A Secret for a Lifetime
by Julie McGue
On a cold and cloudy February night, my twenty-six-year-old birthmother, who called herself Ann Jensen at the time, left the downtown Chicago women’s home where she’d moved with her trusted friend, Mary. Three weeks shy of her due date, Ann was having pain she assumed was labor. As directed by Catholic Charities, she reported to Lewis Memorial Maternity Hospital, a facility on the city’s south side that had previously operated as a hotel.
As was the custom back then, the doctor on call put Ann into “twilight sleep.” In recovery, my birth mother was shocked to learn the pregnancy she’d desperately hidden from family and friends resulted in the birth of twin daughters. At a little over five pounds each, my sister and I were healthy newborns.
Out in the hospital waiting room, Ann did not have a nervous husband pacing, a man who might have fingered a pocketful of celebratory cigars to pass out when the doctor informed him he was the proud father of two perfect little girls. Instead, my birthfather was several states away oblivious to Ann’s whereabouts, her wellbeing, and her due date. After refusing to marry the girl he “got in trouble,” my birthdad went about living his life. By the time my sister and I were sitting up and crawling, he’d found a new love interest and was engaged to be married.
Also absent from the maternity waiting area were my biological grandparents, people who might have studied the clock and wrung their hands while their oldest daughter labored throughout the night. Like my birthfather, my maternal grandparents lived several states away. Oblivious to Ann’s situation, they were struggling through another snowy, bitter cold Midwestern winter on the family farm where they worked with my many aunts and uncles. Had my grandparents learned about my birth mom’s unplanned pregnancy, they would have disowned her.
So, the only soul lingering in the waiting area was Ann’s longtime friend, Mary. The two met in grammar school and became fast friends. Throughout their lives they shared many secrets between them, but this one–hiding Ann’s unplanned and unwed pregnancy–was the truest test of their lasting friendship.
The labor and delivery nurse located Mary slumped against the wall in the corner of the waiting room, asleep. The nurse shook Mary’s shoulder gently and informed her that Ann’s ordeal had reached a healthy conclusion. Mary wept. And then she did what she and Ann had done every morning and evening during their months of seclusion: Mary prayed. She sent urgent pleas heavenward that this shameful chapter in Ann’s life would remain–as promised by the adoption gatekeepers at Catholic Charities–a secret for a lifetime.
While Mary prayed in the waiting room, Ann slipped out of the fog of her “twilight sleep,” and her hand went immediately to her belly. She explored its soft contours, scarcely believing that such a small space had held two babies. Even though multiples ran in her bloodline, she hadn’t expected it. Twin girls! Ann squeezed her eyes shut, hoping to stem the flow of tears, tears of relief and shame, and then she draped an arm across her face. She had a choice to make. Should she heed the advice from the Catholic Charities social worker or follow the longing in her heart? Would it be easier to surrender her parental rights if she did not view or hold her newborn daughters?
Once my sister and I were cleaned up, weighed, and swaddled tight in our pink blankets and skull caps, Ann requested we not be brought to her, thus depriving us of precious skin-to-skin mother-daughter bonding time. We remained in the sterile confines of the infant nursery. Not once did Ann venture down the long, antiseptic-scented hallway to view my sister and me through the glass windows of the infant nursery. As a result, no photos were taken of the three of us cuddling together. The usual bond and the natural attachment that occurs between a mother and her child would remain severed, unfinished for decades.
Five days after our birth, the woman who had given us life signed away her parental rights. My sister and I became wards of the state. After Ann signed the relinquishment papers, Catholic Charities never heard from her again. Three weeks elapsed before the adoption agency placed my sister and me with our new family. During this interval we were legally orphans. The Daughters of Charity and the staff at St. Vincent’s Infant Home on La Salle Street in Chicago cared for us.
Because my Catholic Charities adoption file is thin on details, there was no one to ask what happened during the first three weeks of our existence. And so, I’m left to imagine and suppose. How did we get from Lewis Memorial Maternity Hospital on the city’s south side to St. Vincent’s orphanage north of the Loop? How were we cared for there?
Part of me wonders if Catholic Charities would have entrusted the transport of two newborns, each of whom barely weighed five pounds, into the care of a pair of nurse’s aides from St. Vincent’s orphanage. But then again, why not? We were just a few more of the city’s abandoned children. Illegitimate. Born out of sin.
In the hospital nursery, I envision the nuns from St. Vincent’s unpacking two sets of warm travel gear donated by the faithful parishioners of the Archdiocese of Chicago. I’d like to think that the hospital nurses quarreled lightly with the nuns as to which set of women would feed us before our departure. I want to believe these staff nurses had developed a fondness for my twin and me, a preference even. Maybe they secretly called us “their girls” while they hummed and rocked us in the crook of their able arms. Possibly these women entertained fantasies of if-only-I-could-adopt-these-perfect-baby girls.
Once we arrived at St. Vincent’s Orphanage, we were whisked through the black enameled wrought iron gates surrounding the property. The nuns bustled us up the singular lobby elevator to the infant nursery, where I wonder if we were placed in one bassinette or two. If my sister and I were given our own cribs, did the nurses scoot our bassinettes close so we could see one another and hear each other’s cries? Besides one another, to whom did we bond during our first three weeks of life?
So many unknowns. Such unfinished business.
Throughout my life, I often wondered about Ann Jensen. Who was she? Where had she gone? Did she think about my sister and me? For years, I puzzled the circumstances surrounding my closed adoption and the missing details of those first three weeks of life. When I was forty-eight years old, I was sent for a breast biopsy. That incident thrust me into a five-year search for family medical history and background. It culminated in my sister and me reconnecting with our birth mother. The day we met was breath taking, glorious, and magical. Life changing. Because on that day, the three of us picked up where we had left off in our unfinished mother-daughter journey.
JULIE RYAN MCGUE is an American writer, a domestic adoptee, and an identical twin. Her first memoir, Twice a Daughter: A Search for Identity, Family, and Belonging (She Writes Press), released in May 2021, won multiple awards. Her collection of essays, Belonging Matters: Conversations on Adoption, Family, and Kinship (Muse Literary) releases in November 2023. Julie splits her time between northwest Indiana and Sarasota, Florida. She is currently working on the prequel to Twice a Daughter.
