The Most Dangerous Animal of All

I tried to swallow the lump that had suddenly formed in my throat.

“But then I prayed about it,” she continued, “and the Lord laid it upon my heart that this was your mother and that your daddy and I should be honest with you.”

“When I first saw the picture, I just knew it was your mother,” Loyd piped in. “I told your mama, and she just wouldn’t believe it.”

Seeing the tears that were welling in my eyes, Leona gave me a gentle squeeze.

I couldn’t believe it. After all these years, I would finally have an identity, a name that was really mine. I could feel a wave of excitement flowing through me, and I reached for my father and mother and hugged them tightly. I promised them that no matter what happened, they would always be my parents. At that moment, I had no way of knowing how much this day would alter the course of my life.

Leona explained that she had received the call on May Day. She and Cindy had been in the living room, visiting with Loyd’s mother, Evelyn, when the phone rang, and she went into the kitchen to answer it.

“Hello,” Leona said in her sweet southern voice.

“Hello. Is this Leona?” the voice on the other end of the line asked nervously.

“Yes, it is. And who is this?”

“My name is Judith Gilford, and I live in San Francisco. I believe I am your son Gary’s birth mother.”

For a few seconds, Leona couldn’t speak.

When she was able to catch her breath, she managed to say, “What makes you think that?”

“I have information from his placement file,” Judith explained. “Look, I don’t want to interfere in your lives,” she rushed on. “I just want to make the information available to Gary, to give him an identity just in case he wants to know.”

Leona listened as the woman explained some of the circumstances of her life and how she had come to give her baby up for adoption.

“I never wanted to give him up, and I’ve always wanted to find him,” Judith said just as Loyd poked his head into the room. Leona waved him away and walked into her bedroom, closing the door behind her. She listened carefully while Judith told her everything she had gone through to find her son over the past few years. Leona, always attuned to the feelings of others, couldn’t help but feel sympathy for the woman.

“Please just let me send you a package with a letter and some pictures for him,” Judith begged.

“I’ll discuss it with my husband,” Leona said. “And I’ll talk to Gary.”

Judith cut her off. “Please don’t make me any promises. I will just send the information and trust that whatever should happen will happen.”

A few days later, when Leona received the FedEx box from Judith, she turned it over and over, afraid to open it, fearing the potential it had to change all of our lives.

All the birthday parties, the skinned knees, the boo-boos she had kissed. All of the memories she had shared with me flashed through her mind. Was this some kind of cruel joke? How dare this woman intrude into her life – her son’s life – like this?

With trembling fingers, Leona opened the box. A picture clipped to a letter caught her eye. The woman who had called stared at her from the wallet-size photograph. Tears began to cloud Leona’s vision and then rolled down her cheeks. She tried as she searched the picture to convince herself that the woman looked nothing like me. But try as she might to lie to herself, the truth stared back at her from the photo.

She brought the picture to Loyd.

He held Leona’s hand as he scanned the photo.

“He sure does look like her,” Loyd said. He wanted to tell his wife that this woman could not possibly be my mother, but he knew he had to be honest.

For the next few days, they talked about nothing but this unbelievable predicament in which they suddenly found themselves. Mine had been a closed adoption. This shouldn’t have happened. Should they tell me? Should they keep this a secret? Holding hands, they prayed together, asking God to show them what to do.

Finally, one night Loyd got his answer. He turned to his wife and said, “He deserves to know who he is and then decide what he wants to do.”

Leona knew her husband was right, but she was very afraid I would get hurt. For the next week, Leona and Loyd prayed harder than ever that God would give them the strength to be unselfish, that He would help them deliver this news in just the right way.

And now I knew.

I drove the twenty-eight miles back to my house that evening in a state of shock, remembering all the times I had fantasized about what my real parents might be like and wondering from whom I had inherited my reddish hair. Because I didn’t know my real name or why my adoption birth certificate stated that I had been born in New Orleans, I had struggled with an identity crisis for most of my life. Excited and anxious to look through the package Leona had given me, I pressed my foot a little harder on the accelerator, holding the picture of the woman in my hand. I caught myself veering off the road several times because I couldn’t take my eyes off it. As I drove, I thought about my son Zach’s reaction to the photo.

“Hey, Dad, he looks just like you,” Zach had naively said, looking at the man standing next to Judith in the photo she had sent. Everyone had laughed. The man was clearly of American Indian or Hispanic heritage, but Zach had assumed that if the woman was my mother, then the man had to be my father.

When I got home, I turned on the overhead light so I wouldn’t miss a detail as I sifted through the letters in the box. Sitting in my favorite recliner, I stared at the picture of the woman who claimed to be my mother.

Her eyes.

Her nose.

Her mouth.

They were like mine.

I pulled out the letter Judith had written to all of the men she could find who had been born on my birth date in Louisiana.

Tears gathered in my eyes as I read.

In the letter, she explained that she had been fifteen and a runaway from California when I was born. She had been married to my father, but the marriage had been annulled by her mother because she was underage. Judith went on to state that she and her husband had been apprehended and sent back to California. The condition her mother had set for her daughter to eventually move back in with her was that I – two months old at the time – be given up for adoption. She said she had married again at the age of twenty-six and had another son.

I had a brother?

Then she said that she had loved me from the day I was born and that I had been with her every day since. “It would be the happiest day of my life if the phone rang and my son said to me, ‘I believe you are my mother,’” she wrote.

I read the letter over and over and then reached for the phone. As I began to dial the number she had provided, my hand began to shake, and I hung up. What would I say?

My thoughts turned to Leona. I knew how difficult it must have been for her to share this news with me. The next day was Mother’s Day, and I felt guilty even thinking about calling this woman when Leona had been such a wonderful mother to me. Throughout my life, I had spent that special day in church honoring her as she proudly wore the corsage that announced she was a mother. She had chosen to love me when she had no obligation to do so. She had happily taken me into her home and treated me as well as she had her biological child. She didn’t deserve such disloyalty.

As I sat near her in the pew at church the next morning, I felt such love for her, but as I squeezed her hand, I couldn’t stop thinking about the other woman, the one who had given birth to me when she was only fifteen years old. I couldn’t quite fathom that. I felt compassion for the young girl who had been faced with such an adult situation.

By the end of the day, I knew what I had to do. I had always believed that everything happens for a reason, and this could be no different.

When I got home, I walked into the living room and sat down in my favorite chair. Still holding the woman’s picture, I reached for the phone and began dialing. My heart was pounding as I punched in the numbers. Holding my breath, I waited.

One ring.

Two rings.

Three rings.

Then I heard a man’s voice on the answering machine. Speaking with a distinct accent, he said, “You have reached Judy Gilford and Frank Velasquez. Your call is very important to us, but we are unable to take your call at this time. Please leave your name and phone number, along with your message, and we will return your call as soon as we can.”

Disappointment raced through me. I wanted so badly to hear her voice. I hesitated for a moment.