So the church filled the gap.
Birthing centers was what the archbishop of Dublin labeled them, but they were little more than dumping places, like the one he’d just left. Each was run by nuns—not caring souls like back in Zlatna, but difficult women who treated the expectant mothers in their charge like criminals.
Women were forced to do demeaning labor up to and after giving birth, working in horrid conditions for little or no pay. Some were beaten, others starved, the majority mistreated. To the Church they were sinners, and forced repentance was their only path to salvation. Most, though, were mere peasant girls who could ill afford to raise a child. Some were the other side of illicit relationships that the fathers either did not acknowledge or wished to keep private. Others were wives who had the ill fortune to become pregnant against their husbands’ wishes. The common denominator was shame. Not a one of them wanted to bring attention to herself, or to her family, for the sake of an unwanted child.
After birth, the babies would stay at the centers for a year, maybe two, being slowly weaned from their mothers—a little less time together each day. The final notice came only the night before. An American couple would arrive the following morning. Only Catholics were allowed the adoption privilege, and they had to agree to raise the child in the Church and not publicize where he or she came from. A cash donation to the Sacred Heart Adoption Society, the organization created to run the project, was appreciated but not required. The children could be told they were adopted, but the new parents were asked to say that the natural parents had died. Most of the birth mothers wanted it that way—the hope being that the shame of their mistake would pass in time. No one needed to know they’d given a child away.
Michener recalled vividly the day he’d visited the center where he was born. The gray limestone building sat in a wooden glen, a place called Kinnegad, not far from the Irish Sea. He’d walked through the deserted building, imagining an anguished mother sneaking into the nursery the night before her baby would leave forever, trying to muster the courage to say goodbye, wondering why a church and a God would allow such torment. Was her sin that great? If so, why wasn’t the father’s equal? Why did she bear all the guilt?
And all the pain.
He’d stood before a window on the upper floor and stared down at a mulberry tree. The only breach of the silence had come from a torrid breeze that echoed across the empty rooms like the cries of infants who’d once languished there. He’d felt the gut-wrenching horror as a mother tried to catch a final glimpse of her baby being carried to a car. His birth mother had been one of those women. Who she was, he would never know. Rarely were the children given surnames, so there was no way to match child to mother. He’d only learned the little bit he knew about himself because of a nun’s faded memory.
More than two thousand babies left Ireland that way, one of them a tiny infant boy with light brown hair and bright green eyes whose destination was Savannah, Georgia. His adoptive father was a lawyer, his mother devoted to her new son. He grew up on the tidewaters of the Atlantic in an upper-middle-class neighborhood. He’d excelled in school and become a priest and a lawyer, pleasing his adoptive parents enormously. He’d then gone to Europe and found comfort with a lonely bishop who’d loved him like a son. Now he was a servant to that bishop, a man risen to pope, part of the same Church that had failed so miserably in Ireland.
He’d loved his adoptive parents dearly. They fulfilled their end of the bargain by always telling him that his natural parents had been killed. Only on her deathbed had his mother told him the truth—a confession by a sainted woman to her son, the priest, hoping both he and her God would forgive her.
I’ve seen her in my mind for years, Colin. How she must have felt when we took you away. They tried to tell me it was for the best. I tried to tell myself it was the right thing. But I still see her in my mind.
He hadn’t known what to say.
We wanted a baby so bad. And the bishop told us your life would have been hard without us. No one would care for you. But I still see her in my mind. I want to tell her I’m sorry. I want to tell her that I raised you well. I loved you as she would have. Maybe then she could forgive us.
But there was nothing to forgive. Society was to blame. The Church was to blame. Not the daughter of a south Georgia farmer who couldn’t have a child of her own. She’d done nothing wrong, and he’d fervently pleaded with God to grant her peace.
He rarely thought about that past anymore, but the orphanage had brought it all back. The smell from its fetid air still lingered, and he tried to rid the stench with the cold wind from a downed window.
Those children would never enjoy a trip to America, never experience the love of parents who wanted them. Their world was limited within a gray retaining wall, within an iron-barred building equipped with no lights and little heat. There they would die, alone and forgotten, loved only by a few nuns and an old priest.
SIXTEEN
Michener found a hotel away from the Pia¸ta Revolu¸tiei and the busy university district, choosing a modest establishment near a quaint park. The rooms were small and clean, filled with art deco furnishings that looked out of place. His came with a washbasin that supplied surprisingly warm water, the shower and toilet shared down the hall.
Perched beside the room’s only window, he was finishing off a pastry and a Diet Coke he’d bought to tide him over until dinner. A clock in the distance banged out chimes for five P.M.
The envelope Clement had given him lay on the bed. He knew what was expected of him. Now that Father Tibor had read the message, he was to destroy it, without reading its contents. Clement trusted him to do as instructed, and he’d never failed his mentor, though he’d always believed his relationship with Katerina a betrayal. He’d violated his vows, disobeyed his church, and offended his God. For that, there could be no forgiveness. But Clement had said otherwise.
You think you’re the only priest to succumb?
That doesn’t make it right.
Colin, forgiveness is the hallmark of our faith. You’ve sinned and should repent. But that doesn’t mean throwing your life away. And was it that wrong, anyway?
He could still recall the curious look he’d given the archbishop of Cologne. What was he saying?
Did it feel wrong, Colin? Did your heart say it was wrong?
The answer to both questions then, and now, was no. He’d loved Katerina. It was a fact he could not deny. She’d come to him at a time, just after his mother’s death, when he was tangling with his past. She’d traveled with him to that birthing center in Kinnegad. Afterward, they’d walked the rocky cliffs overlooking the Irish Sea. She’d held his hand and told him that his adoptive parents had loved him and he was lucky to have two people who cared that much. And she was right. But he couldn’t rid the thoughts of his birth mother from his mind. How could societal pressure be so great that women willingly sacrificed their babies in order to make a life for themselves?
Why should that ever be necessary?
He drained the rest of the Coke and stared again at the envelope. His oldest and dearest friend, a man who’d been there for him half his life, was in trouble.