Part 3The Orphan Who Refused to Starve

I was adopted twice during kindergarten.

My first adoptive mother was Eleanor, a single woman in her early forties.

The first time she saw me, she smiled and said, "This kid has fire in her eyes."

She held my hand and took me home. She lived in a beautiful, tastefully decorated three-bedroom condo in the suburbs. She had set up a bedroom just for me. The duvet cover and the stuffed animals were brand new; everything smelled like clean laundry detergent and sunlight. Out on the balcony, she had strung up fairy lights that blinked softly in the dark.

I asked her why she adopted me.

She told me that before I arrived, she had spent ten years sitting on that balcony, looking at the stars alone.

"I grinded for two decades to become a VP at my firm," she said softly. "I married my college sweetheart. We were together ten years. Everyone envied my life. But my reward wasn't happiness. It was betrayal."

"He told me I was too career-driven, too aggressive. He said we just weren't compatible anymore. The truth was, he had been sleeping with someone else for years, but he didn't want the guilt of being the one to end the marriage."

"He waited until his girlfriend showed up at our door, pregnant."

"I divorced him. I bought this condo, bought my own car. I thought I could just live the rest of my life on my own terms. Then, last year, I buried both my parents."

"I sat on this balcony on my fortieth birthday, and this crushing, suffocating loneliness just washed over me."

She stopped and stroked my hair. "Why am I telling you all this? You’re just a kid. You don't understand."

I did understand.

But I also knew that adults needed kids to be innocent. They needed us to be blank slates.

I tugged gently on her hand. "It works out perfectly. I like looking at the stars, too. From now on, when you get off work, you can watch the stars with me."

Eleanor smiled and nodded.

I lived with her for three months. She was a corporate executive; she rarely got home before ten o'clock at night. In those three months, we only managed to watch the stars together four times.

One afternoon, a social worker from St. Jude’s showed up at my kindergarten and took me away.

The social worker told me Eleanor was sick. Acute Myeloid Leukemia.

She knew she couldn't take on the responsibility of raising a child while fighting for her own life, so she surrendered me back to the state.

It broke my heart. She was the gentlest person I had ever met. Her life shouldn't have ended as a tragedy.