Sophia coughed. “I’d like to work in an office, ma’am.”
“An office doing what?”
“Anything that doesn’t put me anywhere near a farm,” Sophia retorted in such a way that Ethel could feel the tiredness down in the young girl’s bones.
“Well, you are going to need to dream a bit bigger than that. You are at West Oak Forest, right?”
“Yes.”
“Such a prestigious school. I read about the integration in thePost. How’s that been for you?”
“Good, I’m learning a lot,” Sophia said while dropping her eyes. Ethel watched how she fidgeted with the hem of her skirt and wondered what deep struggle she was enduring.
“Always remember that education is the one thing no one can take away from you.” Ethel turned, and as she pulled open the file cabinet, she asked, “You said Clark, right? Norma and Frank?”
Sophia nodded. “With my three brothers. Walter, Karl, and Lu.”
“One kid at a time.”
Ethel flipped through the files before sliding a manila folder marked “Clark” from the cabinet. She studied the contents, closed the file, and then walked over to Sophia. “Do you pray, Sophia?”
“Sometimes.”
“Let me pray with you before we go any further.”
Ethel stood in front of the girl, took her cold, dry hands, pulled her to her feet, and prayed the Lord’s Prayer, followed by the Hail Mary.
When she finished, she said, “Now, you should probably sit back down, Sophia Clark. This could be a lot to take in at once.”
CHAPTER 41Washington, D.C., December 1965
SOPHIA
Sophia did as she was told and sat down in the ladder-back chair. A square pillow rested at the small of her back. This was the moment she had been working toward since she’d learned of Max’s origin, the fire that made sense of her nightmares, and read the stories of the Brown Babies coming to America from Germany. Her heart thundered in her chest, and she could feel heat gathering in her armpits as she opened the file folder.
There were four sheets of paper. The first one looked like a birth certificate, but it was written in German. She made out the name Schultheiß. Could that be her original last name? The next sheet was in English, an adoption petition form; and then what appeared to be an affidavit of facts. The last page was a medical form, also written in German, but in the top right corner a three-by-five photograph was attached.
Sophia had never seen a photograph of herself before the age of ten. She’d only ever seen one of herself, from the Easter Sunday when she and her brothers had dressed up in passable hand-me-down clothes and been taken to an Easter-egg hunt at a nearby church. Itwas the most fun they’d had in months, and Sophia had come away with the golden egg. The pastor of the church, a squat man with a silky voice, had taken a Polaroid picture of Sophia holding her prized egg, which he later gave her as a parting gift. But that was the only one she had, and her hands trembled slightly as she removed the paper clip, trying her best not to scratch the photograph.
She stared at her younger self without blinking. The photo was in black and white, and she wore a white bow in her hair, a dark cardigan over a ruffled blouse. A stuffed bear with floppy ears sat in her lap. Sophia took in every detail of the picture, unable to stop her bottom lip from twitching. “This isn’t me?”
“What do you mean?” Ethel stood over her.
Sophia swallowed back a sob. “She has a birthmark on her cheek. And look at her hair.” She lifted the photo up to Ethel. “This looks nothing like me.”
The girl in the photograph was not her, that she knew with every fiber in her body. She had been wrong all along. She was not one of Ethel Gathers’s precious Brown Babies after all. How foolish she had been, wasting so much time and energy on chasing a pipe dream. She had wanted some sort of explanation for her horrible life, but she had just been dealt a bad hand. Ma Deary and the Old Man were her parents. The Clarks, in all their dysfunction, were her family.
“I’m sorry for wasting your time, Mrs. Gathers.”
It was a good thing she hadn’t hung up her coat. It would be easier for her to leave without taking up any more of this woman’s day.
Mrs. Gathers took the photo out of Sophia’s hands. Her eyes drifted from the picture to Sophia and then back to the picture. Sophia noticed that her skin turned a shade paler almost instantly. The woman probably felt sorry for her.
“Why don’t we go into the kitchen for some tea.”
“I don’t want tea. I just wanted to understand—”
Mrs. Gathers covered her mouth with her hand and gasped. “I never meant for this to happen. Dear God, what have I done?”
