A.M. Homes remembers waking as a young child sobbing for her “other mother”. Although she was adopted as an infant, some part of her yearned for the parents from whom she came. Many adoptees do the same. But what if, when you find these long dreamed-of parents, they have feet very much made of clay?
Novelist and short-story writer Homes, whose fiction works include The Safety of Objects and Music for Torching, writes her own story in The Mistress’ Daughter. It’s a not-often-told story that will be of interest to many adoptees. Certainly many birthparents, such as those profiled in The Girls Who Went Away, loved their babies and are a positive force in the lives of their birth children. Conversely, some children have been abandoned or have been taken from horribly abusive, neglectful, and/or chronically addicted or severely mentally ill birthparents.
But probably most adoptees will find the reality somewhere in between. Sometimes birthparents place children for adoption because of instability in their own lives, bad relationship choices they have made, psychological problems. Some of these characteristics may still be manifest in the birthparents’ lives when they are found. The adoptee may find a decidedly mixed emotions—comfort in finding out about his or her family history and the circumstances of his or her birth, and disappointment in the flawed people they find and in the relationships they have after reunion.
Again, many adoptees and birthparents have very good relationships after reunion. But enough will inherit a more difficult scenario that A.M. Homes’ story will be good preparation before a reunion or good comfort after one.
As the title of the book suggests, Homes’ birthfather was a married man who had an affair with her birthmother. As an adult, Homes meets her birthfather, who appears to want to know her, but is rather stiff and critical, leaving Homes with the impression that now as then, “it’s all about him”. She then meets her birthmother, a rather narcissistic person who may not be exactly mentally ill, but is not exactly psychologically stable either.
Homes is a master chronicler of how the mundane becomes emotionally important: how odd it was to see certain physical features of herself—from her hands to her derriere—in a total stranger; the awkwardness of the DNA test; the incongruence of having a birthparent who wants to meet her but doesn’t want to tell his other children of her existence.
Homes also experiences a needy birth mother who sometimes seems to want more than Homes can give, leaving her with guilt feelings. She also must deal with the death of one of her birthparents. She writes of her grieving process, which included boxing up all the information and mementos she had about her birthmother and going through them years later. She writes of the feelings of intensely desiring a biological child of her own, a genetic relative. This too is a feeling reported by many adult adoptees.
The Mistress’ Daughter is not exactly a cheerful read, but the inconsistency of the characters and their interactions gives texture to the story and Homes’ unsparing description of her thoughts and raw emotions throughout the reunion period is gripping.
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