I contemplated whether to sit or simply lean in close to Kono Ateba Mary Theresa.
Comfortably reclining her heavy-set frame into her armchair, the mother of a former basketball star habitually tucks her fingers underneath her chin and assumes a gaze that can mesmerize her grandchildren.
Tedd Ray Bitsegui Ambassa’s mother is aptly named. She has a certain air about her that rings distantly, but not identically, of Mother Theresa. Her sense of calm moves from her to me as I kneel down beneath her and ““ for the first time in my life ““ reach for the family picture crammed between business cards in my wallet. I had just finished explaining to Kono that I was indeed adopted ““ a concept she had heard of on the news and seen in Hollywood films, but never come directly in contact with.
She was fascinated.
As recently as last September, I found myself sitting at a San Diego bar with my best friend discussing the details of my adoption. He recalled that it was eighth grade when he first discovered my history, and the pieces of the puzzle fell together in his adolescent brain: How the Asian kid with glasses can have a white family and the name Matthew James Stevens. But since eighth grade, he had avoided the subject ““ and I never brought it up.
I never bring it up in conversation because I find no reason to. When you are adopted at the tender age of 4 months, you remember nothing of your short-lived life in Seoul, South Korea. To this day, all I have is a piece of paper so thin you can see the type-written letters punched through it in the light. From that piece of paper I learned my birth name is Seung-Yub Lee ““ “young sapling” ““ and that my biological father impregnated my biological mother and left her.
That piece of paper contains everything I know, and all I care to know. I can’t stand kimchi, but I salivate over Americanized Korean barbecue. I don’t know a single word of Korean, and I can’t name a city in Korea other than the capital. I care nothing for all this because I remember nothing of it. Mr. and Mrs. Lee (or whatever their names are) are not my parents, though they may have given me life. Jim and Jan Stevens are my parents, and I am a product of their upbringing. It’s actually that simple. Or it was, until Kono complicated it.
Imagine her sense of shock at seeing my squinty brown eyes next to the marble blue of my white brother. Africa is a place that puts community above all else, but communities are made of cousins, of neighbors, of clan members ““ not typically of outsiders.
How strange it must have been for her to conceptualize that a white family that has everything would consider sharing that everything with a kid from a different country. How odd it must have seemed that I, a cross-eyed orphan in no better a position than the children living two doors down, would be selected to be saved by this family. Kono wishes more than anything that an American family will take in her talented 11-year-old son when the time comes, so he can play on a basketball team. With her lazy right eye, she was looking at a young man who, thanks to no effort of his own, was living out the dream she wished for all her children.
The next moment, it was as though Kono had been gripped by God himself. Convulsions overtook her body, and it took several scary moments before she returned to consciousness.
“You,” she panted, out of breath, “must be very close to God. How else could one be so blessed to be put in a situation so good as yours?”
I couldn’t find the strength to stand up from my crouched position, and I felt instead like falling to the floor. Kono’s genuine shock at my fortunate circumstance knocked the air right out of me. As I peered around the room, my gaze settled on her 11-year-old son.
His dream is to wind up in the United States one day.
And for the first time in my life, I had ocular proof of just how lucky I am.