugh. “She couldn’t give me much more detail, but she got that part right, huh?”
“Ms. Gates,” Maisie said flatly, “what can I do for you?”
I bowed my head toward the ground. “I don’t know where to go from here,” I admitted. “I don’t know what to do next.”
“For fifty dollars, I can send you your nonidentifying information in a letter.”
“What’s that?”
“Whatever’s in your file that doesn’t give away names, addresses, phone numbers, birth date-”
“The unimportant stuff,” I said. “Do you think I’ll learn anything from it?”
“Your adoption wasn’t through an agency; it was a private one,” Maisie explained, “so there wouldn’t be much, I imagine. You’d probably find out that you’re white.”
I thought of the adoption decree she’d sent me. “I’m about as sure of that as I am that I’m female.”
“Well, for fifty dollars, I’m happy to confirm it.”
“Yes,” I heard myself say. “I’d like that.”
After I wrote the address where I needed to send my check on the back of my hand, I hung up and watched the children bouncing around like molecules in a heated solution. It was hard for me to imagine ever having a child. It was impossible to imagine giving one up.
“Mommy!” one little girl cried out from the top of a ladder. “Are you watching?”