The Martian Child Read online

  The Martian Child

  David Gerrold

  From the Sept. 94 issue of Magazine of Fantasy & Science

  (r) copyright 1994, by David Gerrold. All rights reserved.

  David Gerrold, CIS: 70307,544

  Nebula and Hugo Awards winner

  THE MARTIAN CHILD

  by David Gerrold

  Toward the end of the meeting, the caseworker remarked, "Oh — and one more thing. Dennis thinks he's a Martian."

  "I beg your pardon?" I wasn't certain I had heard her correctly. I had papers scattered all over the meeting room table — thick piles of stapled incident reports, manila-foldered psychiatric evaluations, Xeroxed clinical diagnoses, scribbled caseworker histories, typed abuse reports, bound trial transcripts, and my own crabbed notes as well: Hyperactivity. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Emotional Abuse. Physical Abuse. Conners Rating Scale. Apgars. I had no idea there was so much to know about children. For a moment, I was actually looking for the folder labeled Martian.

  "He thinks he's a Martian," Ms. Bright repeated. She was a small woman, very proper and polite. "He told his group home parents that he's not like the other children — he's from Mars — so he shouldn't be expected to act like an Earthling all the time."

  "Well, that's okay," I said, a little too quickly. "Some of my best friends are Martians. He'll fit right in. As long as he doesn't eat the tribbles or tease the feral Chtorran."

  By the narrow expressions on their faces, I could tell that the caseworkers weren't amused. For a moment, my heart sank. Maybe I'd said the wrong thing. Maybe I was being too facile with my answers.

  — The hardest thing about adoption is that you have to ask someone to trust you with a child.

  That means that you have to be willing to let them scrutinize your entire life, everything: your financial standing, your medical history, your home and belongings, your upbringing, your personality, your motivations, your arrest record, your IQ, and even your sex life. It means that every self-esteem issue you have ever had will come bubbling right to the surface like last night's beans in this morning's bath tub.

  Whatever you're most insecure about, that's what the whole adoption process will feel like it's focused on. For me, it was that terrible familiar feeling of being second best — of not being good enough to play with the big kids, or get the job, or win the award, or whatever was at stake. Even though the point of this interview was simply to see if Dennis and I would be a good match, I felt as if I was being judged again. What if I wasn't good enough this time?

  I tried again. I began slowly. "Y'know, you all keep telling me all the bad news — you don't even know if this kid is capable of forming a deep attachment — it feels as if you're trying to talk me out of this match." I stopped myself before I said too much. I was suddenly angry and I didn't know why. These people were only doing their job.

  And then it hit me. That was it — these people were only doing their job.

  At that moment, I realized that there wasn't anyone in the room who had the kind of commitment to Dennis that I did, and I hadn't even met him yet. To them, he was only another case to handle. To me, he was… the possibility of a family. It wasn't fair to unload my frustration on these tired, overworked, underpaid women. They cared. It just wasn't the same kind of caring. I swallowed my anger.

  "Listen," I said, sitting forward, placing my hands calmly and deliberately on the table. "After everything this poor little guy has been through, if he wants to think he's a Martian — I'm not going to argue with him. Actually, I think it's charming. It's evidence of his resilience. It's probably the most rational explanation he can come up with for his irrational situation. He probably feels alienated, abandoned, different, alone. At least, this gives him a reason for it. It lets him put a story around his situation so he can cope with it. Maybe it's the wrong explanation, but it's the only one he's got. We'd be stupid to try to take it away from him."

  And after I'd said that, I couldn't help but add another thought as well. "I know a lot of people who hide out in fantasy because reality is too hard to cope with. Fantasy is my business. The only different is that I write it down and make the rest of the world pay for the privilege of sharing the delusion. Fantasy isn't about escape; it's a survival mechanism. It's a way to deal with things that are so much bigger than you are. So I think fantasy is special, something to be cherished and protected because it's a very fragile thing and without it, we're so defenseless, we're paralyzed.

  "I know what this boy is feeling because I've been there. Not the same circumstances, thank God — but I know this much, if he's surrounded by adults who can't understand what he really needs, he'll never have that chance to connect that everyone keeps talking about." For the first time I looked directly into their eyes as if they had to live up to my standards. "Excuse me for being presumptuous — but he's got to he with someone who'll tell him that it's all right for him to be a Martian. Let him be a Martian for as long as he needs."

  "Yes. Thank you," the supervisor said abruptly. "I think that's everything we need to cover. We'll be getting back to you shortly."

  My heart sank at her words. She hadn't acknowledged a word of what I'd said. I was certain she'd dismissed it totally. I gathered up all my papers. We exchanged pleasantries and handshakes, and I wore my company smile all the way to the elevator. I didn't say a word, neither did my sister. We both waited until we were in the car and headed back toward the Hollywood Freeway. She drove, guiding the big car through traffic as effortlessly as only a Los Angeles real estate agent can manage.

  "I blew it," I said. "Didn't I? I got too… full of myself again."

  "Honey, I think you were fine." She patted my hand.

  "They're not going to make the match," I said. "It would be a single parent adoption. They're not going to do it. First they choose married couples, Ward and June. Then they choose single women, Murphy Brown. Then, only if there's no one else who'll take the kid, will they consider a single man. I'm at the bottom of the list. I'll never get this kid. I'll never get any kid. My own caseworker told me not to get my hopes up. There are two other families interested. This was just a formality, this interview. I know it. Just so they could prove they'd considered more than one match." I felt the frustration building up inside my chest like a balloon full of hurt. "But this is the kid for me, Alice, I know it. I don't know how I know it, but I do."

  I'd first seen Dennis's picture three weeks earlier; a little square of colors that suggested a smile in flight.

  I'd gone to the National Conference of the Adoptive Families of America at the Los Angeles Airport Hilton. There were six panels per hour, six hours a day, two days, Saturday and Sunday. I picked the panels that I thought would be most useful to me in finding and raising a child and ordered tapes — over two dozen — of the sessions I couldn't attend in person. I'd had no idea there were so many different issues to be dealt with in adoptions. I soaked it up like a sponge, listening eagerly to the advice of adoptive parents, their grown children, clinical psychologists, advocates, social workers, and adoption resource professionals.

  But my real reason for attending was to find the child.

  I'd already been approved. I'd spent more than a year filling out forms and submitting to interviews. But approval doesn't mean you get a child. It only means that your name is in the hat. Matching is done to meet the child's needs first. Fair enough — but terribly frustrating.

  Eventually, I ended up in the conference's equivalent of a dealer's room. Rows of tables and heart-tugging displays. Books of all kinds for sale. Organizations. Agencies. Children in Eastern Europe. Children in Latin America. Asian children. Children with special needs. Photo-listings, like real-estate albums. Turn the pages, look at the eyes, the smiles, the
needs. "Johnny was abandoned by his mother at age three. He is hyperactive, starts fires, and has been cruel to small animals. He will need extensive therapy…." "Janie, age 9, is severely retarded. She was sexually abused by her stepfather, she will need round-the-clock care…." "Michael suffers from severe epilepsy…." "Linda needs…" "Danny needs…" "Michael needs…" So many needs. So much hurt. It was overwhelming.

  Why were so many of the children in the books "special needs" children? Retarded. Hyperactive. Abused. Had they been abandoned because they weren't perfect. or were these the leftovers after all the good children were selected? The part that disturbed me the most was that I could understand the emotions involved. I wanted a child, not a case. And some of the descriptions in the book did seem pretty intimidating. Were these the only kind of children available?

  Maybe it was selfish, but I found myself turning the pages looking for a child who represented an easy answer. Did I really want another set of needs in my life — a single man who's old enough to be considered middle-aged and ought to be thinking seriously about retirement plans?

  This was the most important question of all. "Why do you want to adopt a child?" And it was a question I couldn't answer. I couldn't find the words. It seemed that there was something I couldn't write down.

  The motivational questionnaire had been a brick wall that sat on my desk for a week. It took me thirty pages of single-spaced printout just to get my thoughts organized. I could tell great stories about what I thought a family should be, but I couldn't really answer the question why I wanted a son. Not right away.

  The three o'clock in the morning truth of it was a very nasty and selfish piece of business.

  I didn't want to die alone. I didn't want to be left unremembered.

  All those books and TV scripts… they were nothing. They used up trees. They were exercises in excess. They made other people rich. They were useless to me. They filled up shelves. They impressed the impressionable. But they didn't prove me a real person. They didn't validate my life as one worth living. In fact, they were about as valuable as the vice-presidency of the United States.

  What I really wanted was to make a difference. I wanted someone to know that there was a real person behind all those words. A dad.

  I would lie awake, staring into the darkness, trying to imagine it, what it would be like, how I would handle the various situations that might come up, how I would deal with the day-to-day business of daddying. I gamed out scenarios and tried to figure out how to handle difficult situations.

  In my mind, I was always kind and generous, compassionate and wise. My fantasy child was innocent and joyous, full of love and wide-eyed wonder, and grateful to be in my home. He was an invisible presence, living inside my soul, defying reality to catch up. I wondered where he was now, and how and when I would finally meet him — and if the reality of parenting would be as wonderful as the dream.

  — But it was all fantasyland. The books were proof of that. These children had histories, brutal, tragic, and heart-rending.

  I wandered on to the next table. One of the social workers from the Los Angeles County Department of Children's Services had a photo book with her. I introduced myself, told her I'd been approved — but not matched. Could I look through the book? Yes, of course, she said. I turned the pages slowly, studying the innocent faces, looking for one who could be my son. All the pictures were of black children, and the county wasn't doing transracial adoptions anymore. Too controversial. The black social workers had taken a stand against it — I could see their point — but how many of these children would not find homes now?

  Tucked away like an afterthought on the very last page was a photo of the only white child in the book. My glance slid across the picture quickly, I was already starting to close the album — and then as the impact of what I'd seen hit me, I froze in mid-action, almost slamming the book flat again.

  The boy was riding a bicycle on a sunny tree-lined sidewalk; he was caught in the act of shouting or laughing at whoever was holding the camera. His blond hair was wild in the wind of his passage, his eyes shone like stars behind his glasses, his expression was raucous and exuberant.

  I couldn't take my eyes off the picture. A cold wave of certainty came rolling up my spine like a blast of fire and ice. It was a feeling of recognition. This was him — the child who'd taken up permanent residence in my imagination! I could almost hear him yelling, "Hi, Daddy!"

  "Tell me about this child," I said, a little too quickly. The social worker was already looking at me oddly. I could understand it. My voice sounded odd to me too. I tried to explain. "Tell me. Do you ever get people looking at a picture and telling you that this is the one?"

  "All the time," she replied. Her face softened into an understanding smile.

  His name was Dennis. He'd just turned eight. She'd just put his picture in the book this morning. And yes, she'd have the boy's caseworker get in touch with my caseworker. But… she cautioned… remember that there might be other families interested too. And remember, the department matches from the child's side.

  I didn't hear any of that. I heard the words, but not the cautions.

  I pushed hard and they set up a meeting to see if the match would work. But they cautioned me ahead of time — "this might not be the child you're looking for. He's classified as 'hard-to-place. He's hyperactive and he's been emotionally abused and he may have fetal alcohol effects and he's been in eight foster homes, he's never had a family of his own…."

  I didn't hear a word of it. I simply refused to listen. The boy in the picture had grabbed my heart so completely that I'd suddenly expanded all my definitions of what I was willing to accept.

  I posted messages on CompuServe asking for information and advice on adoption, on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, on emotional abuse recovery, on everything I could think of — what were this child's chances of becoming an independent adult? I called the Adoption Warm Line and was referred to parents who'd been through it. I hit the bookstores and the libraries. I called my cousin, the doctor, and he faxed me twenty pages of reports. And I came into the meeting so well-papered and full of theories and good intentions that I must have looked the perfect jerk.

  And now… it was over.

  I leaned my head against the passenger side window of my sister's car and moaned. "Dammit. I'm so tired of being pregnant. Thirteen months is long enough for any man! I've got the baby blues so bad, I can't even go to the supermarket anymore. I find myself watching other people with their children and the tears start welling up in my eyes. I keep thinking 'Where's mine?"

  My sister understood. She had four children of her own, none of whom had ended up in jail; so she had to have done something right. "Listen to me, David. Maybe this little boy isn't right for you —"

  "Of course he's right for me. He's a Martian."

  She ignored the interruption. "And if he isn't right, there'll be another child who is. I promise you. And you said it yourself that you didn't know if you could handle all the problems he'd be bringing with him."

  "I know — it's just that…I feel like — I don't know what I feel like. This is worse than anything I've ever been through. All this wanting and not having. Sometimes I'm afraid it's not going to happen at all."

  Alice pulled the car over to the curb and turned off the engine. "Okay, it's my turn," she said. "Stop beating yourself up. You are the smartest one in the whole family — but sometimes you can be awfully stupid. You are going to be a terrific father to some very lucky little boy. Your caseworker knows that. All of those social workers in that meeting saw your commitment and dedication. All that research you did — when you asked about the Apgar numbers and the Conners scale, when you handed them that report on hyperactivity, which even they didn't know about — you impressed them."

  I shook my head. "Research is easy. You post a note on CompuServe, wait two days, and then download your e-mail."

  "It's not the research," Alice said. "It's the fact that you d
id it. That demonstrates your willingness to find out what the child needs so you can provide it."

  "I wish I could believe you," I said.

  She looked deeply at me. "What's the matter?"

  "What if I'm really not good enough?" I said. "That's what I'm worried about — I can't shake that feeling."

  "Oh, that — " she said, lightly. "That's normal. That's the proof that you're going to do okay. It's only those parents who don't worry who need to."

  "Oh," I said. And then we both started laughing.

  She hugged me then. "You'll do fine. Now let's go home and call Mom before she busts a kidney from the suspense."

  Two centuries later, although the calendar insisted otherwise, Ms. Bright called me. "We've made a decision. If you're still interested in Dennis, we'd like to arrange a meeting — " I don't remember a lot of what she said after that; most of it was details about how we would proceed; but I remember what she said at the end. "I want to tell you the two things that helped us make the decision. First, all that research you did shows that you're committed to Dennis's needs. That's very important in any adoption, but especially in this one. The other thing was what you said at the end of the meeting — about understanding his need to be a Martian. We were really touched by your empathy for his situation. We think that's a quality that Dennis is going to need very much in any family he's placed in. That's why we decided to try you first."

  I thanked her profusely; at least, I think I did; I was suddenly having trouble seeing. and the box of tissues had gone empty.

  I met Dennis three days later, at the Johnson Group Home in Culver City. He was one of six children living-at the facility; four boys, two girls. Because the caseworkers didn't want him to know that he was being auditioned, I would be introduced as a friend of the group home parents.

  The child who came home from school was a sullen little zombie, going through the motions of life. He walked in the door, walked past me with no sign of recognition, and headed straight to his room. I said, "Hi." He grunted something that could have been "H'lo" and kept on going. For a moment, I felt somehow cheated. I recognized him, why hadn't he recognized me? And then I had to remind myself with a grin that I was the grownup, not him. But, after a bit, he came out from his retreat and asked me to play electric hockey.