A teenager giving birth with only her sister at her bedside, under the cover of night and non-disclosure agreements, in a town two hours away from home—I can’t even fathom.
“My mom showed up a few hours later, you had already been taken away by someone with the adoption agency.” Cheyenne wipes at her cheek. “I don’t know, the next few days are a blur. With the hormones and trying to suppress my milk, there’s not much I remember other than sleeping and crying a lot.” With a resigned sigh, she continues. “My mom filled out the birth certificate paperwork and I would suspect she left out Miguel’s name so that if it ever leaked nobody could go digging.”
The secrecy. The cover-up. And the two kids, who weren’t much more than babies themselves, at the center of the drama unfolding around them without the power to stop any of it. I don’t know what kind of story I expected to hear about how I came into the world, but it definitely wasn’t this.
“Let me show you one happy thing that happened that day,” Cheyenne says, voice soft, smile warm.
She moves across the room and retrieves a small picture frame from one of the bookshelves.
I take it from her as she says, “I got to hold you.”
No larger than a four by six, the image is grainy and slightly out of focus. It’s taken from too great a distance to make out any nuanced details and the camera flash combined with the dim lighting in the delivery room has left a light flare in one corner of the image. Yet, I see a teenage Cheyenne, face turned away from the camera, gazing down at the newborn baby cradled in her arms.
Me.
“It was only for a few minutes, but you opened your eyes and looked at me and…” Her voice trails off as she begins to cry. I run my fingertips over the glass. “My God, I saw it clear as day even then, you look just like your father.” She laughs, voice thick with emotion. “I don’t think he believed me before today.”
I look over at Miguel who stares back at me, glassy-eyed but content like he’s come face to face with a miracle.
“This is the only picture you’ve ever had of me?”
You can’t even see my face in this picture. I’m nothing but a tiny swaddled blob cradled against Cheyenne’s chest.
Miguel—for more than two decades he’s been told that his first daughter looked just like him, yet he never saw it for himself until now.
He flashes an affectionate grin and a wink at his wife. “Yeah, I had to take her word for it.”
For the past twenty-two years they’ve had nothing but this single blurry photo to remember me by. This photo that they’ve preserved, framed and put on display in their home alongside countless other family photos.
“A few minutes after Winona snapped this picture, a woman showed up and took you away. I’m assuming your parents took you home sometime after that.”
I know the story from here. “They said they picked me up from a hospital in Phoenix a couple days after I was born.”
A heavy pause settles between us, both our gazes fixed on the photo in my lap.
“And you’ve had a good life?” Her question comes out quiet, a little broken, but eager—a mother desperate to know that her child ended up in a good home.
I turn to Connor who hasn’t said much but remains strong and steady at my side. His face is a display of pure adoration and pride behind a lens of unshed tears. I squeeze his hand and the dip of his chin in reply says,I’ve got you.
“I’ve had a great life,” I say.
Cheyenne’s smile is relief and curiosity wrapped into one. “Will you show us pictures?”
Chapter Thirty-Six
THEY’VE BEEN WAITING FOR HER
Connor
Gretchen’s phone comes out,as does mine, and we begin to mine our camera rolls and our social media accounts as well as her family’s profiles to find photos to share with Cheyenne and Miguel.
One look at the handful of pre-teen and teenage Gretchen pictures we find on her mom’s profile and it wouldn’t take an expert to see the Ortega siblings’ resemblance.
When we pulled up to this house yesterday and Gretchen spotted the tricycle and sidewalk chalk, she was nearly scared away altogether.
Imagine if she had missed out onthis.
Teenage parents who managed to overcome all odds. Despite her parents’ strict forbiddance to the contrary, when Cheyenne moved back to the reservation after Gretchen’s birth, she remained in contact with Miguel via secret messages and phone calls until she graduated high school and made the decision to come to Flagstaff for college. Her parents cut her off entirely at that point. Miguel’s family, however, took her in like one of their own. Fouryears later, they were married. Two years after that, Miguel Junior was born and three more kids came along over the next several years.
