She was My Mother

In a dark room, two chairs are empty, and the lights are down. The INTERVIEWER comes in with the lights low and takes his seat, sitting so that the audience can see only part of his face. A spotlight follows KRISTEN into the room and she takes a chair facing the audience.

The atmosphere of the room is that of an artist's studio, with KRISTEN lit and seated as the canvas, from which the story will be evoked. She dresses carefully, but in a style that is has long been out-dated. Her bangs hang long and straight on her forehead; her makeup suggests that she is unmarried.

(Notes: Kristen's story is far from conventional. There implications of deviance - possibly criminal and certainly dishonest - on the part of her "mother". The interviewer is interested in hearing Kristen's thoughts on whether or not she was mislead, and to what degree, and additionally interested in discovering any unknown facts of the story, especially if they would be dramatic. There is a tension between Kristen's desire to understate the situation and cast it in a neutral light and the interviewer's intention to draw intrigue and drama out of the interview. The interviewer does not, however, lack delicacy. There are sensitive, appropriate pauses after many of Kristen's answers. He knows she isn't telling all she knows and interviewer's awareness of certain facts is both stated and implied throughout the scene.)

(Lights up.)

Interviewer: (Aside) Begin tape two. Radio interview. Kristen Adolphino.

Interviewer: I'm sorry, Kristen. Please continue. What were you saying?

Kristen Adolfphino: No one killed her. I told you. She died.

Interviewer: In her obituary, you wrote of a sense of blame. Can you explain that?

KA: Someone else wrote that obituary and put my name on it. I thought you'd know, that I hadn't written it. Aren't you a reporter?

Interviewer: There are quite a few things I still don't know about your story, things I'd like to find out. Do you know who wrote it?

KA: The obituary? Yes, I do. I know who it was. But I'm not the kind of person to...to tarnish the name of another.

Interviewer: So you know, but won't tell us. Not even to clear your name.

KA: No. And I don't feel that I have to clear my name. I didn't do anything. No one accused me either, of doing anything but...being a daughter.

Interviewer: Was the obituary inaccurate then to say that you felt you were to blame for your mother's death?

KA: No. It wasn't my fault. No one killed her. She died. Let's get this right. I loved my... my...I loved my mother. Oh, I want to say it all...the right way.

Interviewer: But she, um, she wasn't your mother.

KA: I didn't know her at all until I was thirty. She was introduced to me as my mother. So, she was. She was my mother. I lived with her, loved her, took care of her, in the end.

Interviewer: How did she die?

KA: Excuse me?

Interviewer: What was the cause of death?

KA: She had a heart attack.

Interviewer: The newspaper said -

KA: Newspapers don't speak.

Interviewer: The obituary, ah, stated that your, ah, mother died of a head trauma.

KA: Well, that's not true. It's not entirely accurate anyway. Her death was not instant. She did hit her head, but it was her heart that caused it.

Interviewer: Can you explain what happened?

KA: She suffered a heart attack... She was grabbing at her chest and, she didn't say anything, she was quiet. She held her arm out to me like this and her other arm was at her side, limp. Limp like a rag. Like she couldn't move it. Like it wasn't' really a part of her.

Interviewer: Where was this?

KA: It was in the everglades. Our trailer isn't, wasn't, more than an hour's drive...(long pause) She had gotten out of her boat onto a big tree root and she held out one arm to me. She fell then and her head hit...a...

Interviewer: Who else was in the boat?

KA: Detective Sims was in the boat with her. Or that's the name I knew him by. I don't know his real name, for sure.

Interviewer: So you were in the boat with Detective Sims and your mother and she had a heart attack and climbed out of the boat?

KA: No. That's not exactly how it happened. There were two boats. I was in a boat with John Carter, my co-worker. He and I were scouting a location to do a take on pollution for our station.

Interviewer: You're a production assistant for KFTA news.

KA: Channel 5. We are the news that speaks.

Interviewer: Yes... So, there were two boats.

KA: Two boats.

Interviewer: Four people?

KA: Yes.

Interviewer: You were scouting a location to film, you said. What was your mother doing with Detective Sims?

KA: Like I said, I'm not the kind of person to tarnish the name of another. Not the dead either.

Interview: Don't cry Kristen. Would you like to take a break?

KA: No. Let's go on. I'm alright. I'm sorry. It's just that... It's just that... (long pause) I'll never forget that moment. Our eyes met and I knew everything, right then. Up to that moment, I hadn't known - so much. There was so much I didn't know. So much that had been kept from me. But, it all came crashing into to my mind, clearly, with perfect clarity, painful clarity. All the memories lined up and I knew. It was in her eyes. The way she looked at me.

Interviewer: What did she say?

KA: She didn't really say anything. She yelled out Detective Sims' name, only she didn't yell "Detective Sims" or "Sims", it was something else, like Charley. Not actually Charley though. I don't know his name to this day. I don't want to.

Interviewer: She didn't tell you anything else?

KA: She yelled out my name too, which was when she started to get out of the boat. "Kristen," she said. And when she shouted my name it was like something broke inside her. She wasn't a bad mother, really.

Interviewer: But she wasn't your mother, biologically speaking?

KA: She was my mother. To me, she was my mother.

Interviewer: What about the woman who raised you?

KA: Judy is my mother too. My adopted mother. I always knew I was adopted. From the very beginning, Judy told me, and Frank. There were no deceptions, no false dreams. They told me that I wasn't theirs but that they would love me, always, like I was. And they did.

Interviewer: What made you go out and, seek out, your biological mother?

KA: What do you mean, exactly?

Interviewer: Well, you didn't seek her out until you were thirty. What made you do it then, instead of ten years earlier or five years earlier? What changed for you that you felt you needed to find your mother.

KA: A few things, I guess. A few things changed. I saw Judy get very old in just a few years and that frightened me. I realized then that if I wanted to meet my mother, ever, it would have to be soon. And I, I had a - when I - I started to think about having a child of my own. I was changing jobs at the time too. The future was so uncertain. I wanted to find my mother before I left Florida.

Interviewer: You didn't leave, after you found your mother. Did finding your mother change your mind?

KA: No. I stayed in Florida. Florida is my home, I think, really. It's where I belong.

Interviewer: How did you find your mother?

KA: It was very easy to find her. I hired a private detective, Detective Sims, and he was able to track down my mother in less than three days.

Interviewer: Detective Sims was able to find your mother in three days, someone who you hadn't seen for 30 years, someone who you had no information on?

KA: Judy and Frank suggested that if I ever wanted to track down my mother they'd help me. I asked them how. They said the best place to start was the adoption agency that they had used to get me - where they adopted me, when I was born.

Interviewer: Judy and Frank helped you find your mother then?

KA: No. They had said this years before I decided to find my mother.

Interviewer: Did you tell them you wanted to find your mother? Did they know you hired a detective?

KA: I didn't tell them right away. I didn't tell them at all until after I had met...my mother. Before I moved in with her in the house.

Interviewer: Why didn't you tell them?

KA: It seemed like a sensitive subject. To them, I was their child. They understood that one day I might want to meet my mother. They really understood that, expected it. But I didn't want them to think that I was trying to replace them by finding, by finding my mother.

Interviewer: Were you trying to replace them?

KA: That is a very blunt question.

Interviewer: I'm sorry, Kristen. You don't have to answer if you'd prefer not to.

KA: No. I'll answer. I do want to tell everything - the right way - I want to say things truly and get it all right.

Interviewer: Were you trying to replace them?

KA: It wasn't them that I was trying to replace. It's hard to say what it was that I wanted. There was so much wrapped up in the emotion of meeting my mother. There still is. I get goose-pimples when I remember the day. When we met, when I met her.

Interviewer: Can you describe it?

KA: The house she was living in at the time was in a decent little neighborhood over on the south side. She had good neighbors, she said, and everyone kept their yards nicely made up. There was a tiny little baby flamingo in my mother's yard, the cutest little thing. Standing on one leg. It looked like it would fall right over. (She laughs with innocence and sadness. The first time she has smiled during the interview.) One of the neighbors did the mowing. My mother couldn't do it. She was not mobile, you know - had to use a wheelchair all the time for those last years... Detective Sims had given me her address and phone number. I had called to make an appointment, from the news office - I had just started on at KFTA - and left her a message. She left me a message on my home phone saying it was alright. Her voice was thick and flemmy. She sounded so old. Old. (Again she laughs. This time without innocence.) But that was years ago. She only sounded old. On the phone.

Interviewer: When you arrived then, you hadn't spoken to her at all? Ever?

KA: That's right. Not once, ever. I pulled up and parked in her driveway. She was on her porch. Everyone had that green Astroturf on their porches in her neighborhood, everybody but her. She just had wood. It was weathered so she had trouble wheeling over it on the bad days.

I pulled in the driveway and saw her silhouette, kind of, the top of her head up above the flowers on the porch railing. My heart was going one million miles a minute. I couldn't get out of the car.

Interviewer: But you did. You did get out and meet her.

KA: After a few minutes I did. Yes. And it changed my life.

Interviewer: Did she look like you? Do you look like her?

KA: (In a reverie) She was smoking. She always smoked. There was a cigarette in her hand, burning down, it was still full, like she had lit the cigarette and just let it sit there, not smoking it. There was a mark on her hand that I thought was a liver spot, right between her thumb and her pointer finger, right on the small of her hand, an almost perfect circle. Later I found out it was a birthmark. She'd had it all her life, from the day she was born.

Her hair was still dark then, darker than mine is, but was starting to go white. There was no silver or grey. There was the dark, dark brown and streaks of white like tears running through her hair. That's what I thought then, but, of course, I was crying, so naturally I thought of tears. Later, the thought never left me and as her hair got whiter and whiter I would think that it was all full of tears. Ages of them.

She was sitting there watching me come up to the porch. I waited on the step and said, "hello," and I told her who I was.

She just held out her arms. She didn't say anything, just held out her arms to me and I went to her...we both cried for a long time. When I went home that night, I felt light as a feather. Just so unburdened.

Interviewer: Did she tell you then that she was your mother?

KA: No. She never.

Interviewer: You mean that she never told you that you were her daughter and she was your mother.

KA: We would sit together for hours, after that day, and I would tell her all about what my life had been like and she would sit there, at the kitchen table in her house, flicking her ashes into the ashtray - she had this cute little cut-glass ashtray that must have cost more than anything else in the place - and she listened to me like no one has ever listened to me. And I listened to her.

Interviewer: What did she tell you? What kinds of things did she talk about with you when you two were getting to know each other?

KA: She told me about my father and she told me what happened to the two of them before I was born.

Interviewer: Can you tell us now what she told you? What do you know about your father?

KA: His parents had lived in Cuba. His family wasn't from Cuba exactly, but he was dark haired and spoke Cuban Spanish. He dressed a little bit Cuban, but he was Italian. His family was Italian. The police didn't know that. They said he fit the description of a criminal and they wanted to take him in. He resisted. My mother saw him struggle with the police, two policemen, in front of the apartment they were renting. She wanted to yell at them to stop and leave him alone, but she didn't. For some reason she couldn't.

Interviewer: What happened?

KA: He knocked down one of the policemen. They got out their clubs. My father was in the hospital for ten days. My mother visited him every day and spent the night. In the morning she would leave his bedside to go to work before the sun came up. She had to go all the way across town to get to work, so she left while it was still dark. One day two men assaulted her while she was waiting for the bus. They dragged her into an alley.

She didn't tell my father.

Interviewer: So he wasn't your father?

KA: She didn't tell my father until right before I was born. He was a good man, she said, but he couldn't take it. He stayed until a few days after I was born and he knew that my mother would be alright. Then he left and she never heard from him again.

Interviewer: When did you and your mother move into the trailer?

KA: After she got out of the hospital. We had no money. She didn't have insurance. I sold the house we'd lived in for three years and got what money I could together to pay the medical bills. It wasn't enough. It was never going to be enough. We were broke.

Interviewer: What was she hospitalized for?

KA: They couldn't find out what was wrong with her. She was just sick.

Interviewer: So she was released...?

KA: She came home to a trailer in a trailer park. Borrowed.

Interviewer: How long did you live in the trailer together?

KA: Together? We lived there for about a year and a half. She died before we could move on, to another, to a...

Interviewer: Did you see Detective Sims over those five years that you knew your mother?

KA: I did. A few times. He would be there when I got home from work.

Interviewer: Waiting to talk to you?

KA: Yes. Well, no. He left when I got home. My mother always said that he was checking on things. She was happy too, when he came around, so I didn't ask any questions.

Interviewer: Did you ever wonder about their relationship?

KA: Only after it all came out. When I knew. Then it made sense. I didn't even wonder how he had found her so fast until I knew.

Interviewer: Do you resent what they did to -

KA: They didn't do anything to me. There was no crime. I do carry a burden (heavy pause), a cross...of sadness. Because my mother is dead.

Interviewer: But they lied to you, for years.

KA: Sometimes you have to see that...you have to realize that lies can lead you to the truth, the larger truth.