Off Balance: A Memoir (3 page)

I took another look at the photos, took a deep breath, and called my parents in Houston.

“Hello?” Mama answered groggily.

“Did you give up a baby for adoption in 1987?” I blurted out. I knew I caught her by complete surprise and gave her a morning wake-up call she’d never forget, but sitting in my car, in the rain outside the post office, I needed answers.

Silence.

I felt a strange combination of emotions whirling out of control. I looked at my belly, my unborn baby, while images of my own childhood raced through my head. My parents were devoted to me and worked tirelessly to provide me with everything they possibly could. They wanted me to have every opportunity in life. But what I longed for most in my early childhood was a bigger family—brothers and sisters. The birth of my sister Christina in 1989 was one of the happiest days of my life. I remember Mama bringing her home from the hospital and how everything instantly seemed sweeter. A baby sister—she was everything to me. We did everything together and today remain the closest of friends. How could it be that Mama had another baby before Christina? Another sister? This didn’t make any sense.

“Mama, you have to tell me—is it true?” I pleaded.

“Yes, it’s true,” she said quietly in a voice I hardly recognized. I had been so close with my mother my entire life and truly thought that I knew everything about her. I suddenly felt a distance from her, and I didn’t like it one bit. I couldn’t understand how or why she would keep this from me and Christina. I’d expect something like this from my father, who is a born salesman and a master at gently twisting the truth when it suits his needs. He never had a real need to lie outright, since he could wrap you up in his stories in a heartbeat. What he omitted was oftentimes more telling and more important than what he actually said. But
not
my mother. Mama was a straight shooter, honest to the core. Or at least, that’s the Mama I knew.

“How could you have kept this from me?” I cried into the phone, both of us knowing there was no possible answer that would
satisfy me. Tears flowed down my face; the floodgates had opened and I couldn’t stop. I was a complete mess.

I heard my mother crying on the other end of the phone, too. Mama has always been my rock and confidante, and her pain has always been my pain. But at that moment, I felt a total disconnect, which made me feel confused, angry, and alone.

I had so many questions, so few answers. My emotions were running in every direction, moving so quickly I could barely keep up. The raindrops hit the car roof like little metal hammers.

I felt paralyzed, retracing the steps of my life. Every photo ever taken, every holiday spent, all of our childhood memories—there should’ve been
three
sisters. My life reshuffled, restructured in a matter of minutes.

Just like that, with the rip of an envelope, I had a sister and her name was Jennifer. She was born October 1, 1987, the day after my birthday. We are exactly six years and one day apart.

Jennifer would have been the
middle
sister. Why was she given up for adoption when Christina and I were allowed to stay?

Jennifer had provided contact information, and I was tempted to call her right away, but first I had to learn more. Anyway, I was in no mental state to talk at that point.

“I wanted to tell you, and I almost did many times. I just couldn’t find the words,” said Mama.

I was disappointed for so many reasons, but most of all I felt betrayed that she had kept this from me all these years. She had been the one I could trust and the one I relied on to always tell me the truth. I felt angry, sad, deceived, and vulnerable. I had always been open with Mama and confided in her things I have never shared with anyone else. And prior to receiving Jennifer’s letter, I had thought she had done the same with me.

Even though my mother had kept this from me, at least I was able to communicate with her. As for my father, I couldn’t bring myself to speak to him for several weeks; I knew, deep down, that
he was likely responsible for how things were handled, or mishandled. After all, he had played a key role in virtually all the most painful moments in my life up to then.

My father was not a man of the modern age, and even though he loved the United States, he was very much an old-school Romanian. As a father and husband, he ruled our house with an iron fist. Decisions were made by him, obeyed by us, and explained by nobody. To question my father’s reasoning as a child was invitation for punishment, and as an adult was invitation for outbursts.

Starting with my teenage years, I had clashed with my father many times but had never really been angry with my mother, not in this way. I always felt sorry for my mother; she had such a difficult marriage and wasn’t treated the way I believed a wife should be treated—with love and respect.

My home life throughout my childhood was turbulent, at best. Tata’s rage and temper tantrums took a toll on my family. We often found ourselves hiding in separate rooms. I can barely recall a single holiday when my father didn’t make a scene or create some kind of chaos. We were
always
walking on eggshells. As a child, I never understood his rage, and I still struggle to understand why he did such horrible things to the family he was supposed to love.

But things had started to soften between my father and me at the time I received Jennifer’s package. We still clashed on many issues, but his battle with a rare form of eye cancer had significantly shifted the dynamics of our relationship. He took a big leap when he allowed himself to get emotional and melancholy in my presence. However, all the old feelings of frustration and alienation returned when I discovered that he and my mother had kept this huge secret from me for twenty years.

Despite being physically weakened by the cancer treatment, my father’s retelling of Jennifer’s birth was matter-of-fact and decidedly old-school.

“You must remember, Dominique, we were very poor, struggling
to survive and put food on the table. When she was born, the doctors told me that we wouldn’t be able to afford her medical bills. I saw her, and she was born with no legs. We had no money and no insurance. We could barely take care of ourselves and you.”

No legs?! What does that mean, no legs?
I thought. My father had a knack for embellishing, so I never quite knew what to believe.

“That’s what I remember.”

And that was it. Nothing more. I’m sure the finer details after twenty years in the vault were a little fuzzy, but I expected more—something, anything. I needed more of the story, more pieces to a puzzle that was becoming more confusing with each new detail, but my father had said his piece and offered no more.

Once again, it was my mother who tried to help me understand.

“I was given an ultrasound,” she began. “It was the only ultrasound of my entire pregnancy. We had no insurance and I had not even seen a doctor prior to delivery. I saw the way the technicians looked at the ultrasound, and I knew something was wrong, but they would not say a word, and I left the clinic with no one ever explaining what they saw. I remember feeling scared and uneasy, but tried not to worry. Months later, when I went into the hospital to deliver the baby, they took me to the operation room to perform a C-section. I was without your father, and it seemed as though they put me to sleep with anesthesia almost immediately. All I remember was waking up in a fog—and with no new baby. Your father said that our little girl was born with no legs. I never saw my baby. I never held her, never touched her, never even smelled her. I desperately wanted to, but your father told me we had to give her up and that was that. We never looked back because it was too painful. You know your father—once a decision is made, that’s the end of it.

“He never asked me how I felt after all of that happened. It was such a horrible time in my life. After I came back from the hospital
I cried for a very long time in the emptiness of the streets. No one even noticed my sadness.”

It seems crazy and tragic that this could happen in the United States in the 1980s, but in my family’s universe, it made sense. My father controlled my mother; every meaningful decision was made by him alone. She had no friends or family in this country and spoke limited English. My mother depended entirely on him, and that’s how he liked it.

My mother spent twenty years hiding the pain and agony of this secret, but on December 10, 2007, it finally came out.

Tormented, betrayed, and still in shock, I knew I had to contact Jennifer.

Chapter 2

CAMELIA

T
o better understand my parents today, we have to look back to their homeland, Romania. Situated north of the Balkan Peninsula in Central Europe, Romania is a country well known for its history of hard-line communism. It fell under communist control in 1947, after the previous ruler, King Michael, was driven into exile. My parents grew up under the brutal dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausşescu, who rose to power in the 1960s and continued to rule until the Romanian Revolution in 1989. Romania’s economy fell apart under Ceausşescu’s reign, leaving most citizens starved for food, work,
and a sense of hope. Meanwhile, Ceausşescu himself lived lavishly and misappropriated the country’s resources for his own benefit. Ceausşescu’s secret police agency (the Securitate) regulated almost every aspect of daily life—from deciding who could have children to who was permitted to own a typewriter. Human rights violations under Ceausşescu were legendary.

It’s not every day you meet someone who was raised in a communist country during a period referred to as the “reign of terror,” let alone when they happen to be your parents.

In November of 1980, on the day of my parents’ engagement party, my father’s family presented a dowry—a few wool dresses, a gold cross, and a handful of other gifts, in exchange for my mother’s hand in marriage.

At the age of nineteen, my mother, Camelia, would marry my father, Dimitry Moceanu, a man she’d never met and whom she had seen only in a photograph. When my mother describes the events leading to her marriage, it is as though she is watching someone else’s life unfolding in front of her: yes, she
was
the bride, but unlike brides of the western world, decisions about the flowers, the wedding gown, church, day, time, and even the
groom
did not belong to her. It’s not that she completely opposed the marriage—options for a young woman in Romania at that time were pretty bleak—but she felt like a pawn being pushed, pulled, and maneuvered.

My father’s family, the Moceanus, made the arduous 350-mile journey from Bucharest to my mother’s home in Dudestii Noi to attend the engagement celebration for their youngest son. Noticeably missing from the entourage was my father. To his credit, he had been in America looking for work and planning for his future, but he was denied a visa to leave the country in time for the celebration.

So their son could at least
see
what his bride-to-be looked like, the Moceanus had announced that they would have a professional photographer at the celebration to memorialize the engagement and take formal photos of my mother. At this time in Romania, money was scarce and times were tough. Excess was frowned upon; in fact, it was practically sinful. But weddings were still considered a special, once-in-a-lifetime event. It was okay to splurge a little on a celebration with a photographer and maybe even a visit to the salon. On the day of my mother’s engagement party, she had her long, black locks perfectly curled and set to impress the mysterious man she was about to marry. It was important to look her best in the photos, even if she hadn’t chosen the man who would be her husband. A first impression lasts a lifetime.

It didn’t take long to notice that my father was not the only one missing that night. The professional photographer never materialized. No real explanation was ever provided, either—it just didn’t happen. There, in her own home with the celebration swirling around her, my mother felt alone—no fiancé and not even a photographer to capture the moment or at least lend an air of importance to the event. In the end, she did not remember a single photo being taken that day.

“Beautiful, smiling Camelia” would not dare voice or even hint at her overall disappointment that night. She was the product of a traditional Romanian upbringing. The youngest of her siblings, my mother was born in Timisşoara on October 19, 1961. In her generation, Romanian women were expected to know their place in society. The rigid environment didn’t leave much room for questioning any of the rules, much less breaking them. A woman’s role was exclusively in the home as wife and mother. Subservience, obedience, and unquestioning loyalty to the husband were a must. My mother was taught first and foremost never to bring shame to the family and that the man was head of the household, period.

The head of my mother’s household had been Spiru Staicu. Born on the border of Albania and Greece, my grandfather (“Papu”) was a typical old-world disciplinarian. Obedience was well ingrained in my mother from the time she was a young child. Papu made all of the family and household decisions, no matter how big or small. He lacked a higher education from a traditional standpoint, but he was an avid reader and devoured books about history and geography. He especially loved reading the Bible. Positioning himself as the rule maker, Papu seemed to make a conscious decision not to get too close to his children. My mother cannot remember Papu ever showing warmth or affection toward her or her siblings. His explosive temper and booming voice didn’t help. As the baby of the family, my mother mostly kept her distance.