When I Was Four, My Mother Left Me Alone in a Church—Twenty Years Later She Returned Crying, “We Need You”
/
Chapter 14 / 34
Chapter 14 - THE EXPLANATION
My father spoke next.
“We were broke.”
I stared.
He continued.
“I’d lost my job.
We owed rent.
We could barely buy food.”
“So you abandoned one child.”
“We thought the church would protect you.”
“You had two children.”
His expression hardened.
“Leo was older.”
I almost smiled.
“What does that mean?”
“He understood what was happening.”
“He was eight.”
My father stopped.
My mother took over.
“We thought a younger child would be easier to place.”
The room seemed to tilt.
There it was.
Not impulse.
Selection.
Four-year-old Nora was more adoptable.
May you like
Eight-year-old Leo was not.
They had looked at two children and calculated which one the world might absorb more easily.
